MY BROTHER HUGH Born 5th October 1920 died 9th May 2006
We put our heads down and skimmed under the barrier so fast before the police had even realised what had happened. Slowly we climbed up the Rambodde Pass at almost midnight. All in second gear so as not to strain the differential. By now it was really cold with a frosty nip in the air. Luckily I had Mike’s Ex-US army great coat in the car, from the Red Cross in Japan and he snuggled into that and collected on the side of the road giant glow worms about 3 inches long which moved and crawled all over the open car. To eat and stave off our hunger we tucked into Mother’s mince pies for her Christmas parties to keep us going. Finally we got over the crest and started the slow descent into Nuwara Eliya and then on to Uva, finally arriving at Hugoland just after 3 am. We had done it. Next day though I got an enormous rocket from Mother for devouring her mince pies, and was told in no uncertain manner how irresponsible and thoughtless I was!
Shortly after this she decided that my little Bungalow by the side of the road was tip and needed to be thoroughly cleaned out under a woman’s eye. She arrived with Mike who came out with me round the Estate, whilst she busied herself with Perumal my house boy flinging things out with gay abandon. We came back at mid-day for lunch and she had also collapsed with a drink in her hand. We had lunch and were sitting down for coffee when Perumal rushed in to say that he had seen a cobra coming out of my hen house. I grabbed a walking stick and sure enough there he was fallen into a deep soil anti erosion ditch. I managed to get the stick against his body and pinned him down struggling, and Perumal passed me another which I placed behind his neck and then I was able to grab him by his head and wound his long body round my arm. The danger was his fangs. In a cobra they are however quite small and towards the back of his long head. The neuro-toxin venom though is deadly and will cause death with 20 – 30 minutes so it is essential to remove them. I tried first using a handkerchief and getting him to bite it and then tugging them out, but it did not work. Mike however rushed to the car which was in pieces in the garage and found a pair of pliers and then it was an easy job. I put him on the lawn, and he was furious and ros e with his hood to strike, but of course he was harmless now. A crowd of Sinhalese villagers and children appeared and enjoyed watching me play with him, until eventually he was put to sleep in my teak bookcase that Mike now has in his home in England. I fed it on eggs about one a week and periodically took it out for a play in the evening on the lawn. It was here that my ownership came to the notice of the nearby Buddhist Temple. The Head Monk came to see Father and protested that they did not like me playing with the cobra. Cobras are sacred to the Buddhists as the story goes that the first Buddha saw his enlightenment and developed his philosophy medidating under a Bo tree which is wild fig with a leaf of similar shape to a cobras head. Father promised that it would be released, but in the meantime I had put in an advert in “The Times of Ceylon” saying “Wanting a Good Home: Well behaved Cobra quiet and peaceful by Nature; Any Offers?” I had a number of replies the most amusing from someone in one of the Big Agency Houses of Colombo who said that from the description they could be interested as the writer felt he would fit in well with their current Board of Directors!
Meanwhile back on the Estate I had got engrossed in trying to grow clonal tea from cuttings instead of tea seed. To start with Father poopoohed the idea, but later became wildly enthusiastic once he saw that it could be done. Nowadays all tea is grown from selected clones and I am proud to have been one of the pioneers of the system. There was again here a lot of Union and Labour trouble, and once I chased John Kotelawala from the estate to Welimada firing my shot gun over his car. Later we met up at the resthouse and had a beer and a good laugh about it! A few years later he was a member of the Government…..how circumstances change!