lucky I was to survive with speedy good attention whereas  my  poor Aunt Helen had not!  Septicaemia  in those days was very dangerous prior to the wide availability of anti-biotics.
A few days later Hugh came in his Red Singer Sports car to take me back up-country. It was cool in Colombo  early in the morning, this time a perfect tropical day. I remarked that as we left there was a terrible whine in the rear of the car:
“Oh don’t worry  Mike, the crown wheel is worn and may well conk out, but I have taken the precaution of buying a replacement which I will fit at home. Hugh having spent the war  in tanks and armoured cars had been trained well by the army to pull anything to pieces and put it together again.  So we journeyed on, the whine and clanking getting ever louder until we started to climb the low foothills and at a village called Mawanella  it eventually packed up and were lucky to push the car into a handy cadjan palm leaf roofed Sinhalese garage. The Sinhalese are quite the most amazing mechanics and a hour or so later the differential was out in bits, the old crown wheel removed only to find that the new one was the wrong size  and we were stuck in the middle of nowhere. Again ingenuity came into play and with cleaning all the old shards of metal and a few adjustments and packing washers, the old was refitted and judged to have enough teeth to just engage and carry us up on a 6,500 ft mountain climb. With Hugh life was never dull, in fact it was always a thrill a minute!. We thanked and paid our Sinhalese mechanic saviour and left finally as it was getting dark and stopped for refreshments in the Officers Club in Kandy. There we  had a sandwich and a beer in the bar, finally leaving hurriedly  after Hugh had punched a loud mouthed American for being derogatory of the British.  Hugh was very small in build but was a champion inter- public school boxer  because of his speed, agility and accuracy.  We climbed the mountains in bright clear moonlight in  the cold frosty mountain air stopping on the Rambodde pass to put on my POW GI overcoat which fortunately was in the back of the car. We finally arrived at Hugh’s house at 3 am  some 17 hours after leaving Colombo 150 miles away!  At midnight being hungry we  had  tucked into about a dozen mince pies of the gross that Mother  had ordered from the Galle Face Hotel for her Christmas parties . She was furious when she counted them and we both got a good blasting:
“You are both thoroughly irresponsible and cant even be trusted to do a collection without eating half my stock!”  However all was soon forgotten and Christmas was wonderful at Luckyland, the same huge fir tree touching the ceiling laden with baubles presents etc. Helen was up on leave and we all had a riotous time as a family together. This was our first and only Christmas as a family together. After Christmas it would soon be back to Colombo for swatting, but in the meantime Mother was shocked at the mess of Hugh’s house and was determined to spring clean it. So we went down the valley 5 miles to his little simple  abode. She worked all morning with his cook cleaning, and chucking out rubbish whilst I went around Hugoland    our Estate, with Hugh. At midday we returned and had a light meal and had just sat down, when the cook rushed in:
“Come quick Master, there is a large snake just coming out of the chicken coop”
We went to see, and sure enough there was an enormous grey cobra emerging from the run. Hugh gave chase and the snake slid into a monsoon ditch. He jammed a walking stick in the middle of the snake’s back and shouted  “ Get me another stick quick Mike” . I  looked  around  and found a broken branch which he wedged against the serpents neck  so that he was then  able to  grab his head firmly and wrap his long body  around his arm. “Give me a handkerchief quick”  and I passed him mine for the cobra to bite and then he tried to yank out his fangs. But it did not work so I rushed to his car which as usual was in bits, and found a pair of pliers and   we were   able to draw them out easily. Cobra fangs are quite small at the rear of their mouths, in sharp contrast to the enormous teeth of the other Ceylon snake the Russell’s Viper. But a cobra’s bite if he were to get you is really dangerous being a neurotoxin  and a man is usually dead within half an hour with the heart muscles seized up.

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