My father, Douglas Claude Venning (known as George), came out to Africa after the Great War in 1919.  He applied in London to take part in something called the Soldier Settler Scheme (Kitchener Memorial Scheme) to encourage men to farm in East Africa.   My father chose two farms – one on his own and one shared with three brothers called McDonald.   He started farming with the McDonalds just outside Nakuru and next door to an Irish family by the name of Costello, who had come over from India.  Mr Costello had worked on the East African Railway that was being built to run from Mombasa through to Uganda (the book the Maneaters of Tsavo tells the story of this time).  There were four Costello children – Winifred (not there at that time), Kathleen (known as Babs), May Constance (my mother) and Ivan.   May had married Steve Craven and had a young son, Nick and lived on a neighbouring farm to my father. During the following years my father fell in love with May, had an affair with her and she became pregnant (with Jock, my older brother).  So far as the McDonald farm was concerned, four people all trying to run the same farm was not working out and no doubt the situation with the Costello family (I believe May had moved back with her family for Jock’s birth) needed to be resolved.  So my father sold out to the McDonalds and said he would go off and survey his other farm. He could not at this stage take my mother and Jock along so they then went to stay with Ivan, May’s younger brother, at Njoro.

My father set off for the Nandi Hills to find his farm and it was on that journey that he had a rather extraordinary experience.  He was travelling by mule over a very rough road up an escarpment, when he saw a man mending his motorbike. He stopped to help him and introduced himself. The motorcyclist said that his name was Scollick.  “Surely not Scollick the skunk who dropped bricks over the railway bridge at Tonbridge School?” said my father!  This must indeed have been the case since the motorcyclist sped off quite unnerved by this revelation of  his evil deeds some eighteen years ago. The story goes back to my father’s very first day at Tonbridge School. The whole school was called into the assembly hall and the Headmaster announced that some boys had been throwing bricks over the railway bridge and on to the passing trains. The aim was to get a brick down the funnel of the engine. The engine driver reported that these boys were in Tonbridge School uniform. The whole school stood for an endless time and were all deprived of free time since no one owned up to the misdeed. As they were filing out of the hall the boy in front of my father tapped another lad on the shoulder and said, “Why didn’t you own up Scollick you skunk”.  Nothing came of the incident but the words remained engraved in my father’s memory only to be dredged up in this unlikely place!  My father continued his journey and eventually found and surveyed the area that was to become his new farm.

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