A week with Emily

We arrived at Tauranga airport just over a week ago to be met by Nic, Ray and Emily - smaller in real life than I expected her to be from seeing her on Skype, shy of us as we expected, and even more beautiful than we expected.

What a week it has been!  Emily is a delight - she has a wonderful little character all of her own - very determined, very confident, very stubborn and so loving I just want to melt when she holds her little arms up to me.

Day 1 and 2 she wasn't well and she spent most of her birthday party grizzling - especially when another babba was in her swing! Nic was chagrined, I  think - especially when she wouldn't go to sleep in her normal, relaxed way. (She still doesn't.) Our first day she stayed home with us because she had a cold - which we picked up, not being used to little ones and their germs. But despite her sniffles and her clinging to me and not wanting Granpa to hold her, we had a lovely day together.

And the days have got better and better. She's not keen on going to sleep in case she misses something, but the rest of the time she is a delight! She "talks" all the time and not just noises, real words and even sentences.  This morning I'm quite sure she told grandpa to take her to the lounge to play - the imperious forefinger pointed down the passage and she said "Bubby go there" - sure its not just my imagination.

She's developed 2 new words - Mummy, which she says with great deliberateness and such feeling, much to the delight of her mom, who melts! - and Bubby, which is what she calls her grandpa. I don't have a real name yet although she sometimes calls me Mum. Hopefully Granny will come, but grandpa is definitely Bubby.

She also needs to hear something just once to repeat and remember it - I have a picture of Winnie the Pooh on my nightie and we told her it was PoohBear. Now she whispers "Poo ba" every morning when she gets into bed with me.  But also recognizes Pooh on her stokies and swimming towel.

She's also done some more "big girl" things - her car seat now faces forward and she doesn't yell in the car any more. We had to change it around in the parking garage at the Mall because she yelled so much when we tried to put her back in to it.   She is standing up with really great balance and has taken a couple of steps.  She still finds crawling much quicker, though.  She stands up from her couch and tries to walk, but gets too excited - clapping for herself and telling us all to clap too.  She continues to enjoy gardening with her mum, but has eaten a handful of soil when mum wasn't watching. She's learnt to "high five" with Grandpa and does it to everyone - little starfish hand out and a loud "figh" when she wants us to play along. She's also had a tantrum or two when she didn't want to do things, and has become a bit of a tyrant at times - her "staff" are all ready to run around her and do her bidding though, so not much need for tantrums.

All in all, she has stolen our hearts away - a smile as she comes to play with us in our bed in the morning and that's me gone for the day!

An other 5 weeks to go thank goodness!

Memories of Mulgrave

My grandparents lived in Mooi River for much of their married lives - firstly in a huge red-brick house called Riverview, next to the Primary School, and then, when they retired, in a small house in Fife Street which they called Mulgrave, after one of their English country homes - I can't remember which side of the family had a home of that name.

It was a strange little house - two bedrooms off a small living/dining room, and a small vestibule off the living room which led to a bathroom and a tiny kitchen.  It was on a big, rambling piece of land - with a garden full of fruit trees, strange little miniature may hedges, paths, rockeries, a huge pergola with a catawba grape vine over it, topiary bushes and wonderful small, secret lawns which were a child's delight.

Over the years, the house was added onto - a big, cement floored room off the verandah, where my mom and dad always slept was added, and later, a pantry, loo and a strange, long room called the "gallery" which had fibre-glass type sliding windows and was so cold and damp that I don't remember anyone ever sleeping in it; and later still, part of the front verandah was enclosed and the outside room incorporated into the house. It was always a quirky, inconvenient little house, even when it had been "improved" but it held a really special lpace in the heart of the grandchildren who had a chance to visit and stay.

My grandfather died when I was tiny, only months after moving into the house, and Grannymama lived on in the house - mostly alone - for nearly 40 years.  Aunt Bridget, one of my dad's sisters spent every evening with Grannymama, but had her own home nearby.  When Grannymama died at the ripe old age of 97, Aunt Val, another of Dad's sisters bought the house from the estate and moved most of her accumulated "stuff" into it, on top of most of grannymama's stuff.  By this stage, Aunt Bridget lived across the road, and when she died, her house was packed up and all her "stuff" was moved to Mulgrave where it remained, unpacked, for the next 10 years.  When Aunt Val died, she left the house and all its contents to my sister, Jen.  Not only was Jen her god-daughter, but she and her husband, Les, were so good to Aunt Val in her last year.  So Jen ended up sorting the lifetime accumulations of 3 old ladies.

We spent many holidays at Mulgrave as kids - notably a week in January every year.  Jen and I got to sleep in one of the rooms off the living room, and our great delight in the morning was to sit on the end of Grannymama's bed, eat 1 Marie biscuit each out of her special tin, and play a game where we tried to catch her toes under the blanket - she was of the "austere grandmamma" type.  Evenings were not such fun - after a "supper" of scrambled egg and toast with jam OR butter (not both) we would be sent to bed while the "grown-ups" had "spots" and a more interesting supper.  We would lie in bed listening to the talking and laughing, and not allowed to join in - even when we were teenagers.  We would kiss the "grown ups" goodnight, and be roughly patted on the back by the maiden aunts and told to "Sleep tight, don't let the bugs bite - Har!har!har!" and then off through the green and white striped plastic door curtains, not to be heard or even seen till the next morning.

My favourite time was the afternoons when all the adults would have a rest and we were banished to the garden.  This was never a hardship for me - I loved the garden, even in the middle of winter, and I especially loved the small cardboard suitcase of toys were allowed to take outside to play with.  In it was a miniature white glass tea-set, a set of ivory elephants from India in varying sizes, strange tin cars and dolls, and tiny cloth dolls.  As I grew older, the musty books, with their cloth covers and yellowed, soft, powdery pages attracted me and I would spend hours in the gallery, choosing a book to read under the bushes.

Grannymama made wonderful preserves from the fruit in the garden and I remember the treat it was to go into the storeroom with her and choose a new bottle of marmalade or jam.  The best treat was being allowed to lick the underside of the wax plug poured over the jam to keep it good.

Dinner was always at lunch time and we would set the gate-leg table - opening the table, getting the silver table-napkin rings from the drawer on the side, getting out the heavy, solid silver cutlery and cruet, along with the wooden pepper grinder (long before they became fashionable) and then carrying through the thick, blue bargain-basement crockery.

We had a few holidays on our own at Mulgrave while Grannymama was visiting her family in England.  I remember Aunty Hazel, Uncle Graham and Penny coming to spend a few nights with us. It was midwinter and bitterly cold - so cold we put orange juice in the plastic cups from the thermos flask out in the garden and it froze solid overnight.  Dad and Uncle Graham slept on blow up mattresses in the living room, and Uncle Graham's had a leak and went down all through the night.  The highlight of that holiday was a trip to Giant's Castle - Dad and Uncle Graham climbed, and we paddled in the freezing water and had a picnic.

Another vivid memory is walking up the hill to where the Police Station is now, and looking across to Giant's Castle.  Dad had set off to climb it with a friend, and at a specified time he sent us a morse code message using a mirror - such an excitement.

"Out" trips from Mulgrave included a visit every January to a huge (well, it seemed huge) grove of oak trees to listen to the Christmas beetles (cicadas), and driving out to Rosetta to the piece of land we owned on the Little Mooi River.  We planted hundreds of pine trees on the very sloping plot, but never lived there.  Sometimes, our Boulanger cousins would come with us, and we would count the cars of different colours coming towards us - the road we went on was the main road to Johannesburg, and there was frequently a whole line!!! of cars on it.  The plot was called Brown Brooks - partly because of the peaty-brown water flowing under the willow trees, but mostly because both my Grandpa and one of my cousins slipped the first time they visited - my granpa's long white pants were definitely "brown brooks."

When Jen inherited the house, she kept it for a while as a holiday home, and we spent some wonderful weekends there, away from our busy lives.  When she needed to rent the house, we helped clear it - Jen is amazingly generous and gave away all the furniture - on condition we took what was inside!  So we have some lovely pieces of furniture in our home - and also many fascinating reminders of life in a less throwaway time - button hooks, chipped and mended jugs, scales, books, and the family Christening Robe which was in one of the trunks.

And now Mulgrave is sold, and Jen has had to say a final "Goodbye." She and her kids went to Mulgrave for Christmas and had a picnic in the garden and mostly empty house.  When they came back last weekend from clearing up, they brought us one last gift - a plum tree grown from the plums we loved eating on summer afternoons.  We've planted it where we can see it from our verandah - so every spring and summer, Mulgrave will live on in our home.

The end of an era - but what memories we have.

Mombasa by Moonlight

Almost two weeks in Mombasa and I spent so much of it working that most of my leisure time was at night under a full Mombasa moon.

In December, Mombasa is hot and steamy.  The long rains are far in the past in May, but sharp showers of rain come down every few days and make it even steamier.  We stayed inside most afternoons after work, savouring the aircon in our rooms and emerged at 7 into the cooler evening.  On the rooftop of our hotel we could sit by the pool and have a drink and dinner and relax after the tension of the day of training.

A few nights we saw moonrise over the city - a huge, orange full moon appearing from behind the buildings like the dome of a mosque, while the muezzins chanted from the 5 mosques around our hotel.  Mombasa is a  very Muslim city, especially the Island where we were staying, but just across the road, there are two beautiful Hindu temples, and the Cathedrals brush shoulders with the mosques.

Instead of eating at the hotel every night, we tried out some more adventurous ways of eating.  Next to the hotel is a street cafe where the tables are brought out at night and patrons sit on the pavement and are served  at long tables by cheerful young waiters who tell you the menu and remember exactly what you have ordered.  We ate mishkaki, which is a beef kebab cooked on an open fire right there on the pavement, tikka chicken, masala chips, chappati filled with meat and egg and katchambari which is a salad of lettuce and carrots.  Drinks come in a crate and you have a straw - no glasses.  While you eat, you are interrupted by street vendors selling the usual goods from China - pens and key rings and sunglasses - and also Hazard triangles.  The tuk-tuks buzz around the corner, dicing with the 4x4s and matatus and hand carts carrying water for sale in 50l black plastic barrels.  There is even a "drive through" - cars stop at the corner, shout their orders out of the window and wait for the food to be delivered to the car, wrapped in paper and a plastic bag.  The food is delicious and service is quick - the food doesn't all come at once, but it's hot and delicious and you tuck in to all the different dishes as you want to.

On my birthday we took a taxi to another pavement restaurant called Mubins, which is a bit more "upmarket" if sitting at a fold up table on a busy streetside can be called "upmarket".  At the table next to us were a whole lot of from the Aga Khan Academy, having an end-of-term outing.  The street is very narrow and their bus blocked all the traffic as everyone tried to negotiate around it - reality-entertainment.  They served amazing food but no desert, so we found our way to Shennai for kulfi (Indian icecream to die for) but somehow ended up doing Mombasa-by-night on foot.  A few hairy experiences - matatu drivers screaming and trying to get us to take their taxis, a beggar sliding out of the shadows next to me, street kids begging for money and refusing to leave us - and eventually we got back to our hotel hot and sticky but having walked the calories of the night off.

We visited Shennai twice more - got lost on the way there the first time and then by the third night, we were able to walk there and back without any trouble.

Two daytime adventures too - a visit to Biashara street to buy kikoyis and kitenges - fabric shirts and wraps - and then a drive around the Old Town with the driver from Eaqel - Nazeer - who lives in the Old town and could take us all over the place along narrow one-way streets just wide enough for a small car - and we were in a big Nissan bakkie.  Fascinating to see the parts of the Old Town not on the tourist beat.

I wasn't sad to leave the heat, but for the rest, a few more days in Mombasa would have been bliss.  A bustling small city where everyone respects each other - where churches, mosques and temples nestle next to each other, where drivers give way to each other, where refugees are accepted and integrated into the community, where you can buy anything on the side of the road, and the moon rises over the buildings like a beacon.  I can't wait to go back.

With a little help from my friends

Thanks to Rod for the picture :-)

A dream come true?

Characters:
Zenzi – Miriam Makeba at about 14 years old; Mother – her mother

Setting:
A kitchen in a township home in the 1940s

Scene 1

Zenzi, who is in the kitchen, is singing softly. Her mother comes in


Zenzi: Mama, Mama! (runs to her mother) Something exciting has happened!
Mother: What is it, my child? You look as though a dream has come true!

Zenzi: It has, Mama! You know I’ve been learning a new solo?

Mother: (laughing) I have heard it about 100 times!

Zenzi: Well, I’m going to sing it for the King!

Mother: What king?

Mirima: You know – the king from over the sea – King George.

Mother: You are not going over the sea! (sounds horrified)

Zenzi: No, Mama. (laughs) The King who is from England is coming to South Africa. Our choir is going to sing for him! I am going to sing in front of a king, a queen and two princesses!

Mother: That is wonderful news!

Zenzi: I can’t wait to see the princesses. Look, here is a picture of the little one whose name is Margaret …
Scene 2
A week later; Zenzi’s mother is in the kitchen. It is raining hard. Zenzi comes in.
Mother: My child, you are so wet! Come to the fire and get dry. (Zenzi walks slowly to the fire and sits down sadly)

Mother: What is wrong, my little Zenzi? Did you sing the wrong notes?

Zenzi: No Mama – it’s worse. I didn’t even sing.

Mother: But today you sang for the king and the queen and …
Zenzi: (Zenzi interrupts) No! We stood in the rain and waited and waited, and then the cars came … (pause) We were so excited! We stood up straight and then I took a breath …
(sobs)


Mother: What happened? Why are you crying?

Zenzi: Oh, Mama – the cars didn’t stop! They just drove past. The king didn’t even see us. They just drove past!

Mother: Oh my child! (holds her as she cries) How disappointed you must be.

Zenzi: (Stops crying and stands up straight) Mama, I won’t let this stop me! One day I will sing in front of kings and presidents. They will see that they were wrong and an African woman can become famous!

Mother: You are a brave child, my Zenzi.

Zenzi: You know, Mama – I think I saw the little princess look out of the back window of the car and wave. I will sing so she hears me one day!

The Trial

I only had 350 words to work with, and the language could not be too complex or passive.

I used Sihle as my main character - I'll write about my other kids some other time.

The last day of the competition had arrived. Sihle knew that his chances were good. He had listened to the coach’s advice, he had trained hard, he was fit, he was ready for this! His most serious rival for the position of striker was Thabo, but Sihle felt confident that he could beat him. As Sihle walked to the hostel, his phone buzzed – a message. “Maybe it’s mom,” he thought. “She said she would call to wish me luck.” But as he looked at the screen, he realised it was a number he didn’t know. Yr mom is sick come home now Sihle’s mouth dried up. He shook his head. What should he do? The final trial was in two hours. Should he wait till afterwards or should he leave now? What was more important – the trial or getting home? The decision was easy – family first! He ran back to the dormitory and started packing. He’d get the first bus home. “Hey, bra! What you doing? The trials are starting now-now!” It was his friend Vuyo. Sihle told him what had happened. “Sorry, man!” said Vuyo. “Did your mom ask you to come?” “No, I got an sms saying I must come now,” said Sihle. “Mmm …” said Vuyo. “Let me see that message. It sounds a bit off to me.” He looked at Sihle’s phone. Then he looked at his phone “I thought so!” he said. “That’s Thabo’s number. He sent the message.” “Why would he do that?” wondered Sihle. “Well, you’re his only competition for striker and Thabo really wants to win, “answered Vuyo. “This is his way of trying to get you to leave, or to play badly. I’m not surprised – he never plays fair.” Just then, Sihle’s phone rang. “Hullo, my boy. It’s Mom – I’m just calling to wish you luck.” Suddenly Sihle’s head cleared – it was all trick and he had nearly fallen for it. But, unlike Thabo, he would play fair. He squared his shoulders and picked up his kit. “Thanks, Vuyo. Now it’s time to play and may the best man win!”

Writing in a different genre

I have not written in my blog since June - but I have been writing - TEXTBOOKS!

I have been one of the authors on the English Today Senior Phase English First Additional Language team.  We have written 3 books of 18 chapters each in less than 4 months - which must be some sort of record!

The whole thing is a gamble - only 8 books per subject per Grade will be selected by the Department and schools will have to choose from that list.  Our books go forward for scrutiny and hopefully selection next year - but who knows!

So why did I do it - it was a real challenge!  And I didn't know how hard it would be - I've used textbooks for years - who would have known how difficult it would be to interpret the CAPS (Assessment standards) and write chapters that fulfilled all the criteria and still hung together?  I've had amazing co-ordinating authors, editors and publishers who have held my hand all the way, asked me to rewrite so nicely that I have looked forward to the ride (to hell, because rewriting is much harder than writing)

But the best part is that I have always suspected that there was a writer inside, but I have never really tried writing.  And now I know I am able to write - not just non-fiction, but even stories and plays!

So over the next few days I am going to put some of my writing on my blog.  I shouldn't really, in case our book is published, but the stories have been changed for the book.

I hope my readers - if there are some - enjoy the fiction.