No wonder sorting through a lifetime’s accumulation of things takes such a long time: another photograph fell out of an overstuffed box this morning. This one is of our high school athletics team in 1964. Looking at it – and reading the names on the back – dredged up all sorts of memories from those happy years – when we were so young, so fit, and filled with the joys of life. A time when we could cast aside any doubts or concerns about school work to concentrate on exercise and laughter. Yes, I remember a lot of laughter.
The curious will find me sitting third from the right in the second row.
The first term of every year was devoted to athletics: we used to have to do warm-up exercises before running around the field, practicing sprints and then race against each other. Once we were fit enough, we were taken through our paces for field events such as throwing the javelin, shot put (that was me), high jump, and long jump among others. I used to compete in the longer sprints, hurdles and loved the challenge of relay races. Boys and girls practiced at the same time on the same field, giving us ample opportunities to mix and get to know each other. How odd I found it when I was teaching in Grahamstown decades later to find the girls were unhappy about training where the boys could see them. When did such coyness (and missed opportunities!) set in, I wondered.
Before a school team was selected, there was the excitement of the inter-house athletic challenge. Oddly enough, our sporting houses were named after the Four Musketeers of Alexandre Dumas fame – was this to avoid a clash between the interests of English- and Afrikaans-speaking pupils? Who knows … we didn’t really take note of such things. I was in D’Artagnan House – which we all knew as Darts. The others, of course, were Aramis, Athos, and Porthos. Darts wore yellow ribbons.
What was fun about the inter-house challenges was that many parents came to watch the proceedings and one could buy long braided – and very sticky – koeksusters, or savoury jaffles, boerewors rolls, or pancakes sprinkled with lemon juice and cinnamon sugar. My mouth melts at the memory of these fund-raising efforts. Singing and chanting was as important as the running and other field events. The houses vied with each other, singing as loudly as they could, challenging each other, boosting their own teams, or singing for the sheer joy of it. I suppose we mostly sang songs in Afrikaans (it was the dominant language) yet I feel sure that there were some English ones too. Again, it was not something that bothered us. I taught at an Afrikaans-only school during my first year of teaching and was taken aback when the principal there told the children responsible for the house singing that they could choose songs from any origin – except English – as long as they were sung in Afrikaans.
Once the school team was selected, we were regularly put through our paces during the week as we travelled to other schools in the area for events on Saturdays. How well I remember the uncomfortable school bus, the boisterousness of the boys and girls, as well as the cuddling by senior pupils that would go on at the back of the bus …
I enjoyed athletics so much that I participated in running all the way through to matric. I turned up to the first meeting of the Athletics Club when I got to university and quickly backed out: they took competition far too seriously and so I joined the Mountain Club instead – what an excellent choice that turned out to be!
Something Over Tea 