The Rest

I'm lying on a sweaty sheet on my bed in the bedroom which my brother Richard and I share in the big African Mercantile manager's house at the end of Cliff Avenue in Mombasa. I'm almost naked but I've got a kikoi ready in the unlikely event that someone creeps up the stairs and comes in.

It's about two in the afternoon and outside the crickets are screaming in the heat, the only sound except the occasional breath of air which stirs the pile of dry leaves below our window, and the ever-present, distant boom of the great ocean waves breaking across the Andromache reef.

My mother's asleep in my parent's bedroom and my father has gone back to the office after a short rest - a siesta, you'd call it - in the big armchair at the bottom the stairs, and as soon as he heard the Rover backing out of the drive Richard followed him. He has a rendezvous with some friends - he hasn't told me who and since his friends are very largely the same as mine I am a little surprised that he hasn't told me. I could have gone with him but if he wants a little time to himself, that's fine - because I do too.

It's late September 1961 and we're close to the end of what we've just been told is going to be the last summer holiday in Mombasa as my father has taken early retirement and will be retuning to England by ship while my much more adventurous mother is travelling - alone - the whole way down the Nile from Lake Victoria to Cairo. So this time the tears and rage that Richard and I usually express as the holidays draw to a close are a waste of time. If I am to stay here in Mombasa I'll have to find a job and my own accommodation, all this against the compulsory Africanisation of jobs that an independent Kenya will bring in following Uhuru, Freedom, due in 1963.

I suppose all I really want to do is to go through my options one more time -  a waste of precious holiday, really - and start to come to terms with what my future holds: a return to Bradfield, where I'll be a house prefect; I've already collected three 'A' levels so I'll be doing a couple of 'S' levels - but mostly I'm staying on in the hope I'll be made a school prefect. Then, I suppose, I'll be choosing a course and a university - but of one thing I am absolutely determined: once I'm qualified in something which the country needs I'm coming back to Kenya, one day, sooner later; and I'm going to make my home in Mombasa and then spend the rest of my life here.

Of course, life never turns out how you plan it but, hey!, it's been good.

Autumn Wildflowers

Today's walk, in sunny but blustery conditions, took us through Specked Wood where, despite the dappled shade under the trees which might have encouraged them out, there was no sign of any speckled wood butterflies. By comparison with most other butterfly species the speckled wood has done fairly well here this year.

Many of the trees are now shedding their leaves, led by the rowans, some of which are almost bare-branched already, and most of which have a good crop of berries.

Look carefully and some of summer's flowers. are still to be found. This is a little flower, not more than 15mm across, which is a favourite of mine. It goes under the odd name of tormentil and is unusual in that it has only four petals.

Also, surprisingly, in bloom amongst the tangled grasses is....

....heath milkwort. This was the only one that I could find which was still in flower.

Devil's-bit scabious is still in bloom along the damper edges of some of the tracks as are....

....the last of the foxgloves.

Last, but by no means least, a few remaining daisies are in flower, this bloom all alone in our back garden.

The Longest Road Trip

The term 'Road Trip', with its sense of excitement and adventure, isn't a term much used in Britain, probably because our roads are so congested that any name that suggests pleasure is inappropriate. So we only learned the true meaning of a road trip when we were visiting our son in Canada, where the Canadians travel with great pleasure on their many miles of quiet and well-maintained roads.

We experienced our first road trip on our first holiday in Canada in 2006, when we drove from Edmonton Alberta all the way across the Rockies and Cascades and other mountain ranges to Seattle in Washington State, USA. We didn't go by the most direct route, and we didn't keep a record of our distance travelled, so I estimate we probably did about 800 miles in the four days.

It wasn't a trip without problems, the worst of which was when I hit a curb and wrote off a wheel hub. Hertz didn't have a spare in their Jasper office so they gave us a replacement car - so we left our small Japanese car there, swapping it for the pleasure of a big Ford Explorer.

The worst experience of the trip was travelling along interstate 5, a road of gigantic potholes and huge trucks, which runs north-south through the back of Seattle, and which would have swallowed the small car we started with.

Good as it was to spend time with my brother and his family in Seattle, I was sorry to see the road trip's end. So, when we returned to Canada in 2008 we hired a car which....

....learning from past experience, was even bigger than the Explorer, and repeated our road trip. It was as well we had a powerful car as sections of our route, such as this part over the Cascades, were closing for the season, so the trip was even more of an adventure than the 2006 one.

We did many more road trips on subsequent visits to Edmonton, none of them as long as the two to Seattle. We won't be doing another. It's not that the idea doesn't appeal: I'd happily do another road trip - as long as someone else drove. It's because we're unlikely to travel to Canada again.

A Parting Gift

We've spent the summer working hard in the garden to provide food for the worryingly few butterflies which have come our way, including this tortoiseshell, and have been so pleased to have some still in the garden as we've moved into October. They've been encouraged by some gloriously sunny days when the temperature at midday almost reached 20C.

Joining the two painted ladies have been a few red admirals and peacocks - and then, on Thursday, a lone white which was far too skittish for me to get a picture.

However, it seems that, during an earlier visit, this white....

....managed to lay about a dozen eggs which have now hatched as caterpillars.

I wouldn't have minded if the eggs had been laid on one of the plants we've grown for the butterflies' use, but that wretched large white chose my precious broccoli plants, of which I have far too few to get us through the winter.

And, no, I'm not going to record what happened to those caterpillars.

Three Robins

While there are reports of a shortage of robins this autumn following the very dry summer, this is not true locally: we have plenty of them, all busting their guts to establish territories which will get them through the winter fit enough for the rigours of next spring's mating season.

Our first robin is the garden robin. He's under the greatest pressure of all as our garden offers a feast of different foods but attracts all sorts of rivals - see earlier post here.

Not far away, just in the pinewood plantation, there's our second robin, the woodland robin. A chunk of monotonous pine wood isn't a great territory but he has the advantage of being fairly close to some houses which I know feed the birds.

This is our third robin, the field robin. He lives in a lone willow tree along the farm track above our house, a place of limited resources - where he has recently been traumatised by a huge machine which....

....came along the road with a great arm extended upon which there was a grinding, cutting machine which mashed up half his tree and a considerable length of vegetation along the track. His was a poor territory to start with, so it wasn't surprising that we found him unwilling to leave the remains of his precious tree, preferring to bury himself in it while....

....emitting a plaintive 'weep.... weep.... weep'.

Poor soul - but at least he's very unlikely to have any serious contenders for his territory.

The Sound of a Distant Surf

I woke to the low, constant murmur of the surf, of waves breaking upon a none-too-distant shore; and as the light came, I could see the welter of white water off the golf course, a sure sign that a low tide was breaking along a sand bar running parallel to the shore. And on checking the tide table I found I was right: a 0.73m low tide was forecast for 08:31 this morning, the picture being taken at 07:11.

The ceaseless roar of the surf is a background to so many of my memories of Mombasa, be it at the....

....Hoey house at Nyali where we could sit on the veranda and look out across the lawn and through the high palms to a lagoon protected by a coral reef a mile out, a reef pounded by the long swells of the Indian Ocean or....

....be it at the big house at the end of Cliff Avenue which had a view out across the Kilindini channel to no less than three reefs, all white-teethed by the ocean's great breakers.

The memories of those four summer holidays in Mombasa between 1957 and 1961 are some of the most treasured of my life. One cannot go back to those moments but one can recall them, enjoy them, celebrate and be deeply thankful for them.

The Painted Lady

This beautiful butterfly was spotted on goat willow which is showing signs of the coming of autumn. It was the only butterfly on the wing, which is an achievement as the temperature at the time was 11C on a day when it struggled to reach 14C.

The butterfly is one of two painted ladies which have appeared in the back garden each time the sun has come out. One, this one, is rather bigger than the other, which is also rather moth-eaten.

Painter ladies are rather special as they are immigrants which, over several generations, have worked their way northwards from Africa and the Mediterranean. But, like ocean waves, they can only reach a little further north before they break against the hard shore of northern Scotland's short cool summers and long winters.

I have a special affection for these butterflies because they are, for me, fellow travellers,  emigrants from Africa that will never return.