– life – bokdrols of wisdom –
parked here for safekeeping – hard copies have been discarded. And there were lots of hard copies! Here are some of Aitch’s photo albums. All are gone now.
1986 diary:
1992 diary:
1989 – My first bond:
Jess & Tom – Dance & Portraits
2021 – house-emptying pics. Plus storage, furniture selling, etc.
. . and today, a Lesser Honeyguide in the Milkwood tree! An Indicator minor in a Mimusops afra
Mrs Pretty Mpisane who works at the cottage next door came in for a whirlwind day of cleaning. She gave orders, and we cleared rooms ahead of her. Much sweeping, and mopping and wiping down.
The day after, this tiny little mushroom popped up in the freshly-cleaned bathroom! About 10mm diameter cap.
And last thing before we left: Jess had a birthday and her friends Lwazi and Sandi treated her to roses.
Pre-sunrise at Punda Maria camp waterhole. I decide to make coffee to ‘take with,’ so it’s fully light when I get into the hide, and the sun is about to show. It’s Feb 2024
The resident Egyptian Geese, Blacksmith Lapwings, Three-banded Plovers; and foam nest frog nests are there.
A Bearded Woodpecker drums a tattoo in a dead tree while a Cape Turtle Dove exhorts me to Work Harder. Good luck with that, I’ve been ignoring them for almost four years now.
Two damp Striped Kingfishers sit in the falling mist, not quite a drizzle, giving their trilling call. A Brown-hooded Kingfisher silent nearby. A Tawny-flanked Prinia going crazy, scolding something I can’t see.
Also Fork-tailed Drongo, Red-backed Shrike, Cinnamon-breasted Bunting, Chinspot Batis, Pintail Whydah, Blue & Lipstick waxbills (I don’t like the word ‘common’), Paradise Whydah, Red-billed Oxpecker, European & Carmine Bee-eaters; Greater blue-eared Glossy Starling, GHS girls (Grey-headed Sparrows), Laughing, Emerald & Cape Turtle Doves; Mosque, Barn & Lesser-striped Swallows; Puffback & Red-back Shrikes; Red-billed Quelea flock; Red-Billed firefinch, Indigo bird, Lilac-breasted Roller, Crested Barbet, Grey Goway Bird, Black-crowned Tchagra, Arrow-marked Babbler, Yellow-bellied Greenbul, Dusky & Paradise flycatchers; Long-billed Crombec, White-browed (Hooligans) Robin-chat. A great morning.
Somewhere in the middle distance eles rumble and baboons bark.
A flock of White Helmet-shrikes – The Seven Sisters – fly into the hide tree just a few metres from me. I get a blurry pic.
A skreee from a Blacksmith Lapwing announces a raptor and there he is: A Little Sparrowhawk strafes low over the water, then banks up and lands in a tall mopani tree too far away for a definite ID, but his size tells me he’s a Little.
Now those eles arrive to drink, and one drops a huge dump while doing so. I zoom in on their dry skin.
Uh oh! Three primates enter the hide. Loud talk and cigarette smoke sets off my internal alarm. Oh well, I enjoyed a lovely couple of early morning hours alone at the hide. Time to wake Jess up for breakfast in the hut she hired after tiring of camping!
~~oo0oo~~
Luvhuvhu river banks
White-fronted Bee-eater
Collared & White-bellied Sunbirds
Brubru Kurrichane Thrush
Black flycatcher
White-crowned Lapwing
Bob the Sandpiper (common)
Marsh Sandpiper
Orange-breasted Bush-shrike
Tambourine Dove
Kloppersfontein waterholes
Grey & Black-headed Herons
White-faced Duck
Whiskered Tern
White-backed & Hooded Vultures
Nthakeni Bush Camp
Dark-capped Bulbul
Golden-tailed Woodpecker
Black-headed Oriole
Good Lord Deliver Us Nightjar
Wood & Pearl-spotted Owlets
Blue Waxbill
Bearded Scrub-robin
Blue-Grey (ashy) & Paradise Flycatchers
Green-backed Camaroptera
Green-winged Pytilia
Red-billed Firefinch dancing on a perch holding a tiny twig with leaflets.
*put video here *
Golden-breasted Bunting
Willow Warbler
Mosque Swallow
Emerald spot Dove
Chinspot Batis
Spectacled Weaver
Klaas’ Cuckoo
Cattle bells plink-klonking as they graze along the Mutale river
~~oo0oo~~
That Punda Maria waterhole at night:
Twenty years on, we’re here again. Me and Jess. Thanks to her, we have actually booked ahead and are staying in a comfortable chalet at Kosi Bay Lodge. She loves it, there’s DSTV and good phone signal. Also a restaurant that makes great food. Really tasty grub. Oh, and some nature outside. You go, Dad.
It’s too windy for boat trips on the lakes, so I walk the grounds and drive around the area – Ezemvelo’s Kosi Bay camp. Utshwayelo Kosi Mouth Lodge – while Jess just chills. Good birding, including one I seldom see, an Eastern Nicator. My pictures were just shadowy blobs, so here’s one from a good camera:
Note: All the camps are quite far from the beaches, and as the only one that is actually on the lakeshore, Ezemvelo’s Kosi Bay Camp is, for my money, by far the best option.
~~oo0oo~~
Last we were here we camped at the Ezemvelo Camp, and Jess was young enough to enjoy the swing I rigged up using an umbrella pole and tie-down straps.
Out on the lakes in 2003 – Greg Bennett loaned us his rubber dinghy and Yamaha.
Oops! Sorry Daddy!
Huh? I started awake. What, Jess?
I cut one part way too short.
Oh, doesn’t matter, love.
Were you sleeping?
I did nod off.
Sorry Dad.
Really love, I’m just happy you’re giving me a haircut. You can see how relaxed I am.
After:
Jess you’d better sweep up here, my girl. It looks like an eagle caught a goat and pecked out all its fur on the stoep.
(*hoses herself* *fetches broom*) Okay Daddy. Can I have a picture of your haircut for my profile?
~~oo0oo~~
(Sure dear. And that’s the picture above)
Earliest start and fastest drive to get the ole Ranger to Ford Bluff to fix my airbags. Jess missed the sun rising, my car was going so fast, but later she caught the sun once it was above the horizon.
My Takata airbags are part of the largest and most complex safety recall ever. Installed mostly from 2002 to 2015, some of these airbags could deploy explosively, injuring and even killing lil old me and Jess. Sixty seven million airbags have been recalled, proving false certain people’s nasty allegations that I’m the only airbag in my Ford.
My first recall was two years ago and I had it done (I thought) at Harrismith Ford. Been happily driving it ever since. Not as fast as today, tis true. Last week I got another recall alert, and this time it came with a Do Not Drive advisory. Which is why I was driving so fast to have it fixed. This is urgent.
The reminder last week and its warning caused me to think, I Wonder If The Fix Was Actually Done? I phoned Harrismith Ford and asked them to send me proof that it had been done. What they sent me in writing was, Oops! Actually, It Wasn’t Done! Full confession: This thought has been niggling in the back of my large cranium for the whole two years, but I’m quite good at procrastination and kicking for touch, even though I played my rugby in an honest position, not halfback.
Now I await Ford’s verdict with trepidation, as they keep saying they’re not going to replace my airbags until they’ve ‘checked them.’ I made them assure me they have them in stock so I can drive the car today. They assured me they do have them in stock, but . . ‘First we must check.’
Okay. I’m having breakfast and multiple coffees across the road while I wait.
Update: Great service. Done and dusted by 9am! Just look how great my bakkie looks with it’s new airbag detonators:
A cry from upstairs: “Wash your hands and put gloves on, you bloody cow!”
Jess must be surfing the net. Is someone doing something wrong on the internet, Jess? I shout from downstairs, hosing myself.
“Yes! This person . . ” long explanation of what they did and what they should have done.
Right, Jess. (I don’t repeat my advice of, It’s clickbait Jess; Rather just avoid sites that trigger you).
Mom tries hard to see the bright side of things. She’ll often praise the staff and nurses that look after her and seldom criticises them. But once she said about one of them, Boy if these were the Seven Dwarves, she’d be Grumpy!
Realising she’d just been critical, she doubled down, tongue-in-cheek: And of course I’m Snow White!
~~oo0oo~~
Mom (97) tells me the male nurse and one of the inmates asked her to play the piano the other day. I can’t, she said, Some of the oldies are watching TV.
Ha! They’d see about that. So they went round and took a vote. Mary Play The Piano won easily over Watch TV.
The TV was muted and Mom played Roll out The Barrel.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XERYdzH_aQ8&pp=ygUacGlhbm8sIHJvbGwgb3V0IHRoZSBiYXJyZWw%3D
The oke in the video is cheating. Mom actually plays it herself for real.
That reminds me: Jock n Brenda Grant had one of these pianolas in the Montrose Motel in Swinburne. Dangerous place, the Montrose.
~~oo0oo~~
There are many “Methodist” denominations throughout the world, not only the 1960s Harrismith, Orange Free State version, although that is the most important one. About 112 are listed in wikipedia. So there must be around 112 methylated ways to get to heaven, I spose. Many – or most maybe? – will deny whatever I mutter on the topic of their booze doctrine, but this is sort-of what they sort-of think, I think.
They gloss over Jesus and His wine. Jesus was a lot more pragmatic and accommodating than His Methodists. If he tried that water into wine trick in 2023 he’d be in trouble with this modern-day kerk! They would turn that trick of His into a whine. While it seems Meths are at pains to say they don’t actually BAN grog – no fatwas – they tut tut about it, and suggest that much-ignored Evangelical and Catholic tactic called ‘abstinence.’ The one that doesn’t work. That tactic. This is surely an opportunity for someone to start a 113th Meth sect: One that fearlessly BANS Booze!
From one of the many Methodist websites out there: “Abstinence from alcohol” witnesses to God’s liberating and redeeming love, and is part of living into the life God has prepared for us. We start there. We start with abstinence as faithful witness, and as the norm for guiding our behavior.” The fact that ‘where they start’ is 100% non-biblical? Well, the Bible is full of suggestions . . it’s a guideline . .
In 1960s Harrismith they didn’t get any of the above, sanks goodness. They got Mary Methodist who played the organ beautifully, coached the choir, sang in the choir, served on the Women’s Auxiliary (where women were kept away from any thoughts of usurping the patriarchy), kept us kids in line, or tried to, AND ran a bottle store. Which bottles contained liquor. She did all of these things well, and with love, did my Mom Mary of the Methodist Church and of the Platberg Bottle Store / Drankwinkel.
Do Methodists call for prohibition? Almost. They want “public policy calling for the strict administration of laws regulating the sale and distribution of alcohol.” Give them half a chance and they’ll prohibit, bottle stores will close, and the mafia will have our family’s income stream.
Well, despite their best efforts, if there is a place as boring as heaven, if it’s a good place, and if anyone is going there, Mary Methodist is most definitely at the front of that queue. St Peter won’t even ask to see her ID or her liquor licence. He’ll just wave her right through.
~~oo0oo~~
Here are a few more wafflings about booze by sundry Methodists:
https://www.umc.org/en/content/communion-and-welchs-grape-juice
https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2011-03/methodists-shun-bottle-no-one-wants-talk-about
https://christianityfaq.com/methodists-drink-alcohol/
Mostly it boils down to the same old ‘Yes, the Bible is the infallible word of God, BUT . . ‘ that all denominations use for various things.
~~oo0oo~~
Harrismith’s two bottle stores that provided much-needed succour to the grateful townsfolk were the Platberg Drankwinkel and the Horseshoe Drankwinkel. Sister Sheila tells the lovely story of the Aberfeldy farm school where the subject one day was Engels. The teacher asked, ‘Class, who knows the Afrikaans word for horseshoe?‘ And quick as a flash her friend Elsa du Plessis answered “Drankwinkel.”
They’re generous, kind. ‘Hospitable’ doesn’t describe the half of it. What? Tolerant? Long-suffering? OK OK.
Share our home, share our food, you can even share my car. Hang on, the Ford Flammable? Is that not a hostile act?
Anyway, I drove it, donning my asbestos underpants and gloves, and it was a revelation. I didn’t know they made Fords without shakin’, rattlin’ n rollin’;
Or Fords with little TV screens on the dash that say in plain English, “oil change overdue!“ as can be seen in the actual shot of Brauer’s dashboard above. And bespoke unraveling upholstery. No boot space though – full of golf kit and old planks that ‘might come in handy one day.’
Look, it was missing a pedal and an ignition key, but thanks to my mechanical skill, I managed to get it moving. I restarted it numerous times when it stalled till I realised I just couldn’t hear the engine. It has a tiny engine smaller than a pint of milk, whereas mine has three full diesel-filled litres. And I’m used to my diesel operating and grumbling in no uncertain terms. You don’t think, ‘I wonder if this engine is running,’ in my car.
Oh, I needed a loan car cos mine was being studied by automotive engineers and marketers marveling at its 17yr-old wonders. They’re considering relaunching it as a special edition.
~~oo0oo~~
Us agronomists have lots of planning to do. There’s the preparing the soil, planting the seed and watering the crop and other stuff I know very little about. But I’ve heard about it.
Sometimes though, you can sit in a chair on your stoep and watch a plant growing in a flowerpot and idly wonder what it is. A tomato plant! Hey, look at that. I immediately claimed credit and started planning what to with the harvest once the leaves had done their bit, then the flowers bloomed and now for the harvest! The word ‘bumper’ came to mind. Harvests are often bumper.
I decided I’d share generously.
Maybe I’ll buy a few pockets of onions and make a bredie?
~~oo0oo~~
My pic of the stoep, chair and flowerpot was neatly photobombed by a box kite spider!
stoep – porch
bredie – cooked tomato and onion mix; mine usually found in a can
A special sighting in the garden in Mtwalume! A male Black-throated Wattle-eye some 80km south of where he’s usually to be found. Durban is where I last saw him, in the Beachwood mangroves.
Roberts says: In southern Africa, along the eastern littoral from southern Mozambique as far south as Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, with isolated records from E Cape as far south as Gonubie. Near-threatened in S Africa, where evidence for population decreases due to eg habitat destruction.
Plenty of habitat destruction along the south coast I’m afraid.
As usual, me and my camera were too slow. Moving targets ‘are not us,’ but I got one good view in my binocs and one saturation view, clearly seeing his red eye wattle.
I’ll watch out for him now, camera in hand.
He was still there the next day, but too quick for me and my camera.
The fokkin yoomin race. Just watched a GP tannie woman hose down her SUV in camp for ages, using two million gallons of pure drinking water to get the dust off every crook and nanny. Some people . . !!
It was not a fine aluminium can bakkie like mine, it was a tin can SUV. One of those ForTuna, the new Toyota one, metallic grey. She sprayed and sprayed and sprayed WAY longer than needed. ‘Specially when you know she’s going straight back into the dust tomorrow! She used the camp’s hosepipe – tuinslang – in an area with a sign No Entry Staff Only.
I went over to her and said, My fok Marelize! and she immediately stopped and put all the water she’d wasted back into the hosepipe. This last part in my imagination.
~~oo0oo~~
I told Steve Reed’s Clarens TV story at a 70th birthday held in a lovely home in Maun on the banks of the Thamalakane river one evening. Over.
Sally-Ann modestly said, Well I Can’t Top That One, and then proceeded to do just that, telling a hilariously disastrous tale of her mobile safari outfit getting their first walkie talkie radios so she could keep in touch with her 4X4 vehicles out in the wild.
The next safari launched. Off went the vehicles, the drivers and the clients, off into the wonderful wild of Botswana. Just a few short hours later, Sally-Ann eagerly called them up from ‘Head Office,’ her first time to be in touch with her drivers out in the wild!
Calling Safari 1. Over.
Safari 1 here. Over.
How you guys doing? Over.
Um, not so good. Over.
What’s up? Over.
Well, we’ve rolled the Landrover over. Over.
~~oo0oo~~
I’ve not had much to do with Black Friday. Except twice. Once near Sodwana Bay, and once in Keetmanshoop. Both times it took me completely by surprise.
I got caught with a flat, well how bout that, north of Bethanie on my way south from Solitaire. The young ou there said, Oom we do have some tyres but not your size, Oom. You’ll have to go to Keetmanshoop Oom. Note: You may be pouncing Bethanie incorrectly. It’s ‘Bet-Taahny.’
At the Keetmanshoop tyre plek I got excellent service. They fixed up everything and checked all the other things. When it came time to pay I expressed surprise at the price. That’s a very good price, saith I.
Ja Oom it’s Black Friday and the Oom has got a very special price for your tyres Oom.
Well blow me tyres up and blow me down.
* to add video from vimeo here *
ou – fella
oom – older ou
plek – joint
