I have just been watching an episode of INDIA, presented by Michael Wood - all through the programe I had a feeling that he was somehow familiar.I googled Michael, to discover that he had presented the BBC film about the journey from Cape Town to Victoria Falls. This was shot almost thirty years ago, at a time when airport xray machines were not film friendly - and the result of passing the exposed filmstock through the scanner in the then Salisbury airport resulted in the fogging of the footage. This required a re-shoot of the journey through Botswana to Bulawayo. For budgetary reasons the BBC cameraman couldn't do the retakes and as a freelance, living in Johannesburg, I was asked to shoot the missing part of the journey. We went from Johannesbug to Mafikeng on the Blue Train - then joined a passenger/freight steam train to Bulawayo. A lot of detail is now coming back to me. For years I had the Rhodesia Railways mug, now lost, that was used in a sequence of Michael getting morning coffee, in bed, from a steward. We were traveling with cash - and were not supposed to cross the Botswana/Rhodesia border with more than a few South African Rands. After we left Francistown Michael unscrewed the mirror in the toilet and hid his money behind it. I lent him my copies of Stanley's Across The Dark Continent - which had predictions about the extent and speed of railway development in Africa. The two volumes were left, by mistake, on a bench in the goods van, placed there while we were loading our equipment. I worried during the all-day trip that the movement of the train would cause them to fall. They are first editions and I feared that the bindings would be damaged. Reaching Mafikeng we found that the movement of the train was so smooth that the books had remained exactly where they were - on the edge of the bench. The highlight of the trip was the time we spent with working steam locomotives in the Bulawayo shunting yard. An aside is that the South African song "Shosholoza" describes the journey made by migrant miners on this exact piece of line, through the hills between Francis town and Bulawayo. The word "Shosholoza" is an onomatopoeiac simulation of the soundof a powerful steam locomotive. The first line is - "Shosholoza, ezinthaba, abaleka, stemela sephuma e Rhodesia" - roughly translated - "The Power of Steam, running fast through the hills, coming from Rhodesia"