The Third Cliff Avenue House

In the summer of 1959 Richard and I returned to Mombasa. We were disappointed that it wasn't to the Hoey House at Nyali - it seemed that nothing could possibly beat it - but the African Mercantile manager's house....

....was no disappointment. It was towards the end of Cliff Avenue, and overlooked the Mombasa seafront, the golf course, the channel along which the ships approached Kilindini, and a projection of the reef called the Andromache Reef, onto which the great seas of the Indian Ocean broke in a welter of foam.

Because there wasn't a beach on which to spend our day we had to find other amusement, and we found it in rediscovering our friends - the Chethams, Sollys, Ashworths, Champions, Milnes.... We played tennis at the Sports Club. We all had bikes so we roamed the town, spent time bartering for Kamba carvings along Salim and Kilindini Roads, and for kikois in the African markets, and explored the forgotten parts of the island. Our parents helped by organising trips to the Swimming Club and to the beaches to the north and south of Mombasa.

We also spent a great deal of time at the house. Its veranda looked out at the view but behind it was the sitting room in which my father had the first HMV stereo gramophone in East Africa - the African Mercantile was agents for HMV - so we spent hours playing records. We listened to 'pop', Elvis, Connie Francis, Buddy Holly, but we also enjoyed my father's collection of classical music, particularly Rimsky Korsakov's 'Scheherazade', Dvorjak's 'New World', and Holst's 'The Planets'. We sat on the veranda and the servants brought us Coca Colas, which my mother bought by the crate, roasted cashews, raw peanuts, and raisins.

The ships passed so close we could wave to people we recognised on deck. When one of my father's ships came in - this is a Harrison Line ship - and if the captain was a particular friend, we would hang coloured towels from the upstairs veranda as a signal to him; and, in due course, he would come to lunch and, more often than not, we would go aboard ship.

We returned to this lovely house for the 1960 and 1961 summer holidays.