I have just returned from a five week stay in Kenya, not as a tourist, but living with ordinary Kenyans, as they live.

The house where I was staying has four rooms plus a wet room, a small plot of land which can be cultivated, and electricity (sometimes!).

There is no formal kitchen and the wet room was just a room with a squat toilet with a cistern, although there was no piped water.

Water has to be fetched from a borehole 300 metres away and carried up a steep hill to the  house, or, during the rainy season, it can be collected from the roof.

Cooking is over a single propane gas ring, or a charcoal burner, and food is grown. Staples like maize flour is bought, but just about everything else is grown by the family. They have laying chickens for eggs, and they buy chickens for slaughter from neighbours.

Washing clothes and dishes is carried out in the yard in bowls of water heated over the gas ring.

A shower consists of wetting the body, soaping all over then tipping the bowl of water over the whole body to get the soap (and dirt) off, unless you are lucky enough to be a small child, in which case you can sit in a bowl of water.

Travel – “My feet is my only carriage”, to quote Bob Marley, at least until you reach the road, where you can catch a matatu, motorbike taxi, or if you feel rich, a car taxi.

I lived like this for almost three weeks, and settled in quite happily. But I was living with Kenyans, so I did not have to carry out a lot of the chores such as killing and plucking a chicken for dinner.

And it got me wondering … how well would Mr & Mrs Middle-England with 2.4 kids survive if they were dropped into a typical rural Kenyan life-style?

No computer or Playstation for a lot of the time, and difficulty in charging a mobile phone due to the erratic electricity supply.

When it rains, it is all-hands-on-deck to get buckets and bowls placed strategically to collect   off the roof – one evening I collected 75 litres of water in about 20 minutes – and storing it in the 100 litre water butt.

Where I was staying, Kisii in SW Kenya, the soil is sticky, so walking when it is wet is a challenge. The mud sticks to the soles of shoes and within 100 yards you can be 1 inch taller! The ground is also extremely slippery, and Kisii is in the mountains. There is not a flat path anywhere! So butt-skiing is also a distinct possibility, as I found out at the expense of my dignity.

So how would the Middle-England family cope? You want chicken for dinner? buy a live one and dispatch it with the kitchen knife, then pluck it. Vegetables? Well, did you plant any? If so, go to the plot and harvest what there is, usually sukuma.

You want to go into town? walk to the road and wait for an overloaded matatu (they are licenced to carry 14 passenger, but they will always manage to squeeze a few more in). Or take a motorbike taxi, a 125cc two-stroke Chinese-built machine. You can usually get two passengers on one of these.

As I said, I settled in quite well, but I was living with Kenyans. But if I were alone? Yes I would survive, but it wouldn’t be pleasant.

… or how to feel very sorry for yourself!

No, it’s not my wife, partner, soul-mate or better half, but my dear mother.

Mum is 86 years old. A couple of years ago, I nursed her through cancer and she survived. But the chemo, together with her advancing years has messed her memory.

So we have very repetitive conversations, she asks me the same questions time after time after …

And I am getting tired.

All I want to do is to go to Kenya to kick-start the many projects that are just waiting for me to … well … kick-start them.

Instead, I am sitting here, doing the odd job, “fixing” computers for people who are too dumb to own one (not all, but some), and keeping an eye on Mum, making sure she doesn’t do anything daft, like leaving the cooker on at full pelt, putting her debit card/glasses/hearing aid/handbag somewhere where she will never find it, playing with the buttons on the central heating , etc.

I have a girlfriend, Liz, who would be happy to help out, but she lives in Kenya and there is little chance of her coming to live in the UK, not least because I believe that her children are receiving a better education there than they ever would  here.

Also, they live on the coast where the temperature never drops below 20C. How would they ever cope with our weather with temperatures of -8°C. Liz even finds Nairobi cold!

So, just at the moment, I am feeling very sorry for myself.

A few months ago, a friend of mine in Nairobi was moaning that winter had arrived, with a daytime high of 19°C, which he found to be “freezing”.

I pointed out that at the time of receiving his email, it was 6°C in southern England, and we were approaching Summer!

Now, as I sit here at mid-day, the outside temperature is -1°C. Everything is covered in white frost and although it looks very fairy-tale-like, it is COLD!

I have a dream that my girlfeirnd and her children visit the UK at sometime soon. She has always lived near Malindi, where the temperature never drops below 22°C in the dead of night. What would they make of a British winter? Or a British Summer, come to that?

Adelaide Frances 22/8/1901 – 11/01/2000

She was a wonderful woman, barely 5 ft tall, she was a fighter. She lived through two wars, two marriages and brought up four children virtually on her own.

One of the eldest of about 13 children, of whom five survived her (three are still alive) she was my only grandparent. However, both her parents lived well into my life – I remember them well. Great-grandma Perkins died in the early 1960s and Great-grandpa Perkins, about 1968 or 1969.

Her mother-in-law, Grandma Thomas, also lived to 1960 or thereabouts.

Between “jobs”, she led a nomadic life, moving around her four children and staying until they could no longer put up with her. When she stayed with us, she was the boss, which drove my Dad mad, and probably Mum as well, although she managed to hide it better.

She also drove her grandchildren mad to the point that we dreaded her coming to stay.

She made clothes, lots of clothes, dresses for the girls and shirts and even grey flannel school shorts for us boys. The shirts and shorts were not very good, but then, she never worked to a pattern. And she always managed to leave a couple of pins in the finished article.

She cooked. Her cakes were to die for. Fairy cakes, cream sponges.

As she grew older, she mellowed, her legs and hearing failed her. But she was still as sharp as her sewing needles. She did the crossword every day.

She attended the 80^th birthday party of her younger sister in 1999, where she was reunited with all her surviving siblings, Ivy, Joyce, Tiny, Win and Len.

Christmas 1999 she spent with her daughter (my mother), me, my children and their children – five generations.

She saw in the new Millennium.

Then, having done everything that she was ever going to, she died.

I miss you, Nanna.