Have you ever felt like a visitor in your own home while in the company of long-time friends and family members?
Even when hosting a braai, I
end up idling around, holding a
can of beer while one of my guests goes about offering drinks and enquiring if the martinis are okay.
Hedley King would take the chopper out of my hand and he and the rest of the manne would sort out the fire.
Apparently, us lefties (in the non-ambidextrous sense of the word) look clumpy when chopping wood, stirring a cup of tea, and downright dangerous when slicing bread.
Though Jonathan de Vries, despite having been a boy scout and a rightie, provides some comfort whenever I see him in action, I keep a safe distance.
I must say though that Jono is the sort of fellow you can open your heart to.
I once shared with him that I was glad I was never in the combat side of the armed Struggle.
Comrade De Vries nodded sympathetically as I explained that I would probably have thrown the pin and kept the grenade. He comforted me.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Padre, the word of the Lord, though, is like a bazooka in your hand.”
A fellow poet, De Vries clarified that he meant this metaphorically.
But there is none of that simpatico spirit when it comes to Hermie Adams.
Yes, he is back with Gabieba and arrived from Durban last week.
His lorry had broken down in Knysna and he had worked for a few days at a McDonald’s in the town.
I told him I thought the burger joint was in Knysna Road, George.
“Sê djy ek lieg?” was the defensive response which sizzled while I answered the doorbell.
It was a former minster from the Camelot days of the Mandela government bearing gifts sourced from the highlands of Scotland.
I had been present at an after-tears gathering with some of the Polokwane wounded at the ministerial possie. During the evening, I had asked a young fellow of the house if I could have another tot of Highland holy waters.
I had apparently added, “some that doesn’t taste and smell like TCP”.
His father, who would not do well in the diplomatic corps, suggested that some Old Brown would be more up my plebeian alley.
My opinions and taste have been refined over the years.
My whisky merchant had come to rescue me from the liquid temptations of Lent by helping to reduce my reserves.
Hermie, it appeared, was there to serve in the same noble cause.
There is no better expression of solidarity as when non-confessing fellows rally to ensure that one observes the integrity of the Lenten fast.
I availed the finest jewels of my treasure to these noble souls.
Both these chaps had been detained during the 1985 State of Emergency.
“Waar het djy gelê?” asked Hermie. Ex-detainees tend to talk about what was a traumatic and still troubling aspect of their lives in this manner. Like hardcore 28s.
I was never detained. Once when the Special Branch was doing the early dawn rounds in Mitchells Plain I sought refuge in Harfield Village.
There I discovered the joy of jazz as I listened my way through the extensive record collection of André Kraak.
Eventually muesli and anchovy toast (I added apricot jam, my early nod to fusion food) drove me back home to 10 Nile Way, Portlands.
Years later, in the relative safety of post-1994 South Africa, mom noted the security policeman that came to look for me might not have been one.
Maybe, she suggested, she was just being worried about me.
“I had been kept in Pollsmoor in August 1985,” I told my tronkvoë* brazzas.
“How long?” asked Hermie. “Seven days. It was after the ‘Free Mandela’ march on Pollsmoor,” I whispered.
I still remember their laughter as the lorry and BMW X5 Estate eased on to Upper Orange and I tossed the empties into the bin.
* The Very Rev Michael Weeder is the Dean of St George’s Cathedral in Cape Town.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.