Jessie’s Tummy Mummy Thembi became a good friend thanks to Aitch and her conscientious follow-up and ‘adoption’ of Thembi. Aitch nurtured her and encouraged and empowered her. She arranged classes such as computer and sewing courses; she had her teeth seen to and hugely improved by the state orthodontists at Addington and King Edward hospitals.
Once a month she would take Jessie – and me and Tom sometimes – to meet for lunch with Thembi. Aitch would also take her supplies and goods to sell; Jessie loved those lunches. She and Thembi would gossip and giggle and point at people walking past commenting on their looks, dress, gait, whatever. Scandalous! They loved it!
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Once we took Thembi back to Port Shepstone so she could show her Mom and Gran that Jess was fine. She had left them at age thirteen to go and work as a domestic servant for a family in Chatsworth.
– Thembi’s Mom and Gran seated; Thembi’s long hair –
Thembi longed for a boyfriend, and when she met a guy who was very good to her she was very happy. But tragically she then contracted AIDS; Aitch pitched right in and arranged to meet the chief HIV / AIDS doctor in charge at King Edward, who saw to it that Thembi got good treatment and got it in time. She sickened rather quickly though, and grew weak.
Jess wrote to her when I visited her in Addington:
She died on the 19th of August 2010 in the Albert Luthuli hospital, after a stay in Addington hospital. I took her boyfriend and her brother Dumi in the kombi to buy a coffin and then to fetch her body; then arranged for them to get her remains – and themselves – to Port Shepstone.
Thanks to Aitch’s calendars and the death certificate, I now know Thembi was born on 2nd July 1983 and was fourteen when Jess was born.
Dad! Who farted!? exclaims Jess this morning, wrinkling up her nose.
Not me! Not me! Not me! say all three of us, each suspecting that someone is holding back. Or not holding back?
Soon the mystery is solved as we hear a rumbling in the road at the bottom of our garden. Someone must have been full of shit and the honeysucker has come to the rescue. It’s slurping up the neighbours’ overflow, as it were. Just as well. We don’t want to become known as an effluent suburb!
Ours was a boring municipal truck, white and blue, this one from Hillcrest looks better: A pink honeysucker, YAY!!
Back when I was seventeen or eighteen I became an American farmer – a certified Future Farmer of America and I can still hear how Mr. Schneeburger would say EFFIFFAY in Ag Shop class. In Ag-ricultural work-Shop I craftily constructed a rotating cattle feeder made of a 55gal drum, mounted on a wheelrim on an axle that would always turn away from the wind thanks to an angled weather vane on top. Thus keeping the cattle feed dry in all weather. Clever, hey!? Trouble was my birdshit welding. So it fell over in the first little breeze. Still, the thought was there and I was – maybe – on my way to greater things. Redemption? I have been found wanting as a farmer on more than one occasion.
I went to hog shows – where the winner wouldn’t be looking quite so pleased with himself if he read what his mistress had planned for him on her placard:
I planted peanuts in Fort Cobb – well, watched some Mexican fellas do it anyhow. I sprayed something on Jim’s lands. I drove in Walter & Pug Hrbacek’s – or was it Gene & Odie Mindemann’s? – airconditioned cab of their big combine harvester or tractor (yeah, a farmer should remember which it was!) with an eight-track tape sound system overhead. Remember them?
My farming career peaked when I took part in the big annual roundup, catching, de-horning, castrating, branding and inoculating the bull calves. I was pulled in to the gathering and closely watched to see if this boy from Africa knew anything. At all. Well, by then they actually knew I didn’t, but I was good for a laugh! When I first got to Apache the local cowboys asked me if I could help them round up 18 cows. The maths nerd in me answered, ‘Yes, of course. – That’s 20 cows.’ (actually, that’s a Jake Lambert joke, but not far off the truth!).
As the feverish activity took place I hovered around, just out of helpful range. Then we went home to wash up and joined up again to eat the produce and wash it down with beer. I was better at that. It was my first ‘mountain oyster fry’.
It was like this, but in Walter and Pug Hrbacek’s barn, not at a church, and not in Texas:
They’re delicious, and they smell good – unlike the smell of burning cowhide from the branding! – but I found them best fried and covered in batter. You don’t really want to see them, especially not raw. I only ate the well-battered ones. They also get better with each ice-cold beer!
Recently I found out they do it better in Montana where they add a competitive eating of bull balls, or “Rocky Mountain oysters” and they throw in women’s hot oil wrestling, a women’s wet-T-shirt event, and a men’s “big ball” competition – basically a men’s “wet thin white underwear show”. Sounds like fun, huh?!
They make good products too, good merchandise: One for an insecure man, and how useful is this one for a lady who has a dick of a boss? The Under-Desk Scrotum Stress Ball.
Jonathan something Taylor studied geography. I’ve forgotten his middle name but it’s one of those Scottish throat-clearing exercises: MacLachlan, Kindrochart, Och Aye, MacKechnie, Donnach, Ag Man, Neachdainn, Murderdoch, something.
None of us had studied geography, so trustingly, we bowed to his superior knowledge and would leave all matters geographical in his capable hands and would even ask him “what rocks are those?” and other searching questions from time to time.
Until the night he organised the Night Of The Full Moon. Apparently (I wasn’t subjected to this faux pas) much was made of being in the right place at the right time: A restaurant with a raised perch and a view due east where the magnificent spectacle of the shining (reflecting, not glowing, remember?) orb rising above the horizon over the Indian Ocean as the sun set in the west would be seen by his awe-struck companions. A table at the window. Don’t be late!
Well, this happened:
The light you see on the water is the restaurant’s lights. The only moon that night was under the Scotsman’s kilt!
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Luckily for JonDinDin I could take him down to the beach years later to teach him what a full moon looks like:
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” is an old philosophical thought experiment that raises questions regarding observation and perception.
Me I think it does and forests don’t need humans to hear their sounds; the animals will hear the crashing and the thud, and the falling still lets light in which gives other plants a chance to reach for growth. ‘K?
A more important question is, “If a millennial is at an event with all her friends and thousands of fellow screaming fans and she doesn’t take a selfie, was she actually there?”
We are having Dry July here in Australia. Something like Movember – a national fundraising thing.
Seriously, I did try to do Dry July (but just for my own health, I did not sign up to be sponsored). Took the remaining beers out of the fridge and put them in the cupboard so they would be warm and unpalatable.
So far I have managed to do only the week nights, and I have not touched the warm beers. But something made me pick up a couple of barossa valley reds on the way home Friday night (just in case we have visitors, see?). Then, only AFTER that, while I was in the kitchen slicing up some cabbage, a sneaky voice reminded me that this red wine can, nay SHOULD be consumed at room temperature . .
So the rule has been modified. ONLY on weekends, and only with food.
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Advice followed.
Swanepoel wrote:
I view such daft things with deep suspicion. They are positively Hassidic- or Taliban-like IMNSHO. Tom would say “Dad, that’s dodge” (meaning dodgy).
Thank goodness you have decided to be sensible. Like our rule that you could not drink while driving on tar – solved by putting the two left wheels on the gravel shoulder . . . and BTW, shelf-temperature often brings out some of beer’s more subtle flavours and undertones . . . and um, notes, sub-notes, something . .
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Brauer wrote:
Hey. For numerous reasons you should not throw the Hassidics and Taliban into the same pot. But when it comes to consuming the nectar they are P-O-L-E-S apart. The Taliban says it’s verboten. The Hassidics consume it in HUGE quantities particularly on the Holy Sabbath when they get bored cos they aren’t allowed to do anything else. It gives ‘The Holy Spirit’ a whole new dimension . .
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Learnt something. Like the Catholics drink real booze and us poor Methodists were given grape juice! Scandalous. I stopped going to communion.
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Footnote: Thankfully four July’s have passed since this alarming little episode and not a word from Reed about this dangerous would-be trend.
As you take a picture of the kids they say “LEMMESEE” and look at the photo of themselves on your phone, then say ooh! or ugh!
In 1944 a three year old girl apparently said that to her Dad and he had to explain the film would first have to be sent away to the lab when they got back home from their holiday and then the lab would develop it and send it back to them and only THEN could she see the pic he had taken of her. She thought that completely unreasonable and so her Dad set to work. By 1948 he had made the first Land Polaroid camera.
His name was Edwin Land and his Polaroid Corporation became very famous indeed. ‘Instant’ (they actually took a minute or so to develop when we used them in 1973) pictures in 1948 looked like a miracle, as the fax did forty years later.
Some of you will remember those cameras:
Edwin Land and a surprised codger
I first got to use a Polaroid camera in 1973 when – in my quest to do as little schoolwork as possible – I was kindly allowed onto the Annual Staff of Apache High School where our job was to be amateur reporters and amateur fund-raisers and to cobble together this school annual under the wonderful friendly guidance of our teacher Virginia Darnell. What a star she was!
We had old cameras with bellows and a newer version, something like these:
So why am I not a millionaire? Because everyone knows Polaroid went bust as newer technology came out and nowadays there’s absolutely no need for paper photos when you have all your digital photos instantly viewable and always available on your camera. Everyone KNOWS that.
Except – – – this:
2017 Polaroid cameras
and this:
Seems kids still want to hold a paper copy of their image in their hand. Last year Polaroid launched new instant cameras which look retro-similar to the ‘new’ ones we used in the seventies! My predictions on new stuff that eventually ‘went viral’ has usually been ‘Hmph! that’ll never take off!’
Time will tell if paper photos make a comeback. Recently Jess saw a pink one in the window of a camera shop and said she NEEDED it! “Dad, you don’t understand! It instantly prints out a paper photo!”, she said.
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Thanks to fellow optometrist Ann Elsner, Professor of Optometry at Indiana University for a lovely article on Polaroid’s 70th anniversary 1948 – 2018.
** this blog is mainly after I got married in 1988; my other blog vrystaatconfessions.com is essentially pre-marriage; sometimes things don’t fit neatly into one or the other – they overlap; so occasionally I copy and paste **
Tuffy has hit the bright lights. School friend and class mate Mariette van Wyk edits a lovely magazine Atlantic Gull down in the Dryest Fairest Cape.
She got the fascinating life story (well actually, snippets of it!) of Irené John Joubert out of him recently.
Fascinating thing is, Tuffy DID this stuff, Chuck Norris acts it out. Here’s an eyewitness account of his famous plummet from a helicopter.
Here he is in those far-off days when you could see his chin and not his forehead:
Pierre duP and Tuffy
Tuffy’s older brother Etienne remembers him getting his nickname like this: In the very English environment of the Methodist church some soutie made the mistake of calling the French masculine name Irené the English feminine name ‘Irene’ in Sunday school and promptly got dondered right then and there by said Irené. And hence the nickname Tuffy was born.
I see Tuffy says he has no trouble in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Congo as “with my honest face, people just love me”. What I want to know is: How do they see his face?
Well, now that his cover is bust, his anonymity lost, learn more about Tuffy being a domkrag and then tackling an unsuspecting ox here
Asked what could be inferred about the Creator from a study of His works, British scientist and naturalist JBS Haldane replied:
“The Creator, if he existed, had an inordinate fondness for beetles”.
I have just re-read the delightful book Jayne Janetsky gave me in 1999 and learned again:
– Every fifth species of known animal in the world is a beetle; – Beetles come in the most beautiful array of shapes and sizes and colours.
Absolutely fascinating! And right up my alley!
I show here just three of the 350 000:
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The book has a few more!
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In a letter to the August 1992 issue of The Linnean, a friend of Haldane’s named Kenneth Kermack said that both he and his wife Doris remembered Haldane using the phrase ‘an inordinate fondness for beetles.’
‘I have checked my memory with Doris, who also knew Haldane well, and what he actually said was: “God has an inordinate fondness for beetles.’ JBSH himself had an inordinate fondness for the statement: he repeated it frequently. More often than not it had the addition: “God had an inordinate fondness for beetles and stars.” ‘
Haldane was making a theological point: God is most likely to take trouble over reproducing his own image, and his 350,000 attempts at the perfect beetle contrast with his slipshod creation of man. ‘When we meet the Almighty face to face he will resemble a beetle or a star, and not Dr. Carey’ said Haldane. [Carey was Archbishop of Canterbury].’
– um, your grace? –– dung beetles – over 5 000 species – we saw this one in Mfolosi Game Reserve –
I’ve lost my beautiful singing voice! All of a sudden even I don’t think I sing wonderfully anymore! The kids have never thought so, philistines, and will ask me after the opening bar “Please don’t sing, Dad”. In fact I’ve used it as a weapon: “Want me to sing to you?” sometimes gets them to behave pronto.
Even the neighbourhood kids give a resounding NO THANKS PETE! when I suggest I sing to them in Italian instead of putting Nicky Minaj on the car stereo.
Aitch was the only person who ever said “I love it when you sing” but then she also called me “My handsome oke” so I pinch-of-salted her compliment. She would always ask me to sing “the evening song” when we were driving after dark: Kris Kristofferson’s “Best of all possible worlds”. Of course that’s mainly gruffly mumbled, so that helped.
Of course I used to sing beautifully. The teacher who trained the seunskoor in Harrismith Laerskool said so. I was a soprano and looked down on the altos who, though necessary as backup, weren’t in the same league as us squeakers. One directly behind me used to bellow in my ear: ‘Dek jou hol met bowse off hollie!’ FalalalaLA lalalala’
One day the discerning teacher Juffrou Cronje, chose me to sing a solo in the next konsert. Fame was imminent.
Then tragedy struck! My balls dropped. They handled it very diplomatically. By ignoring it and cancelling practice. The konsert didn’t materialise. Co-incidence? Surely they didn’t cancel a concert just because one boy suffered testicular descent? By the time the next one came around I hadn’t been banished – just consigned to the back and asked to turn it down.
There was one other time – in a sort of Harrismith se Hoer Skool’s Got Talent setting – that it was almost confirmed I sing wonderfully.
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Terry Brauer wrote: Oh Pete I am STILL laughing! But never let the kids be the judge of whether you can sing! They are just embarrassed by most of what we do anyway. 🙂
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Oh well, there’s still a lotta drinks that I aint drunk . . .
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‘Dek jou hol met bowse off hol-e!’ – the famous ‘deck the hall with boughs of holly’ was improved in translation to ‘cover your arse with boughs of (thorny) holly’;
Denis finally passed away just short of his 88th birthday. The last few years were not good. Glen and Alli came to visit from Mudgee, which is to Australia what Kestell is to the Free State. We went out to supper after they had visited Denis; They were not sure if he had recognised them; The next day Alli phoned to say he had gone.
Despite his wake being held at very short notice and in the middle of a long weekend (the next day was Tuesday Workers Day May 1st) it was really well attended.
It was held in the Umzinto church he and Faye had got married in – which they had bought when the congregation fizzled and the building had been demystified. They moved it lock, stock, pulpit and baptismal fountain to Selborne. Then they got married in it all over again. Then Faye was buried from it four years ago. And now Denis.
Just like Faye’s the wake was first-class, and we all made sure the bar tab the family picked up was a hefty one. ‘I’ll have another one of those, please, and let me tell you THIS about Glen . . ‘
Denis and Faye had farmed in the Dumisa district – which made Kestell look urban – on Tanhurst and then moved to Selborne on the coast. I had once visited Glen at Tanhurst as a student, and then visited them often at Selborne, golfing at Umdoni, exploring Linton Hall and Botha House, checking out ‘Vernon the Villain’ Crookes’ beautiful manor house at Selborne – now Glen’s home; Denis and Faye were always so very kind to us and interested in our affairs. I saw Glen turn 21 there and get married there. Free beer!
Barker Selborne
Denis soon began changing Selborne from sugar cane fields, a dairy and an anthirium nursery to his dream golf course. He had traveled to golf courses all over the world* and THIS was how he wanted his golf course to look. With more than a bit of an Augusta National Golf Club look evident!
*in the ‘States somewhere – I must ask Glen where – Denis once got a hole-in-one on a par four! What kind of bird is that!? An apteryx?
Denis and Glen were mad keen cricketers. Sometimes their club was really desperate and Glen would ask me – a FreeStater! – to fill in for them. I would happily oblige. About three or four times I traveled down to Umzinto, got a duck, dropped a few catches and did very well at lunch. Later when Denis wrote a book ‘Umzinto Cricket – The First 100 years’ I bought one, he signed it, and I eagerly read it from cover to cover. Then I checked all the stats. I was sorely disappointed. Complete waste of money. Obviously an incomplete history: I didn’t feature at all.
I believe he wrote another book about a forefather who had survived Isandlwana. I didn’t read that one. I only hope he gave that brave warrior a bit more credit.
PS: If you really want to know accurate Barker history for goodness’ sake don’t read what I write! Ask Glen – he’ll give you lock stock and barrel!
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Dave Hill responded: Nice one Pete.
Denis and my dad, George were at Kearsney together…..so when I arrived there, a freshfaced Zambian boy in 1968, the only person I “knew” was Glen.
He took me under his wing and I spent many weekends at the farm. Denis taught me, sort of, to water ski on Ifafa Lagoon! Hard to imagine nowadays that there was water right up to where the highway passes by.
Later on I was called upon by Denis to drill for water at Selborne. We spent many hours talking during the 3 weeks we were there and I really got to know him rather well.
Those
boreholes are still working today and I always bore [sorry!] my mates
when playing a round there with war stories about drilling in 1983/4.
He
gave me a copy of his Isandlwana book and we kept in contact via
email until he sadly was unable to do so.
He
hung in tough though and he can now finally rest in peace with his
beloved Faye and Jane.
– Me, Herve in red, Dave Jones, Jurie the cameraman and Steve Fourie, Chris Greeff’s buddy –
Greeff took the pic, cutting off the nose of the Lincoln to make sure he got my elbow in. The Lincoln is loaded and ready to take us to paddle the Ocoee River in Tennessee after a night at Dave Jones’ house in Atlanta. Dave is a military man, a dentist and an international paddler. We were there cos Chris Greeff is a military man, a dentist and an international paddler. Weirdos like that tend to stick together.
Here’s Herve on all fours studying my map of the rapids of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Willem van Riet left of Herve with the ducktail is telling us about the moerse rapids he went through that day.
Here is Hervie again, red cap left back, in the Swim Team, much as he tried to earnestly explain why his swim didn’t actually count as a swim! Competitive swine, our Herve!
. . and here he stands dead centre with the faded red cap at the end of our 360km 12-day trip through the Canyon:
My last supper with Herve was positively biblical: He arrived in a cloud of holy blue smoke in a hundred year old chariot – a faded yellow Merc diesel with four million miles on the clock. Nice car, Herve, I said. ‘Hey! Think of the money I save’, said he. He brought four quarts of beer and six bottles of ‘communion wine’ which he called his ‘quota wine’. I thought, ‘quota for the night!?’ but it turned out he owned shares in a Western Cape wine farm and – just like they did with their workers – he get some of his pay in liquid form. Suddenly I thought through the blur that I understood ‘liquidity.’
We had gathered together, dearly beloved, to write down Herve’s tales of the Umko canoe marathon. As the evening progressed I would say ‘but Herve, wasn’t that the Dusi?’ Oh, Yes! We’re talking Umko, hey? But Herve, wasn’t that the Berg? Oh, Yes! We’re talking Umko, hey? But Herve, wasn’t that the Breede? Oh, Yes! The Crocodile? Oh, Yes! But you didn’t saw your boat in half to get it on a plane to go to Umko, did you, Herve? Oh, Yes! We’re talking Umko, hey?
We laughed for seven and a half hours. We talked of the hardship of owning property in England – Herve’s a farmer, things are very hard, you don’t understand. Then he left after midnight in a cloud of holy blue smoke in a hundred year old chariot – a faded yellow Merc diesel with four million miles on the clock.
Linda Grewar was a Kingfisher paddler from back around 1990. She and Bernie Garcin paddled really well – a number of mixed doubles podium finishes on the Dusi, Fish and Umzimkulu. Then she buzzed off ‘overseas’.
In May 2016 Bernie gave me Linda’s address, so I wrote to her:
Hey Linda! – LONG time no hear! Meantime I have freely been using your name in vain in the Umko book we put together for this year’s 50th running of the marathon and for a story on an Umko trip Bernie and I did where you helped us out with driving. MOONS ago!
Last I heard you were out East teaching English, now I hear you’re in England. I’m glad, as in my considered opinion, a lot of Englishmen could do with being taught English proper!
Me I’m raising kids at my age, they’re 18 and 14 now.
I haven’t paddled for ages, but I have bought a new boat (no logic involved; actually, keep it secret, I’m planning a big comeback). Be careful when you look at the pics of me and Bernie with my new boat – you may get a fright!
Saw Greg Bennett yesterday. He’s well. Thanks to the Umko book project I have seen or spoken to a lot of the old paddling guys in the last year that I hadn’t seen for ages. Allie Peter, Mike Frizelle, Ernie Alder and various other maniacs are currently trudging south down the whole Wild Coast. Three to four weeks from the bottom end of Natal, ending in East London or Kei River or somewhere down there in Darkest Eastern Cape.
Fill me in on your movements since – when? – about 1990!?
Cheers now – Love to you – Pete Swanie
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Linda replied:Hi Pete – So good to hear from you after so long. Yes, I was out East, in Taiwan. I then also taught English in Slovakia and Czech Republic before ending up here in the UK. I live in Esher, Surrey and was teaching fairly close by, in Surbiton. As Karen probably told you, I was diagnosed with stage four cancer in January- one hell of a surprise, as you can imagine. So far, I have had a course of radiotherapy and have had four sessions of chemo. Obviously I have not been able to work since I have been ill and things are quite hard financially.
Is it possible to buy hard copies of the Umko book? My brother is keen to get one and he can buy me one at the same time! Those days are but a distant memory now . . . All the best – Love, Linda
Me: Dammit. Dammit! What a bliksem! Bloody cancer! Good luck with your treatment. Hope it goes well.
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**
May 2018 – Bernie contacted me to tell me Linda had passed away.
Dammit. Bloody cancer.
It seems in Joburg in 1939 you could sommer call the pulleys easy.
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British Pathé has a host of old archive stuff worth looking at. Pathé News was a producer of newsreels and documentaries from 1910 until 1970 in the United Kingdom. Its founder, Charles Pathé, was a pioneer of moving pictures in the silent era.
Steve Reed wrote: I love it. Over here in Aus, the national broadcaster has a competition called ‘Exhumed’. A fitting term for those of us, like yourself, who played in a band as a younger person but wanna give it one last go.
The blurb is: Exhumed is a band competition with a difference. It’s not for has-beens, it’s not for wannabes, it’s for the never-weres. It’s for people who play music for the sheer love of it. If you fit that description, enter and listen to your Local ABC Radio to be part of Exhumed. You could hear your track on the radio, be interviewed on air, perform at your local Exhumed event and feature in an ABC Music release. Each station across the country will choose a winner. Of those winners only six will go through as finalists and perform live on TV at our Grand Final. But just one will take home the title ‘Exhumed Winner 2013’.
I wrote: C’mon Brauer! Enter the Botox Ballies Blues Band in this great competition!
Reminds me of a gathering of old canoeists where someone said, We’re the Has Beens. Mate of mine hurriedly clarified, “Swanie you’re not a Has Been. You can’t be a Has Been if you Never Was.”
PS: Reed, you may not know this, but the BBBB is quite famous behind the Boerewors Curtain among certain square circles that are often in their cups. They even pay to play at some events in far distant little known venues. Serious! Brauer’s on guitar and quite vocal.
He got lost under a pair of bloomers that was lobbed onto the stage once. Rumour has it.
As for the suggestion that I actually ‘played in a band,’ truth is more like ‘played with the band’s instruments at the same time the band was rehearsing and was tolerated by the band members.’ To be accurate. 1973.
Jessie’s Tummy Mummy Thembi became a good friend thanks to Aitch and her conscientious follow-up and ‘adoption’ of Thembi. Aitch nurtured her and encouraged and empowered her. She arranged classes such as computer and sewing courses; she had her teeth seen to and hugely improved by the state orthodontists at Addington and King Edward hospitals.
