I had stars in my eyes, that holiday spirit, images of Kilamanjaro capped in snow, the Serengeti trembling to the stampede of the wildebeest herd, Lake Victoria and the desert dunes of the great Sahara spinning through my mind. Could I have been anything other than excited? Could it have been possible that I not be motivated? What on earth could possibly go wrong on a dream trip from Johannesburg to London.

Mother did not want me wondering alone through god only knows where after I had idly been talking about traveling in Africa and she brought my attention to this classified add, advertising a passage Johannesburg to London via they did not know where either but at any rate in a Landrover. It was for this handful of dreams that I resigned Wednesday six weeks ago closed my bank account and bought a new rug sack. There were five of us in our party and I was the youngest .

I met Jonathan with his head buried inside the engine cover of a Landrover with a audience of lightly clad women watching him. He seemed to know what he was doing with that small red screwdriver and I being hardly the most brilliant mechanic in the world was impressed beyond belief. Jon is the sort of chap who does not lack in enthusiasm, ability, general knowledge and loose women so I took him on as a new role model.

He introduced me to Churchill. Churchill is the name of the small 4 cylinder Landrover which will accompany us over our many thousands of miles which lay ahead of us. He got his name from the fact that he can be stubborn, rather temperamental and smokes all the time. He is kited out with duel fuel tanks, a water tank and extra seats in the back. He has a roof rack that runs the complete length of his chassis and is dressed out with a shiny coat of beige paint. He sure looks spick and span and to my eye seems more than man enough for the job ahead of him.

Jon introduced Keith to me as the worlds greatest naturally born hypochondriac. He said that if there was a known decease then Keith had the symptoms and knew he was about to die. Keith replied that normally he would have put John down, kicked him three times on the left shinbone only he was not feeling quite up to it in fact he was not feeling quite up to anything that day. He was the owner of Churchill but that was only on paper. If anything Keith was owned be Churchill and Churchill knew it. I'm sure that this is why he is such a hypochondriac. What Keith suffers no tongue can tell. From the earliest of infancy he had been a martyr to it. As a boy the decease hardly left him for a day. Medical science was in a far less advanced state than it is now and as such others could not understand this decease. They put it down to laziness.

They would call him a skulking devil and tell him to get up and do something for his living not knowing of course that he was ill. And they did not give him pills. Instead they gave him clumps on the side of the head and strange as it may sound those clumps often cured him for the time being anyway. He has known one clump on the side of his head to have had more effect on him than a whole box of pills and make him go straight away then and there and do what was wanted doing. It is often so that those simple old fashioned remedies are sometimes more efficacious than all the dispensary stuff.

Jon harped on that when Keith fancies he is ill that there is never anything really the matter with him and that at the worst of times when he actually feels a bit off colour it is normally quicker to hear what is not wrong with him than to hear what is wrong with him. We sat round for two and a half an hours, listening to Jon describing Keith's maladies. He explained how Keith felt when he got up in the morning and told us how Keith felt when he went to bed and gave us a clever and powerful piece of acting of how he felt in the middle of the night.

The facial expressions which Jon played across his face did cause intense laughter but I began to fear I too have this horrendous sickness that had befallen Keith. I did not say anything. It was all quite clear, I had all the symptoms, beyond any mistake and the chief one among them being a general disinclination to work of any kind.

Nigel arrived around seven forty five. He too has a very strong poomy ascent but as I am not one to hold a handicap against a man especially if I had just met him I decided to ignore him. It seemed that this was not so bad a strategy because so did Keith and Jon. Nigel came out to South Africa a few years ago and now wanted to go back home. He seemed more concerned about what he was getting for supper than he was about meeting me and after he had been fed then the conversation seemed to circle around seemingly impractical things mostly the food that was essential for such a journey.

I have been driving everyone I know and a good many I don't batty with what this trip is going to entail. They think I am mad. Some are polite enough to only say it when I leave the room but mostly they say it to my face. Give up a good job and head off into the bush. Why would anyone sane want to do that. On the other hand I can find little understanding for the reverse. As you know I was never one for having a wishy washy character. Some call it stubbiness but I feel it is their jealousy which gets the better of them. Just because when I am told that a book is blue and I say that it is red even if it is blue they think I've got a screw loose. This same motivation, stretched by a pride that only a Leo can boast, placed me in a position where I may well get unfairly thrown out the moving Landrover but I would complete this journey if I have to walk every mile of the road.

I have been told that my version of Africa, being the sort of place that one reads about in diaries of Stanley or Livingstone, a dark continent, untamed and untainted by western civilisation. I know that this may not be the case but I am not going to let on that I know that. This is my trip and my dreams and they were not going to be spoiled by anyone who may have know better no mater who they are.

It is true that I know little about such a trip and what preparations were to be made. But the way I see it is that if I can pass matric without knowing what subjects I was studying then I could also sit in a Landrover for nine months and arrive in London. Keith phoned me to say that a fifth wanted join our party and that her name was Jane and that I could meet her the following Wednesday. I had my doubts as to whether Jane should come along and let it be said it not that I am prejudice against the softer sex. In fact I quite enjoy their company be the occasion fitting. I was just not so sure that this was the fitting occasion

It was with trepidation that I arrived at Jane's house. For a girl she did make an impression even more so than the other three but there is no way that I was going to admit that. And Jon seemed to like her. I can be a little stubborn when it come to changing my mind about someone but if Jon thought she was OK then so did I. At any rate it was not possible that she could be any more useless than Nigel had already proved to be and Jane’s legs are no where near as embarrassing as Nigel's.

The five of us fitted the landrover out ourselves with boxes bolted to the roof rack, a spade on the side, medical kit that contained anti snakebite serum and adrenalin for just in case we injected the anti snakebite serum by mistake. We have blue pills and red ones and antibiotics and some other things that I can't quite pronounce. Some are for headaches and some were for real headaches although it seems to me that none of us really know which colours were for which headaches. Jon is especially proud of Churchill as he has done most of the work on it. Or rather he has bossed most of the work on it and we have done the panting and fetching and caring.

That's Jon all over. So ready to take on the burden of anything and put it on the backs of everyone else. You never saw such a commotion when Jon undertook to do a job. A box wanted bolting to the roof rack and Jon said that he would do it and that we should not worry ourselves. He took off his coat and began. He sent Nigel to the Hardware shop to get a few bolts then sent Jane after him to tell him what size to get. From that he gradually worked down and started the whole house.

His sister went to fetch the ladder and I had to fetch the drill and get a cable long enough to reach the Landrover which stood at the bottom of the garden so had to go to four neighbours to get enough extension cables together and then we did not need the drill because in the mean while he had made the holes with a hammer and nail and I took the cables back again. Keith was wanted to hold the box and then Jon cut himself on a jagged edge of a hole he had hammered in the wrong place and could not find his handkerchief because it was in the pocket of the coat that he had taken off. Then he scalded each of us for not being able to find a coat that he had taken off only ten minutes before then got up and found he had been sitting on it and called out that we could give it up because he had found it himself.

When half an hour had been spent tying up his finger and the box was being held in position and all the holes lined up he dropped the bolts and we all had to go down on our knees and grovel in the grass for them. Then he lost the spanner. We found the spanner for him. At last he got the job done and surveyed his effort with evident pride and mentioned that we'd never get this vehicle overland worthy if it were not for him and that it was a good thing that he was not as lazy as we were.

We made many more such fine efforts of preparing to our vehicle.

It had become time to make preparations for the logistics of such a trip. I know how very important such preparations can be, they being probably the only thing my father ever taught me. Always make a list before beginning to pack my father would say He was a methodical man. It always started with taking a piece of paper and putting down everything you can possibly require. Then go over it and see it contains nothing you can possibly do without. You imagine you are in bed and what have you got on. You put down everything you have got on together with a change. Then you get up. What do you do? Wash yourself. What do you wash yourself with? Soap, so you put down soap. Go on till you are finished. Then take your clothes. Begin at your feet. What do you wear on your feet? Boots, shoes, socks. Put them down. Put down everything, then you don't forget anything.

That is the plan he always pursued himself. The list made, he would carefully go over it, as he always advised to see that he had forgotten nothing. Then he would go over it again and strike out everything it was possible to dispense with.

Then he would loose the list and pack without it forgetting all that was on it and remembering only what he had scratched from it. That way his trips were always interesting.

Nigel will be just like him when he gets a bit older, and I told him so. I felt that it would be irresponsible if we left the pencil and paper in his hands. The first list we made had to be torn up. it was quite clear that the Landrover we needed to carry all the things that we put down as indispensable had not yet been designed. So we tore the list up and looked at one another.

Nigel said that we were on the wrong track altogether. We must not think of the things that we could do with but rather what we could not do without. Nigel can be really quite sensible at times. I call that down right wisdom, not only as regards the present case but with reference to our trip up the river of life in general. How many people load up their boat till it is in danger of sinking or overturning with foolish things they think are essential, but are really only useless lumber.

How they pile the poor little craft mast high with fine clothes and big houses; with useless servants, and a host of swell friends that don't care a penny for them, and that they don't care a penny for either; with expensive entertainment's that nobody enjoys, with formalities and fashions, with pretence and ostentation, and with oh the heaviest, maddest lumber of all the dread of what the neighbours would say, with luxuries that only coy and with pleasures that bore.

It is lumber, man all lumber! throw it overboard. It makes the boat so heavy to pull, you nearly faint at the oars. It makes it so cumbersome and dangerous to manage, you never know a moments freedom from anxiety and care, never gain a moment's rest for dreamy laziness no time to watch the windy heavens building pictures with the clouds or the setting sun.

Throw the lumber over man. let your boat of life become packed with only what you need a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth their name and someone to love and to love you and a dog and a cat and maybe a little vegetable garden, enough to eat, and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

You will find the boat easier to pull then and it will not be so liable to upset, and it would not matter so much if it does upset. Good plain merchandise will stand water. You will have time to think as well as to work. Time to drink in life's sunshine and time to !

I beg your pardon, really, I am getting a bit carried away here.

We left the list in Jane's hand she probably being the most capable among us. We decided on only two tents and scratched the one we had as spare. After all if the worst came to the worst we could all sleep sitting up in one tent. I grant that it may be a trifle stuffy but then everything has its drawbacks as the man said when his mother in law died and they came to collect the funeral expenses.

Jon was against an oil stove. Gas it would have to be said Jon with a significant look He had taken an oil stove once and would do it never again. It oozed. He had never seen such a thing to ooze as paraffin oil. He kept it in a plastic container in his rug sack and it oozed through the contents and impregnated everything on its way. It went so far as to ooze onto the ground and saturate the scenery and spoil the atmosphere. Sometimes a westerly oily wind would blow, and at other times an easterly oily wind and occasionally a northerly oily wind; but whether it came from the snowy Arctic or the was raised in the waste of the desert sands it came laden with the fragrance of paraffin oil.

And that oil oozed still further and spoilt the sunset and as for the moonbeams, they positively reeked of paraffin. At the end of the trip an awful oath was sworn never to take paraffin oil with again. Having seen that Jon did have a point and not wanting to see him to have to go back on his word and break that awful oath we decided on gas.

We decided to leave blankets they being to heavy to lug about. Keith said in that case we must each take a sleeping bag, a brush, a comb some shaving tackle and a couple of big tows for bathing. What Jane was supposed to do with the shaving kit I was afraid to ask.

It's always the same when going anywhere near water. I always find, when thinking the matter over at home, that I will get up early every morning and go for a dip before breakfast, and I religiously pack a pair of bathing trunks and a towel. I always get red bathing trunks. I rather fancy myself in red bathing trunks. They do so suit my complexion. But when I get to the sea I don't feel somehow that I want that early morning bathe nearly as much as I did when I was back at home.

On the contrary, I feel more that I want to stop in bed till the last moment, and then come down and have my breakfast. Once or twice virtue has triumphed and I have got up at six and half dressed myself, and have taken my trunks and towel, and stumbled dismally off. But I haven't enjoyed it. The seem to keep a specially cutting east wind waiting for me when I bathe early in the morning; and the pick out all the three corned stones and strew them on the beach and they sharpen up the rocks and cover the points over with a bit of sand so that I can't see them, and they take the sea and put it two miles out such that I have to huddle myself up in my arms and hop shivering in six inches if water. An when I get to the sea, it is rough and quite insulting.

One huge wave catches me up and chucks me in a sitting posture as hard as it can down on a rock which has been put there specially for me. And before I have time to cry out or curse the wave comes back and carries me out to mid ocean. I begin to strike out frantically for the shore and wonder if I shall ever see my friends again, and wish I'd been kinder to my little sister when I was a boy. Just when I had given up all hope, the wave retires leaving me sprawled like a starfish on the sand and I get up and look back and see I've been swimming for my life in two feet of water. I hop back and dress and back home have to pretend I liked it.

In the present instance, we all talked as if we were going to have a long swim every morning when possible. Keith said it was so pleasant to wake up in the fresh morning and plunge into a limpid river. I said there was nothing like a early morning swim to stimulate the appetite and that it always gave me an enormous one. Jon said if it was going to make me eat any more that I usually eat then he should protest that I go anywhere near the water. He said it was going to be hard enough work packing sufficient food for me as it was. Keith urged Jon into seeing how much pleasanter it would be to have me clean in the Landrover even if we did have to take a hundred weight more of provisions. Jon got to see it in this light and withdrew his objection.

For clothes Nigel said two pairs would be enough as we could wash them when they got dirty. We asked him if he had ever tried washing clothes in a river and he replied the he himself had not made the experience but he knew a few fellows who had and that it was easy enough. The rest of us were weak enough to fancy that he knew what he was talking about, and that respectable young adventurers without position nor influence could really clean their shirts and trousers in a river with a bit of soap.

Nigel impressed upon us the need to take a change of underwear and plenty of socks in case we got upset and wanted a change. Also plenty of handkerchiefs as they could be used to wipe things, and a pair of leather boots as well as our usual trainers. We should want them if we did any walking but he personally was going to try as much as possible to avoid such strenuous exercise. After all it may be a health risk and Nigel is not the most healthy of souls.

Then we discussed the food question. Jane wanted to begin with breakfast. She really is so practical. I am already glad that she decided to come along. For other breakfast things, Nigel suggested eggs and bacon which were easy to cook, cold meat, tea, bread and butter and jam. For lunch he said we could have biscuits cold meat bread and butter and jam. But no cheese. Cheese is like oil. It makes to much of itself. It goes through the hamper and gives everything in there a cheesy flavour. You can't tell whether you are eating apple pie or German sausage or strawberries and cream. It all seems cheese. There is just too much odour about cheese.

Nigel went on to tell us of how he had eaten cheese in Wales and ended up sleeping in the men’s room of the youth hostel, Evidently he had kept the rest of the youth hostel awake for the whole night and for some reason they became even more irritated when they found that Nigel had blocked both toilets.

For drink we took a wonderful sticky concoction of Nigel’s which you mixed with water and called lemonade, plenty of tea and a bottle of whiskey in case as Nigel said we were to get upset.

It seemed to me that Nigel harped to much on the getting upset idea. It just seems to be the wrong spirit to go about the trip in. But I'm glad we took the whiskey.

We decided against taking beer and wine. They can be a mistake on such a journey. The make you feel sleepy and heavy. A glass in the evening when you are doing a mooch around town and looking at girls is all right enough but don’t drink when the sun is blazing down on your head and you've got hard travelling to do.

We made a list of the things to be taken, and a pretty lengthy one it was before we parted that evening. Jane and Nigel went and bought the stuff and the following Friday we met in the evening to pack. We had two large metal boxes on the roof rack and a large hamper for the food. We piled it in the middle of the floor and sat around and looked at it.

I said that I would pack. I rather pride myself on my packing. Packing is one of those many thing I feel I know more about than and other living person. It sometimes surprises me to find out how many living people there really are and then I really feel proud to stand so tall among so many. I impressed the fact upon Keith, Jane, Jon and Nigel and told them that they had better leave the whole matter entirely to me. They fell into the suggestion with a readiness that had something uncanny about it. Nigel and Jon spread themselves over the easy chairs and Keith went off for a swim with Jane.

This was hardly what I had intended. What I meant of course was that I should boss the job and that the other four should potter about under my directions, I pushing them aside from time to time and then with a "Oh you ! Here let me do it. There you are simple enough." really teaching them so to say. Their taking it the way the did irritated me. The is nothing that irritates me more than seeing people sitting about doing nothing when I am working.

Jon said it did him real good to see me messing about. It made him feel as if life was not an idle dream to be gaped and yawned through, but a noble task, full of duty and stern work. He said that he wondered how he could have gone on living before he had met me. I acknowledged his complimentary admiration with a nod so as not to give away how mad I was.

Now I am not like that at all. I cannot sit still an see another man slaving and working. I just have to get up and superintend and walk around with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. Its my energetic nature. I can't help it.

however, I did not say anything, but started packing. It seemed a longer job than I thought it was going to be; but I got the boxes full at last and strapped them shut.

Nigel asked if I was not going to pack the boots in. I looked round and found I had forgotten them. That just like Nigel. He couldn't have said a word until I had the box shut and strapped up. And Jon laughed. It was one of those irritating, senseless, chuckle headed, crack jawed laughs of his. They do make me so wild.

I opened a box and packed the boots in. When I was finished Nigel asked if I was sure the soap was in. I said I didn’t care if the soap was in or not and I slammed the box shut and strapped it up but had to unstrap it after I found I had packed the my car keys by mistake.

All that remained to be packed were the food hampers. Jon said that we should start in less than twelve hours and thought that he and Nigel should pack the rest; and I agreed and sat down, and they had a go.

They began in a light hearted spirit, evidently intending to show me how to do it. I made no comment; I only waited. When Nigel is hanged Jon will be the worlds worst packer. I looked at the piles of tins, bottles, pies, eggs, tomatoes and things and felt the thing would soon become exciting.

It did. The started with them breaking a cup. That was the first thing the did and they did it just to show what they could do and to get you interested.

Then Nigel packed the strawberry jam on top of a tomato an squashed it, and they had to pick out the tomato with a teaspoon.

And then it was Jon's turn. He trod in the butter.. I did not say anything but came over and sat on the edge of the table and watched them. It irritated them more than anything I could have said and made them nervous and excited, and the stepped on things, and they put things behind them, and then could not find them when the wanted them. The packed the pies at the bottom and packed heavy things on top and smashed the pies in.

They upset salt over everything, and as for the butter. I never saw two men do more with a half a pound of butter in my whole life. After Jon had got it off his slipper, they tried to put it in the kettle. It would not go in and what was in would not come out. The did scrape it out at last and put it down on a chair and Nigel sat in it, and it stuck to him, and then the went looking for it all over the room.

Jon swore he had put it on the empty chair and Nigel confirmed it that he had seen it there himself. They started round the room again looking for it and met in the centre and stared at one another. Jon thought it extraordinary and Nigel mysterious. Then Jon got round the back of Nigel and saw it. They got it off and packed it in the teapot.

Smudge, a half breed between Labrador and St Bernard and who had been living with Keith, was in it all. Smudge's ambition in life is to get in the way and be sworn at. If he can squirm in anywhere where he is not particularly wanted and be a perfect nuisance, and make people mad, and have things thrown at his he’d then he feels that his day has not been wasted.

To get somebody to stumble over him and curse him steadily for a hour, is his highest aim in life, and when he has succeeded his conceit becomes quite unbearable.

He came in and sat on things just when they were wanted to be packed; and laboured under the fixed belief that, whenever Nigel or Jon reached over to pickup anything it was his wet nose that they wanted. He put his leg in the jam and worried the teaspoons and pretended the lemons were rats and killed three of them before Jon could land him with a frying pan.

Nigel said that I encouraged him. Its not true. A dog like that does not need any encouragement. It is the natural original sin that is born in him that makes him do things like that.

The packing was done just as Keith and Jane arrive back to see if they could help. I still today find their timing somewhat suspicious. Nigel sat on the hamper and said that he hoped nothing in it would get broken and Jon said what was broken was broken a thought which seemed to comfort Nigel no end.

There seemed to be a good deal of luggage, when we put it all together beside the Landrover. There was the hamper and the two metal boxes and the sleeping bags and the foam mats, four or five overcoats and raincoats and a few umbrellas, and there was a melon which was to bulky to go in anywhere, and a couple of pounds of grapes in another bag and the tents with poles and pegs, and a Japanese paper umbrella, and a frying pan being too long to pack, we wrapped round with brown paper.

It did look a lot and I started to feel rather ashamed of it, though why I should be, I could not see. Most of the stuff did not even belong to me. I only had to strap it to the roof.

It was getting on late so we all went home for the last night before we were to leave. I some how feel that this trip could turn out to be an adventure that I would never forget and also one which I would not allow others to forget. I am sure that there will be yearns to be told to my grandchildren to which I will be able to every time add fresh, new and exciting detail.

Tomorrow will be a glorious morning in early spring when the dainty sheen of leaf starts blushing to a deeper green and the general skirt length allows glimpses of perfectly formed legs and the year seems like a fair young maid, trembling with strange, wakening pulses on the brink of womanhood. It is hardly surpassing that I love this time of year so. We will gather in style, be waved goodbye and we will trundle out the frontage of that garden in Johannesburg suburbia and be headed towards where our hearts lead.

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