Roses are red and violets are boo hoo

I wish a Good Autumn day to all. The air is crisp, the frosts have started and leaves are falling. And I am loving it. It reminds me of Cape Town with its lovely avenues of oak trees festooned with skittering squirrels. Of course Cape Town is also renowned for its wind and yes, we do have some of that, but not as much as that far off land at the bottom of Africa. 

When I collect my granddaughter from school in the afternoons, we listen to music on our way home. And sing along when we can. I sometimes ask her what they mean by something in the lyrics, like "Drinking Jack all by myself" or "I like it when your'e nice to me". Good singalong stuff.  My husband loved mishearing lyrics and would argue till he was blue in the face that a song said X while it obviously said Y. We had vastly differing tastes in genres. I'm a little bit rock and roll and a lot country ballads. Barry was heavy rock and grunge to the max. So, in the early days of dating, we decided to improve our music knowledge by attending the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra performance on a Sunday night. Our finances did not allow us to actually buy a seat, but they had a few seats behind the organ that you could access free of charge. Remember we were still at the dating stage of trying to impress each other. I did not know an oboe from a French horn and I don't think Barry did either, but nevertheless, we shuffled into the seats and tried to look intelligent. The rest of the freeloaders were music students on the whole and they made remarks about timing and the conductor and we nodded along as if we understood every word they said. Barry was a mechanic and his fingernails crusted with car oil and grease gave away the fact that he was not a philharmonic inclined person. I was able to blend more easily because I was a bank clerk and spent my life cow towing to rich and opinionated clients. But seriously we stood out like two sore thumbs. We learnt from that evening that neither of us knew our way around an orchestra or enjoyed it at all. Other more modern music was more to our taste. We went to a few live shows and loved them but then along came children and our stretched finances finally snapped. It was only when we arrived in New Zealand that we ventured out once more. Would I like to attend another music show? No. not really. Post Malone is coming to New Zealand in October and I thought wouldn't it be lovely to take the grandkids to see him. But finances are once again in the strapped to snapping stage and my body is in the snapped and cracked stages that will not allow walking for miles to the venue. Or sitting on the grass. Or staying up that late. I will leave that to the folks with younger bones and better hearing. 

My cousin posted a video on FB and talked about the quail family that lives in her garden in Canada. Her voice brought tears to my eyes. It must be the old age thing or what my grandmother would say was my bladder being too close to my eyes ... but I thought how lovely it was to hear her voice in reality and not just in memory. Her South African accent has been tinged with Canadian and has created its own cadence. And a few days later another cousin posted a video of her grandson and her having a conversation about the great wonders of the world. And yes, I did listen to it more than once because it took me back to my childhood. Her South African accent is still almost pure with just a hint of Aussie twang. It's those little moments that remind me of  Rob Bozas and Karen sitting outside Hillestads practicing their Zulu language skills. Their words brought back that magic of childhood and the mystery of living in Zululand. When I was told that John Bozas had died and then these two lovely ladies posted videos of them talking, memories flooded my day. John and his Jaguar. John icing a cake at the speed of light, or so it seemed. (He worked in his family's bakery) and John always being gentle and kind to all us younger kids. Life was amazing for me as a child in Zululand. I felt safe and secure and every second person in town was either related to me or connected in some way. The Zulu called me AmaBondi (after my grandparents) and I was supposed to resemble Gogo Bond, but I just can't see it. I went to the other side of the country to find a husband because the locals in my town were too close and who really wants to be a Hillbilly and marry a cousin. Barry, my Capetonian husband, had grown up in the city and was not used to everyone in town knowing our business. But he soon had his own group of people who considered him as close to family as possible  without being blood related. And now here I sit in New Zealand crying over videos and looking at the calendar with Barry's death date ringed in red. One more sleep and it will be 7 years since that day. Linda in Canada has been dealing with the slow attrition of her baby quails as they are attacked by predators. My mother faced a similar situation in the Drakensberg when otters were snacking on her ducklings. Every year it was a fight against the otters requiring food for their pups and Mama duck and Papa drake protecting their brood. My mother's gardeners were often tasked with chasing off the otters but sadly the otters were slippery and sneaky and ducklings were cute but dumb. And so the world turns. Births and growth change into aching bones and finally death and as Mickey Mouse said "No, one gets out of life alive." Or Jim Morrison said "You shouldn't take life too seriously. You'll never get out alive." Intelligent words from great men? Mice? 

"When in doubt, look intelligent." Garrison Keillor (American personality and humorist) I was sent a photo of my great grandfather, William Bond from my Aussie cousin and it was in bad condition. But grandpa was marked with a blue ballpoint pen cross above his head. All good so far. I tried to clean up the image but obviously photo restoration is not my forte. I peered at the sepia photo and saw a young Zulu boy sitting in the front and then, what I thought was a large dog, sitting between two of the soldiers. Now let me just add once more that the photo was degraded. And then my cousin put the photo online for the Bambatha rebellion and the Boer war Facebook site. And yip tee doo, someone offered to restore the details. First try was a little off. The soldiers were suddenly without caps and sporting very modern hairstyles. The colours were harsh and didn't look real. Another person kindly fixed all the stuff that was wrong and yes, it was amazing. But, what I had thought was a Newfoundland dog was actually an African man with his hands on his knees. I had to swallow my pride and laugh at myself a little for only seeing what I wanted to see and not the reality. A woman asked which side of the war did Grandpa fight for. I said he was British but married to a Boer woman ... and wahoo the vitriol was flowing. She said all British soldiers were evil and did I know what they did to the Boer women and children during the war? Good grief I would have needed to be deaf, dumb and blind not to know what British concentration camps did to families. The evidence was all around me in the town we lived in. Some from the British and others from the Boers and I was related to them all. Grandpa William had actually smuggled food to his Afrikaans family during this time at great risk to his own life because he didn't like what the British were doing. But try telling that to this particular lady. Well, no, I didn't even try. Because sometimes explanations are like throwing pearls before swine. I will sit back and take the abuse and keep my mouth firmly shut. I don't know her family history and yes, she doesn't know mine, but it means I can gallop away on my high horse and feel superior, for a moment. My father would take us on trips to the battlefields of Zululand and recount the stories and history of who did what and why. Better than any school taught lesson. We would walk the fields and stand next to whitewashed cairns of rocks and Dad would say "This is where the quartermaster refused to open the ammunition boxes without a chit from the major. Because of his actions, boys died all for the lack of a piece of paper that could blow away in the wind." or "The Zulu impies used the Buffalo horn formation. They would encircle the enemy and cut them off from their supplies and assistance." We were taught about Cowards Bush every time we drove the back road to Eshowe. I sat next to the pit where Dingaan and Shaka formed their assegais and fighting spears. And of course my mother's favourite story was of the death of Prince Imperial Louis-Napoleon. Princess Eugenie didn't want him to go to Africa because of the Zulu wars but to a young man it all sounded like a fun holiday in the sun. He was killed by the Zulu while trying to mount his horse near a stream. His companions would later take Princess Eugenie back to the area and as she walked along the stream, she suddenly stopped and said "This is where he died. I can smell violets." Twenty three years old and his adventure in Africa was over. That was 1 January 1879. The weather would have been hellishly hot and muggy. 40 degrees centigrade in the shade and no place to hide. Too many innocent young men and women killed in wars. When will they stop? We often found the copper casings for the ammunition boxes, or buttons from tunics and discarded shell casings. Stories of bravery and stupidity. Tales of compassion and tears for the losses. I loved history in the wilds with my dad.  

I am seriously sleep deprived because my cat doesn't like the colder weather and demands entry to my duvet at 2 am every morning to warm up. Her toe beans are like frozen buttons, and her nose like an ice block. Oh well, I will blame my rambling on cat disturbed sleep and old age.