Cornishman in Africa. My long suffering brother

I am away in the Valley and he is across vast tracts of land and ocean in America.

When my computer hauled itself into life this morning a big orange icon burst forth upon my screen telling me it was the 20th November. Which coincidentally is my brothers birthday. Now I love my brother very much and he has been very kind and forgiving to me helping me out of a number of scrapes. And to be brutally frank I’ve been a total git to him. So Adrian I am sorry!

For the time when we were children living in Berkshire. We had two tortoises, (Cedric and Charlie) they were both Girls. Even though we were obviously terrible at sexing them you would have thought that as a process of pure chance we would have got one of them right. Anyway Adrian and I used to take it in turns to go out into the garden and hunt for, and pick dandelion leaves for Cedric and Charlie as they really were rather partial to them. So there I was wandering around the garden in the dark autumnal morning looking for dandelion leaves. Mother had gone to take father to the station, for his daily commute to the other side of London, so I knew the house was empty except for my brother who did not like mornings at the best of times, and was never at his best in them. All of a sudden I noticed the bathroom light go on and realised that he was probably groggily, washing himself up there. Now the sink in this upstairs bathroom was right in front of a large frosted glass window that overlooked the garden. Whilst looking up at the window my wicked sense of humour got the better of me. I thought that it would be hilarious if I got a clod of earth and winged it up to the window, so it made a noise, it would frighten the life out of my dear half asleep brother. Well I certainly wasn’t wrong on that front.

I found the perfect clod, about the size of a cricket ball and just the right weight, I let it fly on the perfect trajectory. Unfortunately I had got the force all wrong. If it had not been for the house in the way, it would have probably reached the moon. But unfortunately there was. My little muddy projectile hit the window right in the middle at the weakest point, it did not make a small hole, but dragged the entire window with it, on its way through. My clod hit the ceiling leaving a fantastic brown splatted skidmark. At least I think it was the mud, Adrian was very frightened. He was also covered in Glass. He had been washing his face in front of the window, when it all rather imploded in on him. He thought the bottom had fallen out of his world, when in reality it was probably nearer the other way around.
And on top of this he was livid, absolutely bloody livid. I thought at this stage it would be a good time to leave home and to go and see the world, as I certainly was not going to be very popular round these parts for a while. The main flaw in my plan was that I was only seven.
My family eventually forgave me but I never think they appreciated the humour in it as much as I did and still do to this day.

The worst I did, and I do need forgiveness for, but I am sure Adrian will never give it to me is when we were on Holiday in Devon at Bull Point Lighthouse, I was probably about 11 and Adrian would have been 13.
It’s a lovely spot, the lighthouse perched hundreds of feet on a fairly precarious headland that is suffering badly from erosion, the old lighthouse was slipping slowly, inexorably into the sea. The land around the lighthouse was open grass fields and heath land. The whole headland was suffering from the same erosion by the sea.
Adrian and I used to play for hours on our skateboard (We only had the one between us in those days) down the two mile long smooth private road down to the lighthouse or with our kites in the fields beside.

One day whilst playing in said field I was exploring on my own and went to have a good look at the cliff edge.(As 11 year old boys do) It was amazing, with the erosion what looked like the cliff edge was not, the actual edge had slipped about 1m down and formed a grassy ledge about 1.5m across. Then beyond that the abyss. 150 feet of nothing before the broken and boiling sea and rocks. Another one of Denzil’s wicked pranks sprung to mind.

The next day Adrian and I were playing with our kite in the field beside the lighthouse, the wind was blowing gently up the field from the sea, I was holding the handle of the kite near the bottom of the field and Adrian was at the top ready to launch it. He threw it into the air, and in an effort to help it gain altitude faster, I ran backwards down the field only looking up at the kite, I kept on running without looking then it was too late, I was gone. Just a heart tearing scream as I went. Falling to my horrible death hundreds of feet below ripped to pieces then smashed on the jagged rocks. The kite fell lifeless from the sky.
Adrian came running down the field, tears pouring from his eyes, crying out my name and screaming no, no.
It was when he was about 3m away my cheerful face popped up from the cliff and said “Had you going there!” He beat the living daylights out of me. And I guess I probably deserved it, but it had been beautifully orchestrated, timing, the landing neatly on the ledge, everything, down to the kite, as it drifted helplessly downfrom the sky.

I thought that he would see the funny side of it in about ten minutes, and we would be rolling around in fits of laughter for the rest of the holiday reliving it. It’s been 35 years now and I’m still waiting for him to see the funny side. I don’t think he will now. So sorry Adrian.
As I say I have been horrible to my brother, these are just two of many things that have happened, I just haven’t got space to tell you any more now.
Have a great birthday Adrian.

Denzil Bark.