Vrystaat Confessions

Category: 9_KwaZuluNatal

Natal, my adopted province

  • Sinner Mary

    Sinner Mary

    Jessie’s second pre-school was ‘Sinner Lizabeth.’ I think it’s Anglican, but I don’t know, cos I wasn’t interested. I was only interested in the fact that Aitch had chosen it, so I knew they’d look after my Jessie. And they did: Rose and two Pennys treated her good the two years she was there.

    But today I found out about Sinner Mary. This was news to me. I gasped.

    Gasp!

    Right through school Mary, now universally know as Mary Methodist after playing the organ in the Harrismith Methylated Spirits church for something like a hundred years, was churchless!

    Her Mom Annie, my gran, was blissfully unimpressed and uninvolved and probably played golf on Sundays. I’m guessing she would use as an excuse, if pushed by the pious, that Harrismith didn’t have a Presbyterian church (it had folded).** I’m not going to say that proves God is Methodist, but you can see right here how the thought did flit across my mind. That would be if She existed, of course.

    So Mary the scholar was churchless! I love it! She tells me her teacher Mr Moll – who taught singing, woodwork and religion – never gave her very good marks probly cos he knew she didn’t go to church! She’s joking of course, and her bad marks were probably 80%, but anyway, Tommy Moll was very involved in the Methodists.

    So when Mary got married they had to ‘make a plan’ and the wedding made the newspapers. The headline blared: ‘Four denominations at one wedding’ or something. Not ‘and a funeral.’ (Sheila had the actual cutting so I now know my recollection was exaggerated).

    The bride ‘was Presbyterian’ they said (but we now know she was actually – gasp -a ‘none’); the groom was Dutch Reformed (‘another faith’ they said, but he too was in reality a ‘none’); the Methodist minister was on leave, so the Apostolic Faith Mission man tied the knot.

    Later, when Mary returned to Harrismith, having lived in Pietermaritzburg for a while, where she became Mom to Barbara, she decided to get church. She chose the Methodists as a lot of her friends were Methodists. She maybe forgets she told Sheila the Methodist boys were nicer than the Anglican boys, so she tells me something about not liking the Anglicans’ ‘high church’ aspect. So this twenty five year old mother leaves her baby Barbara with Annie and Dad at Granny Bland’s home in Stuart street, where they have the room with the big brass double bed, and goes off to confirmation classes with a group of schoolkids. She aces the class, gets confirmed in the Lord, sanctified, and starts her epic Methodistian journey, which continues today, sixty seven years later, her only sin on the way being an occasional single ginger brandy with ginger ale while everyone else was drinking bucket loads. When she plays the piano of a Sunday in the frail care dining room in Maritzburg these days, those are Methodist hymns she’s thumping out joyfully.

    I sort of feel like I have an excuse for being churchless now if I need one. ‘I’m just taking my twenty five years off now, Ma,’ I’ll tell Mary when she asks.

    (BTW: In the pic, Mary is the bridesmaid, back left. The bride is her dear friend and cousin Sylvia Bain who married John Taylor, another ‘none’ I’ll bet).

    ~~oo0oo~~

    – Jess in Livingstone uniform with her Mad Hatter Tea Party hat – 2008 –

    After ‘Sinner Lizabeth’ pre-school, Jess went to a remedial primary school whose school song, which they sang with gusto, went:

    Live in Sin, Live in Sin, Progress Voorspoed, Live in Sin

    Eat cake, Eat soap, Eat porridge too.

    Believe in yourself Live in Sin

    Can’t say we didn’t give our JessWess a good grounding.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    “Have faith, have hope, have courage too. Livingstone Remedial.” Tom loved telling me the “Live in Sin” real words, Dad!’

    ~~oo0oo~~

    I see anyone can apply to become an Apostolic Faith Mission Marriage Officer! Just download the application form online here. Maybe this is an out if we can find errors in that 1951 dominee-ring application!?

    ~~oo0oo~~

    ** Harrismith’s historian Leon Strachan tells a lovely story – I’ll find it – of how Hans Lötter met a Harrismith couple on the train ride from Durban to Harrismith. He was going there to settle, having bought a bookstore sight-unseen. He asked them ‘What church does Harrismith NOT have?’ They racked their brains, then said ‘There’s no Presbyterian Church.’

    ‘Ah, then I’ll be Presbyterian,’ Hans announced firmly.

    –oo0oo–

  • What’s Wrong Swanie?

    What’s Wrong Swanie?

    This was the problem: Most of the guys and gals I would do river trips with had a serious deficiency: a lack of some specific paddling strokes one should use on a river trip. They all had the boring stroke where you reach forward, grab a big helping of the river, and pull it back to level with your hip. Over and over. Most of them, however seldom executed my favourite stroke: Place the paddle on your lap, fold your arms, gaze around in awesome wonder, and allow the boat to gently rotate in the current. The Swanie 360° River Revolution, or Swannee River for short.

    They were racing snakes. They’d say ‘Let’s Go,’ and then they would actually do that! Isn’t that weird? Then they’d look back, wait till I eventually caught up and ask, ‘What’s Wrong Swanie?’ I was, of course much too polite to reply, ‘Nothing. What’s The Hurry?’ I’m polite that way. What I meant was, ‘I don’t want this day to end.’

    And so we would gently bumble downriver. Every few hundred metres they’d wait, or one of them would paddle upstream (more weirdness) back to me and ask ‘What’s Wrong Swanie?’

    Strange. Although I must admit, you wouldn’t want me in charge of timing or logistics on a trip!

    When the current was swift enough my speed could match theirs. It was the flat water that was tricky. In their defence, they were actually going slowly and enjoying the scenery in awesome wonder too. It’s just that their slowly and mine was out of sync!

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Watch Luca Sestak (then 14yrs-old) show us how to do the Swannee River:

  • Sweet

    Sweet

    The Old Goat’s usual crap when he phones: ‘What’s for supper?’ Sweet potato, I say. Blah blah, something about the price, always the price. The price here, the price in America, the price of everything . .

    Ouma used to bake them in the oven with lots of sugar and some butter, he recalls. I can remember the taste as if it was yesterday.

    Wasn’t yesterday. That was a helluva long time ago.

    ca.1927 if he was 5yrs old.

    ~~oo0oo~~

  • Bloody Marys

    Bloody Marys

    Mary Bland and Sylvia Bain, cousins, decided there was NO WAY they were going to miss the dance in the Harrismith Town Hall. This is quite possibly Mary’s single biggest act of defiance or wilful disobedience in her whole life. See, they were meant to be in Durban then, to start their midwifery course at Addington Childrens Hospital.

    But to the dance in the dorp they went. Mary with Pieter, who she later married; and Sylvia with John, who she later married.

    The next day they left (by train?) and in Durban they got their new quarters and their new uniform, which they loved: ‘It had a long fishtail headdress down the back almost to our waists. It looked beautiful.’

    Also, their new matron was Mary Hawkins and they knew her sisters in Harrismith and in fact, Mary’s Mom Annie had dated her brother ‘Hawks’ Hawkins for quite a long while.

    – Addington Childrens Hospital – Maybe by 1949 it looked more like on the right? –

    When they were summonsed to Matron Hawkins’ office they waltzed in merrily feeling glam and looking forward to a warm Harrismith welcome; only to be met with a frosty blast and a good dressing-down from Bloody Bill, as Mary Hawkins was known by those who knew her! Or sometimes Bloody Mary. She had been the Matron of all SA nurses in the war, and this was shortly after the war, and she was in no mood for nonsense. They were LATE starting their course and she’d not cut them any slack just cos they were from her home town!

    – Mary left and Sylvia, new in Durban – ca.1949 – day off –
    Mary Bland and Sylvia Bain before they became wilfully disobedient
    – Hey! At least they did get their certificates in the end! – they thought the training was not as good as at Boksburg-Benoni hospital –

    Somewhere there’s a newspaper photo of Mary and Sylvia with a New Year crop of fresh Durban babies. Must find it.

    – Ah, here it is – Sheila had it –

    ~~oo0oo~~

    The feature pic shows Mary and Pieter also in 1949, also outside the Town Hall, but another occasion.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    pics from skyscrapercity.com; and kznpr.co.za – thank you. kznpr is Hugh Bland’s site; Here’s the cover of Hugh’s book on the Addington Childrens Hospital:

    Hugh Bland and Mary Bland are related if you go way back to Josiah Benjamin Adam Bland and John Francis Adam Bland, so they have both played a part in the Addington Childrens Hospital. Hugh didn’t deliver any babies, though, so his role was way less important than my Ma’s.

    ~~oo0oo~~

  • Who You Gonna Call?

    Who You Gonna Call?

    For a while, I was an obstetric ambulance driver. Just for a short while early one morning in 1983.

    So Wendy wakes the Reed and announces it’s time: Stacey the firstborn is on her way and they need to get to the hospital sommer right now. Oka-ay, now where did the Reed put his car keys? Or at least the spares?

    Searching for stuff when you’re not completely calm is fruitless. Rather phone Koos, who comes roaring around the corner into 10th Avenue, Berea, Durban, KwaZuluNatal, South Africa at three ay emm in the grey and grey 1965 Concorde deluxe four door, column shift Opel. Or was it my puke-green 1974 Peugeot 404 station wagon? Memory fades, and it could be either. Both had slick column shift gear levers anyway. And anyway, it’s a good thing we have vehicles like these for times like this. Spacious bench seats. Ample boep-room between seats.

    I whisk them off to the hospital in no time. Efficiently. The robots change when I go through, the clouds dissolve and the sky turns blue . . thanks, Don Maclean. The Concorde is stable around the corners, swift on the straights.

    Wendy was in the ward long before 4am the way I remember things.

    Stacey, on the other hand, appeared in that ward only at about 6pm that evening. She’s still laid back.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Decades later we discussed the details.

    May 2021, Steve Reed wrote: Was it from there (Whittington Court) that you made your pre-dawn mercy mission to the obstetrics department on 8th June 1983? Possibly not, because you bought that flat in 1984 or were you renting it before then?

    – whattacar – built with special event like this in mind – top left is the correct colour for part-time ambuminces –

    Me: Memories dim and they’re very malleable. Mine is of getting into my puke-green Pukealot stasiewa OHS 5688 outside my residential hotel on the Berea – or perhaps the Communal house in Hunt Road.

    Wie weet?

    But not Whittington, I don’t think?

    Where did I drive to? I remember Debbin North, but no more detail except I dimly see a flat, not a house? Where were you when Stace was born?

    Steve: We were living in 10th Avenue – a little duplex near Greyville a few streets up from Windorah. You visited us there after Stacey was born. I remember your living in a flat not very far away …  closer to what was Berea Road. I remember it being pretty spartan – Were you sharing with someone?

    I think it may have been your Opel that you came round the corner on two wheels but memory murky. Maybe it was the Pukalot.

    I had been spray painting a cot for Stacey’s arrival. Slammed the tip up garage door shut and went to bed with all keys locked inside the garage. Another set of keys had been left at work in Durban North. Somehow I had no key for either of our cars.

    Me: So you took Stace home to 10th Avenue? Amazing. I was convinced I roared across the mighty Umgeni River. In the stasiewa, I thought, cos I was imagining being an ambumince driver.

    Me: Ah! I might have been staying with Dave Thorrington-Smith in his flat near Botanic Gardens. Spartan it was.

    Steve: At 5am you took a moer of a lot of waking up… but damn I was happy to see you. Bliksem!

    Me (silently): 5am? He’s trying to downplay my heroics. Typical of new Dads, pretending. Everyone knows the real heroes are the Moms. And the Obstetric Ambumince Drivers.

    ~~oo0oo~~

  • The Swansonian Museum

    The Swansonian Museum

    Scottish courts have an office of The Keeper of the Rolls. We don’t have a Rolls to keep, but we do have a vault-keeper.

    In every generation there is (hopefully) a vault-keeper, one who guards the links and knows they are precious. author Dani Shapiro, paraphrased.

    In our family our Keeper of the Rolls and Vault-Keeper is Sheila in her flat on the Berea in Durban.

    – eish – photo albums – what an old-time ‘cloud’ looks like –

    Sheila’s busy scanning, saving and tossing to try and get some space back! Her lucky friends are receiving envelopes of pictures with the admonition, ‘Take these and go!’

    I catch what I can and add to my blogs, my digital vault. Parked now ‘on the cloud.’ One day – a book? Maybe even an old-fashioned paper one?

    ~~oo0oo~~

  • Whittington Court

    Whittington Court

    ‘We think it’s him, but we haven’t been able to catch him. He must distribute the leaflets in the absolute dead of night, probly just pre-dawn. They’re scurrilous. Well, we’ll see if they end when you move in.’

    Owners in the shareblock building were gossiping about the mystery vendetta that had been waged for a long time in the block. Someone pecked away on an old typewriter, telling tales (and truths?) about other residents and criticising what the managing committee did and didn’t do for the building. They suspected their mystery person was the owner I had just bought from, and they were looking forward to his leaving to stay far away in the little dorp of Richmond out in the sticks.

    My first own home! A spacious, high-ceilinged one (‘and a half’) bedroom flat in a good-looking ‘Art Deco’ building in Marriot Road one block up from Cowey Road.

    – the stairs to my door – which cascaded as Vomit Waterfall one night, rumour had it – or Chunder Cataract – or Ralph’s Rapid –

    On the day I moved in I was ambushed by a gang of Kingfisher Canoe Club mates who had spread the word ‘Party at Swanie’s New Place Tonight!’ The electricity wasn’t yet connected, but no problem to these hooligans: They dangled an extension cord out the window and politely asked the elderly Scots couple below me to please plug it in. Bless ’em they did, and hats off to them they withstood the temptation to switch off as the noise lasted long into the night! There was some excess (did I mention they were canoeists!?) and tales – exaggerated surely? – were told of vomit streaming down the steps.

    Once I settled in and my fellow occupants realised I was obviously the innocent party in the opening night cacophony (ahem!), I was told more about the strange old geezer I’d bought from. And I was told of a mysterious campaign of leaflets surreptitiously distributed, pointing out people’s faults and complaining of things not done, etc. in harsh language. They suspected it was him, but were never able to prove it. Soon I was able to solve the mystery: A secret compartment in the lounge cupboard revealed copies of his printed leaflets – the vendetta stash!

    ~~oo0oo~~

    I bought ca.1984 for R45 000. Sold ca.1992 for R90 000. I saw it offered for sale recently (2021) for R967 000. That’s where I found these pics. The indoor one is a big change from how it was – they opened up the small kitchen so now the lounge and kitchen are all one big room. It looks great.

    ~~oo0oo~~

  • Where Eagles Dared

    Where Eagles Dared

    We drove off the dirt road and onto a green hill, stopped the light blue Holden station wagon and walked up to the top of the low hill which ended in a steep cliff overlooking Natal down below. We were on the edge of the Drakensberg escarpment and about 30m below us (I’d guess) was a nest, just as Robbie Sharratt had told Dad there would be, and on the nest was an eagle chick.

    – location Normandien Pass arrowed – detail in inset –

    The main reason the ole man had taken his dearly beloved son on a rare outing was his new Canon FT QL SLR camera with a 200mm telephoto lens. It needed a subject, and there was the Black Eagle chick right there in the hot sun. Aquila verreauxii, now called Verreaux’s Eagle.

    The way I recall it, we got pics of the nest and the chick, and a parent landed on or near the nest while we waited, but I could be imagining that part. Wonder where those Agfa slide pics are? I’d guess this was ca.1965 when I was ten years old.

    It looked something like this (this pic from the Western Cape Black Eagle Project):

    The top pic was taken at Giants Castle, also in the Drakensberg, by ‘Veronesi.’

    PS: Normandien Pass is worth a visit. It’s beautiful country.

    The Normandien Formation is a Triassic-age rock formation located around here, but about  251 million years before I was born. Lots of fossils! And Donald found one of them.

    ~~oo0oo~~

  • Launch Aborted

    Launch Aborted

    After a long gap from paddling I decided to relaunch my river paddling career, striking fear into the heart of all contenders.

    I would need a boat. Being a cheapskate I searched far and wide, high and low and I found one far and low. In PMB dorp. A certain gentleman in fibreglass, Hugh ‘user-friendly’ Raw had one for sale at a bargain price. His glowing description of the craft made me know this was the boat with which to relaunch – OK, launch – my competitive career in river paddling.

    At Hugh’s place he showed me the boat and it did indeed look pristine. I went to pick it up and load it on my kombi’s roofrack, but Hugh held me back with a firm, ‘NO. Let me have that done for you!’ Customer service, I thought. User-friendly. So I watched as he got his two biggest workers to load the boat for me, which they did with ease. Big, strapping lads.

    On the way back to Durban the kombi seemed to be struggling. I had to gear down on the hills, never had that before. Strong headwind, I thought.

    The boat stayed there till Thursday, the big day. The first day of my relaunched paddling life. The dice on the Umgeni river outside my Club, Kingfisher. And then I understood. Getting the boat down off my roofrack took a Herculean effort. When I plopped it into the water the Umgeni rose two inches.

    I can say this: Rands-per-Kg – pound-for-pound – I got the best bargain from Hugh ‘user-friendly’ Raw of that century. The 20th, it was.

    While I was contemplating thus, and thinking I’m loving being back on the water, what kept me away so long?, Ernie yelled at me through his megaphone and the water exploded around me. What the hell!? All these fools around me suddenly went berserk, water was flying everywhere. It took a few minutes before calm returned and I was sitting bobbing on the disturbed surface. This tranquility was again ruined by Ernie yelling through that same damned megaphone: ‘Swanie what are you waiting for!?’

    Jeesh! I headed off after the flotilla disappearing in the distance and after twenty or thirty strokes it suddenly came to back to me in a blinding flash of realisation: I knew why I had stopped paddling. It’s damned hard work.

    And race days are noisy, chaotic things.

    ~~oo0oo~~

  • Uh, Correction, Mis Betfit

    Uh, Correction, Mis Betfit

    Here’s a re-post – I’m running out of things to say as the era of this blog recedes ever-further into the mists of time – and the misseds of my time. This blog’s era ends around about when I met Aitch – 1985-eish. Post-aitch, marriage, kids and other catastrophes, and current stuff are over at bewilderbeast.org

    In 1969 a bunch of us were taken to Durban to watch a rugby test match – Springboks against the Australian Wallabies. “Our” Tommy Bedford was captain of the ‘Boks. We didn’t know it, but it was to be one of his last games.

    – Boks 16 – Aussies 9 –

    Schoolboy “seats” were flat on your bum on the grass in front of the main stand at Kings Park. Looking around we spotted old Ella Bedford – “Mis Betfit” as her pupils called her – Harrismith’s English-as-second-language teacher. Also: Springbok captain’s Mom! Hence our feeling like special guests! She was up in the stands directly behind us. Sitting next to her was a really spunky blonde so we whistled and hooted and waved until she returned the wave.

    Tommy Bedford Springbok
    – This is Ella, a Harrismith teacher’s son –

    Back at school the next week ‘Mis Betfit’ told us how her daughter-in-law had turned to her and said: “Ooh look, those boys are waving at me!” And she replied (and some of you will hear her tone of voice in your mind’s ear): “No they’re not! They’re my boys. They’re waving at me!”

    We just smiled, thinking ‘So, Mis Betfit isn’t always right’. Here’s Jane. We did NOT mistake her for Mis Betfit.

    jane-bedford-portrait

    “corrections of corrections of corrections”

    Mrs Bedford taught English to people not exactly enamoured of the language. Apparently anything you got wrong had to be fixed below your work under the heading “corrections.” Anything you got wrong in your corrections had to be fixed under the heading “corrections of corrections.” Mistakes in those would be “corrections of corrections of corrections.” And so on, ad infinitum, ad nauseum and ad weereens! She never gave up. You WOULD get it all right eventually!

    Stop Press! Today I saw an actual bona-fide example of this! Schoolmate Gerda van Schalkwyk has kept this for nigh-on fifty years!

    – genuine rare Harrismith Africana ! – or is that Engelscana? –

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Tommy’s last game for the Springboks came in 1971 against the French – again in Durban.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Two or three years later:

    In matric the rugby season started and I suddenly thought: Why’m I playing rugby? I’m playing because people think I have to play rugby! I don’t.

    So I didn’t.

    It caused a mild little stir, especially for Ou Vis, mnr Alberts, in the primary school. He came up from the laerskool specially to politely voice his dismay. Nee man, jy moet ons tweede Tommy Bedford wees! he protested. That was optimistic. I had played some good rugby when I shot up and became the tallest in the team, not because of any real talent for the game – as I went on to prove.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    weereens – again n again

    ou Vis – nickname meaning old fish – dunno why

    Nee man, jy moet ons tweede Tommy Bedford wees! – Don’t give up rugby. You should become our ‘second Tommy Bedford’ – Not.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Meantime Jane Bedford has become famous in her own right in the African art world and Durban colonial circles, and sister Sheila and Jane have become good friends.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Also meanwhile, our sterling Mrs Bedford’s very famous brother – one of twelve siblings – Lourens vd Post, turned out to be a real cad a fraud, an adulterer and a downright liar. Fooled Prince Charlie, but then, that’s hardly a difficult achievement. The vegetables he talks to probably tell him fibs.