Broken Promise

When I asked her to come live with me and be my love, she said she would, once we were married. I did not think much of marriage at the time but I decided it was in my best interest to comply with her stipulation. Then came the fine print. Forget about a Registry Office formality. She was from a full-on, Mass-every-Sunday Catholic family, which meant getting married by a priest in a Catholic church. What the hell, I thought. In for a penny, in for a pound. But when we met with the holy man things started to get complicated.

He asked me what Christian denomination I belonged to and, thinking it better not to let on that I was an atheist, I said I had been brought up a Methodist. From his expression it was clear that he regarded Methodists as a lesser breed. He refused to marry us if I did not swear to raise our children in the Catholic faith, should the Lord bless us with any offspring. The blood drained from my face with a gurgle and I had to gulp down several lungfuls of air before succumbing to his bullying tactics.

Once the nuptials were over it was without divine aid that I managed to impregnate my wife, and I did it again three years later, also without supernatural assistance. In the meantime, I sent my foolhardy vow into exile, hoping never to hear from it again. Then, when the children were old enough to be read to, it emerged from the shadows and addressed me with insolent familiarity. You are reading nursery rhymes and fairy tales to them, as well as telling them make-believe stories and deceitful nonsense about the tooth fairy, Father Christmas and the Easter Bunny. So when are you going to get started with the religious bullshit?

We bought some books: Christian Mother Goose Tales, Stories from the Bible, My First Book of Bible Stories and The Children’s Bible in 365 stories. They were illustrated in pastel colours and all the characters were lily white. The violence was toned down and the sex was largely expurgated or merely hinted at. With these books we were able to familiarise them with many of the better known Bible stories.

They were baptised at an early age, which protected them from going straight to Hell should they meet a premature death. The next sacrament, after holy Communion, was Confirmation at the age of 13. Before that they were required to attend Catechism classes in order to learn about the basics of Catholic doctrine.

Yes, they were being brought up as Catholics, as I had promised. But well before they participated in the Confirmation ritual their power of reason caused them to lose their faith and they rejected my suggestion that they keep an open mind.

My wife, who, like many people raised as Catholics or Jews, has never taken religion all that seriously and I still do not know quite what she believes in. She did, however, accuse me of heavily influencing our daughter and son with my blasphemous ridiculing of Biblical content. In my defence, I said that it would have been dishonest of me to tell them that I believed in that baloney, and also that I had urged them to remain agnostic until they had reached intellectual maturity.

Now, when I take stock of my life and consider the foolish mistakes I have made, the bad decisions I have taken and the harm I might have inflicted, I cannot ignore the faint pang of guilt I feel at having broken my promise to the priest. However, I console myself with the knowledge that our children have kept their minds uncontaminated by nonsensical delusions and have developed into intelligent adults with sound morals.

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

Hospital Story Part One

I was in hospital twice just recently. On both occasions it was for a one-night stay following unrelated surgical procedures. Although I was favourably impressed with the care I received, it was a relief to leave that environment of sickness and suffering. Back in Pearly Beach I was able to reflect on the experience and compare it to the time when I was a hospital orderly more than 40 years ago. To refresh my memory I turned to my autobiographical novel The Life of Henry Fuckit, in which I wrote about the three years I spent as an assistant nurse. Entertained by what I wrote some 15 years back I decided to share some of it in a short series of posts.

In this episode set at Groote Schuur Hospital in 1978 Henry applies for the job of a porter.

Was the uniform grey-blue, green-grey, or blue-green? Maybe it was grey-blue green. Or green-blue grey. Anyway, not a bad colour. Pushing an empty wheelchair the man walked through the main entrance ahead of Henry. In the foyer he parked the chair alongside several others and when he turned Henry asked him 'Are you a porter?' His blunt features were arranged economically, so it was dead easy to read them, like a road sign, plain and simple. No multiplicity of confusing subtleties and nuances. No fine print.

‘I mean, you are a porter, aren’t you?’

'You looking for a porter?'

'Well, not really. I'm actually looking for a job as a porter.'

'A job?'

'Yes. I want to become a porter. You know, like what you do; that's what I want to do. A porter.'

'You must be befokt in your head. This is a kak job. Fuckall pay. Pushing sick old cunts up and down all day. Every day just pushing sick old cunts up, down, up, down. And dead old cunts.'

Everything about this man seemed consistently brutish: his expression, his tone of voice and choice of words, his gestures and his bearing. His base nature was exposed for all to see, unadorned by even the skimpiest vestige of refinement. Methinks, mused Henry, this fellow would make a very fine Caliban.

'I'm sure there must be more to it than that. But anyway could you tell me how I can apply for a job as a porter?'

'Huh.' And he folded his arms and looked out past Henry as if he had ceased to exist, as if he had never existed. Disappointed, Henry began to turn away. 'You got a smoke for me?'

Ah. He shook his head but found a twenty-cent piece and handed it over.

'F. You go up to F Floor.' He jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of lifts and a stairwell. 'You not allowed to use the lift, hey? You go up to the F Floor and you speak to one of those fuckin' bitches. Jus' make sure you don't get Matron Sharp.'

'Matron Sharp?'

'Yah. No man, you get Matron Sharp, you fucked. That woman, she can see right through you, like you was glass. She can check right inside your heart, right into your fuckin' brain, my mate. You scheme you can chune that woman kak, jus a little bit of kak, and you're in jou moer. No man, jus don't get Matron Sharp.'

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

The Queen of England

To mark the passing of Queen Elizabeth here are two pieces I wrote some time ago. The first was on the occasion of her 60th year on the throne, and the other was posted soon after her husband died.

Her Majesty’s a pretty nice girl

My relationship with this woman goes back a long way. Back to around 1956 when I was enrolled at Cecil John Rhodes Junior School in Gwelo, a town about half way between Salisbury and Bulawayo. Every morning at assembly we had to stand at attention and sing God Save The Queen.

God save our gracious Queen,

Long live our noble Queen,

God save the Queen!

Send her victorious,

Happy and glorious,

Long to reign over us,

God save the Queen!

Even at the age of five I’m sure I found it absurd.

Then, when I was allowed to go to the local bughouse (I think it was called the Royal Theatre, or maybe the Empire, or some other nod to the Imperial masters), I was required to not only stand to attention as the anthem was being played, but I also had to watch Her Royal Highness, Queen Elizabeth II, sitting on a horse in front of Buckingham Palace presiding over Trooping of the Colour and taking the salute.

“Why does she sit on the horse sideways like that?” I asked my brother, who was five years older than me.

“If a lady sits with her legs wide open, it causes men to have unclean thoughts,” my brother told me.

I was only a little kid, and, as Jean Piaget has made it abundantly clear, there was no way I was going to grasp how something as abstract as a thought could be dirty. So I just had to take my boet’s word for it.

I soon grew to resent this ritual every time we went to the flicks, but there were a lot of ex-servicemen in the audience, still fired up with patriotic fervour after defeating the Nazis and saving the world from fascist domination, and it would have been extremely unwise not to conform. Unless you felt like a clip round the ear.

Then, in 1960, the Queen sent her mother out to open Kariba Dam, and I got my first and only glimpse of royalty in the flesh. The Queen Mother stopped off in Gwello for a few gins and in the process did a little walkabout at Selukwe traffic circle. I was part of a whole bunch of school kids required to stand on the pavement and wave Union Jacks and clap politely.

It was a disappointing experience because the old girl looked completely ordinary except for her hat, and after being presented with a huge bouquet of flowers she got back in the car and was whisked off to the nearest hotel for a right royal lunch. How undramatic! I had been hoping for something like the firing of canon, and maybe even a public flogging to inspire fear in the colonial subjects. 

“But they’re just ordinary people,” I complained to my brother.

“Yes,” said my brother, scratching his balls thoughtfully. “They’ve also got to take a crap now and again, just like you and me.”

From then on my view of the royal family changed and I began to see them in a more sympathetic light. Especially the Queen. When she started picking up all that shit with her children and it became apparent that she was not only one of the most unopinionated, boring women on the planet, but was severely lacking in parenting skills as well, I saw that her life wasn’t the fairy tale bed of roses some people make it out to be.

And when those parsimonious Labour politicians decided to decommission the royal yacht Britannia, my heart bled for her. No more of those wonderful family cruises with a crew of 240 at her beck and call. That must have been hard to come to terms with.

Sixty years is a long time to have to reign over a nation, and it might not have been an entirely happy and glorious period in English history, but she seems to be coping pretty well, and in no hurry to step aside for her son and go into retirement.

Yes, all in all, Her Majesty’s a pretty nice girl and her subjects love her a lot. She has shown them how it is possible for people of meagre intelligence and mediocre physical abilities to hold the very highest rank in British society. And how to disperse the gloomy clouds of austerity by throwing a party of unrivalled extravagance.

God save the Queen.

Prince Philip on Gough Island

I took this photograph of Gordon McIntyre sitting at the dining table in Gough House in 1981. As Radio Operator it was Gordon’s duty to send six-hourly weather reports to the South African Weather Service HQ in Pretoria. Above his head is the portrait of Prince Philip that commemorates his brief visit to the island in 1957.

Gough is part of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, and South Africa operates its strategic weather station with the permission of the United Kingdom. That explains why the portrait was still on display in spite of the strained relations that existed between Britain and the Apartheid government. To the right of His Highness there was a framed picture of the State President of South Africa, the Rt. Hon. Marais Viljoen. A patriotic Afrikaner from a previous team had placed a toilet seat over Philip’s picture as a gesture of resentful disrespect. Loathing the Christian Nationalists as I did, I had no compunction in moving the piece of sanitaryware over for the President to stare through. I was then able to look up at his repugnant features without feeling an urge to spit or throw something.

This reminiscence was prompted by Prince Philip’s death on 11 April 2021 at the age of 99.

Here is a link to an article recording the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit to Gough Island in 1957.

https://www.facebook.com/GoughIsland/posts/it-has-been-one-year-since-the-duke-of-edinburghs-final-official-royal-engagemen/758196274615167/

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

The War on Nature

It must be more than ten years since I last saw, or even heard a barn owl in Pearly Beach. The Cape eagle owls, though increasingly rare, are still around and their hooting is sometimes audible on a moonlit night. But the screech and hiss of the barn owl is never heard and I presume it has taken a dislike to this area and has moved away, much to my regret.

It was a delightful surprise then to learn that these beautiful birds of the night have not emigrated but merely decided to put the R43 between them and us. At Kos and Sarah’s place, just a kilometre up the dirt road leading to Baardskeerdersbos, two of them were perched side by side in a gum tree. Clearly visible in the twilight, they bore a striking resemblance to a pair of nuns, and I recalled that their common name in Afrikaans is nonnetjie-uil.

Later, when it was dark, I stood outside and listened to a tumult of insects and frogs and was reminded of how life in Pearly Beach had been 40 years ago. It was before the advent of electricity and our candles and gas and paraffin lamps attracted a great variety of moths, damsel flies, longihorns, flying beetles and other insects. Some would flutter at the windows while others would find their way inside and career about the lights. Then came electricity and more and more houses until now even moths have become rare at night.

Almost all other forms of wildlife have followed the trend and the porcupines, grysbokke, hares, lynxes, polecats, badgers, otters, mongooses, tortoises and snakes have either disappeared or are seen but seldom. Similarly, there are now far fewer birds in the air and fish in the sea.

To conserve what remains of the local fauna and flora the Pearly Beach Conservancy attempts to educate residents and visitors about the importance of caring for the natural environment. A small band of dedicated members try their best to eradicate invasive alien plant species and to promote indigenous water-wise gardens. They spread the message that one of the most attractive features of life in Pearly is that it is not like living in a city suburb and that it still feels ‘out in the country.’ To keep it that way every effort should be made to lessen the human impact and allow other forms of life to flourish.

Unfortunately, the Overstrand Municipality does not see it that way and regards all vegetation on undeveloped properties as a fire hazard. By insisting on the clearing of all vacant plots the Municipality demonstrates a lack of respect for the environment that is out of step with a growing global concern for the protection of endangered species and the need to nurture biodiversity.

It is now a matter of urgency for the Local Authority to consult with Conservation Societies in the Overstrand and to draw up new environmental protection guidelines. If the current devastation is not halted, we run the risk of finding ourselves living in a sterile wasteland and not a vibrant Conservancy.

This is an example of a plot that has not yet been devastated in the war on nature. Apart from removing the Manatoka at the back, it should be left just as it is, pleasing to the eye and teeming with LIFE.

"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. … Whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."

- Charles Darwin

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

Sand

Sand is formed when rocks are eroded by wind and water over millions of years. Only sharp angular sand produced by water erosion can be used in construction, and the fine rounded sand found in deserts and on most beaches is unsuitable for making cement and concrete. With the growth of the human population and rapidly increasing urbanisation, sand has become the second most consumed raw material after water. An estimated 50 billion tons is being used up annually, with many countries having to import what will soon be a scarce, non-renewable (on the human time scale) commodity.

This information does not surprise me. It is further evidence of our collective refusal to acknowledge that there are far too many of us and that a global economy based on growth and consumption is unsustainable. 

There are, however, a few of us who do not aspires to a way of life based on short-term materialistic self-gratification. Some rare individuals understand the interconnectedness of everything in the natural world and the need to tread lightly and with care.  This respectfulness is often expressed in mystical language that appeals to me, even though I have no belief in the supernatural. William Blake, for one, was able to feel reverence for a single grain of sand.

And Bob Dylan echoed these sentiments in his song, Every Grain of Sand:

 As for me, I often take pleasure from watching the movement of sand on the beach and along the line of dunes. The sea and the wind are constantly at work, sometimes imperceptibly and at other times with dramatic violence. Knowing that this fine white sand has been in the making for hundreds of millions of years helps me to shun the delusion that my life is of any consequence. To talk of achievements, successes and failures is laughably absurd. In a day and a night, the strong northwester erases all footprints and reshape the crest of a dune formed by a week-long southeaster. In a hundred years’ time what trace will be left of my existence? And in a few thousand years there will be little evidence left to show that a pernicious species of animal blighted the planet for a brief period before becoming extinct.

If, after 50 years, this is all that is left of the houses at Plaatjies Kraal, in another 50 years all evidence of human habitation will have been erased. Only sand will remain.

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

Talking Sewage

Semigration is the movement of people from one part of the country to another. Gansbaai and Pearly Beach have seen a flood of these semigrants to the area over the past two years. They are collectively referred to as ‘Inkommers’ and are welcomed for their contribution to the local economy. However, some of them are resented for the brashness, arrogance and insensitivity that they bring with them.

The Inkommer who I met a few days ago was neither brash nor arrogant, and he seemed genuinely interested in local history as well as the natural environment. I met him while walking my dog and we stood chatting at the side of the road. He told me he had recently settled in Pearly Beach after more than 30 years in Gauteng, where he had worked as a hydrologist in the Waste Water Management Department of the City of Joburg.

“So, you’re an expert in sewage disposal?” I asked. “Maybe you will be able to answer a question I have been asking myself of late.”

“I would be happy to share my knowledge.”

I started by telling him that I had noticed that all the new houses that were going up discharged their waste water into a conservancy tank built close to the street boundary. On enquiry, I had been informed that when the tank filled to capacity it had to be pumped out by the Municipal sewage tanker at a cost of R700 per 6000litres. The effluent was then transported to the treatment works. Now, my question was this: why aren’t new home owners allowed to install old fashioned septic tanks like mine, which seldom need to be emptied?

“This is a subject close to my heart,” he said. “A septic tank is far more ecologically friendly than a conservancy tank. And I’ll tell you why.”

He then went on to explain that in a septic tank the solid matter, which some vulgar people refer to as shit, is broken down by bacteria and microbes in an anaerobic process that does not require oxygen. This takes place mainly in the first of two chambers, where the heavy stuff settles and the partially purified water overflows into the second chamber. There the process continues and almost clear liquid is discharged into the drainage field, where organisms in the soil complete the purification process.

“That’s the soakaway, right? And with a conservancy tank? What happens to the sewage that gets carted away?”

“It goes to the Eluxolweni waste water treatment works. There it is pumped into what is known as an oxidation pond.”

This, he said, is like a lagoon that consists of a series of shallow, open concrete channels that become submerged and disappear from sight. It is designed to treat wastewater through the interaction of sunlight, bacteria, and algae. Algae grow using energy from the sun and carbon dioxide and inorganic compounds released by bacteria in water. During the process of photosynthesis, the algae release oxygen needed by aerobic bacteria. This mutually beneficial interaction breaks down organic material in the effluent and all that is left is a minimal amount of sludge.

“So, like with the septic tank, it is an effective biological way of disposing of raw sewage? But why do you say the septic tank is ecologically more friendly?”

“Most of pearly Beach is built on sand and the water table is very low, so there is little danger of contamination from a soakaway. With two tankers constantly riding up and down, a lot of diesel gets consumed, thereby adding to our carbon footprint.”

He went on to say that, as the area had become more populated, many new properties, especially in the Resort and Eluxolweni, were too small to accommodate a septic tank. That was why a treatment works had become necessary.

“But I still don’t understand why homeowners with a regular sized plot are not allowed to build a septic tank.”

“Think about it. It costs money to run the system. The Municipality needs as much revenue as it can get. By making everyone take the conservancy route, those tankers ar kept busy generating an income. Disallowing septic tanks means that some people in the community will be subsidising others. It’s unfortunate but unavoidable.”

“Now it makes sense,” I said, jerking the lead and getting my dog to her feet. “Thanks for the explanation. I am going to share this info next time I go to the pub, where the locals gather and like to talk sewage all the time.”

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

Pop-splat

 

“A prominent businessman is murdered in an apparent hijacking. For Matt Dreyer the death of his father seems like murder most foul. This disturbed Hamlet of the 21st century sets off on a tortuous and bloody hell ride to track down his father’s killers. Ian Martin's POP-Splat looks at today’s South Africa through cynical eyes and uses his unique brand of sick humor to satirize a sick society.”

I published Pop-splat in 2008, and the issues the novel deals with seem as relevant today as they did 14 years ago.

Copies of the paperback are available for R80. Contact me on 078 455 7355.

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