Horses (2)

Out of all the horses we rode, Lucky who belonged to my middle sister was most probably the best horse of all.  He was reddish in colour and not that tall, which made him ideal for younger children to ride.  I often rode behind my middle sister, holding onto her around her waist.  We would walk around the farm for hours in this manner.  My middle sister loved him and would bend over and lie with her arms around his neck and her face alongside his mane, breathing in the wonderful horsey smell of sweat.  Apart from Cress, the Shepherd's horse who was blind in one eye and needed a stick of dynamite to get him going, Lucky was the most gentle horse we had.  Any visitors to the farm were always given the safest horses to ride, and he was there right at the top.

Life is full of twists and turns and most of the time these happen quite out of the blue.  One such event happened while we were away at boarding school and we only got to hear about it on our return home for the holidays. 

One of the farm workers was riding Lucky whilst herding cattle from one camp to another.  One of the oxen ran into a huge patch of aloes, which grew at the corner of the property, diagonally opposite the old broken down trading store.  He was quite unaware that by riding into the aloe patch after the ox, he was signing Lucky's death warrant.  Unbeknown to him there was a large bees nest nestled at the bottom of one of the dried out stumps of aloes, and poor old Lucky's hoof tramped right into the middle of this.  In two seconds flat, thousands of angry bees swarmed out of the nest and attacked him.  The farm worker jumped off and ran for his life, but Lucky on this occasion was not quite so lucky.  By the time my father reached him, he had been stung so many times all over his face and in his eyes, that the kindest thing to do, was to shoot him and put him out of his misery.

When we arrived home from school for the holidays, we were told the whole sad story.  My middle sister, who was devastated went to inspect the place where Lucky's body had been burnt.  She picked up a number of his charred bones and placing them in a small box between two pieces of cotton wool wrote a note which said " Here lies Lucky, gone but not forgotten"

Horses (1)

A farm wouldn't be a farm without horses, and we had plenty in all shapes and sizes.  The very first time I "rode" a horse was when my big sister who was ten years old, thought that it was high time that I at the age of four should learn to ride, so she pushed me onto the back of Lucky my middle sister's horse and gave him a resounding slap on the rump.  He went from half asleep to a full gallop in two seconds flat, with me bobbing around and screaming my lungs out.

Down the dusty, rutted road we flew, then as quickly as he had set off, so did he just as quickly come to an abrupt halt in order to make a sharp left hand turn into the narrow gate leading down to the side of the old house.  Horses are creatures of habit, and so having turned into this gate a million times before, saw no reason not to do so again.

Not only did I learn to ride that day, I also learnt to fly, for fly I did, straight off the back of Lucky and into the waiting arms of my big sister.  I hate to think what would have happened had she not been there to catch me.  I recon I might very well not have been around today to tell the tale.  Needless to say that incident coloured the whole way I viewed horses from that day onward.

The woman who lived in a shack

I once knew a woman who lived in a shack made up out of assorted poles, planks of wood and bits of tin, all held together with nails and plastic bags.  Large stones kept the rusted corrugated iron roof in place.

She was a woman who had waited all her life for something significantly good to happen to her, however, raw sewage ran down the narrow pathway in front of her shack, and rats as big as small cats roamed around.  Even the mangy dogs with their rib cages sticking out would slink away into the cluttered informal settlement when they saw them.

She was a woman who had experienced the hard side of life in all it's varied forms, even to the point of being raped by some of the young men who lived there.  She lived from hand to mouth, and had no idea what to do with more money or provisions than would take her just from one day into the next.  Her rantings and cries of despair only brought scorn and derision from her neighbours.  No one took her seriously or bothered too much with her.  They all had enough of their own issues to deal with.  Life was far too difficult in that seething mass of humanity.

She began to attend a church nearby in a more affluent suburb.  She always smelt a mixture of stale sweat and unwashed clothing.  Once she was given a sizable amount of money, which she received with a bemused look on her face.  After a lifetime of living with just enough and sometimes not quite enough for the day, she would most probably have recklessly given it away to everyone around her in an effort to gain some recognition and respect.

Each year the church went away for a weekend on what was known as the family camp.  Everyone who wanted to be there was included, regardless of lack of finances, and so with her few belongings placed carefully in a plastic bag, she arrived at the camp.  That night she seemed to wander around in a bit of a daze, but by the next day she had settled in.

Things that I had taken very much for granted all of my life, took on a whole new meaning through the eyes of this woman.  Taking a shower which I would never even think twice about was pure luxury for her.  The shower curtain was half open when I walked past the next morning.  There she stood soaping herself all over, allowing the water to stream over her old, tired body.  The customary bucket of water, heated over an open fire a distant memory as she revelled in the steamy warmth of the shower cubicle.  Making my way back after having showered and dressed, I discovered that she was having another go at soaping herself all over from head to toe.  Ten people could have showered in the length of time she took.  I could imagine that no matter how long she stood there under the water, it could never wash away the decades of abject poverty, or the the brutal abuse or the stench of raw sewage.  However, it did give her a measure of delight and satisfaction for having once in her life been let loose in the steamed up candy store. 

Christmas (2)

The same wealthy aunt and uncle of mine always produced the most amazing Christmas lunches, spread out on a long trestle table in the garden Summer house.  The table would groan with food of every sort, and the usual crackers and hats and punch made it into a very festive time for us children.

One such lunch seemed to take a very long time in reaching the table.  One o'clock came and went, then two o'clock came and went and still no lunch.  By this time we began to ask questions, but none of the adults seemed to be saying very much.  We also noticed that my uncle was absent.  It was all a very big mystery to us.  Eventually at about three thirty my uncle reappeared with a strange man in tow, and the long awaited lunch got under way.  The strange man didn't seem very hungry, because he ate nothing, however we noticed that he seemed to toss down an inordinate number of beers.  Only very much later did the entire story come out.  My aunt being very superstitious had done a quick head count and on arriving at the number thirteen, refused to allow us to sit down to lunch unless my uncle went and found a fourteenth person.  Being Christmas day, I can image that finding someone willing to sit down with a bunch of strangers in order to placate my aunt, must have been almost impossible.  I think he eventually found such a man in one of the Johannesburg parks, hence the liquid Christmas lunch!

After lunch as all the fathers lay snoozing on the grass under the palm tree, we children quite oblivious to the days goings on, blissfully ran around eating slices of watermelon and sucking iced lollies.  As to the strange man, I guess my uncle deposited him back on the same park bench where he had first encountered him.  Life was never dull!

Christmas (1)

Christmases were always a lot of fun, notwithstanding the fact that my father was very against spoiling children, so gifts were usually in pretty short supply.  My mother had to virtually squeeze every present out of him to be able to put something into our pillow cases, which were placed at the bottom of our beds on Christmas eve.

We often spent Christmas with an uncle and aunt of mine who were by our standards very well off.  My cousin who was one of my best friends when we were children, had a playroom which rivalled some of the finest toy stores in  town.  This was a source of great wonder and enjoyment to me every time we visited them.  I would become quite frenetic as I spun from one toy to another.  Once in my great excitement while playing with a set of miniature lead pirate figures, I managed to break off Long John Silvers only leg!  I retreated under someones bed for a very long time, only emerging once I had been reassured over and over again by my middle sister that we would buy another one.

It was here that I received the worst Christmas present in my entire life.  The second worst Christmas present I ever received came a month late in the mail and was a squat, red coloured King James bible.  Not that I have anything against bibles, I just didn't want one at that particular point in time.  Reading it proved to be a mission, as it read like some strange medieval language.  I eventually took it to boarding school and used it to store all my birthday "holy cards" between the pages, but thats another story.

The excitement and thrill of waking up on Christmas morning, wondering what I had received turned into bitter disappointment, as out from the bottom of the pillow case came the swimming costume that I had been wearing for the past three weeks.  No matter how hard I felt around, nothing else emerged.  It felt as if someone had poured cold water all over my head.  To make matters worse, I had to put on a brave face and tell my cousin who had received more toys and books than you can imagine, that I had only got a sort of used, black, school regulation swimming costume and nothing more.

My father always used to say to me "I've got to toughen you up"  Somehow I instinctively knew that he was going about it the wrong way, but at the age of nine how can one say those things to ones father?