Aitch had lots of stuff. She had two huge clear glass vases containing coffee beans and golden spirally sticks with bronze woven balls stuck into them, sticking up about a metre tall in all. I dunno. It’s a mystery. Inferior decorating, I guess.
I hadn’t looked at them for ages, and when I saw Tom up a ladder in the study I vaguely thought ‘what the . . ‘ but I knew I’d find out sooner or later.
Sooner. He had the beans between two layers of the tablecloth and was hammering them with a silver ladle, a wooden rolling pin and a cast-iron pot.
Rather crude? I questioned him.
Jamie Oliver does it like this, Dad. Watch, it’ll be the best coffee you’ve ever had!
I’m looking forward to tasting it, fella (grabbing the camera to record another instalment of living with a short chef).
Postscript: Dad, it’s not so good, he says a few days later. The beans are stale.
True, fella, they’ve been out in the open air for about five years, and you really need fresh beans, sealed airtight. We’ll get some and you can do your Jamie thing with them, OK?
Aitch never held my culinary skills in high regard. Her favourite meal to mock was my chicken-onion-n-potato-in-a-pot special which she described as pale and tasteless. It wasn’t. It just looked bland. With a touch of salt and black pepper and enough red wine taken internally it was fine. Admittedly, I hadn’t yet discovered stock cubes.
She was right about my braaiing skills, though. Luckily Tom’s genes skipped back about seven generations to when burning dead animals on a naked flame was considered an advance in civilisation, not like I believe it to be: a pointless exercise now that Eskom has been invented. So he is now my braaiing stunt double.
To show that I’m an early adopter and no Luddite, I’ll have everyone know that when Aitch met me back in ’85 there was already an AEG microwave ensconced in my bachelor flat, faithfully re-heating coffee, poaching eggs and heating up the half hamburgers I would find on my chest after a good night out.
Which
same microwave gave up the ghost this week. That’s correct. My AEG
microwave, bought on 26 March 1984 fizzled on me on the 26th of March
2014. How’s that for hi-fidelity?
And just to show I really will avoid playing the primitive pyromaniac if I can help it, here’s a picture of me pulling my shirt to hide that same microwave behind me at Kosi Bay, Zululand ca 2002. I snuck it into the kombi knowing their campsites had Eskom power and knowing that heating up Tommy’s bottles was a fiddle without it. So I took gas and I took firewood and I took Lion matches, but I used AEG electric microwave technology powered-by-Eskom’s coal burning to feed TomTom.
– see the electric light burning by day to prove Eskom was a 24hr service back then –
Update: Now I’m pissed off it packed up after only 30 years:
NEWS STORY: 93-yr-old woman is pissed off her oven packed up after only 53 years!
In 1963 John F Kennedy was president of the US, the Beatles had released their first album, and Winifred Hughes of Crewe, then a mere 39yrs old, paid £79 for an ultra-modern Belling Classic electric oven. It turned out to be an amazing bargain. Winifred, now 92, has used it almost every day since, and she says, “it never let me down”. Sadly, just last week, the thermostat finally gave up, and Winifred says she is “heartbroken” her beloved Belling is no more.
~~oo0oo~~
Peter
Brauer wrote:
“…which she described as pale and tasteless. It wasn’t. It just looked bland. With enough red wine taken internally it was fine.”
Wasn’t she talking about you??
~~oo0oo~~
Terry Brauer wrote:
You truly are the nuttiest oke I know. For a greenie this is like true confessions. Nuking your food. Go Tommy! You inherited your mother’s skills . .
Off we go to St Lucia estuary for a camping long weekend. Let’s take the minimum guys, we can buy food locally. Just clear out the fridge and bread bin and let’s go. We’ll buy charcoal and meat and etc from the local Spar. I won’t even take any wine! Rather we hit the road now, shop later.
Let’s take a tent for the three teenage girls, and the twelve year-old fella and I will sleep in the back of the pickup. The simple life.
Except I realise at the first tollgate that I have left my wallet in Westville. Complication. To turn back or not. In my rucksack I find Tom’s saving card, daily withdrawal limit R300. I had just changed his password, as we had not used the account for ages, so we were good to go. We just gotta be frugal, kids, we got R300 kuphela.
And that’s where they blew me away. All four of them said “Dad, we’ve got money! You can have our money, Dad”. They each had R200 pocket money for the weekend and offered it freely! What stars.
Thanks guys, I may need that, but I have enough to fill up with diesel and we’ll just go easy and discuss it before we spend anything, OK?
The next morning I managed to activate my eWallet and cellphone banking at an internet cafe so could now draw R1500 a day! Problem solved! I gave them each R100 to thank them for their generous offers. Their eyes looked like chocolates and ice creams!
Off we went to the game reserve (entrance fee R245) and to the water park (R120 for the four of them). We wuz rich! The girls bought swimming shorts with their own money.
St Lucia camping 2
The next day that amount I could draw had ‘kindly’ been reduced to R200 (“for my safety” – Thanks FNB!), so I had to make the speech again, and again they rallied around with their offer of chipping in, but with Tom’s R300 and my R200 we were fine. We ate boerie rolls both nights – cheap!
– St Lucia camping –
Here’s an isimangaliso* pan with buffalo, waterbuck and zebra (click on the pic). The Indian Ocean is just behind that high forested dune:
Tom got on with fishing . .
. . while the teenage girls did what teenage girls do . .
– Jess took a lovely picture of some grass – with a kudu as a backdrop –
~~oo0oo~~
*isimangaliso means ‘miracle, wonder, surprise’ in isiZulu
Tom delivers a hot-off-the-grill rare steak, a breadroll and a lovely green salad with blue cheese dressing to me at my desk.
Plonking it in front of me he announces decisively: The kids have booked the lounge for tonight, Dad.
Have they paid a deposit? I ask.
Here it is, he says, planting a fond kiss on my cheek.
I’ll accept that in full payment, I say.
I was going to watch the Sharks’ game, but I’ll happily miss it.
=======ooo000ooo=======
The pic is a different day, same year. His mate is Francois. Both of their Dads are named Peter Swanepoel.
Dad can we go to movies at the PuhVILLION? ask Jess n Tom. PleezPleezPleezPleez
Definitely not. We went to a shopping centre yesterday, no way I’m inflicting that on myself two days in a row.
Aaaaw!
Next minute they’ve run to the shops by their own selves, bought jelly tots and flavoured water with their own money, made a big bucket of real, home-popped popcorn, and they’re settled in on the couch on a rainy Sunday watching “UP” on DVD.
Off to the Palmiet River with Josh, James, Lungelo & TomTom. I’m the Dad.
Crossing the stream I took their kit so they could cross unencumbered. And so who dropped Tom’s bag but me. It fell below my feet in a little rapid, and – luckily – got stuck. Dad! He shouts. My Walkman is in there! I should have carried it myself!
Reaching down I find there’s something big and rubbery caught between my lap and my chest preventing me from getting down past my toes to snag the bag. It’s my boep.
This sets me giggling, so now I have a jumping rubbery thing stuck between my lap and my chest and an irritated son who can’t understand why I don’t just reach further and grab, but I’m perched on a rock, short on reach and laughing, so I’m not much use.
Bliksem! I’m going to touch my toes ten times this evening. Well, reach towards them anyway. After supper.
After catching & releasing their usual crop of dragonfly nymphs, fish fry, freshwater prawns and water beetles, they get bored and turn to throwing with a stone. Each throw is accompanied by a triumphant YES! and a fist pump.
Oy! I remonstrate. Focus, you lot! Set a real target and hit it, don’t just gooi and shout YES! like you scored a goal for Arsenhole, you wengers.
SO I line them up. RIGHT: Five stones each and I’ll nominate a target. See that big white rock in mid-stream? (about a metre high, 1.5m wide and 15m away). That’s your target. Easy Peasy, Dad! Not one hit. NOT ONE. Twenty consecutive misses. They were humble for a full three seconds.
They were much better at catching. I got each one to perch on a rock in the rapids and threw marshmallows at them from 10m. They each caught three and only a total of two dropped in the Palmiet (and got eaten anyway).
And you can see they’ve all had caring Moms: Here’s your cooldrink (a 2litre bottle of 7up Zero). Drink up and pass on. Where are the cups to drink out of?
Just sip and pass on. Make sure there’s less, not more in the bottle after you sip. I’m not allowed to let it touch my lips.
Why not? Germs.
Germs are good for you. DRINK!!
They all drank.
Gonna have to take them camping. Toughen them up.
And yes I did gooi stones at that rock and I hit it dead square every time. I grew up gooing wif a stone.
Ndumo – Camping alone – Extract from my diary: Tonight I decide to cook rice, lentils, green beans, potatoes and chicken washed down with a fine claret in a silver goblet. Mug. OK, it’s actually stainless steel. YUM!!!
If you must know, the meal was actually a KOO tin (chicken biryani), but you can read the label, all those ingredients are there. But I added the green beans as an inspirational touch. From a separate KOO can. Delicious!
And the better news: There was two whole litres in that fine claret box.
– fine dining setting –
~~~oo0oo~~~
footnote: Soon after, KOO wins South Africa’s Best Brand Award. Coincidence? I think not.
Found a small Portuguese diary in the garage. Aitch must have bought it in Salvador, their last port in Brazil before they crossed to the Caribbean and she left the little 36ft yacht from Cape Town and joined the magnificent 85ft aluminium Chrismi II in Falmouth Harbour, Antigua as cook and bottle washer (who also happened to be a qualified celestial and coastal navigator). Of course she’d have to be a celestial navigator to work her way around me, but I digress.
So: The diary:
Sabado 10 Abril 1983 (Sunday 10 April to you)
– Lunch on deck (French guests)
Mushrooms cooked with cream & sherry on fried bread
Fetta cheese salad with herbs & olive oil
Green salad with onion, green pepper, boiled egg & anchovies
Later on:
Domingo 25 Abril 1983 St Barts (Gustavia)
– Snacks on deck Cocktail sausages cooked with butter, mustard & sugar
Bowl of layered mashed egg, sour cream and caviar
Crackers
Champagne
No scandal! Only menus! She used to talk about averting her gaze as she handed out the canapes on deck to the naked Frogs lolling around.
“Koos! It was like walking through an asparagus patch!” she’d exclaim.
As students 1974-1977 we would frequent the Casa Blanca roadhouse at the foot of Nugget Hill below Hillbrow when the pocket money arrived from home. Squeezed into Joz’s green VW Beetle or Steve’s beige Apache or Bobby’s white Mini Cooper S or Glen’s green Toyota, we’d ask the old Elvis-looking guy with a cap, flip-up sunglasses and whispy whiskers for a burger n chips plus a coke; Or a cheeseburger chips n coke 70c, or – as Steve Reed reminded me – “if we were flush, the Dagwood with everything including the runny fried egg. Sheer luxury. Messy, but worth it!”
I don’t have a pic of the Casa Blanca, but here’s the Doll House in Highlands North and the Casbah in Alberton so long:
Every so often you’d be asked “Move forward” and you’d inch forward to make room for new arrivals behind you, till you reached the “finishing line” where you handed back the tray the Elvis look-alike waitron had clipped to your half-rolled-up window and drove off under the big sign on the wall: QUIET. HOSPITAL.
Many years later (OK, twenty six years later!) work took me back to Jozi and I had time to kill in my hired car so I drove around Doories and Yeoville and Hillbrow. Around lunchtime I pulled in to the Casa Blanca and I SWEAR there was the exact same oke who had served us twenty six years earlier, with his SAME cap, his SAME flip-up shades and his SAME whispy whiskers! Astonishing!
I told him, Cheeseburger chips n coke and how long have you been here?
“Thirty six years,” he said “but I’m just filling in now.”
Charged me 70c. Plus twenty six years-worth of inflation.
Aitch’s Dad made interesting school lunches for her way back in the days that she attended some sandstone school in Muizenberg or somewhere. So she feels moved to enhance the kids’ lunches. I would give them peanut butter sarmies 5/7, but Aitch makes “tortoises” in a jaffle iron, meat sarmies, hot dogs, eg. This week she made the resident grade one pastafarian his favourite best: Two minute noodles AND macaroni n cheese. In separate compartments of his high-tech lunchbox.
That afternoon she couldn’t wait (cool is not one of Aitch’s traits): “What did you think of your lunch today, Tommy?” she urged, expectantly. And bless him, he rose to the occasion. “Mom!” he said. “When I opened my lunch Mrs Button was ‘ghast!”
Um, really, TomTom?
“Yes. She was astonished and asked Where are your sandwiches?” “And I laughed so hard that the sky moved”.
Mohamed came to play, then ended up staying the night.
Mom Rookaya, in answer to my query, said “just not pork” so I thought I had meals under control.
Supper I pick up a packet of pasta and say “Here’s yours, you guys. Cook it yourself” to the two nine year olds.
NO DAD! THAT’S HARAM! says my TomTom.
What? HARAM. You can’t give that to Mohamed!
Oh. I look at the packet: Cheese and bacon Carbonara. Oh, OK.
(Phew! You saved my bacon, boetie, I think. And who woulda thought TomTom would know these things, I think).
~~~~~ooo000ooo~~~~~
Later we go down to Vetch’s beach where they reflect on things . .
So I’m slaving over the braai fire at Happy Wanderers, juggling the timing of the spuds, meat and veg, (I’m like, doing the Dads can also make balanced meals thing),
when I spot the kids eating bowls of blue bubble gum-flavoured cereal, with milk & sugar.
Hey! Watcha doin’? I’m making supper! I say.
“Dad”, says Jess, “Remember Mom’s magnet on the fridge: “Life is uncertain, eat dessert first“?
21 Dec 2014: Dad! The supper last night was the BEST! says my off-ritalin TomTom breathlessly. The Xmas ham was SO good, and the steak was great, and the roast chicken was tasty, Dad!!I had some of everything except salad, he says proudly. My salad-dodger hates it when his appetite is suppressed by the muti. The meal was Michelle & Craig’s slap-up pre-Xmas supper to which we’d been invited.
The next day Tom bought two hams, one roast chicken, bacon and a huge matured rump steak. I made sure only the bacon and steak were raw. Tomorrow is Xmas and we are going to be cavemen! Oh, he also got some Haagen Das ice cream . .
Xmas day:
I picked Tobias’ cabbage and spinach fresh from the garden, boiled it with onions, then drained and added olive oil and simmered and braised with garlic, salt and barbecue spices. Served with big knobs of butter. They gobbled it up after the usual wrinkle-nosed high-pitched HMMMM!? Tom reserves for anything “dodge”. I had to add a green just in case Aitch does peek down from the clouds. Wouldn’t want to get into trouble . . .
~~~oo0oo~~~
Actually, we have one vegetarian meal a week. If I have my way its putu, mfino & speckled beans. Wonderful stuff. The kids love it, but feel obliged to rev me throughout: “WHAT!? No meat!!? Are we too poor, Dad? This is dodge, Dad! Kinda homeless, Dad! etc etc .” Little shits.
Mt aux Sources, winter 1998. Younger sis Sheila organises a gang to summit the peak. Lots of people. Sheila can organise!
Ann Euthemiou brings two strapping nephews as sherpas to haul her four-poster double bed and duvet up the chain ladder, like this:
I think they may have carried Annie up the ladder too, but I’m not sure, don’t quote me, nê.
I hand out my special patented paklightna snacks at all stops on the way up.
Once up the chain ladder, Sheils insists we camp in the most exposed spot on the escarpment, where the howling gale leans our little dome tents at 45° angles and threatens to roll them away like tumbleweeds. Aitch goes to bed before me as ballast to stop the tent from rolling away! I have to bravely endure the gale a while longer to finish the Old Brown sherry. Late at night, Doug n Tracey Hyslop fight off imaginary intruders, Doug adopting a martial arts stance and shouting in stern Japanese that put them to flight.
Next morning we find out why Sheil had insisted on our bivouac location: That’s the sunrise view from our tent. Hmm . . OK Sheila, spectacular and well worth it. Local knowledge at work.
– sunrise between the Eastern Buttress and Devil’s Tooth –
On top I collect delicious reciprocal snacks from all and sundry who carried heavy packs up all the way up, while I had lightened mine.
Chilly, windy, glorious mid-winter morning in one of our very favourite spots of childhood memory.
Lovely outing, lovely people.
– ___, Sheila – who brung Old Brown sherry – Doug & Tracy Hyslop and me –
Peering down at the Tugela Falls – one of the highest waterfalls in the world:
– me, Sheila and Bets Key in front –
Here’s what the falls look like in a fly past by some enterprising glider pilots:
~~oo0oo~~
It might not have been on this trip, but on a trip up to Mt aux Sources I saw an interesting fly hovering at a flower. I had a good look, memorised him and went searching the internet. Here he is (or a close cousin):
I found a wonderful site – an Aussie Michael Whitehead who does research in Australia and in South Africa. He has some beaut pics of proboscis flies like this one – called Prosoeca ganglbaueri.
