Lovely memories of a cherished place well-known in his youth flicker through
Walter Murton's mind as he muses on days that are past.
MEMORIES OF THE COTSWOLDS
I wonder if they are having fine weather in the Cotswolds? They must be. It is
summertime there after all, and my memories are always of summer. I can remember
mellow sunshine rebounding cheerfully from the walls of the honey coloured houses.
The wolds, too, will be clothed in grass and flowers and will be basking in that gentle
English light.
No doubt, the tunnelled lanes will still be dappled and dimly mysterious and, surely,
the gardens will be ablaze with roses. Yes, that’s how it will be. It was always like
that, I remember.
These thoughts flicker through my mind as I sit in my garden 6000 miles away from
the Cotswold Hills. Here am I, reminiscing in the warmth of a South African morning.
The bougainvillea and the yellow daisies spill onto the borders of the grass and
invade the shade of the water oak. The two dogs, Polo and Tipsy, lie there dozing.
The lourie birds, every one a contralto, gargle in the distance. God’s in his heaven,
all’s right with the world, though I don’t need to be reminded that it wasn’t always so. I
remember that I saw a world at war and I once shared the anguish of a generation. I
was an airman then.
Military officialdom sent me from my bleak northern home to the cosiness of the
Cotswolds. I shall, forever, be grateful for that. There, later, I made my home and
married and raised two Gloucestershire children. Then I was drawn, by South African
cousins, to a tantalising job in South Africa and here I settled, on this high plateau
2000 metres above the sea, to enjoy what is claimed to be the best climate in the
world.
I told my Cotswold friends that I would go back there one day. Alas, a rash promise,
now that their own wandering has landed them far from Gloucestershire beauty. I
have other memories to add to those of my Cotswold home. They are more recent
and less ephemeral. So the final pictures which slip into my mind, this morning, are
not of Gloucestershire, but of smiling black faces, the faces of Africans who happily
work with me in my factory. The cheerful people who gave me a “certificate” which
proclaimed me to be “the greatest gentleman of our time.”
As I drowse into sweet unconsciousness, the last picture fades, but not before it
conjures up the self-invited witch doctor who drifted into my new home to ward off
evil spirits and declared that it would be a “little heaven house.” How right he was. I
have another “heaven house” though – my mind. The most cherished and nurtured
pieces of furniture in that house are its memories. The house would be an empty
shell without them so I treasure them, I dust and polish them and arrange them in my
consciousness. So the memories of the Cotswolds are safely locked in my “house”
and they will always share an honoured place with those more recent “pieces” of
acquired Africa.
Walter Murton
Box 1278
Cramerville
2060
South Africa
jmurton@absamail.co.za