GROWING UP : THE PRIMARY SCHOOL YEARS
The kids at school were given vaccines, some oral, for various things. We were “excused” on religious grounds, although I did once go up and get something that looked like a small biscuit. It may have been just that – to reduce the taste of the actual item.
The bush at that time started just at the end of the road. We would play for hours in the long grass and wooded water courses. We occasionally found snakes. Vagrants lived in the bush, but we never
thought of them as a danger. I think that my parent's Christian Science leanings perhaps meant that they were not much concerned. I don't remember them ever showing it. It is perhaps also a sign of those times that those of other races rarely dared threaten white kids. Even as little kids we could call those much older than us “boy” or “girl” - something we became ashamed of years later. I even remember having fun squirting water from a hiding place within the by now well grown hibiscus hedge at passers by; black folk being amongst the victims. I don't think our family was actually racist as such, but still in a way prejudiced. The difference becomes blurred in time and place.
Learning to swim was fairly straight forward in its early stages. With warm SA summers we were often taken to the Orient Beach and pools. My father had designed the paddling pool layout while with the Council (although they were completely revamped again years later). I have clear olfactory memory of rubber float rings (before plastic) and of these being spun down the beach at high speed by the wind with a parent in pursuit. Sometimes Mummy was accompanied by a friend, a plastic beach bag (with penguins on it), a rented umbrella and a rented deck chair, grumpy kids, if the wind got up, sand strewn sandwiches, wet towels on the return, etc. My little bathing costume at this time was also rubbery and textured. A bit like a speckle coloured nappy. If we went to the beach itself, we would always also got to the beach pavilion, itself already old and cold and smelling of dank sea air, sea salt and rubbery beach paraphernalia. But we did get a snack and often an ice cream or milkshake and were allowed to put a tickey in the little box next to the table which was linked to the jukebox with its limited
selection of seven singles. (“Tickey” is evidently just a SA term for a 3-pence piece which I think was replaced by the 5 cent piece). The paddling pool was a shallow area of sea water, whitewashed in the off season. The way to start learning was to “walk” out into the deeper areas on one's hands with the legs trailing behind. Very easy in salt water. Then with increasing confidence, we would try to lift the hands and swim.
We received swimming lessons in the new school pool as well. (I comment on its inauguration elsewhere). Less success as my confidence and chestiness interfered.
For practice we went to the paddling pool at the Orient Beach. Nearby was the Quanza Pool which was sea water. It always seemed deep, cold and windswept I remember seeing small fish and sea cucumbers (a very large coloured slug is a more accurate description) in the water. The change rooms under the stands also smelt of old salt water and past occupants. We were given supplementary swimming lessons which added to my anxiety. Other kids were doing underwater hockey, but I was still floundering. A favourite “trick” for kids to do at a pool is to pretend to walk over the edge, jumping at the last minute and one used my head as his last step while I languished at the edge grabbing onto the side rail. All the more distressing if a chesty child. But in time I was also doing this trick. The scouts had a gala and I managed to participate in diving down to retrieve objects and even swim a length, probably getting to the other end when everyone else had gone home.
But scouts was an incentive. Being sea scouts all the more so and we were put in training for the Mile Swim. We joined Jim Spring's "Junior Sharks" using the Clarendon School pool. While the other kids went up and down at a brisk pace, I took my time and actually did the equivalent of a mile on two occassions. While my swimming was never strong, my perseverance was and this stood me in good stead for later years when being wiped out paddle skiing and windsurfing at sea.
Metrication came in 1961 with currency and miles turned to kilometres. I remember being taught about this change, but our grandparents just could not cope and I used to cut of the conversion table from shopping bags for Nana to refer to. And I remember being taught the basics of many other systems of measurement that still lingered in the country. In later life as an architect I would need to understand historical maps etc with roods, poles, chains, Cape Feet etc.
In the early '60s when I was about 10 and Peter 8 we moved to a rented house in Pembroke Place in Nahoon. This was within easy walking distance to the Nahoon River via a small path behind the
Hillcoome holiday centre for the blind. This was an excellent if basic facility and blind folk could be led down to the river where they could have a rich sensory experience on the sand and shallows. Not far from that was Nahoon Beach.
Nana and Da came to live with us. Nana had her bridge clubs with her friends who left a terrible smoky cloud. Da was by this time usually bedridden.
One day I was up the tree with my new toy – a paper snake on a string and I expected everyone to come out and be frightened by its realism. It was on such a day that the maid came yelling that a leguan (a large water monitor lizard) had come into the house. No one believed her, thinking it was my prank. So we locked up the house and went out for the day. On return was signs that it has been about. It appeared to have gone up the chimney. The zoo director was called. A fire was lit in the hearth. Belching smoke in mid summer. SA fire places don't work well at the best of times. No sign of the leguan. But the next day we returned to find leguan sick all over our father's desk. The doors
were kept open until we were sure it had gone. But a day later the maid screamed that it had gone into Da's room. It took refuge in the cupboard and the door was shut. Da was not that aware of
what was going on and would have been incapable of doing anything about it if he was. The zoo director was called. For years we could look over the wall at the leguan enclosure at the zoo and try to pick out OUR leguan.
An adult leguan at the zoo. It may just be ours.
My experience of Cubs was brief and unsatisfactory. Probably more from my shyness. But we were to be enrolled in the Sea Scouts with a base on the road down to the estuary. Our father began to becoming involved as a scouter too. He built us a canvas canoe copied from those of the scouts, and a strange one wheel cart for it intended to take the weight off it, but which floundered on the sandy path.
STIRLING PRIMARY SCHOOL YEARS
I clearly remember my first and only cricket game at primary school. I was too slow to lift the bat and the ball hit my thumb. I lost the nail after a painful few days. No more cricket for me. I was no good at football. Tennisette was sort of passable. (This was a sort of scaled down tennis using wooden bats / rackets). Tennis absolutely rubbish. We used to practice at Stirling Park where there were courts amongst the conifers. The council then had a parks depot there and used a horse to draw the mower. Years later the (still separate) Beacon Bay council had draft horses as a sort of quaint (impractical) means of saving fuel. The EL council though had a couple of horse to mow the lawns. The pulled mowers which I seem to remember had a seat on them from which to drive the horses.
It was about this time that Stirling Primary School was expanding and improving. Classrooms were added, but this meant that for a time our class was held in the converted garage of a house down the road. It was also about this time that the sports fields were extended. Us small people were given spades and garden forks and sometimes instead of physical education were expected to level off the earth being dumped by lorries. The handle of my large garden fork was loose and instead of going into the soil swung against me and down between the thongs of my plastic sandals and deep into my foot. I still have the mark. [It was a bit of a shock coming to Scotland and finding Health and Safety in place].
I clearly remember the excitement of sports day. My asthmatic little body was rather useless, but I somehow managed to get very hoarse shouting. It was on such an occasion that the principal, Miss Froelich, officiated at the sod turning ceremony for the new swimming pool with a shiny trowel. With much speech and crowds clapping, she duly put her little trowel in the turf. And then the crowd dispersed. I really couldn't understand why she just didn't finish the job. I was really keen to see the pool filled and ready for swimming. But it was eventually completed and we did learn to swim.
The general groundsman was a black chap called, I think, Bert. We kids loved him and he was popular during break time. But the general grounds maintenance was sometimes done by convicts. These were all black and overseen by an “old” white man with what seems to have been a Boer War rifle. We used to chat to the convicts. One once told us he was there for killing someone.
I also remember the father of one of the kids way back then arriving to pick him up with an electric car. I think it was a DIY conversion, but in retrospect seems way ahead of its time. Yet this really probably was true; the charge possibly got him from home to the nearby school and back again, but no further. A good charge and efficient power from it was still decades ahead.
In 1964 I started high school at Selborne College. At first we used the bus in from Nahoon. A sometimes interesting experience as the ancient buses they used for us tended to overheat and blow their radiator caps. But then we moved to live in Selborne within walking distance to school.
The kids at school were given vaccines, some oral, for various things. We were “excused” on religious grounds, although I did once go up and get something that looked like a small biscuit. It may have
been just that – to reduce the taste of the actual item.
Learning to swim was fairly straight forward in its early stages. With warm SA summers we were often taken to the Orient Beach and pools. My father had designed the paddling pool layout while with the Council (although they were completely revamped again years later). I have clear olfactory memory of rubber float rings (before plastic) and of these being spun down the beach at high speed by the wind with a parent in pursuit. Sometimes Mummy was accompanied by a friend, a plastic beach bag (with penguins on it), a rented umbrella and a rented deck chair, grumpy kids, if the wind got up, sand strewn sandwiches, wet towels on the return, etc. My little bathing costume at this time was also rubbery and textured. A bit like a speckle coloured nappy. If we went to the beach itself, we would always also got to the beach pavilion, itself already old and cold and smelling of dank sea air, sea salt and rubbery beach paraphernalia. But we did get a snack and often an ice cream or milkshake and were allowed to put a tickey in the little box next to the table which linked to the jukebox with its limited
selection of seven singles. (“Tickey” is evidently just a SA term for a 3-pence piece which I think was replace by the 5 cent piece for such use). The paddling pool was a shallow area of sea water, whitewashed in the off season. The way to start learning was to “walk” out into the deeper areas on one's hands with the legs trailing behind. Very easy in salt water. Then with increasing confidence, we would try to lift the hands and swim.
We received swimming lessons in the new school pool as well. (I comment on its inauguration elsewhere). Less success as my confidence and chestiness interfered.
During the earlier years of high school we were taken to the Quanza Pool which was sea water. It always seemed cold and windswept and the change rooms under the stands also smelt of old salt water and past occupants. We were given supplementary swimming lessons which added to my anxiety. Other kids were doing underwater hockey, but I was still floundering. A favourite “trick” for kids to do at a pool is to pretend to walk over the edge, jumping at the last minute and one used my head as his last step while I languished at the edge grabbing onto the side rail. All the more distressing if a chesty child. But in time I was also doing this trick. The scouts had a gala and I managed to participate in diving down to retrieve objects and even swim a length, probably getting to the other end when everyone else had gone home.
But scouts was an incentive. Being sea scouts all the more so and we were put in training for the Mile Swim. We joined Jim Spring's junior sharks using the Selborne School pool. While the other kids went up and down at a brisk pace, I took my time and actually did the equivalent of a mile on two occassions. While my swimming was never strong, my perseverance was and this stood me in good stead
for later years when paddle skiing and windsurfing at sea.
Metrication came in 1961 with currency and miles turned to kilometres. I remember being taught about this change, but our grandparents just could not cope and I used to cut of the conversion table from shopping bags for Nana to refer to. And I remember being taught the basics of many other systems of measurement that still lingered in the country. In later life as an architect I would need to understand historical maps etc with roods, poles, chains, Cape Feet etc.
In the early '60s when I was about 10 and Peter 8 we moved to a rented house in Pembroke Place in Nahoon. This was within easy walking distance to the Nahoon River via a small path behind the
Hillcoome holiday centre for the blind. This was an excellent if basic facility and blind folk could be led down to the river where they could have a rich sensory experience on the sand and shallows. Not far from that was Nahoon Beach.
Nana and Da came to live with us. Nana had her bridge clubs with her friends who left a terrible smoky cloud. Da was by this time usually bedridden.
One day I was up the tree with my new toy – a paper snake on a string and I expected everyone to come out and be frightened by its realism. It was on such a day that the maid came yelling that a leguan (a large water monitor lizard) had come into the house. No one believed her, thinking it was my prank. So we locked up the house and went out for the day. On return was signs that it has been about. It appeared to have gone up the chimney. The zoo director was called. A fire was lit in the hearth. Belching smoke in mid summer. SA fire places don't work well at the best of times. No sign of the leguan. But the next day we returned to find leguan sick all over our father's desk. The doors
were kept open until we were sure it had gone. But a day later the maid screamed that it had gone into Da's room. It took refuge in the cupboard and the door was shut. Da was not that aware of
what was going on and would have been incapable of doing anything about it if he was. The zoo director was called. For years we could look over the wall at the leguan enclosure at the zoo and try to pick out OUR leguan.
An adult leguan at the zoo. It may just be ours.
My experience of Cubs was brief and unsatisfactory. Probably more from my shyness. But we were enrolled in the Sea Scouts with a base on the road down to the estuary. Our father built us a canvas canoe copied from those of the scouts, and a strange one wheel cart for it intended to take the weight off it, but which floundered on the sandy path.
STIRLING PRIMARY SCHOOL YEARS
I clearly remember my first and only cricket game at primary school. I was too slow to lift the bat and the ball hit my thumb. I lost the nail after a painful few days. No more cricket for me. I was no good at football. Tennisette was sort of passable. (This was a sort of scaled down tennis using wooden bats / rackets). Tennis absolutely rubbish. We used to practice at Stirling Park where there were courts amongst the conifers. The council then had a parks depot there and used a horse to draw the mower. Years later the (still separate) Beacon Bay council had draft horses as a sort of quaint (impractical) means of saving fuel. The EL council though had a couple of horse to mow the lawns. The pulled mowers which I seem to remember had a seat on them from which to drive the horses.
It was about this time that Stirling Primary School was expanding and improving. Classrooms were added, but this meant that for a time our class was held in the converted garage of a house down the road. It was also about this time that the sports fields were extended. Us small people were given spades and garden forks and sometimes instead of physical education were expected to level off the earth being dumped by lorries. The handle of my large garden fork was loose and instead of going into the soil swung against me and down between the thongs of my plastic sandals and deep into my foot. I still have the mark. [It was a bit of a shock coming to Scotland and finding Health and Safety in place].
I clearly remember the excitement of sports day. My asthmatic little body was rather useless, but I somehow managed to get very hoarse shouting. It was on such an occasion that the principal, Miss Froelich, officiated at the sod turning ceremony for the new swimming pool with a shiny trowel. With much speech and crowds clapping, she duly put her little trowel in the turf. And then the crowd dispersed. I really couldn't understand why she just didn't finish the job. I was really keen to see the pool filled and ready for swimming. But it was eventually completed and we did learn to swim.
The general groundsman was a black chap called, I think, Bert. We kids loved him and he was popular during break time. But the general grounds maintenance was sometimes done by convicts. These were all black and overseen by an “old” white man with what seems to have been a Boer War rifle. We used to chat to the convicts. One once told us he was there for killing someone.
I also remember the father of one of the kids way back then arriving to pick him up with an electric car. I think it was a DIY conversion, but in retrospect seems way ahead of its time. Yet this really probably was true; the charge possibly got him from home to the nearby school and back again, but no further. A good charge and efficient power from it was still decades ahead.
In 1964 I started high school at Selborne College. At first we used the bus in from Nahoon. A sometimes interesting experience as the ancient buses they used for us tended to overheat and blow their radiator caps. But then we moved to live in Selborne within walking distance to school.
The kids at school were given vaccines, some oral, for various things. We were “excused” on religious grounds, although I did once go up and get something that looked like a small biscuit. It may have
been just that – to reduce the taste of the actual item.
Learning to swim was fairly straight forward in its early stages. With warm SA summers we were often taken to the Orient Beach and pools. My father had designed the paddling pool layout while with the Council (although they were completely revamped again years later). I have clear olfactory memory of rubber float rings (before plastic) and of these being spun down the beach at high speed by the wind with a parent in pursuit. Sometimes Mummy was accompanied by a friend, a plastic beach bag (with penguins on it), a rented umbrella and a rented deck chair, grumpy kids, if the wind got up, sand strewn sandwiches, wet towels on the return, etc. My little bathing costume at this time was also rubbery and textured. A bit like a speckle coloured nappy. If we went to the beach itself, we would always also got to the beach pavilion, itself already old and cold and smelling of dank sea air, sea salt and rubbery beach paraphernalia. But we did get a snack and often an ice cream or milkshake and were allowed to put a tickey in the little box next to the table which linked to the jukebox with its limited
selection of seven singles. (“Tickey” is evidently just a SA term for a 3-pence piece which I think was replace by the 5 cent piece for such use). The paddling pool was a shallow area of sea water, whitewashed in the off season. The way to start learning was to “walk” out into the deeper areas on one's hands with the legs trailing behind. Very easy in salt water. Then with increasing confidence, we would try to lift the hands and swim.
We received swimming lessons in the new school pool as well. (I comment on its inauguration elsewhere). Less success as my confidence and chestiness interfered.
During the earlier years of high school we were taken to the Quanza Pool which was sea water. It always seemed cold and windswept and the change rooms under the stands also smelt of old salt water and past occupants. We were given supplementary swimming lessons which added to my anxiety. Other kids were doing underwater hockey, but I was still floundering. A favourite “trick” for kids to do at a pool is to pretend to walk over the edge, jumping at the last minute and one used my head as his last step while I languished at the edge grabbing onto the side rail. All the more distressing if a chesty child. But in time I was also doing this trick. The scouts had a gala and I managed to participate in diving down to retrieve objects and even swim a length, probably getting to the other end when everyone else had gone home.
But scouts was an incentive. Being sea scouts all the more so and we were put in training for the Mile Swim. We joined Jim Spring's junior sharks using the Selborne School pool. While the other kids went up and down at a brisk pace, I took my time and actually did the equivalent of a mile on two occassions. While my swimming was never strong, my perseverance was and this stood me in good stead
for later years when paddle skiing and windsurfing at sea.
Metrication came in 1961 with currency and miles turned to kilometres. I remember being taught about this change, but our grandparents just could not cope and I used to cut of the conversion table from shopping bags for Nana to refer to. And I remember being taught the basics of many other systems of measurement that still lingered in the country. In later life as an architect I would need to understand historical maps etc with roods, poles, chains, Cape Feet etc.
In the early '60s when I was about 10 and Peter 8 we moved to a rented house in Pembroke Place in Nahoon. This was within easy walking distance to the Nahoon River via a small path behind the
Hillcoome holiday centre for the blind. This was an excellent if basic facility and blind folk could be led down to the river where they could have a rich sensory experience on the sand and shallows. Not far from that was Nahoon Beach.
Nana and Da came to live with us. Nana had her bridge clubs with her friends who left a terrible smoky cloud. Da was by this time usually bedridden.
One day I was up the tree with my new toy – a paper snake on a string and I expected everyone to come out and be frightened by its realism. It was on such a day that the maid came yelling that a leguan (a large water monitor lizard) had come into the house. No one believed her, thinking it was my prank. So we locked up the house and went out for the day. On return was signs that it has been about. It appeared to have gone up the chimney. The zoo director was called. A fire was lit in the hearth. Belching smoke in mid summer. SA fire places don't work well at the best of times. No sign of the leguan. But the next day we returned to find leguan sick all over our father's desk. The doors
were kept open until we were sure it had gone. But a day later the maid screamed that it had gone into Da's room. It took refuge in the cupboard and the door was shut. Da was not that aware of
what was going on and would have been incapable of doing anything about it if he was. The zoo director was called. For years we could look over the wall at the leguan enclosure at the zoo and try to pick out OUR leguan.
An adult leguan at the zoo. It may just be ours.
My experience of Cubs was brief and unsatisfactory. Probably more from my shyness. But we were enrolled in the Sea Scouts with a base on the road down to the estuary. Our father built us a canvas canoe copied from those of the scouts, and a strange one wheel cart for it intended to take the weight off it, but which floundered on the sandy path.
STIRLING PRIMARY SCHOOL YEARS
I clearly remember my first and only cricket game at primary school. I was too slow to lift the bat and the ball hit my thumb. I lost the nail after a painful few days. No more cricket for me. I was no good at football. Tennisette was sort of passable. (This was a sort of scaled down tennis using wooden bats / rackets). Tennis absolutely rubbish. We used to practice at Stirling Park where there were courts amongst the conifers. The council then had a parks depot there and used a horse to draw the mower. Years later the (still separate) Beacon Bay council had draft horses as a sort of quaint (impractical) means of saving fuel. The EL council though had a couple of horse to mow the lawns. The pulled mowers which I seem to remember had a seat on them from which to drive the horses.
It was about this time that Stirling Primary School was expanding and improving. Classrooms were added, but this meant that for a time our class was held in the converted garage of a house down the road. It was also about this time that the sports fields were extended. Us small people were given spades and garden forks and sometimes instead of physical education were expected to level off the earth being dumped by lorries. The handle of my large garden fork was loose and instead of going into the soil swung against me and down between the thongs of my plastic sandals and deep into my foot. I still have the mark. [It was a bit of a shock coming to Scotland and finding Health and Safety in place].
I clearly remember the excitement of sports day. My asthmatic little body was rather useless, but I somehow managed to get very hoarse shouting. It was on such an occasion that the principal, Miss Froelich, officiated at the sod turning ceremony for the new swimming pool with a shiny trowel. With much speech and crowds clapping, she duly put her little trowel in the turf. And then the crowd dispersed. I really couldn't understand why she just didn't finish the job. I was really keen to see the pool filled and ready for swimming. But it was eventually completed and we did learn to swim.
The general groundsman was a black chap called, I think, Bert. We kids loved him and he was popular during break time. But the general grounds maintenance was sometimes done by convicts. These were all black and overseen by an “old” white man with what seems to have been a Boer War rifle. We used to chat to the convicts. One once told us he was there for killing someone.
I also remember the father of one of the kids way back then arriving to pick him up with an electric car. I think it was a DIY conversion, but in retrospect seems way ahead of its time. Yet this really probably was true; the charge possibly got him from home to the nearby school and back again, but no further. A good charge and efficient power from it was still decades ahead.
The kids at school were given vaccines, some oral, for various things. We were “excused” on religious grounds, although I did once go up and get something that looked like a small biscuit. It may have
been just that – to reduce the taste of the actual item.
Learning to swim was fairly straight forward in its early stages. With warm SA summers we were often taken to the Orient Beach and pools. My father had designed the paddling pool layout while with the Council (although they were completely revamped again years later). I have clear olfactory memory of rubber float rings (before plastic) and of these being spun down the beach at high speed by the wind with a parent in pursuit. Sometimes Mummy was accompanied by a friend, a plastic beach bag (with penguins on it), a rented umbrella and a rented deck chair, grumpy kids, if the wind got up, sand strewn sandwiches, wet towels on the return, etc. My little bathing costume at this time was also rubbery and textured. A bit like a speckle coloured nappy. If we went to the beach itself, we would always also got to the beach pavilion, itself already old and cold and smelling of dank sea air, sea salt and rubbery beach paraphernalia. But we did get a snack and often an ice cream or milkshake and were allowed to put a tickey in the little box next to the table which linked to the jukebox with its limited
selection of seven singles. (“Tickey” is evidently just a SA term for a 3-pence piece which I think was replace by the 5 cent piece for such use). The paddling pool was a shallow area of sea water, whitewashed in the off season. The way to start learning was to “walk” out into the deeper areas on one's hands with the legs trailing behind. Very easy in salt water. Then with increasing confidence, we would try to lift the hands and swim.
We received swimming lessons in the new school pool as well. (I comment on its inauguration elsewhere). Less success as my confidence and chestiness interfered.
During the earlier years of high school we were taken to the Quanza Pool which was sea water. It always seemed cold and windswept and the change rooms under the stands also smelt of old salt water and past occupants. We were given supplementary swimming lessons which added to my anxiety. Other kids were doing underwater hockey, but I was still floundering. A favourite “trick” for kids to do at a pool is to pretend to walk over the edge, jumping at the last minute and one used my head as his last step while I languished at the edge grabbing onto the side rail. All the more distressing if a chesty child. But in time I was also doing this trick. The scouts had a gala and I managed to participate in diving down to retrieve objects and even swim a length, probably getting to the other end when everyone else had gone home.
But scouts was an incentive. Being sea scouts all the more so and we were put in training for the Mile Swim. We joined Jim Spring's junior sharks using the Selborne School pool. While the other kids went up and down at a brisk pace, I took my time and actually did the equivalent of a mile on two occassions. While my swimming was never strong, my perseverance was and this stood me in good stead
for later years when paddle skiing and windsurfing at sea.
Metrication came in 1961 with currency and miles turned to kilometres. I remember being taught about this change, but our grandparents just could not cope and I used to cut of the conversion table from shopping bags for Nana to refer to. And I remember being taught the basics of many other systems of measurement that still lingered in the country. In later life as an architect I would need to understand historical maps etc with roods, poles, chains, Cape Feet etc.
In the early '60s when I was about 10 and Peter 8 we moved to a rented house in Pembroke Place in Nahoon. This was within easy walking distance to the Nahoon River via a small path behind the
Hillcoome holiday centre for the blind. This was an excellent if basic facility and blind folk could be led down to the river where they could have a rich sensory experience on the sand and shallows. Not far from that was Nahoon Beach.
Nana and Da came to live with us. Nana had her bridge clubs with her friends who left a terrible smoky cloud. Da was by this time usually bedridden.
One day I was up the tree with my new toy – a paper snake on a string and I expected everyone to come out and be frightened by its realism. It was on such a day that the maid came yelling that a leguan (a large water monitor lizard) had come into the house. No one believed her, thinking it was my prank. So we locked up the house and went out for the day. On return was signs that it has been about. It appeared to have gone up the chimney. The zoo director was called. A fire was lit in the hearth. Belching smoke in mid summer. SA fire places don't work well at the best of times. No sign of the leguan. But the next day we returned to find leguan sick all over our father's desk. The doors
were kept open until we were sure it had gone. But a day later the maid screamed that it had gone into Da's room. It took refuge in the cupboard and the door was shut. Da was not that aware of
what was going on and would have been incapable of doing anything about it if he was. The zoo director was called. For years we could look over the wall at the leguan enclosure at the zoo and try to pick out OUR leguan.
An adult leguan at the zoo. It may just be ours.
My experience of Cubs was brief and unsatisfactory. Probably more from my shyness. But we were enrolled in the Sea Scouts with a base on the road down to the estuary. Our father built us a canvas canoe copied from those of the scouts, and a strange one wheel cart for it intended to take the weight off it, but which floundered on the sandy path.
STIRLING PRIMARY SCHOOL YEARS
I clearly remember my first and only cricket game at primary school. I was too slow to lift the bat and the ball hit my thumb. I lost the nail after a painful few days. No more cricket for me. I was no good at football. Tennisette was sort of passable. (This was a sort of scaled down tennis using wooden bats / rackets). Tennis absolutely rubbish. We used to practice at Stirling Park where there were courts amongst the conifers. The council then had a parks depot there and used a horse to draw the mower. Years later the (still separate) Beacon Bay council had draft horses as a sort of quaint (impractical) means of saving fuel. The EL council though had a couple of horse to mow the lawns. The pulled mowers which I seem to remember had a seat on them from which to drive the horses.
It was about this time that Stirling Primary School was expanding and improving. Classrooms were added, but this meant that for a time our class was held in the converted garage of a house down the road. It was also about this time that the sports fields were extended. Us small people were given spades and garden forks and sometimes instead of physical education were expected to level off the earth being dumped by lorries. The handle of my large garden fork was loose and instead of going into the soil swung against me and down between the thongs of my plastic sandals and deep into my foot. I still have the mark. [It was a bit of a shock coming to Scotland and finding Health and Safety in place].
I clearly remember the excitement of sports day. My asthmatic little body was rather useless, but I somehow managed to get very hoarse shouting. It was on such an occasion that the principal, Miss Froelich, officiated at the sod turning ceremony for the new swimming pool with a shiny trowel. With much speech and crowds clapping, she duly put her little trowel in the turf. And then the crowd dispersed. I really couldn't understand why she just didn't finish the job. I was really keen to see the pool filled and ready for swimming. But it was eventually completed and we did learn to swim.
The general groundsman was a black chap called, I think, Bert. We kids loved him and he was popular during break time. But the general grounds maintenance was sometimes done by convicts. These were all black and overseen by an “old” white man with what seems to have been a Boer War rifle. We used to chat to the convicts. One once told us he was there for killing someone.
I also remember the father of one of the kids way back then arriving to pick him up with an electric car. I think it was a DIY conversion, but in retrospect seems way ahead of its time. Yet this really probably was true; the charge possibly got him from home to the nearby school and back again, but no further. A good charge and efficient power from it was still decades ahead.
In 1964 I started high school at Selborne College. At first we used the bus in from Nahoon. A sometimes interesting experience as the ancient buses they used for us tended to overheat and blow their radiator caps. But then we moved to live in Selborne within walking distance to school.
Our summer uniform was khaki shirt and shorts with plastic sandals and a little green cap with yellow and brown braid (the school colours). In winter we had white shirts with grey shorts and shoes with socks and the same cap.
I clearly remember my first and only cricket game. I was too slow to lift the bat and the ball hit my thumb. I lost the nail after a painful few days. No more cricket for me. I was no good at football. Tennisette (sort of scaled down tennis with wooden bats) was sort of passable. Tennis absolutely rubbish. We used to practice at courts at Stirling Park where there were courts amongst the conifers. The council then had a parks depot there. Years later Beacon Bay council had draft horses as a sort of quaint and picturesque, but impractical, means of saving fuel. The EL council though had predated that with a couple of horses to mow the lawns. The pulled mowers which I seem to remember had a seat on them from which to drive the horses.
It was about this time that Stirling Primary School was expanding and improving. Classrooms were added, but this meant that for a time our class was held in the converted garage of a house down the road. It was also about this time that the sports fields were extended. Us small people were given full size spades and garden forks and sometimes instead of physical education were expected to level off the earth being dumped by lorries. The handle of my large garden fork was loose and instead of going into the soil swung against me and down between the thongs of my plastic sandals and deep into my foot. I still have the mark. [It was a bit of a shock coming to Scotland and finding Health and Safety in place].
I clearly remember the excitement of sports day. My asthmatic little body was rather useless, but I somehow managed to get very hoarse shouting. It was on such an occasion that the principal, Miss Froelich, officiated at the sod turning ceremony for the new swimming pool. With much speech and crowds clapping, she duly put her little trowel in the turf. And then the crowd dispersed. I really couldn't understand why she just didn't finish the job. I was really keen to see the pool filled and ready for swimming.
But it was eventually completed and we did learn to swim.
The general school groundsman was a black chap called, I think, Bert. Us kids loved him and he was popular during break time.
But the general grounds maintenance was sometimes done by convicts. These were all black and overseen by an “old” white man with what seems to have been a Boer War rifle. We used to chat to the convicts. One once told us he was there for killing someone.
We had some very nice teachers and a few intimidating one. The Irishman Mr Redman was quite severe to a young child. I remember him hitting the knuckles of girls with a ruler. Boys were also hit in this way, but sometimes also got their ears boxed. I remember the parents of one of the boys, Robert Stone, laying a complaint against him. I don't remember the outcome. In my eyes his only redeeming aspect of him was that he was Irish like my grandmother. He always wore something suitable in his lapel on their national day.
I also remember the father of one of the kids way back then arriving to pick him up with an electric car. I think it was a DIY conversion or kit but in retrospect still seems way ahead of its time.
Learning to swim needs a mention. I still clearly remember visits to the beach with my mother, sometimes with a friend of hers. Usually to the Orient Beach. I remember an embarrassing saggy child's costume. And a multi-coloured rubber bucket and a spade. Eating sandy sandwiches and drinking Kool-Aid (Basically flavoured water). A rubber inflatable ring helped in the children's pool. I would pretend to swim by walking in the shallows with my hands down and feet kicking out. One day a frantic mother rushed in to grab her inverted child from the water, blaming me, a swimmer, for not going to his aid. The it was off to the change rooms, still in the long timber building that my grandmother had used, and tea room, still in that dank big block. I remember asking for a tickie to put in the jukebox.
My farther was to replace all that with a new pavilion with a theatre while an architect with the council. We used to go to basic variety and talent shows in the small outdoor theatre as we got older. There was the occasional Punch and Judy show, but I never got the point of it. When building of the new beach complex began, that was moved into an inflatable building on the lawns. I think the highlight was often when the service door was left open too long and the whole building started to deflate.
I did learn to swim, even as a rather asthmatic child. Visits to other beaches included those down the coast where I remember my mother chasing my rubber ring down the beach in a howling gale. It was never recovered, but the new inflatable plastic ones were becoming available. We would play on the rocks on the West Bank. The heavy Indian Ocean waves would be more dramatic after a storm. Boulders would roar as they were rumbled back and forth below in the chasms. There was one point where a large rock was stuck in such a crack over the water and formed a sort of bridge. Near it the rocks were more like sloping shelves. Once when looking at rock pools and not at the changing waves, I was swept off – well I managed to keep a single handhold and got no more than a great shock and soggy. My parents who had not seen this happen were not concerned. But it did raise the story of grandfather Da, who in his youth would swim off the Natal coast. He was caught in a back current and ended up out at sea. He kept calm and managed to get back to shore “miles” further along the coast.
My progress in music left a lot to be desired. Heavy discipline at home playing scales. An aching back and no sympathy. I did learn the rudimentaries though. Our music classroom at school was upstairs of the suburban chemist, the school at that time not yet possessing one and the extensions not yet complete. For my first lesson there I was led by an older boy, Len Cooper, who was to later be in the popular pop band, the Dealians named after the Deals Hotel where they played. [They had a single hit, Shy Girl which I still remember. This success led to another local initiative, East London's own recording studio in Epsom Road, just outside the primary school gates. Remember that this was at a time that recording would be onto large tape machines and then cut as 7-singles. (As a student without a car, I once had a lift with the band's agent. Besides hitting a dog on the way, he complained how little royalties there were from sales. But then the band disappeared and so did that recording studio).
I was so shy then, that when I was supposed to play the piano at the primary school concert, I crept away and hid in a classrooms. I was a little better some years later when participating in a small scout show out on by fellow scout Alan Colquhoun. I played a duet with my brother P, fortunately accompanied by other instruments. And we lost the music sheets so had to improvise! To cover this we played very softly and I remember the surprise on some of the audience that we were there at all.
