I've been writing up my memories of growing up in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) from 1953 - 1972 for a writing class and the other members seem to like my stories. I need to find a way of sharing my observations with friends and family so here goes.

These appear to me as glimpses in a fast moving old movie.

I was called Ginger Bush as a baby because I was so placid that mum would sit my pram under a ginger bush and promptly forget about me. This may have promoted my love of nature but that’s another story.

I do not remember that house. We were living there while my dad worked but also owner-built the house that came to be known as Plot 57 in Helensvale, Southern Rhodesia, now known as Zimbabwe.

My childhood was idyllic. I mainly remember love and freedom but when you scratch the surface there were tensions and irritations and bullying going on. My beloved mum, Betty was the nucleus of the family around which everything circulated.

1 Betty 1955

 A big bosomed, big bottomed,  big hearted woman with table legs but the best sense of humour and temperament you could ask for. She had to be. She had four sons; I was the youngest.  And there was her beloved husband, Jack. It seemed to be a sport to tease her mercilessly but she seemed to love it. I can picture her snorting with disapproval over something but still maintaining a look of benevolence.  She seemed to handle sibling rivalry by making it clear that she loved us all equally. Peter was her favourite eldest son, Henry the favourite second son, etc, then George and me. Jack was the real love of her life and that was made clear from as long as I can remember.

2. George, Henry, Peter and Tom

My next strong memory was when I was about three. We went on “Board Ship” as they used to say from South Africa to England with my mum. The trip was just a blur, but I do remember some sailors playing with my football and accidentally throwing it through the porthole never to be seen again. I also learned to swim on the ship which was considered quite precocious at the time.

3.Oranjefontein Ship , 1956

4 Family farewell to return to Africa. Mum George and I in the foreground

When we got home, that changed. The house was functional and we had a swimming pool. The boys’ rooms had no windows; only window frames. For what seemed like an eternity, my brothers would take it in turns to wake me up to carry me down to the pool and throw me in. I must have been traumatised because I then stopped swimming for some time until mum and dad gradually rebuilt my confidence. 

So far not so idyllic. I had a special mate, Mike, with whom I spent so much time. His mum, Viv, was my Godmother. Their lives were slightly chaotic but I loved it. I don’t know how many nights I spent at his place and he at mine.

 The Fynn family. Mike on the boat and Viv standing. Also Ted, Jane, Robin, Vanessa and a cousin

As evening approached, mum would ring Viv to say that Mike would be staying the night or vice versa. Sometimes there would be a more formal arrangement whereby I was supposed to stay the night but we’d have a fight and I’d go home in a huff or he’d leave out place over some disagreement. I fell out of the top bunk at his place one night and woke up Viv with my groaning, even though I had not woken up. Viv just helped me back up to the top bunk and went back to bed. Nowadays I often wonder how I would have reacted if a friend of my son had fallen out of a bunk bed at my place 30 odd years ago. Or how a parent of today would react. Probably an MRI would be in order today.

We “explored” many places and things. How to anaesthetise a frog, how to annoy a monkey, and more. Our best jaunt was to the local shop about 2 miles away and we went on foot. I did eventually get a bike but this came later. One day we went all the way to the shop to buy a box of matches. It was October; suicide month, they say as the heat builds up and the grasses die off and it seems as if the rain is never going to come. In this context, it probably was unwise for the shopkeeper to sell us matches.

We drifted home slowly and started a game we called “Chicken”. The idea was to light a match and drop it on the grass on the verge of the road. This immediately set fire to the grass and the boy who had dropped the match was to wait until the fire was getting out of control and then stamp it out. This worked  a few times but we just got bolder and bolder and before long one of us had set a fire that we could not control and it was about to burn a whole “vlei” (grassy valley) when Mr Fairlie pulled up and dragged some sacks out of his boot and put the fire out. His place would have been endangered as well as family friends the Ramsays and the Strongs.

On another occasion when we had bikes, Mike and I rode to the shops. There was also a garage next door where you could top up the air in your tyres. We had been riding around with our slug guns trying to shoot swallows off the electricity wires with no luck thank heavens. But suddenly, Mike decided he’d take off from the garage on my bike so I took a pot shot at this moving target and shot him in the leg which made him fall off the bike. Poor Mike. He didn’t try that again. Maybe some forms of deterrence work.

Apart from October, I don’t really remember the weather. In summer it often warmed up through the day then the clouds rolled in. On these days, there was often a shower or storm towards evening. Sometimes this inspired the termites to relocate, so this was a great time for the Africans. I don’t know how they knew, but they were able to find these heaps whenever they were being vacated. They would put straw over the heaps to hinder the migration of the termites and put them in a saucepan which they then fried up to produce this delightful snack which tasted like butter but they were beautifully crisp.

Mike’s family had flatter land than we did so we paid half to get a tennis court built on their land and could use it as often as we wanted. This was fantastic over the years. As little kids we would play against each other with the net half down.

This should have given us an advantage over the others in the neighbourhood when it came to playing tennis comps at the Borrowdale Country Club but it didn’t. Those tournaments did serve another purpose, though, as we started to socialise with girls, which I loved. That club was also the venue for Gymkhanas and Polo Crosse tournaments. We kept horses. My parents and all my brothers loved riding but whatever horse I rode (especially Nelson) would walk halfway up the drive and then head for the trees, which he could get under but this would result in me getting grazed and dragged off the horse. So gymkhanas were not my favourite activity. Nevertheless I sometimes came home with a few ribbons, usually when I rode other people’s horses.

George and Tom and Peter or Henry with Dusky and Nelson, circa 1956

When it rained at our place there was still plenty to do indoors. We had a rug in the sitting room that served us very well as a putting green and carpet bowls rug. We also played Scrabble, Monopoly and cards on the rug which usually worked out well. Occasionally, though, one of us would lose the plot during a game if things had consistently gone against us. My brother George would automatically decree that we would need to sort this out with a punch-up or a wrestling match which we did.

This was not the only time that our pugilistic skills were tested. Down in the valley below our place there was an African village where they would hold a beer drink every week. From early afternoon, the drums would start pounding and the ululating would commence. Somehow, Mike and I gatecrashed one of these gatherings. There were often punching matches between the revellers and their kids and Mike and I were invited to fight each other much to the amusement of the revellers as we were not very skilled. Those parties would continue into the night. It was somehow reassuring to go to sleep with the glow of the fire in the distance along with the drumming and continued ululation. I believe I developed a great sense of rhythm from hearing those sounds.

The valley was also fantastic after the rains. We would go mushrooming and always come home with a fantastic harvest which we had with breakfast.

7 The pool and the valley

But this same valley was not purely benevolent.

One day, George and I were mushrooming and we had been warned about toadstools. George picked up a mushroom and started eating it raw. Then his breath became a wheeze and he fell to the ground as though dying. I rushed up the hill yelling out for mum to come and help my dying brother who was, in fact, a yard or so behind me dying of laughter.

The same valley was also where the bushfires came from. It was said that these fires were probably deliberately lit so as to chase out creatures to kill for food. I wasn’t in a position to complain so maybe this was Karma. At night you couldn’t tell how far away the fire was. The valley was large but it always seemed to me that the fire was right below us. If this had been the case, the fire would rush up the hill and burn the house down. What made this prospect all the more scary was that a fire had whooshed up the hill once during the day and it had been a struggle to extinguish it, so I knew it was possible. 

The other problem was the rooms without windows. One of the men who had helped build the house turned up at the back door one day and asked to see my brother Henry. Henry went to see him and this guy was keen to kill him. Somehow I was protected from the details of what happened next, but our cook, Cigaretti, explained to me that he had become “Penga” (mad). From then on, on the odd occasion where I could not get to sleep I would have visions of this man coming up from the valley with a machete in his hand to kill me.

We had a borehole at the bottom of this same hill. When the pump was on, the borehole water was pumped up to a tank above the house which then gravity fed water into the house. Baziwell, our gardener, was given the responsibility of checking the depth of the tank water by tapping it with a stick. If he felt that it was getting low, he would tell my parents and one of the boys was asked to go and turn on the pump. On more than one occasion, when it was the turn of one of my brothers, they would offer me a race to the bottom of the hill to turn on the pump. So I’d rush down and win the race easily, as the brother was comfortably seated at the top of the hill. The fact that this happened more than once is a powerful indictment on my intelligence.

But these were isolated incidents. We had great fun most of the time. 

The veranda out the back had all the hallmarks of a home-built colonial home. The house had a roughness that somehow exuded security. Rough slate floors, glass doors, funny steps and a stone wall down to the grassed patch below that was the scene of steeple chases, cricket tests, cricket coaching from dad (”foot and bat ….. together”) rugby games, fights and boils. I swear I got a boil once from a rope burn but that’s probably a mixed memory. I also misjudged a high rugby ball and scraped the side of my face quite badly a few days before I was to be a page boy at a wedding. When I was on my own that stone wall was a catching wall. I could throw a tennis ball at it and it would send me back a catch that often kept me challenged until I mastered the art of throwing the ball at the right place to exact more predictable returns.

Back up on the veranda was my mum; musty sort of mum who crossed her legs to sneeze and was uninhibited about scratching her bum in my company. There she sat helping me under a relentlessly blue sky that somehow exaggerated the garden smells of roses and catnip.

Because I was the youngest, I spent a lot of time with Betty who didn’t have a full time job when I was young and my brothers were at boarding school. I was very conscientious about my studies especially in primary school and she was really helpful. She taught me to read before I started school so I went straight into Year One at school. Later she would help me with revision of all subjects. She was always coming up with mnemonics to help me remember geographical names etc, some of which I still remember. She always tested me on my French vocabulary the day before a test and was extremely supportive. One day, when we were revising for something, she started to fart, and this made her laugh. So what ensued was this gymkhana type horse fart that continued for ages and we doubled over with a fit of the giggles. I can still picture the veranda we were sitting on with the rough slate floor and the sack of peanuts in the corner. Such an enduring memory of the place and of mum and so different from the way she was in her later years.

The radiogram was everything for me as a kid. It sat in the corner of the sitting room but it was the chronicler of our lives.  When I was sick and had to stay home, (which I hated) I always had the radio. The best show was the one where they sent condolences to people in hospital. I’d never heard of adenoids before, but every second person was having his tonsils, adenoids or appendices out. In the evening, the radio was news preceded by military style band music which was very stirring. The gramophone part of it was also wonderful. Mum and Dad had 78 rpm classical records that they played after dinner. When they became too scratched and obsolete, George and I were allowed to toss them into the valley where they buckled and melted. Then there were the 33rpms, Buddy Holly, The Knights, Tchaikovsky. Most of the records were given to me as birthday presents even though they were for the benefit of my brothers. My mate, Mike and I found a way of performing to these records. Mike got a few boxes and I got a tennis racket, and suddenly we were the Knights, miming along to their records.

8. Pop band, the Knights with the radiogram in the corner

 At other times it was the key component of the Scottish dancing nights we held at home. I was included from as far back as I can remember; and when I tired I would sit beside the fireplace and drift off to sleep to the jollity all around. And then there were the Rock n Roll nights my brothers organised complete with French chalk on the floors to make it more slippery. The rugs were rolled up and, until the guests arrived, the music had a tinny sound that echoed like an empty house. But when the guests arrived, it was as though someone had turned up the bass on the radiogram.

There was also the BBC world service news that we listened to around lunchtime.  I can still picture the sadness in the faces of my parents as the death of Sir Winston Churchill was announced. Deadly silence. I was inspired about the Sputnik after hearing about it on the radio. On Saturdays it hosted Lyons Maid Hits of the Week. For a while I used to believe that the artists all played live in the studio.

And finally, there was the disturbing moment when I awoke to quite loud music in the sitting room, and there, on the floor, were my parents making love in front of the fire. It was one of those indelible moments. I don’t think I actually knew what was happening, but gradually through gossip and chat at school and with friends I built up a picture of what was really transpiring. I wasn’t embarrassed, and went back to bed as told, but it took a while to settle down, particularly as I was due to play my first soccer game for the Colts the next morning and I was excited.

All of this just brings back only good memories although I still see the flickering of old movies in my mind that prompted me to run away from home; all of 10 yards up the hill and lying in wait for the call which never came, or the occasional cross words between dad and eldest brother, Peter over use of the car.