Every new recruit to the Colonial Service received a loose-leaf book with a blue-grey cover called – if I remember correctly – “General Orders and Colonial Regulations”.  We were expected to familiarise ourselves with the contents and to pass an examination on it at the end of our first year of service.

I failed my first test so they withheld a small salary increment that would, otherwise, have been due to me.  A few weeks later I was allowed to re-sit the test and now managed to pass. I did, however, find I could not reclaim the few pounds I had lost earlier.

GO&CR was an excruciating dull book … except for one chapter that many of us newly fledged colonial civil servants found fun. It dealt with “noticing”.

The chapter said that if a male officer was to find himself noticing a female colleague, he was to raise the matter promptly with his personnel officer. Steps would then be taken: the noticed lady might be transferred to another office or the noticing male officer might be moved.

The term “noticing” soon acquired a special meaning in our circle.  It replaced far more vulgar terms that were, at the time, in widespread use.

So far as I can remember noticing among members of the same sex was never mentioned.  The authorities must have decided that since such relationships were, at the time, still a criminal offence, they did not occur.

New revised pages of GO&CR were frequently issued and we were expected to remove outdated ones and substitute the new.

So far as I know, in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) noticing was a far less frequent problem than in the Kenya Highlands. I observed, on my travels, that women in the Highlands had a sparkle and a vitality that made them very attractive.  I might have welcomed a transfer to Kenya but never achieved it … perhaps because I did not have a double-barrel name. Or was it because I was too dull-witted to ever apply for it?

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