William Fischer

The old boys that told me stories when I was young, prefaced with “You wont want to listen to an old man” but I did though their advice, to “watch and wait” cannot be taken in youth when are things to do, money to make so as to attract women with whom one develops intense and meaningful relationships.




I did listen. About the job in Yemen: “Don’t apply for that unless you intend to go because they most likely will offer it to you.” I applied, I went, I learnt, rather quickly how ruthless and corrupt are the organs of the British state, or were in those days, those days of yore. I learnt the trade.



In Dar es Salaam I said no, I won’t, it is not my job, not what I am paid for. John, from behind his large and empty desk, on the fifth floor of the High Comm said: “You will. It can take time, I think not long, but however long, you will agree. The idea of a free Englishman is a myth”. True, I had accepted the job, would go on to get a mortgage on the strength of it.



He was very right, in those days of telex machines- the cough and sudden urgent chatter, provoking us to stare at the distantly controlled keys chattering, the message:



“After further consideration I advise you, strongly, that it would be in the best interests of the Crown and the best interests of yourself to do as these people tell you. Regards, Stuart.



“Well”, I said to John, "You were right". He said “You won’t see me again I have another posting”.



Yet what do you learn, what is it possible to learn? Not much.



I now know, I am told, I have seen the orange uniform snap, that William Fischer is a crook and was even then. As yet I do not know if Cathryn AlKannan is a knowing accomplice or simply the naive beneficiary of dodgy money. I have a view, that she is a very knowing crook, but that is a view leaned upon by the insult. Cathryn would look most fetching in an orange jumpsuit.

One lives the cards that are dealt or any other platitude we use for lifes fortunes and misadventures. My connection of Phil Winter, bristle mosutaches, the Crown  Agent who sent me to Yemen, John Rundel, a very clean shaven kind of useless spy, William Fischer, a conman who could con because he had the momentary funds to widen the eyes, if it was those he widened in Cathryn Alkanaan, are my own elusive connections: my own sense. Cathryn is by this criteria a good enemy, Once a freind, close enough to cuddle, as the best enemies are, hard bitten, righteous, very hard to get. And of course, since this is a public fiction, and a story of spies, the Karlos is beyond AlKanaan, one step more. A enemy must be long in the making to quench the sense of guilt.

Bata (Kubwa) na Casa

Those two liked to joke about the animals that they watch intensely, staring hard and silently and then teasing each other giving characteristics taken from the creatures they study. Casa, a turtle, whose given name is Muhsin, is so called because of his very big feet and splayed way of walking made more because he chooses shoes that are much bigger than his very big feet. Bata, duck in Kiswahili, had a different provenance. Batash they told me was the family name of a famous trading clan who Batashi may have once worked for, had a connection with or been adopted by. Batash is a broker, his success then and now based on his reputation for being good with money. Everyone trusts Batash for money, a necessary and rare attribute for a Zanzibari trader. “You are a casa” said Batash to Muhsin, “you are a bata” said Muhsin to Batash. Bata a diminutive form of Batash. His given name is Mohamed, but there are many so called in Zanzibar so it is good thus to have a familiar name. They had a name for me too, Basset, but that came from another source. Basset, a breed of dog, “sad and rather disappointed” which is how I look because of my down turned mouth and jowly features, but I liked the name because on optimistic days that description fits with my view of my history. Cathryn AlKanaan, the Piss Chippers wife, said always that my glass was half full, another wag, more perceptive, reading from a birthday card bought in a Sandwich shop, said the glass is not big enough.




Batashi was once a driver and very good at that. He could and can run at speed a foot or so from a wobbling bicycle, break through the gears, never has road kill, not even a chicken. He told me he did not like to kill any animal and though he made little of it preferred fruits, berries and roots to any meat and is very much adverse to consuming refined sugar. He told me that he gained his insight into the human condition from a time of working on ships, a common escape for Zanzibari boys. A character I mused from the novels of Joseph Conrad, who wrote of ships and spies.



Muhsin had trained to be a cook and was then the assistant cook at AlKanaan's huts but was not of family. His English is good and self taught. Muhsin is very discreet, very knowledgeable about other peoples business but not at all inclined to opine, approve or disapprove. He grins the best enigmatic cheshire I have ever seen. Bata na Casa discuss matters often under the mango tree at Darijani and come to secret conclusions/



Bata left driving and owned busses which he employed people to drive. The key to any business, so obvious but lost, it to have customers. Without paying customers there is no trade, with customers any other matter can be solved. I cannot do anything at all only arrange for things to be done. Batash sold his bus, sold another, by and by bought and sold without ever owning the wheels at all. One rainy day I borrowed a car from Batash, since by then I had become mzungu mchovu and thus had no shillings of my own. In the three hours I drove on favour Batash changed the car three times, he had bought and sold them all.



The arrival of mobile phones was the event that moved Batash from doing rather well to becoming quite rich. There was no need to meet, no need to see a face, just a conversation since Batash is good for money. All can be done under the mango tree in Darajani. Those sullen layabouts, his school mates are not so lazy, Batash employs them all. I said “You sell on the left ear and buy on the right ear”. Batash like me is left handed and our bond was helped by the mutual recognition of a secret society. The society of Batash is a growing one for in Zanzibar even the most honest is by necessity corrupt, even the most discreet has a version of their business known. Batash can trade with everyone and for sure there will be no record of any conversation. Bata Kubwa, in the tinted car, on the back of a vespa or appearing from one of the many entrances to Darijani. Sometimes and certainly on Friday now that he is older Batash goes to pray in the mosque. 



Batash advised me to go home. Advice or not it was time to go home, to be broke in a country not your own is a sad state of affairs. It has taken over two years in my own country to become decently wealthy again. In this new business I too have not met my customers or my suppliers or anyone I do business with. I too do not exist.



On the park course my golfing partner drove the orb into the pond. Reload. I did the same. Come home, reload.

Gray Ladies

I drove to the quiet house in the village near Oxford up the hill from the Cowly car assembly plant. The village where the grey ladies live, where the bridge evenings are dry though they are always tempte but never succumb to drink.

The paintings that came from the art gallery in Barcelona at a cost of nine thousand pounds were still unframed lent against the dining room wall. The teak table for twelve was half set and much polished. I have known that room used only once. Susan hosted a bridge evening for the ladies and one man plus me.

“Have you got any fags?”
I have.
“Do you still smoke?”

“Only when I see you”

Susan said  “I have not had a fag since the last time you were here”

“I have some. Where shall we smoke? In the conservatory?

An equally expensive painting from the same art gallery is hanging on the conservatory wall.
It was the hot weather week of September 2011, so the conservatory in the cold house was just beyond pleasantly warm. Susan removed her long jumper, her trousers I could see filled her tightly and pleasantly. I am sure she noticed me looking

“Do you live here?”

“When I am England. Of course I do. It is my house. You know that.”

Susans accent had got a bit plumb.

How often are you in England.?  You see me on Skype.

The next day we walked to Wheatley to buy food in the Coop supermarket there because she said there is none in the house. I bought two bottles of beer because there was none of that either. She bought some pasta:

“We can have pasta and cheese”

“It will be better with bacon”

We went to the aisles again.

“Have you wine?”
“Lots of wine”
“Good. I have not found it yet”
“I will put a bottle in the fridge”

On the way back a lorry, a crew and a land rover 110 were making a mess of moving a mobile home.

“There is a mobile home site down that track. My cleaning lady lives in a mobile home down there”
“You have a cleaning lady?
“She only comes when I am not in England”


The quiet house did look as if the cleaning lady had been yesterday, the washing up done but not put way.The crisp of the sheets the make of my bed in guest room looked like cleaning lady work.
  
“My cleaning lady and her husband once had a house but they sold it because they are spend thrifts and used up all their money”


Back at home Susan went to repose so as to fend off a migraine. I drank the two beers, smoked two cigarettes, poured with delighted defiance a good full glass of the wine now in the fridge. I was thus tongue loosened. The September sun, these clear blue skies, faded, the quiet house is soon cold.

Susan came, no glass, no water. I gave her a fag, she lit it with style, I took a draught. She had released let loose her hair, a mane of many blonds. I admired, I wondered, but she had told many times that she has had no lovers for many many years.

“There is quite a difference in what is on the audio and what you report that Lars said in the showers”

A touch lip puff. The as the smoke curled in the cooling air.

"So tell what Lars said in the bathroom."


I had reported it, written it verbatim as I remembered.

Susan is very professional, has been doing this stuff since she was twenty five, which, I distracted, note is twenty five years ago. It is what she does bored and fed up with it as she is. The Washerman has no pastimes either and in retirement is bored and lost.

“Golf is boring. I hate golf”

“I don’t find it boring- it is a pastime when there is a lot of time to pass”

I have had that conversation with both of them.  Golf has no meaningful result.

I told her what Lars said. Sarah kept my gaze, as far as I could see the only recording device was her own listening. This soft persistent interrogation is the English style. She kept her eyes steady at mine, lips pursed tight enough to whiten.

Then.

“You got back to Hamburg at six thirty five, you left just after ten. That was not the scheme. Your contract said you leave on arrival. You did not. What did you do?”
“I had never been to Hamburg before, the trip had gone well, so I went to a pub”
“Did you drink?”

It was a pub, they sell drinks, I had money, I bought their products.

“Who did you talk to?”

No one. It was Hamburg, I don’t speak the lingo

“You stayed three hours in a bar and spoke to no on

Exactly. I can do that in the English pub I visit every day.

Susan said “Men can do that. You are a man who can do that”

She said “One more time, it is my job, tell me again, word by word, what Lars said in the shower”

I am a bit drunk now. I can see that. It is not that she wants to catch me out in a lie, I am paid to lie, but she does want to confirm that I am consistent, cupped or not.

Not that drunk, we went to play bridge, three rubbers with the grey ladies. There was coffee, tea, pineapple cake. The sugar, the charm, the deprivation swayed them. The bridge session was divided into two tables which were not changed between rubbers. One of these ladies would be working with Susan but I could not tell which one. All of them could spot the inconsistencies and bullshit which I laded on.

The day before.

“I have booked us to go to a lecture, in Oxford, the afternoon, on climate change and economics. Would you like to go?”

I would. We did, the lecture very well attended presented by Professor Hendry was interesting, a huge canvas, a paper he said that had been fifteen years in the writing. Professor Hendry said that “if the distribution changes the mathematical models on which economics is based do not apply.” Gosh now there is a thing.


After the lecture she said we can go to the pub if you like. I did like. Susan is the only person I know that can order a pint of tap water in a pub with out showing any sign of embarrassment. I ordered two pints of beer and one pit of tap water, I am more easily embarrassed and can drink two pints if needs must.


We looked for a table outside so we could have another fag. We were invited to join a bench for four occupied by two students just, they declared, in their first week of a postgraduate in environmental something. Susan told them of her interest in natural bee keeping.

One said, the wit of youth.

“Is this new love or old love”

Answer that Susan

Her silent steel stare provoked a “whoops, wrong question.” Sarah asks she does not answer. A job to do. I am fed up with it, but it is what I do. And no hobby or good works has fired that barren.

“We seek to resolve conflicts. But more, to see the conflicts that are inherent in the contract, because, Michael, these contracts are complex. We seek to avoid litigation”

As one would.

Odense Golf Club

“Since you have developed such an aversion to airports I have arranged a lift from Sandwich to Hamburg.”
 
Is this a favour meriting a discount on my fee? I have never asked, it comes with the trade. It is true that airports make me angry, a lift from Herbert was a much better idea. At six in the morning, 11th June 2011 we set off from the Quay side car park Sandwich, Kent.

The car, a Mercedes glided away. I began to describe it predicting this account. It is lived in like my face, modern enough to have the necessary gadgets, a music system that picks every note, a sat nav that gave instructions in the most discreet German, a climatic control that made no noise but for the inaudible whoosh that silenced any outside noise. Once on the ferry to Ostende the sound of gulls, tannoy and sea made me say to self “concentrate Michael, this is not a film but a job”.


Back on the road the motorways made Europe, the Continent, appear as a lot of green fields. Herbert drove fast, each field a frame replaced by another. There was no sense of speed, it is a Mercedes, only the Sat Nav voice and the display with colours more gaudy than the outside reporting that we were ever nearer to Hamburg railway station. Were there borders? There were no places that we stopped other than for lunch at a restaurant five kilometres of the track where Herbert was, I gathered from the greetings, known as a customer. A little wine, some beetroot too.

I knew Herbert a little since he had visited Sandwich to play drums with a Dixie Jazz band, a fixture at the festival and a couple of times between.  He has a mistress there who I know passing well since the rich retired meet often in the streets of any small town. We meet in walled gardens. During one or more such supper Herbert told me he had made a later fortune in floor coverings .


Herbert knew my story: a long time in Africa, once with HM Government, a hotel, Zanzibar, latterly English teaching and the publication of Kiswahili language primers.

It was understood that we neither of us would want to say more. That is easy for men, there is no need to fill the silence with questions. Herbert put Dixie on the car stereo, mostly recordings of the band where he brushed the drums. He remarked on the quality of the solos, occasionally swapped, with a touch of his thumb, to Duke Ellington. The fields gave way to suburbs and then, some relief, to town, until the Sat Nav voice said, in English, “You have arrived at Hamburg railway station.” We had been seven hours together, most pleasantly, with four questions each. Now we spoke again
“You live in Hamburg?”

“No Dusseldorf. I will go there now

“Quite a drive. Anyway thanks for the lift”
“It has been my pleasure

Standard lines, standard play, but still a long way out of his ordinary drive to Dusseldorf. I had no idea nor, I noticed inclination, to ask how the Washerman would know of Herbert.

At Hamburg station my hire car booking was all set, the booking clerk spoke English with a top marks for grammar, the sat nav was set in English. They did not ask me where I was going. I set the new destination: City Hotel, Odense, distance to destination 210.6 kilometres. “That won’t take long on the smooth roads of northern Europe”. Herbert had driven the meat of it.


And it did not take long, two hours and a bit, the light did not fade, there was no border that I noticed, and City Hotel, Odense had kept my reservation, (paid for in advance), had some parking, a beer for the room, which was of course exactly as such a room would be in any part of Europe that is inside the fence. That red passport, that anonymous and anodyne look of an old white man on a business trip made me a very comfortable part of the wallpaper. As the hotel room closed, the softest of clunks, I felt very relieved and for a second very happy that I had left Tanzania for the last time and jobs, few as they were, would be henceforth in Europe

“No one will notice you there. You will like that.”

The next morning Lars Smith was waiting when I arrived forty five minutes early of the tee time he had booked. It was our first, perhaps our last meeting, but anonymous as we are, any two old men meeting, recognition was immediate. Lars introduced himself and then his companion: “This is Magarethe” Twenty minutes of conversation, all of well told stories, much rehearsed less often played out.

“So what is your handicap?” I told him

“Mine is the same, so we will play match play, every hole a competition”

Lars went to the cloakroom eight minutes before we were timed to play. He left a simple Nokia on the table. It was switched of. My voice recorder is smaller but more obvious in its function.

"Crackerjack". There is still a relief when the first drive sets off somewhere high and forward. We played even up to the ninth, though I had the impression that Lars was playing a little inside himself. He gave me one that was too long, missed, by a few inches a couple he should have taken.

The notes said say the piece on the ninth hole. But the ninth is short at Odense so that could not be done. The first hitch? One never knows with the Washerman. I decided to leave it until the tenth: I like a decision every now and again

I won the ninth, so drove off the tenth. Lars hit  very well to a yard of mine. That was very convenient. “This is the ninth hole"  I said very clearly to the pocket my recorder was in. Lars, as obviously, had his Nokia in his hand as we walked together down the fairway. I said my lines, he said his. There were some variations- enough to justify the trip and the product. Once we had to send reports, but now, easier, just send the edited audio. But, simple as it is, it does not work. Secret as we are these mpg files exist, they can and will be copied. We have used this authenticity to make our lies more credible.


We were even at the seventeenth where my impression, (my conviction really) that Lars was playing a little inside himself was confirmed. His first putt was dead though I did not give it. On the eighteenth his approach shot was that of a practised amateur familiar with the lay of Odense Golf Club.


Back in the club house Lars said we will take a shower, be fresh for dinner and the ladies. In the shower once we were naked Lars turned the showers to full and then turned full on all the basin taps. I remembered suddenly the waves crashing the coral beneath the bar at Sazani Beach and the story teller saying nothing obscures the recorded voice better than the sound of moving water. Lars came naked from the cubicle, the shower jets hissed the steam rose- excellent changing rooms.

He said, the lines of a familiar play.
“We can talk privately here which is we presume way you have made this long journey”.

We did ebding with:
“And thanksfor the golf”

I felt some relief, some liberated feeling that I may have actually on this occasion.
Dressed, me in a tie, we went to meet the ladies. Margarethe introduced Birgitte. Our conversation for drinks and dinner was very relaxed. I had now private as well as professional reasons to go more easy on the wine that is my lonely habit. In the morning Birgitte calling from the shower, the accent I love:

“Get up Englishman and have breakfast with me. Then I must leave you, it is a working day in Denmark”

On the way to Hamburg, the car smooth, I wished for more jobs like these. Everything had gone very efficiently, pleasantly, it was all very Denmark. After dropping the car at Hamburg station, tempted to stay an extra night, I called in a café to send the now pointless audio tapes- I had edited them in the presence of Birgitte- and to check my account. The fee was already there- very nice, from Living English- very imaginative. I said out loud "It is all commercial now,thank god.”

The Piss Chipper, Internet Cronies, Charlatan

May 2003

11th June 2009
You have singlely (sic) persisted in trying to undermine the chances of Sazani being developed and fortunately you have only been able to convince yourself and a few internet cronies of the value of your actions.
Mine and the other shareholders intentions are all for the best for the hotel, yours are for Mike Harrison. You are the chip pisser, you have pissed on your own chips, everyone else has salt vinegar and ketchup on theirs!

Cathy


24th May 2011
Dear Walter

William J. Fischer owns 50% of the shares in Sazani Beach hotel via a Cayman Island shell.


The first owners of the hotel were the parents of Cathryn AlKanaan. They took on the place when they visited for the wedding of their daughter intending to have a holiday home but were required to make it a hotel, a guest house, by the Zanzibar zoning rules. There are chalets attached to the original house on a very pretty plot which you can see on the internet.

I have never known how Cathryn came to know Fischer, her story that he rocked up when she was visiting and liked the charm is possibly a decent version of the facts. She marked him early as her preferred buyer. Cathryn is good at spotting marks.

He claims a residence in Palo Alto, California. A trust fund baby, his parents, he told me, made their fortune in scrap metal dismantling US battleships after the 1939-45 war. Fischer William, says he “attended university” but that was not his thing. In so much as he would talk of his business and give hints enough for me to get a lead. he had money in time share and new jerry builds in Florida, Costa Rica and perhaps scruffier bits of California than Palo Alto.

Fischer told me he was a philanthropist which is why he came to Africa. Africa needs to be saved. To pursue this he raised capital from, his words, very rich Californian divorcees and widows, who, spending all their time on keeping fit were interested in doing good, in Africa. I suspect, these cohorts were pleased to see their fortunes increasing in those times before the end of 2007.


The schemes that Fischer put money into seemed very mad, to place a side kick, David Gill, an Englishman in Dubai to seek out further funds, more mad. David, who ended up with 5% of the shares in Sazani Beach in lieu of wages told me that Fischer was adolescent, but, hey, David was placed in Dubai, no wages but an all found expense account hired to solicit funds. “It was a dream world.”

Sazani Beach was a mad scheme but one of the least bonkers. Cathryn was, still is, delighted to have this once rich fool ready to buy and put off other buyers. Fischer flush with cash, his widows, took on Cathryn valuation of $400,000, a very big premium, paid out for 55%, the balance given to his gopher, in “lieu of wages.” The money was transferred directly from an account based in California. They were very pleased.

Fischer’s scheme was to make the huts a posh bijou for his rich American cohorts. For that I told him you need more land, for the ancillary services. The land behind and adjacent for the hotel was all bush and Fischer put up another $75k for a hunk of that though the title was vested in an Tanzanian company, Bata Kubwa, set up by me for the purpose, to get around the local ownership rules. That price was a ridiculous premium as well.

As part of the deal Bata Kubwa, my vehicle, got 10% of the shares with a promise of 5% more. I would have preferred cash but there was none and equity was the bad but only other option.

It was Fischer who first told me of the term credit crunch: “Mike have you heard of the credit crunch.” It was the introduction to a rant, dope fed, on how he had seen it coming and got out into cash. I think all wish not fact. To me he is a charlatan, as once I called him to his face. He was very upset which makes me think the description is correct.

I was fired from the hotel by the other shareholders on the 31st December 2009, “the new management was coming 14th January.” I left, annoyed because I wanted to leave with the cash not now useless equity. No new management came, Fischer disappeared from view. Cathy may have contact but since she wrote to the authorities cancelling my resident permit we have never spoken since apart from one email sent on the 11th June 2009

There was a postscript since another hotel chain offered to buy the place. Fischer via Gill agreed but Cathy vetoed the scheme because she wanted to retain a share on behalf of her son.



27th May 2011

Dear Charlotte
I do think Cathryn AlKanaan or her vehicle, Sazani Associates is necessarily more corrupt that anyone else in the business.

It is the aid game, the poverty industry, to make money out of it requires some collusion otherwise the business model does not work and there is not enough for the mortgage and school fees.

Cathyrn is rather good at it. To get by in the game one has to set up a charity- there are various legal means of doing it but a limited guarantee company is the current most popular option. But that is the easy part, you then have to dream up some projects, those projects have to fit the trend, (leadership, youthful entrepreneurs, advocacy have been popular recently), then seek for people to fund the scheme. That is a chore too, proposals have to be written and these days donors who do not look too much must be discovered. In Cathryn’s case, and others I am sure, Comic Relief is the heaviest juiciest low hanging fruit and Cathryn has picked a ripe plum from those fools.

Since you are a charity, doing good, helping the poor, developing Africans you cannot declare a profit. But a profit has to be made otherwise no school fees, no mortgage, no junkets. So of course schemes are necessary. One has tame trustees, mutual favours are reciprocated, well meaning friends with sinecures in universities are a particularly good slice of buttered toast.

In that part of the poverty industry you sell your integrity. That is vulnerability, a sensitivity because deception is a necessity otherwise you are the toast.

Cathryn is not more corrupt than any of the others who ply the trade which she is successful in. My dislike of her is personal not because of how she makes her living. Poverty is a trade and there is a lot of money there if you know where to look. Cathryn has not made herself a millionaire from poverty- I know some who have- but, true, as you ask, I dislike her an awful lot.



Best regards



Mike



3rd June 2011

Mmmmm the days before the bottle got the best of you........

Cx

Cloves and Zinc

Circa Zanzibar 1988

Mbarouk had said “Can you help us make more money from our cloves”

I have no idea, I will ask.

We can said the Agents, in the voice of Moule, the new Director, modern man, plucked from a successful career selling razor blades.

He knew a Greek who had experience of the Tanzanian sisal industry. Things progressed, meeting were arranged, a plan hatched involving future sales, credit limits and timely sales. It was for me, in those days, most mysterious and exciting. Zanzibar, closed and dark would be saved, I, at a tender age would have a part of it.

When first you come to Africa you know nothing of Africa. After two years you think you know something of the culture and will learn more. After five, some take longer, you understand you know nothing and never will. I stayed on and had fifteen years of learning nothing more but, say it now, there were some amusing moments.

The project progressed to such an extent that the Agents bankers came to Zanzibar to promote the scheme. Terry (the) Kettle, Michael Collyer and I, Michael Brian Harrison, met the Representatives of the Peoples Bank, at the banks head quarters facing a square in Shangani. Collyer, a banker then but ten years into a grey suit career that is maybe onward, made his logical pitch. The chief of the Peoples Bank explained that though the scheme Collyer had presented made some sense to him as a banker there were some political and cultural hurdles to be over come.

Collyer thought long, he rubbed his nose, he caressed his chin, he looked up and down, he sighed he said, po as you like

“If I were you I would get out of cloves sell your grandmother and move into zinc."

The Peoples man matched his contemplation and as I remember rubbed his nose, a cross culture gesture.

He said, at last,

“Harrison, you know us, could you translate that remark into Kiswahili”

I doubt given the time elapsed I will be hauled up under the Official Secrets Act. But to be sure do not make notes or remember anything of what you read here. After all I may have made it up.

London Rooms

London, April 2011
18 Allfarthing Lane, London SW18 2PQ. Second floor. I turned off the lights and set off to Tanzania on March 5th 1985. I returned to these rooms on March 6th 2011.

The upper part of a Victorian, 1899, terrace, converted to three flats in 1981 by the property developer Graham Cox. It was on my bicycle route home from the Agents to the place in Wandsworth I shared with student friends. I chose the second floor flat; I had already a taste for attics.

These rooms are more than an attic. A split level, lots of space taken up with stairs lit by skylights. The bedroom and main room is big, a place to sleep and live looking out on the back gardens, not known from the street. The first and ground floor make the presentation to Allfarthing Lane, my rooms were hidden then as now. It is a starter flat said Graham Cox, you will sell it and move on. I thought not even then. My job as a civil servant gave me access to a mortgage loan, 95% of £28500. In some stressful times I had talked of selling it but I hung on, believing I would come home. The bed I bought as my first and only piece of furniture, now as then, as I return after twenty six years of Africa.

There is a large bedroom facing a back garden through a big sash window. On this level a bathroom which I rarely used prefering the more social ablutions available at my Club. The bed is the same reinforced pine that I had put there in 1985. There are more electic sockets now to power my modern collection of screens. On the upper level a kitchen, big enough to eat in with back garden facing window. I had modernised the kitchen several times in the intevening years so as to please the tenants and had a new version installed for my return. I prefered not to use the kitchen since the washing up is an irritation: I eat in the cafe thirty yards down the street. The lady who serves there said, "Hello, I have not seen you for a while- how long is it?

"Ten years"  Well, who would believe it, time does fly. Your usual? Liver, bacon, greens and mushrooms.

On the same level a day room once more devoid of furniture as it was when I left. I am wating for the pieces, just three that had been made in Zanzibar from the wood of a redundant dhow. These three small tables had been in the bar that I had run at Sazani Beach Hotel. I was for a while well known as the host there.

The window, an attic eye, looks out to Allfarthing Lane. But from the street it is not apparent that there are rooms beyond the window. The flat is flooded with light from skylights on the passage way between the two levels and in the sitting room. There are no blinds, I have an aversion to curtains, darkness and light will come as London town decrees.

There is a loft.. In that space there are the clothes and books, the letters I left there in 1985. This dust has been untouched by the tenants that have come and gone in the years that I spent in Africa.

I was thirty two years old when I left and am fifty seven returning. the loves and lost love, the fortunes made and lost, until here I am as single and as broke as when I left. Holding my tackle I thought, well not quite so, the intervening years have paid off the mortgage.

And now the last stage of a life gone by fast enough. Looking around my empty London rooms, the sunlight making live memories of past sunlit days. Will there be any more events to intersperse with the memories? Perhaps there have been enough events.