A Fool, His Gold & Ancient Ruins!

Morning folks – lots of interest in my gold mining piece so will fling back the curtains of opportunity and drag in all my readers before they up sticks and run for the Aspirin bottle. Could rattle on forever, but don’t want to bore those of you whose interests lie elsewhere; so will keep an eye on my Facebook ‘like’ button and current Blog stats. Me? I love it – prospecting for gold has literally held me captive since my first, mineralogical discovery and subsequent embarrassing trip to the claims register office in the sixties; guarded bag of raw gold clutched close to my naive heart.

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Going off at a vicious tangent here but can’t help myself – chose, ‘Schoolboy Prospector Strikes it Rich?’ as a fair title for this next bit...

Snuck my old man’s rifle out from his wardrobe along with a full box of Super X .22 solids, loaded my haversack with a day’s worth of cheese sarnies, rusty hammer and bottle of Mazoe orange juice. With dog in tow I went down into the wilderness.

Striking eastwards across The Great Rift (stream at the back of our house, couldn’t afford the fare to Kenya) and after a half day’s gruelling trek through the Mountains of the Moon (kopje behind the stream), I eventually reached the far horizon. Not without trepidation did I step beyond the boundaries of recognition and like the intrepid explorers, Speke and David Livingstone, for one last time I gazed back upon familiar territory; then boldly did I go where no other boy and his pooch had ever gone before.

Down we went, without compass, phone or Medicare, down inside that ancient valley. The path I had been following petered out; the last signs of civilisation fell behind – we were truly on our own. Time to look for gold; somewhere close at hand, hidden by thick jungle and protected by lion, leopard and marauding Matabele lay my Eldorado. However, my stomach reminded me that it was time to eat; so down we sat, me and my dog for a slug of juice and a cheese sandwich. That’s when I saw the trench; a deep scar on the hillside, a leftover from Rhodesia’s early mining days. All that reading I had done on quartz reefs, igneous rock formations and prospecting was about to pay dividends. I abandoned my half-eaten sandwich to the dog and scrambled for the trench.

Fixed between serpentine and some funny looking soft stuff was my quartz reef – black as burnt iron. Wreaking of vast fortunes it lured me onwards. Out came my trusty, rusty hammer and within minutes the ground about my feet was littered with broken rock. I dropped the hammer; the dog watched me, one ear up one ear down, bewildered by my antics. Then I found it; black quartz, harder than a witch’s heart, peppered through with bright stars of yellow metal. When I held it to the sunlight my hand trembled; the fever was upon me – I had found my Eldorado...

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Me & Roger Bacon; continued from last blog post – Gold & Ancient Workings!

... But up we went; me, my old man, twenty Shona labourers of dubious descent and with Roger Bacon leading the way; blasting through the undergrowth, four kilo’s of volatile attitude bundled up in black fur, spoiling for a run-in with the first leopard foolish enough to block his way. At regular intervals the quiet of the hillside would be blown apart by squawking partridge and Bacon’s jaws snapping shut on their tail feathers.

Our camp was pretty basic; nope, that’s not true – our camp was less than basic and though blessed with threats of betterment, less than basic it would stay – forever.

Night time was a mixing of fun and curse time; built on an unavoidable slope, our accommodation offered little in the way of rest, let alone sleep. Our home was a hut; no other word for it and what breeze, venom or lion breath there was found little difficulty in sliding in through gaps between the timbers. Spiders, scorpions and a hundred other creepy-crawlies moved in with us and through a generous gap in the thatch we watched the heavens wheel their way from left to right. Whenever my father spotted a jet-streaming Boeing flying northwards he would swear on his mother’s grave that one day he would be on it; followed by the usual, ‘should have drowned you in a bucket when you were born.’

Roger-of-the-Royal-Bacon got a slap for his amorous advance on my un-blanketed foot and spent the rest of his night sulking...

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Sons of Africa; an extract:

... ‘She had a child.’

‘You have spoken to her?’ said Mathew.

Bent shook his head; ‘A small village, east of the ruins; the headman works for me. He swears she poisoned her own baby, a few days after the infant was born.’

Mathew felt his gorge rise. ‘Why in God’s name would she poison her own child?’

‘Apparently, one of your Irish fossicker friends was the father.’

Mathew looked away. ‘Have you seen her?’

‘No,’ said Bent, ‘but she’s here. Mabel caught a glimpse of the girl; less than a week ago, no longer.’

‘From the hill fortress,’ Mabel related the event, ‘I was sketching a view of the valley when I saw her, but only for a moment before she disappeared. Apart from a fragment of beadwork to hide her modesty she appeared to be naked. More like a wild animal than a girl.’

Bent excused himself from the table. ‘Humour our reasoning, Mathew, there’s something I would like you to see.’

They waited in silence for Bent’s return to the fireside. Small sounds drifted out from the forest and at odds with them, men’s laughter from a temporary labour compound further around the hillside.

‘The headman brought this for me, only a few days ago’

Composed of natural stone it had been sheered as a single piece from the rock face. Mathew held it to the firelight, it was the size and thickness of a child’s scribbling slate, one side rough and misshapen from it having been prised free of the living granite; the reverse, smooth as polished alabaster. Bent gave Mathew time to realise what he was holding.

‘Throughout my travels in Africa and the Aegean Archipelago, I have never witnessed anything that has proven more fascinating,’ Bent reached out and traced the artwork with his finger tip, ‘more so here, where the images have been overlaid with gold...’

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Gold & Ancient Workings!

Maybe there are a couple of old-timer, gold miners out there who just happen to read this old-timer, gold miner’s blog. That would be ‘cool’ as the youngsters put it, nothing like a powerful draught of nostalgia to get the juices flowing. Let me think now, was it back in ’71 or ‘72...

Knee-haltered my burro and left him there for the day; took my pan and .44 Winchester then headed up into the mountains... Lies, all lies! Sounded good though. For burro read short-wheel base Land Rover; series I with failing brakes and a busted front prop-shaft so no four-wheel drive. For Winchester, read .22 Remington long rifle, just to scare the crap out of baboons if they came too close. And my dog (promised him a posthumous mention), spent most of his time with his butt stuck fast in a snake hole or eyeing up rock rabbits with, what I suspect was a view to swelling their numbers as well as his belly. Calling him a strange little dog would be listed by the tabloids as understatement of the year – hence his name; Roger Bacon. But that’s another story.

Found us a small reef, me and my old man; only a foot wide at best but going some twelve ounces of raw gold to the ton of ore mined – pretty good money even in those days. Slight problem though, I had a knack of finding things where most folks wouldn’t dare to walk. Sort of up a mountain; pretty well straight up for the last hundred feet – even the eagles built their nests with one side higher than the other to stop the eggs rolling out... (Finish this next time; two in the morning – eyelids welded shut)

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School Hols...

The late fifties and early sixties held for me the makings of fond memories. Boarding school was, in my third year there, turning from crap to semi-crap; holidays were eagerly awaited and then, in the blinking of an eye, devoured with alacrity.

‘We’re going to Zimbabwe Ruins, tomorrow,’ mother piped at me, as though it would be our first visit. ‘Lunch at the hotel and you can swim if you wish, so remember to take your costume.’

Today went and tomorrow came; off we went, Zephyr Six loaded to the gunnels with unnecessary necessities, mother’s fags and Kleenex box wedged against the windscreen. My father, without so much as batting an eyelid flooded the tank with ten bob’s worth of proper petrol, pumped the tyres front-and-back to 32 psi, watched the pump attendant slop his rag across the windscreen, drag his rubber scraper thing and then grin like a wonderland cat for his customary sixpenny piece.

After much saluting and more grins we lurched for the local equivalent of the Trans-Africa Highway. To this day, I can remember every twist, turn, up-and-down and dodgy pot-hole – twenty five miles to Fort Victoria and another ten or so to the Great Zimbabwe Ruins Hotel car park. Always remember the clink of ice in G & T’s, the clunk of Castle beers and coke bottles. Sixpenny packets of potato chips; waiters dressed in white with their Tommy Cooper, red Fez cocked at a jaunty angle (nicked the last two words from a book) and everyone smiled. Guess back then they had never heard of HIV, war and starvation – oh, what fun times waited ahead...

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Sons of Africa; an extract:

... ‘Would you look at that, Mister Chulmleigh? A more marvellous sight I swear I’ve never before clapped me eyes on.’

Again, O’Reilly plunged his fist into a bucket of water, rubbed his find between thumb and forefinger and then held the shining artefact to the sunlight. ‘And I tell you, Chulmleigh. Never in a dozen lifetimes would I prefer the company of a dozen whores to that of this little beauty.’

No bigger than O’Reilly’s little finger, a golden replica, that of a winged beast, half bird half reptile had been skilfully brought to life by ancient goldsmiths and even though it had been hidden beneath the ground for more than a thousand years its original form remained unblemished. The melancholic colour of that precious metal was still very much alive; red and raw, as though only that morning it had been poured from the smelter’s furnace.

‘Should we be handing it in to the company’s Ancient Ruins people d’yer think?’

‘And the mother of all pox on Mister bloody Rhodes’ company,’ Chulmleigh sniggered. ‘It goes in the bag with the others and we’ll have the buggers melted down and sold before his committee tumbles to our little scheme.’

O’Reilly opened the neck of a hessian sack and peered inside.

‘I’d say not far off a goodly fifty ounces or so.’

The finds were made up mainly of beads and beaten foil, all of that same precious metal – some still fixed to remnants of wood and yellow ivory, held in place by exquisite bindings of drawn gold and tiny, hand-forged copper nails. A few of the treasures had been cast as solid pieces; portrayals of wild animals – buffalo, rhinoceros and even a cobra’s likeness; the snake’s hood fully blown – portentous and threatening, its eyes were cruel reptilian slits set deep inside the gold. O’Reilly discarded the bag with casual disinterest, to him the treasures were merely an easy means of lining his pockets. His thoughts swung more to filling his belly.

‘Bloody starved I am, time to get some grub on the fire.’ He crossed to what was left of a butchered impala ram – cursed the early signs of putrefaction and slapped the palm of his hand to the beast’s rump to clear the flies. He drew his knife along the soft indentation of the animal’s haunch so that the copper coloured hide parted to expose clean pink flesh beneath. He put the weight of his shoulder behind the stroke and sliced down through muscle and ligaments; cutting deep into the animal’s hip to break the bone free from its socket. He dropped the hind leg on a tussock of grass then wiped his hands on his britches.

‘Rake up the coals,’ he told Chulmleigh, ‘while I fetch us a little something to wash down our dinner.’

They sat with their backs to a wall of granite blocks, sixteen feet thick at its base and built to reach up thirty feet above their heads. O’Reilly perused the stone-work – each block had been cut from living granite – shaped and squared to fit the one before it.

 ‘So whose name would you put to having built this place, Mister Chulmleigh? Blacks couldn’t have done it – not too good with the old straight lines these Shona lads. Not in a thousand years could they build a place like this.’

‘Don’t give a damn. Made ourselves a tidy profit and that’s what matters. Blacks or us Irish, I don’t give a monkey’s turd.’

O’Reilly passed him the bottle. His hand wavered – now his eyes were fixed to a gap in the stonework.

‘Hand me the rifle,’ he whispered. ‘Slowly now, Mister Chulmleigh, we have visitors. You get on down there behind the wall whilst I sort out our peeping-tom. Don’t let the little black lassie slip through your fingers, mind.’

O’Reilly waited for Chulmleigh to make his way back inside the labyrinth of stone passageways. He fired from a sitting position; with his knees drawn up as steady support for the rifle. From a distance of only fifty yards the bullet struck exactly where he had intended, high up on the ape’s chest...

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America's Settlers & Africa's Pioneers!

Thought last night (I know, I know) how similar America’s Wild West must have been to its Southern Africa counterpart – settlers and pioneers, both heading off into the wilderness with little or no support from any quarter. Gutsy folk, pushing West or North through God-knows-what and all of it done without a single mobile phone!

Wish I could have been there; guess this is my John Wayne delusion stirring again, but seriously, what a life it must have been and I do realise the pitfalls, I’m not naive enough to think their dentistry was done by the tooth fairy. Medically speaking, nope, things weren’t that good, but wow, waking up in the morning with open vistas and clean air must have been fantastic – and not a single politically-correct-pain-in-the-butt person in sight.

Buffalo, elephant, or both as far as the eye could see; womenfolk just as adept as men when it came to loading and firing rifles or gutting and skinning the dinner. Pioneers or Settlers, whatever; they were respectful of each other – respectful of their gods – respectful of the men they fought against and in my book that’s pretty much the way it should be; so where in our history books did it all start going wrong?

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Now; something a little different from my school boy ramblings;

Changing my profile photo to one that I hope is a little less frightening, so you can let the kids back into the room. Started a proper page on Facebook; bit bare-boned but will build on it. And below (vanity powered drum roll), the final cover art for Sons of Africa! I love it. Exactly what I wanted, so a huge thank you to the people at Pentacor, one of the UK’s top design companies. And to you, for reading what I write and through your support, helping me tell a story...

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Sons of Africa; an extract:

... Catherine’s heart raced. A few more days at best and they would forfeit the protection of the column. For a moment her courage faltered. Stories of ill fortune had not taken long in finding her – of blackwater fever, a sickness ten times more vile and virulent than the malarial fever that spawned it – marauding savages who in their hundreds fell upon settler wagons and killed for the sheer joy of it. ‘My husband found the wagon stuck fast to its axles in the bed of the Shashani River,’ a woman had told her – an Afrikaner woman with the heart and strength of two men. ‘All but one of them were dead,’ her fists were balled to meaty hammers, her need for revenge dark and unsated. Hatred spat from her mouth. ‘Four children... in the riverbed with their little throats cut through.’ With her face raised up to the heavens she had beseeched a vengeful God. Her lust was for a deep and terrible fate for those killers of little children. Spent from her cursing, she had slumped into her riempie chair and held out her glass for another filling of Cape Smoke. ‘It will be a fight to the end,’ she had prophesised. ‘But it will come, as sure as God gave me, Anna Magdel Bowker the power to foretell.’

The memory of their conversation still lived – every venomous word – every blow-by-blow description of the wagon in the riverbed. Sometimes, Catherine would sit bolt upright from her sleep, her eyes wide and fixed to that dark night outside her wagon tent. When the men were away from the wagons hunting meat, Catherine would, without compunction take to Magdel’s company and learn from her the ways of surviving the wilderness.

 Magdel showed off old and practiced skills, handed from her mother. The making of candles and soap, remedies for colds and colic, the grinding of native tobaccos for her snuff and with a blade made razor thin by a thousand sharpening, she had, in less than an hour, butchered the carcass of a full grown Impala ram – stripping back hide from flesh and flesh from bone. Venison, sliced to the length of a man’s arm was liberally mopped with salt and coriander, black pepper and a splashing of raw vinegar to ward off the maggot fly. ‘The meat must always be hung in the shade, and only in winter when the rains are finished or it will rot within a day; high enough for the wild dogs and jackals not to be able to reach it.’ The biltong would stay fresh and firm for months on end and was the mainstay of a Boer’s very survival when game was scarce. With a motherly eye, she had watched Catherine stake out the wet Impala hide for the sun and salt to cure, then scour the skin of fat with river stones before immersing it in potent tanniferous juices taken from roots of the kleinsuurkaree and the bark of sweet thorn acacia. With the hide now stained to a deep red, through patient deliberation and over the passage of many days, Catherine worked its softness to that of a woven blanket.

‘It will keep out the cold of winter,’ Magdel had told her and laughed aloud at the sheer delight in Catherine’s eyes. ‘God will always provide, my meisie.’ Though by His other hand, Magdel knew He might just as surely take away and in the blinking of an eye...

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A Good Night's Sleep & Farming Mad!

G’day everyone!

Slept like a log. Originally wrote: slept like a baby, then realised the flood of wisecracks it would invite from certain friends in the southern hemisphere. Anyway, sleep I did. Bear in mind that where we live could be likened to living underground in Coober Pedy; kind of far out – no noise. I mean zero decibels unless an owl cracks off with a hoot for the night-shift. That was the problem; the old brain cells were screaming out for a bit of good ol’ street noise – gets too quiet out here and the well used ‘silence is deafening’ truism sometimes springs to life.

Farmer harvested his silage yesterday – late on – eleven o’clock at night the machines moved in. War of the Worlds had surrounded our little house. Wife threw back the curtains for a glimpse of alien tripods and Tom Cruise; realised her hopes were fanciful and snuggled back down. But the noise went on; engines roared, cutters hissed and clattered, spotlights glared through our curtains and our three, normally well-behaved pooches threatened to eat the back door. I waited for that red-and-green-eye-on-a-hose-thing to come slithering up the stairs; guess it heard the dogs and thought better of it. Anyway, for whatever scientific reasons, we slept through it all and awoke refreshed, just in time to watch the tractors and tripods rumble off into the sunrise...

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A Farming We Will Go! (pulled this from the archives; needed a break from the norm.)

Living in the same house for ten years made the rut that I first fell into just that little bit deeper; my own, slothful haven – or at least I thought so before my wife announced over dinner that now was the time to start our own business.

‘Doing what, exactly?’ I asked and wished I hadn’t.

‘Worm farming!’ Victoria exulted, as though the reasons for our being on this earth had suddenly been revealed by a celestial plaque between the sauce bottles. ‘I’ve been doing some research on the Internet. Worm farming is big business in America.’ The kids stopped eating and pleaded with their eyes for me not to leave them alone with their mother.

‘Worm farming?’

‘That’s what I said, darling,’ and wiggled her little finger in my direction. ‘Remember? Those little wriggly things that fishermen use?’

I was being got at. My normal, lovely, sensible wife had turned into a Sybil Fawlty sound-alike.

‘What about the fence?’ I asked her; stone faced – now prepared to do battle in order to preserve my boring little lifestyle. ‘The fence is broken. The worms would make a break for next door’s garden?’

‘I’m trying to be serious,’ Victoria crackled at me, but already the kids were grinning me on to greater things.

‘These worms,’ I asked. ‘Where will they live?’

‘You’re doing it again,’ Victoria glowered at me. ‘They’re called worm farms,’ she went on through gritted teeth, ‘we could keep them in your shed to start with and expand from there.’

‘So I wouldn’t have to round them up and herd them back to a sort of worm corral every night?’

The kids cracked up.

‘And what about rustlers?’ I was pushing my luck, and from the look on Victoria’s face my John Wayne voice-over wasn’t being appreciated. ‘They’d have our herd across the Rio Grande and into Shropshire before sun-up.’

This is the time when everyone looks at each other and lapses into silence, a sort of wait-and-see mode, but what goes up must come down and it did. With a bang.

‘You’re a puerile twit!’ snorted Victoria and conjured up her best ‘I hate you stare’ before storming out of the room.

It was time to apologise and I did, with a week of flowers and my solemn promise to support her worm empire. So for days after our business rift we searched for web sites selling all things wormy. Statistics were read and discussed for hours on end and only once did I get into trouble when I suggested we market mini lassoes and branding irons. By this time, wormy information was coming at us from every quarter. Things like; ‘Send just $14000 for your worm farm business plan’ and a myriad of book offers from places abroad like ‘The Square D Worm Ranch’ and ‘How-to’ books on everything from worm ailments to increasing their libido. All somewhat confusing when the little darlings seem to manage alright in our garden without strategically laid out feeding plans and Anne Summers catalogues.

However, we soldiered on, my wife with a growing sense of excitement and me with my own cynical barrage of smiles and ‘yes dears’. Two weeks into empire-building and our first self-contained, state of the art worm farm arrived from America.

Victoria was enraptured. Her multi-storey stack of trays was quickly installed in my shed and filled with some composty looking stuff. Obviously well pleased with her first wormy experience, she busied herself with our new inmates, clucking like a delighted mother hen over her brood of wriggling hatchlings.

‘I’m sure they’ll be happy in their new home?’ said Victoria, but with some trepidation, and my offer of throwing them a housewarming party went down like a lead submarine. So once again I attempted to save the day by drawing on my own, branded type of silly humour and as usual, failed miserably.

‘What about some country and western music? A bit of good old American line dancing might stop them getting homesick?’ I went on with the jibe, making the most of those remaining seconds to offload my last week’s pile of pent-up humour. ‘And the Fourth of July will be here soon so what about turkey dinner and fireworks for your little critters down there in good old dirt’s-ville!’

I think she heard the first bit and ignored the rest; her usual need to choke the life out of me had been beaten into second place by this newfound interest in worm world. My rights to the sanctuary of the garden shed had been usurped.

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Sons of Africa; an extract:

... Before dawn, the king himself summoned Mhlangana to the royal enclosure. Fresh from the sleeping mat, Mhlangana stood naked to the warmth of a small fire whilst his woman, Imbali, gazed upon him with soft eyes. With fat from the hump of a bull Eland, she lightly anointed his body; so that now he glowed with that same, deep patina of black granite.

‘You are indeed the king’s man. Should another woman look upon you with lover’s eyes I shall be forced to cut out her heart.’

 He clothed quickly and in the full regalia of his high standing. To each muscled arm were tied medals of his valour; tails from the whitest of royal cattle, culled in their prime – each one given to the Induna by the king himself. At his waist hung a kilt of soft hide, adorned with the black-ringed tails of speckled civet and for the length of a man’s arm above his head, a plume of pure white ostrich feathers appeared to Imbali as a crown of winter mist above the sacred hills of Matobo.

 Against his skin, hers was the lighter; more subtle of colour – that of turned earth to warm rain. Barely reaching his chest with her forehead, she stared up at the king’s favourite and marvelled at the face above her, black as the night itself, god-like in the firelight; throughout her entire life she had never seen another more beautiful.

‘Were it not the king who summoned you, Lord. I would please you until every glimmer of strength was drawn from my body. One night was not enough,’ she whispered, and let her hands wander beneath the skirt at his waist. She felt his passion rise, cobra-headed from the soft caress of her fingertips and she teased him lightly.

‘He still hungers, Lord.’  Imbali forced herself free of Mhlangana’s arm. ‘Go now, my husband, do not stay for another moment or not even the strength of a hundred great elephants will be enough to take you from me...’

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Royals, Bells & Hammers!

‘Pologies for a late blog!! Lost my internet cable to the farmer’s plough so the first bit may seem a little dated, but what the hell, the rest makes up for it and anyway, you’re all nice people; hopefully will be back on track as of now.

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What an incredible day it was. As much pomp and good old British pageantry as you could shake a stick at. Stuff the naysayers; the Royal Wedding was simply, magnificent! Even a Republican buddy of mine down in Australia watched it – bless you G, promise to wear my drover’s hat ’n corks in recognition of your support. So, go the Aussies! Now go dig out a signed photo of Ned Kelly and forward it to me – one of my more rebellious heroes...

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The bells are ringing for me and my gal!

Year 2 at boarding school saw us first year movers-and-shakers propelled to loftier heights. We were shifted en masse from the infamous Cowling House to more prestigious accommodation – Tower House on the other side of town; a stone’s throw from school, so no more daily traipsing through whatever weather God had decided would suit His little band of devotees. We were big kids now; had the rudiments of first moustaches and stout hairs sprouting from strange places. Some of the squeak had gone from our voices, nuts were dropping all over the place and we were all growing upwards at a rate our mothers found alarming. We had moved to an era of razor blades and deodorants, conversation revolved around girls and what to do to them should we ever be given the chance.

Tower House was a place of frenzied male activity; little of it educational. Some five hundred yards to our north-east stood Temple House, a hostel crammed with girls of every shape and hair colour. One kid, little guy, really short with black hair and white suit rented out his binoculars for a shilling per quarter hour, think he bought himself Fantasy Island from the proceeds; always shouted: “The plane! The plane!’ if one flew over the hostel. However, there were much more sinister things afoot!

On Saturday nights, deep inside the corridors of Tower House something stirred. Mini-skirted teachers smuggled in booze and nibbles and of course none of us lads knew this. However, out from our corner window we went and up the drainpipe. Six kids in rugby shorts, trainers and dark jerseys – onto the flat roof and like some special forces recce mission, we were there purely as observers. Once directly above the staff room windows we leaned out over the edge and peered inside. We had sound as well, compliments of the staff room wall breeze blocks.

‘Oh darling, darling I love you, I love you!’

Maybe she did but by this stage we were all at level 8 on the giggle scale.

‘Let’s go to my room!’

‘Yes darling, let’s, let’s!’

We legged it back to the drainpipe. Back inside, we ran to warn the others and then crouched in the dark, ready to crowd the housemaster’s bedroom door for a listen.

Unbeknown to him and her, all of the tinkley service bells from two staff dining tables had been nicked and tied beneath his bed. Door opened, door closed. The lovers were in there; shredding each other’s clothing to reach the juicy bits. Ten of us, ears against the door strained for giveaway noises.

Then it started; more jingles and jangles than from Santa’s sleigh at peak delivery times. We made it back to bed just as his door flew open. Then our dorm lights went on and there he stood; dressing gown, one slipper, red-faced and in his right hand, twitching like a lion’s tail was, The Punisher – a four foot length of bamboo cane from behind the woodwork room.

‘Line up damn you, you, you’ll pay for this!’ (Basil Fawlty would have given the scene much credence). His hands shook. His lips were thin demented slugs and he dribbled profusely. The cane rose and fell, rose and fell until the last of us, crippled more by laughter, fell into our beds. His door slammed and his girlfriend left. Can’t recall her ever coming back again...

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Sons of Africa; an extract:

... With the over-burden cleared, Mathew took his time examining what lay beneath. The underlying rock was banded ironstone, harder than the pillars of hell and when struck with a four-pound hammer it would ring as solidly as the metal it had given its name to.

From the steep angle of the hillside, Mathew estimated the distance they would need to tunnel before hitting the reef.

‘Twenty paces in – maybe thirty before we reach the gold.’

Mhlangana squared his shoulders and waved his gang of miners up to the face. Each man carried with him a hammer and drill-steel. With a piece of soft serpentine, Mhlangana marked the rock face with a network of white crosses; the drill pattern for the Empress Deep’s first blast.

Mathew threw off his shirt and took up the hammer and steel of the closest miner.

‘I will drill the first hole.’ He cocked his head at Mhlangana, ‘If you were not already an old man, I would gladly have matched your month’s earnings against you finishing before me.’

‘And were you old enough to lift that hammer I would gladly cover your wager - tenfold.’ Mhlangana looked to one of his drilling crew and commandeered his tools. Theatrically he raised his hammer to the sky, when he turned to Mathew his grin was that of the hyena for the newborn wildebeest.

‘Let the boy step aside for the better man, murungu.’ He pushed his way through to the rock face; already the taste of victory was honey-sweet on his tongue. Both men picked a mark furthest from the centre.

‘No changing of your drill-steel before the halfway mark or your opponent wins,’ warned Mathew.

‘If the boy is ready?’ laughed Mhlangana and swung the first blow.

As tolling bells, the hammer blows rang for three miles along the valley; neither of the two men paused to take in water, nor did they rest the arm that swung the hammer. Side by side they worked their steels deeper inside the rock; with each strike, bright halos of sweat leapt from their foreheads. Still they took no respite and the drill-steels sang their songs to the mountain. Each new blow was preceded by a sharp twist to their drill-steels, setting the hardened tips at a fresh angle for them to break new rock.

At the same time, almost to the second, both hammers fell silent. Both men slumped with their backs to the ironstone. Mathew dropped his hammer and openly marvelled at the ruined pads of his right hand.

‘You must have lucked to a sharper drill,’ Mathew chided.

‘And yours was the bigger hammer,’ Mhlangana countered playfully. ‘Rova i nyundo!’ Mhlangana shouted his crew forwards onto the rock face. ‘Use your steel, murume! I give you ten days to reach the lair of our snake.’

‘And a bonus of ten shillings for nine,’ Mathew promised, and like brothers they walked away from the rock, leaving behind space enough for the miners to swing their hammers.

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Witches & Fantasies!

Kindles are jumping out all over the place and screaming, ‘Read me, read me!’ Everywhere I look, eReaders are there, surging alongside iPhones ‘n BlackBerries. And why not; they are what they say they are – damn good pieces of kit. Their pages remain un-gunked; the edges clean and crisp, without smear or thumbprint or folded corners. Know we’ve talked about this before, but the e-race is really hotting up; now it’s more about selling words than clawing back costs for the paper they’re written on. As long as eBook prices stay lower than those expected of their hardcopy brothers, sales will climb. The truth of the matter? No one can stop them...

*

Boyhood – from stream to raging torrent...

COWLING HOUSE

Often, people ask me what it was like at boarding school. The short answer is pretty straightforward – for the first year at least, I hated it; a period of intense trauma that I would rather forget. Being locked in a building that ranked somewhere between Alcatraz and the workhouse from Oliver Twist did little to strengthen my faith in humankind. Not so much the schooling itself, but the aftermath of hostel life. A white, austere building of high walls and red tin roofs with doors that, at night, were always securely locked, bolted and spied upon by beaky housekeepers; not as a guard against ‘things’ that might get in, but as barriers that would keep us little darlings from sneaking out and wreaking havoc on the town’s fruit trees and chaste daughters. We were as the housemaster put it, ‘a rabble that needed to be contained for the financial and moral safety of the community.’ And so it was that a hundred or so little boys planned and plotted their way through their first year of tutorial incarceration; a nest of little vipers that crept, crawled and spied on the ‘spy-ers’ about the dark halls of Cowling House, the boarding school from hell...

At meals, it was expected of Mister Arlers, one of the more senior teachers to say grace. Small guy, bony hands, mean administrator of the cane; his jowls shook, same as a St Bernard’s, always rung his hands at prayers – one eye left open to watch for dissidents.

‘For what we are about to receive...’ He paused to work his single eye around the hall; satisfied that all was well he carried on; ‘may the Lord make us truly thankful.’ Then after a further, pointless ten second silence... ‘You may all sit.’

So we sat; and waited for the day’s delicacies to be brought from the kitchen, ate whatever slop the cook had invented and then went to prep (homework) for an hour and a half. Maths and Latin – I detested both. Could never fathom how learning to speak like a Roman gladiator might one day enhance my life.

Being forced to go to bed at eight o’clock was a welcome release. The switch was flicked and forty chunnering boys were plunged into darkness. Forty iron-framed beds, forty tent-sized mosquito nets hung like gossamer church bells from the ceiling, forty little erections like forest mushrooms pointed up at it.

‘Are you doing it?’

Strained, ‘yes’s’ from further down the bed-line. No embarrassment, no clandestine rustlings from beneath the sheets, just forty furtive squeaks from pubescent boys harnessing their fantasies. We were determined self-achievers all working in perfect harmony.

Driven solely by professional dedication, Miss Saxon soon worked out what we were up to. Her room was just outside the dormitory, she was ‘the gatekeeper’. Her hostel duties included the monitoring and suppression of any subversive activities, an occupation she carried out with an unnaturally keen interest.

Miss Saxon had a torch, a powerful torch; I was convinced it doubled as a searchlight for anti-aircraft batteries during the Blitz. She was our very own Lady with the Lamp, but for different reasons to those of a more temperate Florence Nightingale. We feared her. Her attacks were rigorously executed, her stealth second only to that of a leopardess. Her application to duty knew no bounds, neither did her excitement when, with her face still smeared in night cream she would lunge amongst our rocking beds with Gagool-like fervour; eyes flashing, stick raised,  torch beam blasting back the dark; forty teenage libidos fluttering to a standstill.

‘Bloody little perverts!’

As the punitive sword of Damocles, her stick rose and fell, but with little effect; all of us had disappeared beneath our beds and stayed there; waiting for her to drool off back to her room. Strange how she always singled out where the bigger kids were before switching on her torch...

*

Sons of Africa; an extract:

... ‘Prepare yourself. On your life, do not try to use your rifle. What you see will be beyond your understanding, but no harm will come to you, Rex Kumalo.’

Alone in total darkness, a faint orb of wavering light rose up to him from deep in the hillside – then movement; as dry leaves over a wooden porch.

‘I see you, Rex Kumalo.’

It was not the voice of the man who had led him there. This was stricken with age, emanating from lungs that were filled with viscid fluid from the breathing in of foul air. Rex waited for the wraithlike figure to materialise in front of him; when the creature turned about in the narrow passageway the full horror of the harridan’s affliction flung him back against the sidewall.

About her shrivelled waist was tied a simple belt of leather. Hung from it, on sinew stripped from the limbs of the Vervet monkey were the sickening tools of her wizardry; slivered body parts, bone and teeth from venomous forest vipers, charms and ancient powders searched from a hundred secret places. Ashen body hair stood out from the juncture of her legs, the skin about her groin and upper thighs transparent enough for Rex to see the veins and arteries that for more than a hundred years had kept her living. Above the darkened pits that were her eyes, verminous colonies scurried to hide from the lamplight.

‘Follow me, Rex Kumalo, there are many things for you to see. Do not fear your destiny – you are both the destroyer and the father of our nation.’

Without warning she raised her lamp to the granite sidewall.

‘Behold the mothers of Kagubi and Muroyiwa, the bewitched ones! Messengers from beyond the wall of death. Eaters of genitals and lovers to dogs.’ Like steel on glass her voice keened inside his head; her eyes glittered and threads of silver spittle drooled from her lower lip. Rex suppressed a sudden urge to dash out her brains on the sidewall.

‘Touch them, Rex Kumalo – touch the ancient guardians of this fallen city of stone.’

Ghostly insects skittered inside his shirt. Alcoves had been fashioned into the living granite; the grisly remains of what once were living beings were held in place by hand-forged iron pegs. Dry air and skilled hands of their embalmer had held off putrefaction – the victims’ jaws set in that final grinning rictus of an agonising death.

‘My own child.’ Perverse pleasure thickened her voice, willing him to gaze upon the handiwork. Shrouded in swirling dust she appeared to float above the ground. ‘My own mother drew off the child’s blood and stuffed its belly with balm to hold off the maggots.’

Rex’s eyes bulged in their sockets. He felt trapped by the ancient rituals and superstitions of his own race. The harridan’s strength of mind held his feet to the earth.

‘How did the child die?’

‘From the bite of the mubobo, the black mamba,’ her voice a sibilant hiss in the quiet. With a skeletal hand she reached out and caressed the tiny, shrivelled neck. Then her lips parted and for a brief moment Rex caught the reptilian flick of her tongue. ‘Here, where the child’s blood was hot and close to the heart.’

The powerful neurotoxins in the snake’s venom had caused the child’s spine to arch backwards. The head had been drawn with it, forcing the mouth wide open. Rex turned away and fought to hold his voice steady.

‘What of these things, old woman? Why do you show them to me?’

Mutiswa held the lamp to his face.

‘As this flame takes life from the oil on which it feeds, so will the sons and daughters of the new order take life from the strength they find in you, Rex Kumalo.’ Her eyes narrowed. For a hundred years, this was the moment she had lived for – the resurrection of a people whose voice once held sway over an entire land. Again the bull bellow of the Matabele would be heard above the whine of their Shona underlings.

‘Was it not the power of the past that brought you here?’ Again, she shuffled forwards and raised the lamp to the sidewall.

‘Behold the magic that has brought your bloodline back to its rightful place beneath Zimbabwe, the birthplace of our nation.’

‘Another child.’ His voice heavy with revulsion. ‘Killing you now would not rob me of a single minute’s sleep, old woman.’

Mutiswa reached out for the corpse, touching, prodding, testing the softer parts with her finger tips.

‘The balm is not yet at its best, only when it hardens will the pup be safe from the fly. Come, son of Mashobane, we must hurry. The ghosts of your ancestors grow tired of waiting.’

So frail were the old woman’s limbs that they hardly cast a shadow. Rex watched her move from light to dark, scuttling forwards, roach-like and bent at the waist, more akin to a wild animal than any human being.

 The passage opened; changed to some dark and limitless void, the lamplight now too weak to reach beyond.

‘What is this place, old woman? What good has this done, bringing me to this stinking pit beneath the ground?’

Mutiswa turned to face him. Now the light, held close to her hairless skull showed the full horrors of her afflictions. Dark ophthalmic holes leered up at him and the advanced malignant cells of a deep and virulent melanoma clung to the ruined stump of her nose. In the living light, the canker appeared to Rex as some grotesque and separate beast upon her face, so that he reeled from the horror of it and almost lost his footing...

*

Church Social & Stage-Coaches!

Touched on this before so will keep it short; reckon it’s down to my judgement day looming on the horizon. A fair number of folk have been following what I write and for your support I will always be grateful. However (like that word, sort of lets me take a deep breath), blogging out book extracts and offering up a completed book come with very different price tags; putting out Sons of Africa as a whole, I could compare to me standing outside the Post Office on a Saturday morning – butt naked, open to criticism, but hopefully with some good reviews mixed in – just to balance things out. One thing I’ll say in my defence; it’s a bloody good read – a proper story.

‘Can’t win ‘em all!’ I hear you shout and that’s as maybe, but nerve-wracking nevertheless. Anyway, confidence still reigns supreme and just to prove it, will shortly be posting Sons of Africa’s new and final cover art. Hope you like; kept the theme as ‘Africa orientated’ as possible, attractive but not over-the-top. No flashing spears or leaping lions, I promise. Reckon that’s enough for now; vanity, as always, is insatiable. Now go read about my school’s church disco...

*

Friday night church social; the only night that we were semi ‘let loose’ on the town – the town being a church hall at the back of St Michael & All Angels. No big deal, but we welcomed it anyway. Marched in crocodile formation and guarded by front and rear prefects we were scuttled town-wards for a whole two hours of ripping it up with the hostel girls; more importantly, for the chance of a crafty fag and a frantic fumble in the alleyway.

The girls all came in frilly frocks; the boys, denied their freedom of choice, in school uniform – really gave us the opportunity to strut our stuff. Twenty or so spotty boys dressed in striped blazers, white shirts and matching stripy ties that I swear were designed by some crack-head pyjama salesman.

The coolest kids had twenty Stuyvesant and a quarter-jack of brandy hidden inside their blazers; the geeky kids – a comb and polo mints. My buddy carried the most coveted of cool items – a Durex! Nobody knew what the word condom meant back then. I eventually acquired one and hid the relevant rubber inside my blazer lining for my last two years at boarding school. Think it was a hand-me-down from one of the senior school-leavers; had it until the foil wrapper disintegrated and the rubber bit fell to pieces. Guess rubber wasn’t meant to last that long; would rather have faced a firing squad than bargain with a half a crown’s worth of my weekly pocket money for a replacement three-pack at McGhie’s Chemist. Even the seniors would crack under Mrs McGhie’s stare; then wobble back out with unwanted aspirins, toothpaste and weak excuses. Besides, the closest I ever came to using it was waving it under the nose of a pretty girl I fancied, like milliseconds before she screamed and lamped me one.

On Friday nights, the Vicar had a break from saving souls and doubled as our DJ for two hours of musical mayhem, coughed a lot as usual; more so when the prettiest girls gave their all to Brenda Lee’s, Let’s Jump the Broomstick. Had really thick glasses so we never knew where he was looking, the funny grin and slavering lips gave him away though...

*

Sons of Africa; an extract:

... Like a circus trick rider the boy flicked his feet clear of the stirrups and hit the ground at a run.

‘They’re coming in! No more than a mile behind me.’ He threw the reins to his mother and bounced through the bar-room doors. ‘Mister Dickens, sir – you said for me to watch for the coach!’ He stuck out his hand; palm up – his breathing quick with excitement. ‘You’d best be hurrying outside or you’ll be missin’ it.’

John Dickens flicked the boy a silver sixpenny coin.

He crooked a finger at Mathew. ‘Something I want you to see, been waiting nigh on two years for this.’ Mathew followed him out. Dickens had dressed himself in freshly laundered calico britches and shirt. His face still shone from a scrubbing and his beard caught well at the sunlight when he stepped out into the street; a mass of springy whiskers pressed against his chest like bees to some rocky overhang. John repeatedly sprung and latched the case on his watch.

‘At least they got the day right, I’ll give them that.’ He grinned at Mathew. ‘Keep your eye on the passengers, laddie and all shall be revealed.’

At first, the American built stage-coach seemed trapped inside the wriggling heat haze, its progress marked by a mere flickering of pale dust. Occasionally, when carried by a slight wind, the driver’s voice and the crack of his whip would carry. People crowded around the hotel frontage and craned their neck expectantly; a half dozen urchins and stray mongrels ran up the street, infected by the excitement.

‘Here she comes!’ someone shouted and the crowd opened.

‘Do I look alright?’

‘As you’ll ever be,’ Mathew smiled and saw Dickens’ eyes widen with trepidation.

As mythical spirits the mules came out from the haze and though not as well appointed as their equine cousins, still they were spectacular. At their best speed, a team of ten work-hardened hybrids dragged their Zeederberg mail coach rocking and lurching into the neck of Victoria’s First Street. Grey with granite dust, Doel Zeederberg flexed his legs at the foot-board and with his full weight against it drew back the mules, easing the thrust from their harness.

A cloud of dust caught up with the coach, together they rolled towards the crowd; magically, a woman, like a character from some fantastical dream appeared at an open coach window. Her hair, freed by the wind, glowed with the colours of a midnight sea ripping the tide off Cape Agulhas.

*

‘Elizabeth Anne.’ She held out her hand. A deep cobalt blue, her eyes held him spellbound; Mathew rummaged desperately for the right words.

‘Mathew Goddard.’ Mathew accepted the hand. ‘You’re John’s...

‘Daughter.’ Elizabeth helped him. ‘You seem surprised?’

‘I didn’t know,’ said Mathew.

‘So you didn’t tell him?’ Elizabeth admonished playfully. ‘You haven’t changed, father.’ She looked around and with the sun directly overhead her hair sparkled with blue lights. Mathew wanted to touch it and though they had just met he felt his pulse quicken. Elizabeth’s father watched him from the corner of his eye and he smiled like a man who had just that minute lucked to a winning streak at the Crown and Anchor table...