mother, father and brother<\/a>. She had quite a few penfriends during this time, one of whom was my father. He grew up in Lowestoft as part of a family of 13, having three sisters and seven brothers. Being the second eldest, he was looking after his younger siblings. He lost his front teeth when he was a teenager; he was drinking from a bottle of pop when somebody hit the end of the bottle. He turned out to be the black sheep of the family because he decided to leave England and go overseas to join the Palestine Police. This was before the Second World War broke out. When the war ended, he came back to England and asked my mother to marry him (\u201cWell, why not, you don\u2019t have anybody else!\u201d were apparently the words of his proposal!) <\/p>\nMy sister was born in 1946, in Lowestoft, followed a year later by my brother. Finding it difficult to make a living in post-war England, my father decided to leave for Africa. He had a farm in Kenya for a few years, keeping mainly livestock. My mother always tells of the cow they called Daisy who used to put her head through the kitchen window and lick the soap! They had a few dogs, one of whom was called Mush; he fathered many generations of puppies in Kitale. On one occasion, the chickens started going missing. My father sat up one night with the shotgun, and hearing something in the chicken run, shone his torch and fired. It was an eagle owl. The next day he took the body to the local museum; it was the biggest eagle owl yet found in Kenya \u2013 the stuffed carcass is apparently still on display there.<\/p>\n
Trouble then started up with a local group known as the Mau Mau. One of my parents\u2019 friends had a brand new shiny car, and his houseboy always took very good care of it; he was always outside polishing it. One day the chap asked him why, to which the reply was \u201cwell, when the Mau Mau take over, this will be my car\u201d. \u201cWhat about me then?\u201d the chap asked. \u201cOh, you\u2019ll be dead, Bwana\u201d was the serious reply.<\/p>\n
Another couple of acquaintances had a native cook who was very capable of cooking\u2026 mince. After several visits to their house, my father remarked that he was a bit tired of being fed mince for dinner, so concocted a plan. The next time they were invited to dinner, he went to the local butcher and bought several pieces of expensive sirloin steak. Giving these to the hosts, he said \u201cthis time, I\u2019ve brought dinner!\u201d The hostess took the meat through to the kitchen and gave it to the cook to prepare. After several pre-prandial drinks, everybody sat down to dinner and the cook brought the meal through. Lifting the lid of the salver, he revealed his effort for the evening\u2026 mince!<\/p>\n
Things did not go very well with the farm and my father eventually sold it. The family moved to Uganda where my father obtained a job with the local government. My brother and sister stayed at boarding school in Kenya – my brother attending the Prince of Wales school at the same time as Roger Whittaker. I was born in Mbale. <\/p>\n
As befitted the women of those days, my mother did not drive. One day she found that she needed something from the local town, and as my father was away at work, she decided to take the Land Rover into town herself. This was achieved successfully, although at a slow careful rate. She ended up taking driving lessons there. The examiner was extremely stringent, even telling her to stop on an incline, getting out, and putting a box of matches just behind the rear wheel. Another test was reversing into a driveway on a culvert over an open drain. Needless to say, she passed her test. The next time she was to drive a car was after my father had died in 1990.<\/p>\n
One holiday was taken on the coast at Mombasa, where my father collected quite a few colourful shells. These were brought all the way home on the train, in a small suitcase. Because the weather was fairly hot, a strange smell started to spread throughout the compartment. This was noticed by the steward who gave my parents some very strange looks! When the shells eventually arrived home, advice was given by a neighbour to bury them near an anthill so that the shells would be left nice and clean. This was duly done. The next day, the entire ant population vacated the premises! The shells were never cleaned, and as far as I know are still buried there!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well it\u2019s Sunday again. So far the day has been spent doing all the little bits which need to be done. I won\u2019t call them \u201cchores\u201d because that indicates drudgery, and once you start thinking of things as a drudge, you\u2019ve had it \u2013 they get put off and you start dreading doing them. Washing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/la-darnoire.com\/st1100blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/la-darnoire.com\/st1100blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/la-darnoire.com\/st1100blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/la-darnoire.com\/st1100blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/la-darnoire.com\/st1100blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/la-darnoire.com\/st1100blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/la-darnoire.com\/st1100blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/la-darnoire.com\/st1100blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/la-darnoire.com\/st1100blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}