This week was simply a continuation of the waiting game health-wise until Thursday when early morning we received a telephone call to inform me to report to the University Hospital, Coimbra on Thursday the 21st January for surgery on the Friday.
We have been able to go out for lunch a couple of times during the week with friends within the limitations of our lockdown. Like most of Europe, we are now seeing a greater tightening of lockdown restrictions. Today we go back into full lockdown with restaurants and bars closed. Over seventies should not leave the house. That’s me.
Due to my illness, any medium to strenuous gardening is beyond my capability. We have retained the services of a local, long-distance driver, Sergio, to do some weekend gardening work to help out with the heavier tasks. Hopefully pruning roses this coming week. By the way, even sweeping leaves is strenuous for me at this time. Just a few minutes of raking or weeding leaves me gasping for breath. Sergio started work with us before Christmas; then his wife caught the virus. No-one else in his family contracted it. Since his wife is now clear, Sergio came for the second time this past Sunday. His wife, although clear of Covid, is suffering serious post-Covid ailments including severe leg pain. Many people have said this virus is overhyped, but of course, that is until they or one of their loved ones becomes unwell. We have many friends who have been very ill, and some have unfortunately died. Equally, as you well know, some have been unaffected, or only display minor symptoms.
“The nice thing about Twitter is you realise there are many more bigotted idiots out there. You are not the only one. In fact, in some instances, their tweets can make you look like a sensible, benign citizen.” Peter McSporran
Sergio within four hours does more than I am able to do, admittedly intermittently, in a week. Some of my friends say I am probably very grumpy due to my illness and being unable to drink Scotch. The truth is, Sergio’s achievements against my feeble efforts make me extremely grumpy and frustrated. I do not know why this is so, as those that know me well, will know how lethargic I can be under the current circumstances. I suppose it is an example of the case if you’re told not do so; you get this burning desire to do so.
We have beautiful sunny days, although the nights are cold. Planning to go fishing on Thursday for bass in a local pond, if allowed. Of course, the bass here are much smaller than those in Zimbabwe; nonetheless, I will be excited to put a line in the water let alone catch a fish. Nowadays, my wife Rozanne nearly always out-fishes me in a ridiculously casual “couldn’t care less manner.” I will have to use a chair, as standing longer than thirty minutes is a challenge. Shit! Shit! Luckily these are not serious “bees.” Otherwise, I am fine with discomfort rather than pain.
Been fishing! No fish! At least my wife did not outfish me, some small consolation.
Medical Update
Everything is ostensibly ready to go ahead with the surgery. The concern is hospitals are filled with Covid patients, notwithstanding we are told oncology operations are a priority. There may be potential delays. By writing this, Rozanne will crap on me for being negative. We have given up on negativity in this house. It is sad to be separated from an old trusted friend and his partner “Melancholy”.
I left the above as proof that Rozanne’s positivity worked and we received the call for surgery a week earlier than we were told to expect. I go to hospital next Thursday for surgery on Friday the 22nd. Probably no blog next week to all of your relief. I will have a pre-surgery COVID test on Tuesday. This means I will join the rowdy queue this time being the old codger amongst the youth.
I must also remind many of you, my present cancer is not related to my previously treated prostate cancer. Not everyone is as lucky as me to get two types of cancer.
“The internet makes it really hard to identify what is true. Modern media has done its best to destroy the truth.” Peter McSporran
Life Story
I think I mentioned in an earlier blog that our annual holidays consisted of a week-long trip to the Royal Highland Show. This was in the days when the show used to tour, visiting a different Scottish city each year. This meant a new holiday venue for us each year, unlike the permanent site now based at Ingliston outside Edinburgh, with its tarred roads and pathways. In those days the showgrounds were only grass, which used to turn into a quagmire very quickly, we know it nearly always rains in Scotland in summer. Let’s be honest, it rains no matter what season it is in “Bonnie Scotland”. All those smart farmer wives had to throw away their high heels in favour of Wellington Boots. Wellingtons have many great attributes, but high fashion is not one of them, especially when the farmer’s wife is adorned in her Sunday best. One year, in 1956, when the show was held in Inverness, I got lost. My parents left me watching the “horse show jumping” in the main arena. Would be a definite “no-no” nowadays. The alternative would have been to drag a whinging six-year-old around the commercial stands demanding candy floss or a wee. Or worse, needing a poo immediately. After a while, I got bored watching the “donkey wallopers”, abandoning my younger sister, and decided to look for my parents in the heaving throng. I not only lost myself but my sense of direction in the crowd. Unexpectedly, I found myself exiting one of the many entry/exit gates. I then set out to find our car in one of the many car parks, each containing thousands of cars. To everyone’s surprise and amazement, a policeman found me sitting by my parent’s car in the late afternoon. They wondered how I had found the car. Equally, so did I. My mother’s relief overcame my father’s ire.
Unbeknown to me my life was about to be turned on its head. My mother was now deemed terminally ill in 1958. Of course, my sister and I were unaware of the seriousness of her illness. My mother was sent home from the hospital in Glasgow to spend her last days in the comfort of her own home. If we had been a bit older we would have realised this was nearing her end of life. Only later in life did I realise there were little clues to her imminent death. For instance, towards the end, my mother would tell us that when she is better, we will all go on holiday and she will buy threepenny things for herself and buy farthing things for us. Fanciful at best, as even then I doubt if you could buy much for a farthing. Yes, I was around when the farthing was still in use! More importantly, we never went on holiday other than to the Highland Show. Summer is always the busiest time on a farm. I was eight years old at this point. For me, it was still a time of running free; however, if you go upstairs, “keep very quiet as mother is resting”. She was always resting in our eyes. As we rarely went upstairs during the day, this was no real hardship.
I should have mentioned I think we were probably spoilt with presents during this time. My favourites were an air pistol, for shooting sisters, farmyard sets complete with animals. Throw carpets with shoes underneath can make great hills and are ideal for tripping adults. Nannies are more inclined to clear up your mess and rogue toys from the floor, unlike parents. I also received a Welsh pony as a birthday present. My father knew horses; unfortunately, he had little time to spend with me nor Jessie Cameron, she was working. I am afraid I neglected riding my pony somewhat due to lack of horsemanship training. I fell off many times. Others did make use of Star, the pony. She was black with a white star on her forehead. Hence the name Star. I did take her to the school on occasion until one of the girls fell off and broke her arm. This put a sudden end to that. We also had Clydesdales horses on the estate for hauling timber. Gentle giants. They caused a lot less damage in the forest than crawlers. One horse especially comes to mind called Little Lemon. The colour matched the name but the little part did not match the size.
One of my mother’s relations, not sure who, probably a cousin, who was extremely pompous, in my eyes, came to visit us during this period. He loved to show off in his huge Rover car, also proclaiming he knew everything about fishing. He decided he would borrow one of the estate boats and go fishing on Loch Na Keal. He wanted company on the boat, so took me off to Brown’s Hardware in Tobermory to buy me a fishing rod and reel. He had deemed my hazelwood fishing pole not up to standard. He also ignored my statement that the Creighton’s caught tons of fish from their boats with handlines. I had never seen a rod being used on a boat, just a net or a handline. The Creightons, in fact, used a hand line called a “Murderer", which had about ten hooks with feathers as lures. I recently saw similar still being used on a fishing TV program on Cornwall. Sometimes every hook would have a mackerel if they were on the bite. Anyway, I did not argue too hard as I could always use the rod on the shore or the river. The outcome was I became the owner of a beautiful split cane rod and spincast reel. Tools well above my fishing station. Of course, he had a trunkful of various rods and reels of a quality not fitting for children’s use. He also purchased a tin of bloodworms which I had never used before. When the Creightons and I fished in the sea, we used limpets, bits of fish, crabs, mussels and feathers for bait. Free and plentiful. After a day spent out on the sea the outcome was, I caught one fish, he caught nil. That was the last fishing trip we went on together.
Meanwhile, my Aunt Bunty, mother’s sister, came from Holland to care for my mother in her last few months. Aunt Bunty was a lovely lady, freely sharing her love toward us children. One day my father called Morag and I, for some reason taking us into the downstairs toilet. He wrapped his arms around us and said your mother was gone. The one and only time I saw tears in his eyes. Only after, Maudie, the nanny explained, did we fully understand our mother had died. Little did I know what a profound change to my life my mother’s passing would have.
Investing in Africa
In 1977 I was still working for the Edwards family in Enterprise. The main reason I agreed to do National Service was in the hope of at some later date going farming on my own right. Calls-ups continued, and by then, our Mozambican border was no longer secure as the Portuguese had gone. We had been sold down the tube by Kissinger and the South Africans. Kissinger, because that is what politicians do, the South Africans hopefully to give themselves some breathing space before their inevitable hand over power to the black majority. Many of the farming districts were now war zones, creeping ever closer to where we lived. In fact, one day Liford, my boss’s son, informed me a group of insurgents were seen on the hill behind my house. The area quickly deteriorated into a war zone shortly after that. Farmers, like myself, in those days would do call-ups to the front line areas and older town people exempt from call-up (+65), disabled soldiers and mercenaries, known as, “Bright Lights” would be called up to guard the farms and farmers' families in our absence. Sounds crazy but Rhodesia was getting very short of fit young men capable of fighting the war. Farmers, their wives and children over the age of eight all carried weapons. We did not move without a weapon, even from room to room in the house.
Diane, my wife at the time, and I did much soul searching, and I even applied for a job in Brazil as we were convinced the war was going badly. After an interview, I was told I was too highly qualified for what they were looking for. Were they looking for supervisors, not managers? I certainly did not believe that. I also started to visit the Land Bank looking at opportunities on their books. The Land Bank, State-owned, was a farming bank that lent both short term working capital and long-term finance. They had a record of all the farms for sale, foreclosed or those abandoned due to the war. Many farmers were leaving as farmstead attacks and ambushes were daily occurrences. The Land Bank was meant to fund new entrants or recently established farmers while the commercial banks and farming cooperatives funded well-established farmers. Needless to say, some long-established farmers remained on their books, notwithstanding this. The farmers liked the terms the Land Bank offered. It was the best means to raise money for the purpose of buying a farm. The bank enjoyed having a base of good, stable, solvent customers so bent the rules slightly. Much of the cropping finance was provided utilizing the “Stop-Order Act” allowing comfort to lenders. These stop-orders were held by the State Agricultural Marketing Parastatals, Co-ops or Tobacco Auction Floors depending on where the crops were marketed. Most of the crop marketing, including selling prices, were controlled under the Agricultural Marketing Authority (AMA). This ensured a guaranteed market and a price announced before the season commenced. For example, the Land Bank ran the irrigation loans for wheat schemes, and all wheat production was secured under Stop-Order on the crop delivered to the Grain Marketing Board (GMB). Unless retaining the controlled crops for your own use, you had to sell all production through the designated Controlled Marketing Boards which ran as parastatals. For instance, the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) controlled all grain and soya beans' sale, storage, and marketing. This means of marketing gave much comfort to lenders, banks, Co-ops, Marketing Boards and other institutions. Finished cattle were also controlled, prime beef beating sanctions into the European market. Tobacco, horticulture, potatoes, youngstock, breeding cattle and pigs were not controlled. Guaranteed markets and prices removed a great burden from farmers and lenders. Importantly the marketing boards could store the whole year's crop production, so no need for farmers to build expensive storage. For tractors and farm equipment, Hire Purchase and Lease Hire was the most common means of Finance.
The long and the short of it was my father-in-law, who was aware of my wish to either start farming in my own right or leave the country, intervened. While he farmed outside Salisbury, he also owned a farm in the Darwendale area he had bought speculatively from the government. Much of this farm was to be inundated by a planned State dam to supply Salisbury with water. The Government had purchased the farm from the previous owners and then offered the remaining land outside the dam basin as a subdivision up for sale by tender. I am not sure if my father-in-law's motivation was because he did not want his daughter to leave Rhodesia, or was scared we would end up on an insecure border farm, prone to attack. The Land Bank was willing to lend me the money to start farming, providing we had $5,000 in cash or kind in the form of agricultural assets, such as farming equipment or livestock.
Once again, Diane and I had a long think about this. It would be a lease arrangement with an option to buy on her father's property. The farm had become a burden to him at the time as both he and my wife’s brother were also involved in call-ups. In fact, on our wedding week, he swapped call-up dates with his farm manager, Pat Smyth, who got killed in action on that particular tour of duty. So very sad. There was a benefit to both parties in us going to Darwendale. The pros were that it was one of the safer areas in the country, was sixty-six kilometres from Salisbury, it had some land cleared and was suitable for tobacco, a high-value crop. Once the dam was built, it would offer water for irrigation on the farm doorstep. The cons were that we would be leasing from family, the farm was underdeveloped, development costs would be high, and the soils were only really suitable for tobacco and groundnuts. In hindsight, fortuitously, we decided to take up the offer. At last at twenty-seven, I had my foot on a very low rung of the farming ladder.
Tough days ahead between fighting a war and establishing a commercial farm.
Casevac* - the evacuation of casualties by air.
Disclaimer: Copyright Peter McSporran. The content in this blog represents my personal views and does not reflect corporate entities.
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