Boats - 1

One of the good things about being old is that one doesn't feel the need to justify sitting in the sun on a sunny day and just remembering. For example, the other day I began to list all the different sorts of boats I had been in, and my list started, logically, I suppose, with what must have been the most primitive, the coracles two friends and I built in the summer of 1962 in which we floated - or, rather, sank - on the River Thames.

Coracles led to the beautiful ngalowas of the East African coast and the memory both of sailing out in them to the reef and also more recently, while on a holiday in Tanzania, of being taken out in one by a young man who allowed me to take control. And thinking of small boats led to others I have enjoyed, like....

....yachts, both in East Africa and on Ardnamurchan, and rowing boats, from dinghies to racing eights, and then....

....to kayaks and the many happy memories I have of paddling the clear but sometimes rather wicked waters off Ardnamurchan.

My Father's Pubs - 2

My father was a lunchtime drinker. Perhaps this went back to his days as a ships' agent on the coast of Eastern Africa, where he would start work very early in the morning and then take time away from his desk through the heat of the day. Lunchtime was also when he entertained the captains of the ships that came in to his agency, taking them to the club before bringing them home for lunch.

So I have many happy memories of time spent with him in this pub, the successor to the Three Oaks Hotel after my parents moved into Hastings Old Town. It's the Cinque Ports Arms in All Saints Street, Hastings, a small, single-bar pub with panelled walls and a perfect pub atmosphere. In it....

....my father (right) would meet his friends, particularly Gordon Faulkner (second from right). Being such good, regular customers meant that they were well looked after by the landlord (left) and his wife. What was special about the pub was that it didn't bother with the inessentials, like food; if existed for its beer and its atmosphere.

My father spent the fading years of his life in Maldon, Essex, where his lunchtime beer was taken at the Blue Boar hotel. Although he walked the half-a-mile from his house to the pub, by this time his hand was shaky so the bar maid, a lovely Spanish lady called Inez, would pour him a three-quarters pint of Adnam's bitter and then top it up.

We also lived in the town so I was able to spend some lunchtimes with him. By this stage his memory was going so I would hear the same stories day after day. This repetition didn't bother me: I was just so pleased that he had these experiences to enjoy. However, he wasn't happy with his life - my mother worried that they should have stayed in Hastings rather than move to be nearer us.

It was in this pub, sitting by the window, that he turned to me one day and said, "Life owes me nothing." I think I understand what he meant.

A Lone Redshank

There's plenty of seaweed, much of it kelp, along the tidelines of the beaches below Dunrobin Castle, dumped there during the recent easterlies. It's ideal feeding for waders, and in previous years we've seen small flocks of them working it, but on Thursday, when I spent some time scanning the benches with my binoculars, the only wader I could find....

....was this lonely redshank.

I keep insisting that the number of shore birds we're seeing is significantly down on previous years. There is only the occasional curlew, we've a serious shortage of redshanks, the sanderlings seem to have gone AWOL, the turnstones are finding stones elsewhere, and the oystercatchers are all on holiday at Littleferry. Even the starlings are missing, as are the rock doves, a flock of which were here only a week or so ago.

Look up, though, and skein after skein of pink-footed geese is passing over, their numbers in the hundreds. Thank goodness that at least one species appears to be thriving.

Voices from the Past

One of the joys of writing this blog is that, every now and again and thanks to the wonders of the internet, a voice whispers from the past. I've probably had more comments on my posts about Chalvedon School, comprehensive school in Basildon New Town than anything else, but recently I've had a spate of comments on posts about our time at Bernard Mizeki College in Rhodesia. This one, received yesterday is typical:

"I was teaching at Goromonzi secondary school at the time. I remember Bernard Mizeki well - it was one of the few schools that were good enough to invite my African students for a tennis match! Goromonzi was an 'African' secondary government school but our links to schools such as Bernard Mizeki and Peterhouse were strong."

Thank you to whoever sent this comment. I too remember the friendly, though very keen rivalry between Goromonzi, Peterhouse - a mainly white school - and Bernard Mizeki. While we played football against Goromonzi - picture shows the Bernard Mizeki 1st XI football team in 1963 - Peterhouse was a rugby school. The main meetings between the three schools were, therefore, athletics and, in particular, cross-country running. Peterhouse wasn't very good at cross-country but both Goromonzi and Bernard Mizeki were, so my memory is that one of these two schools usually won the competition, which included several other schools, on overall points.

I have very happy memories of training cross-country teams. Most of the boys loved their sport, and many had a natural talent for cross-country, the main job therefore being to get them to peak fitness. We did this by meeting outside the library (above) every weekday morning before everyone else got up, and doing a good five-mile run. Anyone acquainted with Zimbabwe/Rhodesia will know the beauty of Central African dawns, which made these occasions so pleasant. Needless to say I had to cheat to keep up with the squad, so I rode a bicycle from which I urged them on.

Memories, memories.... How good it is occasionally to sit in the sun, as I am as I write this, and remember those far off, happy days.

My Father's Pubs - 1

That my father found so much pleasure in a good English pub may, at least in part, be due to this pub, the Ship Inn in Caister, the small Norfolk town from which his branch of the Hayletts came.

His father, against family tradition, had gone 'deep sea' rather than join a local fishing industry which, after the loss of the herring, was in severe decline, yet he found his wife in this pub, for Edith, my grandmother, worked there. And it was to Caister and this pub that my father returned on the leaves - holidays - he had while working for forty years on the east coast of Africa.

Pubs didn't exist in East Africa, so my first memories of my father's enjoyment of good company was at the Mombasa Sports Club. He didn't just relax there: he was one of the club's cricket umpires, and used to challenge my brother and I to explain the leg-before-wicket rules.

While my father drank with his friends in the bar, my mother, Richard and I would enjoy a drink and the club's chipped potatoes under the mango trees that shaded the outfield.

My first memory of my father in an English pub was soon after my parents retired from East Africa, when they rented a cottage in the Kent village of Appledore. While he did like the Red Lion in the village, he preferred The Ferry Inn at Stone on the Isle of Oxney, a short drive from Appledore. He was so favoured by the publican, George, that he was often to be found in the bar long after closing time in the afternoon.

They bought their first retirement house in the village of Three Oaks, just outside Hastings. Its only services were a small 'halt' on the Hastings to Ashford railway - a 'halt' being a station where one held out one's hand if one wanted the train to stop - and the Three Oaks Hotel where my father spent about two hours at lunchtime every weekday. While he amused himself thus, my mother used the railway to commute up to London on three days of the weeks to work for an association which represented Conservative peers.

My father did, occasally, take a break from the hotel, driving to this pub, the White Hart, on the Hastings to Rye main road. The bitter (beer) there didn't suit him, so he often drank bottled Guiness instead. When we first went to the pub - by this time I was old enough legally to enjoy a pint with him - it was very run down, the main area in the pub being split into three rooms, the saloon bar being the place the women drank and the public bar where workmen drank. However, a revolution followed when it was taken over by a young couple, the Richardsons, who knocked through the interior walls to make a large bar area, and who developed the pub by, for example, creating a lovely pub garden at the rear of the premises where guests' children could play.

Memories

 

I have memories from my youth of the excitement at the dawn of each new day; of an anticipation at what it might bring that sent me running out to meet it. In mid-life I have memories of the uplift in spirits that came with it, a warm joy which often lasted through the day. Now, faced with such silent, passing beauty, I turn and look back, seeking the memories of similar dawns and, through them, of the places where I stood witness.

Loch Fleet

It's weeks since we last walked at Loch Fleet so today, with the weather set fair, we took our usual route, starting on the northern side of the loch and walking towards the sea. The shingle banks in the picture are often a convenient roost for waders but the only ones we saw, a small flock of what might have been sanderlings, seemed in a hurry to be elsewhere.

This picture looks back from the beach that runs along the eastern side of the National Nature Reserve towards the mouth of the loch, where a strong current into the loch indicated the approach of high tide. 

We walked northwards along the beach until we found a bank where we could sit and look back along the beach, and look back too to the many beaches upon which we have sat in our time together. This is hardly the most exciting beach, particularly since so much of the wildlife seems to have deserted it, though....

....there was a flock of over a hundred oystercatchers on the far side of the loch.

On our way home we stopped at a picnic site provided by NatureScot where we could sit in the intermittent sunshine and look out across the inner pools of the sea loch. By this time the tide was high.

This extensive area was occupied by small groups of widgeon, perhaps a hundred in all, a few gulls, and half-a-dozen cormorants.