– life – bokdrols of wisdom –
. . . into the real world.
We went to Mbona to vist Brooose and Heather on their one country estate. Took two kayaks and two fishing rods and four kids.
![IMG-20150929-WA0001[1]](https://i0.wp.com/bewilderbeast.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/img-20150929-wa00011.jpg?ssl=1)
‘Twas with great relief they got their noses back into their cellphones and the world of selfies and updates. Huh? What? Oh, did we enjoy the fishing? Oh, the real fishing on the dam, you mean? uh huh. Slight nod. They’re busy re-connecting.
Dad! I got 200 followers on instagram! Please can I buy some followers, Dad!? Ha! I now have 362 followers, more than Beast and Midnight! I’m second in our gang now, Dad. Only Lungu has more than me.
*sigh* How do you get followers, fella? You can buy them Dad. I mean besides that. Oh, I follow people and then when they follow me I just unfollow them. Oh so they’re real, true friends. Blank look.
Hmm. Oh, and also if you post awesome pictures, people follow you.
OK. Do you post pics of the pool and the kayak and Sambucca the gorgeous labrador and . .?
A look of immense sadness and deep pity clouds his face. Dad! How lame. We post pics of ourselves! Selfies!
How thrilling fella.
.
Maybe like this one?
What a farcking week from hell. ‘Queen’ Lizzie thought her anus was horribilis, what does she know, she’s got footmen and pages kissing hers.
My week was frightful. My son is plugging horribly (as in one subject at 50% the other ten all less with the depths plumbed in Geography at 15%); I got yet another person telling me I’m acting ratty causing me to see my GP who put me on Sort-You-Out pills. Of course they’re exaggerating, but they may have a tiny little sort-of point: I spent two hours at Tom’s school – more than doubling the total time I’ve spent there this year waiting to get his confiscated cellphone back, eventually going to the lady teacher’s home across the road to retrieve it from her! I call it “Not taking no for an answer.” Some critics may call it ratty.
I took TomTom to an Educational Psychologist where I reversed into some oke’s car in the parking lot; His fucking Audi A4 right front door was suddenly his prized asset and will take R10 876 in the shade to touch up with 1½ml of white paint. I didn’t even notice I’d bumped it. Tom said, Dad I think you hit that car. I went to look and had to put on my plus-fours to see the scratch.
My computer farcked out just when I needed to send emails for this farking book I’m compiling and running late on; I took my sister’s car for a valet as I thought it was a bit dodgy that the boot struts were soggy and she needs the boot to stay open while she unloads wine and turns out the fuckin’ clutch is shot;
I clean forgot about a date to join friends at the KZN symphony whatsit at the town hall – embarrassing! SSSA want my fucking fingerprints so I can attend the smugfest at Sun City (literally want my fingerprints – “register biometrically” they say). Damned if I’ll do that. Jeeeeesh!
BUT: Jessie had a great week at Work Experience; she worked hard at a busy B&B; My canoeing mate is visiting from Aussie and I met him and a dozen others for a few too many beers like the olden daze; Tom cooked a great supper and washed the dishes afterwards; The two Educ Psych’s are real mensch’s and hit it off like a house on fire with my Tom. The oke is a KZN fisherman and a chef – two of Tom’s prime interests! He even owns a chef school! – AND – how’s this for a great recommendation – he’s my age! Both brats still give me huge hugs (Tom makes sure no-one is watching and says LUV you Daddy as he hugs – how’s that!? It’s a healthy counterpoint to “fuck that” to some of my other suggestions anyway! Both read to me most nights; Work made target; Tobias is growing delicious veggies; Cecelia is great and is fetching her matric mid-year results tomorrow);
All is well in the world.
Even Jessie’s dull brown curtains in her room are glowing tonight!
‘Kinell
All Worth It!
Oh, and don’t forget: Sambucca the part-greyhound labrador still thinks the sun rises at 5.30pm when I get home and she sets off for a lap of sheer delight around the trailer.
~~oo0oo~~
That word: When accused of resorting to cursing because of not having a good vocabulary, Billy Connolly said,
"Bullshit! I know loads of words.
I just happen to LIKE "fuck."
'kinell - taught me in an Irish pub in Waterval Boven; the Shamrock Arms - See https://bewilderbeast.org/2017/03/19/kinell-2/
Jessie had another magic concert at school. Singing and dancing with gay abandon.
As I drove home it struck me:
I hadn’t taken a single picture! Damn!
I’d have been in big trouble under a previous regime!
Got one from the teachers
VOORTREKKER HISTORY WEEKEND
FRIDAY 31st JULY - 18H00 Meet Ken in the Conference Room for a talk, “Zulu Military Systems”.
SATURDAY 1st AUGUST - 09H00 Depart for the Kerkenberg, to see where Piet Retief’s daughter wrote her father’s name on the rock; and the Kaalvoetvrou (barefoot woman) Monument at Retief’s Pass. From this magnificent vantage point on the edge of the Drakensberg escarpment, you’ll be told the story of the arrival of the Voortrekker parties, Retief’s visit to King Dingane and the tragedy that unfolded in the valleys below.
Return to The Cavern in time for lunch.
Ken makes it all come to life. But no thanks. I had enough of “the arrival of the Voortrekker parties” back in the sixties and early seventies to last me a few more decades, thank you. “The Great Pull” – Die Groot Trek – was an oft-repeated, always mocked theme throughout my lo-ong Free State school years.
Before we had Boy Scouts in Harrismith my good mate Leon Crawley joined the FrontPullers as we used to call them. The Voortrekkers. Later he told me they were going on a camp and made it sound so good I asked if I could join them. Only if I ‘sluited aan’ said the Kommandant and Korporaal and Hoofleier and all those other menacing military-sounding mense that ran it. With their berets and badges and uniforms.
So I sluited aan for short-term gain and went to a pre-camp session, then joined them for that camp in winter in a wattle plantation on a farm outside Swinburne. Bok Venter’s farm. Where we sang lying songs and listened to lies exaggerations.
I did have fun, but I resigned the next week. Or probly just let things lapse. So yes, I abused the Voortrekkers, I’m afraid. Used them, rather. Used, not abused.
I remember the tents: Canvas with sloping roof and vertical walls, wooden poles, rough hessian rope guys, some metal pegs some wooden pegs. Who remembers wooden tent pegs?
No groundsheet, just bare dusty ground – no grass grows in a wattle plantation. We didn’t pitch them, they were ready-pitched. We didn’t dig trenches on the uphill side, though best practice said you had to do that – though it must be said there’s very little chance of rain in a Vrystaat winter. I didn’t think the FrontPullers weren’t big on actual camping lore though, and that’s what I wanted to learn. I had American Boy Scout books and I wanted the camping and survival stuff, not the history stuff.
A few years later we started Scouts: 1st Harrismith Troop. Father Sam van Muschenbroek, Anglican dominee, Charlie Ryder, electrician, and Dick Clarke, electrician with the municipality, led the way. They gave up their time, skill and resources for us. Now that was fun. Sure, the uniform was also military-like, but it felt more . . . anti-establishment somehow. Had I known more about British army atrocities in SA and the Scouts’ beginning in the British army in Mafeking in the Boer War I may have had a different outlook, I’m sure. I hope.
But, ignorant, I loved it! The 50 Mile hike down Normandien Pass. A blind-folded trip to Nondela and a compass-guided walk back.
Being a Patrol Leader, choosing our name as Cheetah Patrol with brown and burnt orange shoulder tabs. Fishing. Canoeing. Cooking meals. Camping out. Sleeping out alone – character-building – that was a lo-ong night! Killing my first chicken, plucking and cooking it – character-building also. Building rafts and platforms. Watching a sheep being slaughtered – can’t have mutton without death, right? Father Sam of the Anglican church ran Scouts, assisted by Dick Clarke our municipal electrician, and Charlie Ryder, electrician and Dusi canoeist. Robbie and Wally Sharratt supported us and let us use their farms.
Good times, good people.
~~~oo0oo~~~
voortrekker – trekking ahead; pioneer
sluited aan – joined;
Die Groot Trek – almost mythical epic heroic trek into the interior; actually trekking away from the abolition of slavery and British rule of law, no?
The one is still fully original:
The other has had various titanium and plastic parts fitted, and electronic, leather and wooden accessories attached*.
Both were seen at LindiLou’s Tarr Roses Open Day.
.
*Titanium knee, plastic knee, titanium specs, plastic spec lenses, plastic lens implants, electronic hearing aids, Omega watch, leather hat & shoes, wooden walking stick.
This time in winter. Tom loved it. Caught many small blacktail, karanteen, bronze bream, one shad and stayed on the rocks for hours. I had to fetch him and march him to the showers threatening not to feed him till he smelt civilised.
When we got there Monday I found I had only forgotten the tent poles, the flysheet, the groundsheet, the kettle and the food, but otherwise we were Be Prepared. Like Boy Scouts. .
Get the kids to put together a check list for next camping trip while the discomfort is still fresh in their memories…. Tape it to the inside of the bakkie. And put them in charge of “equipment”
Yeah right, Just joking. my two would just roll their eyes…
(They both arrived last night on a flight from Auckland)
Ending the trip a day earlier – sounds familiar. I think it happens when the home comforts beckon.
Specially that new bathroom.
~o0o~
Kathy:
Thats so funny ! We forgot our tentpoles too once and had to crash on some poor chalets carpet as it was 4 hours from home . All five of us . very embarressing . But you beat me here ! Nice fishing Tom , Leo would be so jealous . Those two must fish together one day . And you know , kids, there is dad – killing himself and sleeping in the rain and they wanna watch videos and go home early . I can picture mine saying that too . I’d force them all to stay and we’d pull faces at each other for 2 days . You’re much wiser . We had this grim holiday in Port Alfred once where it rained nonstop and was freezing . J got flu and depression and stayed in bed . I tortured the kids for a week until J persuaded me to give up and go home . He drove back so fast and only stopped once for a sandwich – no peeing allowed . You win some , you lose some .
~o0o~
Its really dry here in Westville. Our resident troop of vervet monkeys are feeling it badly as they glean the area for food. I decided to put food out on the boundary away from the house for them to ‘fortuitously find’, but since the jungle gym has gone off to the grand-niece I had to find somewhere to place the food.
I put it out in a long trail from the garden bench to the corner of the yard, spread out so the big powder-blues don’t grab it all. Try and give the females and teenagers a chance at it too.
As I turned round I realised I had been followed by the plump black labrador. She’d hoovered up all the choice bits! She’d left the fruit, but even the bread had been labradored. Ah well, I’ll have to think of another way.
I gave her the bowls to lick.
Sambucca the Needy
Here’s the dismantled gym on the farm with its new owner:
Dad open up its urgent! Midnight at home, a bang on the front door.
Lots of blood all over him. He’s bleeding from a deep cut on his lower eyelid and a nick in the lid margin. My handsome boy is now handsome and, uh, interesting.
‘I fell against the metal deep freeze drawers.’ Damn! I’d meant to put those drawers back in the deep freeze. He and a mate were sleeping in the cottage on a Saturday night.
I staunch the bleeding and disinfect with gargle. It’s all I can find, we’ve re-arranged the house in the middle of renovations. Go to bed now, fella. Luckily only him injured, so I don’t have to please explain to any Moms of other 13yr-old boys.
Next morning I phone the ophthalmic surgeon on call. On the way to his rooms at Parklands hospital I say, “OK level with me: What happened?” I had seen shards of glass and found a broken bottle hidden behind the bed.
Two boys. A champagne bottle. ‘We couldn’t get the cork off.’ A tussle. ‘The wet bottle was slippery. We dropped it. It exploded.’
The eye man checks Tom and pronounces him OK. No stitch needed. Lucky lil bastids.
That was Sunday. On Monday his mates nicknamed him Scarface.
~~~oo0oo~~~
I used to have a simple beauty regimen:
For my face I would use Palmolive soap; For my body I would use Palmolive soap; For my wisp of hair I would use Palmolive soap; For my feet I would use Palmolive soap; Not to be too vain, but it worked for me, knowaddimean? I mean a quick glance will tell you:
Today was different. There was no Palmolive soap in the shower so instead I chose – from the vast array of expensive stuff that now fills the shower we’re all sharing while new bathrooms are being made –
Danger Time shower gel.
I came out smelling, so the blurb tells me, of
The Scent of Courage.
As the Axe ad said: A Step Up, Eksê! Watch out, damsels.
~~oo0oo~~
‘Break a leg!’
‘Hope you have lots of shit!’
Dusty Muffin’s blogpost on thespian good wishes.
I ‘met’ Dusty when I first started blogging. She gave me good advice – switch to wordpress.com – but I procrastinated and so lost everything on bewilderbeast.amagama.com. So then I finally switched to wordpress.com as Dusty had advised me earlier. Shoulda listened!
Luckily, I usually emailed my stuff to friends before posting it, so was able to reconstruct a lot of it.
Dusty now blogs at hakunamthatha.blogspot.com – go and check out her life in the Mthropolis of Mthatha.
~~oo0oo~~
As we were going to have a small wedding out in the sticks, we held a Pre-Nuptial-Party at Kingfisher Canoe Club back in 1988 to celebrate with friends who couldn’t make it or who hadn’t cracked the nod. Who to invite and who to discreetly ignore is one of the things that makes the lead-up to tying the knot vrot with danger as anyone who has gone singing to the gallows well knows.
I was reminded yesterday about that happy gathering by Barbara Mason, who I only occasionally see as she lives a normal and sane life, parallel to the madcap canoeing world that links me to her hubby Charles (him a legendary paddler, me a used-to-be wannabe).
She told me she quotes from my speech of that night to this day. I had forgotten that I’d even spoken, but she assures me I spake thus:
“Aitch and I gave careful consideration to the pros and cons of getting married, but we decided to go ahead and get married anyway.”
(Check the invite! Remember typewriters?)
Jess made a confession today.
When she got to Wendon she was eleven. In her class was Michael Z. He has a fulltime au pair who accompanies him to school and sits in all their classes. Mrs Tracy S soon became a firm favourite of the girls. They now call her Mrs S after a firm lecture was given to them about not thinking she’s their classmate.
But at the time they called her Tracy and Jess lurved her! (still does). One day after break in which the girls had been discussing a matter of some importance to them, 11yr-old Jess plucked up the courage to ask 32yr-old Mrs S – who had been in the staffroom at break – an important question:
Tracy, she asked, Are YOU going to smoke when you’re older?
. . and the Wilful Slackness of Old Toppies.
Soon after 16:44 yesterday Tom found me in Sportsman’s Warehouse.
“Dad! Why do you wait so long before you answer me? I whatsapp you and then you take AGES before you respond!”
Oh! How long about, TomTom?
“Hours! Or maybe ten minutes or more.”
Let’s check, shall we?
I show him the time sequence below: Three minutes total.
In his defence:
1- he was wanting me to check out a new speaker for his Rap Noise and it was really important and urgent – and he suspected I was going to say No! And he NEEDED it because today they’re travelling in the bus to play KES in Joburg!
2- he did look sheepish when he realised the enormous delays were in his head!
Meantime elsewhere a Jo’burg architect called Porter was making a good living and buying farms as a hobby. One of them became the Harold Porter Nature Reserve in Betty’s Bay. He sent his son Barry off to PMB varsity to get a BSc agric and then bought him a farm on the right bank of the Mkomazi opposite the Payns. This magnificent 5000 acre farm had the imposing Hella Hella mountain on it.
They called it Game Valley Estates and stocked it with nyala, impala, zebra, wildebeest and blesbok to add to the bushbuck, duiker, warthog, reedbuck and oribi that were there. That was the only time they ever stocked it. ca 1970.
Well, Barry had a Landrover cabriolet and wore short pants and long socks, and Lyn wore dresses so it was inevitable. They spotted each other across the mighty Mkomazi, their eyes locked and the two families were united in a river dynasty, solving the problem of parts of Barry’s farm being cut off from him and him having to traverse the Payn land to get to ‘Ottos.’
Except not really, as Barry and the Payn parents had quite a prickly relationship, kinda like porcupines meeting and sniffing but not embracing. So the farms were never united, Barry would grumble about how they didn’t appreciate the value of game fencing; when Mrs Payn put the farm up for sale and Barry could have negotiated they never got round to discussing a price and Trevor English bought it for a good price and Barry STILL had the prickly feeling of having to traverse someone else’s land to get to the other half of his farm! And English didn’t appreciate the value of game fencing.
Barry the bachelor stayed at Otto’s, so his and Lyn’s eyes actually probly locked while he drove his Landie across their lawn, not trans-river. Once they got wedlocked they moved up to Highover.
Where they had a little porcupine – rescued when a Ford F150 did a caesarian section on its Mom at 65mph. It used to scurry around in the walls of their house between the corrugated iron and the rhino board inner walls. They also had Warren there. We bumped into him by chance visiting Hella Hella a couple years ago, and together we checked out the ruins of the house up on Highover where he was born forty years prior.
Later Barry and Lyn built a lovely new home at the foot of the Hella Hella, and the little Wimbury baby girl was growing shapelier and shapelier and she went nursing at Addington where the Weermag had sentenced a newly-knighted luitenant in the Medical Corps to hard labour: “You arre herreby sentenced to live in Doctorrs’ Quarrterrs and test eyeballs, including those of the 600 nurses ensconced in the Addington Nurses Res”.
What could I do? I obeyed. One of them was called Richenda Wimbury and she said you must come with me to a farm called Hella Hella. I took a peek at her legs and said OK. And so I met Lyn and Barry. It was 1980.
Later Richenda did audiology and moved to Wentworth hospital where she met a cardiovascular perfusionist called Trish Humphrey in 1985, arranged a Sunday braai and introduced her new friend to me and my friend Bernie the Jet. That was Aitch and the rest of that part of this tale was history.
Barry now had two young girlfriends, and this latest one would botanise with him! They would spend hours with their bums in the air and their noses in the grass. He wrote a love letter to his Botanising Buddy:
See here for more.
In 1988 Aitch and I got married at Hella Hella. We had been frequent guests and would continue to visit often for years to come. The farm meantime had been declared a Natural Heritage site. It was going to be the first marriage on the farm, but a Pee Aitch (professional hunter) and his chick got excited one night around the braai fire and suddenly got married. Technically, you could call theirs a shotgun marriage, right?
Here you can see their Natural Heritage Site plaque and certificate on the wall behind the bride-to-be:
KCC mate Andre Hawarden made our wedding invites, complete with named rapids on the Dusi, Umgeni and Umko in case any guest wanted a quick paddle on the way!
We started raising kids around 1998 and that led to less visits. Later Barry & Lyn sold the farm to a consortium who finally united the two Hella Hella farms into one logical unit, doing what I wished Barry could have done decades earlier. Of course it’s always easy with someone else’s money! Oscar Wilde said “Advice is wonderful stuff – in the giving.”
They bought a lovely unit in a complex in Umzumbe on the KZN South Coast, and Barry hit the trail, traveling far and wide on birding trips. Their son Warren was selling big trucks nearby; Barry’s brother’s Litchi Farm was close – outside Port Shepstone; McDuff, the younger son did heavy duty diving (oil rigs n stuff) all over the world; Lyn got busily involved in the local ‘Akward Society’ as we joked – orchids – and other affairs. Barry kept busy with birding, atlassing and other avian pursuits and committees.
After Aitch’s first chemo in 2007 we went to Hella Hella for the first time since those days, staying in the lovely new cottages next to The Approaches. We woke up one morning and there was a big furry creature on Aitch’s pillow. It was her hair!
Then in 2011 Lyn died of breast cancer, Barry got a leg infection and died, and Aitch died – also breast cancer. February, April and July. Annus horribilis.
Recently a vulture hide in Oribi Gorge was unveiled: Barry would be delighted that it’s not just called “Barry’s Hide”. It’s called
The Barry Porter Memorial Vulture Viewing Hide.
You’ll understand why he would have loved the full formal title when I tell you he made us a tool to dig up plants. It had a handle like a motorbike, footsteps to step on to dig deep and the blade was made of the high-tensile steel of a cultivator blade. A Plant-Digger you might think? No. It had a neat label on it:
Porter’s Powerful Patented Plant-Pincher.
He also made us an intricate bird feeder labeled:
Barry’s Bizarre Balancing Bird Bistro. I found a photo with a bit of the bird bistro in the background behind Kiza Cele holding Jessie in the garden at 7 River Drive Westville. Note the dead branch for photography so you didn’t get artificial metal in your pic; the platform for seed; the various arms had spikes for oranges, cradles for bananas and pawpaws and small holders for suet and nuts. A full-buffet Barry bistro indeed!
~~~oo0oo~~~
