To our Paralympians – who others thought could not, but did!

A small tribute to the world’s disabled athletes; more than most, they give of everything they have...

'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 who dare to dream.'

*

Well, that’s it. What little summer there was has most definitely come and gone, and like some ignominious lover, left most of us unimpressed.

Watched the last gathering of Africa-bound swallows rev up their engines, lift en masse and with a final, farewell tip of their wings to us on the ground, twitter off to warmer climes.

Die-hard stalwarts; chaffinches, tits and robins grin at me through the kitchen window. Don’t forget our nuts and seed! they shout, and I grin back and give ‘em a thumbs-up. For those who stay behind, winters are hard out here in the sticks.

Already the wind is howling around the chimney pots; hawthorns and blackthorns bend their backs and like little old men cling tenaciously to sodden hedgerows. But all of this is England, my home and though the wind still howls, the world outside my study window is now at peace. I know where I stand. Without rancour, I look forward to our next snow-covered Christmas Day...

*

Kindle & Kobo - the risen and the rising up!

 

Made a second leap of faith and uploaded Sons of Africa to Kobo; need all the ePub exposure I can get my hands on before the sequel, Empress Gold pops its head above the parapet. Been with Amazon Kindle since August last year and can only sing its praises; what a ride it has been, what a great company to deal with and what hopes and aspirations have sprung from Amazon’s guidance and valuable insight.

However, now is the time for me to move up a gear, so climbing aboard a second platform just had to happen, and has, with much excitement.

As with those at Amazon Kindle, the folks at Kobo bent over backwards to get me up and running; my book is live and though tentatively, Sons of Africa is starting to move off Kobo’s shelf. Before the year is out, along with Sons of Africa, Empress Gold will be available for download to both Kindle and Kobo eReaders.

Good on you all for your choice of reading and thank you for your support; whichever brand you read from, be it Amazon’s fabulous Kindle or the magic of Kobo, I sincerely hope you stay with me – another five books have already reached the nursery stage – each one of them unique – all of them winners.

Talk to you soon – have to catch up with my design boffins about the new cover for Empress Gold.

*

Wanderings or Wonderings?

Often, people ask me what drove me down that rocky road to writing stories and there are a thousand answers to choose from; most of them used, most of them contrite and supposedly clever, but the real reason? I’m not much good at anything else. And anyway, I genuinely love the art of cobbling together interesting stories; to leave behind perhaps, a trail of tasty crumbs...

*

To The Sky!  A young boy’s antics in old Africa:

... Didn’t take long for me to reach full speed; reckon it must have been all of eight miles an hour down the hill to Willie’s house – our crash-out zone at the bottom. But hell-for-leather I went at those cursed and buckled old pedals; the chain kept slipping so that at least twice, my tender, teenage parts were flung against the crossbar.

‘Faster!’ The ground crew shouted and we shoved and pulled like demented rats up a drain pipe.

By now, Gilbert’s face had turned as pale as any black kid’s face could manage, but his grip on the half crown piece was unrelenting. Frozen to his imaginary stick and rudder pedals he willed the beast to fly. The homemade bamboo wings were forced upwards at a sickly angle; the skate wheels screeched and clattered over the tarmacadam and firmly fixed to the tailplane, Junior shoved for Mother Africa and screamed, Geronimo! whenever he caught his breath. Bob got a fit of the giggles and infected us all. Thirty yards from the bottom I hit my almost non-existent brakes and Gilbert wet himself. We were going in. Big style. Willie’s dog shot out from his driveway, barked his brains out and snapped at my front wheel. I kicked out at Ponkie (I know, strange name for a dog), but instead of the dog I found the spokes of my front wheel. Up I went and still at maximum thrust, ejected from my seat.

I saw things, wonderful things; the sky was underneath instead of above, sort of in slow motion. The trees were upside down then sideways-on and Bob was laughing even louder. I think at this point the wings came off and what was left of Gilbert’s plane crashed through the front of Willie’s garden.

Three weeks later, when all of the parental dust had cleared, we once again joined forces and for another two-bob, with his left arm still encased in plaster, Gilbert foolishly stepped inside our very unseaworthy home-built river boat...

*

Beetles, Bananas and Up, Up and Away!

Early morning; grabbed my dish and with Holly, Jones and Star in hot pursuit, headed for the garden. Purely by luck and by jumping over the lead dog did I make it to the fruit before our three, self-confessed strawberry addicts plunged their snouts inside the foliage. Managed to scrabble up half a dozen berries, but Holly got the biggest and reddest, Jones the most because he’s little and quick and then came Star – good at lifting and chasing off robbers, but somewhat lacking in the brains department, he got none. So I gave him one of mine and now contented, the four of us went back inside for a hearty breakfast.

Filled their bowls with biscuits and other bits and my own with nuts, raisins, Weetbix, bran flakes, muesli, natural yogurt, teaspoonful of honey, chopped banana and, last but never least, my impoverished pile of little strawberries. The dogs gave me their best ‘no fair’ stare and held back on the biscuits, begrudging me my berries.

Anyway, I ignored their slavering, flooded my dish with cold milk and hefted my spoon, ready for breaking through the half-inch thick, yogurt permafrost, but all was not as it seemed.

Where the yogurt ended and the bananas, like calving icebergs stuck up through the slurry, something lived and waved its arms in earnest. Got my glasses and peered into my dish. Clinging desperately to a strawberry, a single, tiny beetle prayed for a fair wind to carry him shoreward. Adrift in that arctic sea of iced milk he stood little chance of survival; with every tremor from my tabletop, waves proportionally the size of two-storey houses lashed his makeshift lifeboat and, had I not seen them, both lifeboat and beetle would have gone the way of the underlying bran flakes, straight to my stomach.

Plastered to my fingertip he went back out to the garden and on the highest sunflower seed head he stood, stretched and began the process of washing down. For that next half hour I watched him preen, clean and brush away his yogurt suit. Soon, he composed himself and then, without so much as a nod or a wave for saving his life, flipped open his cleansed wing casings and blasted off – up into the sky.

He managed twenty feet before a swallow took him. Could have saved myself the bother and eaten the ungrateful bastard myself.

 

*

 Another excerpt... ‘Up, Up and Almost Away!’

... For half a crown, Gilbert would, without so much as a second thought captain a papier-mâché submarine to hell and back, so test flying Spitfire One was looked upon as little more than a flap and grunt down the hill outside Bob’s house, but first the money – or no deal. Reluctantly, Bob dug around inside his pocket and pulled out a bright, shining, almost new half crown piece, thrust it into Gilbert’s outstretched palm and threatened death as a minimum punishment should he fail to get our plane airborne. Gilbert promised his best effort and pocketed the coin. He donned his borrowed mining helmet and lowered himself inside Spitfire One’s flimsy fuselage.

‘I am ready,’ he rasped and took a firm hold on his bamboo crash bar.

It was early morning, the sun was big and yellow and a slight east wind was blowing head-on to runway two-niner. Other than the sound of straining little legs on old pedals and the rumble of overloaded roller skates, there was nothing. I pulled, Junior pushed and Gilbert’s eyes flew wider as the wind speed under his eyelids climbed to maximum velocity...

 *

Flight of Fancy?

I keep looking for the summer; a long, hot day or two, some reassurance, maybe sunburn even, but nothing yet. The rain just keeps on raining, the ground, where I can find a piece that isn’t flooded feels as though it’s floating on marmalade. Everything is sodden; swallows huddle as soggy twos and threes along the telephone wires and stare listlessly back along the route they have just travelled. Five thousand miles from sun to no sun; doesn’t make sense, why not stay where you are and save yourself the bother?

*

From a little boy’s life, an excerpt...

... Bob’s house trebled as command headquarters, watering hole and storage centre for egg collections, fishing rods and air rifles, but this particular day we needed none of those. This day would be dedicated to the building of our first and only piloted aeroplane; Spitfire One.

Took us three days, from the original schematics done in the sand, to the final painting-on of her Air Force roundels. We built the frame from bamboo canes hacked from Bob’s garden; the wings and fuselage were covered in greaseproof paper and suitably ‘doped’.
‘We must be crazy,’ I told them, but my pointing this out fell on deaf ears. Come hell or high water, Spitfire One would bear its fearless pilot aloft, or at least glide him sedately across the lawn to the far side of the garden.
‘We need an undercarriage.’
‘What’s an undercarriage?’
‘Wheels to go underneath or it won’t move.’
We all agreed; wheels were a good idea, so back inside the house we galloped and ten minutes later emerged with two sets of roller skates, old Beano books, loads of Sellotape and balls of thick string. Another hour and Spitfire One had her undercarriage.
‘What next?’
‘Who’s going first?’
No one spoke. Squirming and headshaking we all declined the offer of test pilot. The fun had been in the building, the terror we knew, was in the flying.
‘We’ll draw straws,’ Junior piped, ‘those with long straws will be the ground crew – the one with the shortest straw will fly.’
Four straws were brought from the pantry; scissors were found, used, and the modified straws held out at arm’s length.
‘Take one.’ Junior looked at the rest of us and the rest of us recoiled in horror.
‘It won’t fly,’ I warned them. ‘We’re all too heavy.’
Everyone nodded, apart from Willie.
‘It might if it goes downhill.’
We all looked outside; Spitfire One, like a one-winged, no-engine Spirit of St Louis stood waiting in the sunlight, her Beano book double undercarriage with silver-coloured skates now ready for the runway. Midway between her front and rear bogies, a hole had been left where the pilot could sit.
‘Forget it. I’m not doing this.’ I folded my arms and glowered at Willie. ‘You think it will fly so you do it.’
Willie dropped his eyes to the floor.
‘It’s late. My food will be ready.’ He stood up. ‘If I’m not there on time the dog gets it.’ He disappeared through the front door. For the next three days no one saw him.
‘Gilbert.’ Bob suggested. ‘He’s thin and little enough to get in.’
‘What if he won’t?’
‘Then I’ll rat on him and my mother will sack him.’
Bob’s eyes glowed; Gilbert was the cook’s son, in the holidays he worked in the garden. At four feet nothing and weighing half of one of us he was the ideal trainee pilot. We could see him; almost insect-like, whippet-slim and unsuspecting, outside in the garden, watering flowers and whistling. A good puff of wind and he would disappear over the fence. We all stood up and went outside to convince Gilbert that his imminent promotion to test pilot would be his first, tentative step on the corporate ladder...

*

Things Are Brighter Now!

Hi everyone, my wife and commander has just finished brightening up my blog. I like it – easier on the eyes and when all’s said and done, the old quote ‘a change is as good as a rest’ always rings true. The elephant background served me well but had become somewhat tiresome and sombre looking, so here we go with a fresh start; hopefully, the writing matches up.

Something about a little boy’s travels springs to mind...

*

A small leap forward with An English Boy’s Wanderings in Africa...

 ... Took me quite some time to settle in at Mashaba Primary School, but now I had friends, three of them and as a unit, the four of us became inseparable. After school, we met at Bob’s house; me, Bob, Willie and Junior, plus three Persian cats, an owl chick called Spook who always wanted feeding and whatever else we had taken into custody, rescued or traumatised via various methods of capture. Then there was Bob’s Grandmother, Granny Fleming; a dour, but lovely, grey-haired Scot who sergeant-majored the Sunshine Club on a Tuesday afternoon. Religious instruction had long since become her forte. Bob’s Mum played the piano and trotted out her music for us to infect with our singing. Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam and My Cup is Full and Running Over were hot favourites; and if sung with fervour would guarantee a sneak peek into Heaven, or at least give access to Granny Fleming’s homemade lemonade and rock buns festooned with raisins, cream and finally, a dollop of Granny’s strawberry jam with the strawberries still in it – so we all sang our little hearts out, devoured the buns and lemonade and piled into the front room for fear of missing Superman on the radio...

*

A Short, Though Very Welcome Break!

My apologies for the unannounced leave of absence – I needed a break from computer screens and storytelling, so went for walks and too many pub lunches. Kicked a ball with the kids and talked with my wife about anything other than writing; looked at spring flowers, the rain on stone walls and miles of open moorland, all the things that normal people do. Anyway, I’m back behind my pc and already the wheels are grinding. Balance has gone through the window and that maddening, right eye tic has resurrected; all is as it was – time for that little boy in Africa to get on with his story...

*

An excerpt:

So every Friday night we trundled clubwards in our now, sun-faded, patchy-black Morris Minor. Dad even used the same parking space; we were conforming. Like other Friday-nighters, we would climb out from our car and crunch across the gravelled car park, lured like mindless moths for glass-panelled, overly curtained front doors. Some people said hello and some didn’t. Once inside we were absorbed then ignored. People talked, drank and waited en masse for the draw; that magical ten pound note was all that mattered.

For thirty miles in any direction, this was it – a weekly high point contrived by company hierarchy to keep the workers happy. This was mining life, Rhodesia style; as long as the beer stayed cold and the crisps crunchy, no one gave a toss. An hour later and our usual legless, master of ceremonies shouted for quiet and spun his company workshop manufactured, lottery drum – steel thick enough to fend of Howitzer shells, shaft mounted and held in place by two pillar block bearings, it would, if allowed to, remove several fingers with one, single spin.

The drum slowed, with every pair of wanton eyeballs glued to it. Incantations were whispered, prayers said, coughs stifled and lucky coins were clutched and fiddled with. Like some giddy, fairground ride it rocked to a standstill. Wing nuts were slipped from a steel access door and in went the hand of fate.

‘Number thirty nine – Missus Oberholtzer!’

Silence. Everyone held their breath. To claim the money you had to be there – in the club. Relieved sniggers. Save for waiters bringing drinks, no one moved. The Oberholtzers were missing.

‘Spin it again, she’s not here!’

So he stuck back the lid and for a second nail-biting time, spun the killer drum. ‘Number 8 – Mister and Missus Whittam!’

Mother shrieked, spilled her drink and stabbed me with her cigarette – albeit, accidently. Up went her hand.

‘That’s me!’

Like a tornado she made for the stage to claim her ten quid. My dad sort of tried to shrink and when I grinned at him, pretended we weren’t related. My ear throbbed from the fag burn.

Mother collected her winnings, promised half to my dad, told me to rub some spit on my ear and waved for the waiter. Dad disappeared back to the bar; I could hear him singing Nellie Dean because he was rich now, and because it was Friday night...

*

Unpredictable April!

April’s mixed weather bag has definitely been turned upside down and given a good shake. Within the space of one week we have had rain, sleet, hail and small splatterings of very welcome sunshine; my greenhouse is slowly losing its grey, lifeless demeanour and is gradually, but purposefully, most definitely, going green. Time to get in there and hunker down amongst the grow bags and slug pellets. Think it’s a man thing; sheds and greenhouses are pretty much related and the vast majority of us males love them both; sheds, with their pot-bellied stoves in winter, and greenhouses with their pot-bellied men in summer – often encouraged by a beer or two hidden amongst the tomato plants.

However, labouring over nature’s fecundity does have its downside. Pests, alien spores and death-by-damp watch from the shadows; thrips, mites and things that make your leaves curl, flock like vultures to a lion kill. Within a day, all can be lost and, considering my ease of access to rows of thripless supermarket shelves, I often wonder why I do it. But never, not ever, will I abandon the quest for red-ripe, greenhouse-grown tomatoes and cucumber jungles.

After all, where else can a man pretend to work, drink his beer and dream...?

*

An English Boy’s Wanderings in Africa: another little bit of...

... By my mother and mother’s growing circle of other mothers, Friday nights were eagerly looked forward to; that one night a week when the mundanity of holding together family life was forgotten. Husbands were corralled in the club bar and could be spied on via the waiters’ serving hatch, or waved at for another round of drinks. Children of semi-responsible age had two bob thrust in their hands and were then sent outside to ‘go and play’.

Two bob got me two cokes and two packets of chips (crisps). Kids were seen as little people who wandered into the cocktail bar for one more sixpence and hourly check over’s, but I wasn’t the smallest kind of a kid anymore. That following year I would be twelve years old and like a grown pig for the spit, I was ready for Alcatraz – boarding school. Fort Victoria High School, stuffed with trembling, homesick wannagohomers, cold showers, lonely hostel matrons and sadistic hairy men, torturously intent on flaying every boy within range of the birch. But that’s another story; six months time was a still a long, long way off and I duly made the most of my freedom.

Sat on the club steps with my second coke and first packet of chips, I was suddenly alone. The other kids had legged it and watched with full grins from the safety of the flower beds.

‘You’re the boy in the Morris Minor?’

I looked up and nodded, more out of fear than politeness.

‘Your mother came for the draw then?’

Another nod. My fingers closed and crushed my chips; the rest of me refused to move. I had been loomed over by the giantess from hell; the lady with the lookalike blood splatters all around her dress.

‘You mustn’t sit too long on the steps, you know.’

‘Why not?’ I croaked.

‘The spiders will get you.’

‘Spiders?’

‘Big ones with red hair.’

‘Red hair?’

The giantess nodded her head. ‘Like the one climbing onto your shoe.’

I left her on the steps, along with my coke, my chips and a spider big enough to push-start our Morris Minor...

*

With Murderous Intent!

Talpidae, or moles as we commoners call them, can kick up mayhem aplenty beneath our emerald lawns; digging, chewing and slashing in hot pursuit of earthworms, which, through toxins in the mole’s saliva are immobilised and stored in underground caches of up to a thousand. What once was level and pristine ground is quickly changed to semi lunar landscape. Mini volcanic mounds spring up overnight and flowers droop because their roots have been bulldozed off. Tunnel networks to challenge the London Underground spread through the entire garden and Jones, our four-legged digger-upperer, with much glee, is becoming obsessed with the dig of the century.

In retaliation, I have borrowed some traps from our farmer neighbour and already been sent to hell by my kids.

‘Murderer!’ they called me; along with, ‘mole killer’, ‘animal batterer’ and a dozen other names to match my heinous crime of protecting our garden. However, I went ahead with eradication plan A, and, when the boys were asleep, snuck outside with my spade and extermination kit.

With my lamp on low burn and me looking somewhat like a Victorian grave-robber, I set about the task of ‘demolerisation’. Six molehills were selected, six holes were dug and six traps were primed, semi-buried and covered with grass sods. Ripper-like, I sneaked back inside, hid my muddy willies and, whilst still smiling triumphantly, fell asleep in front of the telly.

Holly, one of our Labradors woke me up at six this morning; covered in lab-slobber I made myself a cup of coffee and went to sit in the loo for half an hour.

‘Got the bastards!’ I whispered gleefully and then rubbed my hands together in anticipation of six, abundantly filled traps.

The first five traps, though sprung, were empty. In the last I found a neatly folded sheet of paper – upon it, scribbled in black ink, were the words, ‘Hasta la vista, Baby!!’

I didn’t look round, but knew the kids were watching from their upstairs bedroom window.

It was with the dignity befitting an English back-woodsman that I took up my guttering lamp, spade, and empty traps and went inside...

*

That Boy, again – an excerpt...

... It came at my father with wide, reptilian eyes and a guttural hiss that frightened mother from the kitchen. I fell backwards – hit my head on the kitchen wall, shouted out a ‘B’ word and then, started to laugh. Mother’s ‘poison-spitter’ was in fact, a flea-ridden, ash-covered, half-starved Siamese kitten.

Dad dropped his hooker-outerer and, slack-mouthed stared down at his refugee. Mother discarded her cigarette and scooped up ‘poor little Cinders’ before dad had chance to say we couldn’t keep it. So we kept it. Cinders of the Dover Stove; like a phoenix she had literally risen from the ashes, a bright and comforting addition to all our lives.

*

The days in Mashaba dribbled past, but the excitement of Friday draw night was always looked forward to. Double bonus for mother; Friday night was also logged as Library night, along with that one in a hundred chance to win ten quid. The library was sort of a bunker style arrangement, tagged to the side of the Mine Club. To mother and mother’s friends it was a place of solace, a womanly refuge where men never ventured; who needed books when a bar filled with beer stayed open as long as its patrons stayed upright. Often, I stood outside and waited for dad to finish his tenth bottle of beer and customary, Nellie Dean before he emerged to take us home; fag between his lips, bitching like hell as to why he had left Mother England in the first place, car keys pointed with belligerent intent at our dutiful Morris Minor.

The draw-master always did his thing roundabout nine o’clock. Any earlier and the club would empty; once the tenner had been won and lost, most people rounded up their kids, picked up their basket of assorted drinks and crisps, then headed homewards for a fun-filled night with Jim Reeves.

For ten minutes, thirty cars revved up, moved if their drivers were capable and, as a convoy of weaving, wobbling tail lights, evaporated into an asbestos-laden night...

*

A Power of Good!

Being the evil, scheming parents that we are, the Boss and me have successfully coerced our teenage boys into restoring their bedrooms from leprous cess-pits to clean and smell-free dens in two days. Some achievement, you might well say? Admittedly, mistress bribery had to be commandeered and our pain, from forking out vast sums of money has yet to ease.

Sky+ boxes and high-def flat screens are now in both boys’ bedrooms and, dare I say, not a single coke can, smelly sock or antique burger crust is anywhere to be seen. However, for both siblings, there came with the deal a sting in the tail – the flat-screens were financed via their own burgeoning, momentarily unlocked bank accounts and for their promised commitment to responsible ownership, we stumped up the cash for their satellite boxes and associated bits and pieces; a goodly amount once the dust had settled.

Astounded by the transformation, we now knock before entering their adult-style dens and have sworn never to touch their tellies. Amazing how possession through the use of personal finance can change a young man’s view of his now expanding world. A little taste of adult-angst evolved of cash investment seems to have done them both a power of good...

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An English Boy’s Wanderings in Africa – just an excerpt...

... Mother, with her back pressed firmly against the kitchen wall, looked on; nerves steeled by double-strength drags on her cigarette. Dad had found himself a suitable piece of fencing wire and, after a few modifications, now brandished a long, hooking-out type instrument.

He went down on all fours; eyes level with the firebox and, with his breath held, worked his wire hook amongst a pile of old cinders.

‘Be careful it’s not a snake,’ mother warned him and moved another step further away from the stove. I tried to look inside and got shouted at; promised the ‘flat of my dad’s hand’ if I didn’t get out of the way.

‘Could be one of those spitters,’ mother proffered, ‘mind your eyes for God’s sake, one squirt of poison and you’ll never see again.’

‘Maybe we should just leave it where it is,’ said dad, not so brave anymore.

Can’t say I blamed him, running round the kitchen with a six foot length of spitting cobra wrapped around his head wouldn’t have gone down very well; with any of us.

‘Let me have a go.’ I held out my hand for the snagging wire, but once again, got glowered at.

‘In the glove box; there’s a torch. Bring it for me.’

I ran to the car and dug out an old Bulls-eye bicycle lamp.

‘The battery’s nearly flat,’ I told him, but he took it anyway and directed a beam of failing light into the dark throat of our Dover Stove.

‘Eyes,’ said dad, ‘two of them.’

‘How many eyes do snakes have?’ I asked in all innocence and got a slap round the legs from my mother...

*

Photo's Tell Stories!

Great to be able to say ‘hi’ to everyone – I like it when people read my stuff so to all of you out there in digital-land, my sincere thanks for your interest.

Been story-blogging for more than a year, now; my English Boy’s Wanderings in Africa is coming along nicely and my current love affair with the sequel to Sons of Africa is clamouring for release. So beware, this summer will tear the wrappings off Empress Gold, of which I am immensely proud, thrilled and super-chuffed with. However, not all stories are portrayed through text alone; some, like the picture embodied here, will ensnare our literary psyche without the need for a single, written word.

The stories are all there, told via facial expression, true colours and an intensity of purpose that the photographer, Phill Steffny has brought to life with a masterly dose of ‘show not tell’. A million words in a single moment; to me, that’s what photography is all about.

Taken during a guided safari along the Serengeti’s south-eastern border with Loliondo,  Phill has captured this classic moment; the Maasai people’s honest and open wonderment for new technology.

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Back again to that Little Boy...

... The office people gave my dad the keys for our house; it was easy to find – first left, first right to number 34 Glenview. A stony silence befell our little Morris and not until its engine was finally switched off did anyone manage to speak.

34 Glenview, with its whitewashed walls and red tin roof, stood to its non-existent garden, the way an unloved, rusty tractor would stand to a drought-stricken field – straight from Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.

If my father had the spare cash he would have turned our car about, loaded us up and headed on back to Wankie Colliery. But he didn’t, so we stayed and all piled out, but not without those fateful insects of dread first crawling up our shirtsleeves.

‘Please tell me I’m dreaming,’ my mother whimpered and flapped around in her bag for a box of cigarettes.

My father said nothing. The door key squeaked its way around the lock and I watched some insects abandon their home in the keyhole.

Mother was first inside; she wasn’t pleased, I could tell. Something about flared nostrils and flashing eyes that frightened me. She lit her cigarette and breathed fire.

‘They’ve put us in a concrete shed; have you seen the kitchen – a bloody coal stove for God’s sake!

‘We’ll get you a proper one,’ said dad and squeezed out a grin. ‘We’ll make it nice for you.’

Mother fiddled with her iron cooker; ‘Dover Stove’ had been cast in big black iron letters over the front of it.

‘That’s where you put the coal in,’ said dad and pointed out the iron firebox. Mother scowled at him, unlatched the heavy oven door and like some evil, Bodmin jailer, swung it back against the wall.

‘After a couple of years they’ll upgrade us to a better house,’ dad told her.

‘Or a room in a lunatic asylum,’ mother countered, then peered inside the cavernous firebox. ‘There’s something living in there.’ She backed off and pointed with her cigarette. ‘I heard it move...’

*

Mothering Sunday!

Mother’s Day; got up really early and took my lovely wife for a trip into the countryside – how different! How many wives can lay claim to chain-sawing logs in lieu of breakfast in bed? I did the cutting and my wife, with strong back and even stronger mind did the carrying and loading. After the first ton she politely suggested we go back home for breakfast – said I looked a little tired...

*

Back to a boy in Africa...

The General Office was a gloomy sort of place; a sign saying, Gath’s Mine had been stuck up over the main entrance. Outside, struggling to grow in a mixture of soil and asbestos dust, fire-proof Cannas and Busy Lizzies guarded asbestos-coloured grass and paved pathways. A black boy stood on the lawn, his hosepipe dribbling tepid water. I think he had all day because he hardly moved. Maybe the sun had got to him – wasn’t sure. Anyway, I smiled and thought I saw his eyes flicker.

Dad went in, papers and stuff in his hand for the man to read; there was a button thing on the wall and when he pressed it a lady opened the door to see what he wanted.

Mom lit a cigarette and finished drinking her coke. Wavy heat lines wriggled up from the car’s bonnet; dad said that black cars got hotter than other colours.

‘Why don’t black people get as hot as white people, then?’

Mother shook her head and looked away. The window sill burned her arm when she leaned on it and she said something rude that I wasn’t supposed to hear.

‘I hope they give us a nice house,’ she said, and peered out through the haze at a double row of cloned cream-coloured bungalows shimmering in the heat.

A black man on a bike peddled out of the haze and I remember thinking how tired he looked. His face shone and his hair sparkled – I think it was sweat. A basket dangled from his handlebars, the ‘madam’ had sent him on a four mile bike ride in a hundred degrees of heat for a loaf of bread and twenty Stuyvesant.  In his shirt pocket there would be a note and ten bob to give to the lady at Gruber & Sager’s. I waved to him and he looked surprised and waved back. Don’t think he got many waves. Whites didn’t wave at blacks – just wasn’t done.

There didn’t seem to be any gardens, at least none to cheer about. Hardly anything grew, not voluntarily, apart from raffia-type grass and ‘chinda bush’, a sort of pointy-leafed shrub that thrived on acid soils and whatever moisture came its way.

I didn’t like it here and wished we had stayed in Wankie...

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