Memory Project: My Father’s Weights

On returning to South Africa from Rhodesia in 1963, my father found employment as a motor mechanic in the Simon’s Town Naval Dockyard. He was 48 years old and remained in that job until his retirement at 60 in 1975.

As something of a fitness fanatic, he started every work day, regardless of weather conditions, with a workout in the courtyard. This consisted of running on the spot, lifting weights and doing 20 sit-ups followed by 50 press-ups.

He had two 10kg dumbbells and a 40kg barbell, which were manufactured in the Yard by mateys of his acquaintance. A Dockyard matey was an artisan who was willing to be of assistance to other mateys, knowing that reciprocity was a fundamental principle shared by members of the fraternity. The weights for the dumbbells were manufactured in the Heavy Plate Shop, and those for the barbell were made in the Foundry.

The Heavy Plate Shop, unlike the light Plate Shop, had a massive overhead crane and specialized oxyacetylene cutting equipment. The four discs came from the thickest steel plate available. At an inch thick, it was used primarily as armour for gun turrets and was the heaviest material in use. The two weights for the barbell, which resembled canon balls, were cast in the Foundry. Each one had a thread turned into it, thus enabling it to be screwed onto the end of the bar. It was important that all components could be dismantled in order to make it easier to smuggle them out of the Dockyard without detection should the goons at the gate mount a surprise search of workers’ cars.

This photograph of my father was taken when he was 60. I asked him to pose with a deadpan expression, and not to look like he was thinking up another iconoclastic witticism. His neck and shoulders are strong, his chest deep and his arms powerful. His stomach is flat and there is no vestige of flab on him. He continued to exercise and keep fit well into his eighties. He was still doing press-ups at 90, and he lived to 98, just a year and four months short of a hundred.

I took over his dumbbells but never used them. Then, a few weeks ago I came across them in my garden shed. After brushing off the worst of the rust, I attempted three curls.

As is evident, I struggled to lift the 10kg weights and for the next three days I was obliged to dose myself with anti-inflammatories. There can be no denying that my father was a far tougher physical specimen than I am.

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The Sleep of Reason

(This is another extract from my semi-autobiographical novel, The Life of Henry Fuckit.)

"You know, two months ago I too would have been incontinent with laughter at this buffoonery." Henry shook his head ruefully. "But I seem to be losing my sense of humour, and it worries me. Instead of laughing at the idiotic antics of my colleagues I gasp in fear. The future is beginning to terrify me. I ask myself, Is this what I have to look forward to, day in and day out, year after year? Is this all there is? I try to tell myself that this is merely an interlude and my life will change and become charged with meaning and interest. But I know I'm lying. Apart from the odd extraneous detail nothing will alter. This is the pattern, to be repeated over and over." He slumped forward on the desk, head on hands, a picture of dejection.

"Haw-haw, ho-haw!" Schroder's sudden loud laugh was quite different to his donkey mirth. That was "Hee-haw-haw, hee-haw-haw-haw!" Henry flinched and raised his head.

"For Christ' sake. Now what?"

"Sorry, but you look just like the poor bugger in one of Francisco Goya's Los Caprichos aquatints. Maybe you know it. Number 43. The Sleep of Reason."

 

Henry sat up. "La fantasia abandonada de la razon, produce monstruos impossibles. Do I know it, you ask me? My mate, all eighty of them are engraved upon my imagination. They have been catalogued and neatly stored in the archives of my memory, awaiting effortless retrieval at the twitch of a nerve. Certainly, I know it, and it does indeed seem rather apposite right at the moment." He already looked brighter, and as the seconds passed, he became increasingly animated and cheerful. It was as if the mention of Goya's drawing had acted as a catalyst in his brain, causing a large quantity of neurotransmitter to be released. Now his head was abuzz with fusillades and barrages of synaptic firing, and he was suffused with a feeling of alertness and euphoria. This was better than amphetamines. Who needs Benzedrine when there's Goya?

"Yes," Schroder was looking at Henry with guarded interest. This fellow might turn out to be more of a hindrance than a help if his better qualities couldn't be harnessed. " ' Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters.' The weird owl-bats and that huge cat. I suppose it's a cat. But imagination allied with reason is the source of great wonders. I think we might have stumbled upon something here, young Fuckit. A rampant imagination, undirected and undisclipined, might be what you're suffering from."

"You think so, do you?" Henry was quite prepared to discuss his malaise and its origins. "You might be right, Sigmund. I must admit to spending much of my life in a world of fantasy. I always have, as far back as I can remember. It's probably the reason why I'm such a misfit in the real world where one is required to 'work for a living'. I can see from your general demeanour that you're about to make a recommendation. How do you suggest I get my imagination under control? Has it anything to do with quantum mechanics?”

Schroder grinned toothily and admitted his thoughts were camped in that area. But he needed more time to formulate his ideas.

"Anyway," he said, "it's already Thursday and there's no point in starting something so important right at the end of a week." He rose to his feet and Henry reluctantly followed his example. "Have a nice restful weekend and we can start fresh on Monday".

As he made his way back to the Verification Office he could feel the exuberance, burning fiercely only a few minutes ago, beginning to gutter and die down. He resolved to take the train to Cape Town on Saturday morning and visit the art library. He was in need of stimulation.

(Read more here.)

To view my longer work as an author, you can find me on Smashwords here.

Injury at Sea

Another winter storm was attacking the island. Gordon, the radio operator, picked up a call from the Tristania. While passing close to Gough in a heavy sea, a crew member had fallen into the hold and broken his arm. The ship was due to return to Cape Town in three weeks time but the man was in pain and needed medical attention. The Captain was asking if it would be possible for the team medic to lend assistance?

When John, the expedition leader, asked me if I would be up to the task, I began to perspire and felt the urge to defecate. In these stormy conditions the Tristania would not be able to anchor but would pass as close to the base as was safe and lower a dinghy to come and fetch me. The heaving swells made it too dangerous to use the crane to lower me in a net, so I would have to take the path over the arch and climb down to a narrow rocky platform at sea level. The trickiest part would be when I had to ‘hop’ aboard the dinghy.

Realising that if I did not want to be branded a coward, I had no choice but to agree to give it a shot.

After knocking back a double tot of rum I packed a haversack and we set out into the wind and rain. The arch formed a natural bridge to the outlying stack where a hand winch was bolted to a concrete base. The ship was holding steady about a mile offshore and the dinghy was making its way towards us, a lone figure at the tiller.

John, Ray and Thys, who had accompanied me, lowered the 40-foot aluminium ladder and I began the vertical descent, all the while telling myself, ‘You fall off this ladder and you’re dead.’ Down on the ledge, I was alarmed at seeing just how turbulent the water was, and how its surface heaved up and dropped back in slow convulsions. I would have to board the boat as it came alongside on an upswell.

The dinghy headed for the arch and then swung round and came towards me on a course that was almost parallel to my platform. It was clear that the helmsman would have to keep his boat moving in order not to be washed against the rocks. At the same time, he had to reach me just as the swell rose up. It took two dummy runs for him to practise the manoeuvre, and then on the third pass he moved in on an upswell and shaved past. He shouted, I jumped into the boat and as I fell to my knees, he gunned the outboard and we headed for the waiting ship.

The clamour of the motor and the force of the wind would have made any attempt at conversation both futile and embarrassing. All I could do was to give a thumbs-up and the seaman replied with a nod. As we drew nearer to the fishing vessel, I remembered that, as an afterthought, I had stuffed the Minolta into my pack along with the first aid items. If I survived this adventure I might as well have a record of it.

The ship had turned broadside to the gale, thereby offering some protection in its lee. We drew in close to the rusty steel hull and, as the vessel rolled into the vertical, I grabbed the rope ladder, stepped into space, and desperately felt for a foothold. I found a rung and began to climb. A man was standing at the rail looking down at me. He turned out to be the Captain and, after welcoming me aboard, led the way below deck.

In the crew’s quarters the patient was lying on his bunk. He was a small man of about 40 with unshaven all-weather features. Nursing his right arm, he sat up with a groan. His forearm was bruised and swollen, and the break was about half way along the radius.

“This doesn’t appear to be a compound fracture,” I said, pretending I knew what I was talking about. “That’s good, because it means that I won’t have to operate and put in a steel plate and screws, or any of that shit. But first I am going to give you an injection for the pain, and then I will stabilise your arm and put it in a sling.” To lighten things up a bit I added, “You will have to wipe your arse with your left hand for a few weeks, like a Moslem.”

I injected the Omnopon and while I was busy bandaging and strapping splints in place he began to relax.

“How are you feeling now?”

“No, I’m feeling better. The pain is going. I’m feeling lekker, man.”

“You should be. That’s the whole point of morphine.”

When I was about to leave, after giving him a week’s supply of pain killers, he reached into his locker, took out a magazine and presented it to me by way of thanks for my services.

Seated in the dinghy once more, I took a photograph of the Captain, and then one of my driver as we returned to the island. Only later did I fully comprehend just how skilled and courageous this man must have been to get me out to the ship and then safely back to the island.

Several months later, on landing in Cape Town, I was standing on the quayside waiting for my luggage to be offloaded from the Agulhas, when I caught sight of a man approaching who I recognised as the seaman with the broken arm. In alarm I looked about for a weapon with which to defend myself, imagining he was about to stab me for having set the break skew, thus causing him a whole heap of suffering by having to undergo corrective surgery. But there was a friendly smile on his face and he offered me his hand.

He was on leave right now and, when he heard that the Agulhas would be docking this morning, he decided to come and thank me for how I had helped him. He clenched his fist and flexed his muscles to show how strong and healthy his right arm had grown. I had done a really good job.

“Ah, it was nothing,” I said, trying to sound like an experienced orthopaedic surgeon. “And I would like to thank you for that magazine you gave me. It did the whole team a power of good. You know how difficult it is to come by good stuff like that in this fucked-up country?”

To view my longer work as an author, you can find me on Smashwords here.