I ask Tom not to wee over the edge of the patio, but rather to go into the garden, find a shrub and wee discreetly behind it. More than once I ask him. Yes Dad, he says, shaking off the last drops.
Early one morning as the sun rises I watch the feathered parade in the old dead avocado tree. I’m going to miss that tree when it finally platzes. Already I’ve sawn off the big branch overhanging the driveway as it was full of bracket fungus and ready to dent someone’s car. I have planted a Natal Mahogany underneath to succeed it one day.
The white-eared barbets fluff themselves up in the early rays and two black-collared barbets land and go through a spirited two-puddly (or “Scottburgh”) duet. A group of purple-crested touracos bound across the branches, an olive thrush peeps and lands, as does a female violet-backed starling, a brownhooded kingfisher, a forktailed drongo and a speckled mousebird, all using the tall bare branches as a waypost or a sunning spot.
I’m busting for a leak but I don’t want to miss anything. I don’t want to go inside and I don’t want to disturb the birds by going off the patio, so I discreetly have a leak over the edge of the patio outside Tom’s bedroom window. It’s early. I’m sure he’s still sleeping.
But he spots me and I know I’ve blown my credibility.
I feel I need to explain, so at breakfast I tell him about the wonderful dawn display and not wanting to disturb the birds. He nods.
Not too long after that morning there’s Tom, weeing over the edge of the patio in full view. I bite my tongue. I know what’s coming. Dad, he says mock-solemnly, I didn’t want to disturb the birds.
I never really learnt to be circumspect. I tend to blurt. So what would you like to do now your second chemo spell is over, Aitch? We’d gone snorkelling at Mabibi on the Zululand coast after the first. A six hour drive in a 4X4.
Where? The Great Barrier Reef? But that’s in Oz, m’dear! You do? Um, what I meant to ask was: What, reasonably-speaking, would you like to do?
So I scurried off to do my homework. Costs, flight times, travel time to the reefs, what we could afford. With trepidation I showed her two alternatives: The Great Barrier Reef in Oz vs Madagascar, where we would live aboard a yacht, plopping overboard to snorkel whenever we wanted to.
Phew! She chose Madagascar – and LOVED Madagascar. “My BEST holiday ever!” she enthused afterwards.
We shared the boat with a delightful English couple, Dickie and Claire, with their two blonde girls Sonja and Natasha. Easygoing and relaxed, it was a blissful getaway. They were chilled and accommodating, and so were we. The crew, too, were wonderful folk, friendly, capable, and good chefs! Skipper Bert, chef ___ and teenage deckhand ‘Mowgli,’ who fascinated our Jessie.
It was Aitch, so homework was still done, naps were still taken, routines were kept as far as possible:
I tried. Well, I made a less-than-worthy attempt. My heart wasn’t in the training. I thought, if you live on the route, you gotta have a go. If you live in KwaZulu, you’ll always be asked, Have You Done It? But I could never quite see the glamour or ‘worthiness’ of shuffling furtively round the dark streets long before sunrise. Anyway I thought, Give It A Go. I even tried the flaming hot running shorts Phil Greenberg gave me in the hopes I’d speed up a bit.
Running broeks Phil Greenberg gave me in my crazy running daze
I joined a club – maybe that’s where I went wrong? I joined Westville with their red & white hoops ‘caterpillar’ outfit whereas historically I was more suited to be a black-&-white Savage with a Zulu shield, knobkierie and spear on my chest. Years before, I had been a Savage. Running Number 451, so maybe I should have stuck to that? Westville gave me number 159738b or something – I don’t think they valued me like Savages did. That probably put me off my stride a bit.
Anyway, I shuffled and I shuffled and I ran a lot of races. 10km, 15km, half marathons and two 42km marathons.
Here’s an example of a ‘short’ training run in windy, hilly Westville, starting at our home. We took turns hosting our short runs at our homes, with tea n cake served afterwards. This is the run I worked out for the training team:
Walk up River Drive
R into Elvira
R into Rockdale across highway bridge
R Severn – down
L Mersey
L Rockdale – UP for 500m !!
Back all along Rockdale
R Tweed – Done 4km at this point
L Thames – down
R Conway – down
L Constance Cawston – UP & UP
L Somerset – UP & UP (becomes Frank)
L Cochrane (becomes Cleveland – UP) – 6,5km
L Rockdale
R Rockdale (that’s right, Rockdale again !)
R Broadway – UP
L Neville – 8,6km
L Westbrook – down, then UP
L Harrison – UP
L Springvale
R Lawrence
R River – 11,5km
Then eventually the big day arrived and I hadn’t arranged anything so I took myself off to Maritzburg to my folks. Early the next morning my Mom dropped me off at the start – long before sunrise. More dark streets – but now with crowds of lunatics milling around the red brick city hall.
Some guy crowed like a rooster and a gun went off in the dark and nothing happened. Minutes later still nothing had happened. The chatter of the would-be runners had changed to an excited murmur but nothing else had changed. Eventually we started shuffling at a slow walk, then a very slow pace, slower even than my training pace, and some long time later we crossed the START line. The START line! I was tired already! I think I was in Batch ZZZZ.
That’s when I started thinking fu-uck! and I’m afraid that thought didn’t really leave me all day. I knew my pace was slow by the people around me: None of the runners looked like young skinny blonde Wits students, nor like Russians – and if they did look African they looked larger and rounder than me. Also, the few spectators about weren’t saying ‘Well Done!’ or ‘Go! Guys!‘ NO, Instead they were saying Move Along! in a rather critical, nagging tone of voice, I thought, Why’s no-one saying, ‘You’re looking good!? Weird that.
This was confirmed when I passed under a banner that said ‘HALFWAY’ – Half way meant I only had 3km (Plus a Marathon) to go. Springbok rugby captain Wynand Claassen recklessly shot off a gun which left gunpowder residue on my scarlet Westville Running Club shorts. Well, if that wasn’t a pointed ‘Move Your Arse’ hint! Who the hell did he think he was? He had run the race but he’d never won the race, his father had.
En route I caught up with a few long-lost friends: Jacques-Herman du Plessis from Harrismith days; Rheinie Fritsch from army days. Also Aitch and 5yr-old Jessie and 1yr-old Tommy met me in Botha’s Hill for a family reunion. They were all a bit cool though, a bit offish, I thought: Because after a while of enjoying standing and chatting to them, they all said, ‘Haven’t you got something to do today?‘ and sent me on my way. Bugger off, Koos! they said.
So I shuffled and I shuffled and then my spirits rose at a sudden thought! I started to think maybe there had been a collective coming to their senses, as there were no other runners around nor any spectators. Maybe I had got the wrong day? Or maybe everyone had just gone home to a hot bath and a cold beer?
But no, the spectators returned in Westville. Trouble is, they were all packing up their deckchairs. And so the slow torture continued. Shuffle, shuffle. Suddenly a few cops jumped in front of me holding reflective tape as I shuffled under the N3 below 45th Cutting, just before the onramp (usually an offramp) onto the Berea Road section of the N3 into town.
Go Home, they said, We need this road for tomorrow’s traffic. You’ve had eleven hours, they said, and you’ve only done 82km. Where have you BEEN?
So I went home to a hot bath and a cold beer. Look, about this heading: Actually, you can call me Comrade, I’d love that, but only in a liberation sense, not in a shuffling sense. Who knew they only give you a medal for the last 7km? The first 82km are completely ignored!
Maybe next time, to speed me up I’ll shave my legs?
~~oo0oo~~
So now I’m also guilty of this: “How do you know if someone has run a marathon?”
“They’ll tell you.”
~~oo0oo~~
The guys in my pics are Dave Williams, Kingfisher and Savages mate; and Dave Lowe, Westville runner; Both have done OVER FORTY Comrades – 41 and 42 respectively to be precise. That is Seriously Certifiable! I told Dave ‘Jesus’ (when he had a beard) ‘John Cleese’ (when he shaved) Williams just the other night at Ernie’s wake “You know you can stop now, right?” and he said No, I failed to finish last year for the first time ever, so this year I have to repeat my 42nd Comrades. Bleedin’ ‘ell!
Obertauern in Austria and I’m learning to ski. The paraat Austrian ski instructor is earnestly telling us to “snor-plau, snor-plau” but we’ve been “snor-plauing” for an hour and we only have two days to ski! This won’t do, so I head off for the ski-lift.
“Oy, where are you going?” shouts herr instructor. I point ‘up there.’ “But you can’t even snor-plau!” he exclaims, him being used to things being done as they should be done. He’s right, of course, but there’s the matter of the two days (less this hour we’ve already wasted).
I discover that when you hop off the ski-lift gravity does not take a short break to allow you to get your bearings, so my first descent is backwards standing up for twenty metres, then backwards lying down for a few hundred metres, then various undignified ways until I lose a ski which then gives a bit of traction, so I can dig one boot in the snow and stop.
So I can then retrieve the other ski and get back to the ski-lift and start again.
After a while I work out a good system: Down at full speed at an angle across the slope till I cannon into the deep drift on the side. Then back across the slope to the other side, till ditto. Zig-Zag I go, accumulating more snow with each crash so I look like a huge semi-human snowball. It’s abominable, but it is more fun than snor plau.
Too much snow accumulates on the corduroy trousers, so I decide to try another way: Straight down the slope to dodge the deep drifts.
Well . . .
Whistling along at terminal velocity I notice that there’s nothing to stop one at the bottom (which I haven’t reached till now, having been on my face long before the bottom). Below the ski-lift start, the slope simply ends against a building. Said building houses a below-ground restaurant where people can sit and eat while looking up the slope at eye-level.
Approaching the restaurant window at speed I close my eyes and lie back and hear a smack as my skis go through the grill under the window and protrude right into the restaurant above an occupied table where some sane guests (who can probably snor-plau) are eating. Some of our group, notably Volke – the CEO of Aitch’s company, our host on the trip, whose brother owns the restaurant, which is why we’re here – come up to me and pour gluwein down my throat and laugh at me, refusing to help me up or out of my skis. I’m soaked through my corduroys and cotton shirt under my anorak and my ankles are breaking, but do they care, as they laugh and take pictures?
I hang up my skis when I’m finally freed. Call it a day with limbs intact. One’s constitution can only stand so much fun.
– first-time skiing – corduroy pants, half a lesson, no brakes! –– Aitch bundled up –
~~~oo0oo~~~
snor-plau – snow plough, I suppose – I never did learn to do it. Even after skiing again in Lesotho: Still no brakes.
Hey Dad! What’s that in the pool!? shouts Jess this morning. It’s a mole, swimming rather desperately, gulping for air every so often, head underwater between. I rush for the poolnet and get him onto the lawn where he starts burrowing under the grass right away.
Well saved, Jessie!
golden mole
Remember: Golden moles: Tiny teeth, eat insects & worms;
Mole rats: Big external teeth, eat plants;
Don’t harm either of them. Allow them in your gardens. Please. Your lawn or garden need NOT be ‘perfect’. In fact ‘perfect’ gardens are a sure sign of cruelty. Again: Perfectly neat gardens are a sure sign of cruelty. And pollution. And poison.
Four year old TomTom got burnt. Boiling water. It was my fault. We were in our kitchen in our new home and I switched a stoveplate on to high, put an empty pot on and later added water! Mistake!
I rushed him to Westville private hospital. Where they didn’t talk to him; they didn’t look at him. Please help, he’s been burnt with boiling water! I said. Is he on medical aid? You need to pay a deposit. The doctor was reluctant to even get started. I had to snarl and tell them he’s my son and he’s on my medical aid before they give him attention. A very poor show. Damned disgraceful, actually. If he wasn’t, what would they have done? Told him to piss off!? A hurt four year-old!!? Shame on them.
But we all know private medicine in South Africa is “World-Class”, right? American-class, maybe.
~~~oo0oo~~~
Another time our friend Minneapolis hurt her leg, she thought she actually heard it break as she turned on it playing netball. She has no medical aid, no insurance. I got a call, a plea for help. I drove to Westville Girls High School and took her to King George government hospital – now King Dinizulu. They immediately put her on a wheelchair and talked to her, sympathised and re-assured her. Then off to x-ray her, bandage her, give her medicine and THEN they asked for R20 admin fee if we could pay. A good show.
But we all know state medicine in South Africa is “Third World”, right? We all know you CAN’T go to a state hospital!
~~~oo0oo~~~
Other times, another two hospitals:
Aitch goes to Parklands private hospital. Small op, two nights. They give her a fierce infection. I see it happen. A nurse is putting up a drip. She’s battling. Another nurse comes in, wheeling a trolley. Seeing the first one battling, she drops the trolley and joins in, helps put up the drip in Aitch’s arm. Nowhere have hands been washed. Aitch ends up in hospital six nights instead of two. Dose after dose of intravenous antibiotics finally control the raging infection. The UNNECESSARY infection. So the hospital got punished for their poor cleanliness, right? No, they made thousands and thousands of Rands of extra profit thanks to it. Maybe the nurses were given a percentage of the extra profit?
But we all know private medicine in South Africa is “World-Class”, right? American-class, maybe.
~~~oo0oo~~~
I take Aitch’s dear ole Dad Neil to Mshiyeni government hospital with a broken hip. He’s 88yrs-old. They check him in at 11pm at night. They wheel him around, x-ray him; I see him to his ward and go home. The next day they operate, then intensive care him, put him in the ward and look after him. No sign of infection. I check his hip every day. It stays cool and clean. The senior orthopod gives me his personal cell number. ‘Phone anytime,’ he says.
When I do phone him with a question, he says ‘I’ll discuss with the prof and phone you back.’ He does. Once I sms him and he sms’ back: ‘I’m in a conference in JHB today, but I’ll get the other surgeon to look at Mr Humphrey and he’ll contact you.’ He does. They charge him nothing. He has paid for it the fifty years he paid taxes. THAT’s how it should work.
But we all know state medicine in South Africa is “Third World”, right? We all know you CAN’T go to a state hospital!
~~~oo0oo~~~
I think: Westville and Parklands hospitals’ people should spend a day at King George and Mshiyeni hospitals. Especially their accountants and profit-sharing directors – and some of their shareholders – should spend a day in real South African hospitals. And learn. Maybe learn to spend less on Marketing and Public Relations, plush carpets and artwork on the walls – and more on infection control and human care.
Two versions of “pace” on this morning’s school run:
Tom – Dad, I PACED him (telling how he had run around some hapless defender on the rugby field).
Faatima – I have to learn to PASTE myself when running (telling how she runs with her 18-Comrades-medals Dad).
I encouraged Jess to shoot some videos with her 2011 xmas-prezzie Canon camcorder. Set it up on the tripod, showed her how and said “Go for it, girl. Get footage of Black Sambucca the lazy labrador, or birds in the birdbath. Experiment!”
Over lunch I press her: “Let’s see what you‘ve done”. Much giggling and No Dad!, but I insist on looking.
Loud sounds of International Love by girlfriend-beater Chris Brown and Pitbull, with Jess dancing joyously to the beat dressed in her hiphop best.
Way back in around 1962 Donald Coleman and I walked home from school. The Harrismith Kleinspan School.
It was about a mile and we set off around 1pm. When we got home we got the “Where have you been!?” treatment. Apparently it was 5pm already and getting dark and cold. Well, we wouldn’t have known and anyway, we’d had a lot to talk about and Donald had a box of matches, so we had stopped and made a little fire of plane tree leaves in the sandstone gutters of Stuart Street. These gutters used to channel water from Platberg to town according to Blanche Hawkins, local historian.
Fast forward to 2014 and 12yr old TomTom asked me if he could walk home from school today. It’s about 4km and school ends at 2pm. When I got home at 5pm he had just got in and Cecelia and Carla had been worried: “Where had he BEEN?!”
I knew where he’d been. His journey was double mine and he’d taken one less hour. Why, he’d almost hurried home! And no matches, so how could I complain? You have fun, my boy? I asked. He’d stopped en route to buy a pie, a packet of jelly tots and an energade drink.
=========ooo000ooo=========
Feature pic: Me, Anne, Donald & Sheila in Platberg’s shadow
There’s a message on my phone this (April Fool) morning. Its the old man to wish me happy birthday.
He doesn’t leave a message, but before he switches off I hear him bellowing to the old lady: “He was in a hell of a hurry! Just said ‘Leave A Message’ and then he had to go. We’ll have to phone him later.”
In 2008 we took ourselves up to Mabibi. Lovely snorkelling spot on the Zululand coast. Aitch had just finished her chemo and this is what she chose as her “what would you like to do now?” With best friends Jon & Dizzi.
We luxuriated in the lodge and went for a daily snorkel in the reef at the point nearby. Lolling around the shallow reef checking out flocks of fish of all shapes n sizes one day, Aitch suddenly rose up and leapt about shrieking something about a sore earlobe. Luckily the water was only thigh deep so she could wade shorewards shouting ouch! and eina!
Six year-old TomTom had seen the fish, got out and rushed off to fetch his tackle. Getting back he had cast in where he’d seen the pansizers, and caught his Ma!!
Off we go to St Lucia estuary for a camping long weekend. Let’s take the minimum guys, we can buy food locally. Just clear out the fridge and bread bin and let’s go. We’ll buy charcoal and meat and etc from the local Spar. I won’t even take any wine! Rather we hit the road now, shop later.
Let’s take a tent for the three teenage girls, and the twelve year-old fella and I will sleep in the back of the pickup. The simple life.
Except I realise at the first tollgate that I have left my wallet in Westville. Complication. To turn back or not. In my rucksack I find Tom’s saving card, daily withdrawal limit R300. I had just changed his password, as we had not used the account for ages, so we were good to go. We just gotta be frugal, kids, we got R300 kuphela.
And that’s where they blew me away. All four of them said “Dad, we’ve got money! You can have our money, Dad”. They each had R200 pocket money for the weekend and offered it freely! What stars.
Thanks guys, I may need that, but I have enough to fill up with diesel and we’ll just go easy and discuss it before we spend anything, OK?
The next morning I managed to activate my eWallet and cellphone banking at an internet cafe so could now draw R1500 a day! Problem solved! I gave them each R100 to thank them for their generous offers. Their eyes looked like chocolates and ice creams!
Off we went to the game reserve (entrance fee R245) and to the water park (R120 for the four of them). We wuz rich! The girls bought swimming shorts with their own money.
St Lucia camping 2
The next day that amount I could draw had ‘kindly’ been reduced to R200 (“for my safety” – Thanks FNB!), so I had to make the speech again, and again they rallied around with their offer of chipping in, but with Tom’s R300 and my R200 we were fine. We ate boerie rolls both nights – cheap!
– St Lucia camping –
Here’s an isimangaliso* pan with buffalo, waterbuck and zebra (click on the pic). The Indian Ocean is just behind that high forested dune:
Tom got on with fishing . .
. . while the teenage girls did what teenage girls do . .
– Jess took a lovely picture of some grass – with a kudu as a backdrop –
~~oo0oo~~
*isimangaliso means ‘miracle, wonder, surprise’ in isiZulu
My garden is a wonderful tangle of KwaZulu indigenous growth gone wild. Interfered with only by my best man Tobias Gumede’s earnestly-felt desire to do something besides pulling weeds! He’s a GARDENER, so why does he get told: Do Nothing!?
Recently he trimmed the undergrowth near the birdbath and the spot where beautiful turquoise Araneus apricus spins her web each night and takes it down every morning.
I had to sit him down and remind him:
Tobias, my good man, remember when we listened to the yellow-bellied greenbul’s complaints (nickname Belly-aching Bulbul) and you told me how it was saying “Don’t shoot the birds, it’s Spring and they’re nesting?” And how you would teach the kids in Jozini not to shoot birds in that season – and how they did anyway!?
Yep, he remembers.
Well, its Summer, and remember: We don’t trim or cut anything till the season fades and we’re sure no birds or other creatures are nesting. And even then we do it with great circumspection? Lots of ‘easy-does-it’?
Oh Yes, He Does Remember and Sorry, He Forgot.
But he forgot again and as I was leaving he asked, Can You Buy Me A Rake? Um, what for, Tobias? Oh, Yes, He Forgot, We Don’t Rake. Right.
Well, I mention this because I have recently found out that unbeknown to me, I garden according to the ancient principle of wu wei. I mean, I always suspected my method was brilliant, but wu wei! That is brill. Its the Zen (or Tao? – or something . . ) art of “masterful inactivity.”
I love it: “The Art Of Masterful Inactivity”! Wu wei! I can do this!
I’m reading a book by Esther Woolfson who lives in Aberdeen in Scotland, called Field Notes from a Hidden City. The review of her book made me want to write about all the wonderful hidden creatures in my garden and generally in Westville, so I bought it with the express intention of plagiarising it. I’ve got to the part where she writes about wu wei and I’m right behind her.
“Less is more.” German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe popularized this slogan among designers around the world in the 1950’s. And the wisdom of this aphorism goes way, way back to the time of the great Lao Tzu, ‘venerable master.’ The concept of Wu Wei became mainstream in China, where great leaders came to see the power of “non-doing.”
I read a lot about books and then occasionally I buy one and actually read the whole thing. Often the book review is better than the book. I bought Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck by Eric G Wilson. Well, it was a very good review.
Back to plagiarism: I will write to Esther and tell her what I’m doing if I get the book done. My wu wei credentials are not confined to gardening, however, so she may be safe.
Here’s the manicured bit for soccer, rugby and biking, with refuges for creatures in front and behind. When the kids stop swimming the pool will be made more frog-friendly. Made? Well, ‘Allowed To Go’ frog-friendly . . . .
– that chlorine-poisoned water needs to go greener –
So how did I know the beautiful little turquoise orb spider I found in my garden was Araneus apricus? I went to my saucers. This one is seldom in her cups, ‘cept when she’s making beautiful ceramic ones: My favourite entomologist and arachnologist Tanza said:
Hi Pete – I think she is Araneus apricus, a little orb spider. Most are nocturnal, spinning their webs in the early evening and then removing them in the morning. Maybe she got out of bed late . . . ; It is probably a “she” as the males are often (but not always) smaller.- Tanz
I first met Tanza when she was working with social spiders on the Hella Hella bridge over the Umkomaas river. Hundreds of them obligingly spun webs between the aluminium railings, allowing Tanza to mark and measure at leisure. Usually they’d be in tangled bushes!
They’re fascinating. For one thing, like me they can balloon off and fly away!
~~oo0oo~~
TanzaCrouch’s 9 research works with 278 citations and 2,858 reads, including: The influence of group size on dispersal in the social spider Stegodyphus mimosarum (Araneae, Eresidae) – researchgate.net
Security is not me. We have just come off a long spell in which my gate motors
have been disabled so all you had to do was slide the gates open manually
and stroll in. This followed a two year spell in which we had no burglar guards
(after the renovations).We now do have burglar guards again because insurance wouldn't cover us
in the unlikely event. And then I decided last week that getting out of the car to
slide open the gates is only fun when you have 12- and 16-yr old slaves riding
with you. Which is not always. Also, finding four knee-high neighbourhood kids
who have drifted into the house unannounced staring at you as you get out of
the shower must stop.So I say to to the gate man "While you're fixing the gates, can you fix my
intercoms? I want friends to be able to open them without buzzing and waiting.
I want to give them a code so they can simply punch it in and Hey Sesame."No problem he says and "fixes them".By replacing them with keypads, so now the ONLY way you can get in is by
knowing the code. We can't speak to anyone at the gates, they can't buzz us
and we can't open the gates without a mobile remote (which is kept in the car).So its MORE like Fort Knox in some ways, not less. Except already all the
neighbourhood kids know the code (which is 1234). So much for keeping THEM out!Bloody hell . . . I'll be starting over this week. There's got to be a way . . .Maybe I'll just stand at the gate . . .
.
Later: All fixed now. Friends and neighbours can breeze in using their codes (the last four digits of
their own cellphone numbers).
Everyone else can buzz, we can hear them on intercom and buzz them in.
Sorted.
=======ooo000ooo=======
Just in the last couple weeks Jessie has had three trips to the dentist, a flap of loose skin in her cheek, (I have to peer inside and tut-tut) –
. . slammed her finger in a drawer, needed lower back massaging and stubbed her toe. Badly.
She’s loving it.
Demands lots of attention from Dad and announces she cannot possibly go to school. “I’m in the wars, Dad”.
I agree. Take three weeks off and lie in bed, Jess, we’ll bring you your meals.
At which she sighs and demands “WHY NOT!?” as she knows that means fugeddaboudit.
But secretly she’s so chuffed at the impressive bandaging I did of her toe (binding it to the one next door) that she can’t wait to get to school to milk maximum sympathy, one school shoe, one pink slop.
