– life – bokdrols of wisdom –
In the 2016 rugby season I wrote:
Affies came to Westville this past weekend and SLAUGHTERED us. I don’t think we won a single rugger match. Our firsts lost 65-0.
Today the local free rag arrived and I caught a glimpse of the sport heading and did a double-take:
“Westville slays Pretoria giant”
Turns out only the hockey received any coverage in the paper!
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In true journalistic tradition I sent the headline, and not the rugby news, to my full-of-Elon Pretoria Boys High Old Boy china.
When I left Specsavers in 2000 the lovely team I worked with gave me a perfect farewell gift: A book by Chris and Tilde Stuart: ‘Africa’s Great Wild Places.’ Right up my alley. If the Stuarts think these places are special you can bet they are. They have been all over Africa and they don’t flit in and out; when they go somewhere, they stay a while!
I had been to seven of the fifteen places they chose for the book and immediately set about getting to the eighth:
My eighth of the Great Wild Places – Luangwa in Zambia
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I have visited the wondrous Okavango Delta in Botswana by plane and by land on about a dozen occasions, lucky me, thanks to having lil sis Janet living in Maun.
We had this book at home growing up and I loved it. It describes the Okavango in 1958; Moremi and Chobe weren’t parks yet, but the story about two crazy loons driving a great lumbering gas-guzzling, wartime D.U.K.W amphibious monstrosity led to a fascination and – years later – many trips there starting in 1985.
The latest trip was in March 2018. While there I read her new book Starlings Laughing, under her new name June Vendall Clark. While there are challenges, I’m pleased to report that exactly sixty years later, the Okavango is still the amazing paradise June Kay loved so much.
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A magic trip in a little Suzuki to Tsavo East and Tsavo West in Kenya
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Kruger National Park in South Africa
First visit in 1968 – a school tour. Most recent in 2023 – three fun weeks in the park.
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The Kalahari – Kalahari-Gemsbok Park in South Africa and the Kalahari in Botswana
1969 school tour and 1996 with Aitch; In 2010 with Janet we saw the Green Kalahari and paddled the Nhabe River into lake Ngami.
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Makgadikgadi Pans and Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana
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Etosha in Namibia in 1969 and 1986
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Hwange in Zimbabwe
Probably my favourite. In 1997 we went to Makololo and in 2010 to Somalisa
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The Namib desert
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Western Tanzania
This was one area I thought it unlikely we’d get to visit. Then friend Mike Lello got to go! His son Chris worked in wildlife safaris in Tanzania and arranged a fly-in trip. And lately, wonderful news: My bro-in-law Jeff and nephew Robbie have bought a farm near Iringa. I may not get all the way west, but I’d love to go to the Selous and Ruaha National Park! Time will tell!
More to see:
Uganda, the Serengeti, the Soda Lakes, the Great Selous. One day . . .
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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 hollie!’ – the famous ‘deck the halls with boughs of holly’ was improved in translation to ‘cover your arse with boughs of holly’;
1938 – Dad – Maritzburg College, Pietermaritzburg.
1972 – Me – Harrismith se Hoerskool, Vrystaat.
1975 – Aitch at Muizenberg High – head girl!
2016 – My Jessie – Wendon Academy, Westville, KwaZuluNatal.
2019 – My Tommy – home schooling – did the GED course
We went from steam power to cellphone power! Well actually, I spose the internal combustion engine was up and running when the ole man left matric . . .
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When Aitch died it was two Muslim Moms that stepped forward and calmly and without fuss saved my butt. They re-organised their lift club to include me and kept me informed of what was happening at school. I did the morning ‘deliver’ school run every third week, while they shared the afternoon ‘fetch’ school run between them, insisting I needn’t do it as I was working and they were home Moms.
Then every year they’d give ME presents “to thank me for my help”! Five and a half years they just sorted me out, reminding me of events, juggling times when needed. We were all flexible, swopping times as needed by any of us in special circumstances.
They were fundamentally fantastic.
Thank you Sarah and Katie (Saarah and Katija)!
Have you HEARD?! Michaelhouse are going co-ed! It’s true: From next year they’ll be accepting boys.
They ran up against my Tom in the mighty U/15D’s in that game you play with oval leather balls. He personally ran in three tries before half-time.
Final score Westville 52 – : : : : – Girls High Zip. Zero. 0. Nought, ek sê.
Of course, Tom was merely following in the footsteps of his ancestors who have made a habit of whipping Michaelhouse. Also he’d probly absorbed his Dad’s sage rugby tips and advice. OK nah, probly not.
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Feature pic: The Michaelhouse scrum collapses
Tomaldinho! I was seeing dollars sign$ I was going to sign him up with Amazulu in Durban – No Dad!! PSG in Paris!! Oh. My bad. I need new boots, Dad! Lime green ones.
But then suddenly it was rugby. RUGBY Dad! I need new boots. You can’t play rugby in soccer boots, Dad! I’m a rugger player now!
Greg Seibert was an exchange student to Harrismith back in 1972. He mailed me in 2014 to say his brother Jeff was coming to SA for work in Port Elizabeth. He’s with General Motors. I said get him up to KZN and we can go to a game reserve. Short notice, so I booked Hluhluwe.
Greg thought he may join us but it didn’t happen. Very sadly.
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I wrote to friends after: Hared off at short notice to Hluhluwe-Mfolosi park.
Harrismith’s 1972 Rotary exchange student Greg Seibert contacted me to say his brother was in SA. He works for General Motors and I spose he was checking to see if they still sell Chevs in this neck of the woods. He’s from just outside Detroit, Michigan.
Mfolosi was dry and Hluhluwe was burnt, the logs still smouldering from a fire that burnt about half the park. Lots to see in the line of big grey animals plus antelope and painted dogs. Lots of birds, too.
Must get a kombi next time . .
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Jessie’s grade 10 class had Dr Chris Barnard and Heart Transplants as a subject last week.
When she told me I asked, ‘Did you tell them your Mama worked with him?’ Actually, no she hadn’t. She vaguely knew Mom had done it, but wasn’t confident enough to step forward. My shy Jess.
So out with Aitch’s old albums of her working next to the old sleazy charmer, still quite young back before 1983 (when he retired). She says he tried his luck to get her to go out with him one night, as he apparently did with all the nubiles on the team.
And there in the pics was Aitch in theatre greens and mask: The cardio-vascular perfusionist operating the heart-lung machine – ‘the oxygenator’ – that kept the patient alive once the blood circulation had been diverted away from their own heart and lungs. And there was the famous cad watching. And there was a heart in a jar.
Off to school went the album the next day and Jess was the focus of much attention and oohing and aahing. Which she loved.
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Tom’s headmaster committed suicide. At the school. He was found by a caretaker. It has rattled my two profoundly.
Aitch had befriended Eugene when his wife was also suffering from cancer, and then more so when she died, about two years before Aitch died. They were in a home bible study class with the Methodist dominee Ian Howarth.
Tom & Jess both asked me “What would happen if you died, Dad?” and Jess asked me “Dad, would you ever commit suicide?”
Shit! shitshitshit!
I have told them how much I love them and all about what I have arranged for the house and live-in care and so on, and also re-assured them no way I would do myself in. We had some good chats.
What a bliksem. Eugene was a more mature man than many of the teachers at Tom’s school, and a steadying hand. I fear Tom will catch more flak at school for a while.
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.
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Feature pic: Me, Anne, Donald & Sheila in Platberg’s shadow
I went to hand over the cash we had raised after the first school swimming gala to the bursar. Livingstone school, around 2011.
TomTom accompanied me.
Much counting and signing and Tom showing off his swimming “medals” with Rick making all the right noises from behind the hatch at the bursar’s office.
As we left, Tom says to me: “We call her the Prison Lady. You see all the bars she’s behind? Look, even her door has burglar bars!”
Oh, I said, I wonder if she has to sleep in there all night?
“No”, he says airily, “she has her own keys”.
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When I told Rick about this, she told me how one little kid had peered at her through the bars and asked:
“Do you have food?”
Now we’re driving home. Dad, did you see the lions come to drink and the one crocodile ate the little lion cub?
No, TomTom, where did you see that?
On TV.
Dad, if I was a crocodile I’d just live on the water and not eat babies. I’d be a vegetarian to other animals!
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“Dad, I’ve got tomorrow off for study leave! “Can we go to the Pavilion?”, says Jess, pulling my leg, rattling my cage and testing my alertness.
Luckily I twig she’s revving me and I say, “SURE, dear! Let’s spend the whole day there and spend LOTS of money!’
Tom pipes up in the background: “He’s saying no”.
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2012/11/04 Brauer wrote:
What her Dof Dad seems to have overlooked is that she might be majoring in sociology and there’s no better place to do research than at the Pavilion.
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Oh, she’s definitely majoring in sociHology. She and Rita Durban went shopping to Pavilion today. When I got home she was hopping up and down: All those clothes she’s been on at me about for AGES she’s finally got!
And is she CHUFFED!?
I had a fashion parade tonight. Mostly shorts, baggies and short tops.
She has one dress. I think she has worn it once.
She wore beautiful black slacks and a short salmon-coloured top to her cousin’s wedding.
She dances here all day every day, but wouldn’t dance at the wedding.
My Jess.
Her main focus now is her 15th birthday party. This Saturday. Dancing disco with boys, then a sleepover, girls-only.
BUT HAVE I BOOKED THE SLIPPY SLIDE?
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Dropped Tom off this morning. First day, last term.
He was great, full of beans. We chatted a bit and he didn’t roll his eyes much when I repeated my Better Marks, Less Detentions speech.
“Gotta go Dad”, he says as he fist-bumps me and rolls off the back seat “My fan club’s waiting”.
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Tom got two more. One for flying a paper plane in class. The other for shirt out and socks down. Shirt out or Socks down No. 132
I said (ala Paul Simon):
¶ “You’re in trouble, boy and now you’re headed in for more. It’s the same old story: ¶
Either you build a paper plane that flies the length of the passage or . . . ”
No problem. Fold fold fold fold fold, flick. We high-fived before it even landed.
See, Dad, I made it for Teshail and it was passed around the class and then came back to me. I threw it at Teshail but it went too far and landed on Mr Verster’s desk.
Ok, boy. I see.
