It was a sad fact. The Umgeni was going to be dammed. Again. The fourth big dam on its course from the Dargle to the sea. Many people love dams. I hate them. They ruin the valleys and change nature for ever. Dams wipe out species – many before we even discover them; they flood huge areas of wetlands, riverine forest and grasslands; they displace people and affect everything living downstream. Large dams hold back not just water, but silt and nutrients that replenish farmlands and build protective wetlands and beaches. If you love rivers, dams are the enemy – the disease that kills. Dams don’t just change the river valleys in our waterways, they obliterate them. Yet people love them.
So the Umgeni was going to be dammed and damned; and I wanted a last paddle on that part of the river which was destined to be for ever gone.
So I rounded up some boats and some non-paddling friends in August 1988. Come and paddle a part of the famous Duzi Canoe Marathon course, I said. And the suckers fell for it! Geoff Kay, Mike and Yvonne Lello, Pete Stoute, sister Sheila; and wife Trish joined me in the valley. Some brought some kids, and some valley kids joined us.
We launched the boats with fanfare, breaking a bottle of champagne on each one’s hull (OK, not really) – AND:
They didn’t float! The river was so shallow they hit the bottom, even thought their draft was like two inches!
– oops! –
Oh well, it turned out to be not a paddle but a trudge. And – literally – a drag. But fun nonetheless!
I stared at the banks and the valley walls as I trudged. Soon yahoos would be racing outboard motors here. Soon this life and interesting variety all around us would be drowned forever.
Us Blands have published a book. One of us was the author and one was the photographer.
OK, it was tenth-cousin Hugh that actually did both!
Mind you, I do play my small part in keeping this particular trappist monastery afloat by testing eyes there mahala every second month! Who’da thunk I’d ever help the Catholics? Holy me! Thank Allan Marais for that. If it wasn’t for us Hugh might not have had Marianhill to photograph.
– marianhill monastery –
Well DONE, cousin Hugh! That is quite an achievement; your book is stunning.
Here’s another beautiful book by Hugh:
. . this one includes sister Barbara and husband Jeff’s Umvoti Villa homestead, now inhabited by niece Linda and husband Dawie, MissMadam Mary-Kate and Meneer Dawie jr:
Hugh has driven thousands of miles around KwaZulu Natal photographing things that interest him. If you like dead ous, old buildings, graves, churches, farms, railway stations, shops, government and church buildings, houses in towns and cities, hospitals, monuments n kak, seek no more! Go here. 70 000 images and counting!
~~oo0oo~~
mahala – free
You can get your own copy of Hugh’s books here or here.
I was reading about 1966 – when the Beatles got blasé and the British pop music invasion of the USA waned.
Yankee
marketers stepped in:
Pop abhors a vacuum, and just as the originals (The Beatles) ‘disappeared,’ a full-page ad in Billboard promoted a ‘different sounding new group with a live, infectious feeling demonstrated by a strong rock beat’. The Monkees, a four-man group, assembled after ‘research and development,’ to star in a Hard Day’s Night-type TV series. The timing was perfect. Touted as ‘the spirit of 1966,’ the four good-looking group members reproduced the elements of the Beatles’ unified 1964 camaraderie. It was a great record, but it also contained a clear message: if the Beatles weren’t around, they would be cloned by the industry, and the younger teens would hardly care that it wasn’t real: A typical comment: ‘I thought the show was great. It’s kinda like A Hard Day’s Night but it’s even better because it’s in color and we can see it every week.’
How very American. I was appalled.
I scribbled to one of my many Rock Star Wannabe friends: The kak started earlier than we might think.
Personally, my first ontnugtering to ‘Re-Hallity TV’ and ‘fake news’ -type shenanigans in my sheltered Vrystaat ignorance was in 1973 when I went to watch the Dallas Cowboys play American football at their home ground in Dallas and found out that not all the players were cowboys. Or even Texans! In fact very few were Texans, they were bought and paid for from sommer anywhere. A year or two later there was even a Dallas Cowboy called Naas Botha!
Then I found out the amateur college football team we supported – OU – Oklahoma University – also had players from anywhere and they were anything but amateur! Everything was paid for under-the-table, and cash and cars were handed over left and right to these ‘amateurs.’ A few honest journalists would actually call them ‘shamateurs.’
Then in South Africa, along came Louis Luyt who thought, What A Good Idea! and he proceeded to cock up our rugby. Soon the Natal Sharks on an away game in Bloemfontein didn’t even have to book a hotel: All the players just stayed at home with their Ma’s!
I had forgotten the story about the Monkees. They were a purely manufactured group, chosen for their looks and put together like a soap opera; Scripted. Nothing real, or spontaneous or natural about them. The Beatles had actually been real. They actually had started like other good bands, in a lounge in someone’s home in some obscure suburb. Like, maybe, a band might start in the Gramadoelas in Tshwane. Unlikely, but you never know.
Nowadays made-for-you-tube and made-for-social-media is the norm! Fake, really. Damn!
Peter Brauer wrote: The difference with the Gramadoelas group of Tshwane is that we were chosen for our undoubted, unrivalled talent and pin-up good looks. Insufficiently rewarded for years of the hard slog that us musos have to go through before hitting the big time . .
Me: A breakdown is probably imminent. I mean breakthrough. Hang in there! What you need is a gimmick. Can any of you grow your hair? I thought not. Can the chick wear outfits like Cher? Maybe include a lot of vloekwoorde in your act like Die Antwoord? When last did you smash your equipment? Have you strangled a rooster on stage?
Think.
There must be something you can do.
Brauer: Where would biting a chunk out of a toilet seat rank in babe magnetism?
Me: I must say that is quite bad-ass. How do you keep repeating it on stage, though? Decades ago, you ous missed your chance to drown in your own vomit at age 27 like real rockers.
Brauer: A nightly dose of tequila and repetition on stage is a cinch . .
Me: Ja, but I’m worried you’d run out of teeth to send scattering across the stage after a while. So the impact wouldn’t be as dramatic.
~~oo0oo~~
Our thread ended threadbare, we didn’t solve the pressing issue at hand: How can a Tshwane Rock Group achieve fym? ‘Course, Brauer could always fall back on the real talent in the family and provide backup to his talented vrou:
– the Warbling Brauers belt out a rude song full of untruths . . . –
~~oo0oo~~
kak – rot; decay
ontnugtering – eye-opening realisation; hello-o
sommer – jis
jis – just
Gramadoelas – backwoods; sticks
Tshwane – like Nashville; place of latent talent; ancestral home of the Tshwanepoel tribe Homo tshwanepoelii
When Mom turned ninety schoolfriend Mariette van Wyk Greyling wrote and started a long, rambling and nostalgic back and forth between us, paraphrased and embellished here:
She wrote: Goodness, you all look so good. I simply cannot believe your dad is in his nineties. He looks exactly the way he used to look when we were at school. Remarkable genes. Thanks for sending.
– Ah, sepia looks better! – Mom’s 90th Bday – on the left: Four Marys –
Please wish your mom happy happy from me – if she still remembers me: The daughter of TP who taught them to sing ‘and the dogs say goodnight’ – Louis Armstrong.
~~oo0oo~~
Oh, Mary will remember you alright! We only had a few families we’d hang out with, kuier with and sing with, and for a while there that was Theunis and Martie. They both still often talk about the factory and the characters who worked there. Stan Moseley was one. I learnt recently that Petra Bissett worked there a while. That factory your Dad ran was a HUGE part of Harrismith in its day.
Later: I phoned Mom; Mother Mary; Mary Methodist. She never ceases to amaze! I said : Do you remember going to Theunis and Martie van Wyk’s home and listening to Louis Armstrong?
I didn’t have to say another word. She said: “I heard it just yesterday! Someone played me Satchmo singing “What a Wonderful World” just yesterday! It was so good hearing it again after all these years. Theunis had a record player and he used to play it good and loud and Satchmo said, “and the dogs say goodnight” instead of “and the dark sacred night”! Mariette was in your class and then there was Anita and Boeta. And you know Martie’s really not well; She just cries and cries.“
I asked: Where did you hear about Martie? She said: “Oh, Dossie Farquhar tells me everything. Dossie was Mom’s bridesmaid. She’s in the same home as Martie in Bethlehem. She is Dossie de Villiers now; She has two sons in Bethlehem, Neil and someone. Dossie phoned me for my birthday and she’s also turning ninety this week, so I’ll phone her on her cellphone. No-one sends cards anymore. I got four: Yours from Jessie and Tommy; Sheila’s that you all signed that was originally a card to Sheila from Annie in 1974. And two others.“
“No-one sends cards anymore.’ And now Dossie won’t even be phoning. She died recently. Fewer and fewer friends remain once you live this long . . “ ~~oo0oo~~
Mariette
wrote:
Your
mom is incredible! What a pin-sharp mind! Goodness. If only my mother
could speak to her it would mean the world to her. None of her old
friends have been in touch. I mentioned to you that I dread the twice
weekly phone calls because she just cries and cries. One-way
conversation. But she is trapped inside a body with no motor
functions – only has hearing and a fairly sharp mind. Binswanger’s
Syndrome. Absolutely tragic! Can there be anything more cruel!? I
cannot imagine it.
Where
did the name Mary Methodist come from? Just because of her church
denomination? Sounds good though.
~~oo0oo~~
Mom is ‘Mary Methodist’ cos she was the Methodists’ johannes kerkorrel for a hundred years. We had to go to church every single Sunday morning for two hundred years solid. And we had to wear shoes. I was born on a Friday on a hill above town (in a manger, I think, though I may have that part wrong). That very Sunday, two days old, I had to listen to the whole church service, plus go to Sunday school and make notes and this continued every Sunday for four hundred years uninterrupted. I am SO going straight to heaven where I’m going to be the pearly gate-keeper. The holiest oke called Peter always gets that job.
We were well compensated, though. We got to hear Mom playing the piano at home. She would play her classical pieces, her popular music for their inebriated guests – including Theunis and Martie, members of the Goor Koor – to murder in song; and she’d practice her hymns for Sunday. My halo is only starting to fade now, fifty-footsack years later.
~~oo0oo~~
Mariette
wrote:
When I was fourteen my father wisely gave me the choice of church or no church. He wasn’t the church type. ‘Ek gaan nie daar sit met daardie skynheilige spul nie’. I chose not to go. And turned out quite alright. Hence the fact that I was never popular with the bybelkunde lot.
Did your dad go to church?
~~oo0oo~~
Theunis TP van Wyk was a wise soul. No, Dad Pieter Gerhardus never went to church, but nor did he take any stand. Mom would have been devastated if he’d interfered and he didn’t. We went happily to church and – especially – to guild, as it was social and fun and after dark. A gathering of rooineks – except the poor Anglicans who had to go to another church and worship the queen, shame. Oh, and the poor Catholics – mostly the new immigrants from Holland, Portugal, etc who were mostly in die Engelse klas. They had to go and kiss the Pope’s ring, shame. There wasn’t any fire and brimstone from our pulpit and the dominees even downplayed the Methodists’ famous hatred of drink. Turned a blind eye out of respect for Mary Methodist behind the orrel, maybe! Her being a purveyor of booze as her day job. Also, there were so few bliksems gooi’ing pennies into those velvet-lined wooden collection plates I think they thought, “We’ll take sinners, we’ll take rokers, we’ll take drinkers, we’ll take drank smouse, we’ll take ANY contributors!” Just like Jesus. They would even have taken lawyers, though I don’t think we got any of them. The dearth probably wasn’t quite as bad as the Anglicans, but still dire. Have you seen where I wrote about the desperate Anglicans?
Mariette
wrote:
So
what happened? Did that beautiful building survive? No Anglicans for
evermore in Harrismith? Loved that building. What a loss.
Confession:
when we lived in England I went to the Church of England Sunday
school a few times. Only because my best friend Beatrice Evans went.
But then the appeal of spending Sundays driving around the Yorkshire
Dales with Theunis in his new blue Zephyr won the toss.
~~oo0oo~~
Oh no, the old sandstone Anglican church is still there, and its congregation of rooineks limp along as always. Heydays may pass unnoticed, but weddings and funerals still have to have a place to happen! The only outcome was – Tabs didn’t become heilig! He wasn’t consecrated. I saw him the other day just before he went off on a groot trek thru Zimbabwe and we had a good laugh about how he ducked a bullet there. Joan Simpson saved him!
– The door that was not darkened . . –
As for your slipping into an Anglican church: Going to church where your best friend (other than Jesus) goes is a time-honoured tradition that only a lelike church would ever interfere with. As the NG Kerk did with Cappy Joubert after WW2.
The
Yorkshire Dales! I’ve seen movies made there. And the bicycle Tour de
Yorkshire shows wonderful footage. Sure looks beautiful.
Was Theunis’ blue Zephyr like this?
– Mariette said yes . . a ‘winged zephyr’ just like this –
~~oo0oo~~
Until the sessions and the discos arrived thanks to Round Table, there wasn’t any alternative fun in the dorp really. The Sunday School picnics in the park, on Lud Coetzee’s farm on the Swinburne road and at the foot of One Man’s Pass were a highlight of our year. As was standing on the back of Michael Hastings and Charlie Crawley’s flatbed Chevy truck with an orrel on it, driving slowly around town at night singing Xmas kêrels! Little old ‘Uncle Wright’ Liddell pumping the pedals to belt out the noise. He was our johannes kerkorrel before Mary inherited the mantle. Leon Strachan says for a while he was the only Engels-sprekende Nat in Harrismith!
What did Martie do? Trek n hoed aan, or stay at home? I’d say you were unpopular with the skynheiliges for TWO reasons: One: Not going kerktoe; and Two: Doing so well at school! That woulda pissed them off.
~~oo0oo~~
Mariette
wrote:
Martie did the kerk en hoed thing. Theunis let her be. Gave him time with his aviary birds and woodwork.
I
was confirmed as a Methodist for some or other reason but never knew
about the Methodist dislike of drink. Shows you what a farce that
whole confirmation thing is. Had to ‘read’ a bunch of stuff, and then
was confirmed.
I remember you had a bunch of fun with the extramural Methodist activities. The only NG Kerk event I didn’t miss for the world was Die Kerkbazaar. Yum. All those lekker koeksisters, toffee apples, fudge and melktert. Sjoe, makes me very lus now. Somehow the Woolies koeksisters and melktert just ain’t as nice.
~~oo0oo~~
So you briefly became a Methylated Spirit? How’s that! So did Cappy Joubert. When he got back from World War 2 the NG Kerk – his church – kyk’d him skeef when he arrived in his South African army uniform. So he hived himself off to the Meths boys and stayed there for evermore, hugely enriching the lives of us rooineks. His generosity and involvement and sense of humour and moral compass influenced a generation of kids in our dorp.
I learnt my bible stories very mildly from the enchanting Stella Euthemiou. We sat at her feet and gazed up in awe and wonder. Everyone fell in love with Stella! And her sister Pye; And her sister Ann; And her sister Georgie.
A dominee’s son who left Harrismith in about 1962 – Lincoln Michell – found my blog recently and he also remembered worshipping Stella back then, fifty years ago! She almost got us to heaven, but we had the other six days and twenty three hours to maak things reg and get unholy again. She had to start afresh every Sunday!
The only bible story we really learnt without a shadow of doubt was the holy unerring infallible fact that we got gifts at Christmas time. The old oke in red with the white beard got a lot more coverage and adulation than the younger oke in white with the brown beard, I can assure you.
We had another three gorgeous older girls at Sunday School: Shirley Mason, Anne Euthemiou and Lynn du Plessis. When I first heard “Shirley, Goodness and Mercy were going to follow me all the days of my life,” I knew exactly who they were and verily, I was pleased.
~~oo0oo~~
Mariette
wrote:
Anne
Euthemiou, Lynn du Plessis and Martie Marais were all gorgeous. Saw a
photo of Anne and Martie at one of Barbara’s famous get-togethers a
few months ago and they still look fabulous.
~~oo0oo~~
Aside: Famous author Chris van Wyk also had dreams on hearing that bible passage and in 2006 he wrote a wonderful childhood memoir called Shirley, Goodness and Mercy, a Childhood Memoir. He grew up in Riverlea and his lovely smile reminded me of fellow Riverlea character Gerald Durrell (‘yes, like the famous animal and zoo author‘ he’d say) who ran the Riverlea Eye Clinic when we used to go there as optometry students in Jo’burg in 1976 and 1977.
Dad:“Victor Simmonds was a lovely chap and a very good artist. He was a little man, grey, a lot older than me. What? How old? Well, I was probably 35 then and he was grey. He was probably 50. He lodged with Ruth Wright (later Ruth Dominy) on the plot next door to ours, Glen Khyber. I doubt if he paid them any rent, they were probably just helping him out. He moved to the hotel in Royal Natal National Park where they allowed him to sell his art to the guests and that probably paid his rent.
(This was on the slopes of Platberg, the mountain that overshadows Harrismith Free State).
“He was a hopeless alcoholic, unfortunately. He used to come to me begging for a bottle of brandy late at night, his clothes torn from coming straight across to Birdhaven from Glen Khyber, through the barbed wire fences. (Mom and Dad owned a bottle store, liquor store, in the town). I said ‘Fuck off, Victor, I won’t do that to you,’ and sent him away. I wish I had bought one of his paintings. Sheila found these paintings he gave me for nothing. He said he did these as a young student. As I took them he said ‘Wait, let me sign them for you.'”
– maybe a self portrait? – – nude with amphora? – – semi-nude with two amphorae? – – maybe the Kak Spruit at Glen Khyber? – possibly –
So I went looking and found a lot of his work available on the internet. Once again Dad’s 98yr-old memory proved sound. Victor was born in 1909, thus thirteen years older than Dad.
Victor Simmonds’ work has been offered at auction multiple times, with realized prices ranging from $126 to $256, depending on the size and medium of the artwork. Since 2012 the record price for this artist at auction is $256 for South African landscape with two women carrying wood, sold at Bonhams Oxford in 2012.
I just knew this scene! To me this looks like the stream above the Mahai campsite in Royal Natal National Park – So I went looking, and at Love Camping I found:
– spot on! – an image locked in my brain for fifty years! – – sunset, poplar trees, a river – the upper Wilge? –
A number of his paintings are available for sale. I’d love to see his ‘The Gorge, Royal Natal National Park, Showing the Inner Buttress and Devils Tooth’ but I’d have to subscribe for one day at 30 euros! That one was apparently painted in 1980, so he kept going for at least 23 years after he stayed in our neck of the woods. That would have made Victor around 70 and his liver a resilient organ.
– more Victor Simmonds Drakensberg scenes ca.1946 – the two on the left of the Amphitheatre –
~~~~oo0oo~~~~
This post was seen by old Westvillains Tony and Elesa Willies in Canada, who wrote in the comments. Elesa sent a pic of her and her folks taken 43 years ago in the same ‘shrubs beside a cascading stream’ spot above Mahai campsite in RNNP! Wow! That beats even my recall of the scene!
– Elesa with her folks Peg and Ivor Willies – right there! –
And Tony sent a Victor Simmonds painting called ‘Harrismith’ (wish I knew where this was done – maybe near Sunnymede on the banks of the Wilge river, looking away from the river towards Platberg?):
– one of 4 Victor Simmonds bought by Ivor Willies, architect in Westville in the 50s and 60s – – now owned by his son Tony and daughter Elesa in Canada –
Lovely frame!
~~~oo0oo~~~
I asked Dad if he could remember more. Just these (mainly sad) memories: – He was a lovely little man – small, frail even; I don’t think he ate much – he drank too much; – Ruth Wright probly gave him some grub, she was a lovely woman (he stayed in a cottage on their plot); – His pub was the Grand National in Warden street – quite a walk from the plot next door to us. He never had a car, nor even a bicycle; – I wish I had asked him to give you kids drawing or sketching lessons – I could have paid him a bit. He never had any money; – I fear he probably died penniless and got a paupers burial; (thankfully this was probably overly pessimistic as it turned out, as Victor was still painting some twenty years later, as shown by Helen who commissioned a painting of the Amphitheatre from him in 1980, just before she emigrated to Australia – see her comment).
~~~oo0oo~~~
– three more Simmonds now in the Willies’ homes in Canada –
Two more from the “early student paintings” he gave Dad. Both are marked ‘Harrismith ca.1946’ – but by who? Not by Victor himself.
~~~oo0oo~~~
Another wonderful Eastern Free State and Drakensberg artist found a post I wrote on Little Switzerland – a special place in his and his family’s lives. Enjoy Alan Kennedy‘s paintings here.
One wall in the new kitchen in River Drive ca.1999 had to be cobalt blue. I dunno why; mine is not to reason why. Aitch said it must be cobalt blue and so of course it was. Some of the other colours she and Nanich painted the house were also to dye for. See below. Lucky I’m a mild-mannered diplomat.
– Xmas day 2002 with Tommy, 1 year and 2 weeks old –
So when the post-Aitch renovations happened ca.2012 in Elston Place, there had to be some blue. I made the scullery and laundry doors blue. I looked for cobalt blue, but this was the closest I found.
– smiling Cecilia Shozi at the blue stable doors –
Already Tom’s memories are mainly The Legend of Mom, more than real memories. Jess remembers far more. So Tom had lots to say today about Mom. Jess was mainly quiet. As most years, Dizzi and Jon came round to clink a glass in your memory. Jess set a lovely formal table with flowers from the garden – and even a table cloth! I only remembered to take a pic after it was all over.
We had a medicinal G&T as we had all just been to sort-of malaria areas – me n Jess to Hluhluwe, Dizzi n Jon to St Lucia.
We salute you; We remember you; We often talk about you.
Off to the ‘Berg with the kids. To a hotel! A real hotel! The Cavern in the foothills of the Drakensberg. At last their Dad listened and took them somewhere they didn’t have to cook and clean! (This was back in 2012).
They loved it. Especially once they worked out one of the secrets of the place: If you gave any hotel employee your room number, he or she would give you anything you wanted under the sun. They had discovered the key to endless riches. They loved it. They no longer needed me. All they needed was to quickly invent their first signatures. When I said I was going off on a hike, did anyone want to come along? No! Go! Enjoy yourself Dad, BYE! They watched impatiently as I packed my rucksack with lunch and binocs and books. Go, Dad!
Movies, the pool table, tennis, drinks at the pool – all ‘free’!
With them happy in civilisation it was up to me to enjoy the hills and valleys, wildlife and – especially – birdlife.
This long-tailed grass lizard looks like a snake as he whips through the grass after grasshoppers. But look closely at his body:
– his tiny legs can be seen in the red boxes –
The next day I encouraged a bit more action. With some trepidation these townies went horse-riding.
– and loved it – – Tom tried fishing –
The other secret was mine: a secret rendezvous with a buxom lady I had met many years before.
Even if we live to be a hundred, the first twenty five years are ‘the longest half’ of our lives. They appear so while they are passing; they seem to have been so as we look back on them; and they take up more room in our memories than all the years that succeed them.
paraphrased from a quote by Robert Southey, English Romantic Poet
Southey (1774 – 1843) was born in Wine Street, Bristol. He was expelled from school for writing an article in The Flagellant condemning flogging. He went to Oxford, of which he later said, “All I learnt was a little swimming and a little boating.” A good start, then, but as he grew older he ‘sold out for money and respectability,’ proving his own saying that the first twenty five years are your best.
What do you do? I ask the old soldier sitting in my chair. He’s come to me for an eye test. I’m a musician in the army band, he says. Aha! Cool! What do you play? asks I.
The Saxophone, he says. The best of all the instruments! I flatter. How long have you been a soldier? Not long, he says, I joined a couple years ago and I’m just about to retire on a small army pension. What did you do before?
I was saxophonist in big bands. I toured the world. Mario Montereggi’s Big Band? I ask. Yes, indeed, I played with Mario.
And then he drops the big one:
I was with the African Jazz Pioneers for years. Wow! African Jazz Royalty in my chair!!
He might even have played with Mario at my fiftieth, where Aitch surprised me by getting Mario’s small ensemble to blow me away:
Is this him entertaining the kids, maybe?
– Tommy charms the sax player; Jess watches in awe . . –
Its ongoing. There’s even less stuff there, but some stuff is going to have to be pried from his tight reluctant fingers, maybe?
– “No, that’s hardwood for Gavin. He wants to make knife handles . . ” – – “You must take these, they were Oupa’s . . ” –
– the camera probably a box brownie held at waist level? –
The awl and the hand drill brace were Oupa’s in Boom street in PMB. The screwdriver and needle-nose pliers on the right were issued to Dad by the General Post Office when he started as an apprentice electrician in 1938. He had to climb up telephone poles with those in his pocket. Here’s the GPO vehicle he’d drive around in, fixing the phones! They didn’t bother with parcels and letters, no! That was old-school! They were the high-tech side of the Post Office: The telephones!
By the way, everything has a correct name. The screwdriver is a ‘perfect handle’ screwdriver. That’s a specific kind of screwdriver.
– happy apprentices under jovial Wally Coleman in white coat –
~~~~oo0oo~~~~
Today I learnt Mr Buckle didn’t shoe horses. No, he was the blacksmith, upholsterer and wagon-maker. Charlie Rustov shoed horses. He was a few rungs lower down the totem pole, and the only farrier in town. He had a high-pitched voice and would say‘Nee man, Mnr Swanepoel, daai blerrie hings gaan my skop!’when I took my stallion in to be shod. Dad would buy horses, school them, then sell them for a much higher price. I made more on horses than my post office pay.
~~~~oo0oo~~~~
‘Nee man, Mnr Swanepoel, daai blerrie hings gaan my skop!’ – No man, Mr Swanepoel, that blerrie stallion is going to kick me!
blerrie – bladdy
bladdy – bloody; no blood though, just a swearword
Hats off to Alan Turing and his memory and his legacy. We call ourselves civilised but we commit heinous crimes against those who serve humanity well and decently and beyond the call of duty. We have made some progress on the LGBTQ front but we are still far from achieving the right to call ourselves civilised. We are still often ignorant, fearful, hateful and bigoted. We still too often use our prejudices as weapons to divide people and to punish people for being different. We think we have changed since 1954, but right now we are persecuting Chelsea Manning for being brave and principled and serving her country well. And for being different.
Alan Turing was a genius who helped the Allies win WW2, but he had a boyfriend, so he was hauled into court, publicly shamed and ordered to undergo chemical castration – a pointless process administered in utter fucked-up medical ignorance, driven by ignorant fear.
He committed suicide at age 41.
Genius? Mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist, Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general-purpose computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence.
We stamped out his life sixty five years ago today. Because he was different.
~~~~~ooo000ooo~~~~~
epilogue paraphrased from AKALib on dailykos – thanks!
I think my favourite Aitch Art piece hanging on our walls was the Pear Tree ceramic. I broke it.
Smashed! DAMMIT!!
Oh well, we’re going to buy . .
One box of wine
Two packs of beer
Three sticks of glue
Seven . . . . dancing . . . . girls
and hold a –
Party-y in a Pear Tree
And we’ll fix it – yep. Louis is going to be the GluMeister, I’ll keep it lubricated, and Petrea will bring a semblance of order.
Bits n Pieces
~~oo0oo~~
Update: A preliminary Cocktails and Curry evening has been held in which a Mak Martini was drank; also a cream vodka with mint sprig; and a medicinal flu jab consisting of one part gin one part vodka one part vermouth and freshly squoze lemon and orange, garnished with a slice of lemon and topped up with Little Miss Muffet’s whey orange juice from Tropika. Oh yes, and some practice glueing was done by the Glumeister.
Who also made the curry, fresh from New Delhi, the gurugram district. It was delicious, spicy, tasty, filling, warming on a chilly evening. Jess supplied dessert: Baked cheesecake, dark chocolate, double-thick cream; All washed down with strong filter coffee in zebra hide cups.
Update: Eventually I took it to the HIllcrest mushroom farm where a kind lady put humpty together again and charged me way too little for her time.
