– life – bokdrols of wisdom –
It’s 19h45 Thursday before Easter Friday and I get a call from ADT:
Do I want to upgrade my security? They have a special offer.
No thank you.
Who’s that Dad? shouts Tom.
It’s a sapurity* company offering us a security deal. We don’t need it.
Ah Dad! I do – I need security on my bedroom door.
Turns out some GIRLS are occasionally entering his room!
*Tom has always called them sapurity guards
In fifteen years at 7 River Drive we didn’t see or hear a single owl. Wasn’t for lack of trying. We saw and heard A LOT of birds at magical River Drive. Standouts for me that I can recall right now were Pigmy Kingfisher; Bush Blackcap; Spotted Thrush; Olive Bush Shrike; Narina Trogon; Grey Waxbill; Black Sparrowhawk; Black and Grey Cuckooshrikes; At night Buff-spotted Flufftail and my first discovery of what a Fork-tailed Drongo can get up to way past his bedtime. Both of those involved long nocturnal searches.
In two years at 10 Windsor we heard a Wood Owl a few times, which was magic. The furthest south I’d heard them before was Zululand.
After seven years at 10 Elston I had heard Wood Owls and caught one glimpse of an owl (?Barn Owl) flying over the house, but TONIGHT I finally saw a Spotted Eagle Owl sitting in our dead avocado tree!
Heard him first while hanging curtain rails in the cottage. Went out and there he was staring at me. 11pm.
Wonderful!
~~oo0oo~~
pic from theflacks.co.za – thank you – wonderful bird pics
I was actually looking for a pregnant chameleon. Didn’t spot her, but snapped flowers, including some non-indigenous interlopers – Aitch was a softie towards the end, and allowed some strange plants in.
Also a (deceased) bush squeaker and a grasshopper – which reminds me: I must tell you the story of grasshoppers one day . . .
~~~~~ooo000ooo~~~~~
Greg phones: Hey, my son Steve is down from doing research near Kruger Park, can you test his eyes? No prob.
We test, I order specs. Steve is leaving tomorrow early, so I arrange to fetch the specs at the lab and connect with Greg that evening.
I leave work early.
Holy shit! My battery is flat. Flatter than flat. Left the lights on. My big china carguard Dronk Jan Kleynhans from Harrismith “didn’t notice they were on”. He looks after a grand total of about six cars on the roof of our centre, and sits right behind mine. Was snoring his fukken head off I spose!
I check with the BP garage attached to the shopping centre: Can’t help. I check with Battery Centre: Can’t help. I phone the AA. Coming.
I phone the lab: I’ll be late. “No problem, my uncle goes to the funeral parlour downstairs and sits there till 7pm“. Maybe drinking blue top till he feels he can face the wife? “I’ll leave them with him”.
The guardian angel from AA arrives – Automobile Association, altho’ I could have used the other one too. He needs two batteries to kickstart the diesel, then “Hey, you test eyes? I got troublems with my bifocal, no good can you help?“
Get to the lab, but don’t want to switch off, and even I can’t leave the key in the ignition with the engine running while I go in. Not that I wouldn’t, but I feel that would be just TOO embarrassing to explain if the bakkie got whipped. YOU DID WHAT? WHERE? UMHLATUZANA? YOU DOOS!
While I juggle nearer to the funeral parlour door, an ou shuffles up “Buy some DVD’s very good DVD’s. They play, I won’ sell you DVD’s that don’ play, I won’ lie to you“. No thanks. “Hey Larney I’m telling you they good DVD’s! Check: New movies Bollywood this Bollywood that, even white ous movie, one I got“.
No I don’t want, really. He drops the sales pitch and asks “Who you looking for larney?” Terence’s uncle in the funeral parlour. “I know that hou, I’ll go and tell him” Hey thanks.
Comes back with a package with Pete Swanepoel written on it. Thanks a ton. I’m off.
I phone Greg: He says, Come to Mo’s Noodles, I’ll buy you supper. Great idea. I arrange Cecelia to look after the brats.
Halfway thru supper I realise I have forgotten the whole reason for the meeting: Left the specs at home in my briefcase out of which I had grabbed my wallet! FUCK! Turns out it’s no problem, Steve is no longer leaving early, he’s leaving after lunch. Fine.
Next morning I check the specs. A woman’s plastic frame with +2,00’s. Steve’s is a men’s metal frame with +0,75’s. Thank goodness I had forgotten them and didn’t haul them out in the restaurant!
Steve’s were now at work, having taken the usual delivery instead of this flurried, nonsensical ‘special delivery’.
I fetch them and FINALLY deliver them to Greg before lunchtime.
Yussis! WHAT a fokkop. Almost military in its fokkopedness.
~~~oo0oo~~~
The little-known 2013 Elston Place Olympic Games was a thing. Games I. Not XVI or XXII. No, I.
Tom earned 2 golds (run & soccer ball); Lungelo earned 2 golds (swim & cycle) ; One event was drawn (stone throw); Therefore they ended up Equal Olympic Champs!
The Games started officially with four Olympians; then one competitor DNF and one withdrew to go home for lunch.
~~~oo0oo~~~
Stone throwing was interesting. I found ten smooth, small-egg-sized stones in Aitch’s stuff. She had lots and lots of all sizes. I upended an outside black bin and placed an empty 10kg HTH bucket on it, also upended. I placed this target about 8m from a walkway so there’d be no encroaching – there was a clear place to stand. I then gooi’d five stones at the HTH bucket and hit it five times. I did grow up in Herriesmif and gooi’ing fings wif a stone was a fing, I’ll admit.
Tom stepped up; Five throws, five misses. Some by a puzzling large margin. Lungelo sniggered, stepped up: Five throws five misses. Some quite literally by about 4m at 8m distance! I had to give frowing fings wif a stone lessons before they started hitting the bucket occasionally! Bloody mis-spent youth they had, it would appear!
~~~oo0oo~~~
Terry Brauer wrote Feb 2013: This so reminds me of Pinaster Street Olympics, FA cup finals – cricket, soccer, tennis, ad nauseum – Ryan and Deon!!
~~~oo0oo~~~
gooi – frow
frow – throw
The man has decided its rugby this year, so I get lots of tackle-talk and tales of dragging tyres across the field.
Went to fetch him yesterday and watched a while. He’s going to get a crick in his neck from looking up at the other guys. At least he was catching and passing well with the ball all slick in the drizzle.
He has a new name among the rugger ous now:
.
.
Swanie
~~~oo0oo~~~
They lost a few games – this one:
. . but then won this game against Penzance and started winning most of their games after that.
~~~oo0oo~~~
Just returned from a gathering in Harrismith where my sole function was to bring the average age of the attendants down to a respectable level.
Pierre duP, Jill Venning and Mark Raz Russel threw a joint 60th celebration in Harrismith. Pierre builds, Jill farms, Mark runs Finlay’s general trading store – and the golf club – in Harrismith. At their age, a “joint” gathering also describes one of the main topics of discussion among the creaking decrepit.
Swinging 60’s themed, most of the inmates came predictably dressed as hippies. I went as a hippie who admired Elvis’ dress style post-cheeseburgers. I was Sure to Wear some Flowers in my Wig, as a favourite song sang. Some wore safari suits with a comb in vey sock. One wore an old English-type boys school uniform: blazer, cap, short pants and polished shoes. Most wore wigs – and many needed them. Oh, and John Venning very predictably – but a lot later than usual – got round to dropping his trousers.
Fine mates from way back!! Posing with young Tuffy Joe Joubert and old Pierre duP du Plessis. We might not fit together on the back seat of a Saab, nor in the rear compartment of a Beetle anymore.
The evening was saved visually and average age-wise by a flock of the birthday gang’s kids and their friends. They’re now adults, of course, so we could relax and act second-childhood. There were two of Pierre’s blondes there, Michele & Natasha, Mark’s son & daughter and Jill’s two as well, Kirsty was one. They were also dressed as hippies, and they were looking like how we all imagined we were looking. Luckily, there were no mirrors at the venue. Some aesthetically-delightful sixties-style minis and boots on show.
An excellent one-man band played all the right stuff, so it was a good thing it was loud or it would have been ruined by everyone singing along. Myself I would have had half-hour gaps with no music so we could hear each others’ lies, but no, when the band-man was resting, someone cranked on some good ole vinyl LP or other. Probably the bloody youngsters (we must start practicing to grumble).
Pierre gave a speech! Well, he joined Jill & Raz in a well-rehearsed threesome form of poetry rending in which they painted themselves in a good light and we listened politely.
Sheila rounded up a flock of ancient Methodists for a group shot, so three Swanepoels, three du Plessis, three Woods, and Tuffy Joubert posed for the Methylated Spirits Revival. Lulu tried to join in, but we wouldn’t have it, her being blerrie NG Kerk an’ all. She protested that she had come to guild once, to no avail.
Funniest thing was the youngsters drilling us for tales of yore. We told them tales of what their Moms and Dads got up to when they were their age to gasps of outrage when they thought of how their folks had raised them all strictly and with rules and curfews. I had to tell Lettuce Leaf’s kids the old one about how all the trouble started in the Garden of Eden when Adam said to Eve “Ek het your leaf.”
I went home soon after 2.30am leaving quite a few senior citizens and even more young uns still dancing. A few were slurring so that I couldn’t get what the hell they were saying, but they seemed happy with my nods and smiles and ‘Quite right!’s and ‘Serious?’s. Of course some of those were nearer 70 than 60 which makes the ‘hoesê?’s quite frequent!
We stayed at Heritage House, Pierre & Erika’s beautifully restored old house-next-door which they run as a bed & breakfast, so post-party we gathered in the kitchen till after 3am.
Later we gathered for a big breakfast at the Table of Knowledge in Heike’s restaurant on the slopes of 42-second Hill just below the quarry where Jock Grant would blast his dynamite, rattling the dorp’s windows.
Some of the Harrismith farmers are doing spectacularly well. Lodges in Tuli Block, Lodges near the Olifants river, big herds of disease-free Ramaposas, massive wild free-range earthworm farms, lodges on their farms (see https://www.buffalohillspgr.co.za/ and https://lalanathi.co.za/)
Some are also buying “townhouses” – big old sandstone houses in town which they revamp and extend for staying over if they’re a bit too aled to drive home to their farms! I spose you could call them Safe Houses.
And so some more upstanding citizens became senior citizens!
So here’s an update, you “youngsters”: That whistling noise you hear in your ears is not tinnitis. It’s the sound of the plummeting reaching terminal velocity . . . . .
Jess got home from her last day of school on Thursday with a friend.
To stay the night.
Oh. OK.
It’s Saturday and the friend is still here.
Not a word, nor a call, nor an sms from a Mom or a Dad.
Now they want another friend to visit.
OK. Get him to ask his Mom or Dad and get them to call me. You know how it works, Jess.
OK.
They mXit him. Then they give me the Mom’s cell number. He says I must call her.
Jess, you know the drill: Get him to ask his Mom or Dad and get them to call me – like I said.
Ah, Dad!
Yes, my dear. That’s the way it has always been. It hasn’t changed.
Bloody hell. Of course, they haven’t called, so she didn’t come.
I have now sms’d the parents of the girl who is still mysteriously here, asking “When are you fetching her?”
Cables had been strung from the top of the city hall spire over to other buildings and between various other buildings, criss-crossing the square in front of city hall, where Jannie Smuts and Queen Vic and other umlungus stoically endure the pigeon shit. Some cables went from the top of buildings such as 320 West Street down at about a 70º angle to Aliwal Street.
I was looking forward to the madness!
After a while an old sapurity (Tom’s word) guard came up to me where I was peering up at the cables with Tom on my shoulders and told me there’s gonna be an hour’s delay. We joked about the angels having to preen their wings and I said I was worried one of these angels might come and take me away.
“Oh, no, sir” he says to me “Yours will be black and carry a scythe, and he’ll come from up there” pointing at the blackened top floor of 320 West Street which had recently burnt out. Then it started raining and the wind came up, so I decided there’s no way the angels will fly and off we went home.
Dammit. THE ANGELS DIDN’T FLY!
Oh no – what a pity you left.
THE ANGELS DID FLY!
I was there and it was utterly enchanting. We came out of the concert (in the city hall) at about 8.30pm and it was drizzling ever so slightly, but even that stopped before the angels started flying. It was pure magic.
The fevvers (as Deon Joubert would have called them, back in Harrismith in the 60s) floating down made it look as though it was snowing, ‘specially in the spotlights.
I couldn’t help thinking that there must be a hellavu lot of kaalgat chickens skoffeling around today – I have never seen so many fevvers – and they were real!
The atmosphere was fantastic – with great shouts going up everything the angels released huge bags of fevvers all over us. I had my binocs and you could see the angels were having huge fun.
FROM A REPORT: Angels paid Durban a visit this week, bringing magical moments of “light, sound and heavenly activity and a sense of cohesion, unity and humanity shared” to quote Bongani Tembe, South Africa’s commissioner general for the French Season in South Africa that opening in June and ended with the angels.
Strange feathered creatures edging along zipwires strung from high above street level outside the city hall. Glittering winged figures. Flying. Gliding playfully above crowds of spectators invited to the free sky spectacle by the heavenly Place des Anges.
At first the feathers fell like thick flakes of snow; then the flurries became almost a blizzard as the area became a mysterious new place.
Magical Moment of Light put Durban on the map alongside Piccadilly Circus and the 2012 Olympics in London, Moscow, Tokyo and Perth to name a few places where Les Studios de Cirque have taken their angels and feathers.
For thirty minutes, the twisting and twirling trapeze artists careened across the sky in graceful flight, slowly performing tricks and turns, before releasing a cascade of feathers from suitcases and umbrellas on the crowds below.
“Taking place in the creative heart of Durban, the show also serves to remind all of the city’s magnificent architectural beauty and artistic value, and to revive a sense of pride during these moments of playfulness.”
While the crowds gathered in the plaza in front of Durban’s city hall waiting for the aerial show, guests and dignitaries inside the city hall — first bored by some overlong speeches (the speakers were apparently given two minutes each — but some took up to twenty!) — were enchanted by the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra and three extraordinary KwaZulu-Natal choirs.
I bumped Aitch’s delicate little Barry Dibb vase off a bookshelf, where I had recently decided to display it!!
Lotsa pieces.
I hurriedly photographed it and her other two Dibb pieces.
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.
Grade 8 – 2012
Jess got a number of certificates. Best being the floating trophy for 1st in English.
And she sang in the choir with John Didlick and Sure Gooding. “You raise me up”
Tom was hugely proud of Big Sis . .
.
A hilarious speech by the only girl in matric. Rambling, giggling, slating slander of all the teachers and kids. No holds barred.
“I’m leaving now, what you gonna do?” approach.
Had the hall crying with laughter.
Catherine someone.
Secret Diary of a trip down mammary lane.
It wasn’t that we were actually, y’know, OLD, but . . . well, we needed a break and a brief flashback to our glory days, when the chicks used to hurl themselves at us. Well, that one. In the harbour, remember?
So we piled into a kombi and headed off to the Wild Coast, looking for That Famous Stuff they sell down there, and hoping to rendezvous with the Swedish Hockey team. OK, the Swedish Old Girls Hockey Team, who were rumoured to be doing pre-season training in Lusikisiki (or, as we called it after crawling out of The Shy Stallion shebeen) Lo-squeaky-squeaky.
As we neared the coast there was a lo-ong downhill ahead of us and I stopped the kombi and got onto Abbers’ mountain bike and whizzed down with glee. As I reached terminal velocity I did think Uh-Oh! as I felt the effects of the Black Label kicking in. At the bottom I coasted to a halt. I don’t do uphills.
It was the Black Label by the quart and sweet wine that did it, I suppose, but when we got to the actual coast where the waves break against the rugged shore, we were looking for some action. We needed a break from all the Sixties music we’d been playing, broken only by one awful interlude when Bruce snuck an Amy Winehouse CD into the player! So we lay down and had a snooze.
But Abbers had brought that borrowed mountain bike, and we no longer wondered why. Seems he wanted to get away from the competition and meet up with a longtime connection he had met when salvaging the good ship BBC China which foundered off Grosvenor back when he was but a boy in his forties. Off he went on his own, heading vaguely south, trapping that fiets stukkend.
When he got back much later there was a distinct whiff of some smoky vegetation about him and the Msikaba mosquitoes avoided him like the plague. We pumped him for information, but all we got was a mumbled “Loose-titty-titty” and the fact that he had not found the now-overdue Swedish Old Girls Hockey Team, but that when we did he dabzed wrestling with the goalie.
Abbers’ head did clear after a few days and he set off fishing so as to be able to answer spouse Les reasonably honestly, give or take; but the fish were having none of it. You could actually see them giving his bait a wide berth and wrinkling up their nostrils.
wikipedia: MV BBC China was a 5,548 GT general cargo vessel. In October 2003 the ship was diverted to Italy while carrying gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment to Libya. In October 2004 it ran aground near Port Grosvenor, where it was declared a total loss and subsequently demolished with explosives. – BY ABBERS! See? This is true.
~~oo0oo~~
trapping that fiets stukkend – pedaling vigorously
~~oo0oo~~
Meanwhile, unbeknown to us . . . a few rivers further north, the Swedish ladies K4 paddling team was training on the Umtamvuna:
This is true. OK, they might not have been there that same weekend but they did go there! And they were Swedish. And gorgeous.
Taking pictures was hard cos there was beer . . .
~~oo0oo~~
I looked on in amazement as Aitch looked at kids dress-up suits in the market in Hong Kong.
Surely he’s too old for these? I asked, knowledgeably.
She just smiled, and bought the one he would be LEAST likely to wear: A dragon suit with a hood, clawed gloves and a thick stuffed tail with scales running right down the back and long tail. Most uncomfortable if you lay on that thick tail, I thought.
Well, of course he LOVED it. Wore it for years – till it was threadbare! Both in bed as jarmies and out in public.
Moms just know.
Had a 10yr old crawl into bed with me last night.
OK, Dad? he asked.
Sure, Boy. But I’ve only got a sheet, will you be warm enough?
He just smiled knowingly. He was carrying Girry the Giraffe whose tummy is stuffed with a fleecy blanket. He unzipped her, pulled out the blanket and snuggled under it, his head on Girry’s as a pillow.
You know, when your Mom bought Girry for you I said to her: “Do you think he’ll like that? Isn’t he too old for that?” She just looked at me smugly and said: “He’ll LOVE it”.
Mommy knew everything, says Tom.
Tom’s party: Eight boys and two girls, so two teams of five.
Right, the Blues defend this fort and the Greens defend that fort. Hide behind structure, take careful aim and don’t shoot someone at point blank range. Try and take over the other guys’ fort.
CAN WE GO NOW?!?
You have 100 paint pellets each, conserve your ammunition. Take careful aim and fire single shots.
CAN WE GO NOW?!?
OK! GO!
DRRRRR!!! BRRRRR! DRRR! DDAPADAPDAPADAPDAPADAPAPADAP
Aaw! I’M OUT OF AMMO!
R100 each, 100 bullets each, less than 100 seconds total !
Tom turned eleven.
