While staying in friend Ian Whitton’s lovely cottage outside Stanford near Hermanus, we visited the mission town of Elim and its mission station and tsurts (church) where missionaries came from afar to sternly remind the happy locals that they were actually deadly sinners. Also that they must eat like them, so they needed to build a watermill:
– Jess adding flavour to the bread –
– that store –
In the village we stopped for some cooldrinks. The family decided to stay in the car as I ducked into a little village store. A line of little kids were sitting flat on their bums on the pavement leaning against the wall all in a row outside the door, watching me. Their backs against the green wall, they basked in the warm sun.
Four-year-old Jess changed her mind and ran after me, grabbing my hand as I drew level with the local gang. Where they’d looked at me rather disinterestedly, they now perked up. One dug her mate in the ribs with her elbow and exclaimed excitedly: “Kyk! Sy’s ‘n Hotnot!”
The old man made a beautiful riempie bench, modeled after an old one he bought. He thought he’d make two, so that along with the old one he’d have three, the thought being to give one to each of his three beloved children. Here’s mine, newly re-riempied after the originals vrotted and frayed:
Made of blackwood; thickness’d on his big thicknesser and planed on his big plane; also blackwood legs, turned on his big lathe.
Then olive wood turnings for the backrest uprights; yellow wood inlays routed into the backrest with one of his routers; dovetail joints to hang it all together.
The original leather riempies were from a kudu he had shot in old South West Africa on a cousin’s farm. He had it skinned and brought the skin and the horns and the meat as biltong home to Harrismith in 1969. Then he took the skin to Marianhill monastery where it was tanned and cut into riempies. Apparently the monks n nuns like them some leather.
Quite something! No wonder he suddenly wants it back, some forty to fifty years after the kudu died. Here he is with Mom in his woodwork shop/haven/retreat.
~~oo0oo~~
He’d be so proud to see his grandson following in his footsteps, ably taught by his talented son. Bella, inspecting our work, is not so sure about the ‘talented’ part. She thinks maybe this helicopter will fly with a pronounced yaw.
~~oo0oo~~
Aside: While watching the riempies being cut the old goat decided, ‘I can do that’ so he had a riempie cutter made for future use.
Never did happen, but then a huge part of his fascination was the tools. He once spent ages totally rebuilding a thicknesser someone had discarded and he had salvaged. It didn’t ever get used again, but he loved taking it apart, fixing it and putting it back together. Metalwork friends made some replacement parts for him and he changed protective covers from aluminium to plexiglass so you could SEE the parts! It was a shame to craft new parts then hide them. The finished tool looked great, wish I had taken pictures.
~~oo0oo~~
vrotted – rotted, just more impressively. Well, they were over forty years old before they were even used, then did service for – I dunno – about ten years. Very seldom sat on, must admit. Mostly just looked at and admired.
Bloody fireworks!! I had Jessie the daughter and Sambucca the black labrador in my room.
Tom was part of the problem, firing off some of his own at a mate’s house in Umlazi. He’d gone to visit them knowing there’d be more ACTION than at home.
I fetched him about 11am New Year‘s day. “Ha! Dad! he says “You think white people can drink!?” he says. “You aint seen NUTHING! “
Says there was lots of staggering and shouting. They were hauled in to sleep around midnight, waited till Ma Sukude was asleep then snuck out thru the window and joined the festivities till the wee hours.
Can’t think WHERE he gets it from . . .
He was fine, just very sunburnt – tyre-rubber black neck and heat rash from the two days he was there – they spent their time outdoors, not like here where he’s a caveman.
As a colonial, I had long contemplated making an expedition into the regions north of the Cape Colony and Natal, but not until that year was I able to see my way clear to accomplish it. At that time the Cape Colony was not so well known as it is now, and Natal much less; more particularly beyond its northern boundary, over the Drakensberg mountains, for few besides the Boers had ever penetrated beyond the Free State and Transvaal; and when on their return journey to Maritzburg, to sell their skins and other native produce, I had frequent conversations with them, the result was that nothing was known of the country beyond their limited journeys. This naturally gave me a greater desire to visit the native territories, and, being young and full of energy, wishing for a more active life than farming, although that is active during some part of the year, I arranged my plans and made up my mind to visit these unknown regions, and avail myself of such opportunities as I could spare from time to time to go and explore the interior.
That’s a quote from Andrew A. Anderson in his book “Twenty-Five Years in a Waggon in South Africa – Sport and Travel in South Africa”. * He started his trek in August 1863.
So the answer I suppose, is: As long as we’ve been here.
~~oo0oo~~
Well, as colonials we had also long contemplated making an expedition into regions north, so in 2003 we finally got off our butts and went.
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Back to our Andrew A Anderson: He left Natal and sallied into the Vrystaat, stopping first at a soon-to-be-famous town.
‘The great change in climate and vegetation is very perceptible on leaving fair Natal for the cold, dreary, open, and inhospitable Free State. Harrysmith, in 1863, was a poor, dull, sleepy, town, only supported and kept alive by a few transport riders on their way to the Transvaal and the small villages of the Free State. Hmph! what did ‘e know!?
‘I remained two days to gain news and information about the locality, and the various roads to the north; game being plentiful in all directions, principally blesbok and springbok, wildebeest or gnu, quaggas, hartebeest, and others. The ostrich was also plentiful. I decided to follow the game up, taking the advice of my Natal friend, who had recently returned from his shooting excursion. I took the road leading east, and less frequented than the others, which eventually leads to the newly-formed town of Wakkerstroom.
~~oo0oo~~
Later, Anderson relates a story he heard – second hand:
‘As an instance of their boldness at times, for, generally speaking, they (lions) are cowardly, the following was related by Mr Botha, a respectable, educated Boer farmer, and is quite true. It happened to his uncle.‘
“Journal.—Apes river, between Pretoria and Waterborg. Arrived at the Outspan, remained until next night at twelve, then started the waggon off on the springbok flats (twenty miles without water). The party consisted of L. Botha, P. Venter, and the servants, one waggon with span of sixteen oxen, one cart and two horses. Venter and Botha remained at the Outspan place with the cart and horses and a bastard Hottentot boy called Mark, twelve years old.
“The waggon had been gone half-an-hour when they heard the rattling of wheels in a manner which made them think that the oxen must have had a ‘scrick’ (scare) from a lion, as that place is full of them. Mark, who was sleeping alongside the fire, was called up to bring the horses. The lazy fellows there won’t do anything themselves*, not even when there is a ‘scrick’ from a lion. They were soon going to render assistance to the waggon, going at a jog trot (even then they did not hurry*), when Mark, who was on the front seat, called out, ‘Baas, de esel byt de paarde’ (‘The donkey bites the horse’), and immediately the cart stopped, and a lion was seen clasped round the fore-quarters of the favourite horse. Before the gun was taken up, down went the horse; meanwhile the gun was levelled at the lion, but the cap missed. Another was searched for, but it would not fit, as it was small and the nipple a large military one. The lion now was making his meal off the horse, lying at his ease alongside the splash-board, eating the hind-quarter, Botha trying to split a cap to make it fit in vain; so Venter took the gun, and Botha made up powder with spittle to make it stick, and Venter was to take aim and Botha to do the firing with a match. Just as it ignited, the lion sprang right into the cart between them, and gave Venter a wound on the head and scratched his hand with his claw, and bit off a piece of the railing, sending the gun and Mark spinning out of the cart, and with that force that the lion fell down behind the cart. He then came round, as fast as he could, on to the dead horse, and continued his feed; but, not in the same cool manner, but making a growling, like a cat with meat when a dog is near, and now and then giving an awful roar, which made the cart, men, and all shake again. The other horse, which is a miracle, stood quite still, never attempting to budge an inch. After the lion had fed he went away, and Botha got out, intending to unharness the remaining horse, but no sooner was he on the ground than he heard the lion coming on again at full speed. He threw himself into the cart, and the lion stopped in front of the living horse, which tried to escape but was held fast by the pole-chain after breaking the swingle-trees. The lion gave one jump on to the horse, and with one bite behind the ears killed him. Botha was lying on the front seat, with his legs hanging down alongside the splash-board, when the lion came and licked the sweat of his horse off his trousers, but did not bite, Botha remaining quite still, which was the only chance, in the dog-cart from ten o’clock, when first attacked, until near daybreak, when the lion left;”
Saith Anderson: ‘This is a most remarkable case of boldness in a lion, when not wounded.’
*Anderson’s contempt for the Boers was typical of Poms. In ’25yrs in a Waggon’ he often writes disparagingly of them even while accepting their hospitality and gaining from their local knowledge.
This arrogance led to the ‘mighty British Empire’ suffering a crashing defeat against the Boers in the First Anglo Boer War in 1880.
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*Anderson’s book is free to read at Project Gutenberg. Read about the amazing Project Gutenberg here.
Look up and spot the satellites above you. How far are they? Well, if you could lift up the front of your car until it was standing on its exhaust pipe and then drive straight upwards, the nearest ones are only one hour’s drive away, assuming your car can go 160km/h. I’m sure mine could achieve that – on the way back.
Virgin Galactic is taking deposits (now) to fly you not quite so high (one day) for R2,5m.
Here are some distances to various satellites (that’s the International Space Station in the top pic, the one we drove to in an hour or two).
Altitude
Satellite Types
160-480km
shuttles, space stations, spysats, navsats, hamsats
Those that stay in one position relative to earth (the ‘geo-stationary’ ones) are a bit further and it would take you about two weeks of non-stop driving to get to the DSTV satellite. If you get there, please switch off all those “reality” shows. So better pack some sarmies and a flask of coffee. And take blankets.
Two geo-stationary satellites.
On this scale the space shuttle and spysats are flat against the earth – you couldn’t see any space between them and earth they’re so close.
So: Ready to take a R2 500 000 ‘space’ flip, even though you won’t actually be going into space?
The furthest ‘satellite’ you wouldn’t be able to drive to, though. It is now 20 640 000 000km away. Voyager 1 was launched in 1977. It’s more a ‘space probe’ and it’s flying away from us at about 17km per second. Voyager 1 is the first and only man-made object to have explored Uranus and Neptune, and to have left our solar system. A radio message from Voyager 1 now takes over 19hrs to reach us.
Update: Now Voyager 2 has also left our solar system. In December 2018 NASA announced the satellite, the only spacecraft to have visited all four gas giant planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — had joined its predecessor Voyager 1 beyond the bounds of our sun’s influence How’s that!? Travel at 17km per second for just 41 years and Zap! you’re out of our solar system! Just another 81 000 years and you’ll reach our nearest star, Alpha Centauri. Of course, you’d still be in the Milky Way, our own galaxy. Intergalactic travel? Now that’s another ballgame!
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.
David Swanepoel was a wonderful lepidopterist back in the 1920’s to the ’60’s. He discovered many butterflies and some were named swanepoeli after him.
I wanted to find out more about him so went searching the ‘net for him (please don’t ‘google,’ use startpage.com or duckduckgo.com or qwant.com as more internet-friendly ways to search the internet).
Here’s what I got:
Candice Swanepoel as a butterfly!
I then found this:
Mark Williams founded the SA Lepidopterists’ Society in 1983.
As a schoolboy in the mid-1960s Williams, accompanied by two friends, stumbled into a bush camp to find an old Chevy beside a tent and the well-known South African lepidopterist David Swanepoel, who had gorgeous azure butterflies pinned on a board.
Williams managed to annoy the old man, who had been collecting since the early 1900s, and who offered to show the boys where to find the creature. Though tantalized, Williams said he’d find it himself and watched in disgust as his two camping companions trotted after Swanepoel, “like obedient puppies.”
“He called me a hard head and a little bliksem and said I’d never find them. It took me three days. I worked my butt off.
“But I came back and held it up and said, ‘I found it.’ He leaned over conspiratorially and said: ‘Those other two will give up butterflies. But you will do this for the rest of your life.'”
And this:
David Abraham Swanepoel (1912–1990) began collecting in 1925.
His book Butterflies of South Africa—when, where and how they fly. Swanepoel DA (1953) Maskew Miller, Cape Town
There’s a David Swanepoel collection in the Transvaal Museum.
Dira swanepoeli – Swanepoel’s Widow – and Papillio ophidocephalus entabeni, were discovered in 1939 by Mr. D.A Swanepoel, after extensive collecting in the Soutpansberg, near Mountain View Hotel.
The feature pic is Swanepoel’s Brown, Pseudonympha swanepoelii with thanks to Steve Woodhall’s lovely Field Guide to Butterflies of South Africa.
~~oo0oo~~
Sometimes one gets remembered – when your memory is jogged. Friend Steve Reed tells of talk in Clarens, Free State: When we lived in Clarens we had an annual visitation by what must have been the self-same Swanepoel: “Khaki clad solitary figure, fleet-footing round the village with his net like something out of Peter Pan. Regarded by the locals with great interest (and a good level of suspicion ) . . “
Names change. I see some of these names are no more according to Steve Woodhall’s authoritative list. Swanepoel’s Widow gone; braueri gone. Oh well, they were fun while they lasted!
Christmas lunch for a Green-veined Emperor feasting on Sambucca’s labrador poo. Liked it so much it didn’t budge when I opened its wings with my fingers to see its upperside!
It’s 2015 and I’m on the banks of the Umtamvuna on the border of the old Transkei and old Natal. It’s paradise. There’s a broad deep river, a great sunset and the sounds of herons, guineas and francolin settling for the night. Also a black cuckoo complaining he’s feeling indisposed.
All of it drowned out by my camping neighbours from BoksburgBenoniBrakpan whose fokkins are matched by the local South Coast chicks’ fuckings. Loud music. LOUD. Did we ever play it this loud? Well yes, but it wasn’t a mixture of much-too-current and rooi rokkies, bakgats, Meidjie en Lola.
‘Kinell!!
At least my three 13yr-olds are in their element. They’re at the riverside on the wooden peir catching Africa, real crabs and imaginary fish.
My second double G&T from the bar is helping, also a good book.
But it’s hard not to eavesdrop. One oke has just chooned a chick he met that evening she’s a fokkin’ pussy and another chick complained confidentially to her mate that “Mandy’s a problem when she gets drunk: She takes off all her clothes”. Obviously entirely a chicks-only problem, I think, peeping out of my tent.
The next night the gazebo next to our tent on the opposite side gets going. I meet a swaying Kehle nearly my age in the ablution block and over the communal urinal he tells me that he’s from ‘Toti and his wife works in Umthatha and they’re gathering with family and isn’t it *hic* WONDERFUL how peaceful and quiet it is here on the Umtamvuna compared to the din of the city *hic*? I would agree with him except I can hardly hear him as his party has a massive boombox thundering deep bass while the ladies of the party are singing and ululating to an entirely different choon. The car is playing modern while the aunties are shouting traditional.
Squeaking through every now and then is the paid lone guitarist at the camp pub on the far side of the gazebo. He’s doing stuff I actually recognise – umlungu hits from the 70’s, but he’s losing the volume fight.
Later on the three 13yr-olds in our tent (I’m sleeping in the bakkie) get the giggles as they hear what’s happening around them.
Bloody hell! I’m looking forward to peace and quiet back in the city.
Bella became Aitch’s most beloved dog of all, eclipsing TC the Original and even Matt the Beloved. It was a tall order to take Matt’s place in Aitch’s heart but Bella did it by following her like a shadow, paying attention, winning her obedience classes – and by sheer longevity.
She reached the ripe old age of seventeen years and died just before Aitch. She’s buried at 10 Elston Place; whereas TC, Matt and Bogart are all buried at 7 River Drive.
Here TC is not happy with this newfound nuisance! Not another black puppy that’s going to end up bigger than me! The third one!
– Bella Best-Behaved – and her rosette –
In her final obedience trial at Canine Academy, she and Aitch got into the finals with a friend and her pedigree Alsatian. They were neck and neck until the time they had to do “go away” things (as opposed to “come here” things). Bella went as told; found what she had to; waited there until asked, then brought it to Aitch. Meantime the Alsatian stumbled a bit at that task. In congratulating her, her friend turned to Aitch and said, “If you asked Bella to fly, she would!”
Here’s Aitch with Bella facepaint, and both disguised as fairies, with haloes and wings:
– Bella’s main goal in life was to please this woman – Aitch shoulda stuck out her tongue and they’da been twins! –
Pig, chicken, potatoes, beans. And champagne. Clean forgot the salad but it wasn’t missed. We had two types of gammon: Slices from Woolworths and a whole one cooked by Dad, who had – horrors – mistakenly bought an uncooked gammon and had to cook it this morning. Once it had been the oven an hour or so, I read the instructions: ‘Boil in a big pot of water . . .
A Best Gammon Vote was taken and – bearing in mind they’re only getting their prezzies in January – the kids – unanimously; by a wide margin; and by popular acclaim; and unopposed – decide Dad’s was best. By far.
as sides: Lay’s chips in the packet; tomato sauce out of the bottle –
Janet Humphrey got this magic pic of a young Giant Eagle Owl and a Paradise Flycatcher in her old garden on the banks of the Tamalakhane river in the suburbs of Maun in Botswana.
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BTW – Owl wisdom? Not so much
Owls are “eyes and ears on wings”. That brain cavity above is about the size of a large peanut. Two-thirds of the owl brain is devoted to sight and hearing. Of the one-third that is left, about 75% of it is devoted to hard-wired instinct and lower functions. That leaves a tiny little sliver for learning which is mostly taken up by remembering good hunting grounds and hunting strategies that work.
Owls are not social creatures like parrots or crows, so they don’t need a lot of cerebral cortex. Think of them as the sharks of the sky. Very good at what they do (hunt, see, hear and reproduce). Mediocre at everything else. (Thanks Mercedes R. Lackey on quora.com).
Geoffey Widdison, also a quoran, asks why we associate owls with intelligence and wisdom and decides “the most likely reason is that they have large depressions around their eyes (which, ironically, are apparently there to direct sound more than to help vision), and that makes them look ‘intelligent and deliberative’ to humans. In other words, not only are we judging by appearance, we’re judging another species on something that has no connection to the quality we attribute to it. (We’re ‘anthropomorphising’).
Which suggests that, while owls aren’t especially bright, neither are we”.
——-ooo000ooo——-
Here he is a few months later in a neighbour’s garden:
The telephone pole just outside my fence recently got a new cable – a fibre optic cable.
Soon I’ll be able to waste my time more efficiently!
Then I noticed a bird popping in and out of the hole in the pole right on top. A violet-backed starling (old plum-coloured). Beautiful dimorphic male and female.
(thanks for pic, nobby clarke)
Couldn’t have been much of a nest in rainy weather, but there it was.
I watched them for a week, but then we got more rain and I don’t see them anymore so I guess they learned this pole is better suited to the ‘net than the nest.
First puppy. That was TC whose name didn’t signify much but we couldn’t think of another and settled on TC which teasingly was for “Terrible Canine” or “Terrific Canine”. Maybe the character from the TV show Magnum P.I influenced the name too. She was born on Melrose Farm of Mouse the Jack Russell by that he-man and character Stan the dark Staffie and was a gift from Dave and Goldie Hill, new parents of Tatum at the time. This was December 1988.
Stan with Goldie; Mouse with Tatum:
– dogs aren’t allowed on the bed at 7 River Drive – much . .
TC with her siblings before weaning:
We still lived in a flat but were moving into a house soon. Flat life suited TC:
– Top Dog surveys her domain –
But so did the great outdoors:
And even though three younger new arrivals outgrew her . . .
She outlasted two of them and remained Top Dog:
Her big friend and sparring partner was Tess the bull terrier from next door. Great mates they were, but occasionally when we near they’d go at each other with much snarling and hound-dog insults.
Once I held Tess high overhead with TC attached to her leg in a firm bite, both growling furiously, then dumped them in the deep end of the pool before they would quit their nonsense!
TC lived to fifteen, outliving Matt and Bogart. She is buried at 7 River Drive Westville on the banks of the Mkombaan river under a kanniedood tree, the paperbark commiphora (was Commiphora harveyi). She just got old and tired and slower and thin, and died quietly in her basket one evening.
