It's Africa That Does It!

Hi, lots of interest in the little boy story so here’s another chunk – I’m amazed by the number of readers who still empathise with Africa in the fifties. Good days. Oh, almost forgot – this week, will (under a Pen Name) be putting up ‘Feeders’, the threatened short booklet of horror on Amazon Kindle. Different, but thoroughly enjoyed the genre change. Hope you do too. My next blog will reveal all so stay with me...

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Another extract from An English Boy’s Wanderings in Africa;

... The bottles and glasses clinked together because the waiter’s hands were shaking and the tray jumped up and down. He lined up the drinks on the table, big brown bottles of Lion Lager beer – ‘bombers’, Uncle Ron called them because they were quarts instead of pints. I think they had two drinks inside them instead of just one. Mother and Aunt Ann had gin and tonics with ice and lemon slices, but they weren’t bombers. Aunt Ann smiled a lot now and her eyes sparkled. I had a coca-cola in a bottle with a straw stuck in it, my second coke in all my life; and a packet of crisps, which I later learned were called chips in Africa. Real chips were called that as well but everyone knew what you meant. Hilda had the same as her husband – a bomber. She was really thirsty. I could tell because she’d gone really quiet and her eyes were getting smaller.

Apart from Ron’s wife, everyone talked really fast now. The waiter brought some more bombers and gin and tonics. Aunt Ann tipped the ice and lemon out of her old glass into the new one and mother did the same, I think she was learning what to do in Africa, so now she had two ice and lemons in one glass and looked really pleased with herself; she chased a pip round the glass with her finger, but couldn’t grab it. I got another coke but no chips. The waiter nodded his head and smiled when Uncle Ron tipped him a sixpence. He dropped the sixpence inside his jacket pocket then went and stood at the other end of the veranda, watching for someone to put up there hand for some more bombers and gins. Maybe I would get another packet of chips. Maybe my friend with the white teeth would get a shilling next time. I smiled at him and he smiled back. I learned a lot from the old man – how to watch and judge the moment; how to listen without being watched. Say nothing, but hear everything. Unless he looked at me his eyes seldom left the table.

Even the veranda’s covered over bit was getting hot now. Uncle Vince said the hotel man liked the sun because it made people buy more drinks and he put out bowls of salted nuts – all for free to make them thirsty. Sometimes they would stay there all night because their legs wouldn’t work, or the road moved when they drove and made them go in the bushes. Bombers and gins made them talk fast; some couldn’t talk at all and they wobbled when they walked. Some lay down on the grass outside and slept, but nobody cared and for years later my Dad would try desperately to educate the non-believers; ‘it’s Africa that does it,’ he would pontificate, then, with stronger, punitive words he would curse the heat and kick up clouds of ‘red sour earth’ from beneath his feet. Beer helped him feel better, helped him forget, but sometimes he still looked sad. I think he missed England. Mother just smiled and conversed on a daily bases with compliant, nodding flowers in her garden. She loved Africa, it was always warm, the sun big and yellow, gin and tonics plentiful and her Matinee cigarettes, a shilling a box of thirty; but she coughed more now – Aunt Ann said it was the dust.

Those who chanced a drunken arm at driving home took to the road as a weaving, erratic convoy, the kids now frightened into a state of total silence; dead quiet on the back seats – mothers, fearful of their husband’s wrath said nothing. Not all of them reached their destination. My Dad was right, I think the sun and too many bombers made people crazy. Most people in Wankie were crazy because it was so hot and the only things that stopped you getting hot were bombers and gins. But you still went crazy, because that’s what white people did, in Africa...

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