7.30am Jessie to the dentist up the road in Westville. A filling dropped out. I leave her there – she can walk home.
10am Mother Mary to the ophthalmologist in Pietermaritzburg (PMB). R. 6/18 and L. 6/36 no worse than before; Pressures holding good with the drops; field loss very near to the macula. All much the same as a year ago, so at least that’s the good news. She’s around -2,50 / -1,50 and you know what? She can read much better if she removes her son’s glasses. Funny that . .
11.30am the old man to the optometrist in PMB. Thanks to my good friend Owen Hilliar we don’t need him to schlep to Durban this time. Ooh! His eyes widen and he sits up straight. This is a better optometrist! She’s young and female! He’s been saddled with an old bald plump male optom down in Durban for years. And:She, at least, laughs at his jokes!
He has lost his slight myopia and doubled his astigmatism to -1,50 so this should help a bit. Still only 6/15+ best though. Of course, he doesn’t actually need glasses, ‘I can see perfectly without them; just not when I have to read small print , or in poor light, or the score on the TV, or road signs, but otherwise PERFECT.’ But to humour his son he’ll get some glasses. ‘See this here? If I took it out into the sun I could read it no problem without any glasses.’ Ja, Dad, it’s overcast and raining today. Hmph . .
Read this: M S R U – ‘Um, Vee, Ess, Aar, Gee.’ OK, close. That was the 6/12 line, so she gave him 6/15+.
When we leave I try and pay or get them to claim from Medshield. Ooh, no, sir, we have strict instructions from Mr Hilliar not to charge you anything. Quite a guy, young Owen Hilliar!
I tell them all to take a week off in December, they’ve been so kind. They don’t believe I have that kind of authority. ** sigh **
‘She’s got the key of the door; Never been ninety one before . .’
The lovely ladies at Azania gave Mom a special cake and a rousing song.
Maybe due to austerity measures each candle used has to represent thutty years. Also due to fire regulations, maybe? And ‘part thereof’ probably doesn’t count: you have to turn 120 before you get a fourth candle.
When Mom turned ninety schoolfriend Mariette van Wyk Greyling wrote and started a long, rambling and nostalgic back and forth between us, paraphrased and embellished here:
She wrote: Goodness, you all look so good. I simply cannot believe your dad is in his nineties. He looks exactly the way he used to look when we were at school. Remarkable genes. Thanks for sending.
– Ah, sepia looks better! – Mom’s 90th Bday – on the left: Four Marys –
Please wish your mom happy happy from me – if she still remembers me: The daughter of TP who taught them to sing ‘and the dogs say goodnight’ – Louis Armstrong.
~~oo0oo~~
Oh, Mary will remember you alright! We only had a few families we’d hang out with, kuier with and sing with, and for a while there that was Theunis and Martie. They both still often talk about the factory and the characters who worked there. Stan Moseley was one. I learnt recently that Petra Bissett worked there a while. That factory your Dad ran was a HUGE part of Harrismith in its day.
Later: I phoned Mom; Mother Mary; Mary Methodist. She never ceases to amaze! I said : Do you remember going to Theunis and Martie van Wyk’s home and listening to Louis Armstrong?
I didn’t have to say another word. She said: “I heard it just yesterday! Someone played me Satchmo singing “What a Wonderful World” just yesterday! It was so good hearing it again after all these years. Theunis had a record player and he used to play it good and loud and Satchmo said, “and the dogs say goodnight” instead of “and the dark sacred night”! Mariette was in your class and then there was Anita and Boeta. And you know Martie’s really not well; She just cries and cries.“
I asked: Where did you hear about Martie? She said: “Oh, Dossie Farquhar tells me everything. Dossie was Mom’s bridesmaid. She’s in the same home as Martie in Bethlehem. She is Dossie de Villiers now; She has two sons in Bethlehem, Neil and someone. Dossie phoned me for my birthday and she’s also turning ninety this week, so I’ll phone her on her cellphone. No-one sends cards anymore. I got four: Yours from Jessie and Tommy; Sheila’s that you all signed that was originally a card to Sheila from Annie in 1974. And two others.“
“No-one sends cards anymore.’ And now Dossie won’t even be phoning. She died recently. Fewer and fewer friends remain once you live this long . . “ ~~oo0oo~~
Mariette
wrote:
Your
mom is incredible! What a pin-sharp mind! Goodness. If only my mother
could speak to her it would mean the world to her. None of her old
friends have been in touch. I mentioned to you that I dread the twice
weekly phone calls because she just cries and cries. One-way
conversation. But she is trapped inside a body with no motor
functions – only has hearing and a fairly sharp mind. Binswanger’s
Syndrome. Absolutely tragic! Can there be anything more cruel!? I
cannot imagine it.
Where
did the name Mary Methodist come from? Just because of her church
denomination? Sounds good though.
~~oo0oo~~
Mom is ‘Mary Methodist’ cos she was the Methodists’ johannes kerkorrel for a hundred years. We had to go to church every single Sunday morning for two hundred years solid. And we had to wear shoes. I was born on a Friday on a hill above town (in a manger, I think, though I may have that part wrong). That very Sunday, two days old, I had to listen to the whole church service, plus go to Sunday school and make notes and this continued every Sunday for four hundred years uninterrupted. I am SO going straight to heaven where I’m going to be the pearly gate-keeper. The holiest oke called Peter always gets that job.
We were well compensated, though. We got to hear Mom playing the piano at home. She would play her classical pieces, her popular music for their inebriated guests – including Theunis and Martie, members of the Goor Koor – to murder in song; and she’d practice her hymns for Sunday. My halo is only starting to fade now, fifty-footsack years later.
~~oo0oo~~
Mariette
wrote:
When I was fourteen my father wisely gave me the choice of church or no church. He wasn’t the church type. ‘Ek gaan nie daar sit met daardie skynheilige spul nie’. I chose not to go. And turned out quite alright. Hence the fact that I was never popular with the bybelkunde lot.
Did your dad go to church?
~~oo0oo~~
Theunis TP van Wyk was a wise soul. No, Dad Pieter Gerhardus never went to church, but nor did he take any stand. Mom would have been devastated if he’d interfered and he didn’t. We went happily to church and – especially – to guild, as it was social and fun and after dark. A gathering of rooineks – except the poor Anglicans who had to go to another church and worship the queen, shame. Oh, and the poor Catholics – mostly the new immigrants from Holland, Portugal, etc who were mostly in die Engelse klas. They had to go and kiss the Pope’s ring, shame. There wasn’t any fire and brimstone from our pulpit and the dominees even downplayed the Methodists’ famous hatred of drink. Turned a blind eye out of respect for Mary Methodist behind the orrel, maybe! Her being a purveyor of booze as her day job. Also, there were so few bliksems gooi’ing pennies into those velvet-lined wooden collection plates I think they thought, “We’ll take sinners, we’ll take rokers, we’ll take drinkers, we’ll take drank smouse, we’ll take ANY contributors!” Just like Jesus. They would even have taken lawyers, though I don’t think we got any of them. The dearth probably wasn’t quite as bad as the Anglicans, but still dire. Have you seen where I wrote about the desperate Anglicans?
Mariette
wrote:
So
what happened? Did that beautiful building survive? No Anglicans for
evermore in Harrismith? Loved that building. What a loss.
Confession:
when we lived in England I went to the Church of England Sunday
school a few times. Only because my best friend Beatrice Evans went.
But then the appeal of spending Sundays driving around the Yorkshire
Dales with Theunis in his new blue Zephyr won the toss.
~~oo0oo~~
Oh no, the old sandstone Anglican church is still there, and its congregation of rooineks limp along as always. Heydays may pass unnoticed, but weddings and funerals still have to have a place to happen! The only outcome was – Tabs didn’t become heilig! He wasn’t consecrated. I saw him the other day just before he went off on a groot trek thru Zimbabwe and we had a good laugh about how he ducked a bullet there. Joan Simpson saved him!
– The door that was not darkened . . –
As for your slipping into an Anglican church: Going to church where your best friend (other than Jesus) goes is a time-honoured tradition that only a lelike church would ever interfere with. As the NG Kerk did with Cappy Joubert after WW2.
The
Yorkshire Dales! I’ve seen movies made there. And the bicycle Tour de
Yorkshire shows wonderful footage. Sure looks beautiful.
Was Theunis’ blue Zephyr like this?
– Mariette said yes . . a ‘winged zephyr’ just like this –
~~oo0oo~~
Until the sessions and the discos arrived thanks to Round Table, there wasn’t any alternative fun in the dorp really. The Sunday School picnics in the park, on Lud Coetzee’s farm on the Swinburne road and at the foot of One Man’s Pass were a highlight of our year. As was standing on the back of Michael Hastings and Charlie Crawley’s flatbed Chevy truck with an orrel on it, driving slowly around town at night singing Xmas kêrels! Little old ‘Uncle Wright’ Liddell pumping the pedals to belt out the noise. He was our johannes kerkorrel before Mary inherited the mantle. Leon Strachan says for a while he was the only Engels-sprekende Nat in Harrismith!
What did Martie do? Trek n hoed aan, or stay at home? I’d say you were unpopular with the skynheiliges for TWO reasons: One: Not going kerktoe; and Two: Doing so well at school! That woulda pissed them off.
~~oo0oo~~
Mariette
wrote:
Martie did the kerk en hoed thing. Theunis let her be. Gave him time with his aviary birds and woodwork.
I
was confirmed as a Methodist for some or other reason but never knew
about the Methodist dislike of drink. Shows you what a farce that
whole confirmation thing is. Had to ‘read’ a bunch of stuff, and then
was confirmed.
I remember you had a bunch of fun with the extramural Methodist activities. The only NG Kerk event I didn’t miss for the world was Die Kerkbazaar. Yum. All those lekker koeksisters, toffee apples, fudge and melktert. Sjoe, makes me very lus now. Somehow the Woolies koeksisters and melktert just ain’t as nice.
~~oo0oo~~
So you briefly became a Methylated Spirit? How’s that! So did Cappy Joubert. When he got back from World War 2 the NG Kerk – his church – kyk’d him skeef when he arrived in his South African army uniform. So he hived himself off to the Meths boys and stayed there for evermore, hugely enriching the lives of us rooineks. His generosity and involvement and sense of humour and moral compass influenced a generation of kids in our dorp.
I learnt my bible stories very mildly from the enchanting Stella Euthemiou. We sat at her feet and gazed up in awe and wonder. Everyone fell in love with Stella! And her sister Pye; And her sister Ann; And her sister Georgie.
A dominee’s son who left Harrismith in about 1962 – Lincoln Michell – found my blog recently and he also remembered worshipping Stella back then, fifty years ago! She almost got us to heaven, but we had the other six days and twenty three hours to maak things reg and get unholy again. She had to start afresh every Sunday!
The only bible story we really learnt without a shadow of doubt was the holy unerring infallible fact that we got gifts at Christmas time. The old oke in red with the white beard got a lot more coverage and adulation than the younger oke in white with the brown beard, I can assure you.
We had another three gorgeous older girls at Sunday School: Shirley Mason, Anne Euthemiou and Lynn du Plessis. When I first heard “Shirley, Goodness and Mercy were going to follow me all the days of my life,” I knew exactly who they were and verily, I was pleased.
~~oo0oo~~
Mariette
wrote:
Anne
Euthemiou, Lynn du Plessis and Martie Marais were all gorgeous. Saw a
photo of Anne and Martie at one of Barbara’s famous get-togethers a
few months ago and they still look fabulous.
~~oo0oo~~
Aside: Famous author Chris van Wyk also had dreams on hearing that bible passage and in 2006 he wrote a wonderful childhood memoir called Shirley, Goodness and Mercy, a Childhood Memoir. He grew up in Riverlea and his lovely smile reminded me of fellow Riverlea character Gerald Durrell (‘yes, like the famous animal and zoo author‘ he’d say) who ran the Riverlea Eye Clinic when we used to go there as optometry students in Jo’burg in 1976 and 1977.
Dad:“Victor Simmonds was a lovely chap and a very good artist. He was a little man, grey, a lot older than me. What? How old? Well, I was probably 35 then and he was grey. He was probably 50. He lodged with Ruth Wright (later Ruth Dominy) on the plot next door to ours, Glen Khyber. I doubt if he paid them any rent, they were probably just helping him out. He moved to the hotel in Royal Natal National Park where they allowed him to sell his art to the guests and that probably paid his rent.
(This was on the slopes of Platberg, the mountain that overshadows Harrismith Free State).
“He was a hopeless alcoholic, unfortunately. He used to come to me begging for a bottle of brandy late at night, his clothes torn from coming straight across to Birdhaven from Glen Khyber, through the barbed wire fences. (Mom and Dad owned a bottle store, liquor store, in the town). I said ‘Fuck off, Victor, I won’t do that to you,’ and sent him away. I wish I had bought one of his paintings. Sheila found these paintings he gave me for nothing. He said he did these as a young student. As I took them he said ‘Wait, let me sign them for you.'”
– maybe a self portrait? – – nude with amphora? – – semi-nude with two amphorae? – – maybe the Kak Spruit at Glen Khyber? – possibly –
So I went looking and found a lot of his work available on the internet. Once again Dad’s 98yr-old memory proved sound. Victor was born in 1909, thus thirteen years older than Dad.
Victor Simmonds’ work has been offered at auction multiple times, with realized prices ranging from $126 to $256, depending on the size and medium of the artwork. Since 2012 the record price for this artist at auction is $256 for South African landscape with two women carrying wood, sold at Bonhams Oxford in 2012.
I just knew this scene! To me this looks like the stream above the Mahai campsite in Royal Natal National Park – So I went looking, and at Love Camping I found:
– spot on! – an image locked in my brain for fifty years! – – sunset, poplar trees, a river – the upper Wilge? –
A number of his paintings are available for sale. I’d love to see his ‘The Gorge, Royal Natal National Park, Showing the Inner Buttress and Devils Tooth’ but I’d have to subscribe for one day at 30 euros! That one was apparently painted in 1980, so he kept going for at least 23 years after he stayed in our neck of the woods. That would have made Victor around 70 and his liver a resilient organ.
– more Victor Simmonds Drakensberg scenes ca.1946 – the two on the left of the Amphitheatre –
~~~~oo0oo~~~~
This post was seen by old Westvillains Tony and Elesa Willies in Canada, who wrote in the comments. Elesa sent a pic of her and her folks taken 43 years ago in the same ‘shrubs beside a cascading stream’ spot above Mahai campsite in RNNP! Wow! That beats even my recall of the scene!
– Elesa with her folks Peg and Ivor Willies – right there! –
And Tony sent a Victor Simmonds painting called ‘Harrismith’ (wish I knew where this was done – maybe near Sunnymede on the banks of the Wilge river, looking away from the river towards Platberg?):
– one of 4 Victor Simmonds bought by Ivor Willies, architect in Westville in the 50s and 60s – – now owned by his son Tony and daughter Elesa in Canada –
Lovely frame!
~~~oo0oo~~~
I asked Dad if he could remember more. Just these (mainly sad) memories: – He was a lovely little man – small, frail even; I don’t think he ate much – he drank too much; – Ruth Wright probly gave him some grub, she was a lovely woman (he stayed in a cottage on their plot); – His pub was the Grand National in Warden street – quite a walk from the plot next door to us. He never had a car, nor even a bicycle; – I wish I had asked him to give you kids drawing or sketching lessons – I could have paid him a bit. He never had any money; – I fear he probably died penniless and got a paupers burial; (thankfully this was probably overly pessimistic as it turned out, as Victor was still painting some twenty years later, as shown by Helen who commissioned a painting of the Amphitheatre from him in 1980, just before she emigrated to Australia – see her comment).
~~~oo0oo~~~
– three more Simmonds now in the Willies’ homes in Canada –
Two more from the “early student paintings” he gave Dad. Both are marked ‘Harrismith ca.1946’ – but by who? Not by Victor himself.
~~~oo0oo~~~
Another wonderful Eastern Free State and Drakensberg artist found a post I wrote on Little Switzerland – a special place in his and his family’s lives. Enjoy Alan Kennedy‘s paintings here.
The inmates in Azania – I mean Azalea Gardens in Azania – look forward now to new arrival Mary Methodist’s preprandial concerts. While we were chatting the guy next door stuck his head in and asked anxiously from his wheelchair, “When are you coming?” so we all hastened over to the lounge / dining room so Mom could do her thing.
In the background the ole man is paging through some old Farmers Weeklys. The piano music plays havoc with his hearing aids, so he has switched them off.
Ooh, says Mom, I’m not at my best today! True, says I, You were better when you were eighty. She hosed herself at that. She also played Angeline and Chatanooga Choo Choo and two others I forget the names. A round of applause from the tables announced OK, enough now, the grub has arrived. Mary immediately got up and joined them for roast chicken, roast spuds and creamed spinach; then pud.
~~oo0oo~~
edit: The old codger in the wheelchair was one of her biggest fans. We heard a couple of weeks after this day that he’d shuffled off, moved on, fizzled. Natural causes after a good innings, mind you. Nothing to do with Mom’s playing.
Mom was on furlough from the home – Azalea Gardens. Sheila fetched her and Barbara, Linda, Tholo and the two terrors Mary-Kate and Dawie and I joined them at 16 Ivy Road in Lincoln Meade, Pietermaritzburg.
What a lovely day – a great lunch, fun with the kids and ending with a surprise: ancient movies from our youth taken in the sixties with Dad’s 8mm movie camera. Sheila had arranged and paid for hours of old footage to be put on a memory stick! Dad says he had a small Canon movie camera first; I only remember his Eumig camera.
As we were leaving Tholo spotted a birds nest right above the car door with two little chicks begging, and showed Mary-Kate.
Linda lifted Mary-Kate up high and she took the world’s best picture for a five-year-old!
After everyone left I waited till I could spot the mother: a Cape White Eye.
——-ooo000ooo——-
See the top pic: When the old man moved out of earshot – which means six inches away – Linda murmured to me sotto voce, ‘Here’s the man always telling others to get dressed early mornings: still in his jarmies at noon.’
When we grew up outside Harrismith ca 1959 we couldn’t use the lounge. The lounge was filled edge-to-edge by an upside-down speedboat. The old man built his first speedboat in this lounge, now showing some wear-and-tear many decades later:
Younger sis Sheila, in the picture with Mom & Dad, says he also added the stone cladding to that fireplace.
Later we moved to town; to 95 Stuart Street on the eastern edge of the town ca.1961; In 1972 Mom and Dad moved from the house we grew up into a new owner-built house in Piet Uys Street near the middle of town.
After us three kids had all left home and Mom & Dad had retired, he developed another urge to build a boat. Luckily this time in a boatyard with the help of boat builders.
– note the numberplate. He’d go and wheedle a good number out of the ous at the licencing office –
One cold winter’s day ca.1990 we took it, shiny new, for a spin on Sterkfontein Dam outside Harrismith: Me, Dad, two Eskimos and Sheila, the semi-eskimo.
Dad, Mom, Trish & me – pic by Sheila
We zoomed over the spot where Mom estimated her old farmhouse was – on Nuwejaarsvlei, where she grew up. She worked out where the farmhouse had been by lining up ‘Horsehoe Hill’ and ‘Sugar Loaf Mountain,’ as they called the hilis on their farm.
Update 2025: Today on a phone call we spoke of this again and Mom said how she loved those walks to the hills on the farm with her Dad Frank. He had taught her those names for them. ‘How long ago was that?’ she wondered. ‘He died when I was 15.’ Well that was 81 years ago Mom. And your walks were before that, as he died after you’d moved to town.
No! she said. So long?
~~oo0oo~~
That vehicle licencing office: The ole goat had OHS 153, 154 and 155; and for my first car he got OHS 5678. I want an easy number for my son, he said. Are ve Oom not sure you don’t want raver a difficult number for your son? asked the wise fella helping him.
The old man has good news about a great discovery for people who can’t sleep.
He can’t sleep: “I only fall asleep around 2am and then sleep for a few hours” he complains.
I visited overnight recently and urged him to take the sleeping tablets he had. Mom gave one to him and he carried it around. No, he’d take it later, not now.
We all went to bed.
At 3am I’m woken by Mom: The ole man is wandering around the house wide awake and shouting at the people out on the lawn who are carrying away his furniture! He’s hallucinating. “Peter there’s no-one there” says Mom patiently. “Well then who do you think I’m talking to?” he replies belligerently, shining his torch out the window and shouting to the imaginary chair thieves; “Speak up! I can’t hear you!”
So that didn’t work.
Now he has a potion. “It’s made from two flowers. One flower is from Europe. It’s herbal, so it should be mild.” Ja, I think, cyanide is herbal, Dad. “It’s homeopathic I think,” he says. Ja, I think.
So now he phones me to give me the amazing news about his new discovery: It works!
“I took them and nothing happened. But the pharmacist said they’d take time to work. And then wragtig, they did work last night! I fell asleep around 2am and then slept for a few hours.”
~~oo0oo~~
Some time later he phoned: “I hear you owe me some money?”
Ja? I say.
“I hear I gave you quite a show the night you slept here.”
Ja, I say.
“Don’t you think you should pay for such a good show?”
Me ole Mum has slowed down somewhat. Walks with a walker now. But she’s still young – only turns 90 in September. We were discussing mobility this morning as she had a friend visit her who ‘can hardly walk’ according to Mom. ‘It took ages to get her into the house from the car and then just as long back to the car’ says Mom. ‘I told her she should get a walker like mine’ she said.
I said she should actually get a wheelchair. Makes it easier for everyone. Mom fully agreed. I said ‘For example: If you and I were to leave your house, walk down the driveway, cross the road and then walk back, it would take us ages with you and your walker. With a wheelchair I could whizz you there and back at normal walking pace’. Absolutely, she agreed. Quite right.
‘So shall I get you a wheelchair?’ I asked.
“FOR ME? OH GOODNESS NO! I DON’T NEED A WHEELCHAIR!” she said emphatically.
When we’d stopped laughing we agreed: Advice is only good in the giving.
~~oo0oo~~
Come to think of it, over my lo-ong career of listening to old bullets I wonder if I ever heard a one of them say “I need a wheelchair”. Nope. Not one. Just like I don’t think I ever hear a single old goat say, “I think I need a hearing aid.”
I don’t do DIY. I was going to say except for our wedding, but on reflection, I also did that the way I do everything: Stand back and watch as others do it all, encouraging and applauding while trying to save money.
So Andre Hawarden did the invites:
What I did do was buy the booze and fill Mike Lello’s Isuzu Trooper and trailer with it and drive it out to Barry and Lyn’s farm Game Valley Estates at the foot of the well-known Hella Hella kop on the Friday. Lots of rain, muddy roads, the four wheel drive was needed. It had been a wet summer following the huge September 1987 flood.
Like most bachelors when they do fall, I headed off cheerfully to meet my fate, all my own advice forgotten, marching singing to the gallows!
I always sing ‘The robots change when I go thru, the clouds dissolve and the skies turn blue, and EVERYBODY loves me baby – – – what’s the matter with you!?‘
And the clouds did dissolve . . It got Sunny. Then Hot. Then Scorching, Humid and Sultry. It felt like all the rain of the big flood was trying to get back up into the clouds as steam.
And when I say ‘BUSH’ – Lyn and Barry’s beautiful game farm Game Valley Estates is truly in the bush that they have preserved, but their home has all the amenities one needs and they laid on even more for the occasion. So don’t think we roughed it; we had everything we needed as, with Aitch, they arranged everything – flowers, cake, tent, table n chairs, accommodation, food, spitbraai, animals to braai – the works!
Barry’s big old 4X4 Ford F150 gave people a tug up slippery Hella Hella Pass so they could get to their lodgings at the nearby Qunu Falls Lodge. The Brauers, the du Plessis, the Reeds, the Schoemans, the Stoutes, the Stewarts. The Hills live nearby. Family stayed in the concrete A-frame lodge on the farm.
The sauna was pitched on the lawn under the Hella Hella mountain.
The Porters were linked up to ESKOM but just because ESKOM has arrived does not mean that when you throw a switch with a flourish that anything will happen. And so it was on our wedding day that ESKOM wasfeeling a bit off that day and we were without krag, power, lights and fridges.
Enter David Hurle Hill !! He roared off to his farm Melrose a hundred km away in his bakkie and fetched a huge diesel generator on a trailer. David is a Drrrillerr and will drill you a borehole. In fact his company motto is ‘On The Hole Our Work Is Boring.’ He linked up and threw a switch with a flourish. And nothing happened.
She was not wekking, as David Hurle Hill would say.
Enter Enea Spaggiari !! All the way from Italy via Kenya and Petit outside Benoni. He climbed up onto and over and under the trailer and fiddled with wires and threw a switch with a flourish and Let There Be Light! Music! and Cold Beers! That’s Italian vernuf for ya! Or competenza, as they would say.
Iona coaches her daughter: Make all the big decisions, but make him think he made them . . . Aitch: Ha Ha I already do that . . .
– plotting –
Then the usual stuff, the ominous music from Jaws: Tun Tun Ta Da!;Tun Tun Ta Da! What? Oh, the wedding march. The father of the bride looks like he’s having having second thoughts; Guys are thinking hm hm hm who’d a thunk this day would arrive?; Ladies are smiling – they seem to enjoy weddings; Aitch saying – ‘Honour? OK; – Obey? Are you mad!?’ and so on. The usual kak.
Then the cake, made by Lyn’s talented friend with two beautiful frogs – probly a strongylopus and an arthtroleptis. In the heat they keeled over. We should have got a pic, but something like this, just green frogs in white dress and black tuxedo – and not from alcohol – from heat fatigue:
– frog cake –
Then The Lies! You just can’t trust some people. Ten years prior to this I had done a very good job being his best man and if he had paid attention he’d have learned something. Like, to stick to the flattering truth and not tell scurrilous alternative truths that nobody wants to hear. At least nobody called the object of your attentions wants to hear them . . .
That speech was followed by The Truth!plain and unvarnished. By me:
At last, we could change into shorts and relax and party. Some in the background (We saw you Jeff!) had cleverly not changed out of their shorts throughout.
Later came The Getaway:
Which took a while, handicapped as we were. We wore getaway kit appropriate for our intrepid honeymoon. We were headed for Deepest Darkest America.
~~~oo0oo~~~
On the Monday friend Allie Peter flew over Hella Hella in a helicopter and took pics of Rapid No.5&6 looking downstream and then back upstream:
– pinnacle rock is hiding –
~~~oo0oo~~~
Twenty Five Years Later – 28 Feb 2013 – I wrote to friends:
Crazy, innit! 25yrs ago today Aitch and I got hitched down in the Hella Hella valley in a fun DIY game farm wedding. She made it to 23yrs of married bliss (OK, she might have had something to say at this point . . ) and one month short of 26yrs together. We celebrated that 25yrs-together milestone in August 2010.
Thinking of all you good peeps that made our wedding so memorable – that’s the bachelor days before, the day itself, and the 25yrs since!
Cheers!
Lotsa love – Pete – and now Jessica & Tommy!
BTW, Lyn and Barry Porter of Hella Hella also died in 2011: Lyn in January – also breast cancer; Barry in April – hospital infection; And then Aitch in July.
~~~oo0oo~~~
Dave Hill: I remember it well – I ‘nipped’ home to fetch my generator when the power went off.
Pete Stoute:Remember the week-end like yesterday! Struggling up the other side of Hella Hella to the Qunu Falls hotel in the mud and rain – Dave Hill saving the day with a BIG generator.Will have an extra glass of vino this evening – great mates and good times.
Sheila Swanepoel:Those pics are great. What a wonderful record of a very special day. I remember the incredible heat and how you, Pierre and Pete sneaked off and changed into shorts straight after the ceremony. And how the phone kept ringing in the middle of the ceremony in the house. Linda was flower girl, Robbie was so proud of his brand new red “tight”
. . and Jeff kept putting off going to change, saying that he was charge of the antelope on the spit – he dithered for so long that there was no time to change and that pleased him no end. Bess & I sneaked down to the pool for a kaalgat swim and found Iona had beaten us to it!
Steve Reed: Will always remember the weekend; a great occasion. I think it was thanks to Mike and Yvonne in the 4×4 that we traveled safely back through the mud to our lodgings. Fond memories – raising a glass tonight to all of you!
I remember Brauer chasing a tight deadline speech writing – wise.
Pete Brauer:Damn. Been holding my breath during this stroll thru memory lane hoping that no-one noticed at the time or that no-one would still remember that poor last-minute effort.
Terry Brauer: Steve nothing has changed! PB has his own website called lastminute.com
Steve Reed:Speech was excellent. Not many can compose a wedding speech while putting on a tie with the other hand. Besides, Swannie probably tasked Brauer with the job as he was getting dressed himself.
Terry Brauer:Yip Brauer remains an orator of note and Swanepoel continues to notify me he is coming to stay usually on the day when he lands in Pretoria – 😀 Those old dogs ain’t gonna learn new tricks but love them both! T
Pete Swanie:I had prepared well in advance.
Brauer procrastinated and ignored my two rules: Keep it short; and NO LIES.
Pete Brauer:If I stuck to the latter rule the first would have fallen into place quite easily.
Tanza Crouch: Thinking of you, Aitch, Tommy and Jessy at this time. My spider days at Hella Hella are very special to me and Aitch, Barry and Lyn were very special people.
~~~oo0oo~~~
The old paper album has been scrapped, but here it is in pixels:
I’m coming down to Durban to buy a parrot. Where’s Overport? asks the ole man. Parrots can live for eighty years, so what better to get as a pet when you’re ninety five in the shade yourself?
Then the ole lady phones, all worried – as ever. Can you tell us how to get to West Road in Overport, Koosie? I say I’ll try, I’ll look it up, I’ll phone you back. I need to hatch a plot. I phone back and say, Come to my place for lunch, I’ll leave work early and I’ll take you, it’s not easy to find. She sounds dubious but she’ll try that.
She phones back, amazed. He saw sense. We’re coming for lunch, she says, relieved. A rare visit to the son’s home! She can’t see, he can’t hear, so she was dreading looking for a small parrot in a strange haystack, driving by feel and touch, with a driver very disinclined to listen to anything she has to say, and quick to blame.
When I get home they’re on my stoep and Jess has given them tea and Tommy is busy cooking lunch for everybody – pasta carbonara. My children! Bless them! I had told them, I’d love it if you’d give them a polite hello, but you needn’t stay, just make your excuses and go. They decided to completely exceed all expectations and charm the old bullets, the granma that loves them and the old goat who denies them. Proud of ’em!
Off we go to meet Sumie who has three baby African Grey Parrots in a box. His grandfather breeds them in Utrecht. The old man had asked Sumie to choose his own from the three. He checks them out on the tailgate of my bakkie in West Road Overport, picks one and now I think, Here comes the bargaining.
R2500, says Sumie. No way, says the ole man and shuffles off to the front seat of my bakkie. He comes back slowly on the uneven pavement with the bird magazine in his hand, stabbing his finger at Sumie’s ad: R2300; He gives a pained moaning, Now I have wasted my time coming all the way from Pietermaritzburg. Sumie says to me, ‘I thought I wrote R2500!‘ To the customer he says, Fine, Uncle Pieter, R2300.
And the food for free, says the ole man. That cost me R100, Uncle Pieter, I’ve just fed them, so give me R80, says Sumie. It’s my birthday on Friday (true), counters the ole man, You should give it to me as a gift. How old you’ll be? asks Sumie. Ninety Five says the ole man. So they settle on R50.
Now they debate whose box is better. Sumie has a shoebox – it’s wider. Ole man has a box some electronics came in – it’s deeper. Ole man realises if he takes Sumie’s box he gets both, so he settles on Sumie’s shoebox.
We go back home to eat chef Tom’s delicious pasta lunch, followed by ice cream and coffee, and off they go back to Maritzburg. The ole man changes into second too soon up the steep hill, has to stop and start over. He would have hated it that I heard that.
~~oo0oo~~
And I didn’t take a single photo! The parrot pic is off the internet. Damn! Well, here they are with great-grandkids:
And I just thought: When last did I post a recent pic of my favourite children? Here they are willingly posing for me:
When her great friend Joey de Beer – later Jo Onderstall, author and talented botanist in Nelspruit – the Lowveld Botanic Gardens – heard Mom had decided to go nursing after matric back in the late 1940’s she said in her forthright way: “What a waste of a good brain!” She was so right! Mom could have done anything.
I got a phone call at work from a good friend of the folks who had just visited Mom and Dad – “Your Mom was saying strange things and was not herself, I think you should visit”, said Keith Griffiths. I phoned sister Sheila, who phoned other sister Barbara, and then drove to Maritzburg.
Mom was physically fine, but a bit confused and – tragically – with marked short-term memory loss. Trying hard to be alright, she asked me ‘How’s Trish?’ Trish who died six years ago. Dear old Mom has had a ‘turn’ leading to sudden short-term memory loss. Tragic. She has always been so sharp and organised. Luckily her long-term memory and sharp sense of humour is unaffected.
DAMN!! Probably a transient ischaemic attack (TIA) or “mini stroke”.
~~~oo0oo~~~
TIA – caused by a temporary disruption in the blood supply to part of the brain. The disruption in blood supply results in a lack of oxygen. This can cause sudden symptoms similar to a stroke, such as speech and visual disturbance, and numbness or weakness in the face, arms and legs. However, a TIA doesn’t last as long as a stroke. The effects often only last for a few minutes or hours and fully resolve within 24 hours.
But Mom’s memory loss is still apparent a week later.
She blames a bad fall she had when she banged her head hard on a corner near the kitchen door.
~~~oo0oo~~~
I phoned them the next morning:
Dad
says he told Mom to stay in bed till the sun came up but she didn’t.
He thinks she should see an audiologist as she doesn’t listen! He’s
as deaf as a post and her hearing is great, making the joke all the
better.
~~~oo0oo~~~
Mom
says she prays for Tom n Jessie every day that they’ll understand
their lessons and pass their tests.
I asked her in mock-worry if that wasn’t cheating?! Mary Methodist immediately saw the joke and hosed herself. Slightly cautiously, though. She was raised not to tempt fate. No, she didn’t think asking for divine intervention was cheating on their behalf, she chuckled.
~~~oo0oo~~~
In the midst of a big cleanup, Sheila found a photo. On the back is written:
Marjory, Pat and Peggy – Harrismith 1938 – Signed DC Reed
*** pic here ***
So
she phoned Mum for more info:
Marjory was Farquhar – her younger sister was Dossie, who was Mum’s great mate and bridesmaid, She now lives in an old age home in Bethlehem and she and Mum chat quite often. Pat was Bland, Mom’s older sister. Peggy was Hastings – Michael’s sister – she had a lovely sense of humour – she had three kids and then her husband walked out on her. So she came back to Harrismith and married Bert Starkey – her kids were Barbara, Stuart and AN Other.
~~~oo0oo~~~
The “DC Reed” Mum thinks was Peggy’s cousin Daphne, whom they called Dodo – Mum says she was lovely and they all loved her.
It’s
really a gorgeous pic and Pat looks so full of fun and nonsense,
which she usually was!
So
now you know. Love Sheila
~~~oo0oo~~~
More
Mom Memories:
One
day, before Mum started school, Brenda Longbottom came to play. She
lived across the road in Stuart Street and was much older – a full
eighteen months older. Mum very proudly told Brenda about a book she
was reading – all about a little girl called Lucky.
When Brenda saw the book she told Mum in a withering tone that the little girl’s name was Lucy, pronounced Loosie, not Lukkie! Mum was devastated.
(Years later I was also teased for getting hard and soft ‘c”s mixed when I said Sir-Sum-Fur-Rinse for circumference. Hey, we read phonetically ‘by our own selves’, so this happens!).
~~~oo0oo~~~
Mary’s niece Frankie Cowie married and became a McCarthy. She named her sons Patrick and Henry. When a grandchild was born she phoned Mary with the good news and asked if she could help with a name. ‘A name that goes with McCarthy.’ Well, Mom knew not to suggest Gert, even though that was the granpa’s name, so she immediately asked: ‘Have you thought about Benni?’
Benni McCarthy was South Africa’s ‘bad boy’ star striker in the national soccer team and was very much in the news at the time. A real character, he marches to his own drum and has even been a rap artist! Now he’s a coach and father of four daughters.
I can just imagine Frankie throwing her head back and HOSING herself at Auntie Mary’s suggestion!
~~~oo0oo~~~
Two years on, 2019: Went to the farm for boxing day as Mom had suffered 3 or 4 TIA’s starting early xmas morning. Very distressing. Couldn’t remember if she’d had xmas or not, and could not at all remember opening pressies with the great grandkids.
She recovered well and was fine later, but weak – and often worried about what she was thinking or saying. “Ooh”, she said, “I almost asked you, How’s Trish? but she died, didn’t she?” Hey, well done for catching yourself in time!
Meantime, of the ten people staying there, seven fell prey to the collywobbles and some vomiting. Talk about Jingled Bowels.
Also, due to complaints from the intolerant, one poor farm rooster got shot due to excessive enthusiasm on xmas morning. Poor bugger was probably just singing a desperate poultry carol, praying that by being pious he wouldn’t be the one invited to the festive table! Maybe Jungle Fowls, Jungle Fowls, ?
