As it came direct from the Sahara Desert, a thousand miles to the north of us across increasingly dry and dusty land, it seemed strange to me that it should feel so cool, but it was carefully explained to me that this was in fact an illusion. It only felt so cool because it was a dry wind and therefore the direct opposite of the humid breeze we had been experiencing up to then, which made us sweat so freely and feel so limp and languid. It perked me up immediately, and I started to make some curtains for the living room windows. The Assay Office boys began to go down with coughs and sneezes, and Kwasi developed such a hacking cough that we gave him some Vicks Vapour Rub, with strict instructions to rub it on his chest and not to eat it.

It never became cool enough to put on sweaters. Gradually a layer of sand-laden dust settled over everything and the Harmattan moth duly appeared, shedding from its wings the powder which caused such distress to those whose skins were sensitive to it. J.R. and I were amongst the lucky ones who were not affected. Elsa Kiernander, whose husband Kay was Village Master on the mine, looking after the interests of the native employees, was one of the unfortunates who suffered in this way. She was auburn haired, with the pale skin which often goes with this colouring, and all over her back, neck and arms she developed the scaly rash brought on by the moth. It nearly drove her crazy, trying not to scratch. Even more annoying to her was the fact that she was thus unable to wear any of her beautiful, décolleté evening dresses, of which she had quite a collection, and for the duration of this nuisance she had to remain well covered up.

Most of us at Marlu were newly married, and we managed to enjoy life. There was, inevitably, a lot of gossip going the rounds, mostly amongst the wives. I once dropped a very large brick by inviting the wives of two of the heads of departments to morning coffee at our bungalow, totally unaware of the fact that the two ladies had not spoken to each other for a year, owing to a strong suspicion on the part of one wife of an attachment between her husband and the other wife. A suspicion, as I subsequently found out, which was founded in truth. No one had thought to inform me of this situation - it was when I had not been on the mine very long - but the two ladies carried off the meeting with superb aplomb and were incredibly polite to one another. I felt a bit silly when Doris enlightened me, and I am sure it was sniggered about at various other coffee parties for some time. But that was the sort of society we lived in.

It may seem, from what I have already written, that we spent nearly all our time in the Club or in other people's bungalows knocking back the gin and whisky, or idly swigging coffee while discussing the private lives of the rest of the camp. There is a certain amount of truth in this, occasioned by the conditions under which we existed. It was on the whole a placid, uneventful life, weeks going by with not much happening apart from the daily round, and the periods of activity and excitement standing out like peaks above a precipice, especially during the monsoon. The men worked quite long hours, and this was trying enough in such an enervating climate. None of the wives was employed on the mine. Our days were mostly spent in socializing with each other in the mornings, resting in the afternoons (when I for one certainly did not have enough energy to do anything else), and in the evenings after dinner there was nowhere to go but the Club and each other's bungalows. It was difficult to listen to the radio because static over the long waves distorted voices so, and also made it impossible to listen to music. There was, of course, no television there in the early fifties. You could not take the dog for a walk as there were very few dogs, and those that were there suffered acutely from the attentions of ticks, not to mention the possibility of their passing on rabies. One couple did have a dog which went berserk one day and bit a child, and this poor little boy had to have daily injections in his stomach for a week or so to combat rabies: The prevalence of the tsetse fly was the reason for the scarcity of cattle and horses. One could not go out to a theatre, a concert hall, a museum, or even to browse through shops because there were none. At Marlu we had no swimming pool as the Doctor thought pools spread diseases. It was too hot to knit. It was even too hot to play tennis, except occasionally, and the cricket matches which took place between the mines were leisurely weekend affairs.

Our main relaxation throughout the year was the daily game of golf We all looked forward to this and managed it most days, even though the daily rain shower had a habit of starting at 4.30 to coincide with the finish of the working day. The rain didn't matter much, in fact helped to cool us off. The mine boys used to caddy for the Europeans, and great competition developed between the boys as to which master was the better player. J.R.'s caddy had been known to tee up the ball with his toes when he thought he was unobserved, and was once seen to be treading the opponent's ball into the soft turf. We had some very good players amongst the staff at Marlu, who took it all very seriously; but to others it was primarily just a useful way to obtain exercise without too much stress and strain.

There was, however, one event we all enjoyed and looked forward to, and this was when we had a visit from a trader. Sitting on the verandah of an evening we would spy in the distance, toiling up the Assay hill, a tall, white-robed figure with a dusky face approaching at a leisurely pace, followed by two or perhaps three others, similarly dressed, carrying loads on their heads. The word would go round to the occupants of neighbouring bungalows, - "A trader coming!", and we would all sit expectantly while the bundles were undone and the goods spread out on the floor for our inspection. These traders were Hausas from the north, as we could tell by their fine-boned Arabic features and milky brown skins, and they came from Kano, perhaps, or further afield. They brought carpets and Indian or Egyptian brassware, ivories, silk dressing gowns from China, small tables inlaid with mother-of-pearl, Japanese porcelain tea sets, all things to gladden the heart of a house-bound wife making do with stark native-made furniture and very few ornaments. Once we had inspected all the articles and made our selection, then the horse-trading would begin. This could go on for hours, until a price satisfactory to both buyer and seller had been agreed upon.

We bought a number of things over the years while we were in Africa, and still have quite a few ivory elephants, wooden hippos, prayer mats which doubled as slip mats or wall coverings, a table damp of carved cedar wood depicting an African Atlas holding the world on his shoulders, a standard damp carved as a palm tree with an elephant base, various Indian jewel boxes with inlaid designs in silver, ivory cigarette boxes, etc. They were all quite different from anything one was likely to buy in England at that time, and this was part of the attraction. These visits made a welcome break from the usual routine, especially during the rains, and although some of the Europeans who had been on the Coast for years were starting to complain that the traders were becoming too expensive, we newcomers didn't take too much notice of that. After all, the traders had to make a living and they all had their lowest prices, beyond which they were not prepared to go.

On December 31st we had the traditional New Year's Eve party at the Club, and on this occasion all the wives collaborated and produced the food. As a non-cook, I was assigned the easy task of making some bowls of jelly. I couldn't really go wrong on this. I only had to read the instructions on the packet and mix up the ingredients with hot water. But as things turned out, when the day arrived I was not too keen on spending the evening in the Club.

We had that day acquired a brand new kitten. Kwasi had been instructed by J.R. to find a ginger kitten for Madame, and that morning he turned up, grinning broadly, carrying a basket from which came a ferocious meowing. The kitten was deposited in my arms, but far from being a ginger one, he was a plain ordinary tabby and obviously only about a month old. I couldn't refuse the poor thing. He was really too young to have left his mother, so I tried to make it up to him by giving him some warm milk and a dash of brandy in a saucer, and he appreciated this gesture. Unfortunately, it didn't take me more than a few minutes to realise that there was one big snag to this new arrival - he was covered in fleas.

This I could not tolerate at any price and as there was nothing in the U.A.C. resembling an anti-flea powder or spray, there was only one thing to do. The kitten must have a bath.

I ran some warm water into the wash basin in our bathroom and dunked the protesting animal into it up to his neck: he was so surprised that he stopped his protests instantly. At first the fleas were jumping about like crazy, but in a very short time they were only dead bodies floating around in the water. I lifted the kitten out carefully, letting the water drip down off his tail, and then wrapped him in a soft fluffy towel and took him out onto the verandah, where I patted him as dry as I could. But he did look such a pathetic little mite; we couldn't help laughing - until he began to shiver. It was such a warm day that it hadn't occurred to me that he might take cold, although I knew that cats do not like being immersed in water. So I spent the rest of the day nursing this poor little object, feeling his hot nose, feeding him further little dribbles of brandy, and wishing that I didn't have to go out and leave him.

Towards evening, though, he revived a little and even managed to stagger around a little on very wobbly legs, no doubt feeling the effects of the brandy, and by the time we were ready to leave he had found his way into the cat basket placed there for his use and was beginning to wash his face. I understood this to be a hopeful sign. We christened him Fluff. He was not especially fluffy, in fact he was a very short haired, sleek kitten, with suspicious tufts to the tops of his ears which made us suspect he was half lynx. But cats in our family at home had always been called by that name, so this one was Fluff Mark 4.

Another newly married couple, Bob and Mary Ramsey, had recently arrived out on the mine, and at the party that evening we sat with them at the buffet supper to show them the ropes. She, like me a few months previously, was staggered at the amount and variety of food laid out on the trestle tables. There were cold meats of every kind, huge bowls of mixed salads, large desserts, trifles, jellies tarts and mince pies, and also some very interesting looking hors d'oeuvres.

Glyn was there, of course, making the most of all this food. He looked at me, while forking into the hors d'oeuvres, and said, proudly, "Horses doovers!", thus hopefully proving he was no ignoramus and also had a sense of humour. Poor odd Glyn, he never had hors d'oeuvres back home.

A little later, when we had progressed to the desserts, I happened to notice Mary's hands hovering over some mince pies reposing on a plate whose pattern I recognised. I suggested she should try one of the others, because I knew where that plate had come from and whose busy hands had made those particular pies.

It so happened that three days previously I had been in the Lewis's bungalow on Top Hill, drinking Jane's version of morning coffee (weak and luke warm), and watching her making mince pies for the New Year's Eve party. Now I, as previously mentioned, was no cook, but I did possess a cookery book and I did know the proportions of flour, fat and water required to make good pastry, having watched my mother do it many times. It seemed to me that ten ounces of plain flour with no baking powder added, mixed with a bare two ounces of lard but enough water to make the whole thing into a gooey, tacky mess was not guaranteed to result in appetizing mince pies. Added to which, the mincemeat slapped into each grey, sad-looking disc of pastry was barely big enough to cover a sixpence.

But not everyone had my foreknowledge. There was a sudden great yell from Ben Lyons, whose wife Margaret was a good cook, causing every eye to turn in his direction. He had one of Jane's mince pies in his hand, was bright red in the face and furiously spitting out bits of pastry onto his plate, followed by a tooth.

"Who made these bloody mince pies?" he roared. "Just broken my flaming denture!"

A tremendous furore broke out, everyone screaming and laughing, except for Jane, who was sublimely ignorant of the fact that she was the root cause of the pandemonium. Above all the noise, Margaret could be heard upbraiding her husband - "It's your own fault, Ben, you should have picked one of mine!"

After several minutes a sort of order was restored, and very shortly the tables were cleared away and the large room made ready for dancing. Kay Kiernander was already seated at the piano. He was a natural pianist and was very much in demand on social occasions such as this. He had never had a lesson in his life, but could sit down and play almost any melody without the need of music, and what's more, his ear was so good that he could harmonise with his left hand in any key. Not like many a Naafi pianist whom I had listened to in agony during the War, with the right hand picking out the tune and the left hand banging out the same old two chords in the bass, no matter what key the right hand was performing in thump thump, thump thump, cigarette dangling, glasses of beer lined up on top of the piano. A definite case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing. No, Kay was in a different class and we were lucky to have him. Naturally, his wife was not too enthusiastic to see her husband tied up all the evening and unable to dance with her, but he enjoyed playing and play he did.

At Marlu we had a lot of ex-Forces men. There was Vic Jones, Storekeeper, who had been in the Airborne Division of the Royal Army Medical Corps and was at Arnhem during the disaster in September 1944. He was one of the medical orderlies who refused to leave the wounded when it became obvious that the surrounded British troops were going to have to surrender, and he became a prisoner-of-war until 1945. Harold Ruoff, Paymaster, had been a prisoner of the Japanese and had worked on the infamous Burma railway, being one of the few who survived. He was tough, but three years of being at the beck and call of the Japs, having to do everything at a run, had had an effect on him. He still did everything at a run - no one ever saw Harold walking. And then there were Doug Rogers, Ian Armstrong, Ben Lyons, Alec Gray, Les Pepper, Kay Kiernander, who were all in the Army in the Middle East or India, and Danny Formby, taken prisoner with his parents at the age of fourteen in Singapore. One of J.R.'s best friends at Marlu was Tommy Rowe, at present on leave, and his war was spent in the Middle East or India and North Africa. One of his favourite jeering remarks to those whose war service had been in England or on the continent of Europe was "Get some sand in your shoes!".

And just in passing, in all the years I lived in Africa I never met another girl who had been called up into the Women's Forces, as I was. When I think of those days in 1943 when the Women's Auxiliary Air Force was calling girls up at the rate of a thousand a week, it makes me wonder where they all disappeared to after being demobbed. Probably all got married and settled down in England - how un-enterprising of them!

During the first few months of the year, before the monsoon rains really got going in April, our main method of relaxation, apart from golf, was cricket, a slow, leisurely game which the men played while the women watched, kept the score and made the tea. Sometimes the game was played on our own cricket field at Marlu and sometimes we went to one of the neighbouring mines for matches, which were usually two-day weekend affairs. J.R. and I traveled to quite a few of these, as he was a competent and enthusiastic cricketer. There were gold mines at Presea and Abosso, Bremang and Konongo, and we went to all of them, to any place where a dozen or so men could be rustled up to put on white flannels and stand out on the field in blazing sun for several hours. No doubt the boys thought we were all crazy - catch them running about in the sun when they didn't have to!

Once we had an away match at Takoradi, not against another mine but with the European community in that area at their cricket field and Club. It must have been in January or February as the Harmattan was blowing strongly, and as we set off in our convoy of cars there was the usual rush to be first away and not struggling along in the rear, catching everyone's dust. It was certainly a very long and dusty ride, not to mention bumpy, and by the time we arrived at our destination, covered in red dust, our first needs were for long, cold drinks.

I was not terribly interested in cricket at that time, and when the game was finally under way I wandered out to the edge of the field which bordered the main coastal road, reveling in the fresh sea breezes. There were the usual mammies, sauntering along the road, carrying their loads on their heads and their babies on their backs. It amazed me that the babies were nearly all asleep with heads lolling from side to side, only a few being awake to stare at me solemnly with big brown eyes. In the distance, fishing boats were being pushed out from the beach, their nets trailing, and I could hear the boys singing their rhythmic songs as the paddles dipped in and out of the water. A happy, peaceful scene.

And yet this is where it all happened for four hundred years - the slave trade. Geography and history were my two favourite subjects at school (how often the two subjects combined with each other!), I had longed to travel and now here I was in the country where, nearly 400 years ago, prisoners by the thousands were herded by their captors towards the slave pens of Sekondi, Axim, Cape Coast, and Christiansborg and Elmina Castles. Yes, our marriage took place in a castle whose dungeons were once crowded to suffocation with unfortunate natives, awaiting the auction block and the white traders from Europe and America. And it all came about because the first colonists in the tropical and sub-tropical parts of the Americas needed an adequate supply of man-power for their crops of rice, tobacco, sugar-cane and cotton, and the local Indian inhabitants were not very easy to deal with. The solution seemed to lie in importing slaves from Africa.

Thus began the fantastic forced emigration across the Atlantic. Between fifteen and twenty million Africans reached the shores of the Americas alive as slaves, apart from the millions who died on the voyage.

The trade was organised by Spaniards, Portuguese, Dutch, French, British and, later, Americans - all traders who prospered exceedingly from their human cargo, particularly as it could be combined with shipping goods to West Africa to trade in for the slaves and shipping the crops from the Americas back to Europe. From this triangular trade, of which slaves provided one leg, ports such as Nantes and Bordeaux, Bristol and Liverpool, became great and prosperous towns. The slaves, found chiefly in West Africa, were bought by the European slave traders mainly from the Chiefs, and shipping was begun in the early 16th century. They were sent to the British and French West Indian islands, Brazil and the southern United States. This went on in America until the Civil War ended the slave trade there, but it was prohibited in Britain in 1807, and in 1833 slavery itself was abolished throughout the British Empire.

It all looked peaceful enough now. I glanced around at the twenty or thirty natives who had gathered against the fence bordering the road, watching as a distant white clad figure made a lunge for the ball, and missed, bringing forth a loud concerted groan from the direction of the pavilion.

An event such as this, with the white masters playing this incomprehensible game for fun, was always good entertainment, and they all laughed heartily although not being sure what they were laughing at.

Peggy came in search of me a few minutes later, hailing me from the door of the Club house - "What are you doing out there?"

"Thinking about the slave trade", I answered, truthfully.

Peggy also laughed, unrestrainedly, not being naturally inclined to think about anything seriously.

"Well, stop doing that", she said, "come and learn how to score a cricket match".

They were short of a scorer. Which is how I took over this task and came in a very short time to understand and like the very complex game of cricket, which so many people dislike because it is "boring".

This match was the occasion when J.R. covered himself with glory by scoring eighty-six runs, not out. He must have been seeing the cricket ball as large as a football and could do nothing wrong all day. This was a relief to me, as when we set out from Marlu he was not in the most sparkling of moods. Kwasi had washed the Old Gents' Bowling Hat the day before, determined to have his Master looking spotless, and unfortunately the hat had shrunk and now would not stretch over his head. I was detailed to do what I could to stretch the lining by snipping it with a pair of scissors, but it was no good. It would never fit again and he had to make do, most unwillingly, with a borrowed panama. However, eighty six runs put everything right, and when lunch was served out on the grass, I had a happy and smiling husband again.

A small bit of drama occurred during the afternoon, when Kay stopped a fast ball with his head and had to retire, streaming blood. Elsa was quickly on the spot with a large white handkerchief, although her hands were shaking so much she could hardly hold it, let alone try to stop the bleeding. Kay was very cross about the whole thing and kept telling people not to fuss. He was one of Marlu's best cricketers, but he had to have two or three stitches in this gash in his forehead, which finished him for the day.

At the end of my first three months, Tommy Rowe came back from his leave in England. Tommy was a bachelor, a happy-go-lucky soul, who worked as a Shift Boss in the Mill.

He and J.R. were great friends and he became a constant visitor to our bungalow. Before I came out the two of them shared a lot of their household articles, as neither of them owned any crockery, saucepans, sheets, blankets, or anything else of that kind when they first arrived on the Coast. I believe they shared a cook at one time, and there was also the joint ownership of "our winter coat". This really belonged to J.R., and was a very good quality full length tweed coat, bought with his gratuity on being demobbed from the R.A.F., and jealously watched over and looked after, because goodness knows when he would be able to collect enough clothing coupons to buy another. It went out to Africa with him, and then when Tommy was going home on leave and was bemoaning the fact that he didn't possess a warm winter coat, J.R. lent this one to him. Thereafter it was known as "our coat". So now when Tommy arrived back, the coat was duly handed over and returned to its mothballs, ready for our next winter leave. It was a good arrangement and it must have been a very good coat, as I seem to remember it lasted many years and was only pitched out in the end because we were all heartily sick of the sight of it.

There was in fact a splendid view of the mine from the eminence of the hill, even better than the one from Fred and Peggy's bungalow. There it all day beneath us, from the European Hospital on the far deft to the two bungalows beyond the Assay Office on the right, and in between we could clearly see the mine offices, the Mill, the Club, the Treatment Plants, and the white painted Assay Office with our bungalow next to it.

I must have looked my amazement, because she went on, with a knowing look, "Oh yes, I can see all that's going on from up here!"

I had a look through the glasses, and sure enough there was J.R. standing in our garden, obviously trying to decide where Tommy and I could be. I waved to him, but he was not looking in the right direction.

He left after a few minutes, and as we sped down the hill again we passed Glyn on his way up in one of the mine cars. "And God help him", shouted Tommy over his shoulder, "if he's half a minute late!"

When we arrived back at our bungalow and related all this to J.R., his immediate response was to go indoors and fetch his own binoculars, and then focus them on the distant figure up on the hill. After a few moments he lowered them and remarked to us, with great satisfaction - "That moved her!"

Later on that day I was dragged unwillingly down to the dam below our house to watch J.R. and Tommy engaged in one of their favourite pastimes - target practice. They were both good shots, and tried to instill in me some appreciation of the skill involved in hitting a target with a rifle, but I could never raise much enthusiasm. I disliked guns of all kinds, and though I was persuaded once to use a small hand gun of J.R.'s, the terrible noise of the explosion scared me almost out of my wits. That was the first and last time I handled a gun.

They did, however, tell me the true story of an incident which occurred the previous tour, while I was in England, when J.R. was asked to shoot a large python that had infiltrated the blacksmith's shop near the Mill. This shop was not used for shoeing horses, as there weren't any, but for making and mending iron parts for the various different machines in use on the mine, melting down iron for moulds to make new axles, small parts for the locomotives used in the outlying parts of the mine, etc. The shed, which contained the forge, was not a very well built structure, being made entirely of corrugated iron sheet, but it was sturdy enough for what it was used for. Or so it was thought. Inside was a furnace, and round the walls were shelves holding various heavy tools, and there were several large anvils hanging up on hooks, some weighing more than 1 cwt.

One day, Bill, one of the old coasters who had been doing some work in the forge, came up to J.R. with an agitated expression and said they needed some help. What was the problem? enquired J.R. Well it seemed that there was an intruder coiled up in a corner of the forge - a very large python, fast asleep and not seeming inclined to move out. All the boys had taken off at first sight of this reptile straight through the windows, most of them and no work of any kind would be done until some brave person got rid of it.

"Well, what do you want me to do?" asked J.R.

"Shoot it!" was the universal reply, from all and sundry. "Get rid of it! Shoot it through the head!"

J.R. was not too keen. This snake was a full-grown python, with a body as thick as a man's thigh, and as it was coiled up no one could hazard a guess as to its length, but it would certainly be extremely strong. He was afraid that even if he killed it with his first shot, it would not die immediately and might do a lot of damage, thrashing its body about inside the hut before it died.

And that is exactly what did happen. He shot it through the head, and the next few minutes were extremely lively. The python wrecked the forge completely, hurling itself about, scattering tools and molten iron in all directions, and finishing up by hooking its powerful tail round one of the anvils hanging up and pitching it straight through the corrugated iron wall. At that point, the whole flimsy structure of the forge collapsed around the dead body of the snake, and the resulting chaos can be imagined. It was certainly a day to remember, down in the Mill. But the boys were pleased at the outcome, as they considered snake meat a great delicacy, and here was supper for several evenings to come.

I was relieved to return to our bungalow in the dusk, see the guns put away, and have a leisurely dinner with Fluff sitting on my knee.

The next day we received another addition to our household - a little brown hen which Kwasi brought us from the village as a present for Master and Madame.

This was indeed a welcome present. We had visions of new laid eggs for breakfast instead of the musty-tasting ones from the U.A.C.; quite a lot of which were "off" and only fit for the dustbin. Kwasi was put in full charge of the new arrival, instructed to watch her and find out where she laid her eggs and to put them immediately, washed and dried, into the egg rack in the refrigerator.

It was a good scheme but it never quite came off becauseKwasi said he couldn't spot where she laid them, if in fact she was laying any at all, and after a week he had to give up spying on her as she simply vanished. We suspected one of Kwasi's pals had taken her for his supper, although he swore this was not so and insisted the hen had "gone for bush". Meaning, she didn't like her new surroundings and had trotted off into the jungle to find pastures new. We gave up the idea of new laid eggs and thought we had seen the last of little brown hen.

Not so. About three weeks later, Kwasi came bursting into the bungalow, beaming all over his face - "Massa, Massa!" he called, "the hen - she come back!"

We rushed out into the back yard and there, sure enough, was little brown hen, strutting proudly across the sun-baked earth, followed by twelve tiny fluffy yellow chickens in line astern.

Kwasi was so pleased you would have thought he'd hatched them himself. We were quite pleased, too. New laid eggs were now replaced in our minds by succulent roast young chicken, accompanied by roast potatoes, green peas (tinned, unfortunately) and gravy. The chickens all grew up except for one which disappeared one night, probably having fallen foul of a marauding snake, and one by one over the succeeding months they provided our evening meal. They grew up to look exactly like their mother except for one, the only cockerel, whom we called Butch because of his aggressive manner. Butch was the only chicken I have ever seen who had curly feathers, and many times we sat and looked at him, wondering about his parentage. He developed an annoying habit over the months, when he discovered he could crow, of sitting right underneath our bedroom window and waking us up before dawn, usually about 5 a.m. We stuck it as long as we could, but eventually decided enough was enough, and he met his doom, ending up in a casserole.

Pretty tough he was, too.