Brought Down

They are masters of the air, consummate, effortless....

....so how can this beautiful female southern hawker have allowed herself to be hit and brought down on a winding country lane?

The Allotment

Our allotment has done us proud again this year. So far this summer we have harvested carrots, French beans, broccoli, leeks, peas, onions, courgettes, rhubarb, raspberries (red and yellow), strawberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants, gooseberries, we'll soon have pears off the tree, and kale and brussel sprouts are coming on for the winter season.

We've had the usual battles. The wooden frames support plastic netting which keeps the local pigeons off the brassicas, but the cabbage white caterpillars have been a nuisance on the broccoli. Particular successes have been the onions - I think the best we've ever grown - and the carrots - in the foreground of the picture - which have managed, so far, to avoid the attention of the carrot fly.

There's something very therapeutic about an hour or so's work on the allotment followed by a few minutes' relaxation on our seats under the pear tree. The tree is visible in this picture at centre, background, almost covering the very decrepit shed.

A pleasant bonus is that our little patch of good Suffolk earth is near the entrance to the allotments so people walk by along the track and often stop to exchange a few words and, if we're lucky, give us some advice.

What we harvest off the allotment is additional to what's growing in the garden. At present we're harvesting tomatoes and cucumbers from both inside and outside the greenhouse. Both grow very well without a greenhouse in this climate but it is also nurturing some very late aubergines and peppers - though whether they'll fruit before winter arrives is debatable.

A Present from 'Grannie'

I suppose this book might have been a little more distinctive when it had its dust cover - long lost - but the embossed crest may give a clue as to the gravity of what lies between its covers.

It's a complete works of Shakespeare, printed on very thin paper and, despite its age, it has never been opened for the purpose of reading any of the bard's work.

It was given to me by my 'Grannie', who seemed to acknowledge that she hardly knew me, nor I her, by adding her name, Caroline Wilson nee Humphries. Up to that point I had only met her occasionally, when the family travelled to England on leave, and all I remember of her is a very fierce lady who had little time for small boys.

The date indicates that Granny Wilson gave it to me on the first of many Christmases I spent in England away from East Africa, away from my family. I can't be certain but I probably spent it with my Aunt Noel and my cousins Carolyn, Michael, Emily and 'Bibby'.

What interests me are the entries I made which surround Granny's writing. When I was given the book I was a boarder at Glengorse School but spent my holidays with my Uncle Frank, my father's older brother, and Aunt Grace at their flat in Rivermead Court, Fulham. Later I went to Bradfield College in Berkshire, where I was a member of 'D' House. After that, I seemed to have lost interest in ensuring that the book would be returned to me.

The book is a reminder of some very unhappy years of my life. I'm surprised that I have kept it.

Life in Zanzibar

Almost as soon as she arrived in Zanzibar Helen was assigned a flat in a new development called Paradise Mansions - 'Paradise' for no better reason than that the man who supervised its building was a Mr Paradise. Helen had the ground-floor flat behind her in the picture, while the one above was taken by Bunch Jones, a teacher at the Arab girls' school who was to become a life-long friend. They were then joined in the other two flats by the first woman doctor and the female curator of the museum. The four were known as the Angels in Paradise.

Helen had a servant, Haji. Haji collected her food from the English Club, a five minute walk away, in billycans, four-tier aluminium dishes in a frame, the food costing her Shs 125 (£6 and five shillings, or £6.25 in today's numbers) a month. Haji also brought tea to her office at mid-morning and, at 5.30, used the wood burning Dover stove to boil water in a four-gallon petrol tin, which he carried upstairs and emptied into the bath when she called for it.

This is the interior of Helen's flat, with the sitting room in the foreground and the dining room behind. Most of the furniture was either government issue or items which she looked after while the owners were away on leave. At right is an Arab chest which belonged, coincidentally, to a Mr Wilson, and to the left of the armchair is a Pemba stool similar to the ones I still have.

This is the view Helen enjoyed from her flat, looking out across the approach to Zanzibar's port.

Paradise Mansions has been demolished but the site is empty - to the right of the '1'. Helen's office was in the Beit al Ajaib, marked '2'.

Some idea of her early life in Zanzibar is given in this extract from her the diary which she started on the ship out and maintained for the first few weeks of the seven years she lived in Zanzibar:

21st October, 1935. Monday morning and the commencement of my third week. Bunch drove me to the office again and I had a very busy morning with Mr. Vaughan's work (Attorney General). My desk hotching with cockroaches so made arrangements for its cleansing. Back for lunch, then sewing and reading. Tea with Bunch and off to the golf again. Played 7 holes with Miss Dalzell and Miss Dunlop. Played one hole not so badly but not much good yet! Got a lift back from Bunch who had collected two commercial blokes. Had a drink with her and sat and talked till 7.30. Had a bath and changed and entertained Bunch to dinner. Went for a walk and at the post office were picked up by the Wheatleys and taken for a run. A lovely night, quite cool after a very hot day. Saw through what used to be the Sultan's cavalry stables, now have five horses in them. Huge place, partly turned into a school. Had a very pleasant walk home and eventually got to bed not so very long after 11 - the earliest so far!

A Sad Pond

This pond lies a few minutes' walk from our house. It has a pcturesque backdrop of a weeping willow and is surrounded on all sides by vegetation except where the lane runs past it. People often drive their children to it so they can feed the ducks.

A notice on a power pole beside the pond tells a little of the story of its restoration by the local heritage society, the landowner and a local business.

Sadly, like so many similar projects, time has not been kind to it. There is a faint air of neglect about the place and the ducks have moved on, though....

....a pair of moorhens have managed to raise two broods of chicks this year.

The water the moorhen family swims in is grey-brown in colour and seems to be lacking in other forms of life - no plants grow in it, though flags manage to survive around its banks.

The reason may be that, a short distance upslope of the pond, the landowner has a large and growing manure heap which comes from a dairy herd. The pond is under the trees at left centre of this picture.

Dragonflies are a very good indicator of the health of water. Last year the pond supported a good variety of both dragon- and damselflies but this year there have been few. We observed a common darter pair in tandem trying to deposit eggs in the water, though at no point did they drop below six inches above it; and this male common hawker gave up his constant patrolling of the pond.

The pond appears to be another victim of intensive agriculture.

By Sleeper to the Highlands

There is, in my opinion, only one way to travel from England to the Scottish Highlands, and that is by overnight sleeper from London.

The train, which has three parts, for Inverness, Aberdeen and Fort William, leaves Euston at 9.15pm, giving one plenty of time to enjoy a leisurely meal before boarding. At Edinburgh, in the early hours of the morning, the three sections separate, and one wakes to a view such as the one above, looking across a loch to the Cairngorms.

For the journey into the Highlands the train is hauled by a rather ancient diesel loco belonging to a company called English, Welsh & Scottish Railways.

We have been travelling by sleeper for years, mainly on the Fort William to London route - picture shows us leaving Fort William in the summer of 2007 on an educational trip to Italy and Greece -  and it has long been a family tradition, before departure, to walk to the front to inspect the locomotive.

Once in the Highlands there are some superb onward connections. Scotrail-operated trains traverse some of Britain's most spectacular countryside. This is the Inverness to Wick service on the Far North line, a two-coach train which takes four and a half hours to make the journey.

Helen's Arrival in Zanzibar

The entry in Helen's diary for 4th October, 1935, the day her ship arrived in Zanzibar, reads, "Got up early and tidied everything up. Dashed on deck to the saloon to see the immigration authorities and had my first sight of Zanzibar. We were anchored in the middle of the bay and my first glimpse was blue sea with a light white mist rising and then the white buildings of the town packed along the quayside with the tower of the Beit el Ajaib dominating them all. The bay is protected by a string of dark green islands which finish off a perfect setting."

She received a reprimand for the Express article but the disapproval of the Resident was made evident by the fact that she wasn't invited to the Residency for a meal which was the usual arrangement for new appointees to the Government, nor was she invited to the Christmas dance. Picture shows the Resident in his carriage.

It was a sorry start to her time in Zanzibar but she wrote in her diary, "I think what probably helped to establish me in my job was my going across the Dar-es-Salaam to report Legislative Council," which was very difficult as she didn't know the names of any of the members, a job which she carried off with considerable success. Picture shows Dar-es-Salaam harbour with a dhow anchored and, beyond it, the Lutheran church.

The British administration in Zanzibar was housed in one of the sultan's old palaces, the Beit al Ajaib. This picture was taken in 2012 but the exterior of the building is much as it was in Helen's day. The building is now a museum. Sadly, the interior....

....is in a state of sad neglect. This room was Helen's office and....

....this is the view from its window.

Her office was situated between Mr McElderry, the Chief Secretary's room and the general office where Tayabali, the head clerk, and his staff worked and where most of the files were kept in a long line of filing cabinets. The confidential files were in a cabinet in Helen's office while the secret files were in the safe in the office the other side of the Chief Secretary's.

Helen was responsible for all the files and the filing system. One of her first jobs was to go through all the general files, which went back years and contained papers which needed throwing out. She picked out those she considered 'dead' and put them on Mr McElderry's desk, and he chose which to throw out.  She then created a card index for all the relevant ones.

Elegance

Elegance was given to us as a wedding present by Gill's three great aunts, her father's aunts, all spinsters. Another sister, Maud, did marry and had a daughter Marjorie who was involved in the Esperanto movement.

Elegance is a Doulton figure, which is appropriate since the three old ladies lived in the Staffordshire Potteries, in Burslem, in a terraced house which was propped up on one side as the adjoining house had subsided following the collapse of underground coal workings.

The ladies had a large dog, a keeshond or Dutch Barge Dog, which ruled them and which only one of them, Annie, could, just about, control sufficiently to take him out for walks. In desperation they sold the dog to a farmer but missed him so much that they bought him back.

Delicate, fragile Elegance has travelled with us to Africa, the Caribbean and across the UK. These days she has pride of place on the large dresser in our sitting room, watching us as we go about our daily business.

Elephant & Dragon Rescues

This bizarre creature, almost three inches long, was making its way across the sandstone flag desert of our newly-laid terrace yesterday. Other than that it was a rather oversized caterpillar, we had no idea what it was.

The web tells us that it is the caterpillar of the elephant hawk-moth, one of the largest in the British Isles. It turns into a quite spectacular moth which, while it is described as one of the most common hawk-moths seen in Britain, has failed to make an acquaintance with me.

I love the detail in the animal, from the impressively deterrent 'eyes' at the front to the tusk-like projection by its mouth to the....

....lethal-looking stingray barb in its tail.

We carefully moved it into a safe place in the shrubbery with the hope that, when it has pupated and emerged, the moth in all its glory will pop in and see us to say 'thank you'.

Meanwhile, 2019 continues to be a good year for dragonflies. This male migrant hawker has taken possession of our allotment and spends his time patrolling it - presumably in the hope that a female will fly by. Today this dragon managed to trap himself in to one of the netting frames we use to keep the pigeons off the brassicas and, like the elephant, had to be rescued.

A Scottish Gold Rush

This is the Kildonan Burn, a tributary of the Helmsdale river in Sutherland. In 1868 a local man struck gold in its sediments and a 'gold rush' started after a newspaper picked up the story, with some six hundred prospectors descending on it and the Suisgill Burn.

Many of the prospectors set up camp where the road crosses the burn. This ramshackle settlement of wooden huts became known as Baile an Or, the ‘Town of Gold’.

The prospectors were discouraged by a steady waning of the amount of gold and by local interests, including the Sutherland Estate across whose land the burn flowed, so the rush subsided. However, there is still gold in the burn and, while we were there, we met two men from Ross-Shire who were on their way upstream to try their luck. One of them carried two plastic sieves with wide meshes, which suggested that either he had developed a rather unusual system for panning for gold or that he didn't have a clue what he was doing.

To Zanzibar

Before she left London Helen bought all the tropical gear she needed - including dresses, hats, a topi, a riding outfit, and nine white uniforms for the office - and spent two weeks at the Colonial Office learning the filing system and the codes and ciphers needed for Zanzibar. She then embarked on the Llangibby Castle at Tilbury, with her father, mother, Noel and Kenzie coming aboard to see her off. They were sitting in the saloon when she was called away by a steward to take a telephone call on the dock. It was a reporter who asked her questions about her job. Remembering the instructions she had been given by the Colonial Office, she replied carefully and broke off the call by telling him she had to say goodbye to her parents.

The evening after the ship left Gibraltar (pictured) Helen's cabin steward told her there was an article about her in the Daily Express. She was horrified to read it and realised that it would cause a lot of trouble - and also that her mother must have given the reporter the photograph and had briefed him, very fancifully, about her job. Mr. McElderry, the Chief Secretary of Zanzibar, who had interviewed and appointed her, boarded the ship at Marseilles. He had seen the article and was very concerned about its effect in Zanzibar, particularly on the Resident who had been very against her appointment.

There was nothing they could do about it but Helen worried that, on arrival in Zanzibar, she might be sent straight back to England so she worked hard on various papers with Mr McElderry throughout the voyage. She also appreciated that it was essential that she justified her appointment to the Secretariat.

The picture shows HMS Barham at Port Said, the entrance to the Suez Canal. Barham was sunk in 1941 by U331 off the coast of Egypt with the loss of 862 crew.

Her fellow-passengers included a good number of young people, including some RAF officers on their way to Egypt, and Helen - second from right - thoroughly enjoyed herself.

Helen kept a diary of the voyage: it can be downloaded here.

The Partridges

This small statuette of a pair of partridges came from Gill's grandfather, her mother's father, Albert George Mitchell. Each of the birds is about 1.5" long and they're made out of metal, possibly bronze.

The story is that they were made for Albert by a friend, perhaps one he worked with when he was a mechanic with the RAF in the second world war. Alternatively, there may be a connection with Albert's workplace after the war when he was a chauffeur/handyman on an estate near Mollington north of Chester.

A Dar-es-Salaam Beach

This is a slightly unusual photograph in that it shows the whole of our family, plus a small boy sitting in front of my father. It's also unusual because my father rarely came on to a beach, and I have only one photograph of him in swimming gear. He looks ill-at-ease. In contrast, my mother is in her swimsuit and smiling. Her love of beaches was passed on to Richard and me.

To the left, in front of my mother, is a kikapu, a woven basket which will have in it the picnic. Just in front of it is a tin bucket for making sandcastles and, to its left, my mother's white swimming cap.

Kildonan

One of the places I wanted to visit on our recent trip to Sutherland was Kildonan kirk which lies inland from Helmsdale in the valley (or strath) of the Kildonan river. In the 18th century it stood at the centre of a group of small village communities strung along the strath known as clachans.

The settlement around the kirk can be seen in this map, dated to the early 19th century. Kirkton, as it was called, consisted of the kirk, a large manse, a mill, and a scattering of small stone-built houses.

It is of interest to me because this was the heartland of the Gunn clan, of which my mother, Helen Wilson, was a proud descendent. But, starting in 1813, the Gunns were cleared from their homes so that....

....by the middle of the century almost all their houses were destroyed, the land which they had worked being turned over to an incoming farmer who ran sheep across both lowland and hills.

This clearance, by the estate of the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, is infamous because it was particularly brutal, with many of the people deciding to leave the land of their birth to emigrate to Canada.

Many of them migrated to the Red River where life was probably as hard, if not harder than in Kirkton, but they survived and, as this plaque on the gable end of the kirk celebrates, some of their descendants thrived.

The remains of the Gunn houses are still to be found in the fields around the kirk but, sadly, we did not have time to find them. However....

....high in the hills above Kirkton we stumbled across this sheepfold. It may have been built by the sheep farmer but most of the 'improvement' sheepfolds that I have come across have been rectangular. This one is almost round in shape, which may indicate that it is older, that it was used by the Gunns to hold their cattle and sheep when, in summer, the women and children moved them into the hills and set up a temporary camp, a shieling, while the men remained in the clachan to tend to, and then harvest, the crops of potatoes, barley and oats that would carry them through the winter.

Secretarial Work in London

I have a file which contains a number of my mother's papers amongst which are the certificates she received for her examinations while at Sale County High School near Manchester. She was a bright girl. In those days to 'matriculate' a student had to pass exams in six subjects at age 16, including English and maths. Helen's certificate shows eight, three at Distinction level, but she also later passed Latin at Higher level.

Helen had a promising future but things were difficult at home so, instead of completing her Highers and going on to university, in 1931 she left school to join her older sister Christian at St James' Secretarial College in London. The college would only take her if she lived with a relative but Uncle Alf, her Aunt Dizzy's husband, had died in the spring, so she was able to stay with her aunt. Her father paid for her season ticket and she had 7s/6d a week for her lunches and all other expenses.

This reference from the college, provided to her when she applied for a job with the Colonial Office, states that she could take shorthand at the rate of 120 words per minute. The College helped students to get a job and, in 1932, she had an interview at the Asiatic Petroleum Company Limited (APCo) in Leadenhall Street as a shorthand typist. The salary was £2.5s per week and, once again, she was required to live with a relative. She started work at the beginning of June but her aunt Dizzie planned to return to Scotland so she and her sister Christian found accommodation at a hostel on the Embankment run by the ladies of St. Martin's in the Fields. The cost of 25s a week included breakfast and evening meal and all meals on Sundays.

From left: Noel, Helen, Christian

When George Wilson lost his job with Grahams in 1933, the family moved to London, to 39 Denning Road, where helen and Christian joined them, but Helen had already made up her mind to go abroad. APCo would only send girls over 25 abroad so she approached both South Africa House and Canada House, without success. Then, in February 1935, Helen received a letter from Ruth McElderry in Zanzibar. Ruth had worked with her for a short time at APCo and Helen had helped her through a break-up from a young man, so they had became good friends. In the summer of 1934 Ruth had gone out to join her parents in Zanzibar where her father was Chief Secretary, where she had helped with the secretarial work for him. However, she had become engaged and was coming home to collect her trousseau.

Ruth wrote to enquire whether Helen would be interested in applying for the new job of Office Assistant in the Secretariat, Zanzibar, which it had been decided must be filled by someone from England as the administration suspected that some of the locally-recruited secretaries were leaking confidential information.  She immediately wrote to the Chief Secretary expressing her interest and in May she met Mr. McElderry, who was on leave, at the Liverpool Street Hotel. He told her to apply to the Colonial Office, which she did, and in due course she heard that her application had been accepted.

Old Friends

I had almost but not quite forgotten the feelings of freedom and of elation as, a few days ago, we set off into the Scottish hills knowing that, for the next hour or more, the chances were that we would not see another human; and we'd be able to breathe air that was fresh and clean; and....

....that we would meet old friends, like devil's-bit scabious which is in full bloom at this time of year, often found with....

....its pink variation, though there was no sign on our walk up the Kildonan Burn of the rarer white flower.

Other old friends we found included bog aspodel with its delicate flower and rather sinister reputation as a poisoner of sheep and....

....this startlingly red toadstool, probably a scarlet waxcap; and....

....a couple of these large butterflies, one of the fritillaries, perhaps the dark green fritillary.

Then, to make my day, as we set off back along the road towards our hotel Gill spotted....

....a red deer stag in velvet in one of the remains of the 'deer forests' which were developed in the nineteenth century to provide sport for the estate owner and his friends.