At the seaside, Part 2

I dreamt of it last night, our beach shack, and reckon it’s a glaring sign that I need to get back over here to my blog.

There was no TV and no phone. The sum total of electrical goods in the house were an ancient fat fridge, a light in each room and a reading lamp in the sitting room. The bathroom only had a candle for years, until my father rigged up a single bulb with a cord into the house which we thought was the ultimate in luxury. The stove was gas and the water out of the taps was brack. On top of the fridge was a battery-operated radio which told us the news and played us songs.

The second drawer from the right was the Treats Drawer. Every December it contained an enormous Christmas cake (baked by my mother in September and doused with brandy regularly until it's trip to the seaside) wrapped in tin foil, which got progressively smaller as the holiday progressed. The drawer smelt deliciously dark and rich. In there, too, were the sweets and chocolate bars: two sweets or two pieces of chocolate each afternoon after lunch when my parents went to rest.

We drank water from the rain water tank which lived out the back door and to the right, a place that, when we were small and scared at night, flitting out at breakneck speed to fill the orange water jug, was full of dark shadows, possibly containing wolves. The square of light that fell on the grass from the kitchen window didn’t quite reach far enough to light the little tap. We made it through twenty years of holidays without being gulped down by wolves I’m pleased to report. The water was sweet and delicious and we ignored the mosquito larvae that floated about in it. "It's just protein," said my Mother.

If we wanted to phone someone, which of course became an absolute necessity when we hit adolescence, we had to walk over the bridge to the post office and use the ‘tickey boxes’. For our weekly dose of television (Who’s The Boss, on a Wednesday), we’d go over to the lovely old couple next door, The Cleghorns. We’d watch while the old man, Theo, ate Provitas for dinner and told us stories of 'The Olden Days' (far more interesting, even, than Who's The Boss.)

It had a specific smell, which is hard to define, but I smelt it in my dream last night and woke up feeling holiday blissful. It was a combination of grass mats, seaside mould and pure, unadulterated happiness.

It’s almost as if that house was built of love and happiness (at the risk of sounding schmaltzy). It saw me grow up and provided some of the very happiest moments in my life. When I went to university (60km down the road), my parents gave me the keys and we went down regularly for weekends (and sneaky week days, which my parents were blissfully unaware of).

It was there I had my first crush, then first fell in love and there that I lost my virginity (a fact my parents definitely would wish to be blissfully unaware of, I'm sure). I can’t think of a better place for it, all of it. That house, if it could speak, could tell many fabulous stories. There are more, but let me stop there.

I miss it.

At the seaside

We had a cottage at the seaside. My parents bought it when I was two. Living in gold mining towns, often dusty and small and farfarfar away from the sea, they bought this little piece of paradise in a coastal town in the Eastern Cape, near the university they went to (and then I). One small bite of the Eastern Cape and it steals your heart and beckons loudly forever. Thus, their purchase.

This was not a seaside holiday house in the manner of those that are found there now. This was referred to as our shack at the seaside, and rightly so. It wasn't on the sea - in fact it was a good, brisk, ten-minute walk to the beach. It didn't have any amazing views or large numbers of glass sliding doors opening onto a patio and rim pool. It was, in fact, a rather ramshackle, four-roomed square of a house, with an outside bathroom which had lots of ginormous spiders and no electricity.

And we loved it. With every cell of our bodies. And, even though it's no longer ours, I still do.
Spending six weeks a year there (one of the joys of working on a mine back then was lots of holiday time) over Christmas was like heaven. The four rooms were: a lounge into which the front door opened which led into my sister's and my room with two highly sprung metal single beds, some shelves made of bricks and planks, and a dressing table with two large drawers and three small. The three small ones were for my sister's clothes, the two big ones were mine. Always.

Our bedroom led into the kitchen which had a back door that opened onto a bricked path across which we'd fly on dark nights to the bathroom, under a tin 'afdakkie'. Off the kitchen was my parent's bedroom which contained a large double bed and a huge wardrobe which always had 'secrets' in it until Christmas and a top shelf on which my father kept coins for some reason.

The whole house smelt slightly mouldy, as seaside houses do. The lounge floor was covered in grass matting that we'd lift up twice during the six weeks: once at the beginning to sweep away the year's dust and once at the end to sweep out the tons of beach sand that we'd carried in on our salt-soaked, sun-kissed bodies throughout the holiday. Pure bliss.

This story is far from finished, but I've promised myself that I'll press 'Publish' more often this month, so I'll end Part 1 just here. 

One last stand

I should have taken a picture. I wanted to, but the moment passed before I could, or did. It didn't happen suddenly, I had days, maybe even a couple of weeks when I kept saying, each time I came home, "I must take a picture of that." But I didn't and now it's too late. The rain is belting down and it's rained off the last of them. They're blending into the mud below, twirling around blades of grass, becoming mulch, indecipherable from the mud.

Hundreds of little deep purple flowers from the Potato Bush, pale blue Plumbago, yellow ones from the Bush with Yellow Flowers (name unknown) and bright pink bougainvillea, all pushing out over the fence of The House in the Middle of the Street, unruly and sticking their tongues out at the impending Winter.

It's a brave little garden my beloved mother has created here at my house. My fingers are not green, hers are an astounding shade of it. Her garden needs to be seen to be believed, it's gorgeous. I'm a lucky girl that she was kind enough to do mine for me too and she filled it with wild, unruly bushes that have entwined themselves around the palings and push their way out to trail their petals along passersby's arms when they walk past. It's a riot of colour and green.

And I love that, like me, my little garden always makes one last stand in late Autumn. It produces flowers profusely and throws its petals about boldly in the face of Winter.

I wish I'd taken that photo but, as seasons are wont to do, they'll happen again and maybe, just maybe, next year I'll take it in time.

The unwatched TV

There is a distinctly different sound made by a TV being watched and one sitting alone in a room. It's one of my pet hates, a TV left on in a room where nobody is, talking away to itself, lonely. A psychoanalyst would probably put this down to my innate fear of loneliness and give me all sorts of exercises to overcome this fear but, luckily, this is my (self-indulgent) blog, so I have no need to be scared of psychoanalysis and its resultant exercises that I'd hate doing. Besides, I'm perfectly aware of my fear of lonileness, as has just been made obvious here. I don't mind being alone, in fact I like it sometimes. But loneliness - ugh, shudder.

I stray. Watched TVs, be their audience one or a crowd, seem to have a confidently calm kind of sound, like people talking to friends they know are listening. The minute the audience leaves the room, though, leaving the TV on its own in a room, the volume goes up slightly, as if the characters on screen have raised their voices and are peering expectantly around the side of the screen, waiting for someone to come back in and watch, allowing them to carry on with whatever scene was playing out.
Sunday morning ramblings on a Wintery long weekend, getting my writing juices flowing. Again. And I'm a little lazy about writing for a couple of weeks, then come back, and someone's moved all the furniture? This new format? It took me ten minutes (admittedly in a very lazy I'm-still-in-my-pyjamas-at-12 o'clock way) to find what to press to make a new post. Hell man, what's with the symbols for everything? Can't we just use lovely, old-fashioned, words? I can't imagine that anybody illiterate is wanting to write a new blog post, so why the need for little pictures?

Trivial Pursuit and such

There’s a lot to be said about playing Trivial Pursuit with old friends. I suppose there’s a lot to be said about doing anything with old friends, really. It’s just that little bit easier, more comfortable, when people know all the good bits and gory bits of your history.

In Trivial Pursuit though, I realised on Saturday afternoon while sitting next to our first fire of winter, that, when playing with old friends, very often you know which answers they’ll get right, and it feels lovely.

Winter arrived over the weekend, bringing with it bucketing-down rain, great grey skies, a distinct drop in the mercury, and six new leaks in the lounge roof. Also, fires in the hearth, game-playing, red wine and cosy old friend time. I’m going to focus on that, as opposed to Grumpy Shiny that the cold and dark brings out of the shadows.

The aquarium

"It's feeding time at the zoo," she said, although I'd met them at the aquarium - my best friend who is visiting from Sydney, her husband and my godchild, aged 2 1/2 with her cousins (2, 4) and aunt. They'd all been around the aquarium, ogled at the fish, touched the starfish, stared entranced at the huge tank filled with big fish and a shark or two.

I'd forgotten it was school holidays and planned to meet them in the restaurant for tea, while the littlies ate their lunch of fish and chips - oh, the irony! The noise level was extraordinary and the excitement tangible as hordes (schools?) of children ran between tables populated by harassed-looking mothers and the playroom in the corner, even more ironically sponsored by a frozen fish company.

My godchild informed me that she'd got a hippopotamus, which she'd aptly named Henry. Before I could ascertain where Henry had come from, or why he seemed to be the star of the day when they were at the aquarium, she'd scampered off to play with her tomato sauce-smeared cousins in the playroom, leaving us to chat (at high volume) over a calamari salad.

There's something really lovely about being in a space like that, where children's excitement fills the air, flooding ones lungs and, somehow, changing your view on things slightly, opening one's eyes to the possibilities in everything, the naive wonder of the world.

There's a lot to be said for hanging with the littlies every now and again, despite the noise levels that come with them.

Small town thoughts

The leaves are turning on the vines on the other side of the tunnel, just their edges starting to bleed red as Autumn throws her cloak over us. I don't like the tunnel. It makes me claustrophobic as I try not to breathe, every time reminded of the fact that it is impossible for a person not to breathe for that long, without dying. I endure it, however, in order to leave the heaving city behind us. We are in the country, separated from the bright lights by the towering mountains.

As I've said, possibly ad nauseum, I love small towns. I grew up in first one – a place where the land was flat, the soil red, mielie fields abounded and the sky stretched all the way to space – and then another – where the earth was unstable, a patchwork of holes beneath the surface threatening to swallow houses at any moment. Both were places where, if you went into ‘town’ on an afternoon, you would run into at least two people you knew well enough to stop and chat for ten minutes. We borrowed sugar from the neighbours, rode our bikes everywhere, people knew your name.

The small town we went to is one of those that claims to be a little shoowow, you know the type - they have a 'Retreat' which does yoga and runs 'Silent Retreats'. They claim to be on ley lines and talk of spiritual energies and such. I probably don't have to point it out that, while I love a good hippy, I do snigger a little at those that are a little overboard with the shoowow stuff.

Anyway, it's a lovely little peaceful town, surrounded by mountains. The air is clear, they have donkeys, and we needed a night of starshine and peaceful sleep, which we got. We arrived early, visited the donkeys and stroked their noses, scratched behind their ears and bequeathed them carrots. They seemed pleased by the whole thing.

After donkey-stroking we ambled into the village to eat some lunch, a very delicious meat and cheese platter accompanied by a crisp glass of white wine from the valley. We'd decided to braai in the evening, our house being blessed with a fabulous verandah on which to watch the sun set and braai some meat, as good South Africans should on a Saturday. Asking the deli lady about where to buy meat, she showed us her 'deli sausage' and pronounced that there was "nowhere else in town that sells meat. Other than the Chinese Supermarket." The last statement was accompanied by a disturbing sniff of contempt.

So off we traipsed, to investigate ourselves why this should be. It's a supermarket, in the first half of town which we discovered, on our journey, to be the 'coloured area', owned by a Chinese couple, with very little English, but smiley and welcoming. The shelves were filled with necessities and smelt like a proper, farm shop - furniture polish, maize meal - a comforting, childhood smell. Above the meat freezers hung a disturbing array of sexy lingerie. I guess maybe there's a market for it in Small Town South Africa.

Ahead of us in the queue were a patently poor family, buying milk, bread, some fruit, with a toddler who was wailing because he'd picked up a chocolate and his mother had whipped it away instantly and put it back. They paid, and as they were walking out, the shopkeeper reached beneath the till and pulled out a handful of sweets, handing them to the snivelling child, turning his tears into smiles.

I wished I had the gall to go back up the road to the sniffy deli lady and tell her this sweet story (ahem) and encourage the occasional amble over the invisible line dividing the town, but I didn't. Instead we marvelled at this country we live in, still so full of prejudices and segregation, but never stopping trying to make it better. I suppose it all takes time.