WEEKENDS

Who doesn’t look forward to weekends? During my primary school years weekends usually meant travelling to our farm, where we all worked at one thing or another, explored, and enjoyed the freedom of walking in the veld. Saturday nights were particularly wonderful for we often had a braaivleis outdoors and could observe the night sky without intrusive lights of any sort while my father regaled us with the most wonderful stories that he made up as he went along.

At high school, weekends generally meant participating in sports fixtures either at or own or at other schools. I mainly participated in athletics and tennis and enjoyed mixing with other pupils. Even the bus trips were fun. Once, we travelled all the way to the then Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) in Mozambique for a tennis match – that was a particularly fun adventure. The weekends we were allowed home were also greatly looked forward to – again, those were mostly spent on the family farm. The teachers would do their best to arrange some form of entertainment for us during the rest of the term: watermelon feasts (and fights) in the summer, Volkspele (folk dancing), concerts and so on.

Weekends took on a different form during my university years. Freedom from lectures would see me playing squash or tennis, and then later on I would devote my weekends to rock-climbing or hiking in the Natal Drakensberg. These were such carefree days when we were fit and seemed to fear nothing. We travelled to Namibia, Zimbabwe and Botswana, broadening our horizons and simply having fun during the university holidays – which felt like a never-ending weekend.

Having to work meant that weekends were spent catching up with housework, preparing (in my case, lessons or marking) for the next week, purchasing groceries and yet … we spent time in the mountains, entertained friends to meals, gardened and enjoyed the break from work. Yet, we still managed to go camping, visiting game reserves and finding interesting things to do.

The arrival of our children changed weekends altogether. As they grew older, we had to factor in their sporting and cultural commitments, oversee homework … they were still a break from work though.

I still regard weekends as a break, even though I have been retired for some time. I thoroughly enjoy waking on a weekend knowing that there are no commitments that require my attention. I enjoy talking to my children and grandchildren, watching birds, reading, making meals more or less when I feel like doing so, and feeling ‘free’.