One Big, Huge, Mountainous Thank You!!

Been nine short weeks since starting my blog thing – today I had my 1000^th visitor and that’s without selling a single copy of my book. ‘Cause it ain’t there to sell yet. No worries, your company’s more important; get a worthwhile buzz when people as far away as Singapore, South Africa, America, Oz and even Mother Russia drop in for a read. Glad it entertains. Don’t be shy about throwing in the odd message whenever the urge grabs you.

Having the cover of Sons of Africa re-designed; maybe the title as well – not sure yet, guess I’ll have to sell part of my body to pay for the changes – on second thoughts; wouldn’t get much, everything’s pretty well worn out. So keep an eye out for the new stuff – one of these days might even be an entire book for you to read. Got to make up ground now; trashed fifty thousand words with my last edit; working my proverbials off to make up for lost content, not many people go for two page novels.

No matter, thanks again for all your support; keep on reading the extracts. Ten years from now and who knows?  You might well have had the whole book; for free...

New house, new school and some very ‘different’ people...

... The company supplied housing for all its employees; the higher your job status, the better the house. We got sort of a middle of the road one – could have made reference to leafy suburbs but that would be a lie. There were hardly any leaves; just, as my Dad put it; red sour earth, an analogy that would in the future cause many problems with locals of long standing. The only plants that thrived were those that fed on asbestos. Mother managed to grow a cabbage once; think my old man had some replacement brake linings made from it and a pair of flame retardant fireman’s gloves.

My parents had, being blissfully unaware of the dangers, brought me to live on an asbestos mine. My entire world was covered in white dust. The cars were white, the dogs were white, not all the kids were white because that’s the way it was in Africa. Sometimes the black kids turned out kind of grey if the wind came down off the waste dumps.

Everything and I mean everything belonged to The Mine. There was a Mine Hospital, a Mine Store, Mine Club, so on and so forth. Reckon they cut that record here; ‘Owe my soul to the Company store’; employees daren’t change their socks without permission from the Mine Manager. Mashaba; the original microcosm, a far flung crack in Britain’s imperial wall to where unfortunates like my father were lured by offers of endless sunshine, a colonial drink-yourself-to-death pension plan and cheap golf.

My Dad upgraded; from Morris Minor to Zephyr Six, bought it off the barman at Gath’s Mine Club. I remember a large crack in the windscreen – top to bottom. The gear-change stuck out the side of the steering column, rather than out from the floor. Mother went all posh whenever we went out in it. Especially, on Friday nights.

‘Comb your hair Jeffrey we’re going to the club.’ Mother herded me towards the bathroom. ‘Brush your teeth and give your neck a wash.’

It was ‘Draw’ night. Metal drum between two bearings mounted on a trestle and plonked on the stage. The official draw-man would give it a spin and snatch his thumbs away for fear of amputation.

‘Number sixty-three!’

Mother glowered at her forty-nine, scrumpled it up and dropped it in the ashtray. The woman with sixty-three got my mother’s most venomous ‘going to kick your car look’. The waiter pitched up with a full tray of drinks. Mother gave him a ten shilling note and told him not to fiddle the change. Dad was in the bar playing darts and working on his Friday night word-slur. From across the room, the lady we met outside of the shop was staring at me. She’d swapped her dress with the blood splatters for a blood red Friday-nighter with plunging neck line and sleeves wide enough to hide a German wolf pack. She was looking hungry; couldn’t see her kids anywhere...

Sons of Africa; an extract:

... Mathew collected logs from the river’s high water mark and, on a bed of hot coals Catherine arranged a skillet and her three-legged iron pots. Magdel brought out sweet potatoes and the last of her Cape-grown pumpkins.

‘We shall make a feast!’ Magdel decided, ‘a feast to remember the crossing of a great river – a celebration.’ She looked about for Sannie. ‘Brandewyn my kind; a full bottle! Set an extra place for the meneer. Tonight is a special occasion – we have a guest. And your mother’s chair!’ Magdel boomed. ‘Or am I expected to get it myself?’

The iconic throne was set in the fullest part of the firelight and as usual, to its right hand, Sannie erected the trestle; setting it with glass and twinkling cutlery.

‘You will take a dop with us, meneer?’ Magdel smiled at Nathan, but she had already decided for him and poured his tumbler full to the brim with Cape Smoke. She shouted instructions for hurricane lamps to be hung high on the branches of sweet thorn and now they threw good light to the fireside. ‘Your wife already knows,’ she told him. ‘Always I look for snakes. I cannot bear those slithering creatures anywhere near me.’ With a deft flick she put the whip to a stone and sent her pretence spinning away beneath her wagon.

Jars of peach, apricot and watermelon conserve were spirited out, the extravagance warranted. Bread to go with them came up golden brown and mountainous from Sannie’s baking-pot, and in a skillet of hot fat, quartered guinea fowl were turned and spiced one last time. Magdel looked on and smiled appreciatively. God had shown them mercy – delivered them from the wilderness.

‘Sannie, my liefling. Bring out your father’s concertina for me to make some music with.’

Magdel settled herself in front of the fire and everyone listened. She sat with her eyes closed; in her mind’s eye were the social gatherings of her childhood. Trek Boers would come from a hundred miles and even further for the occasion of a wedding or birth of a child; gifts would be exchanged, roasted sheep, fat and juice-full were feasted on, still with them skewered to spits above the braai pits. Thanks would be given to The Almighty and when the wagons were properly laagered, lashed together with trek chains, men with a love for the wilderness burnt in their eyes would waltz their sweethearts to the strains of lamenting fiddles and concertinas. Later, where the firelight did not reach, they would roll out blankets made from soft Karoo wool and make love with only the stars to watch them.

‘So long ago,’ whispered Magdel and freed her mind for the music.

To Magdel, the past was more worthy of contemplation – people were happier, fearful of their God and without question or fore thought had always bowed to His rulings. Horses were faster and men were stronger with muscled backs and beards as black as thunder. Her countenance hardened, but the music went on. The Lord had given her children; all but one, He had taken away – without reason – without thought for a woman bereft of her sons and still with her time on earth strung as a lifeless road before her. Now, only her daughter, her music and her jars of Cape Smoke were left to comfort her. Where the road would lead it did not matter, one day the wagon tracks would peter out to nothingness and she, Anna Magdel Bowker, would be left to lie in the wilderness – merely another name carved into the heartwood of some gnarled and ancient hartekoel. She caught her daughter’s eye and without deliberation, Sannie rose from her stool and re-filled her mother’s glass with brandy.

‘I love you, my meisie,’ Magdel whispered, and it was then she saw in her daughter’s eyes the first glimmer of another life – the first stirrings of some tiny spirit – from the falling of that first rain the seed had struck. God was sending to her wagon a grandchild, and with it, the strength for her to carry on.

‘Ja,’ mused Magdel, the way ahead had been shown to her; still there were hopes and dreams to be tended to, fields to till and the seeds from her buck-skin bag to be planted – and beyond all else, her man, Piet Bowker would be brought back to the fold, for it would not be right in the Lord’s eyes for a child to be raised without a grown man’s knee to ride upon. ‘A grandson,’ Magdel whispered. There was much to do – much to prepare for and she gave thanks for the blessing and now her fingers and feet were expectant, lively things in the firelight...