Steamer Point RAF school, where I started school, was located at the top of a volcanic mountain, from which vantage point the ships in the Gulf of Aden resembled matchsticks.

At dawn, we would be driven up a narrow and tortuous switchback road in the back of an air force truck.

At school we learned to read, and sang English sea shanties like The Mermaid as the heat cracked rocks outside. At mid-day, we were driven back down the mountain to our homes, free to spend the rest of the day in the black dust and the shade of

We'd arrived to join my father on the troopship SS Empire Clyde, which was actually only 33 years old but looked as ancient as the dhows that filled Aden harbour.

We made friends with kindly and dignified Somali policemen as black and shiny as coal, and went shopping in Crater, a market town literally built in the crater of an extict volcano.

Boys dived for pennies thrown from passenger liners in the harbour. There were sharks (we swam in areas surounded by wire nets to keep them out) and huge black rays gliding amongst them.

My brother Andrew and I would peer out of taxi windows at deformed and mutilated beggars, and we were never allowed to sample the sweetmeats that we passed, heaped in pink and white pyramids on market stalls.

My father and I would go walking along sharp black volcanic rocks and chunks of concrete beside the harbour.

At Ras Morbat, I would sail matchbox boats down short-lived irrigation canals that carried the waste from the shower to the thirsty plants in our black-soiled garden.

I watched a chicken being beheaded for supper. It ran around the yard gurgling, and the servants laughed.

In the steamy nights, the sounds of music from the open-air cinema would drift up to our bedroom. I remember a trumpet wailing "Oh my Papa..." into the night air.

I remember the dark, glue and canvas smelling interior of a book shop, its owner hovering, muttering in the background.

For, my imagination fertilised by this sensation-rich place, I began to read, voraciously, even won a school prize for it, and my life changed for ever.

There is no doubt that we were typical, if minor, examples of colonial masters!

We had several servants, who my parents treated very well I'm sure but who nevertheless lived, much to our childish curiosity and astonishment, in absolute poverty in a four-walled unroofed and as far as I remember almost unfurnished shed at the foot of our garden. And they of course were the fortunate ones, with at least a pittance of income that was enhanced by guilty hand-me-downs from my mother.

But I was at an age when people make deep impressions that may last a lifetime. My in-built feelings about the people of Aden are all good ones, certainly better than of some of the Europeans I encountered.

I am prepared to continue to be guided by my childish intuition!

Note: Some of the identifications and spellings in this section may be innacurate. I have seen Ras Morbat spelt Ras Marbut and Ras Morbut, for example. Any guidance would be appreciated!

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