Visiting the neighbours

Visiting the neighbours was always hard for me, as I had great difficulty in speaking their language.  I would stand at a distance and watch my father, who I might add was fluent in four languages, chat away merrily with Mrs. P from next door.  She had three great big strapping sons, the eldest of which it was rumoured, had single-handedly loaded his truck with forty, one hundred pound bags of mealies before breakfast.  When the workers arrived, the task had already been completed.  I found Mrs. P quite intriguing, for the simple reason that she had a really bad set of dentures.  When she laughed, she would quickly bring her hand up to her mouth, to hide the fact that lunch was still lurking around the corners.

One of the farm workers arrived one morning with a new set of teeth.  My father interested in knowing where he had managed to get them, and so quickly too, was told that at the local police station, there were any number of sets of teeth. One just had to go and try them all out to see which ones fitted the best.  It was no coincidence that right next door to the police station, stood the mortuary!

Occasionally I went with my father to visit old Mr. and Mrs. De Wet, who lived on a farm about fifteen kilometres away.  They seemed firmly stuck in the previous century, still riding to town in their horse and cart.  My gaze seldom left the top of Mr. De Wet's head, which seemed to be covered in greenish lichen.  Mrs. De Wet was always decked out in an assortment of clothing spanning about fifty years, offset by a large floppy bonnet.  Apparently she became ill once and took to her bed for ten days without removing her shoes!  On entering their very humble abode, my father and I disturbed a broody hen, who was sitting on a clutch of eggs in the sideboard.  With much squawking and clucking, she quickly jumped down and sprinted out of the front door.

The only English speaking neighbours we had were Mr. and Mrs. B and their spinster daughter Violet, who had a strange turn of phrase, quite unique to herself.  When she did speak, which wasn't very often, she talked about off-legged turkeys, off-handled cups and lah-de-dah pigsty's.  My mother recalled her commenting once about the "comical" weather we were having!  I always felt a bit sorry for her, as I sensed that life hadn't turned out quite as she might have wanted it to.  Living an isolated life with a domineering mother and laconic father was not an ideal situation.  Both Mr. and Mrs. B would eventually lie in state in the rondavel next to our old house, before joining my relatives in the family plot.  Whatever happened to "comical" old Vi after that was any ones guess.  She probably just slipped back into the woodwork, from whence she had come!