OLD AGE

Well knocking on the mid-seventies, I can tell you all that it's not too pleasant. 

Muscles ache with regularity, cuts, bruises, fractures and the common cold and flu take more time to leave your ageing body than they did in your youth.

I've always been a DIY-er., and even now I try, but the numerous times I have fallen foul of the surroundings I was working in, increases with each attempt.

Ladders and roof and gutter work are definite" No-Nos" and even trimming the bougainvillea is beginning to give more scratches than it used to.

Gardening is still a passion but wielding the fork and spade is not as easy as it used to be. Soil sifting and mixing with manure is still a doddle and can be done seated if all the necessary ingredients and tools are within easy reach. With spring in full swing in the southern hemisphere, it's a job on my list of things to do.[ 

My grand-pa used to make me do the job as a youngster and I have not forgotten how to prepare the right clay, loam, manure, sand mix for the seedling trays.

The right mix is the key for the germinating seeds to build strong roots and makes transplanting so much easier and successful. And if you water with his pigeon-shite mixture or worm wee-wee you're bound to have healthy seedlings, that will give an abundant and tasty crop.

I still do the occasional electrical job either around the house or for a friend. 

Recently I found myself in Groot Marico, a small hamlet in the North-West province of South Africa. I was taken there by a friend, Allen, who wanted me to put in three new double plug & plates and repair a couple of bedside lamps.

The jobs were finished before the sun set. Allen told me we were to visit a neighbour on the adjacent plot. The neighbour, Johann, had asked Allen to buy a frozen snoek for a braai we were going to have that evening.

For those of you who don't know a snoek is a sea fish that is caught mainly by the Malay fishermen of the coast round Cape Town. It's been described as the South African barracuda.

Groot Marico is named after the river that flows through it and the name was made famous by the writings of Charles Herman Bosman and the one-man re-enactments of his stories by the late thespian, Patrick Mynaard.

All his tales are set in the surrounds of Groot Marico, an area he describes as: "There is no other place I know that is so heavy with atmosphere, so strangely and darkly impregnated with that stuff of life that bears the authentic stamp of South Africa."

The area's other two claims to fame are its legal and illegal mampoer stills, and and its equally dubious rows of the Cannabacaea plants that are seasonally harvested and sold giving many of the locals a healthy income and lifestyle.

Many growers of the weed have turned their love of getting high into a highly profitable business either by selling the weed itself or extracting the highly sort-after cannabis oil.

Slowly but surely, we are definitely heading towards the legalization of the use of cannabis for medical use.

When this happens, many growers may join the legal distribution network even though this will involve a lot of red tape and the receiver of revenue. An entity that puts the fear of God in all of us.

When it came to payment for my second electrical job I was asked to do, this time for Johann the following morning, I decided that the R of R would not get a look in and choose the barter method.

Johann had asked me to insert a new 30amp breaker in an external  distribution board and link it up to run a new borehole pump; normally a 500 Rand job.

I have no idea of the going price of dagga, the weed or the extracted oil, so I asked for a bank sachet of dagga and enough oil to last me a month. Johann obviously thought this was a good deal. He smiled and said, "Give me a minute." And he departed.

On his return he passed me a bulging plastic back sachet of dagga and a large jam jar filled to the brim with oil. What disturbed me though was the greyish sediment that lay at the bottom.

"You can drink the clear oil, and also use it as a rub on your skin. The stuff at the bottom is frankincense and myrrh. Great healers, aches pains, cuts and bruises."

"Right, time for a drink, Scotch or Irish?"

"Irish please."

"A man after my own heart. You and Allen can get the braai fire going while I get the toots."

After the sixth or seventh double Irish Johann announced the snoek and sweet potatoes were ready for consumption. A large sheet of clean cooking foil was laid out on the outside bar and the crispy snoek was placed atop, sprinkled with roughly crushed peppercorns, sea salt and the juice of a freshly picked garden lemon was squeezed. This caused minor eruptions as it hit the cooked surface of the fish. I peeled back the cooking foil off my sweet potato and tucked in. It was superbly divine, tender and succulent and the flavour was enhanced by a light smear of homemade apricot jam. This was Johann's suggestion and it worked a treat!

He opened a bottle of cooled dry South African white wine and in under half an hour eighteen ravenous fingers had laid bare the cooking foil leaving the fishes skeletontonial bones to be tossed onto the dying braai fire embers.

We returned to our camping chairs around the fire, wood was tossed on it, the second bottle of Jameson's was opened, and I suddenly realized why Charles Herman Bosman had so loved this area. The smoke curled gently upwards, fire-flies danced in the distance over the running spruit/stream, and the whole magical scene was enhanced by musical tweets of the night-time crickets.

The Bosman flavour filtered through embellishing our fire side conversation which encompassed religion, politics, ex-wives, past and present lovers, children and of course many jokes which certainly would not find themselves on either the air waves or the internet.

One such would be classed as racist in the new South Africa but would be classed Ok if the word "Zulu" was changed to "Irish".

You all know that Neil Armstrong was not the first human to land on the moon? No?

When he took that first step he looked across the sea of tranquility and saw a bunch of black African men sitting there surrounded by wheelbarrows, picks, spades, and cement mixers. He bounded slowly across to them. " Hi guys.  I'm Neil Armstrong, I'm supposed to be the first human on the moon. What the fuck are you doing here?"

The largest 6 foot 4 Zulu took a slow drag on his cigarette, a hefty quaff of his Carlsberg larger and said slowly, "We do fuck nothing - - till the boss arrive!!"

It is totally beyond my comprehension that if the hero in this joke was either Irish or a Polack it would not be considered racist, but in this age of political correctness I apologise to anyone I have offended.

I also apologise for meandering off my opening statement.

Old age certainly restricts the playing of my youthful addiction to a forty-five-minute session on a squad court. I also no longer go to a gymnasium, so my only physical activity is either gardening or doing handyman jobs around the house or for friends.

Cleaning the swimming pool is now a dangerous business for my rickety joints, and I must employ help to scoop out the leaves and suction-pump the sediment off the sides and bottom.

It is a labourious and boring job as when you clean, no matter how slowly you do it, some of the sediment is disturbed, clouding the water and making it difficult to see which area you have already swept. I try to be very methodical, starting at one side and going carefully round the pool, but there is always some interruption, a telephone rings, or someone, usually a manure seller in summer or an innocuous and disheveled beggar in winter at the back gate. No matter how meticulously you position the brush, so it will not slip into the pool, it always does. This requires that I start again, but by now the water is far too cloudy, so the whole operation is suspended till the following day.

All in all I have to surmise that the older one gets the longer time it takes to do anything. I’m sure all you older readers will agree. I have learnt however as long as I still enjoy the work and I can stand back and be proud of what I have accomplished, life must go on till the reaper makes his call.

C’est la vie!!!

---

 [Test scri1]

 [Test scri2]

AN ACTING ELECTRICIAN

Building a theatre, or rather three theatres, out of an old fruit and vegetable market, that was obviously not designed for theatrical productions, is a challenging task.

I was involved in such a venture way back in the nineteen seventies.

I'd been a resident in the Republic of South Africa for a few years when I found myself in the employ of "The Company".

It comprised of a manager/founder an artistic director and about 9 renegade actors, who'd turned their backs on the apartheid run State theatre, where they'd had good salaried jobs, and decided to join a Mr Mannie Mamin,

 and create a fully racial theatrical company that would play to mixed audiences.

This was a very brave move and they knew they would be always under the watchful eye of the state security system.

At the time BOSS, the bureau of state security, was in full swing, mounting excursions into neighboring states to kill dissenters who who'd fled, imprison journalists who wrote against the apartheid regime, and tracking down young white males who had refused to join the mandatory 2-year army service.

I was asked by Mr Manim if I would meet the artist director of their group, a Mr Barney Simon. Of course, I said yes, and a meeting was arranged for the coming Monday morning.

In intervening three days I was given a copy of a play called "Fortune and men's Eyes". I was to read it but not told as to which part Barney wanted me to play.

"Fortune and Men's Eyes" is about 4 imprisoned juvenile inmates and the set is their 4-bunked cell. There is a 5th member of the cast, their warder.

I was immediately in love with the play and when I met Barney on Monday I agreed to play the young transvestite, Queenie.

Two reasons, my mother's Christian name was Queenie, and I'd never played a transvestite before.

The production was a huge box office success and I was immediately invited to join the Company and play Malvolio in Shakespeare's Twelth Night. This was also both a critical and box office success.

Both these productions were in venues that the Company had to rent as they did not have a permanent base.

That was to change when the chairman of Anglo Amercian mining house took an interest in the future of the group.

The old vegetable market at the east end of Juta street in central Johannesburg was to be demolished or put up for tender for conversion into another use.

Mr Manim and Barney Simon with their new-found friend at Anglo American immediately put a proposition to the city council.

I have no idea what political or financial strings were pulled, but what I did know was that the 12 or so young actors suddenly became carpenters, bricklayers, plumbers, painters, and electricians. We accomplished these deeds at the same time as being "Actors!"

Several of the group went into rehearsal for Chekhov's play the Seagull, which was to open in the newly created "Upstairs at the Market" theatre, later to be re-named “The Barney Simon” after his death.

But the first ever performance in the old fruit & veg market was a fund raiser.

I was asked if I'd join Barney and legendary South African actress Janet Suzman in this event called "Love and Repentance". This performance was to be held amongst the rubble and cement mixers of the "To-be-Built" new theatre.

I of course accepted the offer and along with actor Michael McCabe, musician, folk singer Keith Blundell, and Janet Suzman, we did the first ever performance in the to-be-built Market Theatre!!

It was performed around a cement mixer over which a lectern was assembled. Keith was permanently ensconced on a bar stool, with a microphone for his voice and guitar. Janet was on-stage, a 4-meter square raised rostrum, all the time and Micheal and I, in turn performed excerpts from both Shakespeare's plays and sonnets.

These duologues were joined together by Keith's dexterous plucking finger and soulful voice as he sang some of Shakespeare's songs and some of his own.

Within a week of our performance a quarter of a million Rand was raised, and the company began rehearsals for its first production to be mounted in the newly built theatre, " Upstairs at the Market".

Although the major construction was done by hired contractors the more menial tasks were tackled by us young eager thespians.

Names that I can drag from my ageing grey matter are, Vanessa Cooke, Alleta Bezuitenhout, Danny Keogh, Sue Keil, David & Di Eppel, Peter Piccolo, Michelle Maxwell, Janice Honeyman, Leone Hofmeyr, Lesley Nott and Jacquie Singer.

Refurbishing of two converted rooms into dressing rooms for the actors working in The Upstairs Theatre, was left totally in our hands, plus redecorating an area adjacent to the foyer that was to become an art gallery.

We had to do this in three weeks before the opening of Chekhov's "The Seagull" directed by Barney.

While the girls sat precariously high on scaffolding painting walls and ceilings, Danny, David, Peter and I rigged up the theatre's lighting bars and wired the dressing rooms so that every actor would have his own private make-up station.

This last action was left to me as my grandfather had been an electrician and had me help him rewire houses when I was eight years old.

We worked sixteen-hour days, those who were in rehearsal for The Seagull, were excused evening sessions.

I worked non-stop one Saturday and Sunday until I had eight stations in each of the two dressing rooms rigged with eight 60-watt globes, each with their own switch.

The opening night of The Seagull was a resounding and critical success. Four months later Marat Sade again directed by Barney opened in the main theatre. It was a momentous occasion and ran for six weeks to full houses and standing ovations.

I was in that production, in a straight-jacket and tied to a wooden bench, portraying Jacques de Roux, a paranoid serial killer. It remains one of my most enjoyable theatrical experiences.

From 1976 till the late eighties I am told that I have been in almost two hundred productions in all three of the venues at the Market Theatre.

Some of these I can't even remember as they were late-night or "Mid-night" performances.

These shows were either banned plays or plays written by people who ordinarily did not allow their works to be mounted in South Africa's apartheid state.

However, with Janet Suzman's help, Mannie & Barney managed to get permission from the playwrights.

One such production in what was called The Market Theatre Cafe, was of Stephen Berkoff's play "East" in which Marcel van Heerden and I had the first male to male French kiss on a South African stage. Lesley Knot and David Eppel, anther two painting and decorating actors, were also in the production again directed by one of my favorite directors, Mr Barney Simon.

We were scheduled to have three performances over a weekend but the queue for the tickets stretched around the newly converted building.

On the final night of the three-night performances we had people watching through small cottage pane windows that backed onto an old train loading platform that was used for deliveries to the old market.

So, it was decided to run for another two weekends until a visit from BOSS closed us down.

Although I and all the productions I was involved in over twenty-five years received great applause and critical reviews, to this day NO-ONE has ever thanked me for wiring the dressing rooms Upstairs!

IF

If.

It’s a funny little word, isn’t it?

It’s the title of a famous movie directed in 1968 by Lindsay Anderson and staring Malcolm Mc Dowel.

Only two letters yet the thoughts that could go with it are massive, and at times earth shattering.

Its origin is in the Old High German (iba), moving to the Old Saxon (eef) and onto Middle English of (gif).

Today it is classed as a conjunction and in approximately fifteen hundred and ten was first used as a noun.

The dictionaries of the world give its meaning as a conjunction as:

a. In the event that: If I were to go, I would be late. b. Granting that: If that is true, what should we do?

c. On the condition that: She will play the piano only if she is paid.

2. Although possibly; even though: It is a handsome if useless trinket.

3. Whether: Ask if he plans to come to the meeting.

4. Used to introduce an exclamatory clause, indicating a wish: If they had only come earlier!

And as a noun as:

A supposition; uncertain possibility: The future is full of ifs.

So now we are on the same page, I pose a question.

How many times in your life have you wondered “If only I’d done that? If only I’d crossed the road? If only I’d taken that turn?  If only I hadn’t had that last drink?

If, like me, you’ve asked such questions a million times during your lives, you’ll concede now that you’ve never fathomed out a reasonable answer.

Therefore they remain unanswered.

I am now going to attempt to answer a couple of my iffy questions, so bear with me.

What would have happened in my life if I had not accepted the job offer that brought me to South Africa way back in the late sixties?

I do not care to air the number of times I have examined this dilemma. It is numerous and each time I have ventured to answer it the number of other “ifs” entered the fray.

I was at the time in wed-lock to my first wife, a beautiful ex-Ballet-Rambert dancer, who I met whilst she was working as a stage-manager working in a Northern English repertory company. I was playing Octavius Caesar in a modern production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

She had played many leading roles for Rambert and was a rising star, but injury befell her and she had taken the stage manager’s job, wishing to stay in the theatrical industry, and hoping that her fractured ankle would mend quickly.

We had a whirlwind romance and were married when we both moved to London on completion of our contract at Billingham Rep. Our best man, was the soon to become famous, Bryan Brown,  for his role of Doug  Coughlin in “Cocktail” staring a young Tom Cruise.

He was also working at the time in the same Repertory Company. As a wild Australian boy, his paper work was not in order and a couple of weeks after our marriage he skee-daddled from his assistant stage manager job and headed homeward to move in front of the cameras and become a famous film star. He later married the equally famous Australian actress Rachel Ward while they were working on the TV series The Thorn Birds.

The Lady in Wedlock and I settled into a flat in Chiswick, we had only been there a month and the weekly queue at the dole office was beginning to get very depressing, when suddenly Maggie got offered job as a chief dresser on the Black and White minstrels show at the Victoria Palace Theatre.

Within a day I was working as junior fly-man in the tower. It was the dustbin men’s strike and then the miners came out and a three day working week was announced by the government. The streets of London looked like a pig-sty and the tube-men went on strike too.

So it was bicycles for the two of us. We only worked on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights with sometimes a Wednesday matinee for the OAPs, but in no time we became two of the fittest young people in show business cycling 8 miles from Chiswick to Victoria station and back to our flat.

Then one Monday morning the phone rang.

A ringing phone meant two things to both of us. It was ominous, either someone was looking for money we owed them or it was the offer of a job.

I answered it with trepidation, and was relieved to hear the dulcet tones of my agent, Miss Boo King. I was being offered two jobs and if Boo played it right I could do them both.

A guest appearance in the popular BBC crime drama Dixon of Dock Green, and another appearance in the new police drama Z-Cars. I played a long haired motor bike rider Kevin O’Brian in Dixon and long haired hippy student ban -the-bomb rebel Tony Monk in Z-Cars.

   

I did both and our bank balance began to look rosy. However I had just finished the Z-car’s job and another job was offered. I was to play a small supporting role in the BBC’c Play for Today series.

It was Penda’s Fen by the already famous David Rudkin. When it was screened in 1974, I was already in South Africa but I heard that it went on to acquire the status of minor classic, win awards and was rebroadcast several times on the BBC.

The job that took me to South Africa came under unusual circumstances. I was in University College hospital at the time, newly diagnosed as a type 1 diabetic, so I had to get special permission from my doctors to get a pass-out for the evening to meet the director and fellow cast, more of this another time.

The job was in Terrence Rattigan’s In Praise of Love a very popular play and the South African producer was assured of good houses as there was no television service in the country till the mid seventies.

Their president at the time, John Voster , and he called it the devil’s box.

I was offered the juve lead, Joey, the estranged son of an egotistical left-wing literary critic Sebastian.

There are only four characters in the play. Sebastian, his wife a part-Jewish woman called Lydia, who is suffering from a terminal illness, but she was with the Resistance during the Second World War, so she survives on her wits and her feminine charms. Then there is Mark, an American best-selling popular novelist and a friend of Sebastian's, who has long carried a torch for Lydia.

Sebastian is openly abusive to his friend Mark, and to his son, Joey, who offends him by working for the Liberal party: "A vote-splitting organisation," says Sebastian, "carefully designed to keep the establishment in power."

Joey himself is an aspiring writer, and is in rebellion against his father's overbearing manner and professed Marxist views.

On the surface the play takes the form of a comedy of misunderstanding, but it quickly builds into a situation of almost unbearable suspense as layer after layer of comedy and pretence is peeled away from each character to reveal the full measure of each one's unspoken love and pain.

As well as being an outstanding dissection of the nature of love and pain, In Praise of Love is as fine a statement about the loss of idealism and illusions in the nineteen seventies.

My fellow thespians were all well established Muriel Pavlov, Robert Flemming, and Canadian actor Robert Beatty.

They all worked, appearing in stage, film, television and radio productions. Muriel had just come from a film set were she played Kenneth Moore’s wife in the epic Second World War movie Reach for the Sky. Robert Flemming had just finished filming The Quiller Memorandum playing the sardonic British Secret Intelligence Service chief. And Robert Beatty had recently come off the set as one of the astronauts in A Space Odyssey and as General George Carnaby in the Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood’s epic war movie Where Eagles Dare.

So I was very pleased to be amongst such distinguished actors and I had a very long argumentative scene with Sebastian.

But it wasn’t the role or my fellow actors that really made me take the job.

What impressed me even more was the sound of my agent’s voice telling me I was to receive a salary of seventy five pounds a week for five months. That would certainly keep toddy full to the brim, and it didn’t take me long to discover that Mr. Robert Beatty was very fond of a very large Brandy and coke. And we were both introduced to South Africa's answer to Potcheen. The illicitly made Mampoer, made in the hidden stills in Groot Marico.

My previous job was with Prospect Theatre Company, I had toured Australia for five months and I received only twenty eight pounds a week. So the deciding factor of this first “if” was money with a capital M!

My first meeting with my fellow thespians was strange to say the least.

A tube and bus trip from central London to Hampstead Heath.

I was informed that our opening night was in five days and it was in Pretoria South Africa.

I was to have two rehearsals apart from this preliminary meeting; they were to be in the evening at the director’s house. The next day we were to fly to South Africa during the night, be taken to Pretoria have a technical run through, a dress rehearsal, and open the following night after a second dress rehearsal in the afternoon.

At the initial meeting I was asked, “How good are you at learning lines Cess?” “Ok”, was my reply. “Good,” replied the director, “Have them in your head for tomorrow evening’s rehearsal.” 

What followed were two read-throughs of my three scenes and then I was sent packing with my copy of the play clutched securely in my sweaty hands and my newly acquired insulin in a small cooler bag.

That evening I was learning my lines when the phone rang. It was unusual for my agent to make an out-of-office call, but she thought she had better fill me in concerning the producer for whom I was about to work for.

She told me I was a replacement; the SA producer was not happy with his original casting and had fired the actor. She gave me a full run-down on the rather infamous Pieter Torein, who I was to work for another three times in my illustrious career.

Needless to say I learnt my lines and the opening night was a resounding success.

The play ran on tour to Johannesburg, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Pietermaritzburg, and Durban and to then what was Rhodesia. All in all, a ten month run with constant full houses.

It was during the Johannesburg run which was about five months that I was introduced to the art of radio acting by some of the finest actors in this craft, the late Hugh Rouse, the late Denis Folbigge, Margaret Heale, Ian Hamilton and his wife Erica Rogers.

They taught me all the nuances of the craft.

How to portray distance and movement by moving on and off mike, how to use the telephone mike in its own little enclosure, and most importantly how to not pop my “Ps” and deliver lines when only a centimeter away from the mike.

This last technique stood me in good stead for all the voice-overs I would do in latter years for Castle Larger, thirteen years, Samsung ten years, British airways, four years, BMW five years.

Denis Folbigge was one of South Africa’s leading actor-writer-directors and was responsible for many long running and successful serials and series. It was he and another radio personality, Margaret Heale, who employed me constantly and who persuaded me to start writing for their series and serials.

Within a year I was performing the lead, and writing episodes of “My name is Adam Kane” and also writing the highly successful crime series, “Squad Cars”. A radio rip off of the BBC series “Z-Cars” that I had just appeared in.

So a few of my “ifs” have been answered, if I hadn’t taken the job I would not have learnt my microphone technique, I wouldn’t have seen every major town in South Africa, I wouldn’t have traveled to Zimbabwe. I wouldn't be writing these tales.

And I wouldn't have discovered Mampoer!!

But if I hadn't?

Now there’s the question!!!