I wrote a while ago how I found Neil. Well, now I found boxes of Neil’s old Kodak slides in a shoe box in Janet’s kist.
So now to digitise some of them for Janet. Here’s my quick and easy hack for doing it: Phone camera on macro setting, PC screen as a lit backdrop, juggle till you’re focused – make sure there’s nothing but white as a backdrop – and fire!
– with macro you go much closer –– a macro shot – now you crop the pic using the cellphone software –
. . and here are a few of the results. I have posted a lot over at the Humphrey Family blog.
Here’s Neil’s kit:
At first the slides were 99% of cute little twin girls, but gradually as they grew up he started taking pics of other things! Eventually it was down to only 80% cute little twin girls:
Who knows what car that is? Click on the ferry pic and see if you can ID Neil’s car in the early 1960s. Probably a late 50s model? – Ah! Don Reid came up with the identification, thanks: A 1950s Peugeot 203. I love its lines!
This is a quick and easy method to digitise your slides NOW. I’m sure there are better ways, but getting round to it . . . . . well, procrastinators will know. This way they’re imperfectly saved, but they’re saved and available.
Have you checked my white horse? Well, white VW kombi – WHICH . . was towed into the garage while on holiday two days before new year. Today I towed it again – to a clutch place.
Meantime, I’ve been driving Trish’s ole man’s 1980 Opel Kadett. He handed me the keys, his vision is shot. Glaucoma, and poor ole Neil’s deciding not to use the drops for years as they irritated his eyes and blurred his vision. He was right, xalatan eyedrops are a bitch. But . .
I await the verdict on the kombi’s clutch – which I hope is better than VW’s R17 290.
I KNEW I shoulda fitted a Stromberg.
Peter Brauer wrote:
How thick can ONE man be?
Read what you wrote: ‘Been driving Trish’s ole man’s 1980 Opel Kadett.’
Do you not see the message in that? Let me help you:1980……Opel . .
Give the kombi to the clutchplate and buy a fucking Opel. Of ALL people I thought you would have learned something as a student.
I wrote:
Problem is – no matter how hard I try – I don’t get the 1980 feeling driving it. I just remember Kevin Stanley-Clarke’s firm statement, as he drove us around Doories in his chocolate brown Alfa, carefully changing gears in its ‘notchy’ gearbox: “When driving, always watch out for old toppies wearing hats. Give them a wide berth.” My current cap protecting my ever-so-slightly balding spot which I’m told is there I can’t see it – says DAS Pilsener.
Also, clicking in the old Opel’s gear lock and fitting the steering lock is a ballache. Feeling the ceiling fabric fluttering on my bald head as I drive with all windows open – the aircon substitute – is .. interesting but distracting. Then waiting for the misfiring to end after switching off – it all brings back TOO MANY memories.
PS: New crutch and “dual flywheel” (TF is that?): R9 900.
Steve Reed wrote:
Like I said: Buy a Toyota.
I wrote:
The WORST thing is, you’re right. As my Toyota patients never tire of telling me. With the Durban Toyota plant just down the road I see a fair number of them and their suppliers for their eyes; and they have NO doubt as to what I should do, them having perfect eyesight now, allowing them to see the answer to my problem clearly. Obviously. Trouble is: The Hi-Ace minibus has a bench seat – I can’t stroll back for a beer or a kip or to feed the kids. That’s a deal-breaker.
Steve wrote:
I never owned a Toyota in my life, despised them in fact, till arriving here in Australia and had to take the cheapest / most reliable / least offensive on the tweedie handsey (second hand) market.
Try standing on hot used car lots in the Brisbane heat !!! Water boarding is a kinder form of torture.
Eventually when my head and body was about to be fully done in, I gave way and said “OK OK I’ll take it” and by some luck I was standing on the Toyota forecourt at the time.
VERY pleased I was not standing next to a Kia or a Holden Captiva.
As for the clutch, anything that can take six months of the good wife Wendy’s clutch abuse and still be on the road is OK for me. And I am brave enough to say this in front of her – then duck.
I wrote:
It’s a sad state of affairs that I will take anything that doesn’t give me kak in the line of cars and women nowadays.
Which reminds me – and takes us to Aeroplanes: Bob Ilsley was at Addington when I got there in my khaki uniform. 1980. He was in legs, I was in eyes. He made woorren legs for the hobbling. He’s turned 81 now, still flies the plane* he made in his garage – a Piper Vagabond – and waltzes around Montclair in rude T-shirts. One says, ‘IF ITS GOT TITS OR WHEELS IT WILL GIVE YOU SHIT.‘ Another says, ‘Please stop your tits from staring at my eyes.’ We’re talking incorrigible.
I’ve made glasses for him since 1980: Glass PGX execs; 3 cyl power, same axis; SAME heavy, dark Safilo zyl frame (same frame, not same type of frame), same add, same same; Tried changing a number of times to new frame, multi, CR39, flattops, different axis, whatever, and every single time we go back to EXACTLY what he had before.
Last year we tricked him. We made a free pair of CR39 flattops (‘temporary’ we told him) in a better frame (still zyl, but thinner) and made him wear them while we took his old specs and “searched for a frame just like his perfect one”. The search continued while his wife, all his girlfriends and even some mates told him he looked much better. Now he has stuck to them (except every now and then he walks in with his old ones on and kicks up a huge stink in the front office when it’s crowded about how “These bloody new frames you gave me are NO GOOD!”). Said with twinkling eyes. He’s a character. Sharp as a whistle. He flies and signs off home-built planes – experimental aircraft – before they can be licensed to fly.
* or would still be flying his Piper Vagabond tail-dragger if he hadn’t pranged it on take-off in PMB with his wife on board. He is re-building it in his garage now. See here why they call these craft ‘rag and tube.’
Bob’s Vagabond in his garage, being fully rebuilt after the PMB prang – he never did fly it again
His long-suffering darling of a wife, Barbara, came out of the prang bruised and arm in a sling. Bob was unscathed. How’d you manage that? he was asked often. ‘Hard right rudder,’ he’d say with a mischievous grin. ‘I thought landing on top of Barbs would be safest.’
~~oo0oo~~
Anyway, back to cars: Owning a Toyota probly makes you more boring in the long run: You, for instance, would not have to catch a lift with friend Bruce to fetch your car in Umbilo Road (and the clutch feels kak, thank you).
We made a detour for lunch – a currie at the famous Gounden’s. Gounden’s is at the back end of a panelbeating shop between Umbilo and Sydney roads. You walk thru the workshop to get to it. Lekker bare place, cheap tables with a big bar doing good trade. Many ous there for liquid lunch. After which they go back to work to fix your clutch. We took quarter bunny mutton, made my hyes water. Washed it down with Black Label and coke – one quart bottle, one long can, long sips from one then the other. R80 for the both of us. Service: Of the Hey You variety. Ambience: Faint sounds of panel beating in the background. Apparently, Gounden opened his restaurant to spite his wife when they divorced. Her restaurant is a few shopfronts away, on the street: Govender’s Curry House. We feel in such cases of matrimonial argy bargy, we should support the husband.
~~oo0oo~~ Clutches: My good wife Aitch also should be employed on a test track for concept offroad trucks along with Wendy. A mate from England visited and Aitch drove them around quite a bit while I worked to make money to take them all to Mkhuze. He drives ancient Peugeot heaps and lovingly tends them with kid gloves, keeping them alive long past their date de vente (sell-by date), so this was an eye opener to him. He said a Cockney version of Yussiss! and described how she takes no shit from a gear lever, nor a clutch. She knows first is somewhere up in that far left corner and she shoves the lever there without any how’s-your-father.
~~oo0oo~~
Back in the air:Bob is now 82. Last week he came in with his “Recycled Teenager” T-shirt. To proudly collect his – wait for it – Glass PGX Exec Bifocals in Thick Square Plastic Frame. “Much better” he says. His CR39 flattops were coated with a thick layer of some spray. Probably make-your-plane-more-aerodynamic juice. Took lots of cleaning with acetone to get them clear and smooth. He did acknowledge they were clearer than they’d been in months. But the execs were better.
Today he’s back from passing his flying medical. “Told you” he says. “You wouldn’t lissen” he says.
Today he’s off to Kokstand to check if a home-built – built by the local hardware man – is safe to fly another year. He’ll certify it if all’s well. If the hardware man has done a good job, Bob won’t punch a hole in it and say, You’ll thank me later.
Next week he’s on his way to Oshkosh in Wisconsin to the world’s biggest home-built aircraft show. Sleeps in a pup tent in the campground to save tom.
Last time he flew a simulator of the Wright Brothers’ first aircraft. Crashed after 3 seconds. Went to the back of the queue and stood in line again to have another go. Flew it for 44 secs that time. Longer than the brothers themselves.
Steve wrote:
Amazin. Where do you get PGX glass execs from? That stuff is illegal here – we live in a nanny state though. Had a dude on the phone for 20 minutes wanting glass PGX trifocals. Banging on about how he could buy PGX exec TRIfocals on the net if only he could get someone to fit them for him. Had not given up and had been trying for 18 months. PLUS of course being a veteran he needed to have them free. Veterans Assistance (V.A) here only does SV or bifocals, plastic only and a free pair every two years. Clear rules. He has been in battle with the head office of V.A. and after 18 months says he is beginning to make progress. Fantastic. Over here if you whinge long enough, know how to use email, have time, and use the term “human rights” you can have anything. Just shout loud enough. Its all yours. And then the taxes go up.
I wrote: Your veteran sounds unlike Bob. Bob would probly made his own from the smashed windscreen of his Piper Vagabond.
On the PGX execs, I got a definite NO WAY from Zeiss, Essilor and Hoya, but of course in Debbin there are lots of little one-man labs with family connections in places far away that keep Morris Oxfords running for half-centuries after their sell-by dates.
They woke up a connection inside Hoya who then found a pair covered in dust. The add was +1,75 not +2,00, but I said “What’s the difference?” and we made them up. Bob’s as pleased as punch, like I told you. He loves a good “I told you so.” I told you so.
Steve wrote:
Like Horseshoes and Handgrenades, closies DO count. Excellent.
Aitch learnt the joy of indigenous plants on the Bluff in 1985 when doing her cardio-vascular perfusion-ing at Wentworth hospital. Ian Whitton, friend and cardio-thoracic surgeon, indigenous gardener and nurseryman extraordinaire, piglet-producer, protea grower, pigeon-fancier, erythrina expert and all-round good friend took her under his wing taeching her about Natal trees and birds. She needed it as a Capie new to KwaZulu Natal. She phoned me breathless one day to describe a new bird she had in her binocs: ‘Koos! Its beautiful! It has a yellow beak, its purply-brown with a black head and it has a bright yellow face. (see bottom of post)
– Aitch with TC & Bella; She sure loved her hounds (especially Bella, hey TC!) –
She also learnt from Kenyan, indigenous guru, horticultural landscaper, author, visionary and gardener Geoff Nichols; She collected seeds and swopped them for plants for and from horticulturalist Enver Buckus at Silverglen nursery; She worked for noted colonist, author, canoeist, British apologist, acrylic painter and Last Outpost historian Geoffrey Caruth Esq Duke of Bhivane at his Geoff’s Jungle Indigenous Nursery enthusiastically selling shade plants; She joined BotSoc (now the Biodiversity Society) and got very involved, especially in the annual big plant sale, working with Sandra, Wally Menne, Jean Senogles, Dave Henry, Diane Higginson, etc; She spent fifteen years ‘botanising’ (as they called it) with Barry Porter on his and Lyn’s Hella Hella game farm. We went there at every opportunity. It became our second home. They would roam the farm spotting and photographing plants and flowers with their posteriors pointing at the heavens, occasionally digging up one for culture with Porter’s Powerful Patented Plant Pincher**, a handy device Barry had welded together to make extracting small plants easy and less destructive. Barry taught us to use Eugene Moll’s tree-ID book using leaves to ID the trees of Natal.
Our first property was 7 River Drive Westville, already mostly indigenous thanks to Mike and Yvonne Lello. On the banks of the Mkombaan River, it was paradise unfenced. We rooted out invasives and aliens and planted the right stuff as directed by Geoff Nichols. On his first visit he told me sternly, pointing ‘over there’, to ‘Get rid of that inkberry.’ You know how Geoff is. Right! Sir! A month later on his next site inspection he said ‘You haven’t got rid of that inkberry!’ Oops! True. So I undertook to do it that week.
A few days later I set to with my bow saw, sawing off all the branches and then cutting down the 100mm trunk just above the ground, Then I garlon’d that and composted the bits n pieces. Phew! Done! Finally!
A month later Geoff was back. ‘Who the hell cut down the tassleberry?!’ he bellowed. ‘And you STILL haven’t got rid of the inkberry!’ I never lived that one down. We planted five tassleberries to make up for it. They have male and female trees, so that was best anyway. I am pleased – relieved – to report they did well over the next fifteen years!
Aitch didn’t mind a bit of attention, so when our garden was chosen to be on display for Durban Open Gardens she blossom’d n preened and was in her element! She LOVED showing people around the garden and re-assuring them that it was quite safe* even if it did look a bit wild. In fact she would keep the entrance and pathway to the front door and pool very tame, civilised and trimmed so as not to scare people and put them off wild gardening. The hidden parts of the garden could go wild and host the 112 species of birds we recorded in the garden over the fifteen years we lived there. For 32 of those species we saw nests or fledglings.
– 7 River Drive garages from Burnside (Heather & Gordon Taylor’s place) – the exotics are mostly not ours –
We put in a bird bath outside our bedroom window and plumbed it to a high tap I could reach from my bedroom window to fine-choon as water pressure fluctuated; and left it running with a fine little spray of water for fifteen years. The birds loved it. Me too. The tap is visible against the far wall on the left; the birdbath is hidden behind Jess.
– there’s the high birdbath tap outside my bedroom window –– the bank above the Mkombaan river – me Tom and Neil Humphrey, Aitch’s Dad, kind grandpa to Tom –
~~oo0oo~~
*In fifteen years we saw one Natal Black Snake, two Brown Water Snakes, a few Herald Snakes, a resident House Snake, regular Spotted Bush Snakes, tiny Thread Snakes, a couple of Night Adders, and that was all. None of them really dangerous.
One year we decided to make a large pond by damming a little stream that flowed though our garden into the Mkombaan. It came to be called (by Aitch) ‘Koos’ Folly.’ In my defence, Nichols was involved in the planning. We built a substantial dam wall next to the Voacanga on the bank, covered in bidim felt and strong and long-lasting, creating a deep pond about 8m X 4m in size.
– briefly a pond –
Which the very first flood filled it up to the brim with silt. One shot. Pond now a shallow little mudflat with most of the flow passing under it underground. I learnt: Don’t mess with watercourses.
– should be easy – right? – nope! silted up –
Some murdering had to happen. There was a mango tree in the grasslands and a fiddlewood behind the house. I bow-saw’d and de-barked and felled. Then I garlon’d. That would sort them out. Well, only years later did I finally get rid of the last shoots that kept sprouting. I developed a genuine respect for their kanniedood properties! A massive syringa on the banks of the Mkombaan I just ring-barked and garlon’d. No cutting. Two years later it crashed down across the river, bank-to-bank, forming a bridge you could walk across.
~~~oo0oo~~~
**Barry also made us a bird feeder, which he called Barry’s Bizarre Balancing Bird Bistro.More about Barry and Lyn here.
– Kiza spoils Jessie – Barry Porter’s Bizarre Balancing Bird Bistro in the background –
~~~oo0oo~~~
kanniedood – hard to kill; later we planted a kanniedood Commiphora harveyi down where we buried the dogs
Every garden should have a resident gnome. Especially if a friend of yours edited the well-known magazine Garden n Gnome. Or was that Garden n Home, Lesley?
My gnome lives in a ‘hanging’ pot on the cottage wall and yesterday morning having breakfast I glanced up and spotted him. Next to him was a packet. One of those paper sacks fancy shops use to put gifts in. String handles and a tag you can write happy birthday on.
Ah, I thought, Annerien has left us a gift as a thank-you for staying in the cottage.
Inside was a green box with Mr NWH Humphrey on it. And Oakleigh Funeral Home.
I found Neil!
I had lost his ashes, forgetting I had put them in such a clever place where the gnome could look after him.
Luckily Janet had said she’s not up to it yet, when I suggested she gooi his ashes where Bella is buried and where we – well, some of us – OK, me – had put Aitch’s ashes. So I didn’t have to confess at the time that I’d lost Neil. I just mumbled vaguely that I had put him “somewhere, I think in the garage.”
Now he can stay right there in the gnome hanging pot till Janet gets back from Maun. And when she’s ready she can go down the special path Tobias cut to the site where, in the middle of me clearing my throat to say “OK, we’re going to put Mom’s ashes here” the kids stomped their feet, slapped their knees, jumped up & down, shouted ANTS! and ran off, leaving me to bury the box on my own.
~~oo0oo~~
Later: Janet did come back and chose to scatter Neil’s ashes where Aitch’s are. Along with Aitch’s favourite mutt Bella, a hamster and a gerbil. Tobias helped her by cutting open the path and steps down to the site, which disappear every summer in the undergrowth.
~~oo0oo~~
Even later, Trish and Janet’s Mom Iona’s ashes joined the gang under the copse of trees down the bank in our front yard.
