Encouraging Words!

Indulgent prose; my own, of course. For all you wannabe word grinders:

Some, as great forest trees stand well above the rest; men and women of courage and forethought, those who start with little and often die with less – those of us who dare to dream.

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Back to, An English Boy’s Wanderings in Africa:

... The headmaster, a Mr Wood, from behind his glasses peered myopically at my mother and Aunt Ann. I was just sort of there, between them, apparently invisible.

‘I shall put him in Standard Four and see how he gets on.’

Mother and Aunt Ann peered back at him and nodded compliantly, then, obviously pleased with their successful first attempt at child disposal, disappeared. I had been abandoned to the care of ‘old Woody’ and was just as quickly despatched to the relevant classroom. That same day, on my way back home from school I experienced my first mango fest.  I returned home covered in yellow mango juice and toting a sore belly. Dad said that I wasn’t used to different fruit, but not to worry because the ‘squirts’ didn’t last more than a couple of days. So I had the squirts quite often and then one day they stopped – I was mango-proof.

That Sunday night it rained, I mean, really rained. Not like English rain; this was like getting slapped all over – drops the size of plate pies. Three would have filled a fish bowl. Half a dozen would ‘drown the dog’ my Dad said, and I believed him.

I knelt on a chair by the window and watched the sky light up. Here, the rain sneaked up on you – bit like a cat sneaking up on a mouse. Before the storm broke, the wind dropped. Lightning slashed the sky and I counted, ‘one, two, three...’ before I heard the bang. Each separate count represented ten miles so we were safe for the next half-hour.

Thirty miles away the storm had scrubbled the clouds into a tight and angry ball; it rolled them over dark valleys and in an instant, parched riverbeds ran bank-high with chaotic walls of whitewater. When it reached our driveway the thunder bellowed so loud that I jumped backwards off my chair. Everyone laughed and Aunt Ann threw peanuts at me and said I was soft.

The roof was made of galvanised iron zincs, that’s what people called them out here; corrugated iron sheeting to anyone living elsewhere in the world. The zincs were always painted red or green and when the sun went behind a cloud the zincs made funny pinking sounds.

The first drops were wet socks thrown at the landing window; sort of sideways on at an angle. Dust mixed up with the rain and ran down the glass like red tears. On the roof the first drops must have been bigger up there; fat frogs flapping against the zincs – then the flaps joined up as one, continuous roar and I hardly heard my mother shout for me to close the window.

Dad opened the fire escape door (we lived in the top half of the old nurses’ quarters) and stood out under the awning. He waved me over and side by side we watched the rain. I shivered when the cold air touched me; my Dad was smoking, I could see the cherry-red end of his cigarette. The sky had gone – the ground had gone – just the light from a neighbour’s bedroom window made it through to where we were standing.

‘So much water!’ I shouted over the noise and dad put his arm round me. Nothing could touch me now, not the rain the lightning nor the thunder. Then the rain stopped and like a grumpy old man the storm sulked away to the south-east.

Now I could see the street lights and the warm air came back, pleasantly moist and sort of musty-smelly – like the smell of an English potting shed in early autumn. I leaned in closer, not wanting my Dad to take his arm away. Not ever...

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