Lives in Cricket No 14 - Jack Bond

In Kimberley Wesley was able to attend the College’s junior school, but Stephanie’s education was more of a concern as she was approaching the age for senior school. However, she thrived at the local convent and Jack believes that travel and the experience of life in another country more than compensated for what his children may have lost in formal education. For his first trip Jack had been in a bed-and-breakfast hotel but, when he returned with the family, they boarded with an elderly landlady who had just one drawback: ‘She didn’t feed us very well. Sometimes we’d only get corn on the cob with some bread and butter and that would be it.’ At times they would supplement their meal at a café down the road, but there were also invitations to join the brothers at the college. For their third and final trip, when the family had their own bungalow adjacent to the college cricket field, Jack became most conscious of the abnormal society in which he was living. The notion that black people should be segregated on buses and shut away in their own townships at night was abhorrent to his Methodist instincts. In their small way he and Florence did what they could to befriend their house boy and maids and ensure that they had enough food to take home, but beyond that they felt in no position to do very much about it. ‘A Methodist coaching the Catholics’ 49 Returning to Britain on RMS Edinburgh Castle, with (l to r) Don Shepherd, Don Bates, Dennis A’Court and their wives.