A Roadside Camp

This is a picture of a typical roadside camp during the weeks Michael Atkinson and I spent hitch-hiking in North Africa in 1964. Michael is to the left, still rolled up in his sleeping bag asleep even though the sun has been up for some time and the air is hot. My belongings are on the right, 'airing'. To the right of them the bank slopes up to a road very like any long, straight road in France with trees lining it, but this isn't France, it's Algeria, recently independent from France after a truly horrid war.

At this stage of the outward journey we were still trying to get back to Southern Rhodesia but, instead of crossing the Sahara as we had originally planned, we were heading for Egypt in the hope of going up the Nile.

Looking back, the whole journey was a terrible risk but we seemed, in those far-off days, to be capable of carrying on whatever the journey threw at us. In a few minutes Michael will wake and we'll make breakfast out of whatever we happen to have in our rucksacks. Then we'll pack them, walk up to the road, and hang out a thumb - and we never knew who would draw up and offer us a lift. It was part of the excitement of the day.

Rain

Last night's rain was heavy and prolonged enough to turn the plantation ditches which have been dry for months into small but....

....raging little torrents, to the extent that we had to take some considerable care in crossing them. 

We mustn't complain about the rain - not yet anyway - as we've spent weeks moaning about how much we've needed it.

The slugs and snails are thoroughly enjoying the change and taking the opportunity the damp weather to attack the fungi with a vengeance. It was promising to be a good year for fungi but....

....the caps hardly appear above ground before the wretched molluscs have....

....had a go at them.

Some they don't touch. These blackening waxcaps come up in the same place every year but are never eaten. They have other problems, particularly the men from the council who come round regularly to strim the area of lawn where they're attempting to grow.

Nor do they seem to bother these beautifully delicate little caps growing on a pine log. Perhaps the resin puts them off.

So, with the rain and the fungi and the slugs and the now-vacant....

....fenceposts where, just a few days ago, the swallows rested, it really does feel like autumn.

Mid-Atlantic

When I accepted a job teaching at a secondary school in Jamaica the normal way contract teachers travelled to the island was by 'plane but we, despite having a small child, wanted to do it by sea.

This is one of the few photographs I have of that 1973 journey from Amsterdam to Kingston, and it shows how much the world has changed since those days.

The Amersfoort was a Dutch cargo ship which followed a route that took in several islands in the Caribbean and some countries in Middle and South America. It had accommodation for twelve passengers who had an almost free run of the ship, and ate meals with the officers.

So we would wander the decks of the ship with our small daughter, taking her to exciting places like the prow of the ship, whence we could look vertically down to where the bulbous bow of the ship sliced the gloriously clear waters of the Atlantic.

The photo was taken in mid-Atlantic in trade wind weather - a steady breeze with blue skies broken by fair-weather cumulus clouds. Around us the ocean stretched emptily away, the view only broken by occasional fish such as porpoises or flying fish, and floating mats of seaweed.

In those days there was little regard for health and safety. To access the viewing point, Mrs MW and our two-year old had to climb a vertical steel ladder and then hang on tightly to the metal guard rail. It was windy there - the ship was modern and fast so, to add to the trade wind, there was the slipstream of the ship. The two of them are wearing sandals, there's nothing like a lifejacket in sight. There could have been the most awful tragedy - but we were careful and the result was an exciting experience.

All this was brought to mind by a recent visit from that little girl, now fifty-five years old and mother to two daughters of her own. I doubt whether she remembers the experience, which is a shame.

Garden Butterflies

Our garden is a mass of flowers, with purple dominating, and should be crowded with insects feeding up ready for winter, but....

....the sun hasn't been around until the past week when we have - at last - seen some, to the extent that, on Wednesday, we sat outside for our sundowners, basking in glorious sunshine, something that has happened rarely this summer. The other days we have had some rain, much appreciated by the garden, but also a very persistent, gusting westerly wind, at times blowing almost to gale force.

The small numbers of butterflies appearing in the garden in response to the sudden sunshine have now moved their attention from the fading flowers of the buddleia to the verbena which, being six foot tall, waves around excitedly in the wind, much to the discomforture of any insects hanging on grimly in the hope of a meal.

It's the same small selection of butterflies, with red admirals and peacocks dominating along with a tortoiseshell or two, but the whites have disappeared and we've had just one visit from an old friend....

....a small copper which put in a very brief appearance, almost as if to say, "I'm off now, have a good winter and hope to see you in the spring."

Au revoir, little butterfly, but somehow spring seems an awfully long way away.

The Lurcher

Normally we share the long sandy beach at Littleferry with few other people, of whom most have accompanying dogs, but today it was our family which brought their dogs, including....

....Lethaby the lurcher who was instantly and gloriously at home, zooming up and down the beach in a way which my mother would have described as, "stretching his legs". 

There is something very exciting about watching an animal at full speed, doing what he was bred to do and so, so enjoying it.

And while Lethaby dashed up and down the beach some gannets, about a dozen of them, were wheeling and diving out over the firth.

The Last Days

As the day of our return from Mombasa to school in England after the long summer holiday approached, the family dynamics began to change. My father, who normally took little interest in his two sons, was dragged into various events which my mother organised. The picture shows one, a long weekend at Whitesands hotel along the coast from Mombasa which my father attended so unhappily that, in desperation, my mother relented and allowed him to return to Mombasa while the three of us enjoyed the hospitality and beautiful, empty beach.

I remember the misery of those last days, as each one with its precious hours shot by, when the evenings, the one time we had both parents trapped so they had no choice but to listen, were filled with our tears and our pleadings not to be sent back to England.

One of the rituals of those times was a visit to the Mombasa Bookshop, where my mother obliged our father to meet us and buy us each something to read on the 'plane journey from Nairobi to Heathrow, which in those days took a day to a day and a half. Early on my brother would choose the Beano annual and I had the Topper annual; later we left the shop clutching books - for me, "Hunter's Tracks', 'The Maneaters of Tsavo', Robert Ruark's 'Horn of the Hunter', 'In the Wake of da Gama'.

However much we kicked against it, the inevitable Last Day arrived. This picture shows us on the last Last Day, in early September of 1961, when Richard and I knew that we would never return to the easy life that Mombasa offered because my parents were retiring to England, a place we cordially detested.

The picture was taken outside the beautiful house at the end of Cliff Avenue with its views out across the golf course to the ocean beyond. It shows a slightly strange combination of people: our father was staying in Mombasa and had to return to the office, while the office driver, Gabriel, took our mother and us to the railways station whence the three of us travelled to Nairobi by the overnight sleeper train.

The Last of the Few

It's been a dreadful year for insects, whether in the garden or out in the countryside, with precious few on the many flowers in bloom on plants which have shown few signs of suffering unduly in the dry, cold, breezy and grey conditions which have characterised the summer of 2026.

However, one insect group has visibly declined in numbers - the butterflies, their absence notable because....

....many are so gloriously colourful. So we've seen peacocks (above) and tortoiseshells and red admirals and whites and fritillaries and blues and ringlets and a small copper or two and....

....we've had the pleasure of visits from painted ladies; and....

....in the dappled shade of the woodland we've seen one species which has bucked the general decline, the speckled woods; but with these one or two exception we've seen precious few butterflies this summer.

So, yesterday, in classic 'showers with sunny intervals', we saw one painted lady and one peacock, possibly the last of the few we've seen this year.