Ice in the Bedroom ~or~ Bad Timing*

As I’ve written earlier, some of Plum’s earlier novels made me queasy.  While reading these tales of schoolboy derring-do, I could not help but remember that due to their likely birthdates that the chances were high that they would become cannon-fodder during World War I.  Of course, these are fictional character we’re talking about, but I cannot help but think that Wodehouse had to base them on some of his own school chums.  In a way, these books are memorials of the boys who later sacrificed themselves to preserve our way of life. 

There was a similar feeling that came over me while I was reading this month’s selection.  Past of the plot involves the main character Freddie Widgeon trying to raise the funds to buy into a coffee plantation in Kenya.  That bothered me a little, and I’ve only just now worked out why that is.  My first thought was to remember that recently** there had been occasions in Africa when white landowners were required to hand back their property to the government.  This did not happen in Kenya, but of course in Zimbabwe. 

My second thought was to remember that a lot has happened on the African continent in terms of nation building in the past century, so I did a bit or research on what had been going on in Kenya.  It turns out that the country won its independence from the UK in 1963.  A quick glance at the publication information of Ice in the Bedroom informed me that it was presented to the reading public in 1961, a mere two years before the country where Freddie immigrated to changed dramatically.

What happened to Freddie Widgeon and his coffee plantation?  Did all of his dreams vanish in the tide of UK citizens who left Kenya following independence?  Did he stay on?  What of any mini-Widgeons who might have been born of his marriage to his beloved Sally?  These questions can never be answered because Freddie has never drawn breath.  Still, it is difficult for me to read these stories and not think about the people who did try and make a go in the coffee world just before the country fundamentally changes.  In my own life I have had what could be deemed poor timing with how international events intersected with my plans, so perhaps I feel something of a kinship for these seemingly-doomed characters.

*Read December 2016

**Right, so it began in 2008 and some might not consider that to be recent.  Please bear with me, because my mind works a little different when processing time.  Anything under a decade happened virtually yesterday to me.  Decades are required to have passed before I even start considering that something happened a while back.  I blame this on being a trained medieval historian and that time in my life when mental leaps of a century or so were commonplace in the grey goo that is my brain.