1954 to 1957 in South Africa

Recollections:

In 1953 we took a week's holiday in Rustenberg on a small guest farm which had rondavel accommodation while Ann stayed with her grandparents. John was keen on horse riding and said he would teach me to ride and his mother lent me her jodphurs.

We went out for my first lesson on the second or third day and the horses were brought out. They only had two. Once was a huge horse and the other had been a polo pony so it was decided I would ride the polo pony. I had never been on a horse before. The manager told us that if we became lost the pony would make for home.
John held the reins keeping my horse near to his while I mounted. Polo ponies do not appear to like other horses close to them and immediately pulled away and started to move off. I had no idea what to do. When John pulled up beside me the polo pony broke into a trot. As John tried to keep up and grab the reins the pony moved itno a gallop and soon I was clinging on for dear life. After a short while, we were running along a path and I had lost both stirrups. I was terrified. John, still behind us, was shouting, 'pull on the reins' which I tried to do but the pony had the bit between his teeth.

Ahead of us I saw a low stone archway and it was obvious to me that while the pony would fit under it it was too low for me to stay on its back and I had to make the decision whether to stay on and get scraped off going under the archway or dismount in mid flight. I decided on the latter and came down hard on the ground, landing on my lower back and lost interest in the pony. John didn't dare dismount because his horse took considerable controlling.

A short time later, while I was still on the ground trying to recover the pony was brought back and it was suggested that I should mount immediately. I was advised that if I did not do so I would never overcome the fear of riding a horse after such a fall. I was in such pain that this was the last thing on my mind and I refused.

I was in agony for several days after this and was unable to move or sit without pain and have suffered from back pain ever since.
Later that year, or the following year the Bretters decided to buy a small holding of  20 or 30 morgen  at Grasmere which was on the main road to Vereeniging. A previous owner of the land had drilled for water without success and not only was there no  water but no electricity, gas or sewage facilities on site and no buildings either. A stream which ran along the bottom of the land (the east) was not drinkable as is the case with all  streams and rivers in SA.

On the west side of the plot was the main road. A small plantation of gum trees grew down the south side of the plot, on the other side of which there was a dirt road which joined the other farms higher up to the main road. Our nearest neighbours, an old couple in their 80’s named the Robertsons,  lived about a mile away up the dirt road. The small holding was in very an isolated spot.

A couple of miles away was Grasmere hamlet with two shops. One was a general shop which sold food, paraffin, clothing and farming equipment and another was a butchers.

The Bretters decided to build a rondavel  at the edge of the gum trees, for use at weekends and holidays although they never used it for either.
Charlie, an old African, was employed to look after the place during the week  and he had a young wife, Elizabeth and a baby son. First Walter built him a little house, made of rock found on site, attached to it was a shed in which Walter kept various tools. There was also a small plot set aside for Charlie to grow vegetables and keep a few chickens. From then on the Bretters usually spent one day every weekend on the farm and John, Ann and I used to join them sometimes.

Driving out to the farm was quite enjoyable at the weekend, it being a change from the flat. Early on a Sunday morning they piled everything they would need (water, cement, folding chairs, blankets, kettle, mugs,  tea, food for a braai, tools etc) into Walter’s Chrysler and after picking us up would drive out to the farm. On arrival a fire was lit on a primus to make tea.

Walter, John  and Charlie worked on the rondavel floor and walls for several months until is was completed. Unfortunately Walter used mine dust sand for the flooring. The sand contains cyanide, and he added a red dye, . The cyanide, apparently, prevents the concrete curing properly and causes it to set in a compacted powdery form. Sweeping the floor caused a great cloud of red dust to rise and settle on everything inside.
Soon the men were at work mixing cement and sorting stones so the building could start. As the weeks passed we watched the rondavel take shape and soon it was time for the roof timbers to be put in place. This was followed by the thatch.
I wasn’t aware that Mrs B was still driving. She was, according to John,  a terrible driver and she often tried to persuade Walter to let her drive us back to Johannesburg. He must have been feeling very tired late one afternoon when he agreed and before he had even finished agreeing she was behind the wheel. She was quite a small woman, only 5 foot tall, and could hardly see over the steering wheel.
I saw the grimace on John’s face as we climbed in and thought to myself ‘It’s just like him - he’s always complaining about women drivers.’
Everything was fine until we reached the main road whereupon she put her foot down and the car took off with a squeal of tyres. Walter was a safe but lazy sort of driver. Alert but quite happy to drive at a leisurely pace. He was never in a rush to get anywhere and I had become used to his driving.
The road was narrow and I wasn’t happy travelling at 70. It seemed that every time we came to a hill there was a car in front of us. Without slowing, and regardless of where she was on the hill, she overtook and continued on the wrong side of the road until she reached the brow of the hill.
I couldn’t bear watching the road ahead and slid down in my seat until I couldn’t see the road ahead, with Ann in my arms and my feet braced in case we crashed. Frequently I heard terrified drivers, coming the other way, sounding their car horns as they went past us and she always asked most innocently ‘What’s wrong with them?’  completely unaware that she was doing anything wrong. She took every curve too fast whilst trying to carry on a conversation with us seated  in the back, even giving a glance behind every now and then to make sure we were attentive.
Walter meanwhile tried to make light of the near misses with comments such as ‘It’s a fast road, isn’t it?’ and  ‘Oh, darling, that was a little close!’ or chuckling and saying ‘Whoops, just missed!’ which  Mrs B found hysterically funny. Sometimes after one of his comments which she had not heard she took her eyes off the road to ask what he had said - not returning her eyes to the road until he had answered.
Eventually, after a few miles of this and much to our relief, he said ‘I think that is enough driving for you today, Tinca. We need some petrol. Pull in at the next petrol station, would you, darling’. She checked the gauge and taking her eyes off the road again started to argue that the car had enough petrol. In his quiet way he persuaded her of the need and without any signals to the drivers who had decided it was safer to be behind her she pulled in, hardly slacking speed, and screeched to a halt by the pumps of the next petrol station we came to.
Walter, I think, had got the message from the groans coming from John in the back seat and after he had filled up the car walked round to the driver’s side and said that he would drive now. She was adamant that she was enjoying herself and wanted to drive some more. Diplomatically he said ‘Now you don’t want to overtire yourself, do you, little Tinca’. Reluctantly she gave in. It had been a nightmare journey and she was quite the worst driver I have ever had the misfortune to meet.

One day during the building of the rondavel Walter, whilst mixing cement, asked her to move the car which was in the way. This meant driving forward, round the rondavel, and down to the nearby gate. First she drove through the pile of newly mixed cement, hit the wheelbarrow standing near it, drove over a shovel and a ladder leaning against the wall, hit the brick barbecue and demolished a gate post. To us, the onlookers, we stood and watched in amazement that anyone could wreak so much havoc in such a short drive. All we could do was laugh. Later she asked Walter if she could drive us home it was a relief to hear him say he thought she had ‘done enough driving for today’.

Soon after it was completed (at about the end of 1954) John decided it would be cheaper for us to live there and with their agreement we moved out on to a small holding. I felt rather nervous because it was very isolated on the farm and the rondavel, which was about 15 feet across, only provided one room the inner walls of which had been whitewashed. Three windows and the door were equally spaced in the walls. Walter intended to build two rondavels with a connecting room in which a cast iron black coal stove, which I never managed to master,  was installed about a year later.

We ranged our furniture around the walls. One part (the bedroom) for the ‘bunk beds’ - iron beds lashed one above the other to gum poles. Next was the lounge area, two small armchairs with a little table in between. Then the kitchen area, a long table with two Primus stoves and a newspaper covered area for food preparation and a cupboard beside it for  the food. In the centre of the rondavel was the card table for our meals. A pressure oil lamp with a mantle gave a fair light and was much better than the oil lamps which had wicks. Late we had two pressure lamps.

There were no water facilities or sewage and only two Primus stoves, which all had to be lit with metholated spirits and were the only means of cooking. The thatched roof soon held a variety of beetles and insects and a constant hazard was having them fall into ones food or hair. It was not quite primitive living but almost.

Ann and I were alone in daytime throughout the week, apart from Charlie and his family. He helped out occasionally on the farm but he was old and his duties not too onerous. For fresh water Charlie and Elizabeth had to climb the hill to the Robertsons and bring it back in a couple of buckets daily. Eventually Walter brought down a large (Bothners) enameled electric washing machine tub to which he had attached tap. A cloth over the top kept the insects out. Charlie and his wife never managed to fill it more than a quarter full and even this took them two trips up to the Robertsons.

Fortunately, a few months after we moved in, we met the new owners of the farm on the other side of the main road. When the road was being built a cattle creep had been created under the road allowing access between the two pieces of land. The couple, Bette and John Pfeiffer,  told us they were having a house built for themselves and had already sunk a borehole. They invited us to use their water and so we were able to have water brought over in two 2 gallon galvanised buckets. Elizabeth carried one back, balanced on her head, through the cattle creep.

I was always careful not to waste water because carrying the water was such a heavy task for them. I tried to wash and keep things clean while using the minimum of water. One doesn’t appreciate water on tap until one doesn’t have it. Once a month Walter picked us up and we took some of our laundry to Mrs B’s and used her washing machine.

Another problem in the early days of visiting was sanitation and a wooden outhouse was built, under the gum trees. Inside there was a box like seat with a hole in it over a large bucket. A short distance a way a deep pit, perhaps 4 foot square and 5 foot deep was dug and the contents of the bucket deposited there regularly. John didn’t think this was work he should ask Charlie to do and assigned the task to me. Not only was the bucket heavy it was not a pleasant chore!

The days were long and lonely with John leaving for Johannesburg early and returning late. I had an interest in a number of handicrafts in those days so painted and sketched, knitted, crocheted and embroidered and made clothes for Ann and myself. Because money was tight I had been making my own and Ann’s clothes since we arrived in South Africa, hand sewing the seams or borrowing a friend’s sewing machine when we lived in Jo’burg.

To reach the shop in Grasmere I had to walk across the veld to the corrugated dusty road, pushing Ann in the pram. It was too far for her to walk and she was too heavy for me to carry.  If a car passed us when we were on the road it threw up great clouds of dust which covered us but no one ever offered a lift although many were driven by neighbours. Then came the struggle back while I tried to balance the shopping bag or bags on the handle while pushing the pram. It wasn't easy along the rutted roads and across the rough veldt.

For protection we had a Heinz variety dog and John suggested I took him along for safety but there was no way I could have managed a dog as well across the veldt. Charlie also decided to get himself a dog and named her Lady. Not to be outdown we called ours Tessa short for Contessa. Whilst she did not take to being trained she did prove to be a good watchdog but had to be found another home when she broken into the chicken run one night and killed all our bantam hens.

We had no car initially and John took the bus to work in Johannesburg. We were without the refrigerator because we had no electricity (it having gone to the Bretters in Parktown) so it was impossible to keep food fresh. If we were to eat meat it had to be either canned or meat freshly bought that day from the shop in Grasmere. Nothing could be held over to the next day and fresh milk had to be boiled to make it last until, that is, we arranged daily deliveries to the gate from the Robertson’s.

Meals were simple and mostly tinned vegetables, meat and fish. Potatoes were bought 28 lbs at a time and occasionally John would bring home something fresh from town such as fruit.

In our first years in SA John continued with the diet which had been prescribed for him when he had an ulcer. This meant preparing very bland food with no fried food so probably the food I was having to boil  or  steam, since there was no way of baking, suited him. I found it very boring.

The local woman’s church guild met monthly and during the meeting usually had someone in to lecture. Mrs Robertson, who was in her 80’s, offered to pick me up in her car each month and drove us to the hall in Grasmere. I only went a few times - it was all too homely - with talk mainly about babies and cooking and the problems everyone was having with servants. They were all very traditional country housewives, mostly Afrikaans, and while I did not feel I was better than them I did feel I needed more stimulating talk. Mrs Robertson was hard of hearing so it was not easy to talk to her and the rest seemed to know each other. When they did speak English and allowed me to enter their conversation they often ran down England almost as though they expected me to apologise for being English.

One of the problems of living near a main road built on a curve raised up higher than the surrounding farmland,  was that cars took  the curve far too fast. Often we would be woken in the early hours of the morning by the screech of brakes and one night we heard a terrific thud. John woke Charlie and, with the pressure lamps and torches, went up to investigate. They soon found the skid marks of a vehicle which had left the road but a careful search showed no sign of a vehicle or driver. They searched for over an hour, thinking the driver could be lying badly injured in the car or thrown out into the grass, before deciding to call it a night.

In daylight the following day John, sent Charlie up to the Roberston’s to call the police, and started searching for the driver of the car again.  Finally he discovered a small van under the road embedded in the concrete wall of the cattle creep. There was no sign of the driver. The truck appeared to have left the road airborne and had come to rest against one of the cattle creep walls.
A policeman arrived later and explained that the vehicle had been stolen from outside an Indian grocers in nearby Vereeniging. On cashing up every night he hid the takings in a brown paper bag under the truck's dashboard, ready to take to the bank the following morning. The policeman sat in the passenger seat and reached up under the dash board and pulled out a bag filled with about £500 in notes.
‘If I’d known that was there you wouldn’t have found it this morning’ John said. The policeman laughed, ‘Yes, and I would have been none the wiser because we would have thought the thief had got away with it.’

On another occasion we heard the screech of breaks at 11 at night and John again went out to investigate and found  two cars had hit head on. In the one was an African businessman. His brains covered the back seat. In the other were two white men, both drunk. One was unhurt but unconscious from drink. The other, the driver,  screamed as John opened the car door and fell out on to the road. His leg was broken. John felt little pity for him feeling he deserved to suffer after killing someone innocent. Apart from making sure neither of the two men were in danger he concentrated on swinging a light to warn other motorists and asking one of them to call the police.

Walter decided to put in some apple trees on the plot but we never ever saw any fruit on them because there was insufficient rain and no means of watering them sufficiently. Walter and John constructed a little wagon from the rear wheels and axle of a car on which a large clean oil drum was attached. A donkey was bought and Charlie was then able to go down to the river in the dry season and fill the drum with muddy water for the fruit trees but it was never enough. Charlie didn’t enjoy the work of filling up with water from the stream so did not make as many trips as he should to provide sufficient water for the trees. It was such a laborious business and he probably realised he was never going to be able provide the amount of water the fruit trees needed so he only did the trip once a week.

Eventually John bought a second hand Ford Anglia and we were able, once a week, to visit Parktown, where Walter and Tinca lived. I was then able to do the washing on a regular basis and also have a bath and wash my hair regularly. Moving to the farm did not save us any money as John had hoped. True we weren’t paying rent but bus fares and, later the car cost far more.

The second Christmas (1955?) on the farm, now named Little Gables after the house Walter and Tinca had owned in the UK, but without a gable in sight, we decided to hold a Christmas party. We collected glass jars for several weeks and covered the outside of them with coloured crepe paper and stuck a candle inside. These were to be strung from the trees. We had a Christmas tree and I bought inexpensive presents so that all the guests would receive something, and hung them on the tree.

With everything prepared and just as the guests started to arrive the heavens, which had been threatening rain all afternoon, opened up and the guests rushed for shelter  inside the extension which had just been added on to the rondavel.
Everyone was happy drinking in the extension while I hastily decorated the tree in secret in the rondavel. By the time I had finished the guests were getting wet because the thatch in the new extension was leaking badly and soon after that the old thatch in the rondavel sprang a few leaks and there were buckets and basins everywhere to catch the drips.
The party came to end as the guests started to feel chilled from the dampness and gradually everyone drifted off as soon as they decently could. It was not a success and we never attempted another party after that although we did have friends calling in at all hours if they were passing.

John and John Pfeiffer the neighbour in the new house over the road, got along fine because both liked to drink. John P suggested to John one day that they try making their own beer and soon they had buckets filled with potato mash and potato beer was made. But that was not enough for them and they decided they would build a still which was illegal. Another friend living on a nearby farm offered to have it set up in one of his sheds. They behaved like schoolboys and treated it as a great joke but it was potent stuff and poisonous too as John P discovered.

That New Year’s Eve everyone was invited to view the still and celebrate on the potato spirit. I didn’t drink alcohol and at about 10 John was not feeling well so we went home. It was unusual for John to leave a party until he was legless and once in bed he did not move until morning. Everyone from the party however turned up at a little past 12 and to wish us a happy new year and did their best to wake us but I ignored them and after ten minutes they eventually they went away.
The following day, feeling extremely ill, John P visited his doctor who asked him if he had been making his own beer from potatoes and then distilling it. John admitted he had and the doctor said he was killing himself because it contained fusil oil. So that was the end of making potato spirit and the still was closed down..

I sometimes called up to ask the Robertsons if I could use their phone but I hated going up there. They were a lovely old couple  but they had a big black Labrador called Champ and when any visitors arrived he had the habit of pushing his nose up between visitor’s legs from behind and then tried to mount them. Very embarrassing.

After Tessa had disgraced herself with the bantam hens and been found alternative accommodation John decided to buy a Beretta for our protection and taught me how to shoot. It was kept unloaded on top of the wardrobe and apart from occasional practice I had no need to use it except on three occasions.

Charlie complained that a bird was attacking and killing his free range chickens and asked me to deal with it. John said I should try to shoot it. I had no trouble doing this, once it had settled on a nearby tree, but later it turned out that is was a protected bird so we said no more about that.

One evening a short time later on the way home from work John collapsed and the doctor diagnosed yellow jaundice, no doubt from the drinking the potato spirit. The doctor wanted him to go into hospital for complete rest until cured but that would have meant Ann and I leaving the farm until he was well and we had nowhere to stay because the Bretters were full up with visitors so I offered to nurse him at home.

There were several different medicines and pills he had to have and I worked out a chart to make sure he had then as necessary. He was under instructions to rest completely and not to undertake anything strenuous so spent all his time in bed and wasn’t even allowed to read for the first month. During this time I spent many hours reading to him.

Tom, the Robertson’s African milkman, drove the Robertsons 2 horse high flat-bed wagon. Twice a day it was filled with the milk churns and taken to catch the train into Grasmere twice a day. Once in the early morning and again in the evening. It had  a double seat which must have been at least 5 feet above the ground at the front with a low rail, no more than six or eight inches  high, running round the sides and back as a very minimal handrail to hang on to. We often saw and waved to Tom on his way back from his evening deliveries.

A young African boy of about 16 who was looking for work called at the farm during the time John was ill and still confined to bed. After consultating with Charlie John agreed to employ him to do a little gardening and help Charlie around the farm. The lad seemed to know what he was doing and laid a row of rocks around the garden area outside the rondavels, and painted them white and then started hoeing and weeding.

We always hung our milk can on the gate at night for Tom, the Robertson's milkboy who was on his way into Grasmere with the milk churns,  to fill with fresh milk. On his return journey one morning  he woke Charlie at daybreak to say he had seen our new employee trying to sell off a variety of things including a push chair which he knew belonged to us. The padlock on the shed was broken and several garden implements,  Ann’s push chair and several other items were missing.
John was still too ill to leave his bed and it was up to me to deal with this. At John’s insistence I put the gun in my pocket for protection and  climbed up on to the wagon seat.  Charlie climbed up onto flatbed and once on the main road Tom whipped up the horses and we were soon speeding along at break neck pace. We had to get to the station before the train left probably with our new employee on it.
I clung on to the iron rail for dear life sure I was going to be thrown off. Tom hardly slowed to make the turn on to the dirt road which led into Grasmere. The wagon was swaying from side to side violently as we progressed along the rutted dirt road, leaving cloud of dust behind us. Looking behind me I could see old Charlie being thrown about on the flatbed while trying to prevent himself from falling or being thrown off. The very devil seemed to have got into Tom as he stood up and whipped the horses. It was like a Wild West film.
We had no trouble finding the young man with our goods and I was surprised that he gave in so easily and made no attempt to run off. Having recovered everything he had taken we returned home with him and it was only when we got back that I realised the butt of the gun was sticking out of my coat pocket. The sight of it must have terrified the boy.
John questioned him and discovered he had been in the local remand home for the last 18 months for theft. The remand home had tried to teach him useful work that he could do in the hope he would stop stealing - this accounted for his experience in gardening. After warning him to leave the district we let him go. I am sure that many of the farmers in the district would not have let him off so lightly.

I was always aware of how vulnerable we were living in such an isolated spot. The last time I used the gun was late one evening during this same time when  John was ill. There was always a bit of a curfew on after dark. It was pitch dark outside when we heard someone crossing the land near the rondavel. I stepped outside with the gun and shouted into the darkness ‘Who’s there?’ No one answered and I shouted again. The noise came closer and I identified it as someone coming towards me and felt threatened. With no reply coming I fired a single shot into the air as a warning upon which Charlie came rushing out of his house ‘Don’t shoot, missis,’ he cried, ’ don’t shoot. It’s my son’. Poor Charlie. It was a relief to me that I had not panicked and shot in the direction the noise or been faced with the possibility of having to use the gun to defend myself.

John and Bette Pfeiffer, our new neighbours, had planted several yellow cling peach trees when they first bought the farm and these soon bore a good crop of fruit which she bottled them in Kilner jars. Bette was a trained domestic science teacher,

We planted peas in our last year on the farm and because of the good rainfall that year they were so successful that most would be wasted until Bette suggested that she would bottle and share them with us. She consulted her recipe books and said she couldn’t understand why peas needed so much boiling and felt sure that as long as they were tender they could be bottled. So she went ahead, cooking them for less time than the book said and then bottled them
A few days later she heard an explosion in her store cupboard. One of the bottled peas had exploded and eventually all the bottled peas did the same. Later we learnt that unless the germ (like wheat germ) in peas was killed by a long boiling the contents would ferment.!

In most matters concerning cooking Bette was excellent and I have seen her butcher a side of beef hanging in her garage, marinate it in a large tub, and hang it up to dry in the store cupboard for biltong which was delicious.

Money was a constant problem but sometimes some things were a necessity such as shoes for Ann who, at that time, seemed to need new shoes every month because her feet were growing so fast. However in the one month when we had enough left over to buy Ann a pair of shoes John said we couldn’t afford them and then arrived home from work the following night with a brand new camera. I bit my lip and said nothing.

The Bretters lost interest in the land (1956-57) and decided  to sell it and we had to find somewhere else to live. We heard of a cottage on a nearby farm run by two elderly sisters. It was small but not as small as the rondavels and had more conveniences so we moved in.

The house did at least have a septic tank for the lavatory and running cold water but no bathroom or heating so it was back to using a galvanised bath once a week and an oil heater when the weather turned cold. Water had to be heated up on a black cast iron stove and at least the one in the cottage seemed to draw rather better than the one in the rondavel but I still never mastered the art of baking in it.
One day I opened a food cupboard and found a mouse sitting on a shelf. It jumped down on to the floor and ran across the kitchen and I, who thought myself unafraid of such things, found myself leaping up onto a chair until it had disappeared.

On hot days I used to put the tin bath out in the front garden under one of the walnut trees, fill it with water, and let Ann splash about in it while I lay nearby on a blanket on the grass.

John's interest in photography was sufficient for him to join a group in Johannesburg. He decided that a good test of his understanding of how the camera worked was to photograph the aluminium milk churns which, after washing,  stood on a table outside the whitewashed dairy wall, to dry out. He bought film in bulk and reeled film into spare cartridges. For months he photographed the churns, developed the film and made prints, taking the best to the group for criticism. Most of our spare money was spent on new equipment for his hobby.

The two sisters who owned the farm often sent over home grown vegetables and fruit which were above their requirements and these helped with the housekeeping.
Following the problems with the potato beer John decided to try his hand at wine making and made sufficient for half a dozen bottles. He decided not to use corks for the bottles (he always knew better) and covered them with greaseproof paper.
He and John Pfeiffer returned home late one evening after a drinking session and there being no other drink in the house they decided to open a bottle of the home made wine. They had drunk half the bottle when I picked it up  to admire the colour of the wine. While  holding it up to the paraffin lamp  I  noticed hundreds of little worms wriggling around inside the bottle. I pointed these out to the men and they quickly disappeared outside and I could hear them being sick. I was grateful I did not like wine. It gave me a good laugh and a tale to tell!

We didn’t stay long at the farm. John was always looking for ways to manage our income and when John and Bette decided to take in lodgers we moved in with them.

I enjoyed Bette’s company. She was a school teacher at the local Grasmere school and enjoyed intelligent conversation and not the usual South African ‘women’s talk’ which generally consisted of discussing recipes. Her husband John P. was a drinker, deceitful, unfaithful and an unreliable timekeeper, a bit like Madge’s husband, Doug.
One evening John and I were sitting with her at the table in the kitchen on which stood a bowl of eggs.  She was thoroughly fed up. It was the last day of term and  her car had gone in for repair. John P  promised to pick her up from school to help her bring home her books, equipment and the end of term exam papers which she had to mark during the break. He did not turn up and with the school empty and locked up she had to struggle home on foot with everything. I think she thought he was having an affair.
John P. didn’t arrive home until 10 pm and was drunk when he did eventually arrive. He started giving his excuses for not having picked her up and was standing behind me but she was so furious she took an egg from the dozen in a bowl on the table and threw it at him. I ducked just in time and it missed him also. I don’t think she intended to throw it at me but she was so angry her aim was off.

After a few months they decided to sell up and move to a house in Florida and we went with them.

In nearby Roodepoort a new estate was being built at Horison by Gough Cooper and we decided to buy one. We had a choice not just of ground plans but the colour of the brick and roofing materials, windows, door styles and inside decoration. We visited regularly so watched the house being built.
During this time Nanette and Ann fell out with each other and we decided to leave the Pfeiffers with the completion of the  new house at Horison only a couple of months away.

We always seemed to be on the move. Jeppe, the smallholding, the cottage, the Pfeiffer’s farm, their Florida house and our next move was to the Florida Lake Hotel. In the 10 years I was married to John we moved 10 times.

Our ‘home’ was now reduced to a hotel room in a second rate hotel but it suited John down to the ground because he no longer needed to go out when he ran out of alcohol. The move however did bring some good fortune.
Florida Lake,  set in a small park, was opposite the hotel. One Saturday afternoon, while sitting in the park while Ann played on the swings, John heard someone talking to a little girl who had been playing with Ann. He recognised the accent as Cornish and he started speaking to Thelma May, who was Cornish. He brought her over to the hotel for afternoon tea and we immediately bonded. She has been a friend ever since.
Thelma and Chris (her second husband) were living in a flat nearby and she had her young niece staying with them for a few days. They eventually moved from their flat in Florida to a house in a Johannesburg suburb and we regularly visited each other and started learning to play bridge together.  By this time we had many friends who came from the UK, some through John’s work or his membership of the MOTHS (Memorable Order of Tin Hats - an ex serviceman’s organisation). Parties were arranged throughout the year by one or another of them.

Ever since I had arrived in SA I had longed to make a journey back to Britain and the way in which my first return trip came about was not a happy one.

In early November 1957 a letter from Dad said that Mum was very ill in hospital. Arrangements were made for Ann and I to fly to England to see her. We boarded a Trek Airways plane at Jan Smuts airports early in the morning of 10 November 1957 while it was still dark. The trip would take two nights and the plane stopped overnight in Luxor, Egypt and Nice. We arrived at Heathrow on the 12th and later that evening I was told that Mum had died on 10 November 1957, the very day and time I had left Johannesburg.
 While we were staying in London his father arranged to meet me several times and was very kind to us. He told me to phone him every time I was short of cash. Following my phone call he would arrange to pick us up from the underground station near his home and took us back to his house where Joan, his second wife,  provided afternoon tea. Then he drove us to the nearest underground station and every time upon arrival, while saying goodbye, he would somehow manage to secretly pass me £100 without his wife Joan, knowing. It was my only income because John did not send me one penny while we were in England.
This trip to the UK opened my eyes considerably. For a start it gave me the confidence to manage to get from here to there with Ann on my own and so I felt rather more independent and self confident. Whilst my father and I did not see eye to eye on a variety of matters I did feel family warmth from him, my brother, Nan and my aunts (my mother's sisters) and cousins, something which I had missed ever since I had left the UK. John was never a warm, loving man and frequently treated me with contempt. He was always speaking disparagingly about women.
In London I realised how backward South Africa was in many ways not least in their attitude towards women who were treated like second class citizens. There appeared to be no interest in SA in those days about world affairs - for most South Africans the country was the centre of the world and how dare other criticise the country for apartheid and its treatment of the black people.
t was a relief also to have no worries regarding John's drinking and  his superior attitude and being made to feel of lower value than him and all men.
Thelma wrote to me and said John was completely lost without me. He didn't seem to know what to do with himself. I thought to myself  'Maybe he realises how much he really cares for us.'
We stayed with my father in London until mid January and then flew back to Johannesburg and John. A big mistake.