For relaxation there was the local Dickson’s Corner Club, but apart from the Annual Tennis Meets it was difficult to get to with the lack of transport. However after a year he purchased a second hand Royal Enfield Motor Cycle. On his first trip on the 30 miles tortuous road to Nuwara Eliya, he came round a corner and almost had an accident with a gentleman in a pony and trap.
“ Who the hell are you?”, the man enquired.
“Fred Charnaud from Gampaha Estate”
“ Well haven’t you heard of keeping left?” he spluttered.
“ No never. What for?”
“Well as there is now an increasing amout of road traffic, it has been made a rule that if everyone keeps to the left, there is less likelihood of an accident being caused.”
“ Thanks I will remember that for the future.”
Father said it was the first time he had ever been aware of keeping to the left. He had been brought up in the era of horses, and it was easy to avoid one when one was trotting slowly and both in Turkey and his life in Ceylon up until then, there was no cause to be involved with traffic in any way.
Whilst he was on Gampaha they had a visit from a young French Nobleman about which more will be said later in this story. Suffice to say that he was on a tour of India and the Far East and had called in to Ceylon, and given an introduction to Fred Whittall to take him out shooting. He and father got friendly as they stalked Partridge and snipe in the Welimada plains and valleys, and he got the idea of starting up his own tea estate. But more of this later.
Soon it was almost two years father had been at Gampaha, and he was now in a position to move on. He bade his goodbyes to some rumbustuous friends from the nearby estates who would often join him for a drink in the evening at his house. One was a wild chap who always carried a revolver in a holster, and when he had too much to drink would draw his gun and shoot at the hornets that would congregate on the ceiling ventilator. He had obtained an assistants appointment on a small Estate in
Dolosbage, near Adams Peak, and one of the wettest areas of Ceylon.