Friends

Judging by the photographs in the album my mother made for me to take to England when I was sent to school there in January 1954, I was not short of friends - this is my third birthday, at the old German bungalow in Dar-es-Salaam.

However, one or two photos show a different picture. The boy at the right, all by himself, is me at the Crole-Rees' party on one of the Dar-es-Salaam beaches. I don't look unhappy. I just look as if I don't want to be doing what the others are doing.

When we moved to Mombasa and went to the European primary school just down the road from our house we had many friends. This is the first of four pictures taken at the Swimming Club. My brother Richard and I are at centre, and the girl and boy at right and left lived in one of the flats in the building next door to our house in Cliff Avenue - I think owned by one of the banks. Sadly, I can only remember the boy's name, David.

I look quite happy in this picture which shows Mrs Shinn, wife of a colleague of my father's, with her daughters Sandra, right, and Rhonelda. We didn't like them mostly because my father, who had always wanted a daughter, kept threatening to swap one of us for one of the Shinn girls.

In this picture, from left to right, are John Solly, me, Mark Solly and my brother Richard, gathered round the yacht made for me by an engineer on one of my father's ships, and called Defender after the last ship my grandfather commanded. The picture was taken in 1953.

This picture shows the four of us again but with a boy, on the right, whom I remember but can't name - and look how unhappy I am! I suspect that this might have been in the summer holidays of 1954 or '55, shortly before I set out for school in England.