Dear Rory Johnston, How lovely to see your name here! This is Morag Cormack. I did not know of your family's connection to the Riccardo's of Matanana Ranch, where we lived for about a year and a half - not sure of how long we stayed there. Mr. Riccardo was an eccentric, wasn't he? I felt sorry for his wife, Lady Barbara, during Ramadan, as he had turned Muslim and so the house was full of his local friends at night until the early hours and then she also had to fast during the day, so we heard, although she was not a Muslim. What do you remember of them? We lived in a house a couple of miles away from the Riccardo's, which had been built for Robin Maughan, the nephew of Somerset Maughan, so Robin would have quiet to develop his own writing skills. The house was completely isolated in the middle of a marsh, that one very dry year caught fire during school holidays. The house roof was smouldering, and we all lined up with buckets being filled from a tap in the outside kitchen to hand them to my father on the roof. What excitement! Guess my parents were not as gleeful as we children... A bunch of feral cats bolted out of the roof. Dad had been trying to kill them off, as one lot had had rabies and that was another scare for him and Mum, although, once again, us kids considered it an adventure. How are you doing, Rory? Birmingham is grey and miserable today. How is Kirsty? We have lost touch with each other. I enjoyed meeting her when I was in SA in 2006 to say goodbye to Gordon. Have you read Tony Edwards' book, The Slope of Kongwa Hill? It is beautifully written and very evocative of the time. It is really his memoirs, not a novel as the blurb calls it. I am in it, p. 52, mis-spelling of our name which did not have 'Mc' before it. Take care, hope you receive this and will answer.
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