Category: life

For Auld Lang Syne

I wrote about Scotsman, Andy Murray, yesterday and then I went to do a Pilates class with the most enthusiastic, chatty Scotsman since William Wallace. Today I thought I would introduce to you some more of my husband’s Scottish family: meet Mac and Lily*.

*I have given them false names, as you probably wouldn’t believe the names by which we knew them. I thought about calling them Mac and Cheese. Nah.

I can’t tell you what a blessing it is to have married into a Scottish family. Mac was my late mother-in-law’s brother. He would have been about 87 now, and Lily would have been about 84. They both passed away in Scotland within the past eight years. They had no children of their own, and adored their nephews (my husband and his brother) as if they were their own. My husband is named after Mac.

Let me tell you what I know about Scottish names. My husband has three first names and is known by his third name. He likes his first name, and when he asked his parents why they didn’t call him by his first name, they said it was because they didn’t like it. Right. They had named him after his uncle, and clearly his parents hadn’t liked his first name either, because he was always known by his second name. We knew him by an entirely different nickname all together. And to add further confusion into the mix, the name my husband is known by is the same as his father’s. And his father was known by the first of his three names, even though he was given an entirely different name at birth (see Not Just Another Winter’s Tale).  And his brother is known by his second – of three – names. You’re confused?

So back to Mac and Lily: I first met Mac when he flew out to Zimbabwe for our wedding in 1984. He arrived unannounced and threw the entire family into frenzied excitement, leaving my garrulous mother-in-law speechless. He was a true Scotsman: he’d insult you then hug you, he’d laugh at you and with you, and tears and laughter gurgled in equal measure. Love of family, humour, generosity, love and kindness ever lurked behind his thinly brittle exterior. I loved him immediately.

I first met Lily when my husband and I travelled to the UK in 1986 and we stayed with Mac and Lily in their wee croft in Perthshire. Lily was about knee-high to a grasshopper and was teased mercilessly by Mac for being so wee. She was a hairdresser and her stories of colleagues and clients and running a salon in Zimbabwe (as she had done for a number of years) are stuff of my husband’s family legend.

Returning to Scotland, she worked at the old folks’ homes, doing the hair of the “old biddies”, as she called them. She never fussed too much about whether her work was good or not, as she chose to live by her belief that the difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut was about three weeks. Possibly longer for the old biddies. She was gentle, kind, quick to laugh, generous and loving: I loved her immediately too.

We saw them every couple of years after that; when they travelled to Zimbabwe and then South Africa for holidays, and when we visited the UK on holiday. Just as they had taken my husband and his brother as sons, they took our boys into their hearts as grandsons. Mac taught them stories and language that, shall we say, broadened their education.

Our boys were little when Mac and Lily first came to Cape Town. We’d told the boys how funny Uncle Mac was and they couldn’t wait to meet them. Our older son, who was about four at the time, laughed loudly and unconvincingly the first time Mac said something, and then looked at us and asked,

“When’s he going to be funny?”

I think he’d imagined a clown.

Our younger son, aged about two, sat on my husband’s lap and watched Mac with interest. After a while, my son grabbed his dad’s face between his hands, pulled his face towards him and, gesturing towards Mac, said,

“Him’s got a big nose. Hey, Daddy?”

One day my older son had a friend coming over to play, when Mac and Lily were with us in Cape Town a few years later. I heard my son say to his friend,

“My uncle and aunt will be there. I’m really sorry but my uncle swears a lot.”

His friend, ever the gracious trooper, said,

“Ooh, that’s okay. I think that will be rather fun.”

Mac was fun. He’d run and play soccer with the boys in the garden, until his smoke-ridden lungs would cause him to gasp and return to the sidelines. As he lit a cigarette, he’d say,

“Bleep bleep! Those bleep bleep kids sure take the bleep bleep bleep out of you! I’m not as young as I bleeping-well used to be.”

He’d wrestle with the boys and then send them on their way. He’d watch them play sport and boast about them to his friends. He laughed at their jokes and regaled them with stories.

We had a wonderful time staying with them in Scotland in 2000. They took us all over their native Perthshire, showing us the beautiful countryside and introducing the four of us – with enormous familial pride – to everyone they met. They took us to the Highland Games in Pitlochry and Mac went to tell the organisers that “B’s son” was there (my mother-in-law grew up and went to school in Pitlochry). Family was everything to Mac and Lily, and we knew we meant the world to them.

Lily would cook wonderful meals for us all, and our best times were when we sat and chatted over coffee and chocolate biscuits in their lounge in the weak mid-morning sun. She and Mac were always interested in our lives and what we had to say, and asked us questions constantly.

One evening, we sat in their little lounge, next to the ever- glowing fire, as Mac relaxed into his favourite pastime: reminiscing. He told us of a Hogmanay party at their house a few years before, where Mac pretended he was a soldier. He put a bucket on his head, and with a broom as a rifle he marched back and forth through their small lounge. It wasn’t long before he smashed the light fitting with the broom and caused the party guests to collapse into hysterical laughter.

He then went further back, to recount tales of his inordinately naughty childhood. He told us of all he and his brother and friends got up to at school, including putting one teacher’s car up on to bricks and waiting to watch as the teacher tried to drive off at the end of the day. Mac and his mates lurked in the bushes, and as they watched the teacher they rolled over and laughed like drains.

He was constantly in trouble. That naughty streak glinted in his eyes through his whole life. Not even the unspoken-of horrors of his wartime service could quench that spirit.

His school-day nostalgia then reminded him of his favourite poet: Robbie Burns. He told us he had once recited Burns at a formal occasion. He ran upstairs to haul out his notes and proceeded to recite the elaborately un-understandable words of Burns to an audience of us. To our African ears, it sounded like,

“Heenel honnel, heenel honnel, heenel honnel, aft the glen.”

His sudden move into serious poetry was at odds with the evening’s levity. The absurdness of the poetry, the absurdness of this sudden turn of events and then, spotting their mother fixing to burst with laughter, caused my sons – and then all four of us – to explode into childish laughter till we cried. Mac was taken aback:

“What the bleeping-bleep you lot laughin’ at? This is Rabbie Burns! Don’t ye like him?”

We tried, we really tried to pull ourselves together but the words of Robbie Burns will forever be etched in our memories in the schoolboy style of Mac’s recital and our childish inability to stop giggling.

I miss Mac and Lily. All of our family does. And I understand why Mac loved to reminisce. It keeps the memories alive.

Sunshine signing off for today!

Lay On, MacDuff!

Last night we went to see Macbeth in the Blitz at a small community theatre on the other side of the river from where we live. The whole concept of community theatre appealed to me and I was so excited to go and enjoy an evening of local talent. I use the word talent local very loosely: it would have been quicker to swim across the Thames.

I misunderstood the blurb about the play. It read:

“It’s January 1941. The Docklands is in the midst of the Blitz. The shattering attack on East London is having devastating effects on its people and the landscape. In an attempt to restore normality, to resist in the only way they can, a group of actors perform Macbeth in an air raid shelter.”

My expectation was that the play would be about a theatre group putting on Macbeth during those difficult and horrendously frightening days. Instead, the play was Macbeth with the screeching of sirens and the sounds of bombs going off every now and then. The costumes were appropriate for that time, but apart from that the sense of history and context was kind of lost. I would have loved to have known the back story.

The cast reflected the diversity of London in 2011, complete with a female King Duncan and accents from Eastern Europe, Asia and South America. There was some fine and passionate acting and it was certainly an ambitious project for an amateur dramatics group to take on. We particularly enjoyed the actor whose self-conscious default was to stand with his arms hanging about his sides like guy ropes.

The play was put on at The Space. I had read about this beautiful old building in the Isle of Dogs, and had long wanted an excuse to visit. Last night’s play was the perfect opportunity to do so, although there was no direct route to get there – we had to take a bus, a tube and then another bus, although we could have taken a ferry then a bus. A twisty route, indeed.

The Space is a community arts centre, offering theatre, music, comedy and dance. Converted from a beautiful 19th century church, with stained glass windows, and a high, domed ceiling, The Space offers a theatre space as well as a delightfully cosy cafe/bar upstairs, known as the Hubbub. The theatre, as it was configured last night, seats about 50 people. The audience sat on either side of the hall, with the play taking place in the middle.

The Isle of Dogs is an almost-island in the East End of London, in the loop of the largest meander of the Thames. There is some speculation as to how the name Isle of Dogs came about, but it was recorded as such for the first time in 1588.

Two more tickets for our red box. A visit to another area of London we’d not seen before. An interesting performance of Macbeth in a beautiful, historic venue. It was worth braving the cold and the circuitous public transport route for all that.

Sunshine signing off for today!

Is All the World a Stage?

So if it’s Thursday, I must be writing about Zumba, right? We had a wonderful class again last night, and, in the midst of our stomping and twirling, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. You know what? I look stupid doing jazz hands. Seriously stupid.

I wrote last week about how amazing it is to dance like no-one’s watching. It truly is. I guess that’s the important part: I need to make sure no-one’s watching, and I don’t want to watch myself either. How embarrassing!

I’m not much of a performer, I guess. I love nothing better than to tell a story or share a joke and make people laugh – my heart leaps when I am able to do that. I’m not shy. And I have done loads of public speaking. But to perform in front of an audience, like to dance or sing or act, would cause me to cower into a shivering heap. Or to go and hide under the nearest bed. An audience of one, in the mirror last night, was enough to cause my cheeks to burn crimson.

I did plenty of amateur dramatics as a little girl. I am the youngest of four, and my performances usually took the form of hands-on-hips tantrums at my older siblings to take me seriously. If they tried to applaud any one of those performances, they would have instantly regretted it.

My sister was always something of a thespian. Her favourite activity of a weekend was to write, produce, direct, narrate and star in a play for my parents. I remember one of our family homes had sliding glass doors that separated the lounge from the dining room: the dining room became our stage, the sliding doors our scarlet, velvet curtains. The audience, usually of two, relaxed in the royal box that was our lounge.

I was always a useful prop. I remember having to put on my school tracksuit – it was olive green – and stand with my arms in the air for the duration of one play.  In the closing credits, I was allowed – as the tree – to take a bough bow.

Occasionally, when the demands of writing, producing, directing and narrating were too great for my sister, I was given the title role. I remember being cast as Rapunzel and having to sit on a chair on top of the dining room table and let down my “golden hair”.

Let me digress here to tell you a bit about my hair. My parents believed in common-sense economy and their approach to life was typically post-war: no nonsense, no frills and definitely no long hair. Every time my sister and I went for a haircut, I’d long to have a word in private with the hairdresser, so I could ask her for “a trim”. It never happened. My mom would always insist on a “good haircut”, which meant that – yet again – I would walk out of the hairdressing salon looking like a boy.

So, golden locks were not in abundance in our home. I am blonde, but short hair that did not quite reach my collar would not do for Rapunzel. We twisted a yellow and white striped towel that tumbled from my head like a really heavy plait, and my handsome prince duly climbed that to reach me in the tower that was the top of the dining room table. I think we might have used a chair or some other hidden device, but it all ended happily.

Another time, I was cast in the role of Queen Victoria. Gordon, a painfully shy and obnoxious little boy who was the son of my parents’ friends who were visiting that Sunday, was cast as Prince Albert. He did not want to be in the play. His older sister threatened him with something, so he duly obliged. We sat on chairs next to each other, as husband and wife usually do: I had a doily on my head, and he was biting his foot.  I banged on about how much I wished we had a baby, and he nodded and chewed his foot and closed his eyes. The curtain went up.

“Three weeks later!” announced the narrator, my sister. The curtain opened to reveal a scene in the home of Victoria and Albert. With doily-decorated head, I lovingly cradled a baby doll in my arms. Albert continued to bite his foot. An immaculate scene indeed.

At high school I had the excruciating experience – as house captain – of having to direct and act in a house play. I had no intention of appearing on stage, but as the date of our performance neared, several cast members got ill, broke their legs or lost their voices. The play was called “Ants” and I had to play the part of an army ant, dressed in camouflage fatigues. I wouldn’t let my parents come and watch the play, and my time on the stage features among my worst, most sweaty-palmed and agonising moments of my life. I was certainly not born for a career in theatre.

So, my stupid jazz hands are not going to hinder me from going to Zumba classes. I’ll continue to shimmy and twirl and stomp my feet to those crazy Latin beats, but I’ll sure as heck step away from the mirror. Well away.

Sunshine signing off for today!

There’s None So Blind …

I’ve just got home after a morning out. As I sat waiting for the bus, an elderly lady came and sat next to me in the bus shelter. To say I felt jolly freaking irritated at her behaviour, would be putting it mildly.

She sat and munched on her false teeth. She pushed them around her mouth, clicked and clonked on them endlessly, and made an awful sound. She also fidgeted and twitched and bounced her legs up and down and rocked the bus shelter seat. Then our bus came.

Up she got, and she shuffled to the edge of the pavement. As she stood there, her legs bounced continuously. Involuntarily. I realised – to my shame – that she must have some condition that causes her to move constantly and involuntarily.

I wanted to cry as I realised the level of my intolerance, and my snap judgment of her behaviour, without thinking beyond how it was affecting me. How pathetic. A humbling – indeed, humiliating – reminder, for sure. I wanted to apologise to her for my thoughts.

A few years ago, a call came through to my desk at work. It was a man who had booked a counselling session at the organisation I worked for, and he wasn’t sure how to get to the offices. I enquired where he’d be travelling from, and proceeded to give him directions.

I expected that sooner or later the directions would sound familiar. Not so much. Nothing seemed to make sense to him; he repeated everything I said a few times, and I wondered why he was so unsure of landmarks and road names. I did feel a little impatient, although I duly repeated each instruction at his request.

An hour or so later, the office doorbell went and, because our receptionist was not at her desk, I went to open the security gate. I greeted the new arrival and he immediately said that he was the one who had called for directions.

I opened the gate, and he struggled a little as he made his way through. He was carrying a white stick, you see.

Not one ounce of me had considered that it might be because he was blind that he was unsure of the directions I was giving him. Nor that he was passing the instructions on to his driver.

My slump into shame was soon lightened by his delightful personality. As I showed him through to the reception area, he asked if he could hold on to my arm.

“It’s a little dark in here,” he said.

He then asked if I would show him to the bathroom, and he chirped and made me laugh as we made our way through the building.

“I don’t look so good,” he said.

I was shaken and stirred and mortified at my blinkered inability to consider another perspective. I had looked at the world through my own lenses, without stopping to consider those lenses were mine alone.

Today I was similarly reminded. My prayer and my desire is that one day my world view will embrace all possibilities, not just my own. There is seriously none so blind as she who will not see.

Sunshine signing off for today!

Waving and a-Shaking

You know those awkward moments when someone across the room waves at you? Well, at least you think it’s you. You wave back tentatively only to discover they were waving at the person behind you. They haven’t even noticed you. Probably because they don’t even know you.

I’ve blushed through plenty of those kinds of moments. Like the awkward “should I, shouldn’t I” moments when you meet someone and you’re not sure whether or not to shake hands with them.

The other day, I went to have coffee with the pastors and team at our church. I arrived at the offices, greeted the various people I saw and then one of the elders came over to greet me. He extended his right hand towards me and, while I thought a handshake to be slightly formal, I did the same. As I extended mine towards his, he lifted his hand and scratched his head. And then he laughed like a drain.

I blushed, but then my phone rang and I answered it. I told the elder it was 1968 calling and they wanted that joke back.

A few weeks ago, I arrived at my gym to do a Pilates class. Our instructor was away, and a “cover girl” took the class in her stead. As I walked into the class, ticket in hand, the instructor started walking towards me. She told me she was covering the class and told me her name, and extended her hand towards me. I told her my name, and duly shook her hand.

She giggled a little and then asked me for my ticket. Clearly she had put her hand out for me to give her my ticket. She got a handshake in its place. Awkward.

And now to the joys of adolescent sons and their over-communicative mother. (Although that’s not how my sons would have described this moment.)

Some years ago, I went to watch my younger son play in a mid-week rugby match at a local school. I had arranged for my older son to be dropped off at said school after he had finished his day’s activities and, as I watched my younger son play, I kept an eye open for the arrival of my other son.

I spotted my older son as he arrived on the far side of the field. He was about 14 at the time. This is important.

I waved at him, and he didn’t wave back. I thought he wasn’t looking in my direction, so I kept watching him and waving at him. I thought he didn’t know where I was. He continued walking towards me, but I still wasn’t sure he’d seen me.

After wave number four hundred, I focused my gaze back on the rugby game in front of me. My younger son was directly in my sight, play had stopped momentarily for a penalty, and he was waving at me. Coyly, barely lifting his hand above hip height, and agonisingly hoping no-one else could see him, he was waving at his mom from the middle of a rugby match. He was twelve.

I realised immediately what had happened.

My older son arrived at my side, and he said to me, “Mo-o-o-m, I saw you as soon as I arrived. You didn’t need to keep waving at me; I was walking towards you.”

After the match, I asked my younger son if he thought I was waving at him. He said he did, and he wondered why I kept waving at him in the middle of his match. He was so embarrassed and thought if he waved back, I might stop.

So next time you want to wave at someone or shake their hand, think about it carefully before you do anything foolish. It’s a jungle out there, I tell you, a jungle.

Sunshine signing off for today!

Zumba Your Cares Away

There was something of a scramble to stand at the front of our Zumba class last night. I put my towel down near the front and got elbowed out of the way. I took myself and my towel to the back of the class and soon discovered the cause of the cougar-fest: a cover guy instructor.

Tattooed and bandannaed, the substitute instructor had the class eating out of his hand. Which was at the end of a very sculpted bicep. He brought lightness and so much more fun into a class that is already fabulous – we mamboed and rumbaed through song after song; we jumped and we posed and we crossed and we hopped and we minced and we pouted. All to the Latin beat of the most remarkable songs. Have you ever heard the theme tune to The Pink Panther, with a Latin beat? Or the Latin version of Kenny Rogers’ Lady? I tell you, it’ll have your foot tapping in an instant.

Towards the end of the class Mr Cover Guy had us make a huge circle around the edge of the studio. He started, and one by one – if we wanted to – we were invited to go into the centre of the circle and share our moves, like we were really partying! That was such fun, although I wasn’t sure I really wanted to copy that one woman’s pole dancing moves … that’s a different dance class all together, I think.

We ended the class with a few, slow moves and, as the music ended, Mr Cover Guy was surrounded by women needing to “ask” him something. As for me, I bounced out of the studio and skipped home feeling light as air. For an hour, I had danced like no-one was watching, I had twirled and swayed and felt the rhythm of the music, and I totally shimmied my stress away.  I can’t imagine there to be a better cure.

Sunshine signing off for today!

Two Ends of the Golden Globes

I haven’t quite settled on what I think about Ricky Gervais’ performance of hosting the Golden Globe Awards ceremony on Sunday night. He was typically Ricky. That is: offensive, irreverent, scathing, merciless, relentless, multi-judgmental and over the top. And incredibly funny.

I can’t work out if David Brent is Ricky Gervais’ alter ego, or the other way round. Either way, he steps in and out of both personas with ease. Watching the clips of him, I winced and cringed and sighed and hid my face in my hands. And I laughed. Hard. At times I wondered if I should be laughing. Was my laughter offending anyone? You know what? I think that’s exactly what Ricky Gervais wanted.

He knew exactly what he was doing. He took risks, he knew exactly what kind of reaction he’d get and I think he’s made a huge success of it. He got as much media coverage as the winning performers and, if popular culture is to be believed, any publicity is good publicity. The kind of comedian he is, he probably thought this would be his last shot at the Golden Globes anyway, so why not live dangerously? In all the reports I read ahead of the ceremony, he had stated categorically that he wasn’t going to be reined in and he wanted carte blanche in terms of material. Check. He got that, and then some.

I don’t think anything has changed in the Ricky Gervais camp this week. He’s always been a Marmite kind of guy, as they say over here in the UK: either you love him or you hate him. His performance on Sunday cemented that. Die-hards will continue to love him. Haters will continue to hate him. As for me, I love Marmite but sometimes, if I’ve spread it too thickly on my toast, it makes me choke.

Love him or hate him, Ricky’s in-your-face performance didn’t detract from the highlight of the evening for me: the best actor award. It went to the darling, charming, well-loved and self-effacing British actor, Colin Firth. Mr Gervais’ polar opposite. The awardee’s performance in The King’s Speech was exquisite. We saw the film yesterday.

We went to our favourite area of London – Greenwich – to the Greenwich Picture House, to watch the movie. Don’t you love that it’s called a Picture House? Given that it was a weekday afternoon, the cinema was filled with elderly pensioners and my husband and I brought the average age down significantly. We enjoyed the nostalgic experience of feeling like bothersome youths!

I knew I was going to love The King’s Speech; I cried when I watched the trailer a month ago. A minute into the movie and the tears were rolling down my face! That’s not usually my acid test for movies, but this one is moving beyond words. The central theme is the relationship between the man who becomes King George VI and his speech therapist, one Australian, Lionel Logue. Lionel recognises the King’s pain and his value as a human being and, in so doing, becomes his first friend.

I won’t go into detail about the movie because I hope that you all will go and see it and see what a worthy Golden Globe recipient Mr Firth is. Geoffrey Rush‘s performance is outstanding too. My hope is that they’ll both be nominated for Oscars and win. The movie is poignant, agonising, heartbreaking and extraordinarily triumphant.

Mr Gervais and Mr Firth. Two Englishmen. Two perspectives. Globes apart.

Sunshine signing off for today!

The Colour of Monday

There’s some doubt in the media about whether or not today is Blue Monday. Heck, from where I sit, Monday is blue, grey and drizzly. Downright miserable, if you ask me, with not much at all to redeem it. Navy Blue Monday.

When I was at boarding school, and probably through my high school and university years too, I used to get the Sunday night blues. That mild feeling of dread that the weekend was over – and, as a boarder, that often meant a weekend away from the hostel   – and Monday would bring with it a bunch of its friends – four other weekdays – to work through until the next weekend. I loved school and sport, but my slight dis-ease related more to the freedom and generally school-rule-free abandon that a weekend away allowed me. Even if I didn’t go out, boarding school rules were quite relaxed at weekends. And we got to listen to our radios, have “free” swimming and have a roast for lunch on Sundays.

When our sons were at school, our weekends were just fabulous: most Saturdays were spent watching our boys play rugby or water-polo, depending on the season, and the rest of the weekend revolved around our family. Sunday evenings always brought that ripple of disappointment as I acknowledged the end of a weekend and the dawning of a busy week where we all went in different directions.

As a working person, I did find that Monday had a charm all of its own. For most of my working career, I’ve loved my jobs and Monday brought with it new and exciting opportunities.

Now that we’re in London, and empty-nesters for now, Mondays are a different animal all together.  Some Mondays I wake up with hope and excitement and a renewed sense of enthusiasm for all that the week holds. Other Mondays not so much. Today is one of the latter.

Last week I wrote about my start to 2011 as a ride on the backwards rollercoaster and in the dark. I don’t know if this is supposed to tell me something, but I lost 15 subscribers that day. Just like that! I don’t think I’ve gained that many in a day, so to lose them seemed quite careless! Who were they, and where did they go? And was my post that bleak that they just unsubscribed on the spot?

At the beginning of January, I got an email from WordPress giving me a summary of my statistics for the five months I’ve been blogging. In the email they congratulated me for my busiest day ever – 3 December 2010 – when I got 2 views. This was the second half of my Freshly Pressed day, and how they lost 2,861 from that day and a good couple of thousand from the day before, I’m not entirely sure. If I thought losing 15 subscribers was careless, this, WordPress, was entirely irresponsible.

The media tells us there are things we can do to feel better on a Blue Monday: sing a song, sit in the sunshine, listen to the sea, listen to the birds, or go for a walk. In drizzly, grey London, where I am nowhere near the sea nor sunshine, and I don’t fancy a walk in the rain, I could stand on my head and whistle Dixie through my a*** and it won’t change a jot about Monday. I’ll live with it for today and tomorrow it will be Tuesday.

And Tuesday will hold its own charm. It brings me the privilege to write my 100th post. I can’t quite believe I’m hitting the ton, and I’m really excited to be doing so. There’ll be no mention of Blue Monday, no whingeing, no whining. I hope it will be pure Sunshine in London – lame humour served with a lashing of optimism. Actually, it’ll just be lame humour. Sorry I can’t find either today. I wonder what colour Tuesday will be?

Sunshine signing off for today!

 

Boys and Girls Come Out to Play

Relationships are always important to me. Never more so than now, having been through such a dark time, where I’ve so needed the support of my friends and family. And I have never leaned so heavily on my husband as I do now. He is a rock and such strength. What on earth did I do to deserve one such as him?

I’ve been reflecting on my history of relationships, and the journey that brought me to my husband. We have been married for nearly 27 years, and we’ve always enjoyed interesting, challenging and hugely fun times together. We laugh and we cry together, and we love each other’s company. 

Our giddy newly-wed years soon morphed into reality, as they always do. Suddenly there was bad breath, the five o’clock shadow, mussy hair, grumpy moods and dramatic sulks and door-slamming. And that’s only me. But we came through all of that and began, as M Scott Peck describes it in The Road Less Travelled, “the real work of love”.

When I was about 10, at home in Zambia on holiday from boarding school in Zimbabwe, we went to a friend’s birthday party. I can still imitate my friend’s mother’s laugh – ask me, and I’ll show you! We played games and we swam and it was loads of fun. However, a boy kept following me around and commenting on everything I did. 

I dived into the swimming pool and he said, “Wow, what style!” I hope his chat-up lines have improved since then. (At least he didn’t ask me if my dad was a thief. Why? “Because he must have stolen the stars and put them in your eyes.”) 

Anyway, he just didn’t leave me alone. He hung on my every word – which wouldn’t have been many in those days – and he watched me and commented on everything I did. I’d never had such attention from anyone before.  I quite liked it and I quite hated it. I was 10.

I don’t remember giving him my phone number, but he called me a few days later and asked if I could meet him in “town”. Dusty Mufulira didn’t have a hectically vibey CBD, so I wasn’t quite sure what he had in mind. And I was painfully shy. I said no.

He called back and asked if he and his friend could come and visit me at my house. I said yes and went into panic mode. Half an hour later, the two boys arrived at our gate, on their bicycles. I did what any 10-year old girl would do: I ran and hid under my bed.

My sister welcomed them at the gate and did what any older sister would do in such a situation: she told them I was hiding under my bed.

Not only did she tell them that, but she brought them into the bedroom, pretending not to notice me cowering under my bed. They spoke as if I wasn’t there, and my suitor told my sister – in a stage whisper – that it was a pity I wasn’t there, as he had some biltong* for me. They then left the room.

I loved biltong. And I was 10. So I ran out from my hiding place and went to find them in the lounge. I was so. disappointed to discover I had fallen for his decoy: he had no biltong.

Tempted as I was, I didn’t retreat to the safety of the floor under my bed, but stayed with them and began, kind of, to enjoy the overwhelming attention of a boy. And we did what youngsters of that age always did: we drew pictures and played Monopoly.

I think I saw him a few times more those holidays, and we maintained a short relationship-by-correspondence for a while when we went back to our respective boarding schools. After while there were months of silence, and I discovered he had moved his attentions elsewhere. I was unphased. His friend, however, continued to write to me and send me drawings for some time thereafter.

I was at an all-girls boarding school. When it came the time for our leavers’ dance at the end of my junior school career, the boys from our brother school (an all-boys boarding school nearby) were bussed in to keep us company. I can remember standing against the wall, all knock-kneed and awkward in my first long dress, waiting for – yet dreading –  some boy to come and ask me to dance. Ballroom Blitz, Tie a Yellow Ribbon, You’re So Vain, Cum on Feel the Noize, Crocodile Rock and Shambala all blasted from the DJ’s turntable. I danced with a pimply-faced adolescent boy in Oxford bags, but I’ve no doubt our teachers watched and laughed at the gangly and self-conscious antics in the school hall that night.

And then I began my high school years. I have memories of cameo moments with boys: my first kiss (YUCK!); many school dances with boys I was glad to be there with, other boys I wasn’t so glad to be with but they had cool friends; leaving a school dance with a boy whose VW beetle wouldn’t start and I had to push start it in my long dress and everything; a partner at another school dance opening a bottle of champagne in my general direction and soaking the front of my dress.

I had boyfriends who hooted for me at my front gate, boys who drove past my house at midnight and hooted (prompting my Dad to ban them from our house) and boys who would call me from the security fence phone at their boarding school and speak to me for hours.

All of those brief, embarrassing and heart-breaking relationships have prepared me, I guess, for the best. I am married to the kindest, most wonderful man in the world and I’m blessed out of my socks.

Sunshine signing off for today.

*Biltong is dried, spiced meat. Kind of like beef jerky, but South African. And better 🙂

Not just another winter’s tale

He was born on the winter solstice in Edinburgh in 1926. He died on Christmas Day in 1992, on the warm tip of Africa. A lovely, gentle, talented, troubled, kind soul he was. He was my father-in-law and this is his story.

As life and breath poured into his infant body on that cold and wintry December night in Edinburgh, so life and breath drained from his mother’s. She breathed her last and died that day. Life and loss. His young father was stricken with an overwhelming grief that veiled his joy at this brand new life.

My father-in-law was adopted by a family whose name we now bear. They lived on the island of North Uist in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. This new family ran a hotel and my father-in-law spent his days living the life of a young, country lad: fishing and hunting and finding the best that the beautiful, bleak, cold island could offer. His days were underlined with sadness and a constant wondering about his father on the mainland. He knew who he was, he knew where he lived and he so longed to meet him.

As a young man he met and fell in love with a beautiful young woman from the mainland. They married and lived on the island, going over to the mainland for the birth of their first son. With the hope and promise of seeking their fortune in Africa, the three of them chose to join her brothers in Zimbabwe (southern Rhodesia as it was known then). He travelled ahead of his wife and son and, before he left, went to Edinburgh to meet his real father. He wondered nervously whether or not his father would welcome him. His fear of rejection turned him round again and off he went to begin a new life in Africa.

Son number two (my husband) was born in Zimbabwe, and the family enjoyed living in the warm, friendly heart of southern Africa. My father-in-law was a talented musician – a self-taught pianist and accordion player – and he played in a Scottish band. He would lose himself in his music, and played the piano with a gentleness of touch that kept me riveted. I often wondered where the music took him as I watched him play. When he died, I inherited his piano. Such a gift it was; such a gift.

He loved his sons and watched, with pride, as they grew into young men and created lives of their own. His daughters-in-law became part of his family, and he loved us with a gentle passion that I will never forget. His heart beamed as his grandchildren started to appear, and each of them loved their “Pops”, with his ready laughter and unconditional love and pride.

One day, when he was almost 60, he received a letter out of the blue. It opened with, “You don’t know me, but we’ve known about you all our lives…”

The writer of the letter told him his father – who was also her father – had been 23 years old when he was widowed. He had married again and had had some children, but she didn’t elaborate. She wrote of her father’s longing to meet him, but how, for fear of rejection, that had never happened. She told him his father had died in 1976. Oh the sorrow that both men had felt the same way, and their perceived fears had kept them from meeting each other.

The writer concluded her letter by saying she’d send him more detail of the family if he so wished. She added, however, that if the communication had made him uncomfortable, she would not continue and would, with respect, leave it at that.

He was amazed. My father-in-law wrote back immediately and asked to know more. He soon got a letter with details of his family tree. It turned out that at the time of his birth, and his mother’s death, he had an older sister. She was three years older than he was, and was raised in Edinburgh by a grandmother (we have yet to discover which grandmother this was). His father then remarried and had seven daughters and two sons. She shared some detail of the siblings, their names and where they lived.

The correspondence continued for a while. It wasn’t long before my father-in-law decided to travel back to Edinburgh to meet his new family. A brother travelled across from Canada to meet him. Most of the other siblings lived in or around Edinburgh. Great excitement, anticipation and a huge nervousness accompanied him on his journey.

He spent a number of days with his new-found family of half-siblings, and met his full sister too. This is the part that always gives me goose bumps: the siblings he met all said, without exception, that having him around was like having their dad back in the house. He had the same mannerisms as his father’s, he coughed like he did, he walked like he walked and he talked like he did. If that isn’t one for nature versus nurture, then I don’t know what is.

He returned to Zimbabwe with tales of his new-found family. A man of few words, he had plenty to say about his family and father and the joy of blood ties. It seemed to fill something of a hole in his heart.

Not long after that, he became ill with emphysema and struggled with ill-health for the rest of his life. He and my mother-in-law moved to Cape Town soon after we did, and enjoyed their retirement in the city nestling beneath the beauty of Table Mountain. Our boys have vague memories of their Pops, as they were both very small when he died. My older son, who was three when Pops died, told me Pops had gone to heaven and had been given a brand new body. I loved that thought.

So there it was that we celebrated Christmas in the warm sunshine of a Cape Town day in 1992. And as we celebrated the birth of the Saviour who breathed his first on that day so many many years ago, my father-in-law took his last, painful breath and we mourned. Joy and grief. So much joy and grief.

Sunshine signing off for today.