Ahem
There is a village close to the Toleza Farm in Malawi that goes by the name of Nzengheza, a Chichewa word that translates as: “Don’t outstay your visit here [or you’ll be in trouble]”. This seems extreme, but many names of Malawian villages and people have literal meanings or messages. One man told me that his surname translates as “unwelcome guest”. Maybe there is a common theme here. I told him to move to Nzengheza, where he would have a warm welcome on the basis of the double negative.
The weather in Toleza, especially in the third and last week, was very hot, causing the fans in the house to work overtime. I made frequent visits to the local markets in Balaka and Chingeni, which, together with the vegetable garden in the compound, offered a regular supply of large fresh tomatoes, red onions, papaws, “Irish” potatoes, okra, green beans, aubergines, and carrots. Meals therefore consisted of combinations of these items, together with local honey, eggs, mozzarella-type cheese, and imported rice and pasta. Papaws were plentiful and sweet, even as the mangoes were ripening on the trees. I became wise in the ways of making pancakes, admittedly from a fancy mix, but there was still a surprising sense of achievement in producing edible pancakes.
On my third night there, I was woken by a very loud cracking noise in the middle of the night. It sounded like a single chop of an axe through wood, or a very large bough suddenly breaking. My sister-in-law in the next room also heard it and thought that I had broken the bed (again). But the sound had come from outside. After a few more nights with similar noises, we were told that it was the falling fruit of the Malaina tree, hitting the tin roof of the house next to us.
We went often to view sunsets on the top fields and once saw a large hyena walk casually and powerfully behind us as it crossed the field. We saw another standing in the bushes in the headlights of the car as we returned to the house on another evening. This produced some discussion about the dangers posed by hyenas, given that regularly used village paths criss-cross the area. There was a rainbow of different birds of several colours around the house, including cordon bleus, African starlings, swifts, whistling ducks, sandgrouse, doves, and hoopoes. Squirrels, lizards, monkeys and, of course, insects were multiform and multitudinous: termites, ants, and moths to beetles, mosquitos, and spiders.
On the first Saturday afternoon back in England, I went to see our local football team, Uckfield Town, who languish third from bottom of the Southern Combination League Division One, playing Selsey, who are a spritely ninth. The visitors were too good for our lads and beat them 1-0 in front of a resting crowd of some 120 punters and a photographer with a telephoto lens. The standard of football was not high. However, the beer I had in the first half was excellent, as were the two hot teas I had in the second half when the chill on the terrace permeated my bones. (But basically, Brian, it was a game of two halves). Later, I went to see the new scientific heart-throb Merlin Sheldrake talk about fungi to a nearly packed audience in Brighton’s Dome theatre. I had read his book a couple of months ago, and one insight that I must have missed in the book was that the symbiosis of fungi and algae created soil and thus prepared the Earth for plant life and all the rest of the caboodle.
I went to J3’s (Jessie, Jurrat and Jaxon’s) flat in Brighton for a dinner that was mostly meant for Alli, who wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t come. I enjoyed the dinner enormously, two courses of which were trial runs for the next sitting of Jessie’s new project, the Sussex Supper Club. She regularly prepares a five course meal for total strangers who pay to come and eat it. Jurrat is “front of house”. I went to Brighton yet again using my bus pass to visit the tenants of our flat in Gladstone Place. They have both worked hard at improving the décor of the flat, which is now clean and kempt. It is also very warm, following the insulation of the loft last year.
Halloween, the over-commercialised celebration of the ancient festival of Samhain, marks the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter—ushering in the darker half of the year. It was believed that the veil between the living and the dead was at its thinnest on All Hallows Eve, and so people wore costumes and lit bonfires to ward off any evil spirits who were flying around.
Halloween company, Lewes, October 2025
It’s the only celebration I am aware of that doesn’t really have a message, apart from the joys of dressing up, children having fun, community capers, and visiting people’s houses to collect sweets. Alli was tensed and ready with a big bowl of sweets in the hallway and some random gourds placed outside our front door to indicate engagement. She then had a record twelve visits from groups of polite local children dressed variously in spooky costumes. I missed it all as I was down the Alma, being served pints of Harvey’s Bonfire Boy by an old lady in a black lace crinoline body and fishnet tights and a man with a nasty head injury.
Yours in absolute horror,
Lionel