Part II
That more or less covers the indoors entertainments. But of course, the main attractions of the Club were outdoors. They had one (or two ?) hard tennis courts on the landward side, and then there was always the Club Beach. Reached down a rather rough and dangerous flight of narrow steps cut into the rock, it gave us safe swimming (I don't remember any history of shark attacks - but then ignorance is bliss). The Club kept, in the changing rooms, a selection of surf boards for the free use of members. These were nothing like the boards you see in Hawaii or Newquay today. They were thin, strong wooden planks only four or five feet long by about fifteen inches wide , but adequate for the surfing on offer.
I'm not sure about the size of the waves, but five or six feet (top whack) would be about right (except in the monsoon, and you wouldn't be there then). If you caught your wave correctly, and it was a big one, you might be able to get into a kneeling position on the board. But usually the most you could hope for was to plane ashore lying prone. Of course, small as it was, it could still give you a hammering if you got your timing wrong and had the "washing-machine" experience (spun round inside a big wave with a very hard board for company) familiar (I suppose) to all surfers. Bruised ribs were not uncommon, but I don't remember anything worse than that. Nor jellyfish stings, now I come to think of it. It was pleasant, lying out on the sand (not sunbathing, after a couple of years out there we were mostly varying shades of mahogany anyway). Don't remember much seaweed.
It was a good idea to be on a towel, for in their burrows in the sand there were thousands of minute crabs (from memory, about ¼ in across) which would pop out and give you a tiny nip before popping down again. Really, these were just a nuisance. Back up to the Club, a fresh-water shower, and you were ready for tiffin or dinner at one of the small hotels nearby (made a change from the Mess cuisine, which was generally good). And the beauty of this sybarite life was that it cost you next to nothing.
Full board at the "Grand Hotel" in Calcutta was only Rs10 a day then: on Rs600-700 a month you could live like a king. I'd guess that the little hotels by the Club would do it for less than half that. Mess bills and Club subscriptions were peanuts. War is Hell (well, not always)
Now who were the Club Members who were the beneficiaries of all this ? I would say that there were very few Europeans permanently resident in Cannanore. A Police Officer, I suppose, maybe a Magistrate or two, a Forestry officer or a high-level railway official. All these would be
ipso facto memners of the Club. And in the "cool" season (say November - February), their numbers were increased by a strange reverse of the "Hill Station" summer exodus. What about the other Europeans (Retirees, Planters, Teachers, Hoteliers, Officials etc., who lived up there all year round ?) It gets cold at 6-9,000 ft agl (Bangalore is cool at 3,000 ft) in the winter, even in India. Snow is possible, but unlikely because of the dryer air inland.
Why stay up there shivering if you don't have to ? The Sahib had to stick it out at his desk in the Nilgiris, of course, but Memsahib, Chota-Sahib(s) and Miss-Sahib(s) could relocate for a winter month or two's holiday down on the Malabar Riviera. What's not to like ? Well, the older Miss-Sahibs, for a start. Just out of pigtails, they had other fish to fry: Cannanore was (normally) full of old, (as they saw it) married men. The bright lights of Bangalore, on the other hand, twinkled; as a major garrison town, there would be plenty of dashing young subalterns to choose from. The rest of the family went on to Cannanore and would be granted Temporary Membership of the Cannanore Club during their stay.
All this was changed by the wartime arrival of the CDRE; immediately the number of Service officers (and civilians of officer status) doubled or trebled: all would be eligible for temporary membership of the Club. Curiously, not many applied. I suppose the majority were married, older and staider men, who were quite content with a comfortable life in the Mess, enjoyed the warm sunshine, and a stroll along the Moplah beach in the cool of the evening. Surfing did not appeal.
There was another community of Britons who were, in a sense, "lesser breeds without the Law", and we shall talk of them next time.
Danny42C.