bewilderbeast

I Choon You

When I phone at 5:20pm every second night, Mom Mary usually launches into her set routine: “I’m in bed, I’m warm, I’m comfortable, I’ve had my eyedrops, I’m just waiting for my cocktail.” But tonight is different.

She’s not in Azalea, she’s in Arcadia. Her second night in Greytown. “I’m sitting at the dining room table enjoying a delicious soup. The food here is wonderful,” she enthuses. Oh boy, looks like Greytown is going to be a dorp of wild late-night jolling. She may not get to bed before 6pm. She’s loving it. But there is one problem:

“Koosie, the piano here is badly out of tune! It sounds terrible. It sounds alright when Barbara plays it because she really thumps the keys, but when I play it some of the notes don’t make a sound.” Omigoodness Mom, let’s get Professor Bloch to come and choon it, I suggest. She hoses herself. “He’ll have to come down from heaven,” she says. “Did he tune pianos?” she asks. “I think he only tuned violins.” Oh well . .

I try another dodge. Mom! Maybe the reason I only went to one piano lesson in my rugby togs was cos Miss Underwood’s piano was out of tune?! Nooit! She leaps to Miss Underwood’s defence. “Oh no, she would have had her piano fully tuned. And I would have noticed. I had lessons from her for twenty years, from when I was six to when I was sixteen,” she defends stoutly if arithmetically dodgily.

True, I conceded, and you’ve been practicing for eighty years since. “Ooh, I spose that’s right,” she says sounding amazed.

~~oo0oo~~

“You know, when I used to play the piano in the Boksburg-Benoni hospital sometimes some of the nurses would just carry on talking.” Um, right Ma. I mean, NO!?

A few weeks later: “A man came to play the piano for us. He’s very good, some of the best playing I’ve ever heard. He teaches music here in Greytown.” I’m thinking, the piano can’t be too bad then. I ask, What did he play? “Oh, modern stuff. Sinatra, Blue Suede Shoes, I asked him to play What A Wonderful World, and he said, ‘Oh thank you! I love that and I haven’t played it in so long!’ It was beautiful.”

Geezer

‘Geezer’ refers to an older person, almost always a man, whose behaviour is regarded as either eccentric or typically ‘elderly.’ So what’s that got to do with me, you ask?

Geezers make hilarious comedy. Some well-known American examples of ‘geezers’ are Grampa Simpson of the Simpsons, Grandad Freeman of the Boondocks, Albert in Steptoe & Son, etc.

Geezers are often – wrongly, I now growl defensively – depicted as irritable and cranky, at least mildly irrational, and mired firmly in the past. Hmph!

‘The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that’s the way I likes it.‘ Grampa Simpson.

‘The best way to describe Grandad Freeman is that he is old yet unwise. He never accepts responsibility for his actions, nor does he learn any lessons’.

More Grampa Simpson: ‘Dear Mr. President, there are too many states nowadays. Please eliminate three. I am not a crackpot;’

Grandad Freeman is not exactly the best parental figure or influence (eg. he is perfectly fine with sneaking into movies without paying). He mutters, ‘I hate to see a child go unbeaten.’ To explain his grumpiness, his grandkids sing of him, ‘He’s just mad ’cause his ass is old!’

Albert Steptoe (with a beer on the coffin of his brother): ‘This is the first drink I’ve ever had on him;’ and, ‘Reading books leads to communism.’

The word geezer originally meant a person of any age, the criterion of ‘geezerhood’ being oddness. When it first appeared in the late 1800s, ‘geezer‘ simply meant eccentric in looks and/or behaviour. The root of ‘geezer‘ is ‘disguiser’ – a person who dresses up in costume for a masquerade or other occasion. To call someone a ‘guiser’ (pr. ‘geezer’) was to say that they were dressed and/or behaving as oddly as one might on Halloween, for example. Sometime around the 1920s ‘geezer‘ started to mean an older, eccentric man says The Word Detective.

~~oo0oo~~

My kids mainly call me Daddy or Dad. When they say Da-ad I know they’re going to ask for money. Tom also uses Ballie and Pops. Of my extra daughters, Gugu calls me Pete, and Ziggy calls me Geezer. I cracked up inside when she first said it, but bit my lip. So Ziggy always calls me ‘Geezer’ – and spells it ‘Geyser.’

~~oo0oo~~

Mom & Fats

Last night Ma Mary didn’t have much to tell me. She has been distracted – they’re moving to Greytown soon and that takes up a lot of her thinking. But she did tell me she remembered Fats Waller’s song Alligator Crawl and can still play it.

So tonight I phoned and asked, Do you want to listen to some music? Ooh yes! she was keen, so I played this:

She loved that; she couldn’t remember Aint Misbehavin’ but the music freed her mind; And she was off! We went through four tonsillectomies: Her own as an adult soon after her wedding – she bled a bit afterwards; then Barbara’s – she had to get stitches in Frank Reitz’s surgery as she had a bleed while recovering; Sheila’s – she had to go back into hospital; mine – we went to recover on Kindrochart, no bleeding.

In the Boksburg-Benoni hospital when she was finishing her training her sister in charge said to her, I want you to become a theatre sister. But, Mary says modestly, ‘I don’t think I had the guts for it.’ She rather went and did her midwifery at Addington in Durban. I think assisting births takes lots of guts too!

‘Oh here comes my cocktail,’ ended our call, as it occasionally does.

~~oo0oo~~

Sounds like a fun frailcare, but her cocktail is completely alcohol-free; a mocktail: a painkiller and sleeping tablet, crushed with a pestle in a mortar and mixed with yoghurt, followed by a tiny quarter sandwich, which always ‘Is delicious, even though I’ve already brushed my teeth.’

Fast Talking

My cellphone bill ran at R1075 a month. Of course I do have a few hangers-on and their need for data rivals a hummingbird’s need for nectar, but I did keep thinking, Must Ask Karen at Cellucity for a Breakdown of my Bill. And I did. Eventually. After 24 months.

Turns out I have two numbers I have never used that I am faithfully paying for airtime who knows why. Cancel them please, I say. Oh she can’t. What!? Nope, she can SELL me numbers, but she can’t CANCEL numbers. To CANCEL you have to phone 0821958 all by yourself, hold on and press buttons. Yay!

Cebisile is very pleasant, very helpful, very informative – and fiercely resistant to actually cancelling any numbers! ‘NO! Rather do this and that and you’ll still have everything but only be paying R880 a month.’ Long explanation of what a good deal this is and how important ‘her pensioners’ are to her. But I never use the numbers or the airtime. ‘Yes, but NO! Rather keep everything AND get a new tablet and phone, which we’ll courier straight to you, AND I’ll reduce your bill to R640 a month.’ Long explanation of what a good deal this is and how important ‘her pensioners’ are to her.

At this point of a lo-ong call I give in. Here’s what I want to know, I say: I’m paying how much at the moment? R1075. And I will be paying how much from now on? R640. OK, Cebisile, go ahead and do it please. Shit and Bust.

~~oo0oo~~

footnote: The ‘free’ phone and tablet did arrive by courier.

Homeful Again

So I sold my forever home and bought a camper. ‘Grey Nomad,’ I thought. Well, I soon found out: A Nomad I Ain’t. Also not grey. It’s gone white. Here’s what’s wrong with being a nomad: Weekends, long weekends and school holidays. Suddenly rocking up without a booking is frowned upon.

So the three years on the road turned out to be around twenty months travelling and the rest comfortably holed up at a special low-low beer-money rental in Broose’s 4-bedroom 3-bathroom beach cottage in the metropolis of Mtwalume, KZN South Coast. The only hard part about loafing on the Souf Cose was that niggling feeling that I really should be looking for a place, a home.

So, in stits and farts, I did. Nottingham Road. Fort Nottingham, Mtwalume, Shelley Beach, Hibberdene, Pennington, I looked; One place in Scottburgh was under R900k for absolutely everything I needed, two bedrooms, big deck, fully furnished, all appliances, aircon, two huge TVs, the works. Owner desperate to join his daughter in England. Pennington got a second and third look – lovely village – but the commitmentphobia held up. After much dodging, I did look at Howick, the Southern Hemisphere’s largest above-ground cemetery. I would definitely not have, but Tabbo made me promise I would, and then he died, meaning I really had to. So I went.

AmberNow, AmberThen, AmberGris 1 through 7, AmberNyet, AmberNever, Eagle something, St Johns the baptist, etc. No. Just NO. Then the town, where a number of grey-haired biddies thought, At Last a Buyer! as I praised their lovely homes and what was great about them. All true, but that did not mean I was about to reduce my savings by two to three million. Sorry. Then I had a clever procrastinating thought: Kick for touch! I asked to rent a place so I could see if I could live in Howick. No problem, I was introduced to a new tannie. She had plenty of places to rent, but ‘the daughter may be a problem,’ she said – Jess was with me by now. Thanks Tannie, You made it easier. Bye, Howick.

On to Mtunzini. Now I got serious. This is a lovely plekkie. Near all the Zolooland reserves, the forests, the coastal resorts. Great birding. Like Pennington, off the main road, so quieter. Better run than the South Coast towns, so this looked right. So I looked at homes. A lot of homes – R2.4m to R3.6m. Oh boy. Well, I’d rent out part of the property to help with an income, right? What am I thinking? Me, the world’s worst landlord.

What I should have done is go back to my checklist: 1. Spend less than the R1.99m I got for my Westville home – a target long abandoned cos of arched eyebrows as estate agents showed me better places in better locations; 2. Be as much off-the-grid as possible; 3. Have good comms – cellphone or fibre; 4. NOT behind a gate of any sort; None of the expensive homes ticked all four.

I’ve an idea Jess! Let’s procrastinate; kick for touch! So we rented a lovely 4-bedroom 3-bathroom wooden cottage at the edge of town bordering the forest for five months. All the while lovely kind Dee, KZN’s most patient estate agent stuck by me, patting me on the head and saying moenie worry nie.

In the end I did what I always do: Ignore the checklist and go cheap, eventually buying a lovely small pozzie on leased land for R1m and I’ll show you the pros and I’ll ignore the cons. It was cheap; It has great solar power – one 6KVA and one 3KVA; It has two water tanks; it’s fully furnished, all appliances, lots of toys; it was cheap; a small garden rigged for automatic micro-irrigation twice a day. All I have to do is rip out the azaleas, columbines, daffodils, daisies and other weeds and plant the right stuff; Also get rid of a mess of flower pots, hanging and earthbound, many garden gnomes and two concrete table and bench sets out of four. And as I mentioned, not expensive.

It is lock-up-and-go. OK, it’s behind a gate in a caravan park, true. I can’t have it all, but I can have savings in my pocket! Two out of four’s not bad. And I don’t have to shop for anything! I hate shopping, and there’s more than enough stuff here for a lifetime. Goodness Ntuli and Strongman have stayed on working one day a week each and have taken a bunch of excess stuff home with them. Willie from Sondela Second hand Stuff Store brought a trailer and carted away two fridges, a deep freeze, a tumble dryer, a bed/couch, sundry other stuff and gave me some cash.

So we’re settling in to our new log cabin and loving it. Jess is thrilled, which helps a lot; the small place has four aircons and nine mounted fans – a clue to what summer will be like in Zululand! Three TVs and a jacuzzi which delighted Jess. One drawback she really didn’t like was the poor comms. FINALLY! she said in desperate relief, when we got fibre. It took ALMOST THREE WEEKS, Dad! We’ve elected not to hook up the satellite dish – it can sommer sit there as a status symbol.

Oh, and Jess got a lovely, relaxed, unfazed welcome.

~~oo0oo~~

Forest Fibre

I thought the bright blue cable running from tree to tree along my back fence was probably the internet fibre cable; Turns out it is indeed, though the local vervets know it as a convenient safe highway well above marauding dogs and hopefully, cruel shooting humans, bastids.

Yesterday the Telkom techie came to connect us. AT LAST! shouted Jessie, the two to three weeks we’ve waited had taken forEVAH! and she nearly died!

So now we’re connected to the world, which is only right for citizens of Mtunzini, as three sea cables land here: SAFE linking South Africa, Mauritius, La Réunion, India and Malaysia, and EASSy, linking Sudan, Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Comoros, Madagascar, Mozambique and South Africa, (both Telkom) and SEACOM, between Eastern and Southern Africa and linking to Europe and Asia (Liquid Telecom Neotel).

“We” spliced the cable, found the tiny thin glass fibre inside all the protective layers, and annealed it with this cool piece of kit. And Voila! we got fibre! OK, so actually Patrick from Telkom did it all.

There’s the router top left in the picture of our lounge/kitchen. We’ve been limping along with 0kb to 4Mb intermittent data rate. Now we have a steady:

Update: Well, not so steady. It’s still Telkom, so we now vary between 0KB and 20MB. They drop the ball quite often, forcing techies out at night and weekends to repair the damage at overtime rates …

Six beers, Five guys

Driving back from Kruger Park we were listening to Jessie’s music. She plays a mixed bag including some sixties n seventies favourites of mine. She also plays some Country & Western which is not my best, but Beer Never Broke My Heart is a hoot and always gives us a laugh. Long Leg, High School, Beer Never Broke My Heart I would belt out until I learned it was actually Long neck, ice cold beer never broke my heart!

Then she played a new one and my ears pricked up at the first line:

Six beers, five guys - (A Long Way - by Luke Combs)

Hey Jess, I said, That Reminds Me Of My (slightly misspent) Youth!

Raiders of the Lost Saab

Pssst, I don’t really think our youth was misspent. Stephen Fry nails it when he says, Education is the sum of what students teach each other between lectures and seminars. Certainly I got my best education in high school outside the classroom from Steph, Pierre, Larry, Tuffy, Fluffy, Lloyd, Gabba and others; and often after the sun had gone down.

~~oo0oo~~

Jess took the feature pic of the sunset in front of my nose as we drove south through the vrystaat. Visible is the duct tape holding up the window, necessary as the windy-windy mechanism had gone phut. Took a long while, but I eventually found a replacement window mechanism – not easy when its a seventeen yr-old model. Seems they don’t keep all car parts for that long, I dunno why.

~~oo0oo~~

Zap! thbbpt!

That’s the sound of the drongo in my backyard catching a butterfly then spitting out the wings while chewing the wriggly part.

I know, I must ID them, I will. Gotta rush right now though. Never put off till tomorrow what you can put off till Wednesday Week.

Here goes, fingers crossed:

Southern White-barred Charaxes – Charaxes brutus natalensis

Green-veined Charaxes – Charaxes candiope

~~oo0oo~~

Pffft! didn’t seem right for spitting or thpitting something out. Calvin & Hobbes were more thbbpt! and so I’ve changed to thbbpt!

Please Release Me . .

. . Let Me Go

I’m now pretty sure I’ve seen Gaboon Adders in the wild. Truth is, I’m more sure Gaboon Adders have seen me in the wild on my hikes in Dukuduku, Cape Vidal and Mtunzini forests over the decades. I just never spotted them, as they’re so incredibly well camouflaged.

Jess and I were invited by Snake Releaser Dean to accompany him to release one he had been called to catch in Mtunzini village. About a metre long and about as thick as my scrawny upper arm, he was a beauty. Beautiful camouflage colouration with a dead forest leaf and shadows motif.

Just look at that pale head, looking just like an autumn leaf.

He moved off after Dean had prodded him out of his usual ‘when in trouble, freeze’ mode. Very soon, he was hard to find . .

Mary & William

Mom told me she has just read* about her namesake and William, joint rulers of England.

William of Holland (Prince of oranges and lemons) and Mary of England were husband and wife and co-monarchs or something. Also cousins. This came about after Mary had got rid of her father as king of England. He was unpopular, see. Can’t have that in a democracy.

My mother Mary then said William wanted to leave England on his ship once upon a time to visit across the channel (to his native Holland I spose, to visit his Ma?) but he couldn’t: There was no wind for his ship. It wasn’t like nowadays when you can just get into a ship and drive off, she says, the wind had to be right.
…

As I know little detail about the fakery called monarchy, and less about that little island offshore of France, and even less about sailing, I had to look up some history for once.

Seems there was a husband-and-wife team that ruled the small island, but the William who had no wind might have been another William 800 years earlier, in 1066. So she may have mixed up her Williams. Well, if they’re going to indulge in endless cousin-fuckery and nepotism, they’re going to end up with a slew of Edwards, Charles’ and Williams, aren’t they?

Instead of original names like Cnut. That’s better – and a more accurate description, seems to me.

If its accuracy you seek – though I think accuracy in history is a wish more than reality – you’ll get more from wikipedia than you’ll get from me:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_II – where my Mother Mary is proved right: There was a time a ship was delayed in its departure “due to bad weather” pertaining to the William in question. The one who was probably actually Willem or Wilhelmus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_the_Conqueror – also a ship delayed due to no or wrong wind

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut – actual name. These looters should have kept it.

~~oo0oo~~

Thought: Those two could have done a lot of good if they’d made joints legal while they were joint rulers.

*Mom must have recalled this, as its been a couple of years since she could read – central vision gone.

Mom Mary Call

A cure for your smoking habit

On our call last night we spoke about smoking and stopping smoking and Mom remembered this from wayback Harrismith days in the Seventies:

Ernie van Biljon was a great character, full of smiles and laughs. He was the Rotarian who arranged for me to go to America back in ’73. Mom says they were at some function in town and Ernie was saying how he was worried about his smoking; and how everyone, including “The Englishman,” as he sometimes called Margie, his lovely wife, wanted him to quit. “But I won’t know what to do with my hands!” he complained.

Well, Mary had an answer for that: “I’ll show you what to do with your hands,” she said, “Here, put them together like this,” Ernie dutifully followed her instructions. “Then put them between your legs like this,” said Mary, putting her hands between her legs. With his mischievous grin Ernie said, “OK,” and made to also place his hands between Mary’s legs, causing great hilarity all round and distracting everyone so he could carry on smoking unchallenged.

~~oo0oo~~

One Tree One Day

.. Three Big Birds

The Southern Banded Snake Eagle’s loud calls kak kak kak-kak-kak-kao, and the Black Sparrowhawk’s persistent rapid chip chip-chip, attracted my attention. The two Palm-nut Vultures were silent.

~~oo0oo~~

A male Southern Mocker Swallowtail fluttered in but wouldn’t sit still.

A Citrus Swallowtail too

On another day, an Olive Sunbird kicked up a huge fuss and I searched, hoping to spot a snake or an owl or whatever was causing such rude language. Nothing. The Sunbird then went quiet and hopped onto this strelitzia flower for a drink.

~~oo0oo~~

Makeover

Off with the camper

Leaving the bakkie looking naked

A big rust-removal exercise; Eighteen months based within a stone’s throw from the breakers had rusted the 3yr-old camper’s weak points. Replacement with stainless steel was called for. Hinges, clasps, washers, hoist hooks, etc. New struts to lift the roof; Some sandblasting and powder-coating; A new Brad-Harris electric point; Removal of a slide-out washbasin setup; And back together again as in the feature pic. Gerhard and Vincent and team at AHA did us proud.

Next project a new windscreen and some major rust removal for the 17yr-old Ford.*

~~oo0oo~~

*Done. By PG Glass and Willie the panelbeater on his farm between Mtunzini and Empangeni. Now for a new electric window windup mechanism for the drivers door.

Shingwedzi Camp KNP

We took the eastern vlei route northwards, from before Mopane camp – the road less travelled. Lemme check the map: It’s the Nshawu waterholes route and leads past the Grootvlei dam and Shibavantsengele viewpoint on the Mocambique border. I loved it. Some open plains and vleis for a change from dense Mopane trees and Mopane scrub. Many herds of zebra and wildebees, some waterbuck, a few impala, and a few huge ele bulls…

Also Chestnut-backed Sparrow-lark on the gravel roads and flocks of Wattled Starling (some in full wattle).

At Shingwedzi, a Hamerkop, a juvenile Little Sparrowhawk hunting, Green Woodhoopoe, Golden-tailed & Bearded Woodpecker, Red-billed & Yellow-billed Hornbill, Arrow-marked Babbler, and a noisy early morning Hooligan’s Robin (actually White-browed Robin-chat),

A Rock Monitor Lizard came to visit Jess at the chalet. She told it to footsack in ruder language than that.

Rescued! After eight days of blissful peace I started worrying. I remembered the long spanner I need to free my spare wheel from under the bakkie is in the camper in Pretoria. A flat would leave me stranded. I approached a sensible fellow Ford Ranger driver who is headed out on a wilderness walk tomorrow and he rescued me in a jiffy. Now I have a dusty spare wheel inside the cab where I can get to it, the nuisance of its bulk almost guaranteeing I won’t have a flat.

Jessie followed the route of this weevil, calling me across to photograph it. She then bravely also took pics with my camera’s super-macro. In my pic you may notice the bugs eyes are wider cos there was a lot of wheezing in getting down on my knees.

A pair of Bennett’s Woodpeckers foraged right outside our chalet.

That’s it. After ten lovely nights in Kruger we’re on our way home.

~~oo0oo~~

Olifants Camp KNP

We followed the right bank of the Letaba south-eastwards towards Olifants camp, driving with the flow then hit the left bank of the Olifants, flowing even browner and more strongly. Now we’re driving against the flow, the confluence of these great Lowveld rivers somewhere behind us.

Four ‘Thunderbirds’ crossed the road (Ground Hornbill), three of them flying up into trees; new antelope seen: Kudu and Nyala.

Twenty five eles came down to drink below me as I drank coffee at the Olifants camp restaurant while Jess had a nap in our chalet. Five wandered back into the bush while the big Ma led the others, including smallies, across the wide and swiftly flowing Olifants river. Lovely to watch the crossing. Every now and then a little one would disappear underwater and the rest would wait till they found their footing and emerged again, trunk held high.

Tracking & Signs of the Wild

Signs of carnage on our stoep! A kill? Looks like a big eagle caught an old grey and white goat and plucked out all it’s fur.

Oh, hang on, cancel that. I just remembered Jess gave me a haircut. She cuts the parts I can’t see. Back there. Behind me.

~~oo0oo~~

White-bellied Sunbird, Paradise Flycatcher, African Firefinch, Kurrichane Thrush, Bataleur, Marabou & Saddle-Billed Storks, Fish Eagle, Wahlbergs Eagle, Goliath Heron, House Sparrow, Brown-crowned Tchagra,

Yellow-bellied Sand Snake spotted by Jess in camp.

Where, Jess?

Here’s what I see between our bungalow and the neighbours. The arrow points to where Jess is saying, “There, Dad. A snake!”

True’s Bob, thru my Zeiss binnies a beautiful slender snake about 800mm long. Grass snake? Whip snake? I’ll have to look it up. WhattaSpotter is Jess!

Psammophis subtaeniatus the Western Yellow-bellied Sand Snake feeds on lizards, frogs, rodents, birds and snakes. One of SAs fastest-moving snakes, he can wikkel! Ours was peaceful as he explored nooks n crannies, freezing motionless if we moved. Emerging from exploring a deep hole, he showed his butter-yellow belly. Amazing coloration: Camo patterns on his upper third, stripes the lower third, and that yellow belly!

~~oo0oo~~

Author Archives: bewilderbeast

I Choon You

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Geezer

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Mom & Fats

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Fast Talking

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Homeful Again

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Forest Fibre

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Six beers, Five guys

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Zap! thbbpt!

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