For a while I was an obstetric ambulance driver.

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?

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 this for times like these. 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?

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.

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 10^th 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: Ah! I might have been staying with Dave Thorrington-Smith in his flat near Botanic Gardens.

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.

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

~~~oo0oo~~~