A special place is Montclair. I’ve been here seventeen years now. Longer than I was downtown, or at Musgrave or Pavilion!
My car guard is 80yrs old, a proud member of the McGregor clan. Knows exactly what the weather is going to do each day and tells me with unerring accuracy. “Sunny tomorrow”. The next day if it’s raining: “I knew it would rain today”. Never wrong. Knowledgeable on birds, too. Two drongos attack a kite, dive-bombing it. “Look, that mother bird is teaching the two young ones to fly”. Had me searching the skies hopefully recently for an albatross that hangs around here. “It just flew over. Yes, an albatross. It’s here all the time,” she says. It would be a lifer for me and it would have all the birders in Durban flocking to the centre if there really was an albatross in Montclair! Of course it could be a wagtail.
The bane of her life is school holidays when the youngsters of Montclair use HER roof to kiss, cuddle, grope and “who knows what else!” She chases them off like they’re alien vagrants. When pressed she will confess she was a handful herself in the old days in Joburg. She worked at the Norwood Pick n Pay and frequented the Braamfontein & Downtown pubs, Wolmarans Street was one I remember her telling me about. Speaks fondly of the Victoria Hotel and the Station Hotel.
If I leave my lights on she marches into the shop: “Where’s your boss?” she’ll bellow. Stentorian, you could call her voice. Demure, not so much. And off she’ll go with my keys to switch them off for me. If I’m around when she returns she’ll deliver a short lecture about the battery. I know it off by heart, of course, but she’ll repeat it. She also gleefully tells us when the lift is working (which is often) to save me the extra twenty metres I would walk to the immobile lift.
Knows all the skinder does Bridget. Which shop got robbed, who did it, what the cops said, her opinion. What the punters at the tote on the roof do and say, whether they have won or lost. How much they drink. Who drinks inside at the bar and who saves money by drinking standing around an open boot with a strong cane and coke mixture in polystyrene cups.
What a centre. Whose car guard comes to fetch them in the shop, pops up a golf umbrella and walks them to their car every time it rains? Mine does.
Stayed at Oxbow Lodge one cold winter night. Can’t remember if we were childful yet or child-free. The whole lodge is tightly squeezed in a narrow space between the road and the river. Our little rondawel was icy: Concrete walls, thin iron windows with flimsy curtains, a slate floor. The bed looked and felt like an ice cream tub. We fired up the gas heater and went off to find supper.
The bar / dining room / lounge area was big and bleak but warmer than our room. Supper was delicious: a big hot filling stew. Maybe oxbone? With sherry.
Plus we had one more great reason to settle down and stay: Lovely jazz music was playing over the speakers perched on the cornices. After a while I went to enquire at the pub. The lovely lady at reception showed me the CD cover below. We have listened to it ever since. *Click Play* and hear it y’self:
Back in the rondawel it was still cold but Oxbow back then was an oasis in the frigid winter Lesotho highlands. There was nowhere else to go for miles. Anyway, we were young and soon heated up the bed knowhatimean.
The rocky, waterfall-strewn river right outside was frozen solid the next morning, miles of ice and beauty in bright sunshine. Still freezing though.
I hardly ever carried a camera back when I was beautiful and had just the one chin. “I’m video’ing it in my head” I would say.
Of course now I’m really grateful other people carried cameras and I could get pics from them. Even in the days when you loaded a roll of film in the dark and wound it on by hand frame-by-frame some people carried cameras. I salute them!
And I admit I would grumble when they said “Stand closer together” “Smile” “Hang on! Just one more!”. Of course some people would think they had put in the roll of film when they hadn’t and all our posing (“poeseer!” remember SanMarie the game ranger’s joke?) was in vain. Yes, I’m thinking of you Taylor. He posed us in various ways on a buffalo carcase and when we eagerly asked for the photies weeks later (they’d had to go off “for development” of course) he had to sheepishly admit he hadn’t had a roll of film in his steam-driven camera. Luckily Trish had been there and took this:
Anyway, my memory of that moment was much better than his pic would have been: I remember a bloody carcase with glistening red meat still on the bone and lion prints around the sandy scene. We were posing looking over our shoulder, worried the lions might chase us off their prey at any minute. When later we did get a pic from someone better organised than Taylor – Trish – the truth was far more mundane. The photo spoilt a good story! Here we were, not one of us looking over a shoulder:
Intrepid non-photographer on the left with impressive camera bag, no fillum
So although I do have some slight regrets I still think I was generally more “in the moment” than many camera-occupied companions over the years – and I saw more birds. Anyway, my memories of what happened are usually far better than boring reality. Usually I play the starring role in them.
Once I met Aitch things changed of course and we had a fulltime photographer in the house. The years from 1986 are well documented. Then the kids arrived and the number of pics went through the roof. Thank goodness for digital! Even now when we drive through a game reserve Jess will say “Mom would have said ‘Stop! Go back!’ and you would have to reverse and she’d take a picture of a flower, remember?”
With cameras as ubiquitous as they now are all this smacks of days gone by. I was prompted to write this post when I read this yesterday: ‘If a millennial goes to a beautiful place but doesn’t get a photo, did they ever really go?’…
To end, some advice for Taylor:
Here’s a graph showing camera sales in 1000’s since 1933:
An optometrist friend of mine is a bit scatter-brained at times. He wouldn’t argue with that. He got a phone call once while seeing his last patient of the day. He had fitted him in late and told the staff “You go home, I’ll lock up.”
Halfway through the test the phone rang and he went to the reception desk to answer it. He listened carefully, said “Yes, Yes” and agreed to get home soon.
He then left the office, locked up and went home – a twenty minute drive.
After he’d been home awhile he suddenly remembered!! Omigawd! He leapt into his car and roared back to the practice, unlocked and walked in to where the man was still sitting in the chair.
The poor man was the first to speak: “Doctor, I hope you don’t mind, I moved the machine away from my face a little”.
Ahem, “Not at all” said my man and carried on examining the poor humble guy’s eyes.
Man, was he lucky with WHO it was. He coulda got ROASTED! His staff told the story for years afterwards!
New Year in Ponta Milibangalala. We joined the Hills at their traditional campsite. It’s a magnificent beach in the Maputo Elephant Reserve. Back in 1990 it was uncrowded and perfect. They’ve been going there for a couple of decades and are very well known and liked by the Ele Reserve staff.
– The Padre d’água surveys his domain –
One day we need supplies. Dave says come along to ‘Ponta’, which means Ponta de Ouro – there are a lot of Pontas but Saffers call de Ouro just ‘Ponta’. We head south along the beach you’re not allowed to drive on. It’s much quicker than taking the road inland. At one rocky point you have to leave the beach, up over the dune and then back onto the beach around the point.
We roar up the dune, crest the rise and . . . there’s a boom across the track. A security guard in uniform stands up to stop us, raising his hand in the universal language of ‘halt!’.
I start rehearsing an acquiescent speech: Yes, its true we were on the beach and no, we aren’t actually allowed on the beach, but it was an emergency (fetching beer) and . . . . . . Dave’s foot doesn’t budge a millimetre on the accelerator. He waves his arm imperiously in an upward motion, signalling in that same universal language ‘open up!’ He leans out the window and shouts “Oy! Vul’isango! Padre d’água!” as he roars straight at the boom with undiminished speed.
Now, never mind that Oy! is Irish or Yiddish, Vulisango! is isiZulu and only Padre d’água! would have been understood (I understand it’s Portuguese for “His Excellency David Hurle Hill, Acting Minister of Water Affairs for all Mocambique”), Dave gets his message across via international sign language, and the suitably impressed security guard flings the boom up with alacrity, barely managing to stop himself from saluting as we roar through without a backward glance.
Gotta admire the pirate in Hill. His swash isn’t easily buckled.
~~~oo0oo~~~
I often put myself in another man’s moccasins, so I’m imagining being a guard at a boom gate on a remote Mocambican beach, sitting in the hot African sun, dozing off, wishing I had something cold to drink and that I could find a better job, when a roar awakes me and I jump up to stop a 4X4 roaring up the dune.
Ha! I think, South African numberplate! I’ll nail this fella. It’s illegal to drive on the beach here, I’ll stop him, give him a piece of my mind and tell him about the fine. Maybe he has a cold drink on board. What? Something, Something, Padre d’água! Oh, shit, he looks important and he has a very authoritarian way about him. And he’s not stopping! I’ll just open the boom and then when he stops I’ll ask him what the . .
Oh. He’s gone . . . the first vehicle in over a month and he didn’t even stop.
I sit back down in the hot African sun wishing I had something cold to drink and could find a better job.
~~~oo0oo~~~
This reminds me of a tale Dave tells of his time working in California. Bachelor days. Once again he is driving a pickup with a mate sitting next to him; This time he did stop, however. At a red light.
He’s telling a story, an animated story like Hill can tell a story and the mate is listening, but he can also see that the light has turned green and Dave is so deep into the telling he hasn’t noticed.
He interrupts the flow of words, nods at the lights and pronounces: “Ain’t gonna get any greener.”
A cold front creeps in from the southwest, bringing Cape Town weather to Durbs. A view from my rooftop parking spot as I left work for home this evening. Disappointingly, it doesn’t look as impressive in the pic as I thought it would!
Pleez pleez Dad! I haven’t seen her for AGES! (yeah, like one week). OK, I’ll fetch her Friday on the way home from work. I enjoy that back route anyway. Instead of taking the N2 national highway then onto the N3 national highway at Spaghetti Junction and home, this route takes me through Yellowwood Park with its dark avenues of huge old yellowwood trees planted around 1885 by Dering Stainbank the sugar baron (don’t take my history at face value, but it’s something like that).
On past the Stainbank nature reserve, over the one-way bridge across the Umhlatuzana River, through the narrow tunnel under the railway line, through the cement factory that Mike Doyle used to run. Up into Bellair past the driveway lined by an avenue of huge palm trees that dwarf the house, past the impressive Albert Luthuli hospital, across the Mkombaan River and into Chesterville at the big shisanyama and beer hall. Andile is waiting outside her home, she hops in and we drive past the Pavilion shopping centre and into Westville and home.
The two girls whoop and give each other a big hello and a hug. Then Andile promptly disappears into the bedroom and Jess into the lounge and they don’t see or speak to each other till suppertime! Of course they may have been busily engaged with each other and a dozen friends on their social media, for all I know. Wifi, after all.
Hate it, but it’s true: Things fade. A month late on our annual tribute. Six years now. Don’t worry, you still do occasionally cause changes to the way we do things, and “But Mom said . . ” is still used to some effect!
Jess still regularly asks if there wasn’t more we could have done to save or cure Mom. When she hears of a new treatment for some or other disease she’ll ask “Why didn’t they do this for Mom?” I explain the difference between bacteria and viruses and cancer to her each time.
Here’s what she wrote to you this Mothers Day:
Yeah, I cried . . .
She was on her Bhejane field guide course up north of Hluhluwe and lonely as anything. Her selfie was taken in the little wooden Wendy hut she stayed in. I love the brave smile.
Jaynee J had a luxury courtesy suite at Centurion Park cricket ground and she invited us to watch a game. The Springboks / Proteas were playing someone in an international test match. 2001, so Sri Lanka, maybe.
Jayne didn’t call it a courtesy suite; she called it her ‘champagne suite’. Jayne Janetsky could POUR, and – as always – she had laid in enough stock for a siege. Or a rainy day. And that day Centurion Park was not like this:
– internet picture –
It was like this:
– me telling Jessie “See love, this is cricket: Not much happens” –
This led to puddle-jumping with Jess behind the stadium:
I had great fun watching the people. Especially a guy in the next-door Telkom box, scanning the crowd with powerful binoculars, looking for girls. Whenever he saw someone watching him he’d say “I’m looking for my sister.”
We had to take two year-old Jessica along and it wasn’t really her thing. It rained off and on, so we were indoors with Celebrity Guest Barman Johnno Green, who was intent on quality control, sampling and plying. Boobs and Booze. Aitch and I took turns amusing Jess and keeping her (mostly) out of the adults’ hair.
After a while (cricket matches carry on and on and when you think they MUST be finished, surely? – they stop for tea) I had to feed and change Jess and decided to take her back to Jayne’s home. Change of scenery for her and a break for the adults.
On the way back to the stadium, with freshly-fed and -wiped Jessie strapped in the car seat behind me, I missed the freeway off-ramp to the stadium. Didn’t have a clue how I’d get back to the stadium now, so I was kinda tense and focused and fuming. What if I missed Jayne’s famous lunch? Finally I figured it out and managed a tricky u-turn after the next off-ramp and got back on track. Finally I could relax.
Hey, they’re making a movie on the life of heart surgeon Professor Chris Barnard.
The 3rd of December 2017 will mark the 50th anniversary of the world’s first heart transplant, so they obviously want to cash in on that.
Aitch worked with him after his heyday until he retired. On 14 December 1983 she went to his farewell. See the post she entered in her diary below (CNB = Christiaan Neethling Barnard).
Barnard & Aitch
I wonder who they’ll get to play Aitch? Maybe Olga Kurylenko, Bond girl in Quantum of Solace?
And I wonder what percentage we’ll get of the gross earnings? Surely they won’t cut her kids out of the proceeds?
~~oo0oo~~
Barnard wrote a book One Life. If I wrote a book on Aitch I’d call it One Wife.
~~oo0oo~~
Later: A new book published shortly after this post featured Aitch in a group picture taken at that farewell.
Going off the (electricity and water) grid is too much of mission and the costs don’t justify it.
And I hate it that I just said that, so I’m committing to re-looking at it.
Last time I looked at solar water heating (meant to be the no-brainer) the cost was so much higher than Eskom that I hesitated. Then they told me the system would likely only last for 5 or 6 years and so I did what I do well: procrastinated.
It also turned out to be more technical and complicated than I thought. People who have done it always say “Ag it was nuthing! I just did this and that”. Not true! Here’s a pic that demonstrates this – Proud Brian B of Tokai with his system (admittedly a borehole, not just roofwater):
Holy guacamole, this is NOT for me! I will start off with catching rainwater off my roof. Then I’ll tiptoe on to investigating solar water heating. After that we’ll see. And I’ll report in unvarnished fashion with no hidden costs.
Watch this space! (But don’t hold your breath).
Update: I fitted two solar geysers, one for the main house, one for the cottage; and I bought a bigger Jojo tank than Brian’s. But I sold in 2021 and moved before catching roofwater for the big Jojo.
~~oo0oo~~
2025: Now I’m off the grid. My new home runs on solar power; I have water tanks for when municipal water fails; water heating is currently by gas geyser – lpg, so changing that to solar is next.
When Mary Bland’s great friend Joey de Beer – later Jo Onderstall, author and talented botanist in Nelspruit’s Lowveld Botanic Gardens – heard Mom had decided to go nursing after matric back in 1945, she said in her forthright way: “What a waste of a good brain!” She was so right! Mom could have done anything.
Typical Mom, she was doing it to help her Mom Annie, widowed two years before. Not only would Annie not have to pay tuition and boarding, Mom would actually be earning a salary.
This from my LepSoc newsletter: Hi everyone; We will be doing a day trip to Tswaing crater, just north of Pretoria, on the 24th September, where special butterflies such as Brown-lined Sapphires, Saffron Sapphires, Hutchinson’s Highfliers, etc. can be seen.
~~~~o0o~~~~ Us lepidopterists move in privileged circles. We see not only these high fliers, but other characters such as Skollies, Nightfighters, Pirates, Policemen and Admirals. Playboys, Pansies and Painted Ladies are also sought-after! One can go prancing after them wearing a pith helmet and waving a net! What’s not to love?
There’s even one called swanepoeli and one called braueri
Lepidopterism is one of the more fun diseases to contract, and I’m tallying you, lepidopterists lead exciting lives! ~~o0o~~
Soutar wrote:
Keep your net stockings on.
We off to Karkloof today. Will try to bring back a dead Karkloof Blue.
That and a Pink Elephant.
~~~~o0o~~~~
Me:
¶¶ . . and a Stuffed Delegorgue’s Pigeon, a Dead Cape Parrot and . .
¶¶ Planks from a Yellowwood Tree . . ¶¶
Hey! We could write a song like that . . .
~~~~o0o~~~~
A Real-Life Lepidoptometrist:
Hilton Pike is a nimble optometrist fella who darts around lithely with a butterfly net, holding it rather like Obelix doesn’t hold his menhirs. A talented lad, young Hilton, he builds fancy hi-fidelity speakers, refurbishes phoropters and mounts butterflies with pins on polystyrene in glass cabinets, all the while making children. Lovely chap, I miss him. Where is he?
Swanepoel, David Abraham (1912–1990). Swanepoel began collecting in 1925. Pennington’s Butterflies of southern Africa (Pringle et al. 1994) describes Swanepoel as follows: ‘Probably no other person has spent as much time and effort in the pursuit of butterflies in the field as this great collector, who had the tremendous gift of being able to excite others about butterflies. His immaculate collection is in the Transvaal Museum. He discovered many new species and subspecies and published many descriptions of new taxa.’
– pinned specimens – from DA Swanepoel’s book –
His list of publications includes the book Butterflies of South Africa: where, when and how they fly, published in 1953 in Holland at his own cost. At the time, it was one of the most valuable reference guides to South African butterflies, citing his many collection localities across the length and breadth of South Africa. He collaborated closely with both Georges van Son and Ken Pennington. Popular names for many of South Africa’s butterflies were proposed by him. ( SANBI Biodiversity Series 16 (2010)6 ).
Swanepoel ended his book with these words: ‘In laying down my pen at the end of what has been to me a pleasurable task, I take occasion to dedicate this book to all naturalists and friends, without whose kindness and ungrudging aid it must inevitable have left much to be desired; and to those naturalists who may one day wander over the numerous paths that have afforded me so many happy, unforgettable hours – these would hardly have been possible without the grace of the Creator of all the beautiful forms described in this book. As mentioned in the introduction, this work is by no means complete, and if one day it is revised by some future observer, may he fulfil my dearest wish by building a great entomological castle upon this small foundation stone.’ (Epilogue of D.A. Swanepoel’s book, page 316).
Read more about David A Swanepoel and other pioneering flutterby enthusiasts here.
Here are three of the butterflies named after him:
– Swanepoel’s Blue – Swanepoel’s Opal – Swanepoel’s Widow –
steve reed wrote: When we lived in Clarens we had an annual visitation by what must have been the self-same Swanepoel. Saith Stephanus: “Khaki clad solitary figure, fleet-footing round the village with his net like something out of Peter Pan. Regarded by the locals with great interest (and a good level of suspicion ) . . “
~~oo0oo~~
I was lucky enough to meet (and test his eyes and provide him with specs) Ivor Migdoll, who wrote the next butterfly book (as far as I know, the first field guide) in 1987. He came to me for his glasses in Durban, and we had some good chats and I loved using his book (since mislaid!).
– I must find my copy of Ivor’s book –
And of course we are all lucky now to have Steve Woodhall, who has built on these two books’ foundations – as well as the big Pennington Butterfly ‘bible’ – and brought out his vastly improved field guide in 2005. He tells the story of how Ivor Migdoll became ill and quietly withdrew from public life. Pippa Parker of Struik Nature told him they were planning a completely new edition of the Field Guide to Butterflies (Ivor’s best-selling book) but could not get hold of him. He did some digging and discovered that Ivor had a horrible, little-known condition called ‘burning mouth syndrome’ and could hardly speak. Hence his reluctance. Damn!
~~oo0oo~~
And so this magic new field guide was born without Ivor’s input. That’s sad.
Mom’s short-term memory has got a bit shaky since a TIA a few weeks ago.
Today she tells me she’s getting on famously. “I sat down at the piano and played a song I haven’t played in YEARS. My fingers just remembered it. It was ‘Maria Elena’ . I played it without a single mistake”.
Her sense of humour hasn’t changed one bit as she pauses, then muses:
“Of course, I may have played it last week”.
“Maria Elena” was written for the First Lady of Mexico, the wife of president Gil, by Lorenzo Barcelata (1898 – 1943), a Mexican composer. It topped the charts in 1941. In 1963 it reached No.6 in the US charts & No.5 in the UK charts.
~~~~oo0oo~~~~
Sheila told another lovely story in June 2012 – Thought you’d all enjoy this: My niece Linda was telling her gran Mary Methodist and me about a friend who had all his precious work stored on his laptop, but had failed to back up anything, anywhere. Aware of the potential dangers, he was very conscious about the possibility of having said laptop stolen, so when he had to go out one day, sans laptop, he hid it in the oven.
Well, you guessed it: Hours later he was met in the drive-way by a very embarrassed partner, who had done the unthinkable. The precious laptop was melted, done to a crisp, warped etc etc.
Oh no! interjects Mary, He had cooked the books!
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