READING THE SIGNS

For those of us who are literate, navigating our world is easy: we can read road signs, identify names on buildings, read messages and immerse ourselves in books.

Of course, you know about the importance of dotting your i’s and crossing your t’s – paying close attention to the details of something. Clearly the signwriter for the above business forgot about this when he climbed down from the scaffolding and declared his task had been completed! The other interesting thing about the sign above is that it is written in longhand. Now, this means writing by hand using complete words and letters, as opposed to typing or using emoticons or recognisable icons. Look at the watch below:

As I said, it is easy to read words wherever they might pop up in our lives … what if the world suddenly returned to using runes – those characters from ancient Germanic alphabets (futhark) used in Scandinavia and across Europe from roughly 200 to 1200 AD? Even spectacles wouldn’t help us with this task!

These days few people use atlases or road maps to help them navigate from one place to the next. There are all sorts of apps on our phones or even in cars to do that for us – even in colour and with a voice to prompt us ahead of time. How many times have you experienced that slightly irritated voice saying recalculating when you failed to pay attention in time. I loathe it whenever I am told to turn east in a strange city with tall buildings that blot out the sun … where’s east? I want to ask, desperately seeking other landmarks I can use instead. Think of the travellers who depended on a silent, yet dependable, compass to find their way across seas, deserts and mountains – and who arrived at their destinations!

VIEWS FROM GUNFIRE HILL

Fort Selwyn, built in 1835, overlooks Grahamstown from Gunfire Hill. This fort was envisaged as a strategic lookout and stronghold during the frontier wars, providing local citizens with a sense of security. It is named after Captain C.J. Selwyn, who commanded the Royal Engineers in Grahamstown from 1835 until 1841.

It is now dwarfed by the 1820 Settlers Monument, which houses theatres and meeting rooms for the benefit of the community.

Here is an early morning view of the eastern part of the town.

Looking across to West Hill, with St. Andrew’s College in the foreground.

A view across town with part of Rhodes University in the foreground.

THE BOOMSLANG IN KIRSTENBOSCH

Despite the low cloud and light drizzle on the day of our visit to the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens, we simply had to walk along the Tree Canopy Walkway, known as ‘The Boomslang’ (tree snake), which was constructed in 2013-14, to celebrate the centenary of Kirstenbosch in 2013, and opened to the public on 17^th May 2014.

The walkway is a curved steel and timber bridge that winds its way sinuously through and over the trees of the Arboretum section of the garden, providing an interesting vantage point of the garden as it winds through the tree tops.

With the winding nature and crescent-shape of the walkway, there is always another corner.

It raises visitors to 12 m above ground, affording one the opportunity to enjoy the view across the trees to the mountains beyond. There are over 400 trees in and around the walkway, and so visitors are brought very close to many different trees and plants as well as having an opportunity to enjoy birdlife at tree level.

It is also great fun being able to look down onto some of the winding paths below the Boomslang.

WHILE I WAS SITTING IN THE GARDEN …

Not my garden this time. It was while I was sitting in the garden of the South African Airforce Museum in Port Elizabeth the other day, that I became aware of a loud buzzing emanating from the base of the enormous girth of a very old Eucalyptus tree that towered above me.

Closer inspection showed that there was a hollow filled with restless honey bees flying in and out on this particularly hot morning.

I let them be, yet started a few times when I got hit on the head – very gently – by several empty seed pods loosened from the Eucalyptus tree by the fresh breeze that had sprung up.

Twice, I found a small spider had landed on my hand while I was filling in a crossword.

Several of these winged insects flew around, landing either on me or my newspaper.

And, I was briefly visited by a vervet monkey.

HOW SAD

I grew up on Sheba Gold Mine in the then Eastern Transvaal, having arrived there when I was about three weeks old. That small mining community was my life: I went to primary school there, swam in the community swimming pool, learned to play tennis there, watched films in the community hall … everyone knew everyone; we mixed with all walks of life as the community was far too small to worry about who worked at what. We spent weekends and holidays on my Dad’s farm in the De Kaap Valley and boarded at Barberton High School. We walked all over the hills, explored paths through the long grass – and feared very little.

My friend, Mary, whom I met when we were in Grade Two (in about 1957) sent me these rather sad pictures when she visited the mine several months ago. The first is of our little primary school. Then, it consisted of two classrooms, two tiny washrooms, an office for the teachers (the principal and one other), and a small room we used for assembly and which housed an old wooden cupboard containing the ‘library’. A neat lawn ran along the front veranda of the school and from there steps led down to the bucket toilets – one for the girls and the other for the boys. There were seldom more than about forty children at the school and so there was plenty of space for us to run around at break time, to play games, or to sit in the shade of the veranda while we ate our snacks. Look at it now: the gate is still there – and the building. The garden has been taken over by Erythrina trees, syringa trees, wild grass, bushes and creepers.

We loved the swimming pool and spent most of our summer holidays in and out of the water. There was the large swimming pool that boasted a shallow end as well as a deep end and a diving board for the brave. A much smaller, and very shallow, pool was situated much further away for the toddlers. The change rooms were always clean; the terraced garden was tidy, with the lawns mowed; some trees provided shade. This was a meeting and mixing place for everyone – a place of great joy. We didn’t have shaded wooden tables at the time. Still, it is sad to see what has become of the area over decades of neglect:

Perhaps even sadder for me is the neglected state of the communal tennis courts. This is where I learned to play tennis, first with wooden bats and later with my first tennis racquet. As we became more proficient at the game – once we were in high school – the ladies would often call upon us to make up a four. Tea was always provided on official tennis days: thick white cups and saucers, large teapots and jugs of milk covered with doilies to keep away the flies. The clay courts were kept in tip-top condition throughout the year; everyone wore white; younger children would be sent off to retrieve any balls that accidentally got lobbed over the high fences surrounding the courts. Now:

These pictures remind me of the many ruined houses and forts we come across here in the Eastern Cape, many of them harking back to the 1800s, if not before. I have always felt the stones could tell a story … the pictures above drive home to me that in this case, I am a part of the story!