In the last posting I mentioned a task I had asked Melanie & Clare to undertake and I will try and tell this story as concisely as possible. The “famous” doors at 9 Maureen Circle (see Nov. 4th post) were from an old building in Port Elizabeth Market Square called the Richardson Building. They had beautiful brass plates embossed with R B (Richardson Building) and I bought the complete doors when the building was demolished and installed them in the house I was building. The R B now stood for Robert Brookes! When I was transferred to the USA in 1985, I removed the plates from the door and took them to the USA with the crazy idea that I might one day own a home where I could install them on another set of doors. When we arrived in PE this trip, coincidently, Hugh Baakens weekly column (general interest) in the newspaper started off by apologizing that the previous week he had written about the Richardson Building in Market Square and of course it was demolished long ago. It came into my head that I should call him and tell him that while the building had been demolished, I knew where the front doors were. However, as all my photographs were at home in USA and I had not yet made contact with the current owners of the house, I did not contact him. After I had met Danie Steyn and taken pictures of the doors, I decided that, on my return to the USA, I would write to Hugh Baakens and send him pictures of the doors in the original building and as they now look, and also send him pictures of the brass plates as I would like to “reunite” the plates with the doors. On Thursday morning, I mentioned to Alison at breakfast that I had woken in the night and had been composing my letter to Mr. Baakens in my head. Wout and Vilia asked me what I was going to write to him about and when I told them, Vilia said “We know Hugh Baakens, but actually his name is Robert Ball – he writes the column – why don’t we invite him for tea on Saturday morning, which they subsequently did. This caused a flurry of activity, as now I wanted to show “Hugh” a photo of the brass plates that were sitting in our home in Myrtle Beach. We emailed Melanie & David (who were visiting Clare in MB) and asked them to find the plates, clean them, take a photo and send it to us before they went to bed on Friday night. We than called home and asked them to pick up the email. Due to some confusion as to where the plates actually were, there was a late start on the cleaning and photographing task but a valiant effort was made by the MB “team” and a photo of the plates was sent at 11.34PM on Friday and was waiting for us on email on Saturday morning. Robert Ball duly arrived at Wout & Vilias home (a little late) and made copious notes as we told him the story. It remains to be seen whether anything comes of it.
Wout is a Sudoku addict so we spent much of Saturday afternoon on a joint effort at solving “more difficult” puzzles. The evening was finished off with a lovely roast fillet dinner.
Sunday morning Alison and I posted the blog for Graaff Reinet and then we had an early Sunday braai to which Tony & Christine Oshry were invited. Tony was already working at Shatterprufe when I joined them in 1968. He subsequently started his own business of growing cucumbers, tomatoes, etc in tunnels, which was run by Christine until it took off, and, as Christine says, he fired her and left Shatterprufe to run the business himself. Tony had just returned from an adventurous “boys only” self guided safari, driving a couple of four wheel drive vehicles through Botswana, Zambia and Mozambique. The following week they were off to another private game park adjacent to the Kruger Park where they have “time share” and go for a week twice a year. We just have to let them know the year we want to join them – an invitation that we will be doing our best to accept some time in the future.
In the evening we went to Wout’s brother Eric’s house for drinks which started with champagne and chocolate coated strawberries, and later the most fantastic bread with great cheeses and cold meats. A nice end to the day.
Monday was another moving day. We packed the car and started our journey to Swellendam, a journey of about 500K. We stopped in Sedgefield for lunch and arrived at Pat & Ausin Lewis’s home at about 3:30, having made very good time. Austin & Pat are a Welsh couple that we met within a couple of months of our first arriving in SA in 1968, so we have known them for almost 40 years. They lived in Port Elizabeth until 2001, when they retired to Swellendam. They live right below a section of the Langeberg Mountains and we went for a walk along the bottom of the mountains before dinner. We retired early, which we have continued to do on all subsequent nights!
Tuesday, Austin & I took a long strenuous walk up the mountain, about 3½ hours in all. The ladies walked into town to do some shopping and then came to find us as we ended our walk. In the evening we went to the local golf club for sundowners and the views from the club are spectacular. We returned home for another home cooked dinner and good South African wine.
Wednesday morning we drove along the Langeberg foothills to the town of Robertson and had brunch at “Birds Paradise”. After breakfast we walked in the town for a while before driving back along the wine route and stopping for tasting at a couple of wineries, one being Bon Courage and the other Van Loveren. Bon Courage was particularly beautiful and had a very nice restaurant which A&P had been unaware of. They intend to have lunch there soon. Both wineries had excellent tasting facilities and there was absolutely no pressure on you to buy any wine, even though the tasting was free (and plentiful). Of course, we forced ourselves to purchase a couple of bottles. When we returned to Swellendam, I took another walk up the Langeberg so that Alison could get a shot of me up there, but it was very difficult for her to spot me and I am so small on the photo that I cannot be seen! Didn’t realize I had walked so far and high. We concluded the evening with another home cooked meal of spaghetti bolognaise.
Wout is a Sudoku addict so we spent much of Saturday afternoon on a joint effort at solving “more difficult” puzzles. The evening was finished off with a lovely roast fillet dinner.
Sunday morning Alison and I posted the blog for Graaff Reinet and then we had an early Sunday braai to which Tony & Christine Oshry were invited. Tony was already working at Shatterprufe when I joined them in 1968. He subsequently started his own business of growing cucumbers, tomatoes, etc in tunnels, which was run by Christine until it took off, and, as Christine says, he fired her and left Shatterprufe to run the business himself. Tony had just returned from an adventurous “boys only” self guided safari, driving a couple of four wheel drive vehicles through Botswana, Zambia and Mozambique. The following week they were off to another private game park adjacent to the Kruger Park where they have “time share” and go for a week twice a year. We just have to let them know the year we want to join them – an invitation that we will be doing our best to accept some time in the future.
In the evening we went to Wout’s brother Eric’s house for drinks which started with champagne and chocolate coated strawberries, and later the most fantastic bread with great cheeses and cold meats. A nice end to the day.
Monday was another moving day. We packed the car and started our journey to Swellendam, a journey of about 500K. We stopped in Sedgefield for lunch and arrived at Pat & Ausin Lewis’s home at about 3:30, having made very good time. Austin & Pat are a Welsh couple that we met within a couple of months of our first arriving in SA in 1968, so we have known them for almost 40 years. They lived in Port Elizabeth until 2001, when they retired to Swellendam. They live right below a section of the Langeberg Mountains and we went for a walk along the bottom of the mountains before dinner. We retired early, which we have continued to do on all subsequent nights!
Tuesday, Austin & I took a long strenuous walk up the mountain, about 3½ hours in all. The ladies walked into town to do some shopping and then came to find us as we ended our walk. In the evening we went to the local golf club for sundowners and the views from the club are spectacular. We returned home for another home cooked dinner and good South African wine.
Wednesday morning we drove along the Langeberg foothills to the town of Robertson and had brunch at “Birds Paradise”. After breakfast we walked in the town for a while before driving back along the wine route and stopping for tasting at a couple of wineries, one being Bon Courage and the other Van Loveren. Bon Courage was particularly beautiful and had a very nice restaurant which A&P had been unaware of. They intend to have lunch there soon. Both wineries had excellent tasting facilities and there was absolutely no pressure on you to buy any wine, even though the tasting was free (and plentiful). Of course, we forced ourselves to purchase a couple of bottles. When we returned to Swellendam, I took another walk up the Langeberg so that Alison could get a shot of me up there, but it was very difficult for her to spot me and I am so small on the photo that I cannot be seen! Didn’t realize I had walked so far and high. We concluded the evening with another home cooked meal of spaghetti bolognaise.
2 comments:
Thanks for the kudos to the MB team. Clare & Josh really got started on the polishing and went to Walmart to buy Brasso. It will be great if something comes of this tale. Lovely, lovely photos around the area of Pat and Austin's home. I can't tell if Wout and Vilia are in a different place or if we just never see it in the day time. Love, Melanie, David and Indigo
Just caught up with Oct 29 thru Nov 7th blog. I'm pleasantly exhausted sharing your trip through this incredible technology..What stories you'll have and I expect to hear some when I see you at Thanksgiving. Because you won't have the time or energy to regale us with all the stories/episodes....Can hardly wait to see you and if I don't have time to comment again, have a safe and pleasant trip home. Love Lee
Post a Comment