The Art of Staying Afloat!

Hi – just finished reading the reviews on Amazon for Sons of Africa; my thanks to those of you who took the time to comment – long may the interest continue. Marketing a book without the clout of a major publishing house behind you really takes some doing; contrary to the negativity of one well-known London literary agency, good ‘old fashioned’ story telling does sell...

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An English Boy’s Wanderings in Africa – (an older piece and more):

‘You’re going to learn how to swim, Jeffrey.’

‘Why?’

My mother lit a cigarette. When she sucked in the smoke her eyelids trembled.

‘Because drowning won’t be good, Jeffrey; people will stare.’

She bought me a fluorescent yellow costume; I would have preferred a blue one and a size smaller. Sometimes my willy stuck out through the leg hole. Took a month for me to rid myself of the nickname, ‘three-legs mango-arse’. Once the yellow had faded and mother boil-shrunk my cozzi, going to the pool wasn’t so bad.

‘Out one – two to the side,’ my mother warbled. ‘Out one – two to the side.’

All my friends were watching. The pool bottom looked good; peaceful, enfolding. I could drown down there quite comfortably with the decomposing frogs and dead ants.

‘Breaststroke, Jeffrey! For God’s sakes stop waving your arms! Out one – two to the side!’

Apparently, my father realised I wasn’t floating anymore and jumped in with his clothes on. From then on mother was sent to sit with her gin and tonic and Matinee cigarettes in the beer garden. My dad took over my swimming tuition and eventually, I mastered the art of staying afloat. Now, every day after school I thundered down to the pool with my faded yellow cozzi strung on a towel, draped round my neck like the other kids. I was almost one of them; the sun had burnt me brown and my hair had turned a gold colour. ‘The colour of sunlight,’ my mother cooed.

A week later and I plucked up courage enough to climb up to the ‘top board’. The platform itself was covered in ropey stuff to stop you slipping; the board stuck out into nothingness – over the abyss – thirty feet above the water, but it looked further because I could see down to the tiles, another twelve feet or so to the bottom – it was a long, long way down.

‘If you’re not a chicken you’ll jump!’ a kid shouted up to me. A big kid from two classes up from mine, I wished I’d stayed on the ground. Every kid in the pool was watching me; all of them with evil, malicious grins strapped to their faces. ‘Chicken!’ the big kid wouldn’t let go and flapped his elbows out at right-angles. ‘Squawk chicken, squawk chicken, squawk squawk!’

I came off the board like a startled gecko; arms and legs stuck out and flailing for whatever help I could grab a hold of. Wind rushed up my nose and pulled my eyelids back so I was forced into watching my descent, then, miraculously, feet first I hit the water. Engulfed by the deep, gratefully, I slipped from view. My tormentors were gone.

There were leaves on the bottom; I felt them with my toes, leaves from a syringa-berry tree that grew by the wall. They’d turned all slimy and puffed out clouds of wet dust when I shoved my feet at them. A dead scorpion rose up wraith-like through the floating bits and I kicked it away and pushed off for the surface.

When I came back up the big kid was waiting for me, his hand outstretched to pull me out.

‘You were great!’ he told me. All the other kids went quiet and from then on they called me ‘Jeff’ instead of ‘three-legs mango arse.’ Life was getting better. Africa ruled...

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