Intro
I find writing a cathartic process. Almost a necessity these days. Maybe it’s something to do with age. It seems to me I have more to look back upon than look forward to. Music triggers memories. But memories trigger memories too. I live in my head a lot. I like rummaging about.
Today I thought about William and Pine View. I’d like to share those memories with you. Before I begin, a short backstory is necessary.
17 July 2021
Backstory
One summer, Dad had to tow Mike and Marion back to England from just south of Lyon. We had met them on a sandy campsite in Cannes. It was probably 1971. They were young honeymooners. We all became friends.
Then one day we all set off back to Enland. Mike and Marion left before us and broke down. By sheer luck Dad spotted them at the roadside as we came trundling along some hours later. The tow home cemented their friendship for life.
Some three years later Mike was instrumental in encouraging us to emigrate to South Africa. As an Anglo American engineer working for the gold mines, he’d told Mum and Dad about the sunny weather and outdoor lifestyle. Dad was hooked. Off we went. January 1975.
By then Mike was living in South Africa full time. He offered us accommodation and a pickup from Jan Smuts airport. We stayed with them at Pine View until we found a place to rent.
These then are my memories of our stay.
Pine View Flats
While Mum and Dad, if memory serves me correctly, slept in the spare room, Peter, my brother, and I bedded down in the living room. We fell asleep to the sound of crickets and warm African nights. Cold and dreary England seemed a million miles away. We were blissfully happy.
How long we stayed I can’t remember now, but certainly long enough to get to know William.
He became a subject of great fascination to me during our days at Pine View, and I continued to seek him out on subsequent visits to Mike’s place.
The apartments ringed a small tidy garden with a crystal-clear pool at its centre. Both were tended lovingly by William, the Zulu groundsman. Having just arrived from the grey skies, cold and drizzle of Lancashire, Peter and I were thrilled with the gurgling water, deep blue skies and heat. Then there was the added enjoyment of getting up close to William, who was usually somewhere nearby trimming hedges or pruning roses.
After getting all cool and wet in the pool, I would follow William around. I found his African features fascinating. He had an almost perfectly rounded cranium. He shaved and polished his head and it reminded me of a waxed leather football. He had circular bags beneath his eyes and, with the arch of his eyebrows above, together they made him appear almost owl-like. He had big thick round lips too. Everything about William’s features was round. He was sort of like a black man in the moon.
He was always grinning and sucking on his bamboo pipe, which he stuffed with cheap Boxer tobacco. In retrospect, I suspect he laced it with good South African doobie — hence the perpetual grin and bloodshot eyes.
He never seemed to mind me tailing him. Staring. Watching his every move.
He would stand with a hosepipe watering flowers, humming to himself and jiggling his right leg. He would beam at me and I would beam back. He was a comical sight, almost drowning in his ill-fitting blue overalls. He was bony and thin. His brass wrist bracelet reminded me of a bird ring on a budgie’s claw. His skin was inky black. He had a very organic aroma. I’ll never forget his crooked white teeth. I could have stared at him all day.
When not studying William or frolicking in the pool, I’d wander up to the Greek-owned supermarket — or café as they were called in South Africa — to buy a Sad Sack comic. The café sat just up the road on the corner of Hill Street and Kent Avenue, across from where the Sanlam Centre would eventually be built.
I don’t know why I took such a shine to Sad Sack. Maybe because I saw a lot of him in me.
I liked the shiny new covers, and I’d buy a Coke to quench my thirst and a bunch of Chappies gum to chew while reading. The humming pinball machine inside always caught my eye.
I guess it had a subliminal effect on me because later my teens became a blur of playing pinball in school uniform — a misspent youth hidden down the back of Greek cafés smoking Chesterfields.
I recall the rancid smell of fatty chip oil and the guffaws of laughter from Roger, my Cornish pinball crony. He took great delight in watching me tilt the machine.
Quite by coincidence, during the height of our preoccupation with pinball, he lived in a block of flats at the other end of Hill Street.
While visiting him to get up to trouble, I’d occasionally think of Pine View. Momentarily. Until Rog laid on the next mad idea. He was full of them. Mischief was his specialty. Quality Street chocolate fights or tying up his sister with telephone cord while his parents were out at the drive-in are stories for another occasion.
Suffice to say, my high school memories revolve to some degree around cold winter mornings riding the Hill Street dip between Rog’s old block and Pine View. It was the route I took to school, skirting Malanshof and dodging the centre of Randburg. It was a run that encouraged my not-so-nifty Yamaha MR50 — a lame excuse for a motorbike — to get my heart beating fast on the way down the dip. I blot out the stupor of the crawl up the other side.
Pine View was a vivid chapter of all things exciting and fresh to a wide-eyed twelve-year-old beginning a new life in Africa.
Besides William, the pool, the fragrance of pine and azure blue skies, there was the smell of Brasso on the brass window latches and snecks. I loved the odour and sight of parquet wooden floors. Something I’d never seen in England. Buffed shiny, they glowed rosy brown. I loved playing marbles on them.
I recall with fondness Marion’s balcony and looking west towards Randpark Ridge Koppie as the sun set and cast dappled light on my Dad, standing outside puffing on a cigarette. Ah yes. Memories so clear.
Pine View is still there. I often ride by these days or take a peek on Google Street View. The pine trees are gone. Probably died of old age. Makes me think too.
Of my own mortality.
