Jaunting Along

Lesley Temple Jess Kure   This is a story written by my mother, Lesley Kure, of her grandfather, Rex Gerald Camp, and Ma Talbot, who lived in Ixopo village, and the Cow. Ma Talbot baked and cooked divinely, and whenever anybody had to wait in the village for a vehicle to be repaired etc. they would visit Ma for tea and the best of home baked.  She listened avidly to all the local gossip, and as Nils said about his friend's mother - the story went in her ears this big ___, and came out her mouth _________________that big.  One could see her green eyes gleaming, and her mind embroidering the facts even as she listened.  As she was likely to have at least three visitors in a day, the stories grew and grew. We were such an innocent group, all the funny stories had to come from the eccentricities of our elders and their forebears. Ma’s interpretation of someone who was in angry turmoil was that, "He's as mad as a bee in a tar barrel." She would only knit wh...

This post is from an email I sent in August 2001 - it describes a young boy to whom I taught Art on a compound in Saudi Arabia. It is written after I had briefly returned home when my dad was dying, upon my return to the 'Kingdom' after his death, where I was teaching art to both adults and children. Action shots from the swing were the order of the day at Al Yamamas, Saudi Arabia

Persian carpet, Saudi Arabia It is always the personalities that are the most interesting in any place, but the most treacherous to write about. Both in terms of getting it wrong, and, in the event that they may one day discover your perhaps less-than-flattering description of them, also in terms of getting it right. Fem often shakes his head in bewilderment when I describe people to him; I ask him why, and he says, “But she is your friend ,” as if that meant I must cut off my sense of discernment at the root. Of course, at this stage I could quote Jane Austen's Mr Bennett, “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours and laugh at them in our turn?” except that, of course, I am entirely without foible myself. But, truth to be told, I like my friends most because of their foibles rather than otherwise, they are more interesting, if necessarily more complex and complicated.  But before we can even get to characters, there is the context. The first few times I...

One of the cars I drove as a woman in Saudi Aramco, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia It’s sweltering here, 47 C the day that I took the car in to be re-gassed as the air-conditioning unit wasn’t working adequately. Fem (my husband) had been asked to undertake that task before my arrival but said he didn’t want it standing around for a few weeks, leaking gas. Leaking? That was the first I heard of it. So, with five kids in the house (two visitors) and a beleaguered Doris  (our South African house-keeper) trying to maintain order and wash all our clothes and clean the house of two months of Fem and abandonment, with the fine Saudi dust having settled over everything thanks in part to a 17 day dust storm in June, and with dust bunnies under the beds which the elder visiting child would point out to Doris leaving her greatly disgruntled (as if she had anything to do with the accumulation of dust in her absence),  I took myself off to the Triple A (Arabian Automobile Association) ...

Early days in Ixopo; Grandpa's cousin Lesley, after whom my mum was named This always brought the conversation to talking about God, albeit in a convoluted and circuitous manner. God was the Elephant in the Room those nights, often alluded to, never referred to, and almost certainly not deferred to. After all, He wasn’t there.

Tending the fire for the evening's bath water: the fire heated up the drum in which water was stored T he boys themselves had a story to tell that night. Just the week before, Gerald had had an encounter with the fire in the furnace that was lit to heat the drum, from which we drew our bath water every night. If not too many people bathed at night, the water managed to stay hot enough that we could wash the breakfast dishes in the morning without having to relight the fire. Lighting the fire was a great treat in our every day at Lynn Avis.