Those Were the Days - A Tale from an Earlier Planting Age. 'And All Before Breakfast'

摘要

Lukas was an assistant manager on a rubber estate in Malaya in an area where local armed terrorists still made appearances and where an "hours of darkness" curfew existed to allow Government forces to carry out their operations without risk to any innocent civilian. On this particular morning, about an hour after sun up, Lukas was carrying out his normal routine of walking through the rubber checking on the tapping. He had been doing the job for nearly five years and liked the work. It paid a fair salary, living was cheap and it was, after all, man's work - which was more than could be said of some of the office-bound jobs that so many friends of his schooldays now held. He had to admit however that he missed the easy access to those same old friends so many miles away and at times envied them the hectic social lives that they were reputed to live.