The Naming of Cars

BESSIE

Have you ever wondered why people name their cars and why eight times out of ten they chose a female name?

I have recently had a lot of trouble with my pride and joy, a 1984 Nissan 1400cc bakkie, known to me as Bessie. She was recently in hospital for almost a month, with mechanics and auto-electricians unable to diagnose the problem.

A simple problem, I thought, poor old Bessie kept on cutting out on my visits to the local shops and the waste collection yard, mere four or five-kilometre journeys.

The engine simply stopped firing. My grey matter has never retained any of the fundamentals regarding automobile engines, but my household electrical expertise told me the problem centred around either a lack of fuel or an electrical short.

The hired auto electricians I delivered her to firstly replaced all the leads to and from the distributor, that is the cables to the plugs and the cable to a newly installed starter-coil. I collected the bakkie after a day, but the following morning Bessie again refused to start. After three or four attempts I managed to get her out of the driveway onto the street and cruise her up and down the road but on the fourth test run she conked out.

I phoned Keith at Stallone-Auto-Electrical and told him of my problem. He sent over a driver with a technician and they succeeded in getting Bessie back to their workshop.

Two days later Keith phoned me saying they’d sorted out the problem and cleaned out and checked the fuel pump and replaced the fuel filter so, I picked up Bessie and drove her home without a problem.

She was then inactive for seven das as my son took me to Mountain Sanctuary Park in the Magalisberg mountains as written about in my previous blog.

On my return to Egoli, the city of gold Johannesburg, I attempted to start Bessie.

No luck.

The starter turned over, but no spark was reaching the plugs, another phone call and Bessie was hospitalised a third time.

Two days later Tony, one of the owners of Stallone, drove Bessie to my abode and collected me to return to their workshop and settle my account.

Account settled, and I was now informed that they had given me a new battery, a new carburettor, a new reconditioned-starter and checked all the wiring, so Bessie was fit to run her menial tasks like local shopping and waste removal. I drove her home.

The following day after a visit to the refuse-collection yard I decided that a celebratory drink was needed so, I proceeded to the nearby local bottle store to purchase a bottle of vodka.

On the drive home Bessie cut out again, luckily before I reached the main road, Jan Smuts Avenue, which was now packed with rush-hour traffic.

Thank God for modern technology, which usually I hate, my cell phone sprang into action and after a half hour wait Tony and technician arrived. Tony drove me home while his technician managed to start up Bessie and return her to the workshop for the fourth time.

Clutching my bottle of Vodka, I sat down, switched on the tele to watch some rugby highlights and poured myself a triple shot to calm my frayed nerves. Three stiff drinks later I began to cogitate over the opening question, why do we name vehicles with female names?

One theory is that the habit carried over from men’s habit of naming ships after women, usually a Goddess’s name from ancient times. This reason combined with the chauvinistic idea that a female car was just a pile of metal and would not work without a man at the wheel! Men adopted the mentality that their automobiles must be tended and coddled with a gentle hand, thus perceiving them as female.

A recent survey shows that the most common car names are, Betsy, Bessie, Sally, Bertha, Lucy and Sally. Other names from modern TV programmes and movies have now entered the list with the additions being, The Enterprise, Optimus Prime, Millennium Falcon, and The Batmobile.

An ageing mechanic I knew in my childhood gave me the best reason we call them female names.

He said in a thick Lancastrian accent, “Cars? Ya call ‘em women’s names, right? Them’s just fucking trouble! Like ya Missus or the piece ont’ side!”

My Bessie had certainly not given me trouble during my twenty-six years of ownership. She had one previous owner when I purchased her in 1990. Her engine has now been round-the-clock four times and I’ve had her re-bored twice, taking her on long distance drives to Cape Town and St Francis Bay near Port Elizabeth. Both these journeys are both well over a thousand kilometres and can take fourteen hours of steady driving. She completed these tasks without failing and I must have made the trip to Durban on the East coast at least five times.

The next day.

It was a Friday and I knew that I had to visit the refuse dump with a three-week load of garden debris, Keith phoned me and said Tony would be round in twenty minutes with Bessie. This time she had been fitted with a brand-new distributor for which I had to cough up another one thousand Rand. I climbed in to drive her and Tony back to the Stallone workshop. I settled my outstanding account and did not wish them “Au revoir.”

Just a blunt English, “Goodbye!”

I was praying I would not have to return.

It is now three days later and so far, Bessie has made four shopping trips, one refuse dump visit, and carried some cut-down garden stakes to a friend who lives about five kilometres away.

I have now decided to re-christen Bessie and name her not after a female, as is the fashion, but in honour of her hospitalisation, she will be called: RE-Furbished!

If she makes another trip to my garden-stake friend this coming Tuesday morning, to collect a disused electric dishwasher, then that will be her name until I depart this mortal realm.

More Questions Answered.

When it comes to films and TV productions in which I have appeared, is much more difficult to select my most enjoyable.

According to information gleaned from the WWW and IMB I have been credited in more than one hundred and fifty TV shows and film productions so, as you can imagine it would be almost impossible to select one to put at the top of my favourites list.

Do I select from my most bizarre locations like the jungles of Malaysia when I filmed Who am I? with Jackie Chan?

Or do I go back to my first TV job when I appeared in Dixon of Dock Green way back in the early seventies? 

The central character was a mature and sympathetic police constable, George Dixon, played by Jack Warner in all the 432 episodes, from 1955 to 1976.

This famous police drama, voted second most popular programme on British TV in 1961, was filmed at the BBC White City studios and as an actor almost straight out of drama school it was certainly eventful and terrifying. Just to be working alongside Jack Warner who played the title role was a huge honour. The character Dixon was the embodiment of a typical "bobby" who would be familiar with the area and its residents in which he patrolled and often lived there himself.

In Warner’s auto-biography he tells of a visit by the Queen to the studios, where she commented "that she thought Dixon of Dock Green had become part of the British way of life".

Warner's success as Dixon was also popular amongst various police forces. He was made an honorary member of both the Margate and Ramsgate Police Forces in the 1950s. Warner said of Dixon of Dock Green: "It has been a very good meal ticket for twenty-one years—although the taxman has never been far behind."

Or, do I select the mountains of land-locked Lesotho, where I played a fanatical Arab, Sheik Maksood, one of the first of many Muslim militants who was planning to use a suitcase-nuke to erase New York from the face of the earth. This was in the filming of American Ninja 5 with David Bradley and Michael Dudikoff?

I do have some very pleasant memories of shooting Shaka Zulu and later in the eighties the story of John Ross. Both these were shot with the base camp in Eshowe, declared the capital of Zululand in 1887, and was visited by the British Royal family in 1947. It is in central Zululnd near the Dlinza Forest, in central Qua-Zulu-Natal.

Shakaland, now a major international tourist hotel was originally built for the filming of Shaka Zulu. It is now a living monument to Zulu culture.  It is from here that people from all over the world come to experience the lifestyles, social systems and rich culture of the Zulu nation.  It is said that a visit to South Africa is not complete without a visit to Shakaland.  It is a traditional Zulu “Umuzi” or homestead, dividing the homes of the local Zulu people and the hotel rooms.

Most of our filming for both these shoots was about 70 kilometres away in a pace called Disappointment Bay just south of the Tugela river mouth and I had a glorious time there eating freshly caught mussels and crayfish.

And, I must admit that Munich holds a desire to be revisited just for the German beer and multitude of sausages I consumed while filming a movie that I can’t remember the name of, probably because I never got paid for it, but I do remember sipping ice cold beers in the English Gardens.

I also remember being trapped in a Range Rover when an unexpected tropical storm hit the location, we were filming near the Olympic stadium when the heavens opened and half of Munich was suddenly under three feet of water, The whole crew and cast that was on call that day were stranded until the flash flood had subsided. Luckily, I had a book of Suduko puzzles with me and Toddie was full.

Another project on which I and another ten actors were stranded was a French movie called, as the working-title Crime in the Gabon, it was shown as “Le Crime de monsieur Stil”, directed by Ms Claire Devers. We were left marooned in the one-horse town of Poffadder which is near the Namibian border after the final day of the shoot.

The crew and the transport manager had all scarpered forgetting to collect us, we made ourselves at home in the Poffadder Hotel, until the owner decided we were going to drink his establishment dry, He loaded us into his Kombi van and drove us like a demented-Schumacher to Upington airport where we flew back to Johannesburg,

This was an eventful shoot as all us local English-speaking actors had to speak French. I was an arduous affair and even with the help of a dialogue coach in French we once took over 70 takes to shoot a night scene. It would have been hard enough in English as the French director wanted the whole scene in one hand help tracking shot, the poor cameraman darted between nine actors trying to pick up each conversation in the bar. It was a memorable occasion and the film won an award in France!

I have already written about my shoot with Jackie Chan in a couple of previous posts. I spent over six weeks in Rotterdam while Jackie kept postponing the scenes I had with him as they were full of dialogue, he preferred the action scenes where he cold display his magnificent ability by sliding down glass-built skyscrapers and defeating his opponents with Dutch wooden clogs on.

I spent most of my time befriending the local Dutch production drivers who were send weekly to numerous other towns with a briefcase full of cash to pay the local companies who were hired on the production. I accompanied them to Amsterdam, Utrecht, Eindhoven, and even crossed the border once to the Hague in Belgium. Otherwise I toured Rotterdam on their excellent tramway system with my “Plonkie”, a ticket one could buy weekly which allowed you to hop trams to various destinations in the far reaches of the city.

The trams were a cheap delight for my wanderings, far more enjoyable than riding a motor bike with a side car attached. I had to learn to do this when I filmed in the late seventies on a TV drama called my friend Angelo,

I was taught by the great stuntman the late Janie Wienand who had me careering down open tarmacked roads and across the open veld steering past rocks, boulders and up and down dongas in no time. I became so versatile that the director David Lister, with whom I shoot my movies, let me do my own stunts apart from the dangerous ones.

At times I had a young actor who played my second in command as the passenger in the sidecar. He too had to have lessons as the swinging from right to left in a sidecar is crucial when taking corners.

So, as you can see from the over 150 productions I have been in it is very difficult for me to choose the most enjoyable, but I can say that as regarding erring an income I still receive a repeat fee from airings of a job I did way back in 1972. The piece, Pendas Fen still gets shown across the world today and because of the stringent British equity laws a few pounds finds its way into my bank account.

So, I’ll pick that one. I think its available on U-tube so have a look and help keeping those payments into my account. Thank you.

Please comment.

The Gambles in Life

Do you ever call it a day and say you’ve had enough, you’ve travelled and gone far enough? Taken as much as you stand?

Well, when it comes to TV programmes I’m definitely a yes-man to all the above questions!

When it comes to Quiz programmes, they are an immediate channel changer for me.

Not all of them however.

One of my favourites is the BBC’s programme with Stephen Fry and now Sandy Toksvig called “QI” and again the BBC with “Would I lie to you” hosted by Rob Brydon and with David Mitchel and Lee Mack captaining the opposing teams.

Both shows are examples of top-notch British comedy at its peak with fantastic guest artists, comprised of comedians, musicians, actors and even a priest or two.

However, down at the bottom and immediate channel-changers are “Deal or No Deal” with Noel Edmunds as the host, and “Tipping Point” presented by Ben Shephard. I have to admit that “Pointless” hosted by Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman  has me in a quandary that falls into no-mans-land, sometimes I can watch and other times I switch channels.

It is, I believe, an aversion that stems from my youth, when I worked for some time as a small-change boy on Blackpool’s Golden Mile amusement arcade.

 It is an aversion to gambling,  caused by the number of fights, crying children in prams and battered mothers lying in the gutter, that I saw whilst I did the job.

It was a simple job, I would wander around the arcade carrying a leather shoulder bag with several compartments filled with small change. In the late fifties when I had the job, it was filled with pennies, threepences, sixpences, shillings, and half-a-crowns, the latter being worth two shillings and sixpence. I had special secret zipped compartment where I placed the paper notes that I had exchanged for small change.

Once I had more than ten pound in paper notes I had to return it to the office, as mugging of small-change-boys was a common occurrence.

Most of the visitors to Blackpool were at that time from the working class manual labouring towns of the industrial North of England, Scotland and Wales. Miners, cotton and wool factory workers, steel foundry workers, furnace feeders, bricklayers and construction labourers. It was their annual summer holiday and they came with hard earned wages stuffed in their back pockets and secretly hoped they would win a fortune at the slot machines on the Golden Mile.

Obviously, that was not what happened.

Gambling like another pet-hate, insurance companies; they both feed off hope, desperation and fear; these are basic human emotions. The faces I see today on the TV quiz shows remind me of those faces I saw as I exchanged a last Pound note to a losing holiday-maker.

Family violence has always been an enormous problem in communities throughout the world. In fact, a recent survey found that in Australia one in three Australian women have experienced physical violence from a current or former partner, and one in four have experienced emotional abuse by a current or former partner.

The survey also showed that there is a clear link between problem gambling and intimate partner violence, children, parents and grandparents are also the victims of violence perpetrated by those with significant gambling problems.

A memory that stays with me goes way back to nineteen fifty-five which resulted in the calling of the local constabulary, the ambulance service and the local social services, which at the time were almost non-existent.

It was a Saturday lunch time when a Glaswegain labourer Ken, his young wife, Monica and six-month-old baby in his pram arrived at the arcade. The baby had a small teddy-bear with him and he squeezed it with delight while he sucked on a full bottle of milk.

“I’ll change my last Tenner,” said Ken, “Sixpences, threepences, and pennies” he said to me, while he looked at his wife as though asking for approval. Monica shrugged in a non-committed way.

“And that’s it?” she added.

“Aye, gotta be, I ain’t got more!” he said in a subdued semi-belligerent tone,

“But y’ still got the ‘oliday-flat money?”

“Aye, I left it there!” he added, “as y’ told mi to!”

“Good.”

I could already sense that the two of them had had a serious conversation on the money situation before they came down to the Golden Mile.

It was about two thirty in the afternoon when the rumpus started, the sound of screaming brought myself and Stan, the arcade manger, to the front of the arcade. A small area of pavement that allowed the passing pedestrians to walk by our arcade and allow them to move on to find another venue that conned them into thinking that they might find their fortune.

When we arrived, the pram was on its side with the baby crying, trying to reach his teddy bear and finished bottle lying in the gutter. Ken had his hands around Monica’s throat and was shaking her violently. Stan made his way to Ken screaming at me, “Call the fucking cops lad!”

I turned to go to the back office, seeing Stan receive a flying right arm jab to the face, sending him crashing to the ground.

I called the cops explaining what happened and told them to come quickly before darting back to the concussed Stan.

“We’ve gotta get ‘em apart!” said Stan as I helped him up.

Stan leapt on Ken’s back and I attempted my best rugby tackle on his thighs. Our joint assault on Ken gave Monica a chance to free herself and went straight to the upturned baby.

By the Grace of God and to our luck the Black-Mariah filled with six policemen pulled up and sprang into action pulling myself and Stan off a slightly subdued Ken.

By now a watching crowd had surrounded us, and while four of the coppers tried to hold them back, the other two dealt with Ken, who by now had found his second-wind and was struggling with them as they tried to get him handcuffed. A third copper finally came over and got the cuffs on him.

Meanwhile Monica was sobbing uncontrollably while clutching her baby. After a short collection of statements by the senior officer, Constable Hardgeaves, Stan escorted Monica back to his office and ordered me to get on with my job.

The fracas had brought in many more customers and the arcade was almost at bursting point. I had to squeeze myself through the throng and be constantly aware of that other villainy that had befallen me before; pick-pockets delving into my shoulder bag.

At about four o’clock in the afternoon we received another visit from the police, this time they were detectives and a single uniformed constable. Luckily Monica was still with Stan in his office. She had chosen to stay there as returning to their accommodation would have reminded her of her time in there with Ken.

She retold her story she had told Stan. She had said that everyday Ken had physically attacked her and forced her to hand over their holiday savings so that he could play the slot-machines. About an hour later the detective asked me to make a full statement. I had to recall every detail as to what I saw the couple doing, the time and their position in the arcade, what machine Ken was playing, and what time he was at each machine. All the time I was praying that they would not search me and find my hidden “Toddie” in my trousers’ back pocket.

I knew that a Yate’s Wine Lodge sipping minor would not be a good witness for the prosecution.

It felt worse than a school test and by six o’clock I was exhausted, they said I could go home after I’d signed the statement that had been written down by the constable. They also warned me that I must tell my mother about the whole incident and that I would be asked to attend the trial in court, probably in about two weeks’ time.

Just as I was about to board a tram to take me home another official vehicle arrived carrying a driver and two meticulously dressed middle-aged ladies.

The last sight I saw was of Monica screaming on the pavement as one of the ladies carried the baby to their car whist the other wheeled the pram and placed it in the boot of the car.

To this day, seventy odd years later, that vision of Monica resurfaces as I watch the faces of losing contestants on TV quiz-shows.

Yep, an aversion to TV quiz shows and a loathing even a hatred of gambling!

Bicycicular Jaunts in the Fylde.

Another tale that I can tell goes back to my early childhood and centres around my use of my bicycle, rather two bicycles.

A fixed-wheel jobbie for short trips to the beach and around the small town of my residence, Cleveleys, to do the shopping for my Nan & Pop, and my drop-handle-barred and ten geared-racer for longer trips to the Pennines, Pilling-Sands, Glasson Dock and the Lake District.

The latter area was visited when I scaled the highest mountain in England, Scarfell Pike. However, the trip was not done on bicycles but by car.

A Ford Zodiac, more of that later.

It was in the early sixties and I was about seventeen at the time. Scarfell Pike is located in the Lake District National Park, in Cumbria and has an elevation of 978 metres (3,209 ft) above sea level.

This is how it looked from the bottom, with Wastwater Lake in the foreground.

Please excuse the photographs taken on this venture. They were recorded on my then newly acquired as a birthday present camera, a Brownie 127 I think it was called.

Today Scarfell Pike and its neighbour Scarfell are climbed regularly by hikers and tourists. I am told that part of the trek is now paved and even wheelchairs can negotiate some of the climb.

Back in the sixties it was an adventure with a capital “A”, the climbing and conquering of Scarfell Pike was then a quest, a mission. A major exploit for four young, athletic and enterprising young lads, particularly as its peak was covered in approximately three-foot of snow!

This is us at the summit.

And a spectacular view of its neighbour Scarfell just 3162ft, 47ft lower!

We opted for the easiest ascent from Wastdale-Head village green, as there was a secure area where we could park the car and the drive to the nearest establishment that served alcohol was only five miles away.

I should perhaps make it clear that when I say “Easy” I mean it’s easy relative to the other routes; it’s an unrelenting climb and the crossing of Lingmell Gill can be dangerous, particularly after rain, but with the freezing temperature and snow on the ground, for us it was a doddle.

You will only have to look up the number of call-outs the Wasdale mountain rescue service had in the sixties to realise that navigation errors can lead to serious mishaps. However, to us the rugged beauty, breath-taking grandeur made our ascent a memorable experience that I still remember sixty-five odd years later.

We, Frank Holford, Nigel Fisher, and myself were in our school’s cadet force so we had experience with camping and had been involved in many orienteering expeditions when we went on the cadet-force’s summer training camps, unfortunately Mick Dyson, the fourth member of our team, did not have this experience or training. His major asset was; he owned the car that transported us from the Fylde to Wastwater Green.

It was the very spacious 1962 Ford Zodiac.

The Zodiac was the luxury variant of The Zephyr and were made by British Ford from 1950 till the early seventies, they were the largest passenger car on the market and they guzzled petrol. Mick was very fortunate in that his dad owned a Ford dealership in Blackpool, so a car and fuel were no problem.

I befriended him in my second to last year at school. As my school did not teach Geology as an O-level subject, my headmaster arranged that I attend lessons at the nearby Blackpool Grammar School, a fifteen-minute cycle ride from my school, Arnold Boys on Lytham Road near the Pleasure Beach.

I cycled there three times a week and struck up a friendship with Mick who was also studying Geology and loved the locally produced bitter called Boddingtons.

After the final geology lesson of the week on a Friday, Mick would drive down to Yates Wine Lodge on the North Shore of Blackpool and order two pints of “Boddies” so that my pint would be waiting on bar when I arrived fifteen minutes later, on my bicycle.

Throughout those final two years our friendship blossomed. Mick loved showing off his Zodiac and was always keen to take new passengers, he was also not shy of sipping several Boddies, so he was soon introduced to Frank and Nigel, fellow imbibers of the smooth bitter.

I’m sorry, I digress. I started inferring that I would write about my memories of my youth involving a bicycle, but I have taken you up the highest mountain in England.

Then, bicycles were usually the only means of transportation I had in my late teens, so without either hitching, which I did annually down to London to be involved in NYT productions, or scrounging a lift off Mick, I pedalled my way to many obscure places within a twenty-five radius of my home.

Friday nights were nearly always a pub-crawl or pub-pedal. My mate, Grid, his nickname for Chris Gradwell. Grad-Grid, you get it? Well, almost. He had the misfortune to get his head stuck in some iron railings while under the influence of some Boddies-bitter, so the name Grid stuck.

Grid and I always chose public houses that were well outside our small town, this involved a pedal on our bicycles. We chose establishments that involved crossing the Wyre river and took us to the villages of the Fylde like Poulton, Preesall, and Pilling, this was about an hour’s cycle, and we passed through Thornton, Stannah, Little Thornton, Hambleton, and Staimine and started our consumption of either Boddies-bitter or a bottled stout like Guinness called Jubilee.

The pub in Preesall is now called the Black Bull, its name then escapes me, perhaps The Preesall Arms, but nowadays all the pubs as we knew them are gone. They all had men’s-only bars, called public bars, they also had a small area for women only called “snugs” and lounge bars were the sexes could intermingle. The public bars were always equipped with a dart board, each pub having a resident dart’s team. A few of them had pool tables and there were always several packs of playing cards available for use in a game of snap, cribbage or even bridge.

Today all these pubs, the communal meeting place, have been converted to up-market eating establishments catering for the middle class and vehicularly mobile generation.

I remember on one occasion we avidly listened to the great Brain London, a local Blackpudlian-boxer, getting pummelled by the invincible then Casius Clay. It was scheduled for fifteen rounds, but London was knocked out in the third round.

That night we bid a hasty retreat to the Shard Inn which was close to the Wyre bridge for our third pint. There was a toll fee to cross the bridge over the Wyre of two pence or threepence. Once over the Wyre we stopped at the Lodge in Thornton, a quick pint and then onto my favourite pub the Bay Horse at Thornton’s rail station.

This place had a snug, a public bar and a lounge. Stools and benches in the public bar, benches and a table in the small snug and Chippendale furniture in the lounge.

The ideal pub!

Fish and chips were then the ideal ending to the evening jaunt and these were acquired back in the Cleveleys town centre.

Here the bicycles came into play as they were used to mount the pavement and ride directly up to the counter, where the order was placed. Cod, chips and “Crosserlies”! “Crosserlies” were all the discarded bits of chips and broken batter that accumulated in the fryer, and Biff gave them away free.

Biff was the owner of the Chippie called in those days, Abbots, because Biff’s surname was used; he never once complained of us riding our bicycles into his chippie.

And always welcomed our arrival with a cordial “‘allo there! Usual eh lads?”

Today apart from us being arrested as juvenile delinquents, we would no longer find the chippie.

It was demolished in the eighties and now a Thai restaurant is across the main Victoria Road.

Progress I suppose.

But that won’t get in the way of many other bicycle adventures to Fleetwood, Royal Lytham St Annes golf course, Garstang, and Glasson dock, some of which can be found by reading earlier blogs. Enjoy, thanks.

Mountain Sanctuary Park and Memories

Memory is an awe-inspiring commodity.

Is it on sale? Can it be bought, sold, or bartered?

We all possess it; our brains retain it.

Today's renowned scientists say it is an intrinsic attribute that all of mankind and many animals have the function to retain and learn from past experiences. This is memory at work.

All you animal lovers that have a pet will know how your dog comes to your whistle, your cat hears its pellets being poured into its bowl and it never forgets where it's litter is.

A memory that constantly stays with me is often catapulted to the forefront of my grey matter is of an old South African friend of the mid-seventies. Marcel van Heerden, a fellow thespian who I worked with back then. The old photograph I have is of him seated on a throne- sculptured rock high on the northern slopes of the Magaliesberg mountain range to the west of Pretoria.

 It was taken when he led me into that mystic and beautiful mountain range in 1975.

His walking-stick lies across him like a ceremonial baton, my dog on his lap and his mongrel pooch stands at the side.

We had just scaled the southern slope, clambering up a rocky-strewn ravine and the summit was our first rest since we had begun the ascent at eight o'clock in the morning.

It had been an exhausting climb and we both needed a rest before we began our descent through the cavernous rock pools of Tonquani Gorge.

The first pool we reached, about an hour later was a God-sent gift. Our aching and sweaty bodies were quickly stripped and in we plunged. The ice-cold water revitalized our tired muscles and swimming back to lie drying on a sun-soaked rocky platform was one of my best memories of life in the South African bush! 

Marcel told me there three more pools we had to visit before we pitched camp for the night under an overhanging rocky roof where could light a fire and graze.

That was the first time I'd heard the South African colloquial expression for eating and it was then that we developed our understanding of our cultural and social differences.

An important occurrence!

As it was to become the basis for the scene that we co-scripted in the late Barney Simon's innovative production of "Cincinnati", that was about to start rehearsal for performance at the new Market Theatre.

Marcel was a country born Afrikaaner and the city of Johannesburg was a new place to him; I too was a stranger to the city and the whole country, yet on this two-day hike we discovered we had a lot in common.

His grandfather like mine had been a keen vegetable grower, he knew a lot about the geology of the range we were on and I’d studied geology in my last year at school. We both loved food and often ate things and experimented with meats and vegetables we’d never tasted or seen before.

We dived down the gorge from one magnificent rock pool to another our only pause was at the second pool when Marcel’s dog suddenly started barking madly.

The pooch certainly was aware of another presence in the vicinity. Marcel told me to stop moving immediately and surveyed the area paying particular interest in the area right next to the pool. He detected a movement about five metres away from us.

A snake, a Boomslang!

It was about four feet in length, a bright green colour and it moved with the speed of a formula one race car.

“It’s deadly, one bite and you’re a gonner!” said Marcel.

 I instinctively took a step backwards,

“Don’t move!” yelled Marcel. I was petrified.

 Marcel remained frozen and in what can be only thirty seconds the snake disappeared into the surrounding rocks. His pooch stopped barking and Marcel said, “We’re safe now.”

He dived into the rock pool. It took me about a minute to pluck up the courage to follow him. We both surfaced and clambered onto the pool side.

“That was very weird,” he said, “They are usually found in trees! That’s where the name comes from Boom, tree in in English.”

“So, what’s it doing here?”
“Having a drink.”

“Reckon we do the same,” I said as I pulled out two cans of the local larger, Castle, from my back-pack, I opened them and passed one to Marcel, “Cheers, n’ baai dankie” I said trying out my Afrikaans.

Marcel laughed, “’N Rooinek!”
Another novel word, A Red-Neck, an English man, a red neck from the sun!

We moved on down the Tonquani gorge and explored two more magnificent rock pools with waterfalls that provided a route down which you could slide into the lower pool. All the time we were encased in the unassailable cliffs on each side. We selected a flattish rock surface, with an overhang as Marcel had said. We unpacked and pitched camp for the night.

We unloaded our Cadac-gas-burners, one for cooking and one for a night-light and soon we were settled down to eating one of Marcel’s South African creations, mealie pap and a minced stew concoction which I was told was called “Bobotie”, a Cape-Malay dish that was certainly very moreish!

Pap is made by mixing water with dried ground mealies. The secret is to get the right consistency, too much water and its ruined, too little and its inedible. Marcel's creation was perfect; he deftly scooped with his thumb and forefingers just the right amount of Pap on which he adroitly scooped his Bobotie,

He then attempted to teach me the correct way to eat the dish using his two forefingers and thumb. I tackled the procedure but after three failed attempts I returned to the use of fork and spoon. He giggled continuously as the pap and mince fell onto the ground and was immediately gobbled up by our eager pets, even though we had fed them earlier with dog-pellets.

As the evening wore on we chatted and discussed our early lives in our respective hemispheres. Here again our conversation found it’s way into our improvisation of our meeting in the main Johannesburg railway station. Our conversation finally saw the light of day 3 months later in Barney Simon’s production of “Cincinnati” at the Market theatre.

The entire play was created by the eight cast members and Barney over a 2-month improvisional exercise. It went on to be a tremendous success for the “Company” and the newly created Market Theatre playing to full houses for the initial ten weeks run with returns over the years, the last being in the early two-thousands.

With hindsight you could say that part of it came from two young culturally diverse minds grappling with the arduous surrounds of the Tonquani-Gorge in the Magaliesberg Mountain range.

The following morning after a great sleep under the stars, an early plunge and wash in the cascading mountain stream, we packed up all our belongings including rubbish and began climbing out of the gorge back the range’s summit and then our descent on the southern slope back to Marcel’s motorbike, where our weary bodies and two pets, packed in shoulder bags, began our trip back to civilization in Johannesburg.

Since that expedition into Tonquani-Gorge way back in the early seventies, I discovered an entry through the equally marvelous hidden campsite called Mountain Sanctuary Park.

This majestic get-a-way mountain park is accessed by vehicle on the northern slopes of the range and from there you can enter Tonquani gorge if you get the right permit, available at the park.

This exquisite campsite park offers accommodation as well as areas to pitch tents and is now run by Owen and his sister and has wooden and stone cabins to rent as well as campsites offering electricity, a large bathing area with solar heated water, and a magnificent swimming pool overlooking Buffelspoort dam to the North.

It was previously owned by their parents, and had far less to offer, however taking our tents and camping gear along, the place became a hide-a-way for myself, son and daughter through the eighties, nineties, and on into the twenty first century.

Worth a visit!!

For the Memories!

http://www.mountain-sanctuary.co.za/

Please, please comment on the tale either on blog page or Sir Cess Poole's Diaries on Facebook. Thanx!!!