My Life
CONTENTS
1. Introduction 2
2. Grove Lodge 5
3. Somerset West 7
4. Caledon 9
5. Boarding school 13
6. The Albion Hotel 15
7. Pinelands 19
8. Rugby 24
9. Table Tennis 25
10. Assisted Cycling 26
11. A party... 29
12. University 30
13. 1953... 38
14. Third year 40
15. The fourth year 41
16. Leaving S. Africa 44
17. A day trip... 50
18. A romantic... 55
19. Leeds 58
20. To Spain 59
21. Luis 64
22. Benidorm 67
23. Blanes 70
24. To Germany 72
25. The voyage back 75
26. An overview... 76
27. Back in Cape Town 77
28. Leaving Cape Town 79
29. Life in Durban 82
30. Summer Holiday 86
31. 1961 in Durban 90
32. 1962 95
33. 1963 98
34. 1964 103
35. 1965: Retirement 106
36. Holiday in Europe 107
37. Making Money 116
38. Ruby and Martie 121
39. Playing the Recorder 125
40. Moving house 126
VOLUME 2
Chapter 41 : A Fruitarian's Journey ..........2
Chapter 42 : Oranjezicht ..........................6
Chapter 43 : Return to Pinelands ............10
Chapter 44 : Kite Fever ...........................15
Chapter 45 : Departure from Pinelands ...17
Chapter 46 : Living in Ottery ....................22
Chapter 47 : Mathematical Pleasures .......27
Chapter 48 : Leaving Ottery .....................31
Chapter 49 : Kenilworth, 1987 – 1989 .......36
Chapter 50 : Mandy ..................................39
Chapter 51 : Return again, 1989 ...............43
Chapter 52 : Renate and Barrydale ..........46
Chapter 53 : Ingrid and Bridge ..................50
Chapter 54 : Death of my Mother ...............56
Chapter 55 : Park Estate ...........................58
Omissions: lunch at Tarifa with Morales,
2. This book is still in process of being written, and this note will be constantly revised. Whether or not I finish it may depend on whether there appears to be any demand for that. I intend to furnish pics illustrating this book on other websites. These are (at present):
www.GurthsHilda.blogspot.com (11 pics of Hilda and others);
http://sites.google.com/site/gurthsalbums (other photos)
Chapter 1 : Introduction
I am now setting myself the task of writing the story of my life. Why do it, and for whom? I am living in David's house, so is Lauren : we are three. She is doing a French course, needing regular work. So out of solidarity, to share her burden in a sense, I must impose a similar chore on myself.
One needs to know some basic things about the person who is talking.
I think I owe what I am largely to the genes of my mother, who was the niece of South Africa's most famous Afrikaner, at least in poetical and cultural circles. The poet C. Louis Leipoldt, who was also a child specialist who held a post of medical inspector of schools, wrote books on cookery and travel, detective stories and short stories with a supernatural flavour. He was one of South Africa's most notable eccentrics, who proposed that babies should be raised on wine rather than milk, among many other heresies.
My father often thought and said that I was just as crazy as my famous great-uncle. My father was a Capetonian who went to work in German South-West Africa as a young attorney, studied German diligently, and while living in Luderitz summoned my mother from Cape Town to come and marry him.
I was born at 6.40 a.m. on 19 September, 1935, 9 months to the day after their wedding, and lived in Luderitz for my first 3 years and more. No memories remain from that period, maybe only one or two murky and vague half-memories, yet I feel that desert place in my veins. Water was brought by rail from over 1000 kilometres away – because there was none there.
As a memento of that time, I have a photo of myself brandishing a golf-club on a course entirely devoid of anything resembling a blade of grass.
In 1939 war was looming – not a good time for a South African to be in a German colony – so my parents returned to Cape Town.
My mother and I settled down in a boarding house in Mowbray.
I remember much from those days. Young soldiers on leave, used to give me war medals, someone gave me a magnifying glass, and some young man gave me belts of liquorice. I loved walking down the road and exploring a nearby brickfield.
My mother used to go up the hill with me and I would career down the road in my wagon. My father was working 50 kilometers away in Somerset West, and only joined us for weekends.
My parents were impressed by how quickly I learnt to tell the time, so my father gave me my own pocket watch at age 4.
He was also greatly impressed by the drawings I made of fighter planes and elephants, copied from cigarette cards. Drawing was my father's Achilles Heel; though good at mathematics he could not cope with the drawing needed in an engineering course, so he had to give up his attempt to qualify as an engineer, and took up law instead.
(Much later I did that same engineering course myself, I even had the same instructor (Sammy Sacks) as my father had had – only I was first in drawing class at the end of the first year, and got the class medal)
I went to school (Mowbray Primary) at age 5 but was found to be too clever to start in Sub A so within a few weeks I found I had skipped the first 2 years of schooling and was in Standard One.
A dubious step on the part of the authorities, which might easily have done me more harm than good. Whether or not it actually did, is a subject for endless speculation. Maybe another time!
Chapter 2: Grove Lodge
We moved to Grove Lodge, a larger boarding house, in 1940.
The scene of many happy memories for me. Many children lived there, we were all organised by the landlady's 12-year old daughter, who had us playing monopoly, doing gymnastics on a horizontal bar, building a hut and drinking cocoa in it, playing rounders on the lawn, building and flying model aeroplanes – a regular tomboy she was, and not at all a bully of us smaller kids. We loved the life.
I remember walking along the streets from school, enjoying the beauty of the golden, shiny beetles in the sun, along the hot sidewalks bordered with hedges harbouring also the black and red beetles, often seen coupled rear to rear.
Later in the afternoon I would walk down the street to the station, to meet my mother there on her way home from work. She worked in the census department during the war years. She was an elegant and beautiful woman then, though I never found her sexually attractive. I felt strengthened by her sterling virtue and reliability.
At school I was certain to always be first in class, yet when we did handwork across the yard in the teachers' training school, I realised that I was not so brilliant in practical matters, and that my “superiority” depended entirely on the lucky and arbitrary chance that we were not marked on our handwork.
But even from such an early age the competitive spirit was very strong in me, and I was quite vain about my “success”.
Two key events occurred in Mowbray at the age of 6. Firstly, the birth of my sister, who became the most important person in my life. Secondly, the beautiful, new, blue Willys car that my father bought.
In this car we journeyed to Robertson, 100 miles inland, to spend the 5-week summer holidays every year. There we lived in my greatest paradise, in a wooden bungalow on the banks of the Breede River. Down the steep bank, at the river's edge, was tied our rowing boat, in which we explored the upper and lower reaches of this wide stretch of river,
from the rushing, non-ridable narrows upstream, to the weir past the reeded islets downstream.
Just below the bungalow the water was very deep, 20 feet they said, and a young boy drowned there one year. The broad sand beaches were of the whitest, finest sand. Across the water was a spectacular rock “koppie”.
Going to the loo was an adventure, crossing the burning, sandy track in bare feet to the loo with wooden bench seat and a bucket below the hole.
A nest of bees in the eaves of our shack provided sweet music and a bee sting for good measure. At night we would sleep on the front yard under the tall bluegums standing at the top of the river bank.
One picture in my mind is coming home to the sunny dining-room in Grove Lodge, eating butter and missing the “farm” butter at Robertson.
A few years later there would be another paradise in my life, “Plankhuis” - more about that later. And later in my life I also considered other places to be paradises – but of lesser order :
Gruinard Bay on the west of Scotland, Torremolinos, Benidorm and Blanes in Spain, Paleokastritsa and Mikonos in Greece.
Chapter 3 : Somerset West
My life in Mowbray came to an abrupt end when I turned 9: we moved to Somerset West, a name ever beloved to me.
This was something new to me, at least in my conscious memory – living in our own house instead of a boarding house. There was the thrill of having a garden where flowers and vegetables were grown, our own cat, large wild grounds behind the house where we hunted wild cats, but perhaps the less said about that the better. My father jokingly wanted to call the house “Dead Cat Corner” - I shudder to think of the brutality of our minds.
At school my firstness was even more remarked on, but at woodwork (luckily carrying no marks) I did not shine with any noticeable brightness! I was also starting to emerge as a sprinter of some speed, to add another string to my vanity.
My greatest love at that time was my bicycle, a new acquisition resulting from the discovery of my father's bicycle which had been stolen years before. It was a smallish bike (my father was rather short) and he gave it to me. What bliss to explore the countryside, or ride down to the beaches a couple of miles away at the Strand.
Living so near the sea meant that we practically lived there over the weekends. Like all the beaches in this part of the world, the beach was of finest white sand, and this beach at Milk Bay was also ideal for small children with a very gentle slope into the sea, and very low waves.
Yet living in our own house had a downside for me. I felt a bit lonely after the company of all the kids in the boarding house and our games and pastimes. Now I had only two friends – a boy in my class called Churnett whose father was a builder and lived in a house consisting of three interconnected rondavels, which seemed very original and exciting to me. Our other companion was the boy from next door, but I saw little of him generally.
Chapter 4 : Caledon
Near my tenth birthday (Sept 19th, 1945) we left Somerset West and took up residence in the Park Hotel, Caledon. Where we stayed for 15 months.
At this time my knowledge of Afrikaans was rudimentary. In Caledon I went into an Afrikaans school for the remainder of Standard 4 and the whole of Standard 5. The strange language caused my class position to drop from first to tenth. Later it rose to second, but I could not beat Wiid du Toit, my rival for first. I'd get my revenge on him 3 years later, when I'd moved back to an English school in the city and we took the same provincial exam (Junior Certificate). I was third in the province, but Wiid was not anywhere special.
Concerning school in Caledon, one of the most important experiences of my life was played out there : my first great obsessive love. I sat midway in the left-hand column of desks – she sat in the next column to the right, a bit in front of me, so I had the best possible view of her all the time.
What is worth saying about her? As did I, she got the prize for best behaved pupil – she was of a very serious mien. Grave, tall, slender, beautiful, long, lustrous black hair in thick plaits (or plait?), blue eyes, an alabaster skin showing blue of veins (or do I only imagine this last?).
Of course she dominated my fantasies. She was supposed to be the girl-friend of a boy Jannie Beukes who sat a couple of places in front of me, but I never saw any sign of this from her. Immediately in front of me sat Jannie Vosloo, who became my best class-mate. I visited his home, and we went to the deserted aerodrome together.
But I spent more time with Nico Wessels, who lived in the hotel where I did, so we were natural playmates. He was in the class above me, and in love with a girl in his class called Marlene Fick. We used to walk the street near the girl's hostel together, in search of a possible meeting or sight of Marlene or possibly of Roleen, another girl in my class that seemed more friendly and possibly more accessible than the remote Eulalie (my great obsession) who lived at the other end of town and was not likely to be seen near the hostel.
At home Nico and I got up to mischief. We each had a long glass tube which we used as peashooter. Ammunition came from the grain mill across the street. Targets walked along the street below the upstairs windows of our rooms, where we lurked behind the curtains ready to strike. And strike we certainly did, to our huge mirth.
On my own I got even nastier. Crab apples grew in the back yard of the hotel, and I slung them down on the heads of passers-by under the window at the end of the passage.
We were never uncovered or punished in these exploits, and I don't think too much harm was done.
My taste for dubious pranks had already shown itself in Somerset West, where I laid a rope across the gravel road in front of our house, attaching the far end a yard up a fencepole. As a bicycle crossed the rope, I would pull my end, causing the rope to rise and trip the bicycle up (or rather down!) What fun! It still gives me glee to think of it.
Caledon was the scene of some of the happiest times of my life, partly because of our holidays and picnic excursions, and partly because of the people living in the hotel.
Every weekend there would be car trips to the sea about 25 miles away. One favourite spot was a river mouth just east of Hermanus, where a sandbank formed a large shallow lagoon. I loved rowing with my arms on my pumped-up inner tube against the wind. Then we would lie in the sun in a spot sheltered by dunes and bushes, to regain warmth. I loved to see the men enjoying their Sunday siesta in the stupor of sleep. Who were these men? My father and one or two of his friends from the hotel.
But the real paradise was Plankhuis, a seaside house miles away from any other buildings, inaccessible by road, only reachable by a trudge over sand-dunes of over a mile. This belonged to a lawyer friend of my father, but our family was most welcome to join him and his family of wife and four sons over a weekend.
After the long, laden trudge across soft sand, we emerged at the edge of the plateau, with a stunning view of the coast below, and a steep descent down the face of the dunes. Below was a strip of flat land, where the house was, and then the sea, beyond a wide expanse of low rocks and sandy-bottomed rock pools. Here we fished for small, delicious klipvis or swam in the largest pool.
The primitive conditions, with no electricity and a brack well the only water supply, added a spice to this holiday.
The war was now recently over, with an important result for me: toy cars again became available. Some cheap, plastic pick-ups from America, with no floors, but I loved them nevertheless. But most I loved the Dinky Toys from England – beautifully made metal models with rubber tires. I pulled my current favourite along the passages on a string, or waited for the silver paint to dry which Errol Anders, my father's best friend, applied to the headlights of my cars.
My father was always popular in hotels – in the lounges and at festive days he took over the piano to the great delight of his listeners, dishing up exactly the sort of music they most liked. Whereas in the privacy of our house at Somerset West I was likely to hear also Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, which enraptured me, or his favourite Chopin, for which I think I was rather too young. I preferred the Blue Danube!
Chapter 5 : Boarding school
After 15 months at Caledon, there came another big change in my life. We left Caledon and returned to city life in Cape Town. I moved into a boarding school – Wynberg Boy's Junior and then Senior, while my parents and sister moved into the Albion Hotel in Buitengracht Street in the city.
I found this boarding school life almost infinitely depressing.
I spent all my time replaying my memories of happier days in the past. Clinging to them as if they were all I had left. And yet I find it hard to understand why I was so miserable. Most of the other boys seemed to relish the life, hardly any of them ever seemed at all sad to be away from home. Maybe their homes were just not so much! I don't know.
I can't say that I was badly treated by my schoolmates – at the impromptu touch rugby games favoured by my dormitory companions, I was quite popular and even felt quite admired – even the biggest bully in the dormitory, who was quite gentle in a rather slimy way, and preferred to humiliate his victims in more subtle ways, left me more or less alone or even gave me a back-handed compliment by calling me “little fisock”. This was to distinguish me from “big fisock”, whoever that might have been – I have forgotten.
I think what I most hated about this life was the sheer slavery of it – having to rise at the crack of dawn to go and do morning prep in some godforsaken classroom before breakfast... and then more of the same after supper – I actually hated schoolwork, although it was the source of my glory and fame at school.
Already at Caledon I had found the discipline of school very irksome. So much so, that I had already formulated my main ambition very clearly : to be free of all necessity to work, and to lead a paradisal existence consisting of a perpetual holiday! To anticipate things a bit, but not to hide the inevitable sequel: I achieved this ambition at the age of 29, and have not once regretted my choice in all the years since.
One thing I DID enjoy, in summer time, was the Saturday afternoon excursions to the tidal swimming pools at Kalk Bay station. Swimming in the water, then lying on a rock in the sun – my idea of bliss.
But most of all I did enjoy the Sundays – when after the excruciating boredom of enforced church attendance I was free for a few hours to catch a train to the city and spend time with my family. Even these hours could be tinged with sadness, caused by their necessary brevity.
In the Albion Hotel I led a different life, a few hours every Sunday but more importantly during school holidays. Then life reverted to the pattern of Caledon : my father's hotel friends playing a big part in my life as admired and beloved beings, numerous and frequent trips, by car, to beautiful picnic and seaside spots (usually in a big party including hotel friends), time to play for hours with my Dinky Cars and Meccano set... what more could my heart desire?
Chapter 6: MORE ABOUT THE PEOPLE IN THE ALBION HOTEL
I am inserting this chapter now, although I have already reached chapter $Aug58$, because I see that I have said far too little about the Albion Hotel.
In my memories it is one of the 4 or 5 most beloved residences of my life, the scene of great joys and happiness.
Most of this wealth which I experienced was due to the nature of the people who were there: the manager, George Shultz and his wife (a woman, unlike her husband, who was hardly ever visible. I think she was nursing her second baby).
She also had a son, Johan, about my sister's age, who was her (and my) great playmate.
Johan was usually pedalling his car around the passages of the hotel, but often joined our games with toy cars and other toys on the lounge table. One of our favourite games was to dangle balloons out of the upstairs lounge window, on long lines. These balloons would then swirl around in the usual south-easter, above and amidst the traffic in the busy street below.
Then there were two very young married couples staying permanently in the hotel. As prelude to being able to afford their own house and raise a family.
Frank Jacobs was a garage mechanic, very muscular but not overtall, with a young wife, Phyllis, one of the most adorable people I ever met. She was beautiful, but more than that, somehow she just seemed to be good. I could never have imagined her resorting to deceit. Her personality was a quiet, relaxed, effortless one.
Somewhat more vivacious, and seeming to promise a promiscuity far removed from the likes of Phyllis, was June Hammond, a slightly plump but decidedly pretty and attractive woman. (once, a few years later, I had a dream about her, after which I wrote about her : “I have never seen a warmer nature.”). She was married to Dennis Hammond, a mechanic who was also a motor electrician and had his own band, which rose spectacularly during and after the time we knew him, taking him to overseas tours and plenty of money.
Dennis had enormous personality and well-deserved popularity, he was the life and soul of the party, but never too self-assertive.
But his marriage to June failed, and he found a possibly more suitable wife in a singer called Margaret Long.
These two couples, and a third couple, together with my father with his wife and two kids, were the regular members of our numerous excursions and picnics.
The third couple was May Howes, the plump mother of Dennis, and her husband George, who consumed huge meals but remained as lean as a bloodhound. They did not reside in the hotel, but were nearly always there. Many a time George would drop me off at the boarding school after a Sunday outing. He went in for large cars, useful for our group picnics. He had a large Hudson, and later a Studebaker Land Cruiser.
(Even after leaving the Albion Hotel in 1949, May and George remained friends of our family and visited us in Pinelands for several years. They were the closest to my parents' age group, being not much older.)
One weekend at Cape Hangklip I remember very well. It was during the long school holidays, and the party included all four couples mentioned above. In our bedroom at the Albion were three chameleons I had kidnapped from the Wynberg Boys' High School grounds, who resided on the curtains. These chameleons went with us, by car, to Cape Hangklip for the long weekend. I had to pay particular attention to them in the car, so see that they did not get squashed, or too hot in their cardboard box.
One beach at Hangklip was full of broken seashells and rotting seaweed, with plenty of weird sea fleas and other species. The chameleons had a glorious feast on the shiny bluebottle flies.
I was enchanted by the semi-drunken party where Dennis played his guitar while singing a very dirty song. May I think cracked some ribald sexual comment about Frank and Phyllis, whichI thought she might find a bit embarrassing, but such was the general harmony in this group that there were never unpleasant moments.
I also remember there was a table tennis table there ( we stayed in a sort of holiday barracks with a sort of recreation hall) and a couple of good players to be seen, but this was before my taking up the game.
I remember two of my greatest joys during this period. One was the icecreams, slabs of icecream with chocolate coating, on a stick, obtainable at a small cafe across the street, and the other was Pepsi-Cola, which I upheld as superior to “Coke”, and best drunk with Christmas cake.
Chapter 7 : Pinelands
But plans were afoot to make a big change in our lives. My father was having a house built on a new plot in Pinelands, an expanding “Garden City” 5 miles from the city. Most Sundays we would catch a train to Woltemade station, then walk a mile to our plot to see how the building was getting on. My mother had designed the layout and size of the rooms, windows, and front porch. And I had spent hours daydreaming about how to arrange the furniture in my bedroom.
Finally, after long delays, the house was finished and we moved in in March, 1949. I left the boarding school to live with my family once again, but continued at Wynberg Boys High as a day scholar.
What pleased me the most about this change was that it meant I could have a bicycle again. Without consulting my parents I took 10 pounds of my saved-up money and bought myself a brand-new BSA roadster bicycle. I had to use my father's garage to keep this bike in. Usually, in good weather, I used this bike to get the 6 miles to school every day, and the 6 miles back. Actually it was six and a quarter miles – I don't want to rob myself now of that extra quarter mile!
And on a Saturday morning, like as not, I would take the bike for a 30-mile spin over Constantia Nek and along the Twelve Apostles, around Table Mountain, Lion's Head and Sea Point and from there through Observatory, usually battling against a strong South-Easter, on my way home.
A lad a block down the road, who went to Rondebosch Boys High, met me in the street and through him I met Hemmo Alting-Mees, who lived a mile nearer the mountain and also went to Rondebosch. The three of us became cycling companions and went on many short trips during the weekends. We also rode the hundred miles to Robertson and camped there for a week during the holidays. That was the only way I was going to see my beloved Robertson again – my father had given it up.
In fact I felt a loser in many ways by the move to Pinelands. Without the presence of his hotel friends, my father lost contact with most of them and so his circle of friends diminished considerably. I realised how much the contact with all these friends of his had meant to me. How much satisfaction and stimulation I derived from seeing them.
With that, my father also seemed to lose interest in going for drives and picnics, so that pleasure was curtailed for me as well. I was thrown more onto my own resourses for a social life, and I found myself lacking in such resources. My only friend really was Hemmo, and I never felt very close to him anyway, nor did I really like him or admire him as I did my father's grown-up friends.
About the only people that visited our house were the Van Heerdens. Nols was an advocate and so connected professionally to my father, and his wife Peggy was a very attractive woman who had a little local renown as a tennis player. Needless to say I was head over heels in love with her – I only hope it wasn't too obvious to everybody. Typically they would arrive in their A40, come into the lounge where I would sit on a chair in the corner, an onlooker tolerated by all the adults, with no real part in the conversation.
Sometimes they would come for an evening of bridge with my parents, then I would probably not see them at all, but I could lie in my bed at the other end of the house and listen to them calling “One heart!”.
I did well at school, and took the Junior Certificate exam at the end of 1949, coming third in the Cape Province. The boy who came first was G. C. Brummer, grandson of one of South Africa's greatest writers, the famous Langenhoven. I regarded him as my real rival, especially as I was the great-nephew of Leipoldt, just as famous a writer and usually considered as by far a better poet. A battle of the generations!
(But 2 years later, when we next did battle in the Senior Certificate (matric), we were both beaten by the “upstart” Mervyn Samuel Gotsman... and Brummer was still ahead of me; I was pushed down to fourth place.)
In 1950 it became known that a new boy, Cyril David Karabus, was coming to our school. From Beaufort West, where he happened to have the misfortune of coming second to GC Brummer, who was in his class! He was reputed to be very bright, and a fellow by the name of Torrington remarked to me in the playground that my reign was over!
Sadly for Karabus, who was a very mature, good-natured and likeable person, he had drawn another tough opponent and never managed to beat me in the school exams, though he showed his calibre by being placed eighth in the province at the final matric exam.
I did not miss any of my ex-fellow inmates from the boarders at Wynberg! I very much enjoyed the lunch-break games of touch rugby that our class played every day. Because I was the fastest runner on the field, and scored nearly every time I got the ball! Lucky for me Hilary Spears was not a sports fan – because eventually one day he was talked into a game with us and turned out to be faster than me, so he caught me when I got the ball and stopped me from scoring.
Our class was 8A in 1949, 9A in 1950 and 10A in 1951 (matric year for me). The “A” classes were made up of those who took Latin, who were also the brighter pupils. About half my class were Jews – there were no Jews in the B classes. They were really a very bright bunch, but mostly small and not very athletic, but nevertheless very keen on the daily lunch-break Touch Rugby, in which I gloried so much. In summer we played cricket instead (with a tennis ball) and there I did not shine at all, neither with bat nor ball. Cricket is rather a discouraging game for an unpractised batter, because its nature is such as to deprive of practice those who most need it! The remedy is of course practice in the nets, but I lacked motivation for this, at boarding school already.
Chapter 8 : Rugby
I had already played a bit of rugby at Caledon, before I came to Wynberg, and there I was put into an under-13 side as lock forward. I played in this position for 4 years, and never reached the “A” side in any age group. My potential as a possible back-line player was apparently not thought of, although those in charge should really have known better.
In the sprint events, over 100 and 220 yards, in the school sports every year, I was usually placed 4th in my age group.
The two fastest runners were Lionel Shapiro and Roy Blumgart, who ran for Wellington and De Waal. The third fastest was Ronny Gomes, who ran for Van Riebeek. The fourth house, Rhodes, had nobody to speak of. I was the second fastest in De Waal, just a bit slower than Gomes.
Shapiro and Blumgart were the natural choice as wings for the rugby “A” team, and Gomes was a really great centre, with a great side-step and ability to break, and a bit of weight, being a bit more solidly built than the wings, making him hard to stop.
I would have been of much more use in the back line, a fact which apparently penetrated the minds of the sports masters after about 3 years, and in an inter-house match I was put into the wing position in order to mark the fast Shapiro, who was running round his opposition usually. With the ball under his arm, he was simply not fast enough to get past me, and I brought him down every time he got the ball.
But it was now too late for tears. It was the end of the season, and next year I decided I had had enough of the farce of being a lock and quit the game, using the need to study as my excuse. I much preferred the touch rugby at breaktime, where everybody's position was the same and I could use my talent of always being in the right place to receive the ball and my speed to do something with it.
It was now my final year and I had discovered Table Tennis.
Chapter 9: Table Tennis
After one year at boarding school, the principal retired and was replaced by W. E. Bowden, an army major and excellent teacher of mathematics. One early innovation of his in the boarding school was a ping-pong table. I immediately liked the game, although none of us knew anything of its possibilities. Nobody among us had any idea of what topspin could do, or backspin could do, for that matter. I don't remember where I first picked such ideas up, but at age 15 I was practising the classical attacking and defensive spins with the boys who lived next door, in their garage, in Pinelands. My cycling friend Hemmo also got interested, and we became regular practice partners. We both joined a club and hoped to improve our standard to fifth league in order to make the lowest team in the club.
Those were the days before modern bat surfaces spoilt the game by rendering defensive play with its long rallies of attacker versus defender obsolete. Cape Town's stars were Theo Paitaki and Monty Shotland. Paitaki had a famous backhand attack, but Shotland retrieved almost everything from far behind the table, and long rallies of spectacular play delighted the local crowds. These two players were an inspiration.
At first I concentrated on back-spin defense, but later developed a back-hand attack that impressed many players better than myself and with which many years later I was still causing upsets by beating provincial players. By 1970 the loop drive had really changed the nature of the game and I was not all that attracted by the new table tennis and gave it up without taking the trouble to practice and master the loop drive.
Chapter 10 : Assisted cycling
Let's go back to cycling for a while. By 1950, cycling was one of my greatest joys. At weekends, I loved the scenic roads around the peninsula, toiling up the long, steep climbs and feeling the strength of my pumping heart, flying effortlessly down the long downhills. On schooldays, there was always the long rise from Claremont to Wynberg. Coming home, I rushed down this stretch with the South-Easter behind me at about 30 m.p.h.
In those days, very few bikes were fitted with the derailer gears so common today. Quite a few bikes had Sturmey-Archer 3-speed gears, which enclosed their gears in the rear axle hub. I had the rarer 4-speed hub, and soon I doubled the number of gears from 4 to eight by fitting two sprockets on my rear axle, one of 12 teeth and one of 19, which combined with the Sturmey-Archer gears to give me gear ratios from very high to very low. My highest gear enabled me to take advantage of the downhill and following wind to reach a very high speed with very little effort. This created a spectacular effect and onlookers found it hard to believe I could go so fast pedalling so slowly – they obviously thought I was shamming my pedalling movement.
Once I had reached the bridge into Pinelands on my way home, with a mile and a half still to go, I encountered the school buses, double-decker diesels, on their afternoon shift. I would stop behind one of these while pupils were getting off, then when it pulled away I would stick behind it, my front wheel inches from its back bumper, easily matching its acceleration and top speed with the aid of my gears. Then when it slowed down for the next stop I would go flying past in a sort of triumph, something in the spirit of a formula one driver overtaking his rival. Eventually the bus would catch me again and overtake me, but then I would catch it when it stopped again and repeat the exercise all over again. A real cat-and-mouse game! Hoping incidentally to catch the attention of the pretty girls in the bus!
On other routes the double-decker electric buses, with overhead electricity supply lines, were a much tougher proposition with their greatly superior acceleration, also these drivers seemed to have little respect for the 30-mile-per-hour limit applicable in those days, and would charge along at more like 40 mph. I found these tough adversaries better left alone.
With lorries on the lower main road, I did not scruple to grab hold of the bodywork and hitch a free ride.
My schooldays were approaching their end. What was I to do next? My father suggested I become an accountant, but that seemed too boring for me. I felt no strong calling in any direction, and would have opted for a permanent holiday if I had had the means. Alas, I did not, so I opted for a career as Mechanical Engineer, based on my old love of cars which was fading away somewhat and also on my facility with maths, thinking I would have an easy time with math courses and not have to do much hated swotting of the other work. In these thoughts I was mainly correct, and so it worked out.
Chapter 11: A party at the home of Hilary Spears
Soon after I had finished with school, a party was held at the home of Hilary Spears, who had been in my class. Hilary played no sports and did not shine in class, but I would call him the most remarkable person in the class.
He never competed in a race, but he was the fastest runner in sight. And most to the point, he was the only person who came from a home that had anything resembling culture in it.
He was the only person in the class that took a musical subject: his instrument was the cello. And music is certainly the most valuable thing in the world. In comparison to Hilary, the rest of us then were total ignoramuses living in a different world, a sub-world.
The party was intended as a sort of re-union or farewell party for the members of Hilary's class. Which was in a boys' school and did not contain any girls. So girls were also invited to the party, to make it more interesting.
Hilary's father, Frank Spears, was a well-known architect and radio actor, while his mother was Dorothea Spears, a poetess whose poems were regularly published in the Cape Times, Cape Town's foremost newspaper. (My judgment is based on quality, not circulation).
I came to this party as a sort of prodigy with a reputation for brilliance. On the bookshelves I saw many interesting books, such as the Sonnets of Shakespeare, and Bergson's Creative Evolution. The prettiest girl, Alison, seemed taken by me and gave me her attention, waiting on me fetchingly.
But then this attention seemd to diminish somewhat.
I remember we played an interesting game where you had to make a drawing depicting some proverb. My picture showed the rear view of a crowd of dogs staring at a mountain range in the distance, with stars overhead. It still amuses me.
Then there was some dancing, but I did not dance. I sat on a bench and noticed someone else also sitting on a bench. It was a very attractive girl of 16 who projected great sensitivity and sweetness, as well as virtue. I sat down and chatted with her. She made an indelible impression on me. I did not see her again for about six years. Her name was Eileen Buchanan.
Chapter 12 : University
At school I had failed to get A's (80%) in English, Afrikaans and History. In fact, in history I got a mere C (60-70%), much to the disgust of Tasker, our weird history master, who had expected 3 A's from this super-bright class containing me, Karabus and the prodigious Clive Young, but instead he got none. His own fault entirely, since he would insist on us learning from textbooks not approved by the provincial authorities. Which dumbskulls probably did not know what we were writing about and must have thought we had all been taught fairy stories instead of history.
More to the point, Tasker had succeeded in almost completely destroying my handwriting by his pressure on us to write 9 foolscap pages per hour. We were submitted to frequent “time trials”. For Tasker, quantity was quality. Clive Young was a brilliantly fast writer, with an excellent memory which enabled him to memorise most of the textbooks parrot fashion. Often as not, he beat me in the class exams into second place, but only in history of course. He was nowhere near an “A” aggregate – that level was reserved for Karabus and me.
However, when it came to writing the matric exam, my writing was to all intents and purposes illegible, so I don't know even how I managed to get a pass mark.
Yet such was my mastery of Mathematics, Physical Science and Latin (I must have scored close to 100% in these subjects) that I not only managed an A aggregate (despite my two B's and a C), but, as stated before, was placed fourth in the province.
Now in my first University year (1952) my 4 subjects were Pure Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Physics and Engineering Geometry. No more pressure on my handwriting, which commenced a slow but steady recovery.
Revelling in the subjects which came easiest to me. Getting unheard-of marks. (I remember one tussle with my closest rival in Applied mathematics, a student from Rondebosch High called Borcherds. He managed to get 127% in one test, not enough to match my 133%!
In case you are wondering how it can be possible to score over 100%, let me explain.
In standard 9 at school, I once scored a genuine 300 out of 300 marks – a true 100%. Next time around, (next quarter), I scored 106%. But that was not a genuinely flawless performance, lthough for all I know it might have been. The paper had been judged too difficult so marks had been added to everybody's score.
At University, the reason was different. To enable the brighter students to show their paces, the examiners decided to add an additional section to the normal paper, containing more challenging problems. The idea was that the cleverer ones should finish the main paper as usual, and then be given the opportunity to tackle the hard section for additional marks, in effect making the paper worth 140%.
And that option was not worthless, because the marks from these weekly tests were also partly carried over into the final mark for the year, which thus did not depend only on the final exam.
This new system had disastrous results for probably the most brilliant pure mathematician in the class, the fabulous Claude Lovelace, who stumbled around in a perpetual dream of mathematics, whose parents were fabulously rich and who gave away his whole fabulous collection of classical music records to the music library so that he could concentrate on his mathematics!
Poor Claude was like Atalanta at the sight of a golden apple. He had no eyes for the main chance, went straight to the most challenging problems, which unfortunately did not leave him time to do the more prosaic 100%-worth of the paper. He ended up with an appalling mark of around 50%, which put him out of the running for the class medal in Pure Mathematics.
I would have got this medal myself if I was not pipped by the brilliant Laurie Mackay, an older pupil who had done Pure Maths before and who was now for some unaccountable reason required to do the course again! Something to do with time delays and change of courses.
One thing I liked about Mackay was the way he would sit on a bench high up in the chemistry lecture theatre, with a chessboard out of sight on the bench between him and a buddy of his, surreptitiously playing a game of chess during the prof's lecture.
A very good comment on the system of lectures. I never saw the point of these lectures, where a lecturer simply copied stuff onto the blackboard and everybody struggled to recopy the stuff into their notebooks with no time for discussion of any sort. What an utter waste of time! They might just as well just have distributed written tracts. To this day I hate lectures of all sorts, where a single speaker addresses a captive audience. Each member of which receives exactly the same words of wisdom, at a speed not of his choice or necessarily, capability to absorb. Much better to read a book, at your own speed, in the time and place of your choice!
Incidentally this Mackay was a very interesting character, one of my role models in some ways. He looked rather ordinary and wore spectacles. He was extremely modest and quiet, yet at lunch time he could be seen sitting on the lawn, surrounded by an admiring circle of young women hanging from his lips.
Added to that, he was a wing in the University first rugby team, a proof that he must have been a very fast runner. During the long vacs, he would get employment on a vessel going to the Antarctic. On return he would show us class-mates his wonderful photographs from the Antarctic, of icebergs and other polar fauna.
Like myself, Mackay was doing Engineering and so was in my drawing class as well. For all his multi-talented brilliance, Mackay, like my father, simply could not cope with drawing. He could not even manage to pass Engineering Geometry at the end of the first year, and had to give up Engineering. So I got the class medal for this subject, as well as for Applied Mathematics, in which Mackay was also not quite in the same class as Borcherds and myself. I don't recall who got the medal for Physics, the remaining one of my 4 subjects, but I know that it wasn't me. Pity!
University was a different world to school. Boys in my class at school, who had got 80% in maths, struggled to pass University first year maths. On the other hand, Leslie Lyon van Zyl, who was in the same year as me at Wynberg, but in the B class for duffers, did poorly at school, I think because he didn't like the subjects in the curriculum. When he was free to choose those subjects himself, at University, as I did he got much better results.
In fact he performed outstandingly well in the first year Engineering courses, being one of only 3 to get firsts in all 4 subjects, together with me and one other whom I do not remember. And that was out of a large class of about 150, all drawn from the cream by school standards.
1952 finished as the most brilliantly successful year of my career, regarding academic performance.
Before I go on to 1953, I must make mention of my most important experiences during 1952. These were my studies in psychology, philosophy and music. These were entirely off my own bat, my own private business that had nothing to do with my Engineering course or bursary.
I found Freud very interesting, in fact I might as well say that he saw what few people in this conditioned age are even now able to see – how much we and our lives are affected by purely arbitrary and unnecessary taboos and conditioning.
And how people can become completely irrational, even mentally disturbed, as a result of this conditioning. I read his books one by one, in the order written, from cover to cover, absolutely absorbed and entranced by the genius of this man. But what amazes me most in this day and age is to see how little he was understood and appreciated by those one would expect to be able to.
But I stopped about halfway through his books. I felt I had read enough, I had got the picture, and understood the whole story perfectly.
In philosophy, I found the greatest genius was Nietzsche, one of t he few philosophers to realise that philosophy went, or could go, beyond being an exercise in futility.
I don't agree with his theory of Eternal Recurrence, yet it deserves thought. A mathematician with some understanding of the concept of infinity will probably not be able to swallow his theory, which depends on considering the possible conditions of the universe as being finite in number. That would depend on a notion of quantum space, and quantum time, for a start. I suppose I must concede it might not be totally out of t he question. But I don't buy it anyway.
But all philosophical ideas were in a sense old hat to me, I had had them all myself. From my point of view, there were no original thinkers.
In music it was very different. I had one hell of a lot to learn. My knowledge of classical music was extremely rudimentary. I knew some of the more popular music, but had no conception of Bach or Mozart whatsoever.
In the first year drawing office, all the Engineers, Electrical, Civil and Mechanical, had desks in alphabetical order, from the front of the room to the back. So Stanley Brown, studying Civil Engineering, a Bishops boy, sat immediately to my left, and Borcherds, my rival in Applied Mathematics, sat in the row in front of me, a little to my left. I enjoyed his repartee and comments on events from time to time.
Stanley Brown helped to open the doors of music to me. He was particularly obsessed with Bach, whom he regarded as the greatest of composers, and particularly his organ music. After lectures, he took me along with him to the music library, where one could listen to a huge repertoire of classical music through earphones.
So I gained experience of the joys of baroque music. After that, I went there very regularly throughout my engineering course, and went through the repertoire of the music of the great composers. This study of classical music brought me the greatest riches that I was to possess in this life. I discovered that music went much further than words could ever do, even the poetry of a Shakespeare.
Chapter 13: 1953, my second year at UCT
1953 was to see an almost total collapse in my exam performances.
I merely managed to pass second year Pure and Applied maths, and was nowhere in the running for class medals against my old rivals Borcherds and Mackenzie, who were doing Civil and Electrical Engineering respectively, but were members of the same maths classes.
Superficially, the reasons for this decline in my performance appear to be as follows.
In first year, we had to write weekly tests in Pure and Applied Maths. This meant that once a week, the day before the test, I revised the week's work, which means I went through the week's collection of transcribed but still incomprehensible notes to study them in order to penetrate their meaning and understand what they were all about. Thus I arrived for the test well prepared, red hot in fact with everything newly fresh in my memory. A system that worked perfectly for me.
In second year, the weekly tests simply fell away and their was no urgency or reason to study the notes until the midyear exam. And then the backlog was too great and I had left myself far too little time to get on top of the work. And there was simply too much of it to swallow in one dose.
The other students were more disciplined than I was, and were prepared to work regularly, but I needed the stimulus of immediate competition to motivate me. I had no inherent love for mathematics to make me study it. Such a love I was to develop about 30 years later, but at that time I found maths appallingly futile, as I did in fact find all technology. I believed in and longed for a more “natural” life, one of living in tropical paradises and eating fruit off trees: the Garden of Eden, you might say. I hated work like a curse.
Chapter 14 : Third year
We have seen that the second year was academically disastrous for me. The third year was just as bad, but at least I no longer had to do maths, which no longer interested me. Instead I had to do much experimental laboratory work,
and laborious designs of bridges, cranes etc. But the real problem was love, co-called. Sometimes better referred to as lust. In my case, better defined as obsession. This was a more passionate and intense obsession than at Caledon.
It started when I saw a girl in a raincoat from behind – a bit below the medium height, all I could see really was hair that could not be described as special in any way. What was it, then, that I saw? The style of movement? Hardly, I think. Something in the air, something atmospheric? Perhaps. I don't know. But when I come across the term coup de foudre, it seems the best way I have seen to describe what happened to me in one moment. It had something of an electric shock about it. About her face I saw and knew nothing, but I knew it could not disappoint me.
Nor did it when I saw her next in a common room basement. I thought she was ravishingly pretty!
What followed was a year of total obsession, a year of illusion, or rather self-delusion, during which I imagined, whenever I passed her along the walkways of campus, that she shared a mutual passion with me. I saw it in her face, in the nervous the passionate way she glanced at me.
As she walked up the library isle, while I watched seated on one side, I wondered if everyone around me could hear the beating of my heart, and thought that if I had to get up and accost her, I would pass out from excitement and nervousness. I felt absolutely paralysed at such a thought.
I could see no way around this impasse, and despised myself for my frailty.
This experience made me see myself as weak for the first time in my life, and caused me to start worshipping the idea of strength. Beethoven's dictum pleased me the most : “Strength is the moral code of those that raise themselves above their fellow-men, and it is also mine.” But it took me a year to find enough strength to act in this affair. During that year of obsession I lived a magical life. I experienced something that I coined the term superessence to describe. And the philosophical question uppermost in my mind was : “What are the determinants of superessence?”
Chapter 15 : The fourth year
The fourth year brought more strength, action, disillusionment, and relative sanity. One day she chanced to come and sit a few metres away from me, I can't remember whether to the left or right. And eventually we exchanged a glance. At that moment, or a bit later (my memory is a bit blurred) I saw that the clock was showing the end of a class period, and I said to her: “Are you finished?” to which I think she made no reply. I got up and left.
A few days later I saw her walking up the aisle. I got up, approached her from behind, and accosted her. In effect, I made a date to meet her later in the day, to go for a walk.
When the time came, we met, and walked along the road from the university that goes past the zoo. There we sat on a bench and talked. I was much stronger then than a year before, and I could only laugh to myself as it became clear that I was nothing at all to her, she had not even noticed me on the walkways of campus, far from being on the point of collapsing from passion for me. What a huge joke!
I had no option but to give up my delusions and return to a more mundane level, and try to win her as a more common type of girl-friend. I took her to a concert at the school of music, on the pillion of my motorbike. I liked her arms around me, but I never embraced her or kissed her.
Soon afterwards she had a nervous breakdown – this stemmed from heavy disappointment. She HAD in fact been passionately in love – in this I was not mistaken, but with someone else, not with me! And he had disappointed her.
I went to visit her in the nursing-home – her mother was a doctor and saw to it that she got elecro-convulsive treatment, much to my horror and disgust. This obnoxious woman, whom I met but once, had the cheek to phone my mother and ask her to stop me from seeing her daughter.
As if my mother could or would have done anything of the kind. And my love herself told me she really appreciated my visits.
But it was not to be. Nothing further ever happened between us. Dozens of years later, I saw in the alumni magazine that she had married a pastor in West Germany. And then also, or either before or later, I was in Caledon and inquired at a cafe about the love of my childhood, and heard that she had married a dominee! These serious, religious types ever appealed to me, though I can't stomach their absurd superstition.
Dieciseis de diciembre, 2009:
diez puertos.
There is no good or evil, no right or wrong, no valid commandments or religion. These things are fictions generated in order to manipulate and control others. They are socio-political stratagems.
In the evolutionary scale, they appear already in other social species which antedate man. They have great survival value for whichever species is using them. The invention of falsehood goes back much further in evolution, as seen in cases of deception such as camouflage, and antedates the development of social species.
So the valuing of truth is dubious, as we are truly “people of the lie” and the most useful truth must recognise this. Within more limited circumstances, truth may be found to have other uses, such as being a source of aesthetic pleasure.
On the whole, I would estimate that the volume of fictional works exceeds the volume of non-fictional writings in value:
in other words, lies are more valuable than truth.
Chapter 16: Leaving South Africa
I am getting impatient to leave the shore of South Africa, at least in this story. Note that in those days that is what one did: in a mailboat. One did NOT depart from an airport in a Boeing – those were still in the future.
I was 20 years old, and had been awarded a so-called Brush Commonwealth Scholarship. Brush was the name of the manufacturing group of companies which made diesel engines and electrical equipment mainly. They forked out a living wage for 2 years to selected graduates in Engineering.
During those 2 years one had to clock in and out daily to get one's salary, but that was about all one had to do.
My first factory was the National Gas and Oil Engine Company, in Ashton-under-Lyne (near Manchester). This factory had the usual set of workshops: pattern shop, foundry, machine and tool shops, fitting shop for assembly and testing of engines, etc.
I met a delightful pattern-maker in the pattern shop, who helped me make a beautiful bedside lamp for myself out of wood, and also a wooden case for my slide-rule. (A slide-rule is another prehistoric animal, like the mailship recently mentioned, since replaced by electronic calculator). Very few of my activities and experiences in these factories seemd to have much connection with engineering, yet I suppose they were all valuable general experience. In the next factory (taking a glimpse into 9 months later) I met up with other engineers, from other countries, in the same boat as myself, and we would engage in surreptitious games of chess, hiding behind the machines and playing on scraps of paper instead of a board.
I stayed in York House, a nice boarding house in Ashton, 5-10 minutes walk from the factory. One resident was Roger Calvert, the accountant for the factory. Two others were Tom Paterson, a rather lugubrious Scot, and James (or was it David?) Cahill, of slightly more optimistic outlook. These three and I formed the nucleus of a regular nightly poker game. My first school. Cards were already in my blood from the numerous family games of vantoon, poker etc., inspired mainly by my card-obsessed ouma. I loved gambling, the way good luck seemed to dog me. There is nothing I love more than a piece of outstanding good luck, unless it is a long run of outstanding good luck.
Let's take another jump into the present, just for the relief of contrast. It is 2 Jan, 2010. Two days ago I was playing scrabble on the Internet with someone calling herself pamclay , from India. She had 3 hours to go to New Year, I had 6. I was very lucky, she was astounded, and was wishing me a lucky 2010. I said that I liked 2009 and would rather it continued! But she told me I would be even luckier in 2010. So what happened yesterday? I played my first game of 2010 and got an astronomical score of 525! (well last year my best was 556, but anything over 500 is very, very nice to get). What I like about scrabble is that luck plays a huge role. And yet so does ability, and there is always more to learn. It is now my favourite game.
Staying at York House was also a Swiss confectioner, who was always pestering me for a game of chess, about which I knew next to nothing. Repeated drubbings from Paul taught me something, as did also a primer on chess I found in the lounge. This was the beginning of my chess career, which led to me winning a Tournament in Durban in 1964.
(This claim means almost nothing; the very best players in Durban did not take part. To define my strength a bit more accurately: I was definitely among the top 12 actively competitive players in Durban, at that time, most definitely not among the top 2, and probably somewhere around number 6 to 8.)
Every day at lunch time I would go home and snatch a 10-20 minute lie-down, made desirable by our late poker nights. While prone I would feed on some classical music on the radio. Books I enjoyed at that time included, I remember, Antic Hay. No other book specifically, comes to mind as I type these words 54 years later. During these two years in England I read mainly Dostoevsky, Turgenev, DH Lawrence and Aldous Huxley.
At “work” we were supposed to take a 15-minute teabreak twice a day. There was a hall with a piano in it, where we went for tea, a few of us students. One was from New Zealand, another from Wales, another was a fellow resident of York House called Arjun Bhagat, who had an impressive Oxford accent and an Oxford personality to go with it. I never clicked with him – he projected no self beyond this stereotype, which I could not see as sincere.
I would extend my teabreak to 45 minutes to practise my pieces on the piano – Beethoven's Fur Elise and Moonlight Sonata, slow movement, about the only two pieces I could play by heart. The New Zealander was quite impressed; he was a similar sort of dilettante to myself, with a microscopic repertoire including a Mozart piece which I rather envied him for. Sometimes I would hear him whistling Beethoven's Violin Concerto, finale.
But I found all these people, British and Colonial, dead in expression and being. A very young student from Germany, Dieter von der Heide, I found much more alive, with spontaneous zest for life. He also took to chess in York House, somewhat under my tutelage as I was slightly more advanced than he, and I gratefully remember his glee when he caught my king in the open and hunted him down. I had no British friends in these two years; my best friends were Latin Americans (Peru and Mexico), Indians and a Bulgarian.
I owe my first lessons in Spanish to these Latins; the lessons were to relieve the boredom of the shop floor. I remember the first sentence Orestes Pastor chose to teach me: me gusta esa mujer, pero no es posible. (A sentence which comes uncomfortably close to being the story of my life).
Spanish became a lifelong study for me, and at age 22 I took a six-month holiday in Spain. This was an early step I took in my life to anticipate my early retirement and start having a good time before I died from the boredom of work.
To take another look ahead, after retiring at age 29, I started studying Greek as preparation for a 4-week holiday in Greece. This was another study which gained enough momentum to absorb me for many hours during the years ahead. Apart from learning modern Greek, I can also recite long passages from Homer. A possession that gives much artistic satisfaction. As an inveterate novel-reader, I gained much joy from reading the novels of the Cretan Nikos Kazantzakis, which, like the work of the great Cervantes, lose nearly everything in translation.
Going back to my stay at York House: by April 1956 I had been in England for 4 months and seen only the miserable winter of Manchester. Now the season was changing and luring me on my motorcycle to explore the terrain. I remember the utter delight of getting out of the city for the first time in months and seeing the green, sprouting crops on the way to Liverpool.
In August I had a 2-week holiday, so I took a 4-day ride up into Scotland. At the end of the first day I slept in a small hotel in Cowdenbeath, not far north of Edinburgh. The second night I slept in a bed-and-breakfast house in Carrbridge, where I enjoyed a good game of draughts with the family. I thought this area most heavenly.
From Carrbridge, to Inverness, the north-most point of my ride. Then south along the Caledonian Canal. Past Fort William, then around Loch Leven, past Kinlochleven, not wanting to miss this part by taking the ferry, the more direct route. Then through the incredible Glen Coe, the mountains seen in glorious colours. In the light of that day, Glen Coe was the most beautiful sight I have ever seen.
After spending the night in a very small bed-and-breakfast house in Crianlarich, itself a very small town, I returned to Ashton the next, fourth and last day of my trip. Resolved to spend more time touring Scotland the next August.
Chapter 17 : A day trip to Loughborough.
I played some table tennis in the factory's club; I was about the second best player there, Owen being possibly a bit better and the captain of their team. I played in some league matches – I remember playing in one hall where the thermometer showed 37 degrees Fahrenheit (3 deg C) – my hands seemed to be too frozen to hold the bat. And I remember slithering along the snow-bound roads on m y motor-bike to get to the venues.
The sports day of the Brush Group, of which my factory was a part, and whose headquarters were at Loughborough, was held somewhere near midsummer. I was in the bus taking competitors from Ashton to Loughborough. I remember some of the good-natured ribaldry and chaffing in the bus.
I was supposed to be a reserve for the two members of the table-tennis team; the management had, understandably, not wanted to include me, as a temporary “foreigner”, in their local team – after all, next year I would probably be at Loughborough and then again upset the natural result of these inter-factory challenges.
I did not mind going along as reserve, although on strength alone I should definitely have been in the team. It was an enjoyable trip, my first glimpse of Loughborough, where I was to pass the next winter, and I particularly remember going for a walk of about a mile, from the sports fields to the town centre, buying a “Milky Bar” of white chocolate and enjoying it on my way back. One more card in my deck of chocolate-eating memories.
Back at Ashton, in September the summer reached the hottest I'd yet experienced in Britain. I remember lying in the sun on the crown-bowls field, sweltering in my half-removed overall. Quite a nice game, incidentally, which I never came across anywhere else, but played a few times at Ashton.
CHAPTER XX LOUGHBOROUGH
My scheduled 9 months at Ashton having come to an end, I was to spend the next 6 months at the Brush Electrical Engineering Company's factory in Loughborough.
I rode down through a summery landscape, from Ashton to Loughborough, in early October, 1956. My chattels went by train. The factory ran a hostel for students very close to the factory's sports fields and pavilion (bar). The table tennis room was also to hand. I was installed in this hostel, sharing a room with two Indian engineering graduates, Hira and Mehta, and a younger British student. Hira became the best friend I had in Britain, for we had a lot in common. First we played chess, and found we were fairly evenly matched. Then it turned out that he was also keen on table tennis. Another Indian in the hostel, Chaudari, was just as keen on table tennis, so the three of us spent much time in the table tennis room. We also spent much time in the bar, mainly playing darts where I had no edge and did not need to offer a handicap. Hira also loved snooker and billiards, to the extent that he confessed to me once, that during his first interview with the personel officer, all he could think about was how to play an in-off shot into the corner of the room off the man's head!
The three of us also went for motorcycle rides in the countryside. I had a 250 cc BSA, Hira had a 350 cc machine and Chaudari a 500 cc one.
But our main passion was cards, especially poker and brag (a 3-card version of poker, with suicidal betting rules). Together with other hostel students and their friends, we had late-night sessions most nights. Stakes were low, just high enough to give the game some reality.
I kept a careful record of my winnings, and so did Hira. We were both biggish winners.
Hira knew someone from Ghana called Billy Sam. I can't recall whether he was also an engineer, but I do recall that he was fairly famous in Ghana as a guitarist. Billy, Hira and I went to restaurant which Hira recommended for its Indian curry, and it sure was good. Then we went to Bill's flat (he did not live in the hostel) where he enchanted us with his beautiful playing. He also composed a piece for each of us on the spur of the moment, and delighted me by playing the Moonlight Sonata movement – like I did, he knew every note by heart, and he made it sound better on the guitar than I ever heard it played on the piano!
I was a regular member of the factory's table tennis team, and played weekly league matches against teams in the Leicester league. One night I had to play against a team with a woman in it, at home. She was quite solidly built, and played with a grave, stolid passion. I had been playing an effortless, highly polished style with success and amusement rather than passion, but I was getting bored with this, and this night marked a sudden switch to a more passionate, violently aggressive game. It was just another side of me craving expression.
Hira and I had even more in common. He was also relishing the novels of Dostoevsky and Lawrence, and introduced me to astrology – the western astrology, as he called it, not the Indian. He impressed me by his ability to guess people's birthdays, and helped me on my first steps to do the same. The first thing I discovered was an ability to guess Aquarians – perhaps not too surprising since my mother was an Aquarian. This was the first stage in my interest in Astrology.
In 1979 I stayed in a commune that included an astrologer, Katinka, who taught me to go beyond sun-sign astrology and how to draw up and interpret complete horoscopes. A few years later I embarked on my own program of scientific research, in line with my training as Bachelor of Science, in order to test statistically certain postulates of astrology.
The results of this research were published in Odyssey, a South African magazine, in 5 issues starting September 1983. In effect, I modified the assumptions of astrology in a way that has not yet been understood by more conventional astrologers. But I am trying to limit the application of astrology in this book, just as I am limiting any exposition of my philosophic nature and convictions, for the simple reason that I don't think there is a suitable audience for my views.
The thinking of the world is not nearly free enough to profit from them – much more radical thinking would be needed than is regarded as palatable in this age.
In all the years since 1957, I have not seen Hira again, but we have continued to correspond, at intervals of about 7 years on average. Our last communication was as recent as 2009.
Bear in mind that I have no other correspondents worth mentioning at all, to see the true position held by Hira in my life. What I valued the most in Hira was his unfailingly fresh and cheerful attitude and approach. His was a mind of very great clarity. I just could not see any sign of a chained mind in him, and he was completely ready to enjoy life to the full on the highest levels. He combined these attributes with a practical side, and had a very successful career in his chosen fields.
Chapter 18 : A romantic stocktaking
It is time to move on from Loghborough to Leeds, where I lived from April, 1957 to January, 1958. But first I want to correct the overall impression created by preceding chapters that I did not lead much of a sexual life. I have dealt with my two major obsessions, for Eulalie and Winifred, which were never equalled again in my life, but I have left out much else which occupied my thoughts. I now wish to fill in the picture, before the reader proceeds under wrong assumptions, about other women who were and remain important personages in my memories.
Most of my life was spent under the prime domination of some romantic passion or other. There were seldom any periods to which this did not apply. Some of these passions were very episodic and shortlived, and practically all of them found no physical or indeed any expression other than in fantasy.
For example, shortly after entering boarding school, at age about 12, there was a girl of about the same age. How did I meet her? Well, a group of us boarders – 4 or 5 – climbed over the fence one evening into an adjoining garden where there was fruit on trees. This was simply illegal, simple theft. But then we were joined in the tree by this ravishingly lovable and loving girl, the daughter of the proprietor. The sum total of my life with her was these minutes, yet the emotional resultant was like a precious jewel that shines on for ever.
More or less around this time, a more stable object of my admiration was one of the two young wives in the Albion Hotel, where my family lived. My emotions for her were not so obsessive or compulsive, but I saw her as an ideal and very beautiful character, as a wife. And she remains as an ideal type for me, to this day.
Next, at age 16, came Peggy, the advocate's wife, mentioned previously. My love for her has remained very strong through all the years. Three years ago, when I was living in Rondebosch, I used to walk the 20 minutes to a house she lived in when she was raising a family, just to soak myself in the ambience of that past love.
After that came the grand obsession with Winifred. About the same time my sister was becoming a woman, and my love for her was definitely taking on sexual tones. And on leaving for England, she took over the first place in my thoughts, whereas Winifred fell out of them entirely. This is a good place to state clearly that my sister was by far the most important person in my life for a period of 16 years. After that, after 1970, her importance to me diminished.
And that brings this stocktaking up to date, that is, up to my arrival in Leeds in April, 1957. So far my stay in England was without any romantic interest worth mentioning. The only person worth mentioning is the woman on the mailship: Rowena Essex-Clark.
She was a very handsome, very nicely-built young woman, newly qualified by 3 courses of psychology and I don't know what else, bound for I know not where, but definitely rather clued-up and not too dull-witted. I remained in love with her for ever, but not too much. Mainly it was a ship-board romance for me, as I never saw or heard of her again.
Chapter 19 : Leeds
This time the lodgings found for me by the Brush Group were not to my satisfaction, so I moved to 83 The Drive, Roundhay, 10 minutes walk from Roundhay Park, where I often wandered alone. My landlady was Mrs Dolan, and there were two other boarders, Eric and Chris.
I had pleasant games of tennis with Chris on the courts down the road.
I lived 9 months in Leeds, and this period is important in my memories, but I now choose to skip over this period without further ado, and to get to Spain.
In Leeds I met Javier Orozco, a Mexican who added to my Spanish. He, together with Professor Whiteman from UCT, were the two men in my life that most closely met MY idea of saintliness. Javier and I used to go into one of the smarter hotel lounges in Leeds to have our favourite drink, a Laager and lime, and discussion about Spanish and other things.
The two years of my Brush Travelling Scholarship were due to end in January 1958, but Brush were quite willing to let me extend my stay in Europe, pursuing my own life, before buying me my return ticket to Cape Town. My immediate plan was to go to Spain for 6 months, and then consider my next move. My intention: to have a wonderful holiday, a break from the tyranny of clocking in, in beautiful surroundings, and in a stimulating culture. (Mainly I had been disappointed in Britain because their culture was too similar to the South African, and therefore not so interesting. I wanted something much more different.)
Chapter 20: To Spain
I took a boat to Spain, from England to Vigo in north-west Spain, in January 1958. My motorbike and trunk I left in storage in London, and took a small suitcase with me. I wore my UCT jacket, blue with gold braid, a rather vulgar uniform I think. And I had two thick woollen jerseys against the cold of
mid-winter.
Disembarking in Vigo, I made my way to the road leading inland towards Madrid. I planned to get ahead by hitch-hiking. I had been told that hitch-hiking was not common in Spain and that the gesture of thumbing in the desired direction would just not be understood – I should rather advance boldly into the road and show any driver my raised palm as a signal to stop.
One of my first victims, if not the first, was a fish lorry carrying fish to Madrid, with a crew of 2 and a bunk in the cab. Progress with this heavy load of fish was very slow up the tortuous road through Galicia, which seemed to be a never-ending mountain pass.
I loved these drivers. Socially they were probably on the lowest rung in Spain, they spoke a coarse slang and soon taught me hijo de puta and similar compliments. When we came to a town we would stop for a bite, maybe some chops washed down with generous helpings of red wine. The price of these refreshments was unbelievably low. Any way these drivers were not in a mood to allow me to pay for anything, and when we eventually came to their stopping-place for the night, Tordesillas in the snow-bound mountains, we made plans to sleep. One driver would use the lorry bunk, the other and I entered a hospice which seemed to have very earthen floors with constant steps up and down. The passages led to a room with beds, where I slept like a log.
Next morning I parted from them; they were on their way to Madrid, further into the snow – I just wanted to go south to get beyond the snow-covered latitudes.
After a reasonably short wait by the side of the glittering, snow-covered road, a car stopped and the kind passengers took me on to Salamanca. They quite enjoyed my beginner's efforts to talk Spanish.
In Salamanca I was inside the main square, surrounded by arched openings onto the sheltered arcades. Hordes of small children were running about, noisily and in high glee.
I did not delay there; back to the roadside where a very friendly driver took me on to Bejar. Here I ran out of lifts for the day, so I went to the railway station. I had on my two jerseys and jacket, and also my fairly thick raincoat, at least it wasn't very thin. I waited for the next southbound train to come past. I had toothache and I rested my jaw on my fists on the table, and sought additional shelter under my hat. I think, anyway, that I had a hat, but maybe I didn't.
After hours and hours, the train came and I pushed my way into a coach crammed with very young soldiers. They made a space for me in a corner. My toothache was bad, so I could hardly sleep at all, but I think I must have dozed off at some point, meanwhile I was absolutely delighted by the conversation and personalities of the young soldiers. To judge from their comversation, they seemed more like students of literature than soldiers. They were dellighting in the rich variety of suffixes that Spanish nouns can take.
Next morning the train arrived at Caceres, the sun was shining, there was no more snow at this latitude, and my toothache was gone. What a mass of benedictions! I was ready to think my little hotel room a palace, and was particularly delighted, as I walked around the streets, to see that all the cars bore a number plate staring with CA and then 5 digits. Exactly as in Cape Town, my home town!
From here on I suffered no more from the cold of winter. I resumed my hitch-hiking, and several lifts took me to Seville, and then on to Cadiz, where I slept one night. And from there, eastwards past Gibraltar towards Malaga.
I had a lift from an American who told me that Torremolinos was a very nice place to stay, with a very nice pension, the Pension Beatriz. I had also slept in the famous Marbella, but the place seemed much too deserted. Fuengirola was even more bleak, it seemed to consist of nothing but a walled bullring surrounded by fields of short grass.
But when the American dropped me off at Torremolinos, I was inclined to think I had found the place of my dreams. And indeed I led a very rich life there for three months.
The Pension Beatriz was the centre of my joys. I was soon playing my beloved card games, the Spanish versions that were easy for me to pick up, with the family of the pension which included two nice daughters and a baby girl. The one girl was really pretty, which delighted me although she was engaged to an Austrian visitor.
The Spanish food, things like paella were a real delight for me, and the waitress was very sexy and vivacious. Her name was Inocencia, but Felipe, a rather cynical and aristocratic visitor from the Basque country, said she was not so innocent. That I can believe. Another visitor (pension resident) was Fred, an American who was trying to be a writer. He was certainly intelligent, and gave me a tough game of chess. Fred was fascinated by the way his coloured sunglasses transformed his nighttime views.
Much time would be spent on the pavement in front of the pension, sitting in chairs, reading the Fall of the Reich (borrowed I think from an elderly British woman), eating almonds and watching the passers-by. Adjoining the pension was the Bar Central, which was always full of interesting people. One of these was a concert pianist with a Swiss wife. He was sometimes away on concert trips. I thought them a classically handsome couple, and he liked to play the Spanish chess putzers, pretty old fogeys by my book, who liked to show off by playing 3-minute games.
One game, I pointed out to him a move he had missed, winning him the queen. Oh, so you know chess, he said to me. I played him, but he was too good for me.
When he was away on a concert trip, his wife and 10-year-old daughter, both beautiful if rather sad blondes, could be seen walking together in the streets. I was in love with this wife and about 5 other women at the same time. I called her La de Plata, the Silver One. To myself, I mean.
Apart from her, there was the pretty daughter of the pension, then there was a young American woman with her boy-friend, a young American painter who painted nothing but garlic, who had an aprtment in the village but came regularly to the pension for meals. I called her La Humilde, the Humble One.
Then there was La de Oro, the Golden One, a local wench with the golden hair that is the Spanish blonde, who used to walk by in the street. I followed her and tried to befriend her, but she was not too keen to hear too much about my troubles, telling me simply that “Me parece Ethpanya” (I like Spain).
And maybe that exhausts the list of my Torremolinos loves. Strange that these were all very grown women, whereas a few months later, in Blanes, the combined ages of my three greatest loves was 28.
But Patricia Boorman, if not a love, was certainly a most valued friend, ever since the evening, early in my stay at Torremolinos, when she presented me with the remains in a bottle of liqueur, and so opened up to me the delightful habit of guzzling sweet liqueurs. She was from London.
Chapter 21: Luís
Luis Alderete Mills, a lad of 18 from Valladolid, came to stay at the pension soon after I did, I think. He became my best friend in Spain, and we did many things together.
Such as: walking the streets of the town together, on the lookout for pretty girls. One of our favourites, a tourist from Sweden, we called La Jugadora - exactly why I don't remember, but we never really got to know much about her.
One night, together with an older man, we went to a nightclub in Malaga where Luis saw a pretty tourist, from Ireland, called Sheila. Or maybe she spelt it differently. He danced with her, and she told him “te quiero”. Poor Luis was very smitten and in the days that followed was forever writing her name on walls.
On these walks we might stop near a lamppole and start bombarding it with pine cones, seeing who could score the most hits.
In the pension lounge, we got intoxicated by the flamenco music which was forever playing on the local radio station. In a fit of enthusiasm, Luis would grab one of the rolled periodicals delivered by post and waiting to be taken by their addressee, lift it high in the air and bring it down with a tremendous thump on the table. An old, doddering Belgian guest, half asleep in his chair, jumped up and scurried out of the lounge in alarm, to the unbridled mirth of Luis and I.
Luis challenged me to draughts, Spanish style, and on cleaning me up would start singing a victory march. Eventually I got irritated by these gloating songs and socked him one. That upset him and he called me a brute: these young Spaniards, like the soldiers in the train, are extraordinarily civilised and gentle.
Luis, Patricia Boorman and I hired three bicycles and went for rides together. One ride left an indelible impression: because of a misty quality of the air, which was more typical of Britain and which I rarely saw in Spain, the landscapes and seascapes and beachscapes took on a magical, dreamlike quality.
Luis and I spent much time playing poker, just the two of us. Mrs Griffiths, the kind lady who lent me the book on Hitler, also lent me two tiny packs of cards, which we used. Later a group of medical students from Madrid came to stay at the pension. They joined in our poker and we had uproarious sessions on the sunroof of the pension, revelling in the sun in the bracing February air. From this roof we had a good view of a towering, volcano-shaped peak, crowned with snow or ice, visible at some distance. A beautiful sight against the blue sky.
Another friend of Luis and me was a 47-year-old man from Madrid whom I thought and wrote of simply as “El Madrileño”. He was an enthusiastic participant in our childish games, such as racing twigs down the water channels which ran through the fields surrounding the town.
I remember Luis named his racers “relampago engrasado” and “puta”. There was a series of putas that went up to puta III.
Luis was foever crooning the song “your eyes are the eyes of a woman in love”, but he had great trouble pronouncing the English w – he made it sound more like a g. Unfortunately, I seem to remember that I was pretty useless at helping him to overcome this hurdle.
As I said, Luis had a penchant for writing on walls; on one of our walks he wrote something that remains engraved on my memory: Esta vida sin cariño no es vida.
Chapter 22 : Benidorm
After three months in Spain, I had to exit the country to get another 3-months visa, so I hitch-hiked down to Gibraltar where I spent a day or two. In a hotel there I dreamt of Eileen. (see page 25). Then back to Torremolinos to say goodbye there. Happy as I was in Torremolinos, it was best that I moved on and saw more of Spain and lived other experiences.
But I was very sad as I travelled on through strange towns filled with unknown strangers. Nerja, with its tragic rock platform over the sea, a platform with plaques celebrating the tragic murders of civil war, made a fitting counterpoint to my depression.
So I did not enjoy the places I passed through very much. This was not arrival, like my first days in Spain, but a departure. I had to find a new life, one to compare with my life in Torremolinos.
Eventually I came to Benidorm, and took a room there. It was a lovely, huge, dark room overlooking the old, central square of the town. This square was at the foot of the headland covered with older houses. To the east stretched a wonderful beach about a mile long. Many hotels were being constructed along this beach, but right then the overcrowding had not become excessive, and the town retained a charm that had disappeared by the time of my next visit eight years later.
It was May now and the temperature was perfect for swimming. A short walk down from my room to the beach, a beach that reminded me of home, of Muizenberg with its ultrafine, white sand. In fact, this region of Spain is called Costa Blanca, a reference to the unusual, white sand.
I set myself to learn how to swim the whole length of the beach, breast stroke. At first I could only swim a hundred yards or so. But every day I swam a bit further, marking my progress by which hotel I reached. Within a few weeks I made it all the way. As I clambered out of the water I felt quite cold, and not in a mood to swim all the way back! After 15 minutes at the charming little hut at the end of the beach, where refreshments were served, I ran the mile back home along the beach, to get warm.
Another task I set myself at Benidorm was to study German. I devoted many hours to this.
There were no other guests at the pension where I had my room, and no meals were served. I made an interesting experiment here: I live on cold food for a couple of weeks. No cooked meals. But of course this was not a raw diet. I ate a lot of bread, cheese, olives and fruit, and probably salami and other savoury sausages. Nevertheless I was surprised at how good I felt on this sort of diet. I did not miss the usual cooked dishes at all.
My social life during the 4 weeks at Benidorm was practically nil. However, I did make one friend, a brilliant 20-year-old called Boris – I think he was Dutch – who worked as interpreter for one of the larger hotels. I met him on the beach, and he used to visit me at my room and share liqueurs and talk with me. He was a very intelligent and interesting companion. Our meeting was really the result of the fact that he noticed me on the beach and was struck my me – it was certainly not the other way around. I was the one who stood out like a sore thumb, he was the one already at home in the environment.
But most of the time I was rather lonely in Benidorm. Sun and sea and sand were great compensations, however.
Chapter 23 : Blanes
Blanes, the southernmost town on the Costa Brava, was my third and last long stay in Spain: I was there 6 weeks. It was now June and there seemed to be a lot of kids around. Perhaps it was the school holidays. I was like the Pied Piper, followed around by a horde of kids, for whom I performed sundry feats of magic such as floating razor blades and Spanish coins on water, and entertained by buying them icecreams and tickets to the autochoque (bump cars). One ten-year old I was seriously in love with and went to visit her mother who was very friendly to me and wrote me letters on behalf of her daughter when I had returned to South Africa. But Pilarin told me her brothers (her father was not to hand) would not allow her to have a boyfriend before she was fifteen. I called her La Desinteresada (Unselfish One) to myself, because she shared my gifts with the other kids.
I think Pilarin loved me, but was not in love with me.
But Alicia definitely was, and this made it heaven for me to be with her. She was 9 I think. The first time I saw her walking with a friend near the harbour, I couldn't help exclaiming “Princesas españolas!” which I think rather pleased them.
I used to climb a hill behind Blanes every day and one day I met Alicia on the top, with several other kids. We joined forces, and walked to the exquisite beach of SanFrancisco nearby, Alicia riding on my shoulders part of the way. Our togetherness was also exquisite, we were so absorbed in it that she lost awareness of what was going on around her, and started mislaying her things. Her friends remarked on her obvious distraction, which was very sweet to me.
I met her father in the garden of their holiday house, a fine, expensive property on the hill above the harbour. He was a well-to-do man from Galicia in north-west Spain. We had a pleasant chat.
I remember Alicia's voice asking me “Has visto todo en Blanes?” and saying “Nunca me ahogo” when I asked her to be careful when swimming. (“I'll never drown.”)
Of course I was now a long-distance swimmer and amazed a little German tourist whose parents were always nagging him on the beach: “Mache dein Mund zu!” (close your mouth). Amazed him by swimming out through the harbour and disappearing in the distance, to reappear hours later.
He said I swam “sehr weit”. (very far). A great compliment from a great tourist.
This was the best way to explore the beautiful coast, which consists of private properties – you can't walk or drive next to the sea! I would swim along, then land at some private landing spot to inspect it, before continuing.
My time in Spain was coming to an end. What next? The idea of going to Germany had been in my mind for months; somehow I did not feel certain that it was time to return to South Africa and see my beloved sister. She was now almost 17, and I had not seen her for over two and a half years. But I had found our exchange of letters satisfying. I could feel her genius in her writing.
Chapter 24 : To Germany
Sometime near the end of July, 1958 I caught the train to the border at Port Bou. Once in France, I started hitch-hiking : I was aiming at Germany.
I was very lucky to have a wonderful person stop and give me a lift. He was a French Canadian on holiday in France. It was obvious that he had friends (or relatives) in France, for he went to a private house at the end of the day, to overnight with friends. I I went along, and was put up with the same hospitality as he! This gave me an opportunity to experience the French personality, so vital, even electric, compared to the more reserved, less flambuoyant Spanish. this in fact struck me very forcibly the moment I crossed the border, and I wondered how national characters could contrast so extremely. I was also struck by the difference in the women, who seemed to have much more sensitivity, as well as beauty.
My friend had told me he was looking for a place where he could stop and paint. He was entranced by the light in South France. Light which was to me no different to my daily bread in South Africa and likewise in Spain. But I knew how rare it was in Britain, and I could imagine, maybe in Canada too.
So we parted: he found a spot to his liking, stopped, and I continued hitching from there.
Lifts were rarer from here on, and by the time I got as far as Marseilles I decided to proceed by train.
The train proceeded through impressive forests and ravines to Strasbourg. I stayed the night at a hotel in Kehl, just inside the German border. I watched a family, with grown-up daughter, arrive in the reception in the lounge. What impressions, of German flowers in the garden, German guests in the hotel... how different from the atmosphere of Germans abroad and on holiday! In comparison to the holiday-makers whose tribe I had joined, the life I saw in Germany seemed bleak and grim. Officials shouting orders on railway stations. It seemed as if there was a war on: I suppose there was. In the post office a poster insisted: “Unteilbares Deutschland!”
I got a lift in a lorry, through the rather impressive Black Forest, to Stuttgart, where I put up in a hostel in Bad Cannstadt. I went to the Mercedes Benz factory to discuss the possibility of getting employment with them. This would have required me to sign a 5-year contract.
In the Mercedes waiting room I had pored over a brochure of Mercedes models through the years, in Spanish, entitled “Un viaje retrospectivo”. It matched my nostalgic mood. I was feeling too lost and alone. I went to sit on a bench by the side of the river Neckar. Nobody was in sight, and the weather was dull. In the distance I made out a poster advertising a movie. It said: “Heute: Heimatlos”. That seemed to refer to me. I sat there, and decided to return to South Africa forthwith.
Having decided to wend my way homewards, I felt as if a load had been taken off my shoulders. I took a train to London – there I had a hilarious experience.
Taking my motorcycle out of storage, the licence of course was out of date, and I didn't get far before a traffic cop spotted me. It seemed I was in trouble! But no, when he heard that I was booked for a passage to South Africa within a few days, he said the courts would not stop me for such a trivial offence. The joke was that I took advantage of the cop to sell him the bike for the princely sum of five pounds, which solved my problem of what to do with my machine, which by now had decidedly seen better days, and was hardly worth taking back with me to South Africa.
Soon afterwards I found myself on the Carnarvon Castle, bound or Cape Town.
Chapter 25 : The voyage back
Like my voyage out on the Stirling Castle, the voyage back was a wonderful experience, one of my best holidays ever.
Going out, I won the shipboard table tennis competition: going back was the same again. But now I also won the chess, having learnt to play the game in the meantime.
This time I found the young, beautiful, attractive married and marriageable women at my table nauseating and disgusting. I could not stand their lies, their falsity and arrogance. They were not to be compared with my angelic 10-year old loves in Blanes, nor even with a ten-year old girl on board, whom I loved dearly. The first night we played tombola, I won the first House and stopped playing and gave her my winnings to play with: to her great delight she soon won the House. What is the use of blase, conceited females who are above being thrilled by anything? I detest them.
But this period of bliss also had to end, and soon I stood on the deck and saw the familiar, yet suddenly unbelievable, mountains of the Hottentots Holland range, across the Cape Flats.
CHAPTER 26: AN OVERVIEW OF MY FINANCES IN EUROPE
When I left South Africa I was worth about one or two hundred pounds. My salary in Britain was about L500 a year, of which I saved about L400 in the two years. Then UCT sent me L300 as a postgraduate award, for my studies in England. (Technically, my employment by the Brush Group was named a Scholarship, the main idea being that by loitering on the shop floor one was actually learning a lot about engineering.) (An idea that I don't particularly think it behooves me to quarrel with).
Then there was my gambling winnings from my card games. But that I forwarded in entirety to my sister, as it didn't amount to more than peanuts anyway.
So by 1958 I had ample funds to finance my six-month holiday in Spain.
Chapter 27: Back in Cape Town
On docking in Cape Town Harbour, I found my parents on the quayside waiting for me – I'm not sure if my sister and ouma were there too. They were obviously glad to see me, and we were mutually surprised at each others' accents, so mine must have changed a bit. If so, I doubt whether any such change survived for very long. When I hear myself, I sound VERY South African.
It was August; my sister's and my birthday were just around the corner. I stayed at home till my departure for Pretoria in June, 1959. For me, a happy, carefree period mostly, near to my adored sister.
I looked around for a job. I took a train to Somerset West to visit the Explosives Factory in search of a job. I visited the Cape Town Tramways Company in search of a job. I visited the Salt River Railway Workshops in search of a job. They managed to sign me up. This was October 1958. My career with the South African Railways and Harbours lasted till May 1965, when I retired.
My earliest memory of this job is sitting on a couch in a darkish passage waiting for an interview. In my wallet were four tightly packed pages of my diary of my last days in Blanes. I saw again the harbour and my girl friends and their voices. I felt extreme nostalgia for this lost idyll.
Being interviewed by a clerk I found very soothing. I seemed to be treasured as a valuable fish by some fisherman. I was amazed by the friendliness and respect shown to me – apparently the railways found it very difficult to find engineers.
At home, a great pleasure was in the fact that my parents had bought a “gram radio”, as it used to be called in those days, and started a collection of classical music records. I revelled in the heroic vigour of Beethoven's First Piano Concerto, espicially as I was contemplating some heroic action of my own.
I felt it was time I tried my luck with Eileen Buchanan (see page $$). I found out that she had moved to Somerset West with her parents. By February 1959 I had earned enough to buy a new car, my first, a Volkswagen beetle, for exactly L600.
I phoned her up and arranged to come out to her home and take her for a drive along the coast from there. After that she would catch a train to Cape Town on Saturday afternoons, and we would see a movie together. During the week, she had an office job in central Cape Town, for which she commuted the 60 miles there and back daily, by train I suppose. So during the lunch hour I would meet her outside her office to spend half an hour with her.
She was the first girl I kissed, a very exciting experience with her, much more so than with any other girl I kissed till 1995, 36 years later.
But her interest in me faded out, and after about two months our “affair” seemed over to me. She had not been at all the kind of person I imagined from our single meeting in 1952, six or seven years earlier. It was a shattered dream. But it did not upset me too much. I was rather pleased with the poem it led me to write.
Chapter 28: Leaving Cape Town
In June 1959 I was transferred to Pretoria, to work in the offices there until I found a more permanent position on the railway staff. I found a suitable room in the Burgerspark Hotel, a modest but comfortable enough home. There was a very beautiful young woman living there called Annetjie Pohl, but she was not very friendly and was, I think, engaged. But she furnished thoughts for day-dreams and relieved the otherwise boredom of existence.
I made a good friend of a colleague, a Yugoslav, some years older than me but also at the start of his career with the Railways. We spent most of our free time together, taking a couple of Yugoslav girls he knew to the drive-in cinema, going to swimming spots in the weekend. One weekend he took me with him (actually I took him in my car, he did not have one) to stay with some friends of his in Jo'burg. Presumably Yugoslavs, whom he knew by virtue of their common nationality.
Funnily enough, like Hira in England, he was also a good chess player, and also a good table tennis player, much better than Hira. But he had not played for years and had lost his form. I hammered him when we played at our boss's place.
Years later, in 1971, when I had not seen him for 6 years and he had resumed his table tennis career, he was playing for Northern Transvaal and was in the provincial team visiting Cape Town. I went to watch him play against the Cape Town stars, and though he lost to most of them, he would have thrashed me.
At the hotel in Burgerspark I was washing my car in the driveway when a fellow resident took up with me and befriended me. She was an attractive young woman who had come to stay there to get away from her husband, bringing with her her two kids, a girl of about 4 and a baby boy of 18 months. She had thought I looked lonely and she was quite right about that.
Every day on coming home from work I would come into her room and get onto the bed, but not with her – with her 4-year old daughter. This girl loved me, and I loved her too. Her name was Irma de Vos. (I can't remember her mother's name, it is as if I never knew it, which can hardly be the case)
I took them for a drive to the Hartebeespoort Dam during the weekend. My relation with the mother remained very platonic on my side, but she accepted this pretty well, I'd say.
In September I was given the job of holding a vacant position in the Germiston works until it could be permanently filled by a suitable candidate. It was too senior a position for my level, but they had to make do with me for three months. Every day I commuted the 30-odd miles from Pretoria.
In the Germiston office I remember dozing to recover from the late nights with Jovan Radmanovic, my Yugoslav friend.
The work I had to do was routine and boring stuff.
In December, 1959, I drove down to Cape Town for my summer holiday, to be reunited with my family. Jovan also came down to Cape Town on his own free pass. I found him a nice hotel near our house in Pinelands, and he spent much of his time with us. He, I and my sister went down to the Boulders for a swim, and had a good time.
In January 1960 a “permanent” position was found for me in Durban, where I lived and worked from then until my retiral in May 1965.
Chapter 29 : Life in Durban
Durban might be the cockroach capital of the world – if not, it is not for want of trying. The cockroaches are carefully nurtured in the city sewers, and never disturbed. Their large, shiny bodies cluster and hang, layer upon layer upon layer, on the walls in the darkness. Isaac Bashevis Singer would have found many, many, many good friends in Durban, if he had ever been so fortunate as to spend a night here.
These cockroaches make it easy for the Indian waiters to reward mean-tipping customers with an extra portion of cockroach in their soup or curry. Mind you, even the best tipper would still stand a good chance of finding one of these large, shiny jewels as hidden treasure in his food.
Looking for lodgings, I found an ad in the paper and moved in to the home of Mrs Galvin and her family: her 44-year old daughter Noreen, Noreen's 75-year old husband Clarence, two dangerous, hefty sausage-dogs, which spent most of their time out of harm's way (my harm!) in Mrs Galvin (Agnes)'s bedroom. Mrs Galvin also had an unmarried son, the manager of a non-European compound in Durban, who resided in the compound but sometimes visited his family.
Then there was Alice Jacobson, Agnes's second daughter, born out of wedlock, fathered by a high Jewish official in Indian railways, and aged 13. This family were in fact refugees from 1947 India. Alice was spectacularly, obscenely pretty, and was at a Catholic boarding-school in Durban, and came home for the weekends only.
I fell very much in love with her. I would lie in my bed on Saturday mornings, waiting to hear her arrival from school, with emotional anticipation. She was friendly with me, would bump her knees against mine under the table when we played cards, enjoyed hearing me play Beethoven's Minuet in G in the piano, and wrote me love letters in an unknown script to while away her time. If only I could have deciphered them!
Her mother was always encouraging our friendship and trying to further my suit, as she regarded me as good marriage material. Agnes and I liked each other a lot, she always used to say If only she had met me when she was young... and I thought her a handsome woman, with a powerful personality, despite her 64 years and the fact that she was supposed to have cancer.
In the evenings I would take them to the waterfront in my car and we would stop at drive-in cafes for chips, hamburgers, cokes, ice-creams etc.
Poor Clarence had a hard time of it. His wife Noreen was a fat nursing sister, usually in uniform, with a carping, indignant manner towards her husband, who was really the soul of gentility and good breeding, while Agnes really had the soul of a criminal tigress. She would pour boiling water from a kettle onto him at the bridge table. Sometimes he used to knock on my door, seeking refuge from the storm, and scurry inside when I opened the door to him. Poor devil! I don't know what he did to deserve these she-devils.
What else did I do during 1960? I joined the Durban Chess Club and played 13 rounds in the Candidate's Tournament during the year. (There were 4 tournaments. The Championship, for the top 12 players, then the Candidates, for the next 14 aspiring to promotion, then the Major A, and finally the Major B. Those who came top in their section were promoted to the next higher section the following year.
I won this Candidates competition with 13 straight victories.
My game was very stodgy in those days. Invariably I avoided open games, replied to 1. e4 with 1...e6, and opened 1. d4..., 2. c4. Most of my games were long ones and went to the end-game. In later years I became more playful and imaginative.
My days at work were half boring and half pleasant. The boring days were those spent in the office on routine paperwork and correspondence. The rest of the time I got out of the office, and travelled all over the Natal System.
Either I was a member of a board inquiring into some accident, at the place where it happened – we would travel by chauffeured railway car, or else, for a longer inquiry, our caboose would be attached to a train, and we would live in it, cooking our own food, for a few days.
Or else I might undertake a tour of inspection of all the water pumps in Natal, for which I was responsible, together with the Chargehand Pumpfitter. We would travel in his pick-up truck, and overnight in restrooms or maybe a hotel.
Or else drive my boss, Geoff Notcutt the Locomotive Superintendent, in a huge railway Ford sedan, to one of the locomotive depots at Stanger, Empangeni, Pietermaritzburg, Glencoe or Port Shepstone, for a get-together with the Locomotive Foreman of that depot.
Or else be sent out to the scene of an accident, to superintend the removal of wreckage from the line, while the Civil Engineering department supervised the repair of the line. Likely as not this would be in the middle of the night.
In such ways I travelled widely in Natal and became familiar with many beautiful places and routes. And also had some very pleasant times playing snooker with my fellow members of the board after a day of inquiry, or playing cards with them in our caboose. One person, Bob Mazzoni, was a particularly pleasant character. He functioned as our secretary on every inquiry, typed down the statements of all our witnesses, and even drew up the final reports – all we really had to do was ask the witnesses a few extra questions and finally sign the report. Bob was a stocky fellow with the build and look of a bespectacled prizefighter, a very efficient and imperturbable worker on the board, who actually refereed boxing matches in his spare time. Years later, long after I had retired, I caught sight of him on television, refereeing an important boxing match. He was also a believer in table tennis as good speed training for boxers, and I remember some good games with him on one of our trips.
Chapter 30 : Summer holiday, end of 1960
During my 5-week annual vacation, I first drove down to Cape Town for Christmas and New Year with my parents and sister, then drove back to Durban with my sister, staying at the most beautiful bathing resorts along the coast. From Durban she flew back to Cape Town.
While in Cape Town I met her boyfriend Michael and his sister Yvonne. One day we drove to beautiful Ceres in two cars. Lucky me, I had Yvonne all to myself in my car. She was a beautiful woman, with a generous build, an excellent swimmer and intrepid diver from high rocks into the small river near Ceres, an intrepid swimmer into underwater caverns and through underwater narrows. I felt rather a coward beside her casual daring. I tried to make progress with her but didn't achieve much, though she was friendly towards me.
A day or two later my sister and I left Cape Town. I was still very lovesick over Yvonne, which still clouds my memories of the start of this trip with my sister. But the feeling faded away within a couple of days.
We spent a night at the hotel in Mossel Bay. Into the dining room came a honeymoon couple. The woman was very beautiful and impressed me very strongly.
We took a bungalow at Knysna for a few days. My sister managed to swim a few strokes in the Knysna lagoon, about three strokes was about all she could manage. She was very thin that year. She had had much grief with my father over Michael, my father wasn't too happy to find a sleeping, drunken Michael inhabiting his front porch. Nor do I think my father was very impressed by the fact that Michael's main source of income was from the sale of scrap metal. The metal being supplied by his car smashes.
But I liked Michael, who had an Irish type of madness and charm, and whom I considered a considerable poet after seeing an epic he wrote about himself and my sister, somewhat in the style of Sohrab and Rustum. I was very impressed by his genius in rendering his name from Raymond Michael Gilman to Ramogil, and my sister's name Elizabeth Bruins to Elzabru, thus creating a memorable couple. Michael was lean and rather tall, not like his more solid albeit shapely sister. In a way I am sorry he did not marry my sister: it could hardly have turned out more unfortunately than her marriage did.
Back in Durban I stood in my office on the sixth floor and looked down on the roof of the bus which contained my sister and which was about to leave for the airport. A very painful sadness was hurting me, the sadness of parting.
Before I go on to 1961, I must remedy an important omission regarding my Hungarian friends. Soon after coming to Durban I met the Drexlers, a Hungarian family (the German name is immaterial).
One of my colleagues at office was a young Hungarian, Nesmelyi by name, and he introduced me to a pair of small Hungarians who used to call on him in his office. One of these was Ernst Drexler, a Civil Engineer (self-employed consultant). I became very good friends with him and his wife Marta and 3-year-old daughter Martie.
They had left Hungary during the troubles of 1956. I was a frequent visitor at their flat, where I mostly played games with Martie. The mother showed me a lot of warmth, but as in Pretoria, my main interest lay in the daughter. We all went to the beach very often, and on longer excursions we sometimes went in two cars, with Martie preferring to go with me. We were a bit naughty – I allowed her to steer my car sometime.
Martie and her parents conversed in Hungarian, so I picked up several Hungarian phrases: Come here, my kitten, are you stupid, what are you doing, what have you done, stay there. Ernst also taught me the word finom (fine).
This friendship with the Drexlers was really my main one in Durban. It continued without any disharmony through my stay in Durban, that is, till I left in May, 1965. And it continued beyond then, as you will see.
Chapter 31 : 1961 in Durban
A young graduate, Blodwen Davies by name, came to Durban early in 1961, having heard about me in Cape Town and, from what I heard by letters from my family, it seemed as if she had already conceived a passion for me and set her cap at me. This is not the type of thing that puts me off at all, but I did feel a little wary at the prospect of meeting what sounded like an unprincipled bluestocking.
She came to stay in a hotel just down the road from my office, so I got into the habit of popping in every day after work for a chat. She was certainly intelligent, without being at all pretentious, and became a very good friend of mine. Unfortunately I could not find a way to respond to her sexually, as I could just not find a single thing about her to attract me physically. So life became a little frustrating for her.
But still, she enjoyed my company and valued my friendship highly. She was reading Atlas Shrugged at the time of our meeting, and lent it to me on finishing it, which did not take her long. Both of us found this book unputdownable, and she also recommended The Fountainhead, which she had read previously. I found this book even more readable. 48 years later, when I first tried to reread them, I could not get past the first pages of The Fountainhead, but managed to finish the other book in about a month, though I found it terribly long-winded in parts.
Blodwen took to calling me El Diablo, which I found pleasing and flattering. Somehow I basked in her love, although I could not return it. Once we were at the small swimming pool among the rocks at Uvongo beach, and I was swimming up and down the pool while she lay in the sun. She took some photos of me that showed me as happy and fulfilled, something nobody else had ever been able to do. And even thereafter, nobody ever managed to take pictures of me that I liked as much.
Within a month I had met her best friend Siggi, who was librarian at the Pietermaritzburg University Library, despite being only about 23. Siggi was another very intelligent girl, but unfortunately she did not fall for me. I was Cupid's victim on this occasion. She was half-Swedish, a very handsomely built and sufficiently goodlooking blonde “bombshell”.
Round about this time I left my lodgings with Mrs Galvin. Alice had fallen more out of love with me, and more in love with another boy. Also I wanted a place where I could be more private. I found a suitable furnished room in a block of flatlets where my contact with other occupants could be as minimal as I chose. This was Greengates, in Clark Rd.
Siggi and I were both at Blodwen's wedding to Conrad Reitz, who was a probation officer like Blodwen and had met her at work. This wedding took place around May or June, and Blodwen left Durban soon afterwards. I was still in love with Siggi, but she had not softened towards me.
Seeking a way, any way, to win her good graces, it occurred to me to suggest that we cross the Sahara together, in my car. This took her fancy, to the extent that she suddenly thawed completely to me, start calling me “honey” and acting in a loving way. I was in the seventh heaven. I spent a night with her in her bed.
At this moment I happened to be doing a job at Albert Falls, a hamlet not too far from Pietermaritzburg, and I had the use of a railway pick-up truck to get around. I was sleeping at the Albert Falls Hotel, and visiting Siggi after working hours.
The next morning I stood on the ground in the sun at Albert Falls and was glorying in the thought that eventually, after 25 frustrating years of the longings of life, I had found my mate.
Back in Durban I had a rude shock a few days later to get a letter from Siggi saying in effect that all bets were off, and that she could not trust me. I forget why. Whatever the letter might have portended, I felt that her love for me had disappeared as fast as it had appeared, and that there was no future for us. I felt in fact that the episode had taught me a lesson, not to push my suit against unwillingness, but rather to abandon unresponsive objects as soon as possible.
That I could reach such a conclusion I find rather a remarkable piece of good sense, for my whole life so far had given me little reason to think that I would ever find a “responsive object”. It would take another two years of patience before I at last found a case of mutual attraction and could break my virginity.
During 1961 my sister and I took our annual leave in September. She flew to Durban, and from there we set out by car for Mozambique. I have some photos of this trip: they are more eloquent than what I could write.
Two photos show my sister on arrival at Durban Airport: a ravishingly beautiful, poised, sensitive yet sophisticated woman. The excessive thinness of nine months earlier was replaced by the full ripeness of young womanhood.
Another photo shows her standing on the stoep of the hotel in Goba, the first place we came to across the border. We were thrilled with the friendliness and enthusiasm of the very young waiters with their perfect Portuguese: vinho verde e branco. Very different from our native and Indian waiters and servants in South Africa, who were much more stolid.
We were also thrilled with the hotels in Lourenco Marques, the capital city. The Portuguese cuisine was head and shoulders above what we had experienced in South African Hotels, and less expensive. The Hotel Aviz became our favourite.
I also have photos of Liz on the small boat that took us to Paradise Island (Isla Santa Carolina). And pictures of her there.
But before we went to Paradise Island there was San Martinho and Xai Xai. San Martinho was a puzzling and bewildering place, because our hotel seemed to be in the middle of nowhere with no beaches in sight. Instead there seemed to be beaches scattered out sight in all directions, all deserted and apparently unusable because the sea was too shallow, the deeper water lost in the distance.
Our hotel room was nice, Liz had a new boyfriend, a colleague of hers, Manny Pereira, to whom she wrote in the hotel room. I talked to her about one of my favourite love stories, Turgenev's On the Eve.
At Xai Xai we found a wonderful hotel with a wonderful beach right in front of it: The beach sloped down steeply into the sea, and 40 metres out to sea ran a bar of rocks, parallel to the shore, creating a fairly sheltered pool between rocks and sand. Still, the water could get quite rough, and the waves could sometimes pass over the rocks, making swimming more fun for me.
Paradise Island was a true paradise. It had the special quality of most small islands, with a rather large hotel with many Rhodesian guests. With a nice table tennis table, on which my sister could impress me with her forehand drive, learnt from Manny.
Chapter 32 : 1962
My 1962 year had as main character Chris van Schalkwyk. Chris was a fairly lowly clerk in the railway offices, but I wouldn't have met him there. I met him in the Durban Chess Club, to which he belonged.
He was a professional violinist who had played in the first violins in the Durban orchestra, and given solo, touring concerts with his wife, Clementina, also a violinist. Due to some scandal with a married woman Chris was sent packing from the orchestra, and indeed he was rather an unappetising womaniser with a club foot and a stunning power and talent on the violin, and also a drunkard to boot.
The only job he could then find was as junior clerk in the railways offices, an absurd occupation for a man like Chris.
When I met him, Chris was married to another woman, Mabel, older than himself. He used to tell me that she was highly developed sexually. She often nagged at him, but his only response was: “There's the door, Mabel.” I didn't much care for her, and found her totally unappetising, but I suppose she wasn't too bad a person.
I visited Chris regularly at his flat for games of chess. He was keeping up his violin playing, and spent hours practising the great concertos for violin: the Sibelius, the Brahms, the Max Bruch, the Mendelssohn, the Beethoven. He played them all, and he played them unbelievably well, even without any accompaniment. To my enormous pleasure and appreciation.
I didn't find him quite so impressive when trying to curry favour with a young married woman in a nearby flat, or when waxing maudlin in his cups.
Just before Easter we conceived the idea that Chris would give me violin lessons. With excitement I bore away his no. 2 violin, a beautifully-backed French instrument dated 17-something with a very nice sweet-and-sour tone but lacking the power of his no. 1 instrument. I saw it with reverence, as it lay in my car as I drove away with it for the Easter weekend, as a baby requiring devotion. I think I paid him L100 for this violin, or could it have been R100. So confusing, these changes in the currency.
This made a considerable change in my life. It meant that every day, after work, I rushed home to my room in Greengates, practised for an hour, rushed into town for supper at an hotel, then rushed home for another 4 hours of practise.
This I kept up for the rest of the year. Then it fell away as I concluded that I could never master the violin to my own satisfaction. But this experience was certainly not wasted effort, as it taught me a lot and was an enjoyable, sometimes miraculous process.
At the end of 1962 I took my annual leave in December once again, and once again this was the occasion for a joint tour by myself and my sister.
This time she flew to Durban, as in 1961. After some days spent in Durban and environs, we toured down along the garden route to Cape Town, where I stayed with my family. The places we passed were our familiar favourites. As we got closer and closer to Cape Town, we grew sadder and sadder, at the prospect of this heavenly holiday coming to an end.
Chapter 33 : 1963
My practice of the violin fell away. Instead I decided to resume my table tennis career and joined the Umbilo table tennis club.
Durban was blessed with a large hall devoted to nothing but table tennis. The tables were of outstanding quality. Every day I met Piroska there, a Polish young woman devoted to table tennis, who played in a high league, and we practised together for hours. I reached perhaps a higher form than ever before because of all this intensive practise.
The Umbilo club was part of the Umbilo and Congella Sports Club, which comprised many sporting facilities and also a very comfortable and attractive bar-lounge at the one end of the table tennis hall. I spent many enjoyable hours in this club.
There was a young girl there, a schoolgirl in fact, who smiled at me in a friendly way. I found it came naturally to me to respond to her, unlike the case of Blodwen. I thought her attractive. I took up with her, and we became lovers fairly soon. This is where we both lost our virginity, which was not found to be a difficult process by either of us.
Her name was Hilda. I was 27 and she was 17, in standard 9 at a Durban school. She lived with her father in a boarding house on a pleasant Durban thoroughfare. He was of German stock, while Hilda's mother, of Afrikaans stock, whom I did not meet for 6 months, lived on a smallholding outside Bloemfontein with her second husband and other two children, Hilda's brother Michael and sister Ina. Hilda was the eldest child, Michael was 16 and Ina 13. I did not meet Michael and Ina at first, as they were in Bloemfontein.
I was a very regular visitor to this boarding house, naturally, which I shall call Jumbo's. The place was run by Jumbo's mother Mrs Posthumous, and Jumbo was an exceedingly likeable youngster with many jockey friends. Another resident was an oldish man, the father of one Melrose, who never came to visit her Dad. I forget his name, but he was a delightful old crank who told us that Jesus was a Cape Coloured. He and Jumbo were as thick as thieves, together with a very friendly young man who was always high on marijuana. We four men all got along very well together, and we loved to sit together on the stoep and watch the passing parade.
Hilda and I played cards together in the boarding house – for more serious games we went to my place ten minutes walk away. Her father did not object to our relationship, though he did once say that he thought Hilda should be getting around more and having more fun at her age, having more friends I suppose he meant. He did not seem to be worried by any impact on Hilda's schoolwork, though I suppose he did not worry because Hilda was near the top of her class.
Soon the July school holidays arrived, and Hilda's sister Ina came down to see her Dad. Jumbo was delighted with the discovery that Ina “poked”. He was always raving about his preference for very tight, unstretched vaginas. He had not managed to deflower Hilda, much as he must have wanted to, because she was much more reserved and shy than Ina. And a strong character who could keep a man in his place with ease.
Michael, Hilda's brother, also came down to Durban, and father with children went to stay in a holiday shack at Munster on the Natal south coast for a week or two.
I drove down to Munster to spend a long weekend with them. This was a very enjoyable time for me. My mood as I drove home with the moonbeams turning the sea below into a sheet of silver was happy and grateful though tinged with the sadness of our temporary parting.
Once Hilda had returned to Durban, our relationship continued as before. We went together in my car up the north coast for a weekend camping in my small parachute-silk tent. Jumbo warned her to beware of the snake in the tent. He was a very pleasant joker always.
And one day I drove her south to the Oribi Gorge, where we enjoyed a beer in the hotel.
The summer holidays at the end of 1963 were approaching. I was not planning on my usual trip with my sister, but instead to go with Hilda to her mother's home in Bloemfontein for a few weeks, and then down to Cape Town to see my family, with or without Hilda, whichever way that might turn out. My parents were quite eager to meet her, and my sister was due to marry Manny Pereira within a few months.
Hilda and I had an interesting drive from Durban to Bloemfontein im my Beetle. We spent a night in a hotel at Cedarberg. We had whiskies and soda in the bar, and behaved like a honeymoon couple in our bedroom. What a romantic place Cedarberg seemed to me!
On their smallholding about 5 miles outside Bloemfontein I met Hilda's mother and her husband Oom Dennis, also his son from a previous marriage. Or did he perhaps have 2 sons? I'm not sure. We three or four boys slept in parallel beds in one room. Hilda and I were not given our own separate room, things were not as officially open as all that!)
Nevertheless we contrived to couple somewhere, on some bed or sofa in some room, in a way I'm not likely to forget soon or ever.
All of us had a lot of fun on the farm. There were delicious ripe peaches to picked in the orchard. Oom Dennis fancied his table tennis, so I took him on in the yard. At night we all sat around the kitchen table and played Black Sal (hearts) and had an uproarious time.
Hilda had a friend called Ariena or something like that. Ariena's boyfriend was a Justin or Jurie I think, or something like that. He drove a small Saab which he boasted would eat my Volkswagen beetle up for breakfast. I took that in good part, as I thought he was probably right, but I was a bit concerned with what he might do to Hilda, with whom he flirted a bit too much for my liking. I must confess, though, that I wouldn't have minded it if we could have exchanged girl-friends for a night. The two girls would not have played ball though ... or would they have?
It turned out that Hilda was not coming with me to Cape Town, so I left Bloemfontein and went down to Cape Town for a fortnight. How I missed Hilda, and more especially our sex together! I drove back to Durban via Bloemfontein, where I spent a few last days with Hilda. This was the last time we met on these terms...
Because within a few days of my return to Durban I got a letter, which, shockingly, began “Dear Gurth”. Breaking it off.
The efforts I made to salvage the affair, I prefer to pass over. I was beside myself, but to no avail.
Soon after Hilda returned to live with her father at Jumbo's, and I continued to visit Jumbo and his friends there, so I continued to see quite a lot of Hilda, but I wouldn't say that we were friendly. There was really nothing in common we had any more, once out of love with each other.
CHAPTER 34: 1964
Early in 1964 my sister got married, and I got leave to attend the wedding in Cape Town.
I had dropped my chess in 1961 when I was too interested in Siggi to be bothered with chess. In 1964 I took it up again. A Chief Clerk in the Staff Section at railways headquarters in Durban was keen on chess, and invited me to his home where I met some friends of his, the Jouberts. Suset was a rather beautiful blonde, still at University, her father was a school principal, and her mother played Beethoven's second piano sonata rather to my liking. Suset herself was brilliant at chess, and more so at the piano. She also did art. But she was taking a Science degree.
I was certainly taken by her, and we corresponded by letter when she had to go back to Wits University in the Transvaal.
But I never made any further progress with her – she did not respond to more far-reaching overtures.
During 1964 I also met up with the Galvins again, and we became friendly again. Alice was much more grown-up – she turned 18 on 25 August 1964 so she was only six months younger than Hilda, something I never realised before, but only do so now as I type these words.
I found her attractive still, but got no better response than before, despite her mother's efforts to sell me as a good husband for her.
I also played chess in the Palmerston Hotel, where the members of the Durban Chess League gathered to play. The top players in Durban did not play here, but only in the Durban Chess Club. Kevin Claudius was the main organiser at the League, and he also played at the Club and was indeed the chess correspondent for the Natal Daily Mercury.
He organised a chess tournament in which the 9 regular League players competed. I won all my eight games, beating Claudius into second place. To celebrate, I had to play all my competitors simultaneously, plus Errol Tarpey, the previous year's winner who was now back in town. As reported faithfully in Claudius's column, I won all these games except the ones against Claudius and Tarpey. I never had any pretensions to speed chess or simultaneous play, anyway, so these losses did not greatly upset me.
In 1964 I got into a poker school, my first since Ashton and Loughborough, but now the stakes were much higher. I found these people through Jumbo and his jockey friends – a lot of these jockey and turf people like to gamble at poker too.
I did well and started to do a serious mathematical analysis of all poker situations. This work absorbed me more and more : on my excursions by caboose with my railway friends, they were disappointed to find me without interest in our usual social pleasures after work – all I wanted to do was sit with my slide rule and do poker calculations.
Eventually in 1974, when I felt I had finished with poker and was clearing out junk in preparation for a long journey, I threw away all these calculations, about 200 pages of foolscap size. A pity. These calculations were quite extraordinary, and gave theoretical bluffing and seeing percentages for every situation, in fact covered all sides of the game, so one could have used them to program a computer to play unbeatable poker.
Those with no interest in poker should definitely skip this paragraph. But for those with more interest in the game, here are some useful facts about when to bluff and when to see what might or might not be a bluff. Firstly, considering how often you should bluff: of all the situations that your opponent has to face where from his point of view you could be or could be not bluffing, you should actually be bluffing one third of the time. If you bluff more often that that, he will beat you if he sees you every time he is in doubt. And if you bluff less than that, he will beat you if he never sees a possible bluff. If you bluff exactly one third of the time, it makes no difference how he reacts, you will maximise your winnings against best play. But if you know he is inclined to see too often, then you can do even better by bluffing less, and if he is inclined too see too seldom, by bluffing more. The last sentence is obvious. Secondly, considering how often you should see a possible bluff: you should see two thirds of the time, more often against a big bluffer, less often against a player who bluffs too seldom. Don't always see, and don't always believe!
I don't know why I give this information away for nothing – I've never seen it in any book on poker.
Chapter 35 : 1965: Retirement
At the start of 1965 I also started making my plans to retire. This event was to take place in mid-May. I arranged with my mother that she would fly up to Durban at this time, spend a few days in a hotel in Durban, and then go down to Cape town with me in my car, stopping at various points of interest along the way. For her, such places were the museums (she was the Chief Librarian of the Cape Town Museum), Port St Johns and Port Edward (never seen by by sister and me), and we also stopped over at the house of Professor JLB Smith, of coelacanth fame, whose wife was one of my mother's three oldest and best friends.
I started my everlasting holiday by moving in with my parents. My father admired my good sense and good fortune in retiring this early, free of the trammels of marriage and children. Within two months I was already in love with two pretty female chameleons in the garden, Rita and CuaRita.
One day which I was spending in bed with flu, my mother brought two chameleons in to see me. She said they were sitting right behind one another on the same branch. I recognised Rita, but was amazed by the second chameleon, who was almost indistinguishable from her, so I called her Cuarita.
Rita was fragile and delicate, with very fine scale and bone structure, but ominously pale skin. Her nose seemed to bear the scar of a wound. To her I wrote:
Rita Ritita,
Sweet little Rita,
How is your nosey today,
My lovey?
She took to sitting too low on the plants along the fence, another ominous sign, and died soon, still not quite fully grown, unless she was exceptionally small for her age.
CuaRita live on till February, 1966, and was the apple of my eye. I would sit down on the lawn, next to the rose bush she was sitting on, to admire her, and one day she looked at me with love, then climbed down her bush and across the ground onto my knee. She had a healthier colour than Rita, and should have lived to a ripe old age, but died in a terrible catastrophe.
While workers were removing the wooden tiles on our roof, I was stupid and misguided enough to walk over to my sister's house, a kilometre away, to help her and Manny repaint it – they had newly bought it, their first and last house. Trusting my mother to keep an eye on the chameleons. When I came back Cuarita was lying dead beside a rosebush, from which she had been knocked down by tiles dropped by the workers as they carried the tiles along the path to the front gate.
Many years later I came to believe that everything that happens in this world, including the massacre of six million Jews or 20 million Russians, happens for the best in the best of all possible worlds, but in those days I was still very far from such an insight. Still, I did not curse God like the character in Isaac Bashevis Singer's story. Probably because I did not believe in God. Eventually I came to see that the invention of impossible Gods by the various religious leaders and instigators did not actually disprove the existence of some God. Nowadays I can easily imagine a God that is neither a logical impossibility nor an insult to the intelligence, although let's be clear, It bears little resemblance to the popular versions.
From which I conclude that it is the existence and influence of the false religions that is mainly responsible for the prevalence of atheism. A false religion is more blasphemous than no religion at all. People who go around reducing God to a cliché with their “Praise the Lord!” give religion a bad name.
One link only to my years in Durban remained: my friendship
with Martie, who was nine by the time I left Durban. We continued to exchange letters for another nine years.
Also surviving were two other links to my past travels: Jovan, my Yugoslav friend from my Pretoria days, and Hira, my Indian friend in Loughborough.
I had not seen Jovan during my 5 years in Durban. Or he may have paid some short visit that I have forgotten. During these years he had returned to Yugoslavia to marry a sweetheart from his younger days, a very nice and pleasant doctor, then returned with her to his job in Pretoria. Now at the end of 1965 he brought Milena down to the Cape for their holiday. My brother-in-law Manny took us all to Koeel Bay in his new Cortina: He and Liz, Jovan and Milena, and me. I remember this day for the incredible fun I had surfing at Koeel Bay, a desolate beach far from any houses, set in a magnificent position against a huge mountain, the highest point of this coastal range.
This could be quite a dangerous area for swimming because of the violence of the sea and its currents here. On the day of our visit there was a temporary freak condition that allowed my fun: the huge waves came over a sandbar where one could stand and wait for them, catch them as they came over the bar, and then continue to ride them all the way to the shore over deeper water.
In those days surfing as we know it today was not so common, most people surfed in a horizontal position, not a vertical one.
Chapter 36 : Holiday in Europe
Liz and I had been considering a trip to Europe since before her marriage, and now we returned our attention to this possibility.
Manny and I got on well together. I had not seen much of him before I retired, but now I got to know him better. He played table tennis for the Gordons club, which I now also joined. I played in the first team (comprising three players) and he in the second. He had a nice table at his house a kilometre from my parents', and we spent much time practising together on it. He also liked chess, so we also spent many hours playing that too.
He and Liz and I would go camping for a long weekend, the three of us jammed like sardines in my small parachute-silk tent. We camped like this in the Cedarberg, an uninhabited region of mountain, forest and stream, and also at the lido in Robertson, the paradise of my childhood, where we swam and rowed on the river. These were happy days.
Now Liz and I were planning a 3-month holiday in Europe. She had never been overseas, Paradise Island in Mozambique being the farthest she had got. Manny was welcome to go along, but he preferred not to. So off we went, to a few raised eyebrows from my beloved ouma, my father and maybe a few others. But such did not bother us.
We left end of June 1966, and returned end of September.
First to Athens for a few days, then to Mykonos for a week where Liz extended her swimming range from about 3 yards to about 30. We were reading Simon de Beauvoir's The Mandarins at this time. We enjoyed the meat outdoors in the evenings, the spices were very nice at these restaurants in Mykonos. Every morning we breakfasted quite early in the pristine sunshine outside a little place which served yaourti me zakhari (goat's milk yoghurt with sugar), which I preferred slightly to Yaourti me meli, that is with honey. (in those days I was not such a health freak). This was a pleasure we greatly missed after Mykonos. We tried the same thing in Crete a few weeks later, but somehow it was not quite the same.
The beach at Mykonos was about as perfect as a beach can be: not overcrowded but with an interesting selection of talent to assess: my sister and I were fond of commenting on the various sights to be seen. She embarrassed me at times with the intensity of her stare at these – maybe she was a bit short-sighted. Also I found myself reminding her at times that sound carries.
Secondly, the water was just right: beautiful blue, not too warm as it later was in Crete and Thassos especially, and, like most of the Mediterranean beaches, really suitable for swimming as opposed to surfing.
Thirdly, the beach was just the right distance from Mykonos to give it an identity of its own – about 3 or 4 miles, requiring a slightly hair-raising trip by bus. Somehow, all bus-drivers in Greece seem to be bent on giving their passengers the thrill of speed and scary driving. The road was narrow with little view of what lay ahead round the corners. And the driver was like a bullfighter, trying to miss rocks, walls and other vehicles by as few centimetres as he could.
I must say this style of driving does increase the pleasure of eventual arrival. Which fortunately, usually occurs, against all apparent odds.
This week was for me the peak of our month in Greece. The next island we visited, Thassos, was a great disappointment. The layout of the place (like San Martinho in Mozambique) just did not seem to work or to make sense, and the layout of the sea was the same: mostly too shallow, and hot as pea-soup.
But Kerkira (Corfu) amply made up for this disappointment. It rivals Mykonos in my memory for its perfection, especially the spectacularly beautiful Paleokastritsa, which however suffered the disadvantage of being just a little too far from the town on the other side of the island. Making the bus ride just a little too long. So that we usually went to the beach at Pirgos instead, from where we could see Corfu town in the distance. But the water at Paleokastritsa was just as ravishingly cool as at Mikonos, and offered added interest in that I could swim out to the yachts anchored in the bay for a closer look and as an objective.
On the local flight from Athens to Corfu I was sitting next to my sister and one of us was sucking a sweet (present of the airline) which we transferred to the other for a quick taste. This behaviour was spotted by a young American couple on the plane. It led them to approach us and we all made friends. On arrival at Corfu they tagged along with us as we looked for beds and accommodation, especially as I had more Greek than they. Then after that we all roamed around the town for hours, talking about a wide range of interesting subjects. It was nice to have a conversation with such intelligent people, in English, in such foreign parts.
After we were in Corfu for a about a week, we moved on to Crete for our last week in Greece. In Malia, east of Heraklion, we found the most delightfully furnished little room at a place with a most friendly landlady, a welcome contrast to the man at the first place we tried. Liz was happily drinking some beverage in our room, some Greek wine I think, which gave her a buzzing in her ears which alarmed her slightly I think. But I myself wasn't too worried – it didn't seem too serious a problem to me.
From this room it was rather a long walk, some twenty minutes or so, past picturesque windmills, to the sea. Here the sea was a bit too warm and choppy, so that swimming was not ideal here. But the charm of Crete made up for it. I felt this special charm of Crete from the start, from our first stay in the Park Hotel in Heraklion before we set out for Malia.
After our month in Greece, we flew to Britain and found lodgings in London for a look-around there before hiring a car for a two-week tour of Scotland via the Lake District. I have two special memories from this trip.
The first was a night we spent in a Scottish farmhouse remote from any town, reached by a farm road taking us off the main road, into a vale among the mountains, with a gleam of a river in the distance below us. We had to share a double bed, though our usual practice was to spend the night in a room with two beds. What made this a special adventure was the electric blanket which neither of us had come across before in any shape or form. I also seem to remember a specially delicious porridge served up at this farm the next morning. How did we come across this place? A sign on the main road, pointing to “Bed and Breakfast”.
My second memory was the house where we put up for a night or two at Garstang, in the Lake District. The daughter of the house was studying Domestic Science, with cooking as a speciality and she created a wonderful meal for us. But the most special thrill was the bedroom we shared. On the windowsills and furniture were glass containers similar to huge ashtrays, overflowing with exquisite jewellery. What a beautiful touch! Never encountered before nor since. It was so nice speaking to these charming people, mother and daughter
Part 2
Chapter 37 : Making Money
Shortly before retiring I had read Darvas's beautiful and exciting book How I made 2 Million Dollars on the New York stock exchange. This aroused my interest in the stock exchange, which was to be the main source of my fortune. I bought half a dozen graph books and started keeping graphs of the prices of hundreds of shares (equities).
Upon retiring I invested my money in equities and started applying the investment principles of Darvas. But the JSE was as flat as a pancake, taking a breathing spell after a huge surge between 1959 and 1964, ended by a slight crash.
In two years my profits totalled zero, and my retiring capital of R10,000 (about 6 times the price of a new Beetle) stood at R8,000 after my 3-month trip to Europe, which cost me R1000 in airfares for me and my sister and another R1000 for our other expenses during the trip.
I considered it time to make some money. My poker calculations were now in a deadly state of completion and I was itching to apply them. I found a school that played for high stakes through a newspaper ad requesting card players. These players met weekly at the house of Hampshire and Ruby, right on Clifton's beautiful 4th Beach. Walking at sunset along the footpath between beach and houses showed 4th Beach in an unfamiliar light, the tranquil home of residents rather than the crowded playground of holidaymakers. It was October, a beautiful month according to Leipoldt's poem, and in reality the evening light made the drive from Pinelands a pleasure.
I found the poker very exciting, as I had never played such high stakes before, and I was a regular winner. Going home with my pockets full of banknotes and nearly all the silver, which I spread over the carpet to gloat over. Then I would go to bed, by now probably 3 a.m, to dream of yet still more and more poker hands.
I was winning as much money as my Engineer's salary had been, and actually I had to work much harder for it, for the poker player has to concentrate like hell if he is going to play well. He must constantly be keeping track of how much money is being played for and calculating the odds. But this was a job I loved doing, and a competitive sport at the same time.
I might have been a good player, but ultimately making regular, good money at poker requires the presence of players prepared to lose regularly. Fortunately we had in our school a lady who was quite happy to spend three quarters of her income on the pleasure of losing at poker, and could afford this.
A friend I met at the table tennis club, Ralph Buchinsky, introduced me to another school, poker-playing friends of his. I spent many happy evenings with these players, all young men except for the dentist Jackson, at the house of Solly Goldberg, who worked on the staff of Argus Ads. One player was Spike Maisel, a most genial and happy man, and another was Gerald Kark, who likewise contributed much. The good sportsmanship of all these young Jewish men, each one with his favourite, mantra-like sayings, and their unfailing good humour and wit, stay on in my memories after many years still.
One player, Brian Rutter, a student of biochemistry, also played with another school, the Old Ladies of Muizenberg, who played for high stakes. Solly also knew them, and he introduced me to their school as a very “competent” player. One of them was the 85-year old Kitty Marais, the others were ladies in their seventies or sixties. I only played with them a few times, and if I had had to rely on them for my bread I would have starved, they were all such good players.
In October 1967 the Johannesburg Stock Exchange suddenly awoke from its long stupor, and prices started to rocket, a huge boom that lasted till February 1969, but was followed by a disastrous crash that was to paralyse the JSE for ten years.
This boom was hectic for me. I was constantly buying and selling shares, and rushing around the banks banking my profits. I found that the principles of Darvas worked to perfection in such a boom, and I could read a potential star stock just by the shape of its graph. I remember the names of my breadwinning stars: Consolidated Lighting, Sidcor, Sagov, Comair, Adingra, Brozin, and many others. My father, mother and sister all got on the bandwagon too, investing whatever savings they had, buying shares tipped by me with complete confidence in my judgement. Which turned out to be well placed. Also they all had the good sense to get out when I told them to, else the eventual crash would have wiped out their profits and capital to boot.
After an overheated and frenzied boom like this, as in New York in 1929 when lift boys were buying shares, a crash is inevitable. The more frenzied the boom, the greater the crash. and the greater the crash, the longer the recovery period before the next boom can start.
Once prices start to fall, you HAVE to get out. In Darvas's words, “run like a thief”. Unless you happen to be a genuine investor seeking to safeguard your hard-earned capital, and willing to wait ten years without any income from that capital.
I got out in good time, having outperformed all the unit trusts by about 20%. I had trebled my capital of R8000, with some help from my poker winnings. Now I could only sit back and watch the prices sag and sag and sag for a couple of years, till they eventually bottomed out, a bottom that they would inhabit for another eight years. I could make no money on this market, as I was purely a bull not interested in conducting bear operations. But I did not need to make more, I had enough by now. I no longer needed to operate as a speculator looking for the big kill, I could relax and become a simple investor. Which is what I did from then on. I gave up my graphs and study thereof, and let the unit trusts do it for me. Letting them do the work for me might have cost me 20% of my potential profits as a speculator, but I could afford that.
Since 1969, the only time I have ever sold any of my units was in 1987, when I judged the market to be too high, and sold out everything when there was a 10% drop. Prices fell another 25%, then bottomed out within a few months: quicker than I had anticipated. So I had to buy back as soon as they started to rise again, else I would have had to take an overall loss or else give up on equities. From which I concluded that I could just as well have ignored the whole crash, and that my actions had brought me very little gain, and exposed me to a possible loss if my judgement had not been spot on.
So when the next crash occurred, round about 1998, I decided not to sell and endured seeing half of my capital wiped out. But within about three years it had all come back, and from there went on to new heights. I had correctly judged the crash to be not too catastrophic, since recovery was not overly delayed. A genuine investor in equities has to think in terms of tens of years.
Chapter 38 : Ruby and Martie
When Cuarita was killed by the roof workers in February 1966, I rescued another chameleon, Ruby, from her bush which was also in a dangerous area: the workers were not yet finished their job. I kept her in my room for a while, till the danger should be past. She usually climbed to the top of the curtains and onto the curtain rail: also a potentially dangerous situation if anyone should pull the curtains.
My poem A Sporadic Non-analysis, devoted to Stuart Parker ( see www.chameleons.weebly.com , my website containing my poetry on the page POETICS) can be dated to this time. It refers to Ruby at the end.
This was the start of my love affair with Ruby. She soon resumed her residence on the bushes under the eaves on each side of our front porch.
Ruby might be out of sight inside her bush, but if I stood next to it she would emerge and climb onto my outstretched hand. Then we would go for a walk in Pinelands, hunting flies sitting on wooden gates, and visiting a patch of “July flowers” where many mosquito-like insects gathered, a favourite food of Ruby's.
At night, coming home from the table tennis club in the dark, I would see her pale form asleep on a branch of the bush.
Liz and I went away for our 3-month trip, leaving Ruby behind, but when I returned in October 1966 she was still safe and sound, still happy to stay on one of her two bushes in front of the house.
A boyfriend came to stay with her for some weeks, Rodniki to her Rubiki. Eventually she appeared to be getting fatter; babies were on the way. One day I came home to find her looking totally emaciated, her skin in folds, and the bush swarming with about 18 babies. I sprayed water onto the bush, which she licked up avidly, being parched with thirst. All her precious reserves of water had gone into her babies.
Zinnias and other flowers grew on both sides of the path leading from the front porch to the front gate. Ruby would descend from her bush to make a foraging tour of these flowers, and was often crossing the path, with serious risk of being tramped on by unsuspecting visitors.
We didn't bother to lock the front gate in those relatively crime-free times. A delivery boy from the shops or pharmacy, or the postman, might suddenly barge in through the front gate and scurry up the path to the front door. I suppose I should simply have locked the front gate, but somehow this never occurred to me.
Instead I would be lying on the couch in the lounge, listening to classical music, with my ear open for any sound at the front gate. On hearing such a sound I would spring up from the couch and rush outside to intercept the intruder before he got too far up the path.
In such circumstances I did not feel free to go to Durban to visit Martie, who was always clamouring for such a visit in her letters.
During my 5-year stay in Durban there were several longish periods during which I did not see the child Martie, but whenever we came together again the same magic seemed to return immediately. We were simply enchanted by each other, a process I find very hard to understand as she was a type of person that I did not think I really liked, rather rough and insensitive as she dragged her little sister by the hand over the rocks, sometimes causing grazes to her knees. Also she had brown eyes, which I thought was a no-no for me. So did Alice incidentally. So my for my self-understanding.
About two years after my move from Durban to Cape Town, the Drexlers came to Cape Town for a holiday so I saw them again. Martie was now 11 and her younger sister Judy was 6.
At first glance Martie seemed a little shy, but within moments the old magic was working again and it was as if we had never been parted.
At Groot Constantia, Judy rode on my shoulders as we looked through the historic rooms of the old farmstead.
But too soon they had to return to Durban and that was the last time I ever saw Martie. Still we continued to correspond. When she was 13 she met the famous fruitarian writer Morris Krok in Durban and tried to interest me in such a way of living. She sent me a picture of herself at 13: from being an only slightly pretty girl she had already changed into an extremely beautiful woman. She was also embracing the Jewish faith, to the great satisfaction of her mother who had Jewish blood I think. That was, however, immaterial to me. One set of superstitions was as good, or as bad, as another, in my book.
In 1974, when she was 18, and when I myself had been following the fruit diet of Morris Krok and others for three years, I eventually found myself in Durban again and one day went unexpected to their house, which I had not seen before. As fate would have it, only Judy was at home. Transformed into a slim, ravishing beauty. So I did not see Martie, and I decided to drop the whole friendship there and then as she was no longer replying to my letters.
Sometime during the period 1965 to 1970, when I moved out of my parents' house to a new abode, I was involved in a romantic affair, the most important since my affair with Hilda. I can't be more specific than that, because of the requirements of discretion, nor can I go into further details which might encourage unhealthy speculation. After this, I did not sleep with another woman (in itself a rather vague statement, but purposefully so) until 1984.
Chapter 39 : Playing the Recorder
I started playing the descant recorder in early 1969, joined the Cape Town Recorder Guild, and practised diligently. Soon I was a good player. A very remarkable young man, Richard Oxtoby, organised this guild. The guild met monthly at the home of Mr Bongers, a Dutch contractor. Usually these meetings were attended by about 20 adults and about 20 schoolchildren. A very nice blend, to my mind. Assorted baroque music was usually played, or maybe some Mozart piece, arranged for several recorder parts. And the whole group would be assigned to these parts.
Weekends were also arranged, at the ecumenical centre in Stellenbosch, where players could get bedrooms for the night. The whole mass of players, about 70, were split into two main groups, and smaller groups also gathered to play separately - the many halls in this centre made this feasible.
The first time I went to one of these weekends, I met the Claydens, a family with 4 boys between about 10 and 4 years old, who were not really much interested in recorders, but became my best friends for about three years until 1973, when our ways parted.
I usually joined the Claydens for weekend excursions to some seaside or waterside place.
Chapter 40 : Moving house
Several factors caused me to move out of 5, Achilles Way round about September 1970.
My father had retired during the year, so I no longer had the house to myself during working hours. (My mother had a full-time job at the Museum).
My brother-in-law was a keen soccer and cricket player, whereas my sister had no interest in these sports, so when Manny was playing on Saturday afternoons, I took my sister out to the beach, or for a drive during winter.
But now she had suddenly become unavailable for these regular get-togethers with me, and I also noticed a sharp curtailment in her openness with me. This marked the beginning of the loosening of my bond with my sister, a process which only reached completion during 1983, 16 years later. But I felt this as another disruption in my “family happiness” at No 5. I was in the habit of visiting the Catholic priest in Pinelands, Father Seba, for some interesting discussions. He was quite willing to rent me a flatlet, with bathroom but without kitchen, in his house across from the church. So I moved in with him, and stayed there for 4 years.
This house was between my parents' and my sister's, about 5 minutes walk from each. So I continued to see my family regularly, and indeed this moved restored a greater degree of harmony between us.
My friend Lorna Clayden considered herself to be overweight, something nobody would have disputed, and was reading books on diet to find an answer. This was enough to motivate me to do the same. After reading some absurd books, such as Eat Fat to lose Fat, I came across a book Fruit the Food and Medicine for Man, by Morris Krok, in the library. In a word, this book stated that man should eat fruit only. I found the arguments for this heresy so logical that I determined to try this diet for myself, and started immediately, on 21 January 1971.
After one week I was amazed at the psychological changes in me. A chronic depression, which I had regarded as the “normal” lot of man, vanished, to be replaced by a new feeling of well-being. After another week I found myself going for a 12-mile walk along the beach from Milnerton - a month before this, a 2-mile walk had seemed too long to me.
Somehow I knew that wild horses would not drag me off this diet.
This radical change in diet was by far the most revolutionary event in my life, with the most far-reaching consequences.
Of course I lost a lot of weight, but I had never felt better, and that mattered more to me than anything else.
For the first couple of winters I felt the need to eat cheese. Eating cheese soon restored my weight from 109 lb to 135 lb. (before the diet it had been 154 lb).
By the end of 1973 I no longer felt the need for cheese. From this date onwards, for the next 9 years, I followed a raw vegan diet with 100% strictness. This diet included raw nuts and vegetables, as well as fruit which included avocado pears in winter. This was the same diet as that of Essie Honibal, South Africa's most famous fruitarian, who has written several books on the subject.
My recorder-playing continued. Dr Wiles was a physicist at UCT and lived in a beautiful home on the hillside below the university. He was also one of the group leaders at the recorder weekends in Stellenbosch, and provided much of the sheet music from his extensive collection. He and Mr Chiappini and I formed a group of 3 that met regularly at Dr Wiles's house to play trios. He played the bass recorder, Chiappini the treble and I the tenor recorders.
Father Seba gave me the use of the church hall, where I would spend hours at a time practising my scales, becoming quite a virtuoso on the tenor recorder, much to Dr Wiles's satisfaction. He had nothing but praise for my playing, whereas I myself thought it singularly uninspired. At least I knew how to fit in with the other players' lead. However, he was forever carping at Chiappini's style of play and failure to respond to his changes of tempo. I myself thought Chiappini's play musical and satisfactory, and changes of tempo perhaps not always such a good idea.
I arranged a three or four movement piece of Mozart's for the three of us, for the ensemble descant, treble and bass, for me to play the top descant line (Chiappini and Wiles played Treble recorders, instruments in F. Wiles also played the bass recorder, another instrument in F. I played the descant and treble recorders, both instruments in C. The fingering was different for C and F instruments, and many players find it confusing to attempt both fingerings. I know I did, and I once made a terrible hash at a concert given my myself and two women, when I tried to perform on the treble recorder).
The three of us spent many happy hours at Dr Wiles's house rehearsing this trio, and finally gave a performance at a large gathering of recorder players at Stellenbosch.
That weekend there were additional visitors from another province, including I remember one famous teacher of recorder playing. Three of these visitors also liked my arrangement, and gave their own performance of it. During this performance I remarked to Dr Wiles, who was sitting next to me: “But isn't the bass too loud?”. (The bass was being played by the famous teacher). “Yes, it is too loud!” replied Dr Wiles. Like myself, he was not impressed. The bass can easily become too loud and overpower the other instruments, but never in the hands of Dr Wiles.
My Life VOL 2
CONTENTS :
Chapter 41 : A Fruitarian's Journey ..........2
Chapter 42 : Oranjezicht ..........................6
Chapter 43 : Return to Pinelands ............10
Chapter 44 : Kite Fever ...........................15
Chapter 45 : Departure from Pinelands ...17
Chapter 46 : Living in Ottery ....................22
Chapter 47 : Mathematical Pleasures .......27
Chapter 48 : Leaving Ottery .....................31
Chapter 49 : Kenilworth, 1987 – 1989 .......36
Chapter 50 : Mandy ..................................39
Chapter 51 : Return again, 1989 ...............43
Chapter 52 : Renate and Barrydale ..........46
Chapter 53 : Ingrid and Bridge ..................50
Chapter 54 : Death of my Mother ...............56
Chapter 55 : Park Estate ...........................58
* * * *
Chapter 41 : A Fruitarian's Journey
But my time in Pinelands was running out. Even the tolerance of the tolerant Father Seba was starting to wear thin at my eccentricities. I think he was particularly embarrassed by my habit of parading around the vicinity, often in view of his parishioners, sporting a pair of neckties playing the role of trouser braces.
I was also feeling the need for a change. A total get-away.
So I started clearing my stuff out. I sold my violin, my shoes and gave away my tenor recorder and about three of my descant recorders, keeping only my Mollenhausen wooden descant, a gift from Mr Chiappini. I also gave away my music stand and a lot of sheet music, to a group of players at the Museum where my mother was librarian. I threw away my 200 foolscap pages of poker calculations, a great loss to the culture of mankind. I had given up poker and music.
One of the strange changes caused by my radical diet was that I no longer felt the need to listen to music, and simply never devoted any time to any music programme, although I continued to enjoy the sound of it when heard accidentally.
Having divested myself of most of my possession, I now felt lighter and ready to travel. Round about September 1974 I set out in my Beetle bound for a farm near Uniondale as my
first port of call.
This farm, called “Vyekraal”, lay about 10 miles east of Uniondale, on the road to Port Elizabeth. It belonged to Emil Coetzee, who farmed fruit: apples, plums, peaches and apricots, mainly. He was interested in fruitarianism and became much more so during my stay with him, which lasted about a week or two. His wife Heike in fact complained that I had caused a revolution in her house.
He taught me how to prune all the various types of fruit trees on his farm, and I spent many hours doing so.
My second port of call was at Port Elizabeth, at the home of a woman who I had heard about from Essie Honiball, who was raising her baby on fruit only. Her name was Nanette Huisamen.
This baby was amazing, at 18 months it was large, on its diet of fruit only. A standard dish for it, as for its mother, was a blend of paw-paw, banana, avocado, with perhaps some other fruits, such as pineapple, and some raw nuts also blended into this “pudding”. Unfortunately the husband was not happy about what was going on, nor were other relatives and busybodies, who thought the diet criminally inadequate.
Despite the obvious fact that the baby was enormous, flourishing and the picture of happiness.
Sheer prejudice and stupidity, and later, on my way home from Durban (the furthest point on this journey), I touched at this home again, only to find that the mother had succumbed to the pressures of those around her, and put her baby on a more conventional diet. To me the baby looked miserable, without any trace of the beauty and joy I had seen before.
From Port Elizabeth I moved on to Aquarian Estates, a farm near Pietermaritzburg, where a group of people were staying. They had formed a company to own the farm and run it as a sort of community for people of similar ideas. These ideas included healthy diet, especially veganism and raw eating: right up my street. By now my 9-year spell of strict diet was just about 9 months old, after the initial few years of trying to reach the point of strictness.
I spent 3 very happy weeks on this farm. They employed Zulu women as labour on the land, and I often worked with them. I was learning Fanagalo and could practise it on them. This is a sort of hybrid of native languages meant to be understandable by all natives in S. Africa. They also showed me many “weeds” that were actually very delectable salad vegetables.
Running the farm were Dawn and Danie Jordaan, who had a daughter Delta-Anne aged about 9 and a son aged about 11. These kids amazed me by solving an extremely difficult puzzle: to assemble 9 pieces with digits on them into a 5x5 square with no repeated digits on any row or column. To my previous knowledge this problem was to all intents and purposes insoluble.
I slept on the veranda. I could sometimes hear the fukwe (rain bird)'s song, sometimes an exquisite duet between two of them. I thought it the most beautiful music I had ever heard.
Sometimes I would take the VW minibus to go and collect the kids from school, sometimes a hair-raising chore as I struggled to keep the bus from sliding off the slippery, muddy road. Some nights I also enjoyed helping some enthusiasts to complete some huge jig-saw puzzle.
Finally I moved on to Durban, the furthest point of my journey. Here I stayed about a month at the home of Marguerite, my eldest cousin, and her husband Dudley and four children Rohr, Lloyd, Craig and Tia, whose ages ranged from 16 down to 11.
I had seen almost nothing of this family since my departure from Durban in 1965, over 9 years before. Now I was surprised to find that Dudley had a large number of books on fruitarianism in his lounge, and was very knowledgeable about the subject. He was in fact trying to make progress in becoming a fruitarian himself. During my stay with him, I was to see him holding out well for about a week, every time, and then caving in and going on a binge.
All four of his children were also very keen on the idea of a fruit diet, and I spent many happy hours with them collaborating on the preparation of fruit and vegetable juices from recipes in Kulvinskas's epic Love your Body, which I was carrying with me on my travels.
I also spent much time in their garden experimenting with many kinds of sprouts.
During this stay of mine in Durban, Jovan, my old friend from my Pretoria days, came to Natal for a camping holiday with his two sons, Milan and Dusan, aged about 6 and 8. I had not seen Jovan since his visit to Cape Town in 1966, and his sons never.
I went to visit Jovan and his boys in their tent outside Durban, and I found these boys to be most enchanting. Jovan was constantly playing games with them, and showed himself to be an excellent father.
Chapter 42 : Oranjezicht
Back in Cape Town, I stayed with Liz and Manny at their house in Pinelands for a couple of weeks while looking for a new abode.
I found a beautiful old house in Oranjezicht that took about 6 boarders, and there I spent over two years.
Oranjezicht lies at the upper side of Cape Town city, on the side of Table Mountain. From our flat, tiled rooftop, where I spent much time sunbathing in winter, I had a nice view of the city below.
I spent hours walking every day, either halfway up the mountain to fetch fresh, clean drinking water from where it emerged from the mountain at a spring or else scouring the mountainside for mushrooms in autumn, or else running down the hill on the grass through the De Waal Park to the shops in the city to buy fruit or beetroot.
In my bedroom, which always gathered the rising sun, I grew wheat sprouts on my window-sill.
Early in my stay in Oranjezicht I was accosted one day in the street by a young woman, Nina Romm. We became good friends. She was an art student at Michaelis, and also fancied himself a bit at chess. Perhaps I should mention that at that time I sported a huge beard and a very long ponytail.
She became a diet mate, and in fact did heroic deeds in diet. Her figure changed from a bit too fat to exceedingly slender. And she started to amaze her yoga teacher with her progress, a teacher called Simone Williams whom I had never met and would not meet for another 4 years. Nina and I would run barefoot through the narrow streets of Gardens, an area of the city just below Oranjezicht, in the rain of June, searching the shops for beetroot and beet leaves, which we would use to make raw juice. (When I met Simone Williams in 1979, in an entirely different context, and we discovered that we had both known Nina, Simone told me she was the best yoga pupil she ever had).
In 1975 a convention was held in the Art Gallery annex, called Ways to the Centre. Many lectures were given, for example one lecture, on Mandalas, was given by my old professor of Applied Mathematics, Professor Whiteman, who also translated the Upanishads and wrote books on his mystical experiences. Another lecture was given by a young man called Richard Olds. I made friends with him immediately after his lecture.
From that date onwards I was walking to Hopeville, at the far end of Loader Street, nearly every day. Hopeville was the name of the house where Richard, his girl Penny, and a taxi-driver called Mike lived. It was right at the other end of the city from where I lived, about 2 miles away, and situated on the bottom of Signal Hill.
There were always guests visiting at all hours at Hopeville, mostly young men: nobody seemed to do any work, except Mike. Richard did free-lance work, making sets for stage productions by Capab. He also made a glass pyramid in his back garden, and also an Orgone Box (he was a great believer in Wilhelm Reich), both for human occupation. I kept strictly away from them. I always had my own ideas.
They all took pot continuously, and I loved the way it made them, but one day I got them to try a new sort of high. First, we all went out to gather dandelion plants on the hillside. Next, I got them to wash the sand off the roots. Next , the plants, with roots intact, were put through a juicer.
The juice is extremely potent and extremely bitter, but I always love its taste. Each one had about half a glass, which is really a huge amount. After that we were all high the whole night through. And they all conceded it was as good as pot. I myself just felt possessed of an indestructible strength and energy, nor was there any let-down afterwards.
A few houses before the end of Loader Street and Hopeville was the house of Chaim. In front of which was a most magnificent comfrey plant, practically under a water tap, and well watered. Every day, on passing, I would help myself to a few huge, luscious leaves and chomp them immediately. Chaim didn't mind at all.
Richard was greatly influenced by my example in diet, and soon had many bottles of sprouts going, mostly alfalfa. For a year he made great efforts to adapt to this diet of raw vegan food, but could never get rid of a chronic sort of bronchitis which only seemed to get worse.
That is the most discouraging thing about diet: the truth of existence is per ardua ad astra : there is no gain without pain and particularly in diet you have to go through the flame of life to atone for your whole life of self-poisoning. You have to get worse before you can get better. It's just in the mechanism of the way in which the body rebuilds itself. One has to stick it out, for years if necessary.
By May 1975 my niece Lisa (my sister's only child)
was turning 3, and from now on, for the next six years, I would spend much time with her.
Liz had a half-day job as haematologist at Groote Schuur Hospital. I would drive from Oranjezicht to the hospital at 1pm, park my car there, then get a lift with her to her home at Pinelands. There she would likely as not read a book by the side of her swimming-pool while Lisa and I played happily together. We built with blocks, coloured in pictures, or went for a walk. Or I would pull her along the pavements with a rope attached to her scooter. After a few hours I would walk back to my car, parked about 3 miles away, and return to Oranjezicht.
Nina had an 18-year-old sister who was studying in the Transvaal. Her name was Norma. I met her briefly when she came down to Cape Town for a short holiday. Later I was to get to know her better.
Chapter 43 : Return to Pinelands
A twelve-year cycle, broken into two equal 6-year portions, was starting to show up in my life:
1958-1965: away from 5, Achilles Way, Pinelands
1965-1970: at 5, Achilles Way, Pinelands
1970-1977: away from 5, Achilles Way, Pinelands
1977-1983: at 5, Achilles Way, Pinelands
1983-1989: away from 5, Achilles Way, Pinelands
1989- : return to 5, Achilles Way, Pinelands.
In May 1977 my father died, leaving my mother alone in the house. I decided to return to stay with my mother.
Norma moved to Cape Town soon after this, and found a Dutch boyfriend about 37 years older than herself. She was now at UCT and, after her previous courses in firstly Western Philosophy and thereafter Eastern Philosophy, was now studying Sociology. During her period as student she moved in with Ernst in his flat on the eighteenth floor of the Pick and Pay tower in the Gardens. There I would frequently go to visit her, usually for a game of chess (she once beat me 6 games in a row, having been the Transvaal woman's champion) or else we would go to the Sea Point promenade to fly two of my small kites. But I must remember that I only started making kites in 1982, so this is probably looking ahead to 1983.
On getting her degree in Sociology, Norma applied for and obtained a post as lecturer in Pretoria. But Ernst refused to leave Cape Town, so it looked as if they were coming to the parting of the ways. Norma even asked me if I wanted to go with her to stay in Pretoria, but I declined. Luckily Ernst then changed his mind and went with her. He had supported her in her student days: now in the evening of his life she would be happy to support him.
The last time I heard from Norma was about 1987, when her relationship with Ernst was still going strong. She always referred to him as her “baby”, had no desire for any other children of her own, and as a Geminian proved to be a model of the constant heart. She got her PhD, and a year ago or so when I tried to trace her whereabouts, the trail led to Hull University, but then petered out.
Of course, in Pinelands I saw even more of my young niece.
In 1979 I moved out of the Pinelands house for the winter months March to September, to stay in a commune in Muizenberg. This was The Towers, a very large building that had previously been a monastery or nunnery. It now housed the headquarters of Odyssey, a New Age magazine, and upstairs was a balcony with about half a dozen 6ft by 6ft cells opening onto it. Jill Iggulden, the editress, had the end cell which was slightly larger, and I had the cell next to it, which had room for my camp stretcher, a garden chair, and not much else.
There were about 20 people, mostly quite young, staying at the Towers and we led rather a pleasant, sociable life. There was even a table tennis room where I had some good games with Manny when he brought Liz and Liza for a visit.
There was a cottage in the front garden of the Towers, abutting on the road outside, rented by a couple, Ivan and Katinka Hall, and their 6-year-old daughter Tamsin.
Katinka was my first real astrology teacher, and showed me how to draw up complete horoscopes, a quantum leap beyond Sun Sign astrology. At the Towers I also met Bruce Hewett, one of the foremost English-speaking S. African poets, who was also a very advanced astrologer. He lent me Alice Bailey's Esoteric Astrology, which is without doubt the most important book on astrology ever written.
I used to love going for short shopping outings with Katinka in her car. She was a little worried by Tamsin, or perhaps I should rather say her relationship her, and I myself, used to basking in the confidence and love of small children, found her very distant and reserved. But then, quite suddenly, after several weeks, Tamsin thawed towards me. From one extreme to another, I was now her favourite, and even invited to sleep in the other bed in her room. Which I enjoyed doing. But this friendship was not to develop further, for the time to say goodbye was now on all of us – Jill Iggulden's tenancy of the Towers was now at an end, and was not to be renewed.
Back in Pinelands, September 1979, life resumed where it had left off, my most regular and meaningful activity being my daily visits to my niece. Our favourite game was to recite a piece of poetry when on a walk or out somewhere, alone together or with others. The rule was that one of us barked out a word or two, then the other had to continue with a word or two, and so. The poem was:
“This is the weather the cuckoo likes
And so do I,
When showers betumble the chestnut spikes,
And nestlings fly.”
Lisa always wangled it so that the word “nestlings” fell to her – of course I didn't try too hard to upset that apple-cart.
Another game that afforded both of us enormous hilarity was making up peculiar surnames on the spur of the moment. Mr this and Mrs that. None of our efforts come to mind now, alas.
My chief memory of 1980 was the advent of a considerable comet in my life: Rubik's Cube. These things became ubiquitous for several years, they took over cars and television screens even. No child was without one, and few grown-ups. I relished the challenge of this cube, to solve it with no outside help: this kept me busy for over a week, till I had worked out my first, most primitive methods.
And it also kept me busy for years afterwards. I was trying to find new and better methods of solving it. I was not interested in speed, but in the shortest possible number of moves, and the simplest and most elegant methods. Later, after 1989, when I really took up computer programming as the biggest hobby of my entire life, I wrote a program to assist me with solving the Cube. Together, computer and I could be pretty sure of solving any position in 31 or 32 moves at the most.
In 1979, at the Towers, I also reviewed some scientific books for Odyssey. One of these was Michel Gauquelin's Spheres of Destiny. This book presented the author's scientific, statistical researches into some aspects of astrology. He offered overwhelming scientific proof of some of the postulates of astrology. In my review I suggested that more such researches were needed in order to give astrology more respectability in more scientific circles.
Now in 1980 and 1981 my own curiosity compelled me to do such researches on my own. Step one: drawing up a list of 420 geniuses with birthdates. Step two: going daily to the Royal Observatory in Observatory, to use their almanacs to get planetary positions going back to 1750, and hence drawing up the horoscopes of these geniuses. Step three: analysing these horoscopes to discover the particular properties of their horoscopes that made them geniuses.
I got very interesting results, which proved the importance of astrological “aspects” (angles between planets), an aspect of astrology not covered in Gauquelin's work, especially in the horoscopes of genius.
Chapter 44 : Kite Fever
In November 1981 there began a new craze of mine.
The only kites I had ever tried to build were some abortive efforts at boarding school. But now I was possessed of a demonic urge to make and fly kites. Where this came from I cannot now remember at all.
The first kite I made was a triangular box kite just under a foot long. The three main spars were plastic drinking straws of very large diameter. The front box was made of plastic from a thin shopping bag, the rear box of paper from a glossy magazine. This kite was seldom able to be enticed to fly, but one day at last I enjoyed a beautiful sight of this kite in steady flight, in very kind, steady conditions of wind.
A performance I was never able to repeat with this kite, in spite of many attempts at reconstruction.
My second kite, a fairly flat white kite the size of a big hand, flew fairly reliably among the trees and flats of Pinelands, thanks to a long plastic tail.
Eventually I made Delta One, my first attempt at a delta kite. It was made entirely of ordinary thin plastic drinking straws, covered with thin plastic cut from a shopping bag, and so was only the length of a drinking straw. It also had a shortish plastic fin, cut from a similar bag, with a cleverly cut hole in it. The cross-straw, holding the wings apart, was pinned to the wing straws with lills.
This kite flew with a beauty of style that astonished me, and made me a devotee of delta kites for a long time. My deltas went right up to Delta 32, yet I never managed to build another delta that quite matched Delta One for majesty of style. Some of these other deltas shone in other ways, however.
Basically these deltas were all the same size, i.e. pretty small, and made of the same materials. Delta 2, however, was unique in having spars made of thatch, intended for stronger winds that would have destroyed the lighter deltas.
For a long time Delta 2 would only fly with a drogue, which acted as a tail. Tails really spoil the individual styles of kites, and I try to avoid them where possible. Later I added circular plastic fins to the back ends of the two wing spars, which projected beyond the kite surface. These fins I cut from the plastic lids of cottage cheese tubs. They were fairly rigid.
Delta 4 was made from a blue plastic shopping bag. The plastic was rather stiffish and very crumpled. On a hunch, I crumpled it even more and ended up with a kite that could fly closer to the zenith than any other I ever made or saw. It was also a very nicely convertible kite: to cope with stronger winds, all I had to do was push a thatch rod through the central spine straw.
Delta 9 was made of ultra-light materials. On a completely windless day, I used to take a walk with this kite, which would happily fly in the air speed of my walk – about 3 mph.
Apart from my deltas, the kites that generated most interest were my miniatures, kites about 7 cm long, made using dry grass stems as spars, and invisible thread as flying line. Their tails were tiny balls of polystyrene strung out along a thin line. I flew them at Talk Bay pool in the gentle sea breeze, and also at Sea Point, allowing them to practically enter a flat window on the third floor.
I was forever walking backwards and forwards between the house and the field about 5 houses away at the end of the road. Naturally the kids of the street were interested, so I had to make kites for them too, also for Lisa and her friend Dirk from the house opposite my mother's.
While flying my kites I usually wore a caftan, to protect my arms and legs from the sun. and a sunhat of course.
Chapter 45 : Departure from Pinelands
As I have said, I was in the habit of going every afternoon to visit my niece. My sister and I had grown much less close over the years 1970 to 1982. Now in early 1983, matters came to a head. One day I was there, the next I was not. Nor the next, nor ever again for years. It was simply the end. That end took place inside me, and was not made manifest on the outside by any words on my part. There just was no point in expressing any explanation, or in fact even finding one for myself. I was just something that happened inside me, and when it happened I knew it had happened. As I left her house that day, I knew I would not return.
Since that date we have not really been on speaking terms, except for essential practicalities. Nor have I been at all interested in anything resembling a “reconciliation.”
My sister continued to visit my mother in her house, where I was staying. I found these visits irritating, to the extent that I decided to leave.
When I have been loved by a person or animal, I will treasure the memory of those happy times. If she then ceases to love me, she becomes to me a new person, who has no right to usurp the position and privileges of her predecessor, nor to contaminate my memories of her by her spurious resemblances to her. I will avoid her to avoid this contamination. This I have done with several women in my life.
For the next six years I saw practically nothing of my mother, sister or niece. Nor my sister's cat: which was a greater loss to me than anything else. I certainly loved that cat more than anybody in the world, and the cat loved me more than anyone else did.
In March or April 1983 I moved into a room of a friend's flat in Muizenberg, and stayed there for 5 or 6 months. This was Valerie Dade. Of course, I took my kites with me, and continued to fly them, mostly on the beach.
Delta 3 had become a superstar, and gave a magical performance on her one string one evening above the grass before the pavilion. She would climb steeply then veer off far to the right, then go into a nose-first dive on the right. Now I had two options: reeling in the line would cause her to complete the loop, turning clockwise till she pointed upwards and leftwards. Reeling out the line instead would allow her to turn left and go up the way she had come down.
A riveting performance that had the spectators spellbound. I also built a large kite, of a beautiful green colour, which I would fly over the beach in a very light breeze – her beauty was remarked on by a mother to her child.
Valerie's flat was Sunrise Mansions, at the south end of Muizenberg, squeezed between the mountain and the sea.
Similarly squeezed were also the railway line (next to the sea) and the road. At night I would hear the constant crashing of the sea on the shore (rocky at this point) added to the sound of the breakers on the not-so-distant beach. And the occasional rumble of a passing train. And (least musical of the three) the swish of a passing car.
Every afternoon I would climb up the steps to Boyes Drive and walk along it as far as Kalk Bay, where it descends to join the coastal road. There I would look for a large, overripe avocado in a shop that usually had some of these. Or maybe buy a 100 gram packet of Hazel nuts.
Val and I often played canasta, which both of us enjoyed, but seldom went out together. She did not seem to be fond of walks or other outings.
My main memory of Val actually dates to late 1986, when she visited me at my home in Simonstown a few times. One morning she phoned me to complain of depression. I gave her the following advice: go to bed and don't get out of it until your depression clears up. Well, it works for me anyway.
I moved out of Val's flat in September, to the Philippi smallholding of my friend Mossie, where I stayed six weeks. He was running a lucrative business growing and selling sprouts. I lent a hand here and there and helped him to drink his wheatgrass juice.
Jill Iggulden had asked me to write up my astrological research, done in 1980/1981, (see Chapter 43) for publication in Odyssey, and now at Mossie's I got stuck into the task. This work of mine was duly published in five consecutive issues of Odyssey starting in October, 1983, with far-reaching consequences for the status of astrology and the correct understanding and application of it. For alas, at present astrology still labours under a preponderance of misconceptions.
This was my first publication, and concurrently with my first article on astrology, my article “Biorhythms of Love” was also published for the first time, in the same issue, based on my researches into biorhythm.
One night Mossie took me with him to a meeting of a group of about 6 shareholders who were aiming at buying a certain farm, Hawequas, near Wellington, to turn it into a sort of New Age haven, something like Aquarian Estates I suppose. At this meeting I first laid eyes on Ingrid Peters, a youngish woman, still unmarried, who looked vaguely presentable to me. I was to meet her again 3 years later.
In my investigations of certain religions, with a special eye on their dietetic practices, I had gone to the Helderberg headquarters of the Seventh-Day Adventist sect, on a short visit in 1980. As a result of this I had got acquainted with a young married couple, Andre and Carol de Kock.
He was a teacher of mathematics in their Helderberg school, and also played chess, so I invited them over to the Pinelands house one evening. Where he gave me the surprise of my life by thrashing me at chess. He was obviously a much better player than I.
In 1983, while staying with Mossie on his farm during what could obviously only be a temporary expedient, I thought of phoning Carol to ask her if she knew of a place to stay. I hadn't seen her for years, so it was news to me to hear that she and Andre were splitting up. But she had one positive suggestion to make: that I go and stay with Andre in his house which she had just abandoned. This house was in Ottery, a couple of miles east of Wynberg.
Chapter 46 : Living in Ottery
Andre agreed with Carol's suggestion, and I moved in with him immediately, in November 1983. At least he would have somebody to play chess with. As it turned out, I spent three very harmonious and pleasant years with him, without a single argument or quarrel between us.
Andre had left Helderberg and now had a job with a company as computer expert. He was taking a course in Computer Science through Unisa. It was a piece of cake for him, and he topped the national exam results every exam.
His chess was quite brilliant, in fact his games were such works of art that I preferred to study them in preference to the games of more famous masters. He did play with me, but really these games were more in the nature of lessons than games. He played in the top Cape Town tournament of 11 players, and held his place about 5th among them. In lightning play he was even stronger, ranking about 3rd in the city. His rating was a bit above 2000.
Carol had moved in with her parents, who had a house in Plumstead, 3 miles to the south-west from Andre's house in Ottery. Andre wanted her back, so he visited them nearly every night, usually taking me with him. The four of us, Carol, Andre, I and Joan, Carol's unmarried twin sister, would sit together in the lounge and watch Dallas.
Joan was a non-identical twin of Carol, and a music teacher at a school. She always played the piano at the Adventist functions. I also heard Carol play the piano: she was also very good, but did not practise as much as Joan.
Their mother was a woman who fitted in very well with the younger set and was very popular with all of us. Joan had a boy friend called Delano, whom I didn't much care for.
In March 1984 a sort of festival took place in Cape Town. Part of this was the formation of a group called Come and Play, who were to organise events such as kite-flying days, new types of games for larger groups of people, such as running around the grounds in chains, and new word games for a sedentary game. I was roped into this as an advisor on kite making and flying. This brought me a lot of publicity in the Cape Town press, which of course supported all these festivities. People in the streets of Ottery were stopping to talk to me as they recognised me from my picture in the newspaper. In which I was hailed as the “Kite King” and some fairy tales were spun about me, which I did not object to as I thought it all good fun.
At this time I had also been contacted by a woman called Patsy Collett, whom I think I had met already in 1980, but had moved out of my ambit. Or maybe she contacted me; I can't remember exactly how it is that we got together at this time.
She was, like me, very diet and health conscious. We enjoyed some delicious March Galea melons together. We spent nights in bed. I wrote her love letters in an exercise book. Her teenage daughter came on a visit and much admired my poem To Marguerite. We conspired to save the life of a woman dying of cancer by putting her on a grape diet.
But there was a tension between the Capricorn elements in our horoscopes, a basic power struggle. The whole edifice of our friendship collapsed like a house of cards when our sexual chemistry, put to the test, failed to measure up to expectations. I left precipitately, carefully gathering such of my belongings as were lying around, so as to circumvent any need to return. I think neither of us had us desire for another meeting, nor did we ever have one.
About 6 months later I found a more satisfying chemistry. “I met a woman” who would be coming often to my house (this does not denote ownership but occupation) to pick me up in her old Cressida and take me out as a walking companion. I found her sexually attractive and indeed she said I was in love with her. In this she may not have been entirely wrong. I certainly wanted to sleep in her bed.
A desire not shared by her for many weeks. She took me for Xmas lunch with her parents in Glencairn. On the way back, in the train, she surprised me by inviting me to stay the night.
A night of intense chemistry, which I enjoyed very much, and she also expressed her opinion of me as an adequate lover. I think she was a bit surprised by the lengths I went to.
The next morning, she showed signs of silliness, but seemed to be determined to return immediately to a more businesslike mode, and the high-jinks of the previous night were not to be repeated for another two moons.
Incidentally she was born at the new moon, and by an “amazing” coincidence both her invitations were timed exactly to the new moon. An astrologer who had read Linda Goodman might have predicted these dates with total accuracy. For, as Linda Goodman says, a woman can only conceive at the moon phase of her birth, and if ever a reluctant woman is going to succumb to temptation, it will be at a biologically consequential moment.
Our friendship continued on a more platonic level for a few more months, until she returned to England – she had been on a six-month visit, partly to see her parents again.
About a year later, I met another girl.
In Wynberg, about three miles my house in Ottery, lived my friend Simone Williams. Yes, this was the yoga teacher of my friend Nina from the seventies. I had met Simone at the Towers in Muizenberg when I lived there in 1979. She was working at the Towers as a secretary for Odyssey magazine. But we spent no time together, really, and I hardly got to know her.
It was only now in 1985 that I got into the habit of walking to her house frequently. Through Simone I met several people, not least the local street urchins who were great friends of hers. They also became great friends of mine. Leader of these kids was Bernice, from around the corner, and in her retinue came half a dozen others. We had many delightful games with these kids, did Simone and I.
Simone also knew Rosemary Vosse, the chairman of the Theosophical Society, who had a house 5 minutes walk down the river, called Riversedge. (I never found out whether this meant the more probable Rivers Edge, or the more fantastic River Sedge). Many a time I walked to Riversedge to chat with Rosemary, and to help her address the hundreds of letters she sent out every week, to correspondents all over the world, but particularly in Tibet and Italy (she had married an Italian and lived in Italy). She produced a monthly Buddhist magazine which partly accounted for her voluminous correspondence.
Occasionally she put up people in her spare room. One such person was Helgali. Helgali was one of three sisters and a brother in a very fruitarian family from up country, but she was known as the black sheep of the family. She was not married, but had a six-year-old son with her.
I rather liked Helgali, and proposed that we should get together, even if not so strongly attracted to each other, for the sake of solidarity and companionship in the face of the non-fruitarian world. She agreed, and though she had a boyfriend, soon got rid of him.
We got on nicely, and were becoming more intimate, but then I did something rather stupid to upset the apple-cart.
Her sister returned after an extended stay in Germany, and called in at Wynberg to visit Helgali. I was visiting at the time, so I also met her. She was very pregnant, expecting any day. When I met her, I put my arms around her, and told her I loved her very much. Helgali was watching this performance, which was given in front of her, but did not seem to appreciate it too much.
In fact it seemed that she was entirely pissed off with me, and didn't want to know my troubles any more.
After about 3 weeks she got over her anger with me, and we reconciled as good friends, but the idea of a romance between us was now out.
But our new friendship went well and we had some good times together. Flying kites with her son, or taking him to the Spur for a birthday treat. I liked her son very much, though he was very naughty, if cutting up the curtains with a pair of scissors or setting fire to the dry leaves in the gutters under parked cars can be regarded as naughty.
Chapter 47: Mathematical Pleasures
“It is the activity of the intelligence above all that lends charm to existence.” - Such would be the opinion and philosophy of anyone who considered himself to be the arsehole of a mathematician, and it is certainly mine.
My favourite mathematical pursuits have been geometry, number theory, and more particularly Pythagoras Theorem and the Four Colour Problem and Diophantine Equations, chess, Rubik's Cube, Sudoku, Computer Science and Programming, and Cryptology. Of the vast amounts of time and energy I have devoted to these pleasures, most has been given to Computer Programming, Rubik's Cube, The Four Colour Problem, Sudoku, and Bridge Bidding as a particular problem in Cryptology: the problem of compressing the greatest amount of information into the least number of code-symbols.
Years earlier I had been fascinated by a book containing well over a hundred different proofs of Pythagoras' Theorem, and looked for more of my own, finding about half a dozen new ones.
Now in 1985 my interest in maths revived, and I became a subscriber to UCT's Mathematical Digest, to which I made several contributions to a grateful editor. My most interesting problems, published in this magazine, were an original proof of Pythagoras' Theorem, a method of using only the square root function and the four simplest mathematical operations on a calculator to compute the cube root of any number, solutions to Diophantine equations involving numbers of over 400 digits (numbers higher than 10 to the power 400), to handle which I had to write special programs for my BBC computer (but this item came much later than 1985). I also won the magazine's challenge to all maths teachers and pupils for the best solution to the Partitioned Rectangle problem. (I submitted not one but two entirely different proofs of this theorem).
The Editor liked also my Egg Cup Theorem, which examined this problem: supposing a spherical egg rests in an egg cup, with every point on the lower half of its surface in contact with a point on the cup, can the egg now be rotated to a new orientation so that no point on it will touch the same point on the cup as before?
A particular challenge I offered to all readers was to solve Abdul Wefa's ancient 3-square problem in a new and better way than ever before. After 3 months no answers to this challenge had been received, so my solution was published. One of the proudest achievements of my life.
But the culmination of my mathematical delights came only in 2006, when Sudoku reached an explosive state of development. If ever an activity had been designed to show off my most particular talents to the utmost, it was Sudoku.
Which is a matter of the purest mathematics and logic.
I revelled in Sudoku and the internet possibilities of communication regarding it. I published problems and also solutions to other problems. The champion creator of the hardest Sudokus in the world was Ocean, and the champion solver, indeed the only solver, of these problems was Maria45.
But Ocean's sudokus kept getting harder, till their rating reached and exceeded 10.0, then thought to be the theoretical maximum. I became the only person offering acceptable solutions to these problems. As thanks for my efforts, Ocean dedicated a new Sudoku, of enormous difficulty, to me, calling it : “Extreme Jade (for Gurth)”.
“Jade” was a term that I had introduced to describe a particular sort of sudoku: one that starts easily and then turns very nasty. I was the first to be honoured in this way by Ocean – thereafter he dedicated several of his new sudokus to other worthy contributors to the progress of sudoku.
My greatest satisfaction in sudoku, however, came not from solving hard sudokus but from my investigation into the properties of sudokus with symmetrical clues. (symmetrical in value as well as position). I popularised this type of sudoku by inventing techniques and challenging others to do the same. Several players rose to the occasion in a very satisfying way.
Whenever I invented a new type of symmetrical sudoku, Mauricio responded by immediately publishing difficult examples of the new type. This was fortunate for me, as I could not have composed such difficult examples, and so my techniques were made to look more spectacular, because even extremely “difficult” sudokus could be solved very easily by means of my new techniques. Other players who especially appreciated my new symmetrical sudokus, and excelled in inventing new solving techniques for them, were udosuk and RW.
My work in this field was given recognition in that , of all the dozens of solution techniques invented, named and listed
in the Sudoku annals, only one bears the name of its inventor: my “Gurth's Symmetrical Placement” technique.
The highest and most satisfying praise I ever received during my life was when the great Mauricio wrote in appreciation on the www.sudoku.com website: “Your technique is the most beautiful technique that I have ever seen, Gurth.”
Chapter 48 : Leaving Ottery
Andre had applied for a new job in the Transvaal, and on being given this position decided to sell his house in Ottery, so I had to look for new digs. Katinka Hall, my astrology teacher from Towers days in Muizenberg, had moved from her beautiful little house, The Nest, in Simonstown, to a new abode in Hout Bay, but kept the Simonstown house as an investment and was renting it to a young lady called Carina. Katinka thought Carina might like to share the house with me, as she was finding it a bit difficult to meet the rent. And so it turned out.
I moved from Ottery to Simonstown at the beginning of November, 1986, and stayed there for five months.
Carina Wapenaar, daughter of a racing car driver, drove her blue Beetle somewhat like one, and was 26 or 28 years old, the latter I think. My stay with her was very satisfying in two ways:
firstly, although still a smoker, she really understood the importance of a good diet, and was ready to be inspired by my lead and to follow my example. I, for my part, had slipped off my strict diet considerably, and had been eating too much bread and cheese during my stay in Ottery. So now I was motivated anew to set a good example and to improve my own diet.
Her smoking immediately became a thing of the past, and she took to a fruitarian diet like a duck to water, going all the way at once with no apparent need for an adjustment period. She was over the moon and feeling the indescribable joys of this wonderful diet without any payments and struggles of the sort Richard Olds had had to undergo. This happy success of Carina was a source of much joy and inspiration to me also.
Secondly, it so happened that I did something else for Carina that she found a source of great joy. Although very fond of her “music” CDs, she strangely enough had no conception of what classical music could be. For her this was a whole new world that I opened up to her, and soon she was revelling in the piano sonatas of Mozart, Mendelssohn's Hebrides music, the string quartets of Haydn, and much else. This music was provided on loan from the Simonstown library, but Carina starting buying her own records of classical music.
Carina had an on-off relationship with her boyfriend Kevin, usually two weeks on followed by two weeks off, followed by more similar cycles. During the “on” periods I saw a bit less of her, but for much of the time we went everywhere together. She was a dressmaker who had stalls at craft markets in various suburbs, and would often take me along for the ride and to give her a little unprofessional help.
At one of these places, I saw a woman, also a dressmaker, who Carina knew. I really fell in love with her in quite a big way, but this Elizabeth already had a boyfriend and Carina could see I was wasting my time there. This Elizabeth was a really exquisite creature. But I have always found Pisces women elusive, to me especially, and she was as elusive as any. These days I have learnt my lesson and simply do not look at a Pisces woman twice, however irresistible.
Carina's black dog Clash, biggish and very young, was also a source of joy. When Carina was too busy to pay Clash attention, I would take her for walks along the roads and paths on the side of the mountain. How she would prance for joy in the road outside The Nest once the two of us got outside! And when Carina was free to join us, the three of us had wonderful games on the rocks at the sea's edge: Carina and I would throw a frisbee back and forth, with Clash the pig in the middle, charging back and forth between the two of us.
In December Carina and I went for a very interesting weekend to MacGregor, about 150 miles away in the Karoo, in her Beetle. Which broke down in Worcester, about halfway to MacGregor, where Mossie was now living on his herb farm and had invited us to come for the weekend.
One of his other guests had already arrived at McGregor. This was Bruno, a free-lance mechanic, whose customers included Mossie and me. We phoned Mossie from Worcester, where we were stuck, and Bruno came out to fetch us in his huge truck. We loaded the Beetle onto the back of the truck and carted it to MacGregor. When the weekend was over the Beetle rode back on the truck, and so did Carina and I. A new customer for Bruno!
Bruno was a very, very intelligent Gemini, with total clarity of vision. Whereas Mossie was a devotee of Jim Hurtak, leader of the Academy for Future Science (of world -wide renown). Mossie inflicted a Hurtak session on his poor guests, who were all required to listen devotedly to the words of the master, on (or rather off) a CD, who ranted and raved in the style of Hitler.
This was more than I could stomach, so I just walked out and went and sat on a bench on the veranda. Where I was joined a few moments later by Bruno, who was equally disgusted with this crap. We had a good laugh at the folly of the others, in swallowing these fairy stories.
At this weekend in McGregor also attended Ingrid Peters, with her 8-month old baby boy Joseph. This was my second meeting with Ingrid, having met her for the first time in October 1983. She asked me to massage her back, which I did. I found it a very fine back, and enjoyed this experience quite a lot. I would meet her again after another six months or so.
Since round about the year 1980, a remarkable rapport had been developing between me and the I Ching. In particular, Sam Reifler's translation. His Taoist and Zen slant appealed to me, and phrases such as “you do not fully and easily accept the will of God” appeal to me, and even more the fact that Reifler usually speaks of The One and All rather than of God – a phraseology which to me seems the clearest expression of my own pantheism. And I also felt a deep understanding of his concept that one might grow to a stage beyond goals and ambitions.
And now in early 1987 the I Ching was again asserting its influence and relevance in the lives of Gurth and Carina.
A difference of opinion was developing between our landlady Katinka and ourselves as to the amount of rent we should pay. She was of a mind to ask for more; we were not of a mind to pay more. We held out again the threat of eviction. Because this is what the I Ching told us to do; it forecast that Katinka would give way.
Carina was starting to get worried as the time of our moving out approached : I'm not going to have a roof over my head, she said. Don't worry, I said, Katinka will give in. And so it turned out. A few days before the end Katinka gave in, with some excuse that is irrelevant, and said she would let us stay on with no increase in rent. Which we duly did.
During one of Carina's regular break-ups with Kevin she felt she had reached the end of the road with him. She came to my room and asked to borrow the I Ching. Then she went back to her room and let the Hexagram come. It was the hexagram of ending, using the word “unreconcilable.”
For Carina, that was it – the writing on the wall. Kevin was thrown out finally. He just couldn't believe she would act on a book in that way... but some people understand the power of the I Ching. ... the great Jung himself said it never lies.
But in March the time to move on came, for both of us. Carina moved to Knysna, an old dream of hers, to start her own business, a boutique, with some help financially from her mother. And I found a good place to move to, the flat of Monique, in Kenilworth.
Chapter 49 : Kenilworth, 1987 – 1989
I had met Monique Nauta in 1985, through Helgali, who also did some work at the Michael Oak Waldorf School in Kenilworth. And in 1986 I had visited her and her boyfriend Jakes at her flat, Leckhampton Court a couple of times.
Now in April, 1957, hearing that I was looking for digs, she was keen that I move in to share her flat with her. She had had an argument with Jakes, and he had moved out.
I agreed to move in, but first I wanted to spend a couple of weeks with my friends Elmarie and Alex, who would be house-sitting in a large house in Constantia for that space of time. They were wanting more company, and I was happy to go there, as I liked both of them very much.
The way in which I had first met Alex and Elmarie was in itself quite interesting. In December 1986 Carina had become interested in TM (Transcendental Meditation) and went to an introductory lecture, dragging me along somewhat reluctantly, as such things are not my cup of tea and never have been. After the lecture, people moved around a bit and I saw a rather good-looking man standing on the platform. Somehow I thought he had a friendly look about him which appealed to me. I went up to him and started chatting, with the result that we soon clicked. His feelings towards TM matched mine closely, and he claimed a passion for chess. Then he pointed out a very attractive woman sitting in the front row – his wife Elmarie. All four of us met one another and we all became a set of good friends. Elmarie and Carina would follow up their common interest in TM (both took and completed the course), and Alex and I would become chess buddies. Alex and Elmarie came to visit us a couple of times in Simonstown, and we went to the beach together.
I spent a couple of idyllic weeks at Constantia with this couple. One highlight was when Alex revealed that he saw no point in changing his shirt before seven or eight days. Alex took his Buddhism to a logical extreme: it went against the grain for him to travel in a car, because the car was using a tarred road whose tar was responsible for the mass murder of the grass population. Incidentally Alex was a highly qualified lawyer who saw no point in working and so did not. A year or so later he took the position of Magistrate of Swellendam.
I loved the way, whenever some disaster happened, that Alex would say, “What does it matter?”. These words were constantly on his lips, and I don't think Elmarie liked it at all. (The implication being, of course, that she did not matter either). The more power to Alex for sticking to his guns! Incidentally, I quite agree with his philosophy.
I was just a little bit more than a little bit in love with Elmarie. She could play chess, even snatch a game off me if well fuelled with pot. She and Alex were a divorced couple who had come together again without bothering to remarry. Maybe one divorce was enough for them. Alex had children from a previous marriage, but they were absent in distant parts.
Monique, my landlady-to-be, was one of numerous visitors to us three at the Constantia house, mostly friends of Alex and Elmarie. One day there were just the three of us, Monique, Elmarie and Gurth, together and I basked in the combined attentions of these two girls.
Then I moved into Monique's flat. It was a lovely, spacious old flat on the ground floor, with the back door opening onto a nice lawn with clothes lines not taking up too much room on it. The front door opened onto a spacious veranda where I did much sunbathing. Monique is one very artistic lady and the flat was very beautifully and inexpensively furnished.
Monique's sister Louise lived with her friend Robin in two tiny caravans on the mountainside above Scarborough, a remote beach on the southwest side of the Cape Peninsula.
Louise and Robin went away on a trip, so Monique and I took the opportunity of spending a weekend in their caravans. It was a nice break from the more citified Kenilworth.
After about three weeks Monique and Jakes made it up, and he moved back into her flat. So we were now three. A threesome that got on extraordinarily well together. They took me along with them practically everywhere they went, so my social life became considerably richer. Jakes and I actually became closer than any other pairing in the three. We had endless games, chess, Risk, and philosophical discussions. When after a year he and Monique quarrelled and he left, he would come to visit me against Monique's express prohibition.
After Jakes left, Monique and I continued to live happily together for another year, during which my friendship with Jakes also continued. And even then I only left because Monique was getting married and moving into a house.
One day in about mid-1957, I bumped into Ingrid Peters in a fruit shop about a mile east of “my” flat. It turned out she was living in Derby Court, flats about 10 minutes walk from mine. I took to visiting her and her baby boy. We became good friends. Often we would go for walks in the neighbourhood.
Chapter 50 : Mandy
Early in 1988 Jakes introduced me to a young pupil (in Afrikaans) of his named Mandy. She was just 13, and lived with her parents, brother James (11), and two smaller sisters, Caroline and Mary, aged eight and six.
Jakes was thinking of moving away, or else he had other reasons, but he was thinking I might take over from him as Mandy's tutor. Their house in Claremont was a convenient 20 minutes walk from Leckhampton Court.
The first time Jakes took me to their house, Mandy and I immediately clicked, as was also very apparent to Mandy's very perceptive mother, an Aquarian, Fen.
I became very welcome in their house, not only as tutor but also as companion, especially as a chess companion for Mary, who was very keen on chess and beat me always. Mary was pretty, and interestingly enough, she was a vegetarian, the only one in her family... they had all been for a while, and whereas the others caved in, Mary would not.
I was of course a total vegetarian, had been ever since 1971 and never would be anything else.
I also played tennis down the road with the boy, Richard, and volley-ball in the garden, partnered by Richard against Mandy and her Dad, who was the best of us. They whacked us good and proper.
I adored Mandy, and according to her mother, she venerated me. The harmony between us was indeed extreme. At 13 she was every inch a woman, and I never thought of her as a child. A very, very attractive woman at that.
It is interesting to note that in astrological terms, our Suns were trine, our Moons were trine and our natal moon phases were identical. Biorhythmically, our physical cycles were 100% in sync. So our harmony was exceptional. But there is another side to such a picture: there are likely to be missing certain needed elements: in our case there was missing the Fixed Quality and the Fire and Water elements.
Despite any missing elements, Mandy was by far the greatest joy in my life during that year, and remains one of the greatest loves of my life.
The rest of this chapter is about a short trip to Swellendam, and has nothing to do with Mandy except for the fact that I remember I was thinking of her a lot during that trip. It was when my tutorship of her had just ended, in early 1989... I did not consider myself qualified to teach her in the higher grade that she had now reached, even teaching her Standard Seven Afrikaans had been pushing my luck a bit, as my knowledge of Afrikaans is not all that great.
My friend Alex had moved to Swellendam, about 200 Km east of Cape Town, where he had become the town's magistrate. I went to stay with him and Elmarie in their home there for a short holiday. ( A holiday from what? You might ask - well, a holiday from a holiday.)
Naturally I played some chess against them both, for they are both keen players, but what I most remember is playing against a small boy of about 8. I attacked him with my King and a couple of my King's most loyal pawns, and after exciting vicissitudes and losses managed to win. Alex was not amused – but in general I don't think humour was his forte, though geniality was. His only comment was “ he knows absolutely nothing about chess”, being slightly annoyed to think the little boy might not be a party to such an opinion.
I remember little else of this time in Swellendam, except going with my friends to a local art exhibition. There I might have laid eyes on some exciting females, but am sure I found the exhibition boring – I always find such exhibitions so. I wouldn't hang any painting on my wall if you paid me, except for one painting which I actually bought for R50 and kept on my wall for a year or two. But when I left my last digs I left it behind.
My only other important memory of the Kenilworth years is another trip I made with Jakes and his sister Tinka to his family's holiday house in Onrus.
I had met Tinka, a very sexy young lawyer, some months before. Jakes was encouraging, telling me I could easily cut out Tinka's boyfriend. Somehow, at this remove, I am inclined to doubt Jakes's sincerity. As he told me once, his name Jacob means 'deceiver'.
But I was delighted at the prospect of a weekend with Tinka and Jakes in Onrus. Which is a beautiful place, where the Onrus river runs into the sea, with only holiday houses and about one supply store a kilometre down the road.
There are many shallow rocky pools, and a large beach adjoining the river.
On the first morning Tinka amazed me by proposing a game of chess! But somehow I do not remember playing any game of chess with her. I remember her on the beach, however, where she just sat doing nothing, or maybe reading a book, while Jakes and I had a whale of a time playing frisbee. Or at least, I had a whale of a time. Jakes was always so phlegmatic, I sometimes wondered if he ever really enjoyed himself. I think he was always too aware of the sadder side of life. But he could be very, very funny. I loved most his impersonations of a solemn preacher spouting the most hilarious crap.
Talking about crap, that reminds me of Jakes's birthday party, which took place at some dive or other. The party started with the usual meaningless small-talk, but Jakes soon killed that. “Cut the crap!” he demanded. He had a very incisive intelligence, and was a very tough nut to crack at chess, despite having vastly less experience. He thought his only chance against me was to attack all-out, and he did well that way. One move of his I rather liked: he replied to 1. Nf3 with 1. ...e5! saying in effect “Up yours!”
Chapter 51 : Return Again, 1989
In May, 1989 I returned to Pinelands, true to my 12 year cycle. But this time I would stay until my mother's death in 2004, 15 years later, at the age of 94. Except for two short periods away: 3 weeks in 1992, and 2 months in 1995.
Always when living at 5, Achilles Way, Pinelands, in my parent's house, I narrowed my social life to concentrate more on my immediate family. I had little time for other contacts. It's just the way I am: for me charity begins (and ends) at home.
Up till 1968 my Ouma (grandmother) and sister were my main interests; from 1977 to 1983 my niece was; and from 1989 I gave my attention almost exclusively to my mother.
In her last years, my mother was bedridden, suffered from bedsores, and most of the time I was the only other person in the house, undertaking a wide range of duties, nursing and feeding my mother, doing the shopping, organising gardeners and housemaid, paying the bills, dealing with official correspondence, and the like .
Once she remarked to me: “This is no life for you, Gurth.” But it was, I envisaged no other, feared her death would leave me motiveless and suicidal, and I told her as much.
Most of all, though, I was revelling in this opportunity for me to repay some of my debts. I remembered the days of my youth when she would bring me breakfast in bed: now at last I could repay the compliment. I have a big streak of Scorpio in me: I will repay!
During all those years, my mother and I were good companions. Especially when it came to watching TV. Here we could share our interests in sport – she was crazy and extremely knowledgeable about Formula One and golf especially. She could tell the characters apart from distant rear views, just by their walk. We also watched tennis and cricket avidly.
She also watched soccer, but I gave that a miss. I could never get to like this game, just why I cannot say – I don't know why.
Of course, we also enjoyed a lot of good documentaries and movies on Telly. Both of us also loved the Teletubbies, and watched them for years.
Finally, we watched five soapies a day together. A very important art form this, if you consider that a soapie can last about 30 years, a bit longer than any opera or novel. And also have the advantages of the movies: the visual and aural elements of drama. A picture is usually worth a thousand words.
Apart from my mother, my most important in-house activities during these years were computer programming, which consisted of writing programs to play Bridge and Jacoby and Reversi, and to solve the Rubik's Cube. Also word processing programs where I turned all the keys on the keyboard to use in triggering abbreviations. Also programs to manipulate 800-digit numbers, for my mathematical researches into number theory. Also programs to explore the world of fractals. Later, round the turn of the century, I had three years of musical inspiration, resulting in over 500 compositions. Strange that this form of creativity should have manifested itself so late in life.
My most important out-of-house activities were: firstly, in the early years 1990 – 1991, my friendship with Elmarie, next my friendship with Renate in 1992, and thirdly my friendship with Ingrid which started and ended with the start and continuation of my career as a Bridge player.
Elmarie had left Alex in 1988 or 1989 and married Theo van der Horst, a man I had never met or heard of. They were living in a flat in Kenilworth, and had a baby daughter.
I became a regular visitor to their flat. All three of us were keen chess players, and we spent much time playing chess. But we spent even more time playing cards, the three of us. We would spend the first half of the night playing poker for penny stakes, but with no limit – then the second half playing Jacoby, a very good game specially designed by Jacoby, of bridge fame, for three players.
We also all liked good music. Theo liked to play his favourite, Mahler, but Elmarie and I preferred something a bit lighter, Schubert or Mozart for instance. So we needed a bit of give-and-take here.
Chapter 52 : Renate and Barrydale
Colin Nauta, Monique's brother, was a computer specialist who, if he worked at all, worked with computers. Not programming, but more the hardware side. He knew of my interest in programming, and admired especially my perspective drawing programs. When my BBC Acorn computer broke down, he fixed it for me.
Colin, a Capricorn Sun and Moon, was a very paternal and generous character, and when I got a PC ( a more proper and less Mickey-Mouse type of computer than the BBC models, which used the less powerful 6502 microprocessor) he gave me some discs which taught me how to program in the machine code of the PC, which is different to the code of the 6502, as the PC used the 8206, and later 8306, 8406 etc microprocessors.
I needed to program in machine code, a much longer process than using a higher-level programming language, because I needed the extra speed for my highly computational sort of program.
I remember Colin particularly for one visit he paid me in Pinelands, which for me was the peak of our acquaintance. We went for a long walk together, eastward through the string of cemeteries along the railway line, and our conversation was as deep and spooky as the weird tombs around us, an ever-changing landscape.
I had not seen Colin for quite some time, but Renate had come to Cape Town and was looking for somebody to write a program for her to do astrological computations. Colin thought of me, and put her onto me.
This Renate was the very same woman, the elder sister of Helgali, that I had so ill-advisedly embraced in front of Helgali in 1985! I had not seen her for nearly seven years. With her was her 6-year-old son Ewald.
Renate was again just returned from Europe, having just divorced Ewald's father who lived in the Swiss Alps, and was spending a little time in Cape Town on her way to live with her mother in their house in Barrydale, a town 25 miles beyond Swellendam, about 160 miles from Cape Town.
While in Cape Town her aim was to buy a computer and get onto it a program which could do the special computations that she had in mind. This was not to be bought; a tailored job was required. To meet these requirements she hoped to use me.
But we got on very well together. We went everywhere together, and got together every day for hours and hours. As Colin remarked when we popped into his shop, we had “become inseparable”.
She found and bought a computer, an Acer laptop with a rather small and poor screen, but good enough for her purposes. But writing the program would take weeks, so she invited me to go with her as a guest to Barrydale and write the program there. I thought 2 weeks would be enough. I don't think my mother was best pleased with the idea of my haring off to Barrydale, but that was just too bad. She had taken a dislike to Renate.
I was very happy at Barrydale. I liked going for bicycle rides with Ewald. We went for car trips to Swellendam to visit Helgali who was living there with her son Konrad, who I knew as a six-year-old in 1985, and her second son Sam, who was now about Ewald's age. On the way back we would stop in a mountain pass to fill our water jugs with fresh spring water. Remember, Renate was from the highly diet-conscious Otto family, all fruitarians in principle if not always strictly so in fact.
The programming was going well; Renate and I spent many happy hours together behind the computer getting it to do exactly as she wished, which wasn't always quite plain sailing, as I had to get used to the quirks of the relatively strange computer language, QuickBasic as opposed to the GWBasic I had been using at home.
A rather amusing episode occurred during my stay. Ingrid, a friend of mine as well as of Renate, decided to come and stay with us in Barrydale for a while. A typical pushy Sagittarian, Ingrid tried to take over the guest room, which I was occupying, for the use of herself and her son, and relegate me to the lounge.
I wasn't having any of that, so Ingrid was forced to eat humble pie and sleep on the lounge floor herself.
Ingrid's pushy ways did not endear her to Renate's mother either, as she tried to take over in the kitchen...
in fact Nana developed a virulent dislike of Ingrid that I was now fully sharing, so we conspired together to throw Ingrid out of the house.
But the thick-skinned Sagittarian “lingered like an unloved guest” and claimed that her car needed fixing before she could leave. Eventually we saw the last of her and breathed a sigh of relief. Very strange indeed to think that in another three years I would be falling in love with Ingrid. At that time I detested her heartily.
Renate and I had become as thick as thieves and were practically engaged. But she wanted to go to Switzerland to make arrangements with her ex-husband for future maintenance of her son. This trip threatened to be of long duration, 6 months to a year.
I could not endure such a separation, and thought that if it happened it would probably cause the death of my serious interest in Renate. I tried to warn her of this, but such a warning could hardly seem anything but a form of blackmail, so realising that, I pretended to be happy with her departure, but with a heavy heart inside.
She left, and for the next six months I felt a great sense of loss. Something died in me, and when she returned, at the first moment of our meeting again, I could not respond to the warmth of her embrace. It was over.
We remained good friends, and saw each other from time to time on her rare visits to Cape Town, but never regained our closeness of before.
Chapter 53 : Ingrid and Bridge
In 1952 I had also joined a Bridge club for the first time: the Pinelands Bridge Club, which met in the Pinelands library. There I had played duplicate bridge with a rather unsatisfactory partner, a fellow by the name of King, for about six months. With poor results. There was no question or possibility of using one of my home-made bidding systems, as there was little communication between us of any sort, a poor foundation for a bridge partnership.
At the end of the year, however, I had some worthwhile excitement from bridge. I had met up with a chap, Vincent by name, an old friend of Monique, who was keen on bridge and willing to cooperate with me on putting together a system for our joint use. We did this, and had the satisfaction of winning the first prize for East-West partners at a rather fun evening of bridge at the Mowbray Bridge Club. But our budding partnership fell through soon afterwards. Vincent and I somehow were not a stable combination.
After this I suffered a terrible drought, the absence of bridge, for over two years.
During these years the animosity between me and Ingrid had somehow evaporated. We used to meet occasionally, have telephone conversations sometimes.
At her place in Plumstead, a house she was renting, I saw a friend of hers, Barbara I think her name was, that I thought extremely beautiful, so that my heart was profoundly stirred.
One day Ingrid decided to take her son Joseph, age about 6 or 7, to Epping station where an old steam locomotive was being used to pull a couple of coaches around the local sidings, mainly as entertainment for kids who would otherwise never see one of these obsolete old engines. Ingrid stopped in Pinelands, as we had arranged, to pick me up and take me along. By chance Barbara was also there, with her husband probably, and I caught a heart-catching glimpse of her beauty.
On the way back home, Ingrid dropped me off in Pinelands, where we had a bit of a chat on the grass roadside. I was probably talking about Barbara, and I remember thinking to myself how unattractive Ingrid was. I mention that with regard to future events.
Because, with the unsatisfied urge to play bridge nagging away at me, and knowing that Ingrid was a bridge player, I reached the only logical conclusion and schemed to make a bridge partner of Ingrid, for a successful invasion of some Bridge club.
That was in February 1995.
I broached the subject to her, and she was interested.
We got together and I started teaching her one of my bidding systems. I remember us engrossed in our studies on Fish Hoek beach to the extent that we did not see the people around us, some of whom knew us and were surprised to see us so thick.
We needed more time together, so I stayed with her over the weekends, and these weekends got progressively longer till they were longer than the rest of the week.
I also enjoyed hugely playing beach bats, volleying a tennis ball back and forth, with both Ingrid and her son Joseph, aged 8. On the beach at Fish Hoek, and also on Ingrid's front or back lawn at her house in Milford Road, Plumstead. I also played Uno with Joseph, which gave both of us a lot of fun, and the three of us played some simplified bridge.
In March Ingrid spent a week house-sitting in Fish Hoek, and I went down with her for this week. It was a nice change for all of us.
Ingrid and I were now ready to put our bridge to the test against competition, so we joined the Constantiaberg Bridge Club, which met in nearby Diep River, at the Musgrave Village Clubhouse. We had a lot of fun and did quite well – I was satisfied with our system, which we continued to hone.
I remember how we pissed off one old pompous ass with a 2-diamond transfer bid, which Ingrid had failed to alert, much to my glee. It bamboozled him completely.
We were both so keen on our bridge that we decided to join another club as well, and we chose the Milnerton Bridge Club. There we met more interesting characters.
In May I stopped my rather pointless weekly returns to Pinelands, and simply stayed on in Plumstead. My mother was not best pleased, as I “left' without notice nor notice of my intentions. Well, I didn't know what they were myself.
My stay, a highly idyllic and romantic one for me, lasted just over two months. Then my bubble burst – Ingrid decided to leave Cape Town and go and live in Darling, a small town about 100 Km north of Cape Town. That marked the end of our partnership.
I had met a German man at the Milnerton club, and he and I became friends and bridge partners. This was Kurt. He was a captain of industry, owning his own engineering firm which had contracts to supply Cape Town with lampposts, among others. A very intelligent, jovial and wise man, who when I showed him my latest bidding system, wanted to try it out with random hands, and soon came to the conclusion that it worked.
I had of course returned to live with my mother in Pinelands. Kurt's engineering workshop was just 20 minutes walk from our house, through the cemetery and across the railway lines, so I often walked to visit him – he ran his job with plenty of time to spare for such visits. He was also a baker of note, and also provided delicious vegetables for his visitors.
Kurt and I played mainly in the Pinelands Bridge Club, which was the nearest to me. (His house was in Higgovale, an expensive suburb on the slopes above the city). We gave up the Milnerton Club, which was not so strong. But we also played occasionally at the Constantiaberg Club, simply because it was such a friendly and pleasant Club, which the Pinelands club was certainly not. And we also played sometimes at a club in Sea Point, where we met some more interesting people.
But Kurt was somewhat overbearing and dominating, and we eventually clashed over something, I forget what. Kurt was also not so happy with his bridge. He was always making mistakes, at least in his own estimation, which didn't worry me but seemed to worry him more. So our ways parted.
Then I found my best partner ever, a man about 15 years older than me, a very clever player of the cards, who wanted to play the Precision system of bidding. My own latest favourite system shared some of the features of Precision, and Mike was very happy to follow my lead in evolving our bidding system, just as I was happy to learn from him when it came to the play of the cards, a subject that previously had never interested me to the same extent as bidding.
The membership at Constantiaberg had more than doubled, and the club now regularly used 20 or more tables for an evening of duplicate bridge. Mike and I did very well, I remember we once scored an unbelievable 75% for one night's play. And for a while we topped the averages.
I had introduced the keeping of averages for the last 40 nights played, and produced graphs every week showing, for each pair, their last 40 weekly results and also their average for that period. I used my Quattro 4 program to do this.
But what was happening in bridge circles was not to my liking. More and more restrictions on the bidding were being introduced. My system came under fire, some authorities objecting to it on the grounds that it gave too little information to the opponents, and so made it too difficult for them to play against. When absurdity can flourish to this extent, I think it is time to quit.
I think the final straw was when an official of the club stood up and announced that forthwith it would be illegal to open One No Trump with a singleton. Not that I would ever wish to do such a thing, but I had had enough of the restrictive spirit.
One night on my way to the club, I crashed headlong into a car that was cutting across my path. That car was a total write-off, as I hit it amidships, sending it into a spin, after which it bounced off a parked vehicle and then knocked down a wall on the other side of the street. Luckily the woman driver was not hurt. Nor was I, and my car could even limp home unassisted. But it needed extensive repairs, which took months to sort out. First the insurance had to be sorted out: I carried no insurance at all, but the woman was at fault, having gone full speed through a stop street, and so her insurance company had to pay for the damages, a matter of about R18,000. (My car, a Ford Tracer, had cost me R35,000 new in 1996; this crash was in 2001).
During the months that I was without a car, I did not even consider going to play bridge, and when I got my car back, I decided not to play bridge any more. Poor Mike was very disappointed. He had enjoyed playing my system so much ! He protested against my withdrawal from the bridge scene, but I remained adamant. I never saw him again. And I never played bridge again. But I would see Ingrid again, Ingrid with whom I had started my bridge career, after another 4 years.
Chapter 54 : Death of my Mother
The three years following my car crash were years of increasing isolation for me. However, I continued my twice-weekly visits to the Seniors Chess Club, under the Rondebosch bridge, on Monday and Friday mornings.
My mother's condition was deteriorating, and she became bedridden. Finally, in August 2004, she died, in very peaceful circumstances.
I was in the habit of looking into her room every morning at about 7, to see if she was ready for her breakfast.
Sometimes she would still be sleeping, and I would be careful not to wake her. She might sometimes sleep on for several hours. She would always sleep on her back, with her face visible.
One day she seemed to go on sleeping rather long. But her face looked just as usual, so I sat in the chair near her bed and read a book. I could see her breathing, so I was not unduly alarmed.
But the hours went by, and eventually I started to get worried. I thought I had better call the doctor.
The doctor came, and spoke to her, trying to wake her up. To no avail. Then a closer examination told him what was to me the astounding truth: she had been dead for about 10 hours! I protested that I had seen her breathing – the doctor told me that that was a frequent illusion.
I continued to live alone in the house till December, i.e. another 3 months. Then the house was sold through the brilliant agency of Mr Trevor Armstrong.
Selling the house was quite fun. A tour of the offices of the local estate agents showed more than a 10% variation in suggested asking prices. But none of these agents made a very good impression on me. Until Trevor came along one day with his assistant to look at the house.
What was brilliant about Trevor is that he built up a clientèle of would-be buyers and gained a deep understanding of exactly what they wanted. His idea of selling a house was not to invite a stream of strangers to inspect the house, hoping it might take someone's fancy – no, he already knew whose fancy it would take! So I was spared the procession of disdainful buyers traipsing through my house. Nobody traipsed through it at all.
Because Trevor knew exactly who would buy the house – and pay more for it than any other agent had dared to suggest. Their visit to see the house was a mere formality.
Trevor was a most delightful man to deal with – for me anyway – I don't take kindly to bullshitters. He even ended up getting more than the original asking price – how he managed that I didn't know, nor did I care.
Chapter 55 : Park Estate ...........................58
I found a nice room at 25 Thornhill Road, Rondebosch – two blocks east of the Rondebosch Common, where I lived happily for over two years. I was fortunate in having a landlord, who, though living in the same house, was a model of consideration and never nagged. There was usually also one other lodger, besides myself.
The main change in my life is that I decided to give up my addiction to TV, and not watch it ever or at all again. Well, at least for a while.
I loved walking on the common and would walk through it on my way to the chess club on Monday and Friday mornings, sometimes stopping to admire the beautiful clouds in the sky. This was about a 25 minute walk.
This chronological and retrospective narrative ends here. The events of the last five years are still too much in the present to be suitable for treatment here.
-THE END-