The Veranda

I was standing looking out of the window at the small birds feeding in a freezing back garden when I had one of those moments when the memory of a place so suddenly and totally possesses me that it is as if I am back there. It was of the main veranda - at right in this picture - of the bungalow we lived in for the three years we were at Bernard Mizeki College in Rhodesia between 1967 and 1970, and I was standing where, in the photo, Mrs MW can be seen sitting under the passion fruit vine.

It was a lovely, deeply shaded veranda which looked out across our garden to one of the kopjes that ringed the college. It was a private place where we could relax during what were often very long and demanding working days and where we were often joined....

....by our dog, Marx, and the two cats, Nhangatanga and Nhata, the cats helping to keep us safe by telling us if a boomslang was in the creeper above our heads. It was also the place where we....

....entertained during the day, in this case two of our colleagues, Pat and Jeff, and their small boys - and, yes, those are my legs in the picture.

It was a happy, peaceful place, a place of rest and contentment, a place to read a good book or to simply daydream and let time pass. That flash of memory did its best to transport me back to the three very happy years we spent in Rhodesia and, in so doing, to remind me of how fortunate I have been in some of the places I have lived.