Phoned Mom on my birthday. I’m 69, she’s 95. She joked that she would not be posting any pictures on the computer today. That’s selfies on social media to you. Reason being she had bitten down on a hard old chocolate biscuit and broken half a tooth. This leaves her with one and a half missing front teeth, hence no self-taken photos of her this year.
Not that there ever have been any!
–oo0oo–
Written on the day, posted (very) late.
18 September 1928 plus ninety three years gets you to today. So if you were born then you’ve had around 33 968 sleeps.
Quite something, Mom! Happy birthday, we feel very lucky to have you with us and be able to listen to your stories, and hear your memories and enjoy your piano playing. Love you lots!
I listen to the Chopin and Mozart etc you used to play and I say to the expert pianists playing: Huh! You shoulda heard my Mom!
She recently said she thinks the best piece she played was the duet with Una Elphick in the town hall of Beethoven’s 5th symphony. ‘You know the one,’ Mom says to me: ‘Da Da Da DUM . . Da Da Da DUM . .’
They practiced separately and when they got together they couldn’t ‘gel,’ it wasn’t working. They tried using a metronome, tick tick you know. No good. Then Una said I’ll count, one two etc. That worked, they clicked and . . ‘best piece we ever played! ‘
~~oo0oo~~
The mighty Vulgar river had risen! It was flowing way higher than usual, and had overflown its banks. We needed to get onto it!
So Pierre and I dusted off the open blue and red fibreglass canoe my folks had bought us and headed off downstream early one summer morning from below the weir in the Harrismith park.
By the time we started, the river had dropped a lot. Still flowing well, but below the heights of the previous days. This left a muddy verge metres high where the banks were vertical, and up to 100m wide where the banks were sloped and the river was wide.
When we got to Swiss Valley past the confluence of the Nuwejaar spruit, we had a wide wet floodplain to slip and slide across before we reached dry land, leaving us muddy from head to toe. Dragging the boat along, we headed for the farmhouse where Lel Venning looked at us in astonishment. I don’t think she even recognised us.
“No, You Haven’t! You can’t fool me! APRIL FOOL!” she exclaimed when we said we’d paddled out from town.
Pierre and I looked at each other and he said “Happy birthday!”
~~oo0oo~~
Vrystaat Confessions 