HHH40 Reunion 2014 (Part 2)

8 years 1 month ill …
(c) 2014 Edward C Lunnnon

I said some more than sixty replied in the affirmative. I’m still not sure exactly how many attended – there were still people booking on the Friday morning that the reunion started and some arrived without booking!

The more, the merrier!

Originally, one event was what I had in my mind. But as more people from afar replied, that grew to three official events – and a few more unofficial get-togethers!

All were planned from Port Elizabeth for the weekend of 26 – 28 September 2014. I had also arranged to return to the Cape on 13 September in order to ensure that everything was in place (and an excuse, I guess, to go “home”!).

Communication with everyone was problematic. Not many of my era are computer-linked via the internet and some don’t even have an e-mail address! I had to resort to letters, envelopes, stamps and the Post Office – when last did you post a letter in a red letter box?

The functions planned were a get-together at the school on Friday including tea with the current staff, a tour of the new school buildings and an spitbraai in the evening.

Saturday was winetasting at Vergelegen Estate, rugby and starters at Erinvale Golf Course and Dinner (courses 2 and 3) at Lourensfords Millhouse Restaurant.

Sunday was a brunch and farewell at The Lord Charles Hotel.

I arrived in Cape Town on my late father’s birthday (it would have been his 99th!). In between all the arrangements, thanks to my niece and her husband, Michelle and Sebastian Ridgway, and friends Gretel and Willem Wust from Durbanville, I was able to visit family, friends, wine farms, pubs, restaurants, etc etc. The Cape of Good Hope does not seem to run out of entertainment options.

I celebrated my 58th birthday in the CBD (not my illness!) of Cape Town and in style with my Strand family. I haven’t done that in many a year!

All the time, the reunion dates came closer. People started arriving early in the week, like Kevin Russell from England, Piet Faure from Johannesburg and Carl Groenewald from Pietermaritzburg. We ate various meals at various places, from Gordon’s Bay Harbour to Helderberg’s Slopes.

Cecil Bond arrived the previous Saturday from Vancouver – and he and his wife and I managed to get in a few good visiting hours at The Lord Charles. He then also managed, in addition to our function, a SACS reunion in Cape Town and a family 60th birthday party in Kimberley!

And yes, despite the best of plans, things do go wrong! As the guests were arriving at the front door on Friday, the pub organisers were threatening to withdraw because they still had not received my EFT deposit from the bank!

Imagine a reunion without a pub!

The dinner was double booked and I had to improvise a two stage dinner at two different venues!

But, the people arrived, the memories were unlocked, the camaraderie gelled, the wine flowed and the chatting continued, by some, until four in the morning!

Too soon, it was all over. But not the pics, the memories, the history and the renewed friendships.

I was so pleased that I had persevered, despite the difficulties, to continue with the arrangements and to renew the links.

I was so pleased that we had all come.

I had finished what I had been doing and stopped working. It was all good, so then I rested!

And, before I flew back to Port Elizabeth on Tuesday morning, I managed to slip in a visit to my neurologist at Tygerberg Hospital Dr Henning and his lovely wife Helen. The supper was great, the pills were upped and the company was good!

I did wipe back a tear as the British Airways plane took off over the Cape Flats, False Bay and the Hottentots-Holland Mountains.

“Our school has done well, may it ere excel …”

HHH40 Reunion: 2014 (1)

8 years 1 month ill …
Mental: Advantage Ed / Physival: Deuce
(c) 2014 Edward C Lunnon

I went to Hendrik Louw Primary School in The Strand, Hottentots-Holland High School in Somerset West and Sulphur High School in Sulphur, Oklahoma, USA.

I then attended Stellenbosch University and did some of my practical teacher training at Paul Roos Gymnasium in Stellenbosch and Hottentots-Holland High School.

I did some brief teaching at Sulphur High and taught for five years at Grey High School in Port Elizabeth from 1984 to 1988.

I have also lectured at what was the PE Technikon, the University of Port Elizabeth and the UPE Business School.

My sister is a teacher, my brother-in-law is a teacher and my wife is a teacher. Teaching is in our blood!

Five years ago, in 2009, I organised the 25 year reunion of the very first class that I had taught at Grey – the Grey Class of 1984. Grey is a school with a very strong Old Boys’ Union and has annual reunions for many of its classes – the 10, 20, 25, 30, 50, 60 and many more! Thousands of Old Boys return to their Alma Mater every year.

This year, I assisted a bit with the 30 year return of the Class of 1984. My health would not allow me more than just “a bit”!

Whilst busy with those arrangements, in May of this year 2014, it dawned on me that I had matriculated in 1974 and had been out of school myself for 40 years! Not once, in the ensuing years, had our class ever had a reunion and most of us have never seen each other since we left “… the Valley famed both far and wide since the days of Van der Stel”!

So, when the Grey reunion had finished in May, I started with the arduous task of trying to organise a reunion for my own class in a school where reunions are not annual events but held on a very “los and vas” basis!

I had a few names of HHH classmates on Facebook. Like throwing that proverbial stone into the water and watching the rings that that creates, I approached those first few people to gauge the water – would anyone really be interested in getting together after 40 years?

The rings kept getting bigger an bigger, and soon we had the complete name list of 99 people. With the most unbelievable sleuthing skills by Annemarie Nieuwoudt (Sherlock Holmes!) we managed, in three months, to find that nine of our class had passed away. Of the remaining 90, we traced and spoke to 89 (all except our headboy) and received affirmative replies from over 60 of our class mates!

The stage had been set for a good reunion! (to be continued …)

HHH40 Reunion: 1974 – 2014 (3)

This gallery contains 26 photos.

HHH40: Vergelegen

(Ten days to go for wine tasting: Miss this Miss out

Mr Postman

7 years 11 months ill …

I have been inviting fellow classmates to our 40th school reunion.

Today, I started inviting teachers. One problem – they don’t all have Facebook or even e-mail addresses!

Can you imagine a world without an email address?

So, I have just –

printed the letters ( hope the format is correct Mrs Belcher and Mnr Schoeman!)

found envelopes

folded the letters

inserted the letters into the envelopes

addressed the envelopes on the front

put my home address on the back of the envelopes

used cellotape to ensure the envelopes are closed – the glue is old!

put stamps on the envelopes – hope they are still valid (found them in my desk drawer!)

Now, I will have to find a red post box somewhere ( do they still collect post?)

and, I hope they arrive in Somerset West!

Imagine the world without e-mail addresses!

Money or the Box

7 years 11 months ill …

The title of this blog is the title of a radio programme that we listened to on Monday nights on Springbok Radio when I was in High School.

We listened to the radio because we had no television. We were the last class in South Africa to matriculate without TV. The following year the real box arrived. Test TV and then TV 1, a year later, was introduced into South Africa.

The year was 1974.

My class, the Class of 1974, may have matriculated televisionless but we were the first class to be allowed to use electronic calculators in our final mathematics examination – as long as they were SHARP Elsimate and could only add, subtract, multiply and divide! No more log books or slide rules for us!

We were thus the first high school scholars in this country to enter the world with TV’s and calculators! So, we could be a researcher’s dream! The world of electronic mod-cons and it’s influence on society …

Yet, there were no CD’s, no IPods nor IPads, no laptops, no PC’s, no cellphones nor smartphones, no internet, no broadband.

The only wireless we had was the little transistor brown Hitachi transistor radio on which I listened to Money or the Box (and Squad Cars and Creaking Door …)

This last week I have been organising the 40 year reunion of my Hottentots-Holland High School class of 1974. It is bringing back memories and laughs and old (yes old, too!) friends from around the world. The world has become a small place.

It is keeping my mind off my deteriorating health condition.

This week, it’s Physical: Advantage CBD and Mental: My Advantage, Deuce, Your Advantage, Deuce, My Advantage, Deuce, Your Advantage …

Teach Your Children Well

©2012 Edward C. Lunnon

Monday 2 April 2012: 5 years 7 months on … Deuce

As a first year teacher in 1984, I was responsible for introducing that new phenomenon “Computer Studies” into the High Schools of Port Elizabeth. Pupils were selected from all the (white!) schools of Port Elizabeth on the basis of obtaining an A in maths and science. My computer “laboratory” in G5 at Grey High consisted of 3 terminals connected to the Cape Provincial Administration Mainframe in Cape Town and an Apple 11 “Personal Computer” – our PC, we called it. (nowadays, my Blackberry cellphone in my pocket has far more processing and memory capacity than that entire lab!).

Be that as it may, G5 could be the subject of an entire book on its own!

Having “soft” music playing in the background was always an essential part of my teaching, and a song by Crosby Stills Nash and Young was a favourite of mine and many a class – Teach Your Children Well!

 Over the last few weeks, I have found myself thinking about that line several times – and the Circle of Life.

Life, generally, consists of three main phases:

Give or take a few years, approximately the first twenty years of one’s life is spent in the learning and preparation phase: learning to walk, learning to talk, going to school, going to university, learning about life …

 One’s parents and teachers play an all-important role in this part of one’s life.

They prepare one for the next forty years or so. During that phase, whilst the learning should not stop but only move into a background position, it’s the execution phase of the preparation phase that takes place.

It’s during this second phase that some rise to the highest levels and some sink to the lowest. All experience that which life throws at them – the good, the bad and the ugly – and it’s how one deals with each experience that determines one’s “success” or not of living life.

And it’s during this phase that one starts the preparation phase for the next generation – preparing one’s off-spring for taking over the circle of life; for taking over that baton in the relay of life that they, too, will run when the time comes for one to hand it over to them.

At approximately sixty years of age, the third phase of life is embarked upon – those twenty or so years in which one gets to “retire” from main-stream life. Some would call them the “Golden Years” and whilst for a few this may be so, many would experience silver, bronze or just plain tin and struggle years.  The success of these years is determined to a large extent by the health and wealth that is enjoyed during this time.

Some people never experience the seven score years and ten. Some never get to the Golden Age – they leave this world in the first preparation phase or during the second execution phase.  For whatever reason their life is cut short and they never get to experience the Circle of Life as it was intended. 

Yes – for a few, it’s a very large Circle; for most, a much smaller Circle that is experienced.

In some ways the Circle of Life is similar to having a meal: there’s all the preparation involved in obtaining and preparing the various required ingredients, and all the things that can and do and don’t go wrong; followed by the experience of sitting down and eating  and enjoying or not enjoying the meal; and then followed by the after-meal who for some entails the liqueurs and lighting  up the after-dinner cigars, whilst for others it’s the gathering and cleaning of the pots and pans and dishes!

During the last few weeks, I have experienced parts of the Circle of LIfe again.

A few weeks ago, (see the blog Cape of Stormers) I went back to the place of my Life’s preparation in the Hottentots-Holland Valley of the Western Cape. I stayed at my family home; visited my primary school, Hendrik Louw; my high school, Hottentots-Holland High; saw some of my family, old school and university mates and teachers; and even visited my Std Five teacher, Mr Peter Preuss in Cape Town.

Each of these has had an influence on whom and what I am today.

As a parent, and during Pera’s two-week trip to Italy, I have experienced just how our own two sons have been prepared for Life. We are truly blessed; and Pera needs to take the accolades for her role in preparing the boys in the kitchen and looking after themselves (and me!)

From buying the groceries, running the budget, preparing the meals and organising the house (and Charlie!) to looking after me, they have come out tops.  I am a grateful and proud father and I know that, whenever my Circle ends, they are well-prepared to handle the Storms of Life that they, too, will encounter.   

As a school teacher, I experienced this past weekend (and as I regularly do on an on-going basis) just how a teacher has an influence on other people’s off-spring in preparing them for life.

On Friday (and Saturday!) evening I attended a show of David Aldo (Abbate) at the Boardwalk’s Amphitheatre.

I taught David Aldo Abbate maths in the eighties and thought he would become an Einstein. Instead he has become an American-based alternative acoustic pop singer of note.

As a singer-songwriter David Aldo moved to Los Angeles 13 years ago, but he came home this past weekend only for the second time, performing with his daughter Sherri and pianist Brian Schimmel, to give his local fans a taste of his latest offering titled, Halfway to Memphis.

David’s compositions are aired on radio stations around the world and he has opened tours for music royalty such as Lionel Richie and, ironically, Crosby Stills and Nash in New York. He performed at the 2005 home wedding of Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore.  Other A-listers he has performed for include Oprah Winfrey, Donald Trump, Robbie Williams, Dustin Hoffman, Rob Stewart, Russel Crowe, Tom Selleck and Jennifer Aniston.

He has had four number one songs and was once voted best male vocalist in South Africa. He penned a song titled Madiba for Nelson Mandela’s 80^th birthday celebrations.

 My thanks to David for inviting me to his show but also for reminding me, yet again, in our discussions that despite our station in Life and despite the supposed glamour that some attain, the Circle of Life remains the same for all and the weather never remains constant.

At the end of Saturday evening’s show MC Alfie Jay announced that David’s maths teacher was in the audience and that maybe, in some small way, I had contributed to his wonderful sense of timing!

That set in motion many people who introduced themselves to me and thanked me for the weekly show that I do with Lance du Plessis on AlgoaFM.  I am amazed at and grateful for the growing number of people who listen to that programme.

Ironically, as my Circle of Life grows smaller, it actually becomes bigger.  I am so very humbled.

Yes, it’s my time for the after-dinner cigars. Bring on the liqueurs!

(For the record, March 2012 has shown the most regression in terms of my physical abilities. The paralysis has moved from my left hand up into my left upper-arm and shoulder, making it difficult to lift my left arm much above waist-height.  For the first time, I have started experiencing pain in my left shoulder. My left hamstring is painful and subject to many more spasms.  My left leg becomes weaker and I am more dependent now on the walking-stick and leg brace. My mind becomes cloudier and my short-term memory and concentration an ever-increasing problem. I experience on-going weariness.)

 

 

The Cape of Stormers

©2012 Edward C. Lunnon

Tuesday 27 March 2012: 5 years 6 months on … Deuce

BA Flight 6324 on Wednesday 14 March 2012 was scheduled to leave Port Elizabeth airport at 09h50 – destination Cape Town International Airport.

Before I could board, I had to do my radio interview telephonically with Lance from the terminal building an hour earlier than usual – attempts to obtain permission to broadcast ED is in wED from the air at 10h30 had failed.

I sat chatting to Gareth Hunt until the broadcast was about to begin. Gareth’s brother Steven plays for the Springbok 7’s. Then the broadcast, then boarded, seated in 15F (at the right hand side window to see the coast!) and then take-off in an easterly direction over Algoa Bay towards East London.

But a sharp bank to the right put us in the correct westerly direction headed for Cape Town.  It was a beautiful clear morning – the light blue sky juxtaposed by the dark blue mountains, the Indian Ocean below, the white beaches, the green coastal plain and in the distance the brownness of the Little and Great Karoo’s framed by the various mountain ranges in between  us and them.  

We followed the south African coastline and passed over the Garden Route:  Jefferys Bay, St Francis Bay, the Tstsikamma, Nature’s Valley, Plettenberg Bay, Knysna, the Lake District and then George airport, 3 kilometres below us and more or less the halfway point between departure point and destination.

From there, and as we started descending into Cape Town, we followed the more inland route to the south of the Outeniqua and Langeberg Mountains. Places like Riversdale and Swellendam passed by on the coastal plain, and in the Little Karoo, Oudtshoorn, Barrydale and Montaqu.

Then my heart missed its usual beat as the dark blue mountains of the Western Cape moved into sight. First the Hottentots-Holland Mountains, then over the Drakenstein Mountains, and then a sharp bank to the right – and as the right wing pointed sharply downwards towards the earth, Stellenbosch – my birthplace – and Helshoogte, my university residence, came rushing up towards us. I thought the pilot had done that manoeuvre especially for me!

Three more manoeuvres to the left brought us from our westward flight facing back to the east and ready for landing at Cape Town International . During that process, the Atlantic Ocean and Robben Island  came into view and then the mother of all views, on our right, as we landed at 11am: Table Mountain flanked by Devil’s Peak and Lion’s Head. 

What was initially called the Cape of Storms and later the Cape of Good Hope was directly below me.

I was Home yet again!

This time for a school reunion at my alma mater, Hottentots-Holland High School  – aptly named after the mountains that surround the Valley, and Somerset West, Strand and Gordon’s Bay.

Whilst we waited for our luggage, I joked with Gareth about partying in Stellenbosch and being tempted to stay too long in the Winelands. We joked and parted, and when I turned on my cell phone, the first message to come through was to advise me of Gareth’s father’s death!

Gareth’s trip had nothing to do with partying in the Winelands – it had been all about his dad and yet he had kept a smiling face and not said a word to me! I felt so bad!

I phoned both Gareth and Steven to express my condolences, and by then Sebastian, my nephew-in-law was there to fetch me.

As usual, he had a surprise for me, and we headed straight to a newly found German pub in the foothills of the Hottentots-Holland Mountains, overlooking Strand, Gordon’s Bay and False Bay. Two litres of beer later, lunch and obtaining some business for my sister Lyn’s printing company, we headed for her home in the Strand – what had been our family home for some thirty years – and my base for the next four days.   

I was determined to keep this trip as easy and slow as possible – pace myself just to make things a little easier!

Thursday morning we took a trip to Stellenbosch, and planned to have coffee with my niece Jess at the café in the Botanical Gardens. She overslept, so we had a bite, then visited Helshoogte, and headed of home.

I went for a 5km walk along the Strand Beach and had a swim at Melkbaai (Milk Bay) – something I haven’t done in many a year! The weather was wonderful and the water was warm! It was so lekker being home!

 A short nap preceded a visit to the driving range restaurant where I was joined by ex-school and Varsity mates, Herman van Heerden and Jaco Olivier.

Later Herman dropped me off for supper at Estelle Jordaan’s home in Heldervue, Somerset West.

Estelle and I last saw each other in 1969 when we were in Standard Five at Hendrik Louw Primary School in The Strand. We had spent our primary school years vying for academic positions 1 and 2 in the class. She went on to Rhenish in Stellenbosch and Rhodes University in Grahamstown and I went on to Hottentots-Holland in Somerset West and Stellenbosch University. (She calls herself a nurse and is, in fact, the Nursing Executive on the Executive of the private hospital Medi-Clinic group.)

We spent the evening eating, drinking and reminiscing about the 43 years that had passed by!

On Friday morning, I paid an all too brief visit to my Primary School, Hendrik Louw. Unfortunately, it has been completely rebuilt, so other than a few photographs to jolt the memory, there is very little to reminisce about.

Then on to see Sonja van Rhijn, who was as school a year or so ahead of me, and now has MSA (Multiple systems atrophy). We spent a great two hours together, although anyone listening to us would not have thought so. We discussed and compared our diseases, our symptoms, our ups and downs, and our joys and concerns. It makes it so much easier to know that other people out there can understand what we are experiencing and going through! We can laugh and cry with each other, and yes, we can understand each other. It makes our burden so much easier.

I was late for the usual Friday lunch braai at the Ridgeways Furniture Store, but enjoyed the hotdogs anyway (and was delighted to see Sebastian’s Railway Stand season tickets)! So another power snap nap before we headed off for Newlands to watch the Stormers take on and beat the Blues in a Super 15 rugby game. There is always a great atmosphere to experience at the home of the Western Cape’s rugby, and which may not be the home for much longer, what with talks aplenty about moving to the newly built World Cup Soccer stadium in Green Point, Cape Town!

Then the big day arrived – our reunion at the De beer’s Football Club. I deliberately spent a quiet day so as not to overdo things.

Lyn and Anton dropped me off at the venue and by the time Anthony West took me home at 1am, there had been a spitbraai by Lappies Labuschagne, dancing, 70’s music, talking and laughing about the preceding 40 years and the seventies that we had spent at school together.

It was a tremendous boost to meet up and reminisce with friends of yesteryear. What had started off as a page by Karen Holthauzen on Facebook, “Somerset West Nostalgia”, a few years ago, had ended up as a real-life get-together of so many of us who have been privileged to grow up and be schooled in the Hottentots-Holland Basin.  

On Sunday morning I transferred from Strand to the Wüsts in Durbanville – almost my home from home! After a lunchtime braai with Willem’s mother and their daughter, Anagret, also joining us, we headed off for Greenpoint and a long 4 km walk along the Atlantic seaboard towards Sea Point and back. A latte at a local coffee shop, in the shadow of Cape Town’s Soccer Stadium, finished off a wonderful weekend in the Cape!

After a quiet Monday morning of taking stock of myself, Gretel and I went for lunch at the Tyger Valley centre.

Then, a visit to my Std Five teacher, Mr Peter Preuss and his wife, who now live in Monte Vista in Cape Town’s northern suburbs.  Although only two handfuls of fingers separate our ages, at the time in 1969, he had seemed so large and intimidating!

It was two of the most wonderful hours that I have spent in a long time, talking about family, friends and fellowship – of growing up in The Strand. It was emotional, too, and I wiped a tear or two away as I headed back to Durbanville …

… and on to Cape Town International at ten on Tuesday morning 20 March. We left on time at 11h30, flying off in a westerly direction over False Bay and The Strand and this time in an A seat on the left-hand side of the plane (pre-booked by my niece Nicky who works for BA at Cape Town airport).

This was in order to get that last view of our family home in Gordon’s Bay Road, Strand, the Helderberg and the Hottentots-Holland Mountains, before heading straight back over the Overberg, George, the Garden Route and the direct  short landing from west to east into Port Elizabeth at 12h45.

Sean was there to fetch me. We went home and then directly to Gary Hunt’s funeral, back home, and then back to the airport to say goodbye to Pera who was heading off to Italy that very evening.

Sean and I then decided to have a 2-for-the-price-of-1 sushi at the Cape Town Fish Market.  There he was also able to put his First Aid skills to the test when a patron, allergic to sea-food, dropped over stone cold within seconds after eating the stuff … 

It had been just another “quiet” weekend in the Cape of the Stormers!

 

 

A Giant Leap for Mankind

©2012 Edward C. Lunnon

Leap Year’s Day: Wednesday 29 February 2012: 5 years 5 months on … Deuce

Whether it’s called Leap Day or Leap Year’s Day, yesterday was that extra day we get every four years. It’s name may be in contention but the leap reminds me of that July day way back in 1969 when I was twelve years old and in standard five, and we listened to Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the Moon: “That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind”.

 What we do with those extra 24 hours is up to us. This was my day:

Talking about things school, I had arranged to visit Michiel and Noelene Ackermann at five thirty. I was a half hour late, but that later!

Noelene was first known to me as “Miss” Theunissen. I met her in 1973 when I was in standard nine at Hottentots-Holland High School, Somerset West. She was the domestic science teacher – a room we often used to hang around, not only because there were girls there, but also because there were often left overs of the cooking “experiments” and odours that permeated that part of the school!

Noelene became Mrs Ackermann when she married Michiel Ackermann who had been my mathematics teacher in standard nine and ten. At that stage I thought they were “old” but I guess they were in their mid twenties – somewhere around the age that I sometimes think I am now, although my body tells me otherwise!

Michiel took over teaching me maths from David Harper, to whom I pay tribute for inculcating my love for mathematics and computer science. When I was in standard 8, “Mr Harper” would drive me through on Wednesday evenings to Cape Town Technikon to work on that magical machine called a mainframe computer. I learned to programme in FORTRAN and use punch cards and get the machine to do all kinds of exciting things like add and subtract and multiply and divide!

In later years “Mr Harper” – I never could get myself to call him David! – also moved to Port Elizabeth and taught at Victoria Park High in the city. I learned last night with sadness that he passed away last year.

Anyway, Michiel ”inherited” me in 1973 in standard nine and with his passion for mathematics and many extra hours and “old papers” enabled me to matriculate in 1974 with an A for maths. In those days A aggregates were as scarce as hens’ teeth – in our class only two of us matriculated with an average A and if I remember correctly only some fifty A’s in the whole of what was then the ‘old’ Cape Province! Nowadays, it’s not unusual for 50 A’s to be obtained by one matric class at one school – and they say that education standards in South Africa have not been watered down by the politicians! (Is that, sadly, not a backwards leap?)

No wonder Michiel moved to the Port Elizabeth Technikon and now the Nelson Mandela University to lecture mathematics, and I went on the teach computer science and mathematics at Grey. And no wonder we spoke about education standards (amongst many other things!) and the giant leap from the log books and the mainframe computers and first SHARP calculators of the seventies to the IPads and tablets of today.

And on my IPad I showed them the picture of the sketch of Michiel that I found hanging in the HHH museum that Sean and I visited recently when I was invited back to my Alma Mater by Mrs Fourie (the only one of my erstwhile teachers that is still there) when we visited the Western Cape three weeks ago.

It was a great evening of reminiscing and memories. It also reminded me again of the sadness that the disease that I have has ironically also robbed me of my mathematical abilities. It would be so wonderful to be able to teach mathematics in this age with the use of laptops, IPads, white boards, interactive tablets and the internet and World Wide Web! It also reminded me of the unhappiness that as a country we are so sadly lacking in our ability to produce scientists and mathematicians and to improve our educational standards and skills.

Well, why was I late for my appointment?

 It had just been one of those supposed “quiet” days that ran away with me!

Being Wednesday, it started off with my visit to the radio studio for the programme with ex-pupil Lance Du Plessis. Then came the announcement that we would be competing in the Vodacom Challenge (more later!), followed by coffee at Bluewaters café.

I also met there with consumer columnist Gillian McAinsch from the Herald to discuss my frustrations with trying to cancel an insurance policy. And my friend Kobus was there, and we didn’t have enough time to chat because I had to dash off to the new coffee Roasterie at the bottom of Brickmakers Kloof to meet owner Martin du Plessis (more later!)

Then it was home for quick lunch, and on to the pool in Newton Park for my daily hydrotherapy. And then off to the new Brewery under the Bridge at Brickmakers. It was supposed to be the grand opening, but the liquor licence hasn’t arrived yet, so the official opening has been delayed.

I was joined by ex-pupils Elfick and Barber, and the opening delay didn’t stop us from trying out some of the newly brewed product free-of-charge (no licence, no sales!). That made the product taste even better, and made me late for my visit to the Ackermanns!

But I can see that this leap of faith, this new business and its unique location under the Bridge, could be the source and venue of many a Leap in future.

Cheers!

 

 

 

 

 

PICS: Trip to Cape Town – Feb 2012