*Fuzzy Photos and Unreliable Tasting Notes Above: Shelley-ann (hereinafter to be referred to as "Shan") finally ensconced on the beach at Blaauwberg ... Table Mountain in the background confirms our arrival. After some negotiation with Shan's mum, Judy, involving presentation of credentials vis-a-vis suitable chaperones, we got the green light to travel a deux to Cape Town just after Christmas 1979. The fact that the posse included brother, Martin (a.k.a. Mart), and my married sister, Sue, appeared to have clinched the Deale[1]. But there was a last minute setback. Having repatriated my red Renault 5 from Carmela[2}, I set about packing it for the journey to Cape Town. An essential piece of kit was my surfboard and while manoeuvring it on to the roof with the rear hatch open it prematurely closed on to my forehead. There was a lot of blood, necessitating a trip to A&E on the eve of departure. Apparently stitches were required. These would have to be removed in Cape Town. "Yes, yes, I understand, I have friends at Groote Schuur[3]," I reassured the paramedics in Durban. I was winging it but they seemed to be satisfied. Maybe there was a degree of bang-on-the-head euphoria at play in the early stages of our trip but neither of us can remember where we spent our first night en route to Cape Town (typically a 2-3 day journey). Port Alfred springs to mind but who knows. I seem to remember chaperone #1, Mart, who was driving his own car and having to stock up on "padkos[4]" while we waited to exit Durban . Above: this little cutie was tasked with ferrying four adults with their luggage and a surfboard the more than 3,000 km to Cape Town and back. Lunch in Queenstown My/our first accurate memory of the trip was stopping for lunch with our to-be-host Ivor Wilkins' parents at their house in Queenstown. Ivor had been visiting for Christmas and was also on his way to his own pad in Cape Town. If it wasn't a Sunday, the lunch was splendid enough for it to have been so and once Ivor's Dad, a vicar, had said grace we tucked into a hearty feast of local fare. After lunch we repaired to the lounge for coffee and were just seated when Ivor's Mum addressed her son: "When are you going to get married, Ivor?" she demanded. Ivor mumbled something to the effect that he wasn't sure he was quite ready yet. "Nonsense," his mum retorted, gesturing towards my sister, "All the nice young women are already married, look at Sue! There'll soon be no-one left for you to marry." Caught in the headlights, Ivor pointed towards Shan exclaiming: "well, look at Shelley-ann, she's not married ... ." At this point my beloved was trying to be as inconspicuous as possible but was in the process of retrieving her cigarettes from her handbag. "But Shelley-ann's just a little, little girl," Mrs Wilkins retorted. Shan managed to drop the cigs back into her bag before they were detected. Soon afterwards we thanked the Reverend and Mrs Wilkins profusely for their hospitality and bid Ivor au revoir before heading off to Cape St Francis to rejoin Mart at the holiday home of Myles Budd[5]. At that time of the year the Durban diaspora was in evidence wherever we seemed to go. Stopping in the car park in St Francis, we bumped into Alastair Robertson, a childhood friend of Shan's. In fact that trip became such a blur of friends and relatives that I've often wound up unsuccessfully digging into my generally reliable memory banks[6] in relating this tale. Cape Town at last We eventually pitched up at Ivor's pied-à-terre in the Kloof Nek area of Cape Town, at the foot of Table Mountain. Shan, freshly showered and blowdried can be spotted below on our host's balcony with the famous mountain shrouded in its familiar tablecloth. And now to surf Having split my forehead open and lugged a surfboard and wetsuit all the way from Durban, I needed some confirmation that it had all been worth it. On the first morning in the "mother city" we headed up to Blaauwberg Strand where there was reputed to be a bit of a swell running. Shan can be seen languishing on the beach at the top of this article, once again with a (somewhat clearer) view of Table Mountain in the background. It was a hot day. The sun was shining fiercely but I donned my wetsuit, after all the water was supposed to be cold here. Perhaps a little bit of an explanation would be appropriate at this juncture: Cape Town is situated alongside the Benguela Current that flows up unchallenged from the Antarctic and Durban is situated alongside Mozambique/Agulhas current that flows down unchallenged from the equator. This is depicted below. The upshot of this is that seawater in Cape Town is not even fit for brass monkeys whereas seawater in Durban, even in winter, could be mistaken for fresh vervet monkey urine, straight out of the ape herself. So, in Durban, there is very little point in owning a full wetsuit. Just a top in winter when there is a bit of a chilly wind on one's torso. You've probably guessed by now that the reverse is true of Cape Town. Especially on a day when it is 35°C in the sunshine. On this day the swells were minuscule, too. So our ardent suitor spends half a morning sitting waiting for non-existent waves with a sweating torso until his legs begin to feel as if they're about to freeze off. Having carted a board and wetsuit to the South Western tip of Africa all I had to look forward to was finding someone to remove the stitches from my forehead. Above: Stylised map of the currents around Southern Africa; Shan at the top of Table Mountain. And a virgin trip for my new girlfriend to the top of Table Mountain, which enabled me to resurrect some kudos, having been up there before. Ironically, after 35°C at the beach more covering was required in the mist at 1,000m. The next time we went to the beach, we were accompanied by Ivor to Clifton where the rich and famous people have always hung out and there is grass to sit on if you prefer to avoid fine beach sand in your knickers. Above: Ivor and a current girlfriend at Clifton Beach; Shan on the grass with Ivor in the background, chatting to some fellow locals. In between beaching and eating out with friends we seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time in our little red Renault. This time was constructively spent establishing every aspect of my earlier romantic episodes. You could call it interrogation; I'll go with catharsis. No stone was left unturned. Any attempt I made at shortcuts to cut though some uncomfortable episodes has come back for a return visit during the passing years, final adjustments made and put away. One of these continued until 2021 and I'm not going to commit that to print without permission from the highest authority perhaps when I reach that stage in my blogs after 40 years of this narrative have been committed to paper. I do believe most of the key tripwires were expunged in that week of driving around from beach to dinner, back to Ivor's and out to another beach etc.. No wonder Shan went on to become a successful counsellor, peeling back the layers and rebuilding lives. There was one particularly painful episode when we were treating ourselves to a pukka restaurant and my tooth broke when negotiating something innocuous from a dental point of view. Slightly less painful was the removal of my stitches by a jovial group of junior doctors at Groote Schuur. Also part of our agenda was to meet up with Mart, Shan's sister Kerry and my sister Cath. These two had been major incentives for Shan's, Sue's and my expedition to the Cape in the first place. Kerry (hereinafter to be referred to as "Kinks" a family nickname since time immemorial) was to join us in the car on our return journey. We did drink a lot of wine. Whether it was on an epic 5-6 bottler on the Friday night in a fine restaurant with Ivor (causing our host to call in on the Saturday morning with the message "your captain has been injured" to his staff in the Cape Town bureau). Or during a lunch at Lanzerac in Stellenbosch with a bunch of Mart's reprobate buddies in which we played forfeit bar games. Happily I was able to mitigate my own forfeits at some of these having had substantial experience during my sojourn as motoring editor of the Daily News. There is a numbers' game, Chuckles, in which combatants seated in a circle have to pass a "baton" sequentially to a neighbour who has to come up with a number in an ever diminishing range that wasn't a) the "actual number" (set by a nominated member of the party who had to declare each guess either too high, too low or actual) or b) outside of the diminishing range established by the too highs or too lows. The forfeit for failure was to drink something horrible. Of course there is a probability strategy to be deployed if one can keep one's wits, which decrease exponentially in those who fail a) or b). Sounds complicated? Not really but it helps to have your wits about you from the start. Chatting happily over a bottomless wineglass and losing the plot doesn't help either. Having played the game before helps. Having a bit of an actuarial bent does too. New Year's Eve and Chapman's Peak Drive (Chappies) Shan and I traversed Chappies several times during our trip. Once during daytime because it was a spectacular thing to do. Above: Shan near the top pf Chappies in "those shorts" taken while we were out viewing the spectacle the Cape Peninsular is famous for.. The other time we encountered Chappies (in both directions) was on New Year's Eve in which a whole assorted bunch of people we knew, and many we didn't know, assembled on Llandudno Beach for a bonfire and general piss-up. Our relationship strayed close to the edge that evening when we returned to Cape Town to fetch my sister who was to join us for the remainder of the evening (night). I can't remember how we got to Llandudno nor can I remember why I was driving some bloke I didn't know's Alfa Romeo Alfetta. Nice car. Perfect place to try it out: Chapman's Peak Drive (it was a tad less busy in 1979). So I gave it a bit of wellie (I had recently been the Motoring Editor of the Daily News so kinda knew what I was doing). I haven't lived that down to this day. It still comes up when I least expect it. Aside to Ivor Mon ami, I don't think I've ever thanked you enough for the role you played in Shan's and my developing relationship and continued to play until we were safely married (next blog). Thank you my friend. Returning home One last pivotal conversation Shan and I had before we left the freedom of Cape Town revolved around an expectation between her and her namesake Shelley Renaud that they would take a year or two off to tour the world before they settled down. Boy, did I have to come up with something convincing. A lot of what follows this in upcoming blogs will be about my efforts to deliver as promised. Now it was 4 up in the little red car. What a hoot. First stop Pea Ee (a.k.a. Port Elizabeth, Gqeberha etc.). It was quite a journey, of necessity punctuated by comfort breaks. I feel sure we must have had a feast on our last night in Cape Town, after which we had to leave early in the morning. We had been travelling for quite a while when I had to stop the car to release some air. I pulled over where it was safe to do so and announced that I needed to "stretch my legs" ... we didn't fart in each others' company at that stage. The others seemingly elected to stay in the car so I exited and had gone a few paces up the road when I noticed that Shan was following me. I went a few more paces, thinking that maybe she was experiencing similar discomfort. She followed. After this sequence repeated itself a couple of times I turned to face her. "I need a hug," she announced. This has become a delightfully welcome refrain that has lasted until the current day. How could I resist. As we returned to the car, with my girlfriend seemingly satisfied, I was able to drop back slightly and perform the deed. Our last major stop (as far as I can remember) on our way back was to drop Sue off with her parents-in-law, Zia and Ian MacEwan, who lived in PE and were also old family friends. They had invited us to spend the night before heading on for Durban. Kinks was, and still is, an extremely accomplished sportswoman. She was also extremely short-sighted and had been a very early adopter of contact lenses. Somehow the subject came up in conversation at dinner with the MacEwans. Ian, who had always been quite taciturn and a good listener, asked her a good number of relevant questions as our lovely companion became bolder and bolder in her claims. Never once did he let on what his profession was. We didn't have heart to tell Kinks that Dr Ian MacEwan was a leading eye surgeon in South Africa until we were safely in the car the next morning. No doubt Kerry will get me back for this story when I move to this blog's sequel and I am planning the roles of the functionaries at our wedding. Coming next: Kind of more of the same. Shan and I had got under each others' skins but it wasn't always rosy in 1980. These Deales were (and still are) nothing if they're weren't feisty. [Footnotes]:
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*Fuzzy Photos and Unreliable Tasting Notes Three amigos: (l to r) Tony Kinnear a.k.a. Spikey Norman (latterly shortened to Spike or Norman), Garnet Currie a.k.a. Groper, Yours truly a.k.a. Banjo. Picture by John Pauling. I have to say I felt a bit glum after the dissolution of my partnership with Carmela[1]. I didn't know what to do with myself and was overcome with an emptiness that took a while to put behind me. To be honest, I was lonely. Our flat in Montpelier Road had two bedrooms and I prevailed upon Norman to enter into a sharing arrangement. It was a somewhat strange setup with a maudlin edge. We kind of felt that we were les étrangers from the world in which we found ourselves. We read weighty tomes and spoke of acquiring a small holding to share with dogs. We had occasional girlfriends (Norman more than I did) but there was a sense of being adrift in our late twenties. Maybe we'd stay bachelors into middle-age. All a bit dramatic and flying in the face of both of our underlying desires for the long stable partnerships that we have both enjoyed since those days more than 40 years ago. 1979 Gunston 500 The headline picture to this blog occurred in the middle of this period. Coming up to winter surf and an epic Gunston 500, South Africa's premier surfing event. The contest was held at the Bay of Plenty, opposite Dante's Cafe where we are seated in the photo. The waves at "Bay", as it was known to local surfers, could be pretty capricious and unpredictable, from minuscule to massive. The 1979 event started out massive on two fronts: the waves and the international contingent that was travelling to Durban to compete in the event. Particularly notable was the Hawaiian contingent, worshipped for their prowess in big waves. First day of the Gunston and we were lurking at Dante's. The waves were immense. Not necessarily in sheer height as in some of the premier Hawaiian events but in sheer power, scary. Ours was a beach break and relatively close to shore, The swells were rolling in from a typhoon pushing against the Mozambique Current[2] a few days earlier and which were now pounding the coast in Durban. I was standing near the beach wall when one of the Hawaiian Team came out of the water exclaiming: "Man, it's sheer survival out there!" I believe it was Dane Kealoha, the eventual winner of the event. A few solo ventures into the unknown I went to a wedding on my own. It was a long way from home base in Durban; 140 km inland at Nottingham Road. I had agreed that Carmela should hold on to our Renault 5 until she set off for Australia. But I had my shiny new Honda Hawk and it was a sunny day and the wonderful Andrew Newby was getting married[3]. It was a happy event among friends and I probably tarried a little longer than was sensible and eventually climbed back on my bike having substituted my leather sports coat for a supposedly toasty anorak. I doubt I've ever been as cold as that. Not before and not after. Andy's wedding had been in the Natal Midlands at an altitude of around 1,500 metres, which can get way below freezing at night in winter. By the time I rolled into Durban I was stiff with it and could barely get off my bike. Back in the flat I thought I might thaw out now that I was at sea level. I soon realised that it wasn't going to happen without some corrective action and ran a piping hot bath and lay in it for 20 minutes before my torso became reacquainted with me extremities. 6Above (l-r): Helmet hair from riding my pride and joy to Nottingham Road for Andy Newby's first wedding; beginnings of a responsible adulthood - after the christening of my latest godson, Daryl du Plessis[4]. My next opportunity to wear my posh clobber also involved the bike and the christening of Daryl, son of my friends Jeremy (Gorgs) and Lynne du Plessis. Fortunately I didn't have to stray out of Durban and my body temperature remained stable. Left: an official SFW tasting glass, left at our flat after one of the tasting evenings held in Oslo Court. I still have it after more than 40 years. Having the bachelor pad in Oslo Court in Montpelier[5] Road and having been introduced to a girl friend of Andrew Hathorn's[6] who worked for Stellenbosch Farmers Winery (SFW) we happened upon a ruse for entertaining our friends with free wine. All we had to do was to guarantee a venue, a minimum number of eager subjects to attend a wine tasting (such a chore) and subject ourselves to being tutored for a short while and bountiful quantities of wine were supplied along with suitable glasses for the occasion. Our wine appreciation took a welcome fillip, too. To this day I reckon there are more than a few of those 70s guests who have continued the tradition. The uncertainty continues Having reverted to a proper surfboard after a short stretch as a paddle skier, a fair amount of time was spent with the two other amigos around Dante's. Working on an evening newspaper meant we started early and finished early. If there was an offshore wind, the late afternoons were spent in the sea at Bay. Otherwise we might venture to the "ladies" bar in the Butterworth Hotel, although another friend, Ivor Wilkins, and I twigged that we might just be becoming dissolute a little too young (following in the footsteps of the journos of old and more recently Hunter S Thompson and one or two of our colleagues). So surfing in the evening and heading out for a meal or a game of bridge afterwards became the norm. And so it happened that I accepted an invitation to dinner at the Queen's Tavern (a.k.a. the British Middle-East Indian Sporting and Dining Club), a classy curry joint alongside the racecourse in the Greyville area of Durban. One of those places where suits or blazers were de rigueur for men. I decided not to take a partner, which nearly ended up very badly, as several members of our 20-strong party had matchmaking ambitions for me. As I entered the restaurant a group of my friends, collectively known as Deale, were standing at the bar (where else would you find them?). A particularly handsome young woman was holding forth and one of the Deale party interrupted her: "Do you remember Mark Harrison?" "Oh hello Mark Harrison," she responded before turning back to her audience. I spied Charles Philips (a.k.a. Phorsh, heaven knows why) and wandered over to chat. I asked who the tall blonde had been. "Oh that's Shelley-ann Deale," he responded. 'Hmm, last time I saw Shelley-ann she must have been about this high," I replied, holding my hand at about my own waist level. I had met her 8 years earlier in a Deale kitchen family soirée. She would have been about 11 years old then. As I did this I looked down and this vision was crouched beneath my hand, smiling upwards. "I know what you're saying!" she grinned. Turns out she'd regretted her original short response and had come over to make amends. To cut a long story a little short, the Deale clan summoned me to sit between them and Shelley-ann. Patrick's partner Susie Haines (now more than 40 years a Deale) being at the forefront of this interception. Apparently my new friend was a little more tuned-in to what was going down and was distinctly discombobulated by the situation. Next thing she'd upended her curry on my new suit. In her embarrassment she'd eaten a mouthful of chillies and was blinded by tears. Deale done! Not long afterwards the party dispersed and headed for the bars on Durban's beachfront. I offered Shelley-ann a lift. She was encouraged by her sibling group to accept and we all agreed that we were heading for the cocktail bar at the Edenroc Hotel. Turns out the Edenroc had become an old-age home and someone suggested the Bali Hai. Shelley-ann and I repaired to the Bali Hai. No-one else did. A clear set up. At this point neither of us was complaining. Early the next week I suggested to Groper that I might have met someone a bit special. Groper knew Patrick Deale and approved. That week the Curries and I had a long-standing arrangement to have dinner with Groper's sister and brother-in-law, Lorna and George Thomopolous. I had already arranged for a female friend to accompany me to this event and it was not Shelley-ann. But she was blonde. But Groper had put two and two together and arrived at five: "So how's Patrick?" he inquired of my partner for that evening. "Who's Patrick," she inquired. The rest is history with only the odd blip along the way. The first blip being a short hiccough when Shelley-ann's beloved grandpa Eric died. Susie advised me to give her some space but then I received a phone call from Miss Deale inviting me to her 19th birthday celebrations on November 16, 1979. And so we had our first proper date. Bye bye Oslo Cou(rt) (My) subterranean flat in Durban was a bit of a legend. It had been our landing pad when Carmela and I had first returned from London, then a "bachelor" cavern for two divorcees and now it was going to be consigned to history. Above: The entrance to the building in Montpelier Road with our cavern on the left - site of optimism, lighthearted bacchanalia, heartbreak and disappointments and then optimism again. But first ... we had a few months left and a few parties to annoy and scandalise the neighbours. My new love became part of that process, even though she never lived there. Mother Judy insisted that she should not move in before a proper marriage had formalised the relationship.. As Shelley-ann lived with her Mum just a few hundred metres down the road the obstacle was slightly academic and the return strolls to Chez Deale late of an evening added some frisson. "Drat" the cat, the adopted stray that couldn't meow, was often a chaperone when those short walks returning my girlfriend to home base played out. Then Drat would return home with me and retire to her perch on a high windowsill from whence she dive-bombed my toes if they dared wander from under the sheets. Those who chose to be unkind failed to hide their scepticism at Shelley-ann's and my May to December relationship. Perhaps they weren't being unkind, just solicitous. The consequence was that we alternated between being inseparable and separable. An example was Christmas Day 1979 when we were officially separable while each of us went our separate ways for the festive celebrations. Norman and I spent Christmas Night in Oslo Court commiserating. We opened a bottle of malt whisky and sipped the last sip well into the morning of Boxing Day achieving a phenomenon ... consuming a whole bottle of whisky without getting drunk. Love is often capricious during these formative stages and we were soon headed to Cape Town, lightly chaperoned by Shelley-ann's brother Martin, sister Kerry and my sister, Sue, who were on separate but parallel expeditions to ours in Cape Town. Above: Cape Town awaits.
Coming next
[Endnotes]:
*Fuzzy Photos & Unreliable Tasting Notes Christmas Day 1978 and, after a huge setback, Carmela seeks solace in Molla[1], while Molla seeks solace in the camera. Part of me wishes I hadn't taken this photo but it so well exemplifies how alone my wife was feeling that day. "Irretrievable breakdown, how convenient," uttered the contemptuous regter[2] with a smug grimace and a flounce of his gown. I had to bite my lip at his condescension on that sad day in court in Durban early in 1979. The law stated that one party needed to appear in court to formalise a divorce after submission of a joint affidavit between husband and wife declaring that a marriage was over. Carmela and I had already sat in front of a sympathetic solicitor who was a friend to both of our families. He liked us and we liked and trusted him. He was not a pushover and tested our reasoning strenuously before agreeing to submit the affidavit. So the regter was out of order but had to get his snide word in before affixing the official stamp. He wasn't interested in our wellbeing one jot. Some background In the early days our relationship was pretty much under the watchful eye of her tightly knit Italian family, complete with maternal Grandfather, 'Daddy', who shared their spacious home in Durban's Morningside. The rest of the family consisted of Papa Ciro, Mama Aurora, sisters Elena and Luisa and brother Antonio. Actually, Daddy was an Austrian aristocrat who had ended up on the wrong side of history at the end of WW1 and emigrated to South Africa from Trieste, which had become part of Italy. His full name was Eduardo Giovanni Bruno von Thomann de Montalmar and he was a constant presence at the Morningside home, always someone to come home to for the children if their parents were working. Ciro and Aurora had a delicatessen and older daughters Elena and Carmela spent much of their time working there, too. My first 'date' with Carmela was to join her with her mother and father for a concert at a formal Durban venue. If it was part of a vetting process, I assume I passed muster. My one failure was being a skinny dude and Papa Ciro set about rectifying that with stupendous Italian feasts on Sundays. For the first time in my life I became a bit porky. I could go on but I am just trying to give some idea of how integral the wider family can be to the life of a young Italian wife. What's not to love! To this day I remain friends with the surviving extended Toscano family, now including Carmela's daughters, Carla and Nikki. My daughter, Kate, has too been succoured by them while visiting Australia. I removed Carmela from this comfort zone when I was seconded to London immediately after we were married in late 1974. I went straight into a job in Fleet Street and my lovely 19-year-old wife was relegated to a studio apartment in Ealing. She was such a trooper and I was so caught up in my dream career that I failed to pick up on how lonely she became. Ripped from the bosom of a family where she had been a protected and adored teenager into a world where her husband was expected to be wedded to a newspaper bureau with postings abroad and weird shifts around the clock. My young bride had only the TV for company. The occasional holiday was compensation but really couldn't make up for endless time spent fending for herself in what must have been an intimidating and unfamiliar environment. Above: Our first year of marriage wasn't exactly a gentle introduction ... (top) just arrived and in Hyde Park corner; (row 2 l-r) pretty much Carmela's only environment when we first arrived in London, Elena came to visit; (row 3 l-r) St Tropez, photobombed in Naples; (bottom l-r) Summer flowers in the Swiss alps, the Acropolis. Coming back to Earth It wasn't that long after we returned to Durban from our year's stint in London that I became Motoring Editor at The Daily News. This involved a lot more gadding about on staying-away motoring jaunts, including a month in Germany and the UK. By that stage we had a flat but hadn't yet acquired television, which was new to South Africa and consisted of not much more than a test pattern for a while. Carmela's parents lived just down the road and had a TV and it was easy to avail herself of the warm environment of parents and siblings. Then came bombshell #1 Aurora's brother Merino (Mike) von Thomann[3] who lived in New South Wales in Australia, became concerned about his sister and her family living in South Africa in the aftermath of the Soweto Uprising[4]. He was able to help them move to Australia, which was great for them but left Carmela (and probably Elena, too) with a huge void. All of which could potentially have been overcome had
As far as beetling off to London was concerned, Elena's husband, my friend Howie[3], had other plans for me and lured me into the IT world. By the time I'd got my feet under that table with suitable qualifications[6], it was the end of 1986. It was therefore long after Carmela and I had gone our separate ways before Shelley-ann and I left for the UK, as it turns out for good, in April 1987. Actually, I'm not sure Carmela will believe me to this day but I always did want children but had hoped to hold back awhile until careers were established etc ... . However, I can see today why she might have been exasperated. I was a selfish git. Carmela had been a saint. Above: Some pics from the late 70s; (top row) some motor-editing activities in SA and in Germany; (2nd row) Kayaking was a favourite activity; (3rd row) Carmela and Elena were constant support crew; (bottom row) some 70s glamour. Bombshell #2 As it turns out we did agree in 1978 to start trying for a baby and it happened quite quickly. Actually I became quite excited myself. At first everything went pretty well and I was quietly crossing my fingers for a little girl. Then it wasn't so great. Carmela was confined to bed by our family GP (who I think was a little in love with Carmeeela [what he called her] himself). He visited frequently and after some scary moments things started to stabilise. Christmas was approaching and we had things to celebrate. It was a Harrison family tradition that we alternated celebrations between our home and Dad's brother, Graham's. Carmela and I stopped at my parents' home en route to the other Harrisons' for a Christmas knees up. In days gone by, the Toscanos would have been invited, too, but they were now in Australia. Carmela suddenly started feeling abdominal pains and my mum, Shirley, accompanied her to the toilet to see if she could help. Mum emerged to say our baby had been premature and stillborn. She told the rest of us to leave immediately for the Christmas lunch and that she'd follow on with Carmela in a while. I have no idea why I acceded to Mum's request. That seemed to be the way in those days. Mum would never have been cruel but her own background had been one of stoicism brought about by absent parents and, I found out, at least one miscarriage of her own. Mum and Carmela appeared after a while and the jollifications resumed. I cannot believe Famiglia Toscano would have played it with quite such emotional understatement. Carmela was magnificently stoical. She shouldn't have had to be. I can only now imagine what was going on under the surface. She kept to herself and sought solace by being close to Molla[1], whom she adored. Molla had her own problems. I'm not sure she was much help. Neither was I. I was privately devastated, particularly for my wife, but could only watch her with compassion and resentment at my relatives for thinking life could just go on and we could have a bumper Christmas. Carmela was, and still is, a warm compassionate person and would not have allowed that to happen to anyone else. Above: Some of the sparkle went out of my wife, to be replaced with a sadder, more contemplative demeanour. We continued with our lives but increasingly doing things separately. Of course, I had my work and associated social activities. Carmela started working in banking and made a few friends there. I'm sure they were some support. But I had the career I wanted and my family in Durban. Europe still beckoned. Her job was not a career and her all-embracing family had decamped to Australia. We tried to make things work, Neither of us wished to abandon the vows we'd made to each other in good faith four years earlier. It was finally Carmela who had the guts to call time. She would move to join her family in Australia. This was not a decision a young woman of Italian Catholic background took lightly. Paradoxically, the tension eased in the lead up to our divorce and we have remained friends ever since. Kate, at one stage having developed a great fondness for Carla while she was visiting us in Oxfordshire, asked quite seriously what familial relationship existed between the two of them. One last question for Mr Smug Regter How was this convenient? Life is not perfect. How would Carla, Nicola and Kate have emerged into this world as such fine young women had we clung to a dream that had evaporated? Above: Daddy (a.k.a. Eduardo Giovanni Bruno von Thomann de Montalmar), seen in the livery of his prestigious Viennese school before the First World War, died shortly after our wedding. He rebuilt his life in Durban and saw out his final years supporting Carmela and her siblings. He always wanted us to travel back to Europe and it was sad that he wasn't around to enjoy these pictures of Carmela, taken on our grand 1975 European tour - the first in Spain and the other on the Amalfi Coast in Italy.
[Endnotes]:
*Fuzzy Photos and Unreliable Tasting Notes I'd been pinching myself since I'd won the Mercedes economy test at Kyalami, South Africa's international Grand Prix circuit. Now I had landed in Frankfurt, had been installed in a hotel on the outskirts of the city and was being cautioned to keep an eye out for the murderous Red Army Faction (RAF). It was 1977 and German terrorism was definitely a thing. Somewhat ironically sharing an acronym with Britain's Royal Air Force, this RAF had kidnapped[1] the industrialist and former board member of Mercedes, Hanss Martin Schleyer, and were threatening further terror action. The Mercedes public relations team hosting the international motoring press were at pains to ensure we kept vigilant, delivering the message in our hotel conference suite. This suite was located in parklike grounds with a strip of grass separating us from a dark forest. I found myself glancing repeatedly at the window expecting any minute to see camouflaged faction members bursting from the undergrowth bearing automatic rifles. In the event, the most dangerous interval of our stay was the press day at the Hockenheim Ring where journos, hospitality tents and a broad spread of the latest German autos were combined to make the best of the Grand Prix track. There seemed to be an abundance of Opel Kadett 1.2 saloons doing battle around what was quite a fast track, the motoring reporters eagerly dicing with each other for some ephemeral badge or other. The star of the show that year was the brand-spanking-new Porsche 928. Quite an award winning sensation combining luxury motoring with a 4.5l V8 capable of 0-60mph in 6.5 seconds and with a top speed of more than 140 mph. Doesn't sound that much compared with the supercars of today but against the aforementioned Opels at 18 seconds and 86 mph respectively, it seemed a bit like oil and water on a Grand Prix track with journos giving it the max. I was a special guest of Mercedes and more or less had my own PR person for the day. She lined me up with a few choice Mercs before asking if there was anything else I'd like to drive. As there were a few Golf GTIs buzzing around, and they hadn't yet been released in South Africa, I replied: "The 928, obviously, but not much chance of that [there were 100s of press members queueing] so I'd be keen on a Golf GTI, please." "OK," she smiled, "I'll get you a GTI, come with me." Above (l to r): Opel Kadett; Golf GTI - 0-60 < 9 seconds, top speed 113 mph - with which I instantly fell in love, darting between the Kadetts and sundry other more pedestrian German marques - eventually owned one years later; Porsche 928. After my allocated laps in the Golf, I returned to the Volkswagen "pits" where my Mercedes friend was still chatting to her VW counterparts. She grinned when she saw me: "Now Mark let's go and get you your 928." I wasn't intimidated for long and on the second lap prepared to let the beast have its head as I swept through the bend into the back straight only to find two Kadetts dicing wing-mirror to wing-mirror. Thankfully the Porsche had brakes to match its performance and by the time I'd pared 30 mph off my speed, the left-hand Opel had noticed me approaching rather quickly and ducked in behind the rival car. A brief sweaty moment before sweeping on to 140 mph before the end of my treat. Incredibly in the day's jumbled mix of people and cars there was only one incident. A journo got a bit frisky with a Porsche 911 and spun it in front of the grandstand but, for all the smoking of tyres, didn't hit anything and was able to continue. London to Sydney Rally My memory becomes a bit jumbled after that apart from being taken to a gorgeous bar and restaurant up in the hills somewhere between the Rhine and Main rivers and the next day being apologised to by Daimler-Benz's head of PR. I was to have gone with them to Stuttgart to the factory but they had, apparently unexpectedly, come first and second in the stupendous London to Sydney Rally and needed all hands on deck ... they'd equip me with a car for as many days as I wanted it if I was happy to do my own thing. They'd done so much for me already that I elected to seek out an old colleague and comrade, Phil Duff, who was living in the Frankfurt vicinity selling Kirby vacuum cleaners to households on the US military bases. Phil and his partner put me up for a couple of days including motoring out to a wine festival in the Mosel. It was great to see how an old newspaper colleague was making his way in Germany Above (l to r): Phil Duff and his then partner, living in Germany; we partook in a Mosel wine festival in Traben-Trarbach ; me in the days of smoking overlooking the Mosel from Burgruine Winneburg castle. England and Wales road trip Then it was off to the UK to spend a week of annual leave, including a visit to the Lynskys. The most interesting anecdotes of my time spent with Rory and Brenda and Catherine are covered in a recent tribute to Rory. I'm sad he couldn't read and, no doubt correct, some of the details of this short interlude but it will allow me to make some stuff up. Above: one jazzy Ford Escort - I only had black and white pics so had to do some trickery to get the stripes on using the wonders of 2023 Lightroom. I had arranged with Ford in South Africa to test a prototype of a sportier version of an Escort that may or may not have appeared down South at some stage. What I do remember is that it attracted more attention than the Golf GTIs in Germany, even though the Ford was nowhere near as competent as the VW. The Brits can be funny like that. However. No sooner had I parked it outside the Lynsky pad in Ham near Richmond than a teenager appeared at the driver's window: "D'you jazz it up yersel' then?" he demanded admiringly. I demurred half-heartedly enjoying the attention. Flashing from a bus Wherever I went over the next few days the car drew admiring glances. It seemed that something attainable in its unadorned form became an object of desire because its pedestrian roots were clear beneath the flash add-ons. This one had a rear boot spoiler, mag wheels and a 1.6l engine ... oh yes and stripes. Now I'm innocently driving this magnet down the A38 to visit my friends, Bob and Carol Crampton, at their abode at Windy Ridge, Crapstone (somewhere near Plymouth). I was minding my own business when I came up behind a school bus. A teenager seemed to have been peering out of the rear window when my stripy Escort approached, initially fairly rapidly. I had to slow down and took stock of the rear window of the bus. The teenager was beckoning to her friends and pointing at the car, which was now pretty close behind. Suddenly, as if choreographed (actually it probably was) 8-10 breasts were exposed. I can't be sure whether there were 8 or 10 because I had to focus some of my attention on keeping the car on the road and not running into the rear of the bus. I don't know how long it lasted but at least until the bus turned off the A38 and on to more local roads. I continued on my journey wondering what had just happened. Remember that this was in the time of "Carry On" films when an abundance of double entendre was not yet de trop. Carry On Emmanuelle still had to be screened. Carry On Flashing at Souped Up Cars? Crapstone My sojourn with Bob and Carol flashed past in a blur. They had very recently added a little Crampton to their family and Carol was determined that my visit should not be affected in any way. She dispatched Bob and me off to the local pub on the promise that she and their young son could treat me to a tour of North Devon the following day. So off we went. Bob and I had worked together in Durban on The Daily News. We'd had quite a few itinerant international journos doing a stint and Bob had been a favourite. It was therefore appropriate that we had been sent off to The Who'd Have Thought It a mile and a half away. Evidently, the name had links to newspapers and the pub had scrumpy. I'd had scrumpy before, in London at the Smithfield Meat Market in 1975. But that was for a quick pint at lunch time. Now we were in the home of the hallowed beverage. Bob kinda warned me but we got into reminiscing and philosophising. The pub was quiet as it was early evening and one pint of scrumpy followed the previous. I don't know how many we had, probably not that many, and I certainly didn't feel affected after all the stimulating conversation. We'd been ensconced on bar stools and now was the time to make a move back to Crapstone. Sliding off my seat my knees just kept on going until they hit the flagstone floor. Bob wasn't in a much better state despite his local knowledge. The initial stretch of the journey back to Windy Ridge involved a steep incline that both of us continued up on our hands and knees. I'd like to think that we continued our intellectual reminiscences as we progressed glacially up that hill. Carol did not judge us and Bob bade me farewell the next morning as he set off for work looking remarkably chipper. His wife had a treat for me ... we were heading off for Clovelly and then lunch at a pub that was legendarily rude to outsiders a.k.a. "Grockles". Above, clockwise from top: Clovelly from above; Clovelly from below; Avebury earthworks; Avebury stones. I was predictably blown away by Clovelly. Never before seen anything like it. I have subsequently seen similar places in England's West Country but none had quite managed to match that original awe of the houses tumbling down the steepest of hills to the little harbour. We returned to Crapstone via the aforementioned pub for lunch and Carol primed me to observe the sign above the door. "For heaven's sake don't say anything," she cautioned, "just let me do the talking." I kept my lips sealed as I read the sign proclaiming, "No Grockles Allowed." Evidently, Carol explained later, anyone foolish enough to ask "what's a Grockle?" would invariably receive the reply: "If you don't know, you are one," before being turned away from the bar. Whizzing around Wiltshire and Wales I had been urged, by the Lynskys and the Cramptons alike, to visit Avebury in Wiltshire. Don't bother with Stonehenge they all told me, Avebury's the real deal. And it is[2]. In the intervening 46 years I've been back quite a number of times. Driven past Stonehenge on the A303 even more times but never been tempted to stop the car apart from once on holiday with Shelley-ann before it was all fenced off with a charge for entry. Above (l to r): the "new" 300-year-old bridge[3] over the Usk at Crickhowell; the Bridge End Inn back in 1977; the sporty 'scort does a glamour shot somewhere in mid-Wales It had taken three hours to get from Crapstone to Avebury and by lunch I had time on my hands. I decided to head to Wales with no specific agenda other than an association in my head between fly-fishing and the Usk River. By the time I'd meandered up the Usk, and was about ready for a pint, I was in Crickhowell and pulling up outside The Bear Hotel, an exceedingly fine looking public house. It was late afternoon/early evening and the only other people in the bar area were three young women sharing a table. "Nice car," one of them volunteered as I entered. I sensed a North American accent. So far the Escort's only admirers had been Brits. I wasn't particularly surprised as, bar one or two exceptions, bog standard American cars were even more boring than their British counterparts. They invited me to join them and the conversation turned to accommodation in the town. "Are you staying here," I asked, indicating the Bear "No, far too expensive, we're students touring Europe," they exclaimed. Turns out they were staying on the edge of town. I believe it was at the Bridge End Inn. The Bear was too expensive for me, too and my new friends said there was room at the Inn. Perhaps they could show me the way if I gave them a lift in the zippy Ford. The car was beginning to pay its way. The next morning, I had to set off early to meet up with some friends in London. Elaine was a mutual friend with the Lynskys and she and a pal were heading out for dinner. We'd heard that there was a casual section as part of Simpson's in the Strand, in turn located in the Savoy. Elaine and I were wearing jeans but with smart shirts, shoes and jackets. Her friend worked at Woolmark and suits were required for work. The three of us met outside the Savoy in the early evening and mounted the steps at the entrance. A seriously liveried functionary stepped immediately into our path. "Where do you think you're going?" he demanded. "We understand that there's a casual part of Simpson's and we'd like to eat there," I introduced our party. "I'm afraid you ain't quite making it, dressed like that!" was the response and then, and I don't know if he thought he was being helpful or whatever, he gestured at Elaine's friend, adding, "apart from the young lady, who is welcome to enter." Fortunately the car was parked not far away and we went elsewhere. There wasn't much choice in London in those days. Back to Germany, this time to Stuttgart to check out the Mercedes HQ. This mainly consisted of an exceedingly splendid lunch followed by being handed over to the top test driver ... a mature gentlemen who was going to take me around the legendary test track at Untertürkheim with its vertical banking on one of the corners. The experience was both exhilarating and terrifying. He struck a relaxed pose behind the wheel of a 6.9l V8 S-Class and drove around most of the track facing me and chatting. Even as we approached the wall. I must've turned very pale indeed because he eventually faced the front and entered the "wall" at something like 100 mph. I'm still here to tell the tale so we got round the banking, my lunch still in my belly and the car slowing for the pits. My host was grinning benignly and congratulated me on my fortitude. Above: Just imagine finishing off this partially eaten eisbein after a massive lunch and a tour of the Untertürkheim banking Then the Marketing Director of Daimler-Benz took me to the Stuttgart Oktoberfest. I found out that I wasn't allowed any beer until I'd eaten either half a chicken or an Eisbein. Needed to grease the stomach lining to lessen the effect of endless alcohol. Not even having seen the latter and knowing full well how big a chicken was, I chose the Eisbein. No sooner than I'd polished off my second enormous feast and had a 2 litre stein in my hand, the oompah band struck up and the assembled community linked arms to sway merrily back and forth. My Merc-guy was on my right and an enormous young woman was on my left. Taller than me (I was 6ft then) and sporting considerable bulk, none which appeared to be fat. My guess was an Eastern European shot-putter. Not to be trifled with. I nodded a greeting and she nodded with what appeared to be a stern expression and then added: "I from Finland ... do you wanna vok?" I think mine host helped to extract me from that one. My suitor seemed unconcerned about the rebuttal but perhaps was a little more strenuous in her attempts to dislocate my left arm thereafter. The increasingly drunken swaying had to continue until the marketing man deemed it time to leave. I lost count of how many steins we consumed before he eventually dropped me at my hotel as pissed as a lord. I don't often stagger about but fine wine at lunch time and an endless stream of pilsner had taken its toll. My flight back to Johannesburg was the next day. I had a suitcase for my clothes and a plastic carrier bag for my contraband consisting of the smelliest cheese imaginable. Limburger, ripe Camembert etc. as a gift for my Dad who loved the stuff, the more rancid the better. It also contained a copy of The Choirboys by Joseph Wambaugh. Bob Crampton had insisted I should read it before I got back to SA because it was sure to have been banned and be confiscated. When I eventually arrived at Frankfurt Airport and was passing through German customs, the officer demanded to look inside my carrier bag. She recoiled instantly as the cheese odour escaped. Shutting it immediately she motioned me through hurriedly. As soon as I was on the plane I retrieved The Choirboys, finishing all 346 pages of fine print just as we were preparing to land in Joburg. I hadn't slept a wink. South African customs didn't even bat an eyelid and I still have the book today. Coming next A sad tail - the end of an era. [Endnotes]:
*Fuzzy Photos and Unreliable Tasting Notes Above: collage expanded in text below I'm not particularly proud of it now but, on my return from secondment in the UK in 1976, all I wanted to be was a petrol head. My last few years at The Daily News in Durban were spent reaping the benefits of being the Motoring Editor. Actually, that's not 100% true. I really wanted to be a Political Correspondent but that post was soon to be occupied by Ivor Wilkins, the splendid fellow who was best man at Shelley-ann's and my wedding a few years later. Cars and politics, what could possibly go wrong? Well, not much actually but I always felt as if I was living on borrowed time without a proper job. So I had a fairly brief sojourn as understudy to the incumbent Motoring Editor, Ian Grossert, before he departed for greener pastures. But not before transporting me as pillion passenger through the air cresting a brow on Durban's Western Freeway somewhere in excess of 100 mph. Our steed was a Benelli Sei (yes it had 6 [sei] cylinders) and the exhaust howl of a banshee. Happily it also had the poise to set us down gently after our airborne adventure. Being motoring editor was pretty much an extended holiday, figuratively and literally (as we shall find out in the concluding paragraphs of this story). Basically it consisted of driving a host of different cars, the occasional motor bike and frolicking on mini-breaks, which were essentially what manufacturers' launches of their latest offerings were. Mini breaks with wine, food and accommodation way beyond the reach of a 1977 reporter's salary. The banner collage above provides a little flavour of what the motoring editor's job involved: (l to r) the business end was writing motor-industry related stories, the most pleasurable of which were road tests, particularly those that featured cars of the ilk of a Mini Cooper S; a dawn patrol was often the best time to snap rally cars in action; we also participated in economy tests and I am seen here removing my boots to have a more sensitive foot on the accelerator pedal of a gas-guzzling Valiant. Car launches A little more on motor sport later but first an insight into the crossover between road tests and car launches where we were taken off somewhere allegedly appropriate for the vehicles being introduced. Above: these two frames reflect the diversity of the entertainments afforded to a bunch of journos and feature Rory Brown. Rory Brown. Reporters of the day tended to partner up on car launches and I soon found that the most enjoyable partner was Rory. On this occasion part of the event's entertainment was to travel from one stopover to another on an historic train dubbed the Apple Express. In order to get from Port Elizabeth to Avontuur (near Uniondale) this narrow gauge train had to cross the Van Staden's River railway bridge which, at 78 metres high, is reputedly the tallest narrow gauge bridge in the world. This was too enticing a challenge for Rory, who determined to cross the bridge on the roof of the train. Today there is a "safe" platform on either side of the railway with proper railings but this was not always the case! I thought he was having a laugh. I should've known better. He disappeared on to the top of the carriage and reappeared after we'd crossed the bridge, lit a cigarette and stretched out to read his book, as can be seen in my pictures. Still on the subject of Rory, our "car launch" went on to involve a tour of multiple wine farms. The final stop was for a posh dinner at Boschendal. We'd been drinking wine all day and needed something more thirst quenching. Our winery hostess for the evening asked us on our arrival which wine we'd like to start with. Rory and I asked for a beer. Horrified, our hostess said something to the effect of, "don't you know this is Boschendal!" We assured her that we did and that we'd be very pleased to try the estate's wine but first could we have something to quench our thirst. Evidently the best she could do was water. So we had water to accompany a splendid meal. Not a drop of Boschendal passed our lips. We were sharing a room in a hotel in the centre of Stellenbosch. When our transport finally dropped us off after midnight we shed our outer clothing and got into bed. After about 5 minutes Rory leapt up and wrapped the counterpane around himself: "I'm going to find a beer," he pronounced. "But it's after midnight and this is Stellenbosch," I protested. Ignoring me, he disappeared off into the night. It must have been coming up for half-an-hour later that my companion reappeared with a quart of Castle Lager in each hand. Being the generous fellow that he was, the second quart was for my own consumption ... There were many of these outings over the couple of years I occupied the motoring beat on the Daily News. A few stand out. Bikey and Banjo pick up the spoor of a hippy chick[1] Above: A story in Afrikaans that riveted many South Africans at the time - translations in a comment more than welcome, as well as any more recent theories. It was a long time ago,1977, but back then the memories of Rosalind Balingall's disappearance a few years before remained fresh in the minds of South Africans, especially those that might have dabbled around the edges of the hippy culture less than a decade earlier. Essentially, where Daryl (Bikey) Balfour and I came in was from the periphery of the the motor-trade hedonism that was hosting us in the super-luxury Beacon Island Hotel in Plettenburg Bay. I can't remember what the particular car was but Bikey suggested that he and I follow a lead he'd been given to some forest dweller in the "Knysnabos" who might be able to shed yet unshed light on the disappearance of Ms Balingall. I was totally up for it and we set off that evening to find the missing link. We found the bloke in a not-quite-as-run-down-cottage-as-we'd-expected and the lead went nowhere. But not before we both felt pretty spooked by the experience and being in the forest at nightfall. We shot back to the safety of Plettenburg Bay a lot more quickly than we'd accomplished on the outward journey. The link above has a pretty comprehensive account of the unsuccessful hunt for Rosalind over the years and of South African hippiedom in general. Motorbike and caravan tackle the Wild Coast A friend and fellow journalist, Tony Day[2], approached me and suggested a ruse whereby we would use a Renault 5 (R5 - he had the franchise in Durban) to tow a caravan to the Wild Coast. I discussed this with my partner-in-crime, Andy Newby[3], who majored on the two-wheeled side of things. As it turned out, he could get a Kawasaki KE175 scrambler on test and would be happy to incorporate a ride down to the Wild Coast as part of the proceedings. But first Tony had to get a tow hitch fitted to R5 so we could tow the van. Then we were to head for Msikaba, at the time an exceedingly unspoiled spot on the Transkei's Wild Coast. Actually, I am 96.74% sure it was Msikaba but I'm sure if a real fundi identifies a different location from the picture, that person will let me know with a comment on this blog (where are Andy and Tony when I need them?). Above (l to r): Motorbike at Msikaba; Caravette sans wheel; trusty custodians lived nearby. The plan was to leave fairly early one morning, fetch the caravan (which may or may not have been a Gypsy Caravette) from Pinetown and travel the relatively smooth 340-odd km to Lusikisiki before hitting the rough stuff for the last 40 km to the coast. Andy on the Kawasaki (or Kwacker as they were affectionately known then) and Tony and me in the diminutive Renault towing the van. The journey would take around 6 hours, depending on the state of the last 40 kms. The objective was to prove the R5 could do the job. Actually, the outward journey went without a hiccough. Parts of the road were pretty challenging but doable. We arrived in daylight, had a lekker braai[4] and settled down for the night, tired and content. We had a day's furlough to enjoy the sand and sea before our return journey. The enjoyment was surmounted by an obscene number of fresh oysters acquired for next to nothing from the local oyster pickers. Andy, being Andy and well versed in Larousse and the necessary condiments for oysters, which he brought along, ensured that the feast was memorable. On our third day, once again we left early. We hadn't got too far from Msikaba and there was a nasty noise from behind the Renault which started to slew around on the dirt road. Coming to a halt as gradually as we could, we leapt out to be confronted with a fairly momentous disaster. The axle of the caravan had snapped and it was going nowhere. Combined with a generous local donation to the inhabitants of some huts beside to road, we abandoned the van with a view to sending its purveyors back to the Transkei to retrieve it. Half of our mission had failed, although our R5 had come through unscathed. Our route home was to take in some spectacular country, including the pass through the Umkomaas river valley. Perhaps without the little Gypsy we'd be able to enjoy the scenery a little more. Because of delays and stuff, we were quite far short of our destination when the light began to fade. We hadn't quite reached the treacherous pass down to the Umkomaas River. It was at this point that the sun's wasn't the only light to fade. The Kwacker's lights capitulated, too. Andy, still astride it, was pretty fearless but riding in the pitch dark was beyond the pale. Three blokes contemplated the bike and then the Renault and quickly realised the former wasn't going to fit inside the latter. We tried various strategies before settling on Tony and me driving behind the bike with the Renault's lights on full beam. I remember this being terrifying and even Andy was a tad wide-eyed as we negotiated the Umkomaas Valley before we could find somewhere secure to ditch the bike. I can't remember much about the remainder of the escapade apart from the fact that Tony took some flack from its suppliers for abandoning the caravan. We had the last laugh after it was eventually retrieved no more scathed than it had been when it failed us on the Msikaba Road. Motor Sport, including rallying and economy tests Venturing out in the dead of night to report on a motor rally was always an adventure. South Africa was well represented on the world calendar in those days and there were top international stars out in the Highveld for the 1977 Total Rally. As usual the attrition on the Transvaal dirt was high and top drivers such as Ove Andersson and Roger Clark failed to make the finish line. The event was eventually won by Sandro Munari in the much-hyped exotic Lancia Stratos. Above: this one would have been a dawn backlit shoot-out between the works Ford Escorts and Datsuns (Nissans) ... do not be deceived by the bland exterior, these things were all finely-tuned muscle under the bodywork. The final anecdote for this episode took place at Kyalami, South Africa's Grand Prix circuit back in the day. Mercedes had assembled most of the motoring journos from around SA to introduce a new diesel car which they had hooked up to a tiny flask that bypassed the fuel tank. When we arrived they announced that the reporter who could drive the furthest around Kyalami on the contents of the flask would win a prize. It was a big prize: a trip at Mercedes' expense to the Frankfurt Motor Show. There had always been cliques within the South African motoring journo community and our little group of "Banana Boys[5]" was regarded with condescension by the "Main Manne[6]" from the hinterland. They were at the front of the queue to fight for the prize. This gave me the opportunity to observe a little. The thing about the 1977 layout of Kyalami was that the start line was on a slope that drifted gradually downwards all the way around the track with a short sharp hill, Leeukop, providing a high point just before the finish. My competitors set off one by one and every one of them petered out before getting to the summit of Leeukop. I figured that if I could just get over the hill I would be able to freewheel for almost another lap. As I had been pushed out into last slot it was make or break ... I tiptoed around most of the track and then floored it a bit before the hill gaining enough speed to creep over the top and around once more. "Its not fair," I heard one of the Manne squeal when the result was announced. "He cheated," another cried to the man from Mercedes. "Mark won fair and square," grinned the man from Mercedes. Coming next #2 of Might as well be a petrol head plots my exploits in Germany with a side trip to the UK [Endnotes]:
*Fuzzy Photos & Unreliable Tasting notes Above: Full of promise: an imported 1977 2-litre Toyota Celica, the pride and joy of our wives' uncle Merino. In those days, cars in Australia were either Holdens or staggeringly expensive imports like this li'l beauty. Not very long after Carmela[1] and I had returned from our sojourn in Europe and she had been restored to the bosom of her family in Durban, her mother and father and two younger siblings upped stakes and went to live in Australia. In Newcastle, NSW, to be precise. In the gap between our return and her parents' departure, Carmela's sister, Elena, had married her long-term beau and friend of mine, Howard Frizelle (Howie). After many joint canoeing exploits with Howie and me being supported by the two sisters, Elena became pregnant and the couple decided that the last stages of maternity should take place under her parents' roof in Newcastle. The pressure was overwhelming on the Harrison contingent to make a simultaneous trip. Elena and Howie set off first and we were to follow. But first we needed visas. Perhaps because her parents were already living there, Carmela's visa arrived before mine and we booked our tickets with confidence that permission for me to visit Oz would be along shortly. As was the case with visas in those days (maybe still is) one had to send off one's passport for the Aussie consulate to check you out and stamp it appropriately if you'd passed their criteria. Well mine disappeared into a black hole. I don't know why it didn't arrive but it still hadn't with less than a week to go. Our travel agent was baffled but didn't seem able to produce any unequivocal evidence that I would have the requisite documentation to join my wife on our imminent flight to Sydney. Then by some bizarre (in a good way with hindsight) twist of fate, we came upon an old but still extant passport of mine that we'd thought had been lost. I mentioned it to the travel agent, who encouraged me to have a go at a contingency plan. But the only way this would work would be if I could take the rediscovered passport to the Australian High Commission in Pretoria myself. We lived in Durban, 625 km away. The only feasible means of accomplishing this would be if we travelled to Pretoria on the morning of our flight from Johannesburg to Sydney, Johannesburg (Joburg) airport being 50 km from the Commission. The travel agent told us to be standing outside the High Commission when the doors opened. The rest was a blur. We actually got to speak to the High Commissioner who was initially suspicious of me having two passports. Carmela must've gone on a charm offensive, being much better at it than me. Perhaps a little sob story, too. The bottom line was we left the High Commission with a visa for me in hand and headed back to Joburg airport. And guess what, when we went to check in for our flight, the clerk asked us to stand to one side while a supervisor was called. Hearts in mouths we waited for the worst but the supervisor arrived wearing a big grin and my other passport, with visa, which had been couriered from Durban. A fair few Castle Lagers were consumed in flight and I only really remember arriving in Newcastle to be greeted by Howie, who was dying for a backgammon opponent. After a few days of non-stop backgammon (and being consistently thrashed by Howie), and with Papa Ciro's consistent comments about cousins for Stephen Frizelle, who had popped on to this earth on the 13th of July 1978, Mama Aurora's simpatico brother, Merino von Thomann, who lived across the road, insisted that Howie and I really needed to see more of Australia than the Newcastle 'burbs. He also insisted on lending us his pride and joy, his bright red Toyota Celica coupé, and ordered us to get out of town for at least a week. "Head North, up to the Barrier Reef," he suggested. Above: lunch at the von Thomanns' prima della partenza ... (top, l-r) Merino von Thomann, Tony Toscano, Jenny von Thomann, Peter von Thomann , Howard Frizelle, Elena Frizelle, Carmela Harrison, Luisa Toscano, Aurora Toscano; (middle, l-r) Carmela, Luisa, Aurora, Ciro Toscano, Marianne von Thomann, Merino; (bottom, l-r) Luisa, Aurora, Ciro, Marianne, Merino, Tony. We're off up the Bruce Highway Our initial target had been Cairns but we soon curbed our enthusiasm when we realised that travelling long distance in Oz in the mid-70s was a slow process and further than we thought. We settled for Airlie Beach, thereby saving about 1,000 km on our round trip. Hey ho, as Saffas we were used to Durban to Cape Town return being 3,200 km but Oz was a different story ... the 4,000 km return journey between Newcastle and Airlie Beach on the Bruce Highway would do us just fine given our relatively short timescale. Australia was vast. Especially given that 'highway' was a somewhat optimistic term when we discovered the first slatted wooden bridge on the Brucey. I recall that was at 10-mile creek. There were a lot of gum trees lining this single-lane highway and more than a few kangaroos, too. The latter were a new hazard and we soon recognised why so many vehicles in that part of the world had 'roo bars'. In South Africa you could usually spot errant wildlife trundling towards you from a distance. With roos, one moment they'd be standing stoically on a roadside verge and seconds later, boi-oi-oing, and they'd be plonked in the middle of the road. Even this excitement on the lower section of the journey became monotonous after a while and we resorted to the travelling equivalent backgammon, viz. the 'word game'. One of us would start with a letter and the other would have to follow with another. There were only two rules. There had to be a legitimate word at the end of it and the player landing on a letter that completed a word would lose. We got quite crafty and good at it after 4,000 kms. I forgot who won by the end of the trip but it might just have been me, equalising the scoreboard that started with my trouncing by Howie at backgammon. And we had music in the car. Two albums: Kate Bush's debut album The Kick Inside, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer on cassette tapes. The EL&P was a double album, Works volumes 1&2, and erred on the serious side. With that and the Word Game we nurtured our intellectual acumen. We never quite mastered a falsetto duet of Wuthering Heights. We crept into Queensland as the day was dying and got a glimpse of Burleigh Head before entering Gold Coast, which wasn't too Gold back in the mid 70s. Pitched our tent quite close to the sea and grabbed some Brisbane Bitter and pub grub from a down-at-heel establishment on the 'strip'. Queensland and glimpses of the Great Barrier Reef Early the next day we crept past Brisbane with a lightening sunrise and headed towards Noosa Heads, partly a pilgrimage in the steps of Midget Farrelly. We'd seen the movie Endless Summer in which Midge had discovered our own magnificent tubes at Cape St Francis and had been a smidgeon rude about our surfing attire in Durban. If I remember correctly, he made snidey remarks about jock-straps or something similar. After a brief pause to absorb what was a becalmed Noosa we pushed on towards Yeppoon. This was to be our jumping off point for Great Keppel island the following morning. It turned out that Yeppoon was also a home of fair dinkum 70s Aussies. I'm not sure if women were allowed in the bars in Queensland then, but I don't recall anything but unreconstructed blokes in the huge temple to lager we entered after parking the Celica and pitching our tent. The back wall behind the bar was expansive and occupied entirely by massive fridges to keep the amber 'nectar' cold. These were disgorging bottles of stuff like Brisbane Bitter[2] to satisfy the collective thirst of the cobbers extracting the maximum drinking out of the extraordinarily short opening hours in force in Queensland at the time. So there's a bit of a health warning here ... we are talking about more than 45 years ago when we were reliably informed by a Mate we met on our travels that Aussie blokes had a priority list that went something like this: 1. Car (almost invariably some sort of Holden), 2. Boat (from which to fish), 3. Ute (to tow said boat), 4. Beer (almost exclusively lager no matter what it said on the label), 5. Barbies[3] (we Saffas called them braais), 6. Cricket, 7. Some weird game called 'Australian rules football', which was an antipodean approximation of rugby, 8. Actual rugby, 9. going to the beach, 10. Sheilas (more specifically their wives or girlfriends). So there was certain reflected irony when we were downing our second pint in this Sheila-free Queensland drinking establishment as the following scenario played out. There was a sizeable group of Mates drinking in the middle of the room and we could see them eyeing us. Eventually one of them approached and invited us to join them. We accepted, delighted to experience a bit of Oz drinking culture. Handshakes all round before we resumed drinking and our host turned to us conspiratorially and said sotto voce: "If you see two blokes on their own in a bar, they're either 'queer' or they're lonely. We agreed you were lonely so we invited you over." Before we had an opportunity to digest this information there was a loud announcement. They were about to raffle a sheep, a sort of tombola. A live woolly Ovis. Howie, always one for a flutter insisted that we had a punt. Numbers on plastic cubes were loaded into a barrel constructed from wire mesh, the handle was turned and a die was retrieved. We only went and won the sheep. It was immediately donated to the group of Mates who protested weakly that we could have it butchered to cart off with us in the Celica. That wasn't going to happen but we didn't have to pay for a beer for the remaining hour of opening time. Great Keppel The next morning we were setting off for the real deal. A fair dinkum island protected by the Great Barrier Reef. We found the camp site and pitched our tent amongst soughing Casuarina trees and overlooking a spotless beach. The peace was only interrupted at meal times when the local possums attempted to share our grub - rather rudely and aggressively we decided. Above: Evening on the beach outside our tent on Great Keppel, looking out at Middle Island while Howie scans the shoreline for crustaceans. It became clear, during walks around the island, how incredibly unspoiled and litter-free Australian beaches were. During our few days on Great Keppel we only came across one item. Yes, it was an empty can of Brisbane Bitter lying on an otherwise pristine beach. Probably floated there after being discarded from a boat by an irreverent Saffa. We also got to go out on a flat bottomed launch - quite a large one - to traverse the astonishing beauty of the reef itself. It says something about this then still-callow 27-year-old that the most memorable aspect of that boat journey occurred while returning from the reef. As a fun activity in the calm seas the crew opened out a large boom from the boat's starboard gunwale. Trailing from the boom at a 45-dgree angle was a huge net. We were encouraged to lower ourselves into the water from the sturdy rope matrix. First off was an enthusiastic young woman in a bikini who gingerly descended feet first into the briny. Only thing was, the moment her lower half hit the water the boat's forward motion saw to it that our unfortunate damsel's bikini bottom lost its grip and disappeared rapidly into our wake. Almost instantaneously the boat developed a list to starboard as the several-score occupants darted over to get a better view as our heroine's friends restored her modesty with a towel and got her aboard. The crew abandoned that malarkey and we returned across peaceful waters to port. Airlie Beach I'd love to explore northern Queensland properly one day, both the coast and the inland bits. On our road trip Howie and I had to hit Airlie Beach full on, catch up on a bit of sleep and start our return journey. Airlie Beach overlooks the spectacular archipelago containing, inter alia, the Whitsundays and many other smaller groups of islands. But we arrived in the evening and had to leave the next morning so we gravitated towards the town's amusement arcade ... something a bit like those found in Blackpool or, in the 70s, at Durban's North Beach. The difference between Airlie Beach's amusement arcade and Durban's was the former's legitimate access to beer. It also had toad racing. Howie's eyes lit up. We could bet on toad racing. We investigated further and found that this 'sport' consisted of a set of concentric circles painted on the floor with the outer having a diameter of maybe four feet. And there was a bucket of toads painted in various colours. Punters needed to choose a toad and give it a name. The name, colour and entry fee were then handed over to a fairly dodgy looking compère who waited until all toads were spoken for before upending the bucket in the centre circle. The winner would be the first toad to cross the outer ring. The toads took their time, occasionally even hopping back towards the middle. H and I refused to tell each other what we had named our toads. It turns out 'Howard" never got a mention in the commentary but "Mark" briefly looked like being an earner for Howie but it was not to be. While we were drowning our losses at a bar, this young Aussie Sheila sidled up to me and blurted, looking pleased with herself: "I've been listening to your accent and I know where you're from ..." "... oh yeah, where would that be, then?" I countered. "Melbourne!" she grinned. "Not bad," I quipped annoyingly and, in retrospect, incredibly rudely, "only about 10,000 km out: Durban." She looked a bit nonplussed and wandered off. Merino's pride and joy ... oops! Now we had to retrace our steps back to Newcastle as quickly as possible. I think we did it in two days but can't remember where we stopped. I do remember noticing a lot of road trains: vast pantechnicons towing trailers similar in size to the articulated beast itself, including a 'horse' with an impossibly long bonnet bedecked with stadium-quality lighting and monster roo-bar. Above: something like this[4]. Scary beast n'est-ce pas? At the time the speed limit on the Bruce Highway was 55mph if I recall correctly. Our little Celica was as yet unscathed as we drifted into our last night on the road. I was driving carefully when I spotted what seemed like an alien invader in the rearview mirror. It was approaching us fast and, from about 25 metres back started flashing its blistering lights. I'm not sure what I was supposed to do other than veer off the road (which I would have done if there'd been a place to do so!). The leviathan kept getting closer and started blaring its horn. WTF! This was unique but there was bugger all I could do. And then the beast pulled out and overtook us. As it swept past it kicked up a stone, cracking our windscreen. We were shaken and powerless. Dear Merino (fondly known as Mike) was brilliant about it, bless him. Nog 'n piep No sooner were we back in Newcastle than H announced that he would like to take part in a canoe race on the Hunter River. A two day event if my memory serves me correctly[5]. I can't remember where Howie got the Kayak or what car we used to get there (answers on a postcard a.k.a. the comment section of this blog if you know) but get there we did. Above: Not sure if my friend was looking pensive, apprehensive or excited - he could be a little inscrutable at times.
The Hunter River ploughs its own valley to enter the sea at Newcastle. The valley was one of the first Australian wine regions and today has been producing for around 200 years. Best known for its Sémillon, the region now produces from a string of other varietes including Shiraz, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Verdelho. But that's by the way. We travelled up river for perhaps 150 km armed with our trusty tent and a few basic ready-meals. Pot Noodles spring to mind. We pitched the tent in a designated campsite already heaving with other paddlers and their families, every one of whom had substantial temporary abodes and piles of food. As soon as we started spooning our noodles outside our tent, children started arriving with plates of hearty grub. It seems their parents judged us to be hungry and lonely. That's what I loved about Australia. The generosity and willingness to share. As it goes, we finished our last evening in a pub nearby. It was our last opportunity (well mine at least as I was heading back to Castle-country imminently) to drink cold Aussie lager. H finished his canoe race adding another badge to his growing list (there're already a few on his track top above). THE END R.I.P. This one's for Merino (who died far too young), Ciro and Aurora. If there is a happy place to move on to, I hope they're in it and together. [Endnotes]:
*Fuzzy Photos and Unreliable Tasting Notes There are few benefits to Covid lockdown but one of them is doing stuff like attempting to archive ancient transparencies and then getting completely sidetracked. Some of these fuzzy photos have some creative merit and many are pure nostalgia. Most of them require some level of verification by digging around for provenance. Provenance often comes in dribs and drabs and then the dam breaks. I already have a tribute to a Durban legend, Solange Raffray, in the starting blocks. Now while furtling around in my paddling[1] pics I have been saddened to uncover the death of another Durban legend, Graeme Pope-Ellis. I must have been the only avid 70s paddler not to have known. He died in a tractor accident in 2010, aged 62. For those who are unaware of the Dusi Canoe Marathon, it is a three-day[2] race between the two Kwa-Zulu Natal (KZN) cities of Pietermaritzburg and Durban and has been described as one of the toughest events in the world. It is essentially a Kayak event but there are certain sections that require portaging up the steep sides of the uMsundusi and uMngeni rivers. Graeme won it 15 times in 18 years. Three of the victories were in a K1. When I returned from London in 1976 he had already won the Dusi 5 times. He continued to win in the two following years, events in which I also participated albeit at a much more modest level. Graeme spurred us on with veteran advice (he was not yet 30) in pre-Dusi briefings at our Kingfisher Canoe Club (KCC). Most of us plodded doggedly over the portage sections. The following is photographic evidence that Graeme, and his then partner Peter Peacock, did not plod. They didn't even run, they levitated. The white kayak is easily spotted with its number 1, earned from winning the previous year's event. The low flying Pope-Ellis/Peacock combo inspired me to scan a bunch of other transparencies in a box in our Oxfordshire attic and publish them as an adjunct to this mini-blog for fellow enthusiasts (sufferers) to enjoy if they are so inclined. There are a few shots from Hella Hella on the Umkomaas. Others are taken at random events around KZN in 77/78, culminating in the Dusi in that February. There are also a few nostalgic moments from the "Dice", the weekly time trial run by KCC at Durban's Blue Lagoon. While the transparencies happen to be in my possession, I have no idea who took the originals except for the Umkomaas shots that were taken by yours truly. Given that quite a few of the others have me in them there must have been at least one other photographer involved. Prime suspects would be Carmela (pictured in the collection dangling a Pentax around her neck) and my late brother Paul, who I cannot consult for obvious reasons. I suspect he took the one of me below, though. He supported me in that event, aged 12. I had been hoping that one day we'd be able to do it together. Feel free to dip into the library on this site for a little bit of history. Maybe you took one or two of the pics or have a little more information to add? Feedback is always appreciated.
Coming next: [Endnotes]:
*Fuzzy Photos and Unreliable Tasting Notes In the picture below are, from left to right, Russell Kay, me, Liz Clarke enjoying a Castle, the backs of some heads, me again and Garnet (Groper) Currie I can't pretend that returning to life in the newsroom after a year's dream assignment in London wasn't an anticlimax. But life had to be grabbed and I'd signed up to 3 years back at the Daily News so I needed to make the best of it. The most enjoyable part was reacquainting myself with old friends, although time with Garnet (on the extreme right above) was going to be short as he was heading to London on a similar expedition. It would've been stonking if we'd overlapped in the UK but it wasn't to be ... besides, as a married man, I would probably have cramped the style of the legendary Groper[1] Currie. My compensation was that, in those days, it was considered normal for blokes to write letters to each other, so I was able to live vicariously through my mate's purple prose. Carmela was delighted to be able to spend time with her family again and we moved from London into a flat in Montpelier (sic) Road just a few 100 metres up the road from the Toscano family. South Africa had finally acquired television while we'd been away and our families had been hopefully watching the test pattern on recently bought TV sets. When some proper content eventually materialised, much of it was viewing repeats of stuff like Little House on the Prairie (LHotP). Much of this was translated into Afrikaans while a homegrown market for content developed. Sometimes the translation didn't quite deliver the je ne sais quoi the editors had hoped for. LHotP translated as "Kleinhuisie op die Veld", which, when translated back again, resulted in "shithouse in the grassland". And then there was The World at War (TWaW). This was a superb documentary built around World War 2 and narrated by Lawrence Olivier. It may be difficult to relate to the immediacy of this series now that it is 2023 and the events unfolded in the mid 1940s, but in the mid 1970s many, my Dad included, had been scarred by what still seemed like a recent conflict. Our family gathered religiously around my parents' TV set on the nights each instalment went out. It was really the only TV I cared to watch in those months after our return. Against the backdrop of early SABC programming TWaW was "like bright metal on a sullen ground,[2]". Having been a bit of a TV addict in my temporary London home, I resolved to look elsewhere for other stimulation. Work was part of it (and will form the basis of the follow-up blog to this one) but, after a sloth-like existence in the UK, I approached sport, including some new ones, with a renewed vigour. I'm not sure of the exact chronology but Carmela and I were spending a fair bit of time with her sister, Elena, (who had visited us in the UK) and Elena's beau, Howard Frizelle, who was to become her life's partner. So I am pretty sure the new sports bug started with kayaking. Bring on the Kayaks First of all I think, Howard had invited me to take part as his doubles (K2) partner in an event on the Mzimkulu River. At the last minute he made an arrangement with his brother, Mike, to do the race in Mike's own K2. Howard was apologetic and proposed that my old mate, Andrew Hathorn, be persuaded to accompany me in Howard's boat. The Mzimkulu was a novice event, he reassured us. Andrew has never been a fearful sort and was undeterred when a long journey to the foothills of the Drakensberg proved that there was more water in the river than was customary. Perhaps it was in spate? The bottom line was that we entered the first proper rapid at the top of the white water and half a boat and two separate paddlers left the river at three different points. I couldn't find Andrew and feared the worst. I lost him for what seemed an eternity. Eventually I heard shouting from the top of a hill quite a bit further downstream and our race concluded with a long walk to the finish. Reasonable people might conclude that that would have put paid to my kayaking career. I paid for half a new boat for Howard and I think Howard accepted responsibility for the other half. The next week I spent the remainder of my savings on a used white water K1. Took it off Tony "Spikey Norman" Kinnear[3]. My first boat didn't last long ... ended up at the bottom of this very same rapid, Dog Leg near Durban, sometimes a trickle, other times a raging torrent. As children of Durban our main kayak event on the annual calendar was the Dusi Canoe Marathon, in those days held over three days. The start was in Pietermaritzburg, the provincial capital of what is now KwaZulu-Natal, and the finish was (and still is) in Durban. Initially the Msundusi river snakes and writhes its way to the Umgeni, which ultimately flows into the Indian Ocean. My first go at the Dusi, in 1977, was once again a Frizelle/Harrison pairing. We acquitted ourselves pretty well, placing 51st. Although this was fairly impressive for a first go at the event, we narrowly missed the top 50 whose names were traditionally included in the following year's programme. If I remember correctly, Mike Frizelle and his partner finished 49th. The following year I paddled my own canoe, a shiny new K1. The river was pumping that year and I had a whale of a time. I was a tad unfit but I nailed the rapids and, once again, had a respectable finish. Respectable enough to have a go at that year's Seals Iron Man challenge, which consisted of finishing the Dusi, the Midmar Mile swim[4] and the Comrades Marathon. The "Comrades" as it was known (still is) followed the same route as the Dusi but took a more direct 90 km road route. Others may disagree but the Comrades is far more brutal than the Dusi, especially as the 90 km (more than two standard marathons back to back) has to be completed within 11 continuous hours. More of that a little later. Above: (top row, l to r) Howard looking a little pensive before an event; hotdogs are the order of the day for padkos (road food); Elena and Carmela (the intrepid photographer) are the support team; (bottom row, l to r) Setting off from Pietermaritzburg in 1978 somewhat tentatively - no need to capsize this early in the event; first overnight stop reached; portaging the canoe over "Burma Road", nearing Durban - the river below being considered too dangerous in big water in those days. For reasons that I can no longer recall, I swapped my beloved kayak for a surf ski. While they had tolerated my pootling around in canoes on rivers, Spikey and Groper never quite accepted that switch to a paddle ski for the sea. The only cool device on which to catch waves was a surfboard[5]. Above: Spikey can't even look at me extolling the virtues of paddle skis ... Groper looking, well, Groper. Swimming Not much to say about that really. Swimming had been a big part of my pre-teens, mainly because I had wanted to emulate my Dad, Woody, who had been selected to swim for South Africa in the 1944 Olympics. The 44 Olympics didn't happen for obvious reasons and Dad would've been part of South Africa Air Force 24 Bomber Squadron when he should have been swimming for his country. Above; I might have come 518th but there were thousands swimming and my Dad was proud of me ... And it was another brick in the wall for the 1978 Iron Man award. But there was another mountain to climb altogether. Running I'd done a bit of sprinting and cross country at school but the Comrades was an altogether sterner challenge. Training started in 1977 with the weekly 5 mile (8 km) time trial at our local club, Savages. My first few attempts at the 5-miler involved a fair amount of walking and each took just short of an hour. I was going to have to do a whole lot better than that. Probably have to take half that time. I did manage to corral Spikey into the whole enterprise, which was a small achievement in itself. We eventually set off to run an official 10-miler somewhere up the North Coast from Durban. The outcome was somewhat ignominious and we needed to up our game. We inveigled Groper as our coach, a rôle he approached with initial alacrity. Our next distance involved a 15-miler around Hillcrest[6]. The name said it all but we trotted off gamely with Groper waving us on with exaggerated pride. He was to head off along the route in his car and stop occasionally to ply us with water. For maybe 10 miles we were OK. We'd done that distance before and cantered along confidently. After a few more miles we ran into a brick wall. Groper had forged ahead in the car and set himself up at around the 13 mile mark. When we eventually arrived, to say he was crestfallen would have been the understatement of 1977. By that time we were last and second-to-last. Our coach alleged that the gap to the rest of the field was an extreme disappointment to him. We had to find a new support team. Wives, girlfriends and sundry blokes rose to the occasion. Each time we extended to a new distance our times were pretty dismal. Although we acquitted ourselves not too badly in our first standard marathon[7]. We had to do two in less than 4.5 hours to qualify for entry to the Comrades and had managed to achieve the time on our first go. We had become a bit complacent by our third or fourth "standard" and joined a large party of about 20 friends and colleagues at a local Greek restaurant for a meal that went on into the small (or maybe a bit more than small) hours the night before. Charles and Bonnie were our seconds and delivered us to the start at 6 am. This was Durban summer and races were run in the relative cool of the morning. Spikey and I had to pull over (not quite at the same time) pretty soon for epic bush poos. I think it was the first time we broke the 3.5 hour mark for a marathon. By the end of that day it transpired that we were the only ones from the previous night's party who had not ended up in Addington Hospital having stomachs pumped. Above: one of the great joys of working on Durban's Daily News was association with our world renowned cartoonist, Jock Leyden. I will always cherish the signed copy penned by Jock before the race. In the middle picture Jock has drawn the four Daily News Comrades entrants, Spikey and me at the rear and two of our more seasoned colleagues[8] out front. We also had a great photographic department and I was strong-armed to run across a golf course at sunrise for a pre-race publicity pic. There was one road race that bridged the gap between the standard marathons and the Comrades. It was the 35-mile Arthur Newton Road Race and incorporated most of the biggest hills the big race would traverse in a few weeks' time. In those days seconds were still permitted to follow their runners in a car. For this event Dad had decided to perform this role and take his 77-year-old mother along, too. My gran was sitting in the back seat behind him as we hit the meanest hill on the event. I was taking some strain as we were nearing the finish of a gruelling race. Dad decided to slow down so that I had to run past on the outside. As I crept past, he leant out of the driver's window and shouted: "Lift your knees up!" "Fuck off!" was my shouted retort. I think it was the first occasion I had used that phrase directly at my father but it was certainly breaking news as far as my gran was concerned. She had been gazing out of the rear window with benign grandmotherly love as the car took off up the hill, electric windows slamming shut and cresting the incline before I could manage more than a few extra steps. Not my finest hour but my Dad should've known better. The 1978 Comrades Marathon I can't say I remember too much about the main event but there were a few high/low lights. But first a few pictures from the earlier, fresher part of the 31st of May 1978. Above, l to r: there were two motorcycle teams supporting the Spikey-Banjo[1] duo ... this one consisted of my brother-in-law Deane MacEwan and colleague John van der Meer (the other was made up of Charles Phillips and, I think, Groper who may or may not have relented and seconded us for the main event); it might not look like it but I was still fresh at this point and receiving some encouragement from Deane; Spikey chatting with Charles with what looks like John on the bike behind. The religion we adopted for long-distance running in 1978 was to drink as much liquid as we could. This should be a 50:50 mix of water and a soft drink. For the first half of the race the soft drink should be cream soda and for the second half, Coca-Cola (Coke). The rationale for this was that Coke was deemed to be a bit of an "upper" and the effect would wear off and bring about depression if consumed early on. The soft drinks also provided the required glucose. "How do we know if we are drinking as much as we can?" we asked a pre-event expert lecturing on the dangers of heat exhaustion. "If you're not pee-ing regularly, you're not drinking enough," the expert commanded. "A dozen litres should about do it." Consequently we glugged our liquids diligently while we still had contact with our seconds before the start. During the time lapse between our support team melting away and the starting gun being fired the inevitable happened and there were several thousand runners heading away from the Town Hall desperately looking for a place to pee. Any hedge in a storm. This first hedge just happened to be outside the Grey's Hospital nurses home. The nurses were aware that this would happen and were on call to cheer and clap at the runners' relief. The first stretch out of Pietermaritzburg is long and straight and downhill and then long and straight and uphill. In amongst the twenty-somethings were quite a few more venerable fellows with green and gold numbers, being the badge of a serious veteran. "Ayup Grandad," we young 'uns would cheerfully greet our seniors, "see you in Durbs." The response was invariably a knowing nod. I can more or less guarantee that every one of those veterans had got to Durban, gone home, had a shower and were quaffing lager by the time I arrived. I had been pootling along quite nicely until I got to the end point of the Arthur Newton and the inevitable denouement hit my knee like a brick. The pain was ghastly but I managed to carry on for a few more miles until a helpful bystander pulled me over, shouting to his wife: "Bring me the magic potion, dear." She quickly complied, bearing a bog standard plastic bottle of brake fluid, the contents of which her husband proceeded to massage into my knee. I kid you not, it worked for a while, too. But the last 20 kms were agony. Durban was an eternity away. I finally managed to finish with 15 minutes to spare to beat the 11-hour milestone. Above: the deterioration is evident in my countenance as I neared the FINISH. I'm surprised there was still someone behind me in the second pic in the top row! I went to work the next day. There was a certain badge of pain to be relished, especially as I'd completed my 1978 Iron Man challenge. The pain was pretty extreme, though, and I was dragging my bad leg across an intersection, realising that I wasn't going to make it across before the lights changed. As I was nearing the centre of the road a woman in the same predicament approached from the other side. We stood there for a minute. "I know where you were yesterday," I smiled. She just grinned. That's one of the reasons it's called the Comrades. Coming up
That's enough of the sporty stuff. Except, I suppose, that my job became that of the Daily News's Morning Editor, so a fair bit of motorsport took place. [Endnotes]:
All too soon the quid pro quo had come to fruition for my dream London secondment. Upon accepting the one year job in London, I had to sign a contract to work back in South Africa for a further three years. On the bright side, Carmela and I had been issued with "open return tickets" for the round trip. This meant that, with a bit of massaging and scrimping, we could score a few stopovers on the way back. We chose Vienna and Athens. Luckily we had been enabled to travel light, unencumbered by a trunkful of our accumulated belongings, thanks to the kindness of Max Irving, a former colleague at the Daily News, who had by then become a shipping agent. He arranged for it to be shipped separately. Vienna I wish, as a callow youth, I had taken the time to properly interview Eduard Johan Bruno von Thomann. After all, I was supposed to be a reporter. He was Carmela's grandfather, father to Aurora, and had led an incredible life that ended days before we departed to London, on October 20, 1974. In his latter years, "Daddy" as he was known to the Toscano family, had lived in his daughter's home in Durban. Most of my recollections of what he told us are elusive, hanging in the ether refusing to be plucked and recorded accurately for posterity. The outline, however, is that he was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1901. I believe his family owned estates in the southern part of the empire that became part of Yugoslavia at the end of World War 1. Eduard was schooled at an exclusive academy in Vienna and must have lived quite a privileged life until the family assets disappeared into socialism as a result of the war. At some point he married Elena from Trieste and during the interregnum they had three children, George, Merino and Aurora. The loss of the von Thomann estates left them in pretty straitened circumstances and they decided to emigrate to South Africa (SA). To Durban, in fact, where Eduard and Elena ran a shop/tearoom. Determined that George and Merino should become doctors, something the family could ill afford at that difficult time, Daddy also worked nights as a porter at Durban's Addington hospital, managing to fulfil this ambition. His Austrian lineage came back to bite him during World War 2 when he was interned by the Allied-supporting SA government. For some of that time he shared a bunk with BJ Vorster, who went on to become nationalist Prime Minister after Hendrik Verwoerd was assassinated in 1966. When he heard that Carmela and I were off to Europe, Daddy suggested that, if we ever made it to Vienna, we should visit his old school, the Theresianische Akademie. And so we did. After all these years there was some confusion as to its name but a bit of sleuthing managed to match our 1975 fuzzy photo, with Carmela in the bottom left corner, with a clearer, more up-to-date pic[1]. The last of the three was taken from an inner courtyard illustrating the interleading quadrangles of the Theresianium. Mission fulfilled, we did the usual things a tourist does in Vienna: indulging in afternoon tea and torte at the Sacher and following in the footsteps of Harry Lime, during which we looked at the Prater and visited a dodgy nightclub. This somewhat dingy tavern that celebrated the louche aspects of Vienna's past seemed a fitting swan song before returning to SA's Calvinism of the day. We did wonder about the theatre's safety netting, hanging above our heads and more fitting of a trapeze act, until a nude person appeared and bounced around in various gymnastic poses perilously close to Carmela's face. Athens On the Olympic Airways flight from Vienna to Athens we encountered one of those American tourists people loved to hate in those days. A steward approached her and asked if she'd like a drink. "Give me a beer," she commanded. The steward produced a bottle of Mythos and a glass. "No I want a Skol," she insisted. "I'm afraid we only have Greek beer, madame," he replied politely. "Listen here, we're in Europe and I had Skol in Denmark and that's what I want," she whined. "FFS 'madame'," I was thinking, "a lager's a lager and the rest of us on this plane are parched." The more the steward tried to appease her, the ruder she became, detaining him for ages. It hadn't seemed to occur to her that Olympic couldn't magic a Skol onto a plane flying off the Yugoslav coast. As we were disembarking she fired a parting shot at the cabin staff: "Your management will be hearing from me about this ahfil service." Carmela and I thanked the steward profusely. His detractor glared at us. What are some people like? We had rather lovely accommodation in the epicentre of Athens. Simple rooms but with a shared lounge which was a meeting place for like-minded people, including an art historian, an American who lived in Athens for part of every year. I had particularly wanted to visit the gates of the Athens Polytechnic which had been crushed by a tank during the student uprising two years earlier. Our artistic friend filled us in on some of the background to that event and also suggested we climb Lycabettus for a wider perspective of the city that had sprawled there for millennia. "Oh, and eat in the Plaka," she added, "full of authentic atmosphere." She was spot on in 1975. I wonder what it's like now in 2021? She also recommended the Mani, immortalised by Patrick Leigh Fermor (PLF) in 1958. This was beyond the scope of our short adventure and I've always wanted to visit this Peloponnese peninsula but have not yet managed it. Perhaps I'll have to emulate PLF, albeit at the opposite end of my life. The morning after our arrival we met George Thomopoulos's mum and cousin and they gave us the royal tour starting with pukka Greek coffee off the beaten track. Mrs T was there on a long-term visit to George's cousin, a local. Greece, especially Athens, is greatly enhanced by companions who can read the script and know where to go. As George had provided the connection, we were absorbed without hesitation. I wish George's cousin's name hadn't escaped my memory in the ensuing 45 years. First pic ... no more ecologically-sound method to wipe your bum than with a natural sponge and then return it to nature (allegedly, as I found out on a trip to Ephesus in 2006). Next pic is the view from Lycabettus and the last two are of us with the Thomopouli on the Acropolis with the Parthenon as a backdrop. A fair bit of restoration has occurred since then but it was peaceful at that time. How does one complete the Greek experience? Impossible, perhaps, without dedicating a huge amount of one's life to it. In more recent years Shan, Kate and I have spent quite a few Greek holidays exploring many different aspects of the dramatic land and seascapes and vestiges of the ancient civilisation. We've still only scratched the surface. However, in 1975 Carmela and I did visit two quintessential places. One was an ancient open-air auditorium near Corinth (with astounding acoustics but of which I've lost all photographs) and the other the island of Hydra, which was almost completely untarnished by mass tourism back then. A few fuzzy photos of 1975 Hydra follow ... One can imagine from the first picture why Leonard Cohen was inspired to live there and write timeless songs such as So Long, Marianne. Second picture was typical in those days when locals met the ferries and offered accommodation and transport. In the third shot one can see why donkeys made perfect transport on many Greek islands. In picture 4 the less adventurous tourists are being sized up by the local kitties for their leftovers. Celebrating the donkeys and the kitties that were such a feature of Greek islands in the 70s and 80s. Αντίο για τώρα Ύδρα[2]
All too soon we had to report for boarding our lovely Luxair flight to Johannesburg. Having travelled to London around the bulge[3] on an early South African Airways (SAA) Boeing 747 flight , the Luxair 707 was a tad dated and cramped. The urban myth was that Luxair[4] was a cheap subsidiary of SAA so they could avoid flying around the bulge. It was convenient from Athens. SABC TV The one thing we did have to look forward to was that the Republic of South Africa had finally allowed television while we were away. Previously it had been regarded by the regime as a corrupting contaminant to the Calvinistic way of life. Eventually the government saw the opportunity for disseminating propaganda. For those of us who'd become used to watching The Sweeney in the original on ITV it was kind of weird to see it run on SABC TV rebranded as Blitzpatrolie and dubbed into Afrikaans, thereby losing the London patois and incurring considerable extra expense. Coming soon: A little time out for the next episode of our Classic Blog, i.e. Campy on the beach at Rosemarkie, and then a tribute to Durban's doyenne of wine, Solange Raffray, who introduced some joy and rigour to my Unreliable Tasting Notes. [Endnotes]
It always happens that way. An epoch in one's existence accelerates towards its end. How do you fit everything in before life changes again? Actually you can't but major fun can be had trying. Summer in England, especially one as benign as 1975's, brings everyone out into the open, often from far and wide. No more so than one sunny Sunday in London during which I kept bumping into South Africans I had no idea were in the UK. I can't remember who they all were now but I do remember randomly meeting 15 friends. OK, so not all that random as I was following an Anti-Apartheid march from Speakers corner to Trafalgar Square (South Africa House). But the 15 didn't include fellow journos, or at least ones who I knew were working in London. Didn't include certain safari-suited "gentlemen" either. It was a warm day but no self-respecting 70s marcher would wear mustard/khaki shorts with long socks and veldschoen. Biggest surprise was bumping into Ron Braatvedt, a school friend, with his wife, Helen. JJ and Elaine Cornish were there but expected to be, Jean-Jacques being, I think, at that time the South African Press Association major domo on 85 Fleet Street. All of which leads to what seemed like one long holiday with the European Grand Tour in the middle. Of course there was work but the long daylight made it seem less omnipresent. Adding to this, friends appeared for long saved-up-for oh-vahsiz[1] holidays and wanted to do fun stuff in the evenings. After all, what could be better than finishing work for the day and then enjoying a pint with this lot on the way home. I posted this in an earlier episode as a taster, but without names, so here goes: Left to Right: Garnet Currie, Errol Considine, Rob Melville and Gem Melville. We were in a pub just off the Strand. A notable aspect of this photo was Mr Currie, who achieved the tightrope act of being one of the very view people in London able to appear cool with a mullet. He, Errol and Rob, all Daily News staffers, were in London on holiday, Garnet soon to return to London to work at 85 Fleet Street. More of Gem and Rob later. There were two other factors that freed Carmela and me to enjoy the summer. We had a new subterranean pad in Wimbledon and Carmela managed to get a job in Central London. The new accommodation saved us a lot of money while, at the same time, being more in the thick of things. With Carmela working near Fleet Street, it meant we could do things on the way home like meet up with Garnet. It also meant she could make friends of her own, which she was good at. Garnet visiting us at our "new" bijou basement in Wimbledon. I've probably mentioned this before but an important factor in choosing evening entertainment for visiting South Africans was doing stuff that was forbidden in the Vaderland. And so it was that Carmela, Garnet and I went to an early evening performance of Emmanuelle in Leicester Square. I don't know how the seating worked out like that but Carmela ended up sitting next to a middle-aged man in a grey raincoat with a brown paper bag of grapes on his lap. We swapped places pretty quickly to form a de-militarised zone for the innocent. Garnet's sister, Lorna, and her husband, George Thomopoulos, also fetched up in London at around the same time, also with their own Kombi, although theirs was a bit more surfer-oriented than Lester and Susi's. Being a surf-wagon, I have memories of rattling around in the back on the way to gigs in London without any idea of where we were going. Another friend, Brianne Burke, joined us for some of these excursions. Hanging around in London with George had an unexpected bonus: when we eventually came to head off home via Athens, he arranged for us to meet his mother and cousin. More of that, including pics, in the next episode. Adventures in the Lynskymobile Somewhat of a constant in our adventures in the back of a van was another import from South Africa, Rory and Brenda's Ford Cortina "bakkie[2]". The stealth mobile. The pic was taken by Rory at dawn after a stint on the late shift. He occasionally used to drive to work and park on "the bomb site on Ludgate Circus which was a rough and ready car park". An interesting reminder that 1975 was a lot closer to the end of World War 2 than the mid-seventies is to 2021 as I write this blog. Rory and Brenda thoughtfully included us in many of their bakkie trips. I seem to remember there was a foam mattress in the rear that could accommodate 4 people cosily but often it was just the two of us with Rory driving and Brenda navigating. This would have been a relief because Brenda is one of the most observant people I've ever met and a trump card to have with you in a game reserve. We didn't get to too many game reserves in England but we were delivered faultlessly to destinations as far and wide as Cambridge, Oxford, Box Hill and Chartwell, which had been the family home of Winston Churchill. The first frame below was taken at Chartwell before the days of selfie crowds. In those days one could drive right up, leap out and wander around. The second frame is the same crew surveying the view from Box Hill, perhaps wondering where Emma Woodhouse and Frank Churchill had "flirted together excessively" or maybe wondering where to set up the deckchairs for the 2012 Olympic Cycling Road Race? The third picture above is a random street in Cambridge. We did walk along the Cam where Brenda informed us that the Cambridge punters punted from the wrong end of the punt. Something she would have had to whisper while we were there but that would have earned her accolades had she repeated this assertion on a later trip to Oxford. The churchy photos are a bit random. The first one to illustrate a particularly dorky look I affected at that stage, irritating the older members of the staff at 85 Fleet Street. The last two because I finally got stained glass windows after seeing these exquisite examples. They'd always left me a bit stone cold before that. No bucolic exploration of the Home Counties would be complete without lacerating oneself in the attempt to fill a Sainsbury's bag from the bounty offered by the brambles that intermingled with the hawthorn of the hedgerows. Quite often staining some perfectly good clothing, in the process. The weather remained sublimely balmy when we ventured forth, South of London, one Sunday. We were joined by Rob and Gem Melville on that occasion ... Note to reader: Weebly gives you very few options to compose picture layouts so you'll have to tap the right hand picture below to see Brenda's lovely face. So, once you've filled a bag with fruit that will stain anything within 100 feet, WTF do you do with them? Not to be defeated, we decided to make a blackberry pie. So far so good. One of the many benefits of our new flat was that it had a halfway useful cooker with a proper hob. First job, stew down the berries in a saucepan while Carmela expertly constructed a shortcrust party case. We' had to dash down to Sainsbury's for a new bag and the all the bits needed. Threw a whole Brie in the bag for good measure, together with a magnum of Côtes-du-Rhône. The stewed berries were juicy and firm after we'd strained all the superfluous juice into jug. Miraculously the flesh from a bag-full had reduced so much it filled the pastry case perfectly. All in all our first attempt at a pie, sitting there gleaming at us with its golden crust, was a hard act to follow ... something that I recalled ruefully decades later while battling with Raymond Blanc's tarte tatin recipe. A few days later, fully Brie'd, Rhône'd, pie'd and cricketed out (there was an Ashes series in full swing in England), I remembered the blackberry juice was still standing in a jug in the kitchenette. I lifted the sheet of paper that had served as a rudimentary cover to check for spiders and/or insects and the surface of the liquid had remained clear. How to dispose of it? I wondered. It looked so lush, I couldn't bring myself to pour it down the plug hole. The magnum bottle was standing staring at me from the draining board, the cork alongside. Why not pour the juice into the bottle and keep a hold of it. It must come in useful some time soon, surely? Duly bottled and stoppered, the juice remained in the same place, only looking a bit more elegant, performing, as it was, Rhône wine impressions. It was only a few days later we were sitting watching telly when a loud explosion reverberated from the kitchen. Carmela got there first. "OMG," she exclaimed staring upwards. At first I didn't see what had happened. Everything, including magnum bottle remained in tact ... then I noticed the stopper was missing and my eyes followed Carmela's upwards. Most of the blackberry juice was now spread across the ceiling. Procrastination, eh. It should have just gone down the plug. Try cleaning a purple stain from a white ceiling. Just not possible. We must've repainted it but my memory has selectively erased that bit. Naughty Rory Not everyone knows this but Mr Lynsky has an impish streak. Trouble is, Rory's arrives when one least expects it and it can act as a safety valve after a stressful day. And so it came to pass that we were on another trip to the Home Counties, on this occasion to Oxford. This time we had a long-standing friend with us, Liz Butcher. I had known Liz from schooldays and then she'd suddenly reappeared in the Daily News' Durban newsroom. Now she was on this Oxford trip at the invitation of the Lynskys. We spent some time doing cerebral stuff, including looking at stained-glass windows in Oxford when someone suggested we went to Blenheim Palace in Woodstock a little more than 7 miles NW of where we were in St Giles. I'm not sure Rory was keen but Brenda wanted us all to see it. In 1975 one could drive a bakkie through the unattended main gate at Blenheim and park alongside the palace. This we did. The place was popular enough, being, inter alia, Winston Churchill's childhood playground. And what a playground it turned out to be. A lake with an island and vast tracts of estate and forest to charge around in. For those of my generation, brought up on Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons it was the perfect playground for adventurous children. That spirit is never lost even as one approaches 70. It certainly wasn't lost on Rory. He flipped from curmudgeonly to divil in an instant. I clambered out of the back of the Cortina bakkie armed with my camera as Rory spied the tourist bus disgorging newly-arrived visitors in front of Blenheim's splendid edifice. "Hey Mark," he taunted me, bedecked with camera, "take a picture of the bus." Then my normally decorous friend and journo mentor made it his business to embarrass his four companions. It says something about the relaxed mid-70s, despite all the bombs going off around the UK, that no-one batted an eyelid. He started seeking out photographic opportunities for me. Initially spikes and balls seemed to make for promising photographic subjects. I responded dutifully with "Rory having a ball" (first below) and "Hoist by his own spike". Please note that the ball pic pic also incorporates tourists inside the railings taking a picture of my taking of a picture. The picture of the bus seems to have disappeared into the mists of time. The ultimate picture below, still remains though, in which Rory became fed up with posing for static shots, spied a cow pat on the grass, scooped it up and set up in pursuit of Liz with divilish glee. The picture serves a number of purposes, one of them being that the expression on Liz's face suggests that Rory wasn't quite having the terrifying effect he had intended. The other would be to portray Winston's adventure playground with lake and island. I wonder who assumed the parts of the pirates in his boyhood japes? Arrest that man, surely. Ed. A couple of snippets before we go Roy Barnard There is one memory so hazy as to be verging on ephemeral, but this beer-swilling snippet involves a man who was a big influence in my surviving the early days of being a reporter. Without that I wouldn't have been in London at the time Roy Barnard put the word around that he would buy a pint in the Spaniards Inn for any Durban newsperson who showed up on this particular evening. The venue, on the edge of Hampstead Heath, was quite spooky at night, especially with its associations with Dick Turpin, and made a perfect rendezvous point for the ace crime reporter. As his 2012 obituary tells, he was a “larger than life character, a true newsman and global news hound who pursued every lead and stayed abreast of happenings around the world". This will have accounted for his being in London at that time although I cannot be sure we ever found the full details. I can only remember sitting in leather armchairs with Phil Duff and Roy and bathing in his presence. Earls Court Motor Show As a petrol-head with ambition to be the Motoring Editor of the Daily News, I was looking forward to covering the 1975 Earls Court Motor Show[3] in October, just before heading home. Actually, it was a bit of a disappointment. A little tawdry, even. The show had been a hugely glamorous event for me in the 60s when I was an envious teenage purist. It seemed to me, anyway, that the focus had shifted away from the cars into the surrounding tinsel. If you needed a stark naked model to sell your TVRs, what did it say about TVRs, if you get my drift? Nonetheless the very early '70s shows kind of got away with it because the approach was new and, to many, a bit shocking. By 1975 the whole thing was a bit passé, not to mention exploitative. Also, many of the cars were pretty ugly, a lot of plastic. There were a few topless models around but they had been shifted into the corners to sell accessories. To me they had begun to attract pity rather than punters. Did this kind of exploitation ever have a day? If so that day had passed. There was some cool machinery there, though. Being quite a subjective subject, a few of the cars I preferred are pictured below; See if you recognise them. Some would cost you a lot more today than they did when they were brand new then. Others would not. Last minute music gigs What with being a little more flush in the last months of our secondment, together with "discovering" the Hammersmith Odeon, we had a rush of world class gigs just before we left London to return to South Africa. I'm not going to presume to describe the concerts, something that is better left to the likes of my friends Garnet (the very same Currie as above) and Graham Boynton. In fact, Garnet gave us the tickets to our last gig at the Odeon, a stonking performance by Leo Sayer. Before that we'd gone to a Santana concert in early September where Carlos had stopped everyone from breathing by pausing, for what seemed an eternity, after the penultimate note in the opening sequence to Samba Pa Ti. Never before and never since have I heard such a spontaneous simultaneous exhalation by an entire audience when he resumed on the 7th note. Santana's supporting act was Earth, Wind and Fire. When leaving the theatre that evening the ticket office was still open and selling tickets for Wings a week later. Did we buy some? Did we just. First half was Wings and second half was Paul, a stool and an acoustic guitar playing his signature Beatles songs. We were in the front ten rows. Coming soon: Mini visit to Europe on the way home, Durban's wine doyenne kindles a lifelong interest
[Endnotes]:
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April 2024
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