his vast waistline. That evening David gave us a wonderful Christmas dinner, although Mac was getting increasingly agitated as we all had to listen to our hosts bragging and boasting. Suddenly in the course of the meal Mac rose, excused himself, and we all thought that he had gone to the loo, but instead he had gone to get Mutti, jumped in his car and told him to drive all the 9 hours back to Downside. Father was abashed, at this exhibition of bad manners to our tiresome host but there was nothing he could do......and so ended our Christmas party of 1953. I personally had lost my signet ring swimming in the water, my new camera, but saddest of all was my photograph album with all the lovely shots of Jill and the last two years of life at university and my trip out on the Warwickshire. In future our holiday home was to be Plantain Point bungalow which fortunately we had bought three months previously. I soon replaced my camera with the lucky purchase of an almost new Zeiss Ikon Contax ‘S’ that had been made in East Germany. It cost me then a bargain £75 or almost £1,500 in todays money. But it was a marvellous camera and with its pentaprism viewfinder I took the most magnificent photographs for the next 20 years.
So it was back to my studies and life amidst the lovely hills of Ragalla, with now the heavy scent of the mimosa blossom on the acacia trees that grew everywhere. The monsoon ended, the sun and sky was once again bright, the tennis club re-opened and social life started up again. Soon in the middle of March I took my leave of Ronny Williams. He had been so kind and helpful in starting me off on my career, and his kindest parting present to me at the end, was to offer me the use of his lovely spacious home for our wedding reception at the end of the year, as it was only just over the stream from the little Chapel nestling amongst the fir and mimosa trees. From now on I could visualize in my mind and write to my Jill about where in the not too distant future we would actually be wed. In the meantime I had about two weeks before I was due to start actual work at Hugoland. Father was very keen that I spent this time making friends at the Tea Research Institute, St Coombs on the other side of the Island at Radella. He had some very good friends, amongst the staff who had done a lot of work at Hugoland in getting our fertilizer balances correct. Father suggested that I stay with Hubert Paterson who , the brother of Charlie next door and who was on an Estate called called Ouvakellie not far away. Hubert he explained to me was now in his late 80’s, a hopeless completely disorganised planter but he was good at a number of things. He had a wonderful art as a tea maker for making top quality teas, and he was always fiddling with gadgets, and electronics, building from scratch his own shortwave radios and amplifiers. He was also a pioneer in the new craft of propagating tea vegetatively from cuttings (VP), a technique then just in its infancy. So I was sent off with the words: “ See what you can learn from the old boy. He is 95% chaff, but here and there if you are careful you will find a few good grains to glean”. I was a bit apprehensive but at midday I arrived at his house and parked the car to walk up the drive and lawn to the old bungalow. The whole garden was a wilderness of trees and creepers encroaching, leaving a narrow gap through what once must have been a fine drive. The grass lawn was two foot high and I climbed the dilapidated steps to the house and rang the bell. Eventually an old Tamil with an enormous moustache appeared, and in a very hoarse croaking voice asked what I wanted and who I was? Meanwhile I stood in the entrance hall and saw that there were 8 wristwatches all ticking away on top of the large shortwave radio, their minute hands all in the same place but their hour hands all different. I was just puzzling this out when Hubert arrived and welcomed me. He was dressed in shorts and was constantly scratching himself down below as we made our introductions, and he explained that each watch was set for a different time zone in the world so that he did not have to know at any time what the hour was in London, New York, or Sydney for example. “Come into the sitting room”, he beckoned as I followed him through. There was an awful stale mustiness about the place as we walked in. On one side were four different radiograms, the main sofas and settee were piled three foot deep in books, but under the large bay window there was a window seat covered in hessian sacking , in front of which were two easy chairs also hessian covered upon which were two terrier type dogs, covered in mange, who were fast asleep.
“These are very old ladies” Hubert explained ,“ Jane is seventeen years old and Nellie is fifteen, but they both have got a bad infection of mange”. The poor dogs had practically no hair on their bodies, their pale skin was red from licking and the itching infection. I saw in a flash why Hubert was always scratching, he had obviously got infected himself. We sat on the hessian window seats so as not to disturb the dogs and chatted in the appalling musty stale atmosphere. Shortly after we went into the dining room and had an unappetizing meal which even Hubert could not manage, and so he put his plate on the ground for his dogs to finish. Lunch over, he said , “Come I’ll take you and show you the V.P. work that I am doing.”
I was led out to the back of the house to a small rusty Morris Minor Estate car. Hubert and the driver sat in the front and I was beckoned to sit in the back with the mangy smelly dogs. The car had sliding windows in the rear, and I immediately tried to open them for ventilation. On the one side they were completely rusted up, but on the other side fortunately I was able to slide one open about 3 inches wide. I was lucky in that I have a long thin nose and was able to stick it out through the gap as we slowly climbed 2,000 ft to the cool top of the estate at 6,500ft where he had his pioneering work all immaculately and precisely laid out, a very model of perfection in stark contrast to the mess and chaos at the bungalow. After three days I found myself going crazy with itching. I went down to the local caddies and bought dettol, talcum powder and cotton wool etc. but it was impossible to clean oneself properly in that infected house. I made an excuse and two days later returned back to Hugoland and I explained to Father that I could not remain a moment longer there, with all that mess of mange and squalor. Laughingly with a twinkle in his eye he said: “ Understand Michael that is what becomes of a man who is a bachelor all his life, has too much money, and no woman to nag and harass him into living a civilised existence. Look at the contrast with Charlie his brother who would be the same as he, were it not for Lilian keeping a good clean well furnished house that he himself is proud to live in!” A couple of days later Father was off to Trinco and I reported to MacIntyre and started work as an Assistant Superintendant or S.D. as the post was commonly known: (‘sinai dorai’ or small master in contrast to Mac who was ‘peria dorai’ or big master).

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