. that it was impossible to go about and  we just sailed on across the harbour completely out of control and ended up in the naval dockyard from which Jill and Beryl rescued us with the landrover.
On the other side of Luckyland was the Estate of Waldemar, part of Harrison & Crossfields extensive plantation businesses. It was managed by a fair thin haired chap called Roy Waterfall whom I often met for a chat on our boundary. He had trouble with his false teeth and was often not wearing them which made him feel self conscious.   He was a chatty personality who loved talking and   a very able and hard  working man of great intelligence who  had joined the army during the war as a private ending up as a Lt. Colonel. I used to enjoy my wide ranging discussions with him as he loved the opportunity to talk and unwind, as he would never mix with anyone else and would never go to clubs.  The only time   that I ever disagreed with him was over the question of collecting cooly pay in convoy. When I arrived  in my open land rover by myself with no driver,  he asked me what armament I carried as he had a luger pistol  which he proudly showed me. I said that I had nothing, and  if any bandit wanted to stop me, I would be delighted to hand over the cash as I was not prepared to jeopardise my life for the sake of any insurance company. Shortly after this he was having major alterations to his factory and asked  whether I could manufacture his leaf, to which I readily agreed. He would often come over to the factory, and would enjoy going around our estate, but as soon as we approached our bungalow, his demeanour would totally change and an intense  nervousness and shaking took over. He never ever set his foot in our home, nor would he and his wife ever have anyone in theirs. Apparently they both had a drink problem  and he felt that even watching me have a beer could break his will and he would be back on the downward slope again.  I liked him for his dry sardonic humour and a colleague of his told me that once  all the Lunuva Company managers were summoned to a business conference in Colombo to have a pep talk from a London director  who ended his talk saying:
“Well if  you all follow our instructions on costs and sales we will get through this difficult time. Gentlemen the ball is at your feet and I leave it to you to get on with the job”.
There was a silence at the end of the speech,  and then  Roy piped  up  from  the rear in the hush :
“ If  you go on waffling like this for ever, our balls will be at our feet!” and the room was convulsed in laughter much to the discomfort of the director.  Just a couple of weeks after we had left to go on leave in 1963 Roy went into his office at Waldemar  and spent a couple of hours with his head clerk checking the accounts. He then summoned his senior assistant and gave him instructions for running the large property, and got him to check the petty cash and gave him the safe keys saying that he was going off for a while. He then sat alone in his private office writing letters ,  and when the staff had finally knocked off at 5 o’clock  he drew out his luger and shot himself in the head, with  the bullet ending up  lodged  in the wall of the office. He left behind a letter to his darling wife saying how much he had loved her and hoped that she would be alright, a letter to the local Superintendant of Police to say he was taking his life at his own wish and not to give any unnecessary bother to his wife, and finally a letter to his Company criticising  them for the manner that they had treated him, and now that he had finally gone hoping that they would make adequate  provision for his wife!  A sad tale of a very able, but a lonely and intelligent man obviously mentally wracked with depression which  was never treated, and who had no one because of his drink problem with whom he could really confide in.
At Kirklees meanwhile on the other side of the estate, Pat McKittrick’s replacement was a confirmed bachelor in his fifties called Frank Church.  He was a tall  thin  rangy person, bald with a bushy army moustache.  He also had a reputation for being a loner and also  for disliking  female company, but I got on well with him and would spend many an evening  chatting and knocking back vast quantities of his liberally poured scotch and smoking his  dreadful strong cheroots. Frank had two hobbies again, his love of rugby which now that he was too old to play, he still helped promote and follow. The other great interest was the “Painter Homes for Orphaned Children” and this would take any spare cash  and any time that he had ,and he was forever collecting and promoting financial contributions to help with its work. I asked him once why he was so fanatically keen on promoting and helping it, and he told me:
“ You know Mike, I never ever knew who my parents were. I was just abandoned as a tiny baby and left wrapped up by someone on their doorstep, and because I had been left there they had to give me a name and Frank Church was chosen by the matrons to be true always to God and the Church. All my childhood and education and upbringing was by the kind folk there, and once I had grown up, I joined the army as a career and only much later after the war did I become a tea planter”. Although widely known with a reputation as a bit of a ‘bastard’, we had a good friendship.  When finally I left Ceylon I gave him my large and valuable LP record collection  of both classical and modern dance and my hi-fi system ,which was then one of the first in the country. He was deeply grateful and said that all the children would derive endless pleasure  and the classical records particularly would open up a whole new world for the poor deprived youngsters. I think fondly of the pleasure they would have got and then compare it with the abundance in todays society, when vast swathes of the population know nothing of true classical music and their education and literacy  is limited to the thump thump of punk rock, and a  rap culture ignorant of the wonderful worlds of Vivaldi,  Mozart, Handel, Wagner and Chopin just to name a few of the great composers.
Luckyland and Hugoland together  was a wonderful experience  for a young man to handle in his late twenties and early thirties. I had under me some 1,600 workers from the humblest cooly to senior local staff and an assistant superintendant. In addition there were endless children to be free fed, schools run, dispensaries, maternity homes, and a constant rapport with the many Sinhalese villagers and their headmen and Buddhist Monks, who all had to be kept on ones side and helped and placated or soothed  in some way or another. I had to be the arch diplomat juggling all sorts of conflicting viewpoints and leaving everyone contented that they had gained some small point or other. One request I had from  Napplabokka, a division of Luckyland, which  mainly had  low caste or pariah  Tamils, was for a new Hindu temple or Kovil . As the business was doing well I persuaded the Company to have  a substantial building built, on a knoll not far away from the Estate  buildings. One day when it was almost ready for completion, and in fact it was due to be opened in about 10 days time with a  great ceremony , I was driving back at mid-morning returning to the bungalow in my open  landrover,  with my black labrador Pitch and Rusty, Pat’s Red Irish Setter riding in the  back for company, when up the steep Allagolla Hill,  I met  the  young  Tamil Superintendant of a nearby property, a short  man callled Mr Ramanathan and I stopped for a friendly chat.
“ I hear that your new Kovil is almost ready. You know the labourers are very thankful the way you have got it built. It was a shrewd move on your part, because that lot can be very unruly, but from now on  they will be ever grateful to you.”
“ Thank you  for the complement”, I said “It was kind   of you to say that”,
“ Well one should always speak openly whether it is good or it is bad. But never mind, what I want to know is are you and your young family going to be present at the grand opening ceremony?”
“Well I expect so. They will want my presence at the very least, I am not sure about whether my wife will come, but I hope so”.
He frowned and looked very serious:

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Pluckers

Aunt Nancy with Paul 1962