We mocked Bloemfontein as Flower Fountain and always looked on Durban as the big city, seldom Joburg, as we would head 299km to the coast not 268km inland to JHB when going for any city business. Bloem never featured. It was 378km and more of a backwater. Once you got there, you’d ask yourself WHY? And yet Bloem was our capital and everything official that went upwards in our little hierarchy summitted in Bloemfontein.

Especially the sporting ladder. If you climbed the sporting ladder and your head popped up through the clouds, there was Naval Hill!

As far as I recall I reached this valhalla of advancing upwards in your sporting code three times at school: For rugby I was not chosen for the Eastern Free State U/13 team in 1967. But I was chosen to be a reserve. The reserve, maybe? – or was there more than one? So I trekked to Bloemfontein, pulled on my togs and sat shivering on the sideline at the Free State Stadium for the whole match. The top pic gives a glimpse in the background of how the stadium looked. Our sponsors didn’t supply us with branded blankets and there was no attractive physio to massage our limbs. I don’t even know if the poor reserve got his quarter orange ration at half time. It was rugged.

For tennis Bruce Humphries entered us for Free State Champs.

All I remember is we drove there in his white Cortina and after I had blasted some booming high-speed double backhands – ala Frew McMillan – in the warmup of the first round, a guy called Symington sent me home 6-0 6-0. I even think he may have yawned while he was doing it. I can’t recall if the famous double pairing of me and Fluffy Crawley played. I have asked him. He can’t remember either.

And lastly, one year I went to Inter-High, which was the Free State athletics champs and I got a bronze medal for my troubles (actually a piece of paper that said ‘derde’) in the high jump.

Other than that, we once went for an ordinary rugby game. Daan Smuts drove us there in his VW Beetle to play against Sentraal or JBM Hertzog. Being Daan, we had beer! Yay!! All teachers should be like Daan. When he remembered that he had forgotten to arrange a place for us to sleep we didn’t mind at all. He dropped us off at an abandoned (for the holidays) koshuis where we shivered on beds with no bedclothes. That was maybe the first time we were glad we had blue and yellow and green blazers. Sure it was cold, but we would not have swopped the beers – die binne-kombers – for blankets!

~~~~~ooo000ooo~~~~~

derde – third; bronze!

koshuis – food house; school hostel

die binne kombers – the inner blanket; booze