– life – bokdrols of wisdom –
Jessie’s desperately ill. Can’t move. She’s suffering badly from unfairness: Lots of her friends have stayed at home sick this winter and she hardly EVER has.
You haven’t even coughed, I say, dismissing her request firmly.
So that’s that.
.
I’ve just made her tea in bed and she’s settled in for the day, earphones on, smiling.
Gives a feeble cough every now and then to appease the ole man.
Wake up TomTom, time to get up.
Ah no Dad, just let me finish my dream.
OK, but fast forward it, fella.
Five mins later: Come on, up you get!
It’s about Father Christmas, Dad.
Well, to stay on his good side you better get up, my boy.
He LOVES me Dad, I’m his best client!
~~~oo0oo~~~
A letter from an earlier time – dictated to Ma Aitch:
Off to the Palmiet River with Josh, James, Lungelo & TomTom. I’m the Dad.
Crossing the stream I took their kit so they could cross unencumbered. And so who dropped Tom’s bag but me. It fell below my feet in a little rapid, and – luckily – got stuck. Dad! He shouts. My Walkman is in there! I should have carried it myself!
Reaching down I find there’s something big and rubbery caught between my lap and my chest preventing me from getting down past my toes to snag the bag. It’s my boep.
This sets me giggling, so now I have a jumping rubbery thing stuck between my lap and my chest and an irritated son who can’t understand why I don’t just reach further and grab, but I’m perched on a rock, short on reach and laughing, so I’m not much use.
Bliksem! I’m going to touch my toes ten times this evening. Well, reach towards them anyway. After supper.
After catching & releasing their usual crop of dragonfly nymphs, fish fry, freshwater prawns and water beetles, they get bored and turn to throwing with a stone. Each throw is accompanied by a triumphant YES! and a fist pump.
Oy! I remonstrate. Focus, you lot! Set a real target and hit it, don’t just gooi and shout YES! like you scored a goal for Arsenhole, you wengers.
SO I line them up. RIGHT: Five stones each and I’ll nominate a target. See that big white rock in mid-stream? (about a metre high, 1.5m wide and 15m away). That’s your target. Easy Peasy, Dad!
Not one hit. NOT ONE. Twenty consecutive misses. They were humble for a full three seconds.
They were much better at catching. I got each one to perch on a rock in the rapids and threw marshmallows at them from 10m. They each caught three and only a total of two dropped in the Palmiet (and got eaten anyway).
And you can see they’ve all had caring Moms: Here’s your cooldrink (a 2litre bottle of 7up Zero). Drink up and pass on.
Where are the cups to drink out of?
Just sip and pass on. Make sure there’s less, not more in the bottle after you sip.
I’m not allowed to let it touch my lips.
Why not?
Germs.
Germs are good for you. DRINK!!
They all drank.
Gonna have to take them camping. Toughen them up.
And yes I did gooi stones at that rock and I hit it dead square every time. I grew up gooing wif a stone.
We were moving don’t ask me why. I would happily die here, I said to Aitch. “It’s outside the best schools’ catchment area” Aitch said to me. Which was why I was loading stuff into a rented trailer after fifteen years in River Drive.
Look, it wasn’t a bad trailer. It was – OK, it was a BIG trailer. And it was cheap. It was covered, too, in case it rained, which it didn’t. We had picked Pickfords to do the bulk removal, but I was doing the fragile and precious stuff, me being reliable, dependable, organised, punctual – OK, slightly some of those. We were only moving about 4km to our new temporary home while Aitch searched in earnest for her ideal place.
Picture frames, certain favourite big terracotta pot plants, some old furniture was expertly packed by me, learning as I went.
So I hitched it to the kombi and off we go. River Drive is right at the bottom – where you have to be to be on a river – so I gunned the kombi up the steep hill. She battled at first but then seemed to catch power and roared off lustily. I started humming that song from the removals ad on TV. Y’know: The toothless ou driving along oblivious that his load is falling off the back . . ?
A glance in the mirror showed the trailer right there behind me. Except it was getting smaller . . . Whoa! The trailer had escaped! Which is why the kombi had suddenly felt quick! I watched in horror as it careered down the hill heading straight for Geoffrey’s new gate and wall!
Yanking up the handbrake, I leapt out and ran after it in slow motion, like in a movie. Pointlessly. What would I have done if I’d caught it? Luckily it slewed to the right and hit a small palm tree on the pavement just before Geoff’s gate and smacked to a halt.
Ignoring the big gouge out of the tar where the disselboom had hit the ground, I reversed the kombi up to it, hitched it up again (checking the ball hitch more closely this time), and gunned the kombi up the steep hill . . .
I would clean the potting soil off the pictures later.
footnote: We found a lovely new home in the Palmiet River valley right near “the right schools,” just as Aitch had planned. Then – Murphy's Law - the kids were sent off to a remedial school in town 20km away!! The best-laid plans of mice and Aitch . . .
Aitch did have the last laugh, though:
~~oo0oo~~
Hey, I went haring round on my bike on Sunday – first time in a long time! A friend took the kids on the 10km fun ride, so I had no-one to shepherd and could indulge meself.
This was just like the old days. Single track, through pine forests, up and down rocky paths, across streams and along game trails. Flat-out downhill, bones shaking apart and quite often thinking Oh, sh*t, now I’ve gone a bridge too far and I’m going to see my arse!” But I only fell once and then in slow motion down a very steep rocky path when my front wheel jammed against a rock and I slowly went over the handle-bars to land safely in the grass.
On some of the tight turns they had banked the corners, so you could hit them leaning right down and squeeze your back brake and skid round and jerk upright just in time for the next corner. Lekk-aah!
The trail started near the Umtamvuna river and the high point was on the cliff-edge overlooking the gorge in the wildlife reserve with the white-water rapids far below – stunning! (see feature pic – not mine).
Uphills, though “r not us.” I get off and push and enjoy the scenery. Everyone granny-gears their way past me, then I whizz past many of them on the downhills.
Gravity likes me.
~~oo0oo~~
Gayle, who had accompanied the kids gave this report: At the top of the first long climb, not 2km into their 10km ride Tom turned to her and asked:
Gayle, how much did it cost to enter this?
Twenty Rand Tom, she replied.
Well, I think I’ve had my Twenty Rands’ worth, he puffed.
Gayle managed to get him to the finish.
The next year we did it again, the kids old hands by now:
School. Always more forms to fill in. Why, just recently Tom was going on an outing and he reminded me to fill in his indignity form . . .
I am not known for braai’ing. Anything but. I avoid it if I can.
If God had wanted men to ‘barbecue’ he would not have invented ovens. Or some such excuse.
I am quite good at watching okes braai.
But living in primitive country it’s inevitable that I have to set fire to something every now and then and cook something on it. Tom does it for me now, and does it well, but I remember the first time he assisted me. When it came time to present the offerings he stood up for me:
He said: “The meat’s not burnt, it’s just the way we cooked it”
Aitch and I took Jess & Tom up Table Mountain in Cape Town. We took the cable car up, and Aitch took it down as well.
Here the kids are – about to walk down Platteklip Gorge.
They bounded down like rock rabbits. I felt my knees wobbling about halfway down, so I sat down ‘to examine some interesting little flowers’. Was stiff for three days after!
TomTom keeps a beautiful American corn snake in captivity in a vivarium in his room. He loves her. I say if you love her, set her free. He doesn’t like that. Thinks his Dad is weird. I’m strict with him on cleanliness, feeding and water, temperature, etc, as he would easily forget. She gets a rat a week to swallow, carefully thawed and presented hygienically for consumption. The tank has an air temperature and moisture gauge to monitor that things stay right for Flaky.
Yep, Flaky the snaky.
As she grew we increased her accommodation to this double-story setup:
Once after moving her cage nearer the window so she could catch more sun as the days got colder, Tom came running into my room:
“Dad, Flaky’s humanity is up to 99%” he shouts.
Cousin Robbie gets married to Sarah, and after the wedding – maybe it was all that “giving away” talk in church? – TomTom has a sudden thought:
Dad, will Robbie still be our cousin now?
Yes, boy, and in fact you now have another cousin: Sarah.
YAY!!
*(to add Rob Sarah wedding pic)*
Aitch’s work entailed a fair bit of travel. Daily, overnight, local flights, even some overseas conferences. One night before she left to the Midlands on conference she told the kids she’d be away and the subject of bribery came up. She was told politely but firmly that “a hug and a kiss are NOT OK as a ‘suh-prize'” homecoming prezzi anymore. Those were still welcome, but some hard assets such as cash, toys or sweets seemed to be preferred.
Truth be told, Aitch liked that! She was into gifts – giving and receiving.
We now have two more females in the household! And the one is making deposits bedonnered.
Never one to do things by halves, Aitch has reacted to my firm “NO WAYS” for a new dog by getting TWO puppies: One is here already. Jess calls her “Shadow”. The other has been born and arrives in a few weeks’ time. Both black bitches.
I said to Tommy: It’s you ‘n me, boy!
TomTom phones his Mom on her mobile. He’s a bit upset.
“What’s Dad’s number, Mom?” he asks (he knows hers off-by-heart).
So Aitch gives it to him, thinking “How’s he going to remember it?”
“I’m putting it in now” he says, beeping away as she says it.
“But Tom, you can’t on a landline, it doesn’t work that way”
“Waaaah!”
Background:
He was hurrying to present his case to the more pliable parent before Tobias the gardener could report his misbehaviour!
Thought he could sway Dad if he got in early.
Bad luck: He got grounded.
One just this morning.
What should a great Dad do when his 5yr-old child comes running into the bedroom early in the morning grinning from ear to ear and squeaking breathlessly “Dad, Dad, come and look what I found! I found something new!”
Where, TomTom?, I grunted. And why is your head wet?
“In the bathroom, come look! It’s a fountain, Dad!”
I should have jumped up and gone and danced under the fountain with him.
Instead I said It’s the bidet, Tom, don’t make a mess.
“No, Dad, it’s not a bee day, it’s a fountain!” said TomTom.
He was right, of course.
Later, when I went through, the bathroom was flooded, the magazines next to the loo were soaked, and the washing in the wicker basket was soggy.
But he was ecstatic, and I shoulda got soaked with him. And I only thought of it once he’d beetled off to school.
Dammit.
Aitch’s Dad made interesting school lunches for her way back in the days that she attended some sandstone school in Muizenberg or somewhere. So she feels moved to enhance the kids’ lunches. I would give them peanut butter sarmies 5/7, but Aitch makes “tortoises” in a jaffle iron, meat sarmies, hot dogs, eg.
This week she made the resident grade one pastafarian his favourite best: Two minute noodles AND macaroni n cheese. In separate compartments of his high-tech lunchbox.
That afternoon she couldn’t wait (cool is not one of Aitch’s traits): “What did you think of your lunch today, Tommy?” she urged, expectantly.
And bless him, he rose to the occasion.
“Mom!” he said. “When I opened my lunch Mrs Button was ‘ghast!”
Um, really, TomTom?
“Yes. She was astonished and asked Where are your sandwiches?”
“And I laughed so hard that the sky moved”.
Now we’re driving home. Dad, did you see the lions come to drink and the one crocodile ate the little lion cub?
No, TomTom, where did you see that?
On TV.
Dad, if I was a crocodile I’d just live on the water and not eat babies. I’d be a vegetarian to other animals!
~~oo0oo~~
