Cocktail Sticks

I have three cocktail sticks, each about 3" long, which date back to my Mombasa life. They live in a small white envelope and, because they were never part of the collection kept in the small brown case, they were continually getting lost. It's taken me several days and a fair bit of searching to find them again - they were in one of the three drawers at the bottom of the old Arab chest.

Two of them are Clan Line, and one is from the British India passenger ship SS Uganda. I assume the former came from visits on board ship with my father, whose company was agents for the Glasgow-based Clan Line. He liked these ships because their captains used to spoil him by bringing him a box of Scottish kippers. He loved kippers but his favourite herring was Norfolk bloaters.

I always thought the Clan boats - this is the Clan Shaw - were the very best of the many fine ships built in British yards in the decades after the Second World War. They had sleek lines, sported a black funnel with two deep red bands round it, and always seemed to be kept in top condition - the brasswork shone. Unsurprisingly, therefore, it was the Clan Line I wanted to join as an officer cadet, an idea which was only shaken out of my head when I spent several weeks at sea on the Harrison Line Arbitrator on my way to Cape Town and on to Southern Rhodesia in 1963 - story here.

The Uganda stick must have come from my voyage back on her at the end of my time in Southern Rhodesia, when I hitched to Mombasa, stayed with the Chethams, and then returned to England on her - story here. I travelled tourist class and they wouldn't have given out these sticks to the likes of me, so I must have acquired it from first class: I wish I could remember how.