As time carries us inexorably on into the depths of a Scottish winter it's good to be able to warm my spirits by thinking back to the days when life was spent on this tropical beach - Nyali just to the north of Mombasa.
I struggle to believe that, once upon a time, we lived a few metres back from that beach, in a bungalow which faced out onto it, a place where we had servants to minister to our needs, where we wore little but a pair of shorts, where the day was spent either walking out across the rock pools of low tide or....
....fighting the waves of high tide while sitting in the inner tube of an old tyre. And even in the years when we lived on Mombasa island it was still easy to get back to the beach, either by borrowing my father's car for a day or by spending a few nights at one of the small hotels scattered along the beach, like....
....Whitesands where, in 1959, we seemed to have had almost the whole beach to ourselves.
This beach is now crowded both with the tourists who stay in the huge, modern, four-pools hotel which has replaced the simple, makuti-thatched building we knew, and with the hawkers and chancers and thieves who prey on them.
We were so, so fortunate; and I'm as fortunate to have the memories to warm me.
Many thanks to Tony C for the first picture
As time carries us inexorably on into the depths of a Scottish winter it's good to be able to warm my spirits by thinking back to the days when life was spent on this tropical beach - Nyali just to the north of Mombasa.
Dear Jon,
ReplyDeleteI wish you Four colly birds, Three French hens, Two turtle doves, a partridge in a pear tree; and maybe some redshank, oystercatchers and curlew as well. Merry Christmas and a happy new year.
Season's greetings to you and yours, Derryck. Do hope you have a merry Christmas and that 2025 is good to you. Jon
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