Where Have They Gone? - 2

If some of the happiest memories of my youth are those of the times we had in Mombasa, the unhappiest were those in the ten months of the year when we were at boarding school in England; and the most miserable of those were the years between the age of nine and thirteen which I spent at a Sussex prep school, Glengorse.

Perhaps it is a reflection of this that, after I left, I was never again in contact with any of my fellow sufferers, not even my best friend: I'm at top right in this picture of the school's cricket team, and my best friend, Roger Soole, is standing next to me.

Life at public school was, once one had survived the bullying of the first couple of years, much better, mostly because we had both more freedom and more responsibility.

This picture is of the school prefects in the autumn term of 1962 - I am the only one wearing a scarf - and of these prefects two were particularly good friends. I had other close friends too, and we met outside school, once....

....sailing down the Thames in leaky coracles which we had built at school in the period after we had taken our 'A' levels.

Until my parents retired from East Africa in 1961, my brother and I spent the Christmas and Easter  holidays with a Mrs Groome, a lady whose husband had died in the war. She made her living taking in colonial children during these holidays. She also bred cocker spaniels.

Her house was out in the countryside - ideal for walking the dogs - but we met few children of our age, the only exceptions being the other children, usually two, staying with Mrs Groome.

Of all the people I met during those years in England, after I left Bradfield I kept in touch with only two. One lived close to my parents' house in Sussex, the other subsequently became my best man.

I lost touch with the last of these English friends in 1963 when Mrs MW and I left university to take up teaching posts in Ian Smith's Rhodesia.

See previous post in this series here.