Gremlin Drive-in Restaurant in Harare

Here's a menu from 1977!

How many memories of pulling into Gremmies!

Flame Lily in Southampton

We have seen a number of Flame Lily plants for sale in nurseries and garden shops since moving to the UK, but none as nice as this one in Southampton last week. Some of you may not know that the gloriosa superba or Flame Lily was the national flower of Rhodesia. Not quite sure if that translated into the national flower for Zimbabwe - terrible, I should know that ... but Google tells me YES it is. Even though I think that perhaps the Zim Flower should be the Shrinking Violet in honour of the Zimbabwe currency.

A stirring poem for the Rhodie diaspora

Last November, an icon of Rhodesia, Ian Douglas Smith, died. I am not too sentimental about the 'old Rhodie days' preferring much more to lament the 'good Zimbo days' and the many happy years we had in Zimbabwe between 1980 and 2002. However, Sinclair Ellis wrote the following poem. One interesting memory about Mrs Ellis is that in the 60s and 70s she was well known for her paintings of cats, on copper, and signed SINCLAIR. Like many diaspora communities, the scatterlings of Zimbabwe and Rhodesia, are making new lives in other places, and for the most part, I think those communities are better for their influence.


When our songs will be forgotten,
The peace dream will be dead,
The flame lily will wither,
Our memories have fled.

When the last of our ashes
Is lost in wind and rain,
Yet somewhere in the scatter
Our blood lines will remain.

When the last of us has given
All we had to give,
Within the nations of the earth
Our heritage will live.

by Sinclair Ellis (December 2007)

Ian Douglas Smith dies

Love him or loathe him, Ian Douglas Smith was a colourful character. I met him as a teenager, when he came backstage at REPS Theatre after a play I had a small part in. Many years later, he was guest of honour at a wedding I officiated at, near Norton, and Rose and I chatted for quite a long time to him and his wife Janet (who died not long after that). Ian Smith was 88. Rest in Peace.

The side that came second

This week BBC Radio 4 has featured many programmes remembering the start of the Falklands War. Just now I heard a promo for another one, that will look at what happened in the lives of the hapless conscripts of Argentina who were eventually defeated, sent home, and then more or less forgotten by their nation. I was sad to hear that more of those soldiers have committed suicide, post war, than those who fell in battle.

Probably fresh out of school, a trooper demonstrates a typical fighting scenario in the Bush War

It reminded me to think again of the many Rhodesian armed forces soldiers, most of them conscripts too, who gave up some of their younger years to fight for something their Government believed in, only to find themselves on the losing side. Shortly after the final ceasefire, there was a tee-shirt being sold that said:

Southern Africa War Games 1972-1979

Rhodesian Armed Forces

Second Place

In the 28 years or so since the end of the bush war, I have counselled dozens of men still tormented by things they saw or did. I have watched sadly as ex RLI troopies became drug-addicted street people, and distantly followed the stories of some who moved on to other wars, became soldiers of fortune, or just simply moved far away to places like Australia or Canada, to get themselves far removed from the past. Unlike the way that the Americans or Brits look after their 'walking wounded', most of the people conscripted into the Rhodesian forces have received absolutely no help. Post traumatic stress disorders, marriages in trouble, problems with anger management, not to mention the physical therapy many could have used, were just as absent in post-independent Zimbabwe, as it seems to have been in Argentina. The hawks will disagree, but war just sucks.

Herb Friedman has an interesting and well researched look into the psychological operations in the Bush war.

Good Morning, Sunshine!

This has nothing whatsoever to do with the sun, but with the way my usual bowl of Shredded Wheat makes me feel in the morning! As a child in Rhodesia, we used to be able to get shredded wheat ... until Harold Wilson got the UN to impose sanctions on the country in 1965. Around thee time that most car bumpers began sporting I HATE HAROLD stickers, shredded wheat vanished from the shelves, and for the remainder of my childhood and a lot of my adult life had to live with Willards Foods' RICE POPPINS and HONEY KRUNCHEES and their valiant attempt at corn flakes which always seemed one or two ingredients short of perfection.

Overseas visits were my only connection to shredded wheat, until 2002 when we moved to Johannesburg. Sadly, the shredded wheat there was available in every Pick'n'Pay but too expensive - I even got some once as a birthday present! Now the move to England has brought me in reach of that glorious, sunshine inducing, body satisfying, muscle building cereal called Shredded Wheat.

Bite sized or normal size, it was first produced in the UK in 1926, but had been around in the USA much longer. In fact a fellow named Henry Perky invented it in 1893. Kellogg tried to trademark the name in 1938, but the patent failed when a judge ruled the term had been in common usage since 1894, telling Kellogg to shove off and do something useful for mankind like invent loads of sugar laden cereals to bless school teachers every morning. Wikipedia has more about the best cereal if you are interested.

New Paradise Lost show ... finally!

Show #15 Who Remembers Harold Wilson?
This photo taken aboard HMS Fearless

Happy New Year to Paradise Lost listeners. This show features two short interviews: Rita Gibb, who has been living in the UK for nearly two years, and my brother Rogan, who only left Zimbabwe a month ago.

Also included is a clip from the BBCs Radio 4 programme, ‘UK Confidential’ which was dealing with hitherto secret papers from 1976. Something about the way the Labour government dealt with ‘the Rhodesia problem’, I found interesting.

You also get a little bit of nostalgia with music some may remember from the RBC days of Radio Jacaranda.

You may listen to the show online using the player below, or go to the podcast's Odeo page, or look up PARADISE LOST in iTunes and subscribe from there.

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