Monsieur Maselin

This is, for several reasons, a very special photograph. It was taken at the Mombasa Swimming Club by my father, someone who, to the best of my knowledge, never touched a camera, yet this shot, taken using a Brownie 127, which usually produced terrible pictures, is rather good. It may have been a fluke but I like to think that my father had an innate ability to compose a picture, something which has been passed down in our family.

I'm wearing my favourite clothes, khaki shorts and a matching bush jacket with plenty of pockets to keep things in. I guess I'm about ten, and I look as if I'm enjoying myself, which isn't surprising as I both liked and admired the man on the right. He's a Monsieur Maselin, who was the East Africa representative of the French national shipping line, Messageries Maritimes, for which my father's company was agents. M. Maselin was great fun, using his charms both on me and the ladies. Which rises a question, to which I have no answer: where are the ladies - because my mother, at least, must have been there - and where is my brother?

The location, at the Swimming Club, a place which we frequented because it was the nearest beach to our house, is one that my father did not like, so I think he took Monsieur Maselin there so he, as a fine athlete, could enjoy a swim.

I hugely admired M. Maselin, for he told some wonderful stories of his adventures. The one which sticks in my mind is of his journey out to East Africa from France. In those days, Messageries Maritimes ran three fine ocean liners, the Pierre Loti, Jean Laborde and Ferdinand de Lesseps, on the France to Madagascar, Mauritius and Reunion route, and one would have expected him to take passage on one of them. He didn't. He drove himself out to East Africa in a Citroen Deux Chevaux, crossing the Sahara and the jungles of Central Africa.