40) Some More Friends
I enjoyed living in Hatfield and we were very happy there. The boys made friends at school and we met their parents and made friends too. I have always said that the easiest way to make friends is through ones children. Through our children we also got involved with the Cubs and later the Scouts, the Swimming Club, The Young Farmers Cub, Mini Rugby, and of course the Parent Teachers Association. As I have said somewhere before all one needed to do to get voted onto one of those committees was to agree to give a hand now and again and you were roped in and marked for life. Most of the other parents on the various committees were the same small group of people.
I have mentioned before a friend called Geraldine Norton, when I first met her she was living out of the suburb in a house on an experimental tobacco farm, but they bought a house opposite us later on. Her husband was an electro- plater and worked with Rhodesian Airway. Their three boys were Kevin, Andrew, and Rodney and were a similar age to mine so they all played together. I always remember that her boys were lightly built and could run like the wind and my two were much stockier and usually beat them when it came to swimming. I have a theory that one is either a swimmer or a runner and not usually both. Geraldine drove an oldish VW Beetle and when it was her turn to collect the kids from school they would be packed in like sardines, with most of them wanting to get a turn in the ‘dog box’, the small parcel carrier behind the back seat. I remember once Geraldine and her boys had spent the afternoon with us and left to go out to the farm for their supper. After supper when I wanted to give Dominic his tablets I could not find them. I searched everywhere and began to worry that maybe one of the Norton boys had picked them up. The phenobarb were very bitter in taste and I did not think any child would pop the whole lot into their mouth but I thought I had better be on the safe side and call Geraldine because if they had taken them it could be very dangerous. I rang and rang but got no answer. I thought it was strange, as she had said that she was not going out that evening. I started imagining all sorts of things and got quite worried. If I remember rightly Jonny was away and I did not have any transport so there was nothing I could do except keep looking for the tablets. You know what it is like when you have looked in all the likely places you start looking in the unlikely places, in the oven, in the fridge, that sort of thing. I eventually found them in the broom cupboard and was very relieved to see them. I can’t for the life of me think why I would have put them there.
Geraldine was a very talented knitter and decorated the most fabulous birthday cakes. She showed me the correct way to cast on when knitting and she once made a lovely snakes and ladders birthday cake for one of my boys, it was Dominic I think. Until then they had had to put up with my very amateurish efforts. The very first time I tried to make one I made an aeroplane for Jonathan. To me it looked more like a tombstone than an aeroplane but Jonathan was pleased with it so that was all that mattered. I made trains, boats, Donald Duck and Noddy too but nothing as good as Geraldine’s. Teaching me the correct way to cast on was easy enough but she battled to teach me how to pick up the stitches around the neckline so she just gave up and did it for me herself. What a help that was.
Once we were talking about Scrabble, it really was all the rage at that time, and I told her I had beaten Jonny in the game we had had the previous evening. She said “I never beat Ginger, he wins all the time” Feeling a little smug I said “Jonny and I are pretty even, sometimes I win and sometimes he does” Her answer was “I never win, but then Ginger is very clever” I am sure she did not mean it to sound as if Jonny was stupid but that’s how it came out and we had a good laugh over it.
One of the teachers at the infant school while Dominic was there was Wendy Hall. When we first met her she and her husband Stuart had three little boys Ian, Robin, and Alex and she was expecting another baby. It was another boy whom they called Andrew. She was a natural teacher, she really loved the kids. She was a real mother hen to her little brood and always called them her “Chickadees” even when they were grown up and at university. She and Stuart were great fun and we often got together to play Scrabble. She was very gullible and many times when we played when it was Jonny’s turn he would say something like “How do you spell quintessential?” or some other high scoring word. Her eyes would nearly pop out of her head, she would say “You haven’t got that have you Jonny?” and he would say “No I just wanted to know how to spell it” He caught her again and again. We went to visit them when they had just had a new pool built. By then their youngest son Andrew, who was always called Dooby, was about two. He wanted to show us how he could dive so we all had to sit and watch. He went to the other end of the garden and shouted, “Watch me”. Then he ran across the lawn, up on to the veranda (He was so small he had to stop and climb up the step), he ran along the veranda, climbed down the two steps, across the lawn near the pool, onto the cement surround of the pool up to the side of the pool, then he stopped to make sure that everyone was still watching and jumped into the pool. We all applauded and said how clever he was so he did it again and again, each time with the long run up before dropping off the edge. He was sure that the longer the run the better the ‘dive’ so he tried to make it longer and longer each time. Dooley could not manage to say “Dominic” so he used to say “Donimic” instead so that became the Hall family’s name for Dominic. And when he went to visit them when they had moved to Port Elizabeth many years later when he was a working lad he was still Donimic.
When the junior school decided to start Mini Rugby there was an article about it in the local paper. Until then only the high schools played rugby and the juniors played soccer. The headlines of the article were “The Rugby Coach wears lipstick”. Of course it was a very eye catching headline but when one read the article it explained that the new coach who was starting up mini rugby at the school was a lady called Maureen Richardson. Maureen who had grown up in a large family of boys and had joined in with them when their father had taken but as in those days girls just did not play rugby she could not put her ability into action and the best she could do was to train the little ones. It was a pretty hard job to try and get these lads into some sort of shape. I remember watching two lads from the same team during a match having a tug-of-war over the ball, they both wanted to score the try. There was one lad, Stuart Pettigrew who was the star of the whole team. He was a soccer player and did well at that but I think Maureen used to twist his arm to get him to come and play with the rugby team, as he was the only one who really shone. I remember he had bright red hair and freckles and eventually went to South Africa to the jockey academy at Summerfield. If one of the other lads had an slight injury during a game Maureen would replace them pretty quickly as there was always far more boys who wanted to play than places for them but when Stuart went down Maureen would just shout “Come on Stu, get up, get up, get up”, our team could not manage without him.
Maureen’s son was with my two in the cubs and scouts and each year they would all compete in the Scout cooking competition. It was always held at the caravan park on the Old Umtali Rd. An area would be roped off and small teams of boys would have to set up their fires, cook the food, dish it up to the judges and clean up after them. There were marks given for the taste of the cooking, the presentation and the cleanliness of the site. By the time we were first involved Maureen and her son were old hands at it. Although we parents were allowed to watch we were not allowed to give any help or advise, so the trick was to give them a lot of training beforehand and make sure they knew what was expected. One year Maureen had given her son a small container with some scouring powder in it so that he could get his pots and pans bright and clean after he had finished the cooking. The only problem was that she had also given him a container with flour in it so that he could coat the meat patties in it before he cooked them. Not being an experienced cook the lad got the two mixed up and coated his patties in scouring powder. We wondered what the judges made of that but we know that the team did not realise the mistake until they tried to scour the pans with flour.
Maureen, Geraldine, Wendy and I were on quite a few different committees together; I know we were all on the Scout committee at the same time. I remember going to a committee meeting at Wendy’s house one evening. I thought the meeting had been set for 7 o’clock but found out when I got there that it was not going to start until 7.30. Wendy said “Don’t worry about that, we can have a bit of a chat before the others get here, and we can have a drink too” She asked me what I wanted, I asked for a fruit juice but she wanted us to have a ‘real drink’ I did not know what to ask for so asked if she had any Cinzano, she did not have that so I asked if she had any sherry. That was a negative too so I went back to the fruit juice. Wendy said “No we are going to have a real drink, come on what will you have?” I could not think of anything else so said, “Have you got any brandy?” She said “Yes, yes, yes I have brandy” She poured all that was in it the bottle into a glass. There had not been more than a tablespoon left bottle but she was happy that I had my drink and with the glass filled up with some sort of mixer I was happy too. At about 7.30 the rest of the committee members started to arrive and Wendy offered them all drinks too. (I am not sure what she intended to give them as there really wasn’t a lot in the drinks cabinet) “Come on, come on” she urged, “have something to drink, but you can’t have any brandy because Marina has just drunk all of it”. A whole tablespoon full and she made it sound as if I had had a bottle full. I teased her about that for years.
Stuart was a metallurgical engineer and was offered a better job in Bulawayo so the family all move there, we missed them although we did keep in touch for many years afterwards. Loosing Wendy as a teacher was a blow to the school too. She had always taught the kindergarten class and was not supposed to teach them to count to more than twenty but when she went to Bulawayo she got a job teaching the children in the second year and they were allowed to count up to fifty, I think it was. In the weeks before they were due to leave we teased her that she would have to learn to count up to fifty now. She told us that one of the mothers had actually said “So you will be teaching second grade now, it must be nice to get that promotion after all those years of teaching the kindergarten.
We always seemed to be raising money for something or other. We held jumble sales, raffles, dances and even a baby show. Either for the school, the scouts, the swimming club or the church, we must have baked hundreds of cakes and made a ton of sandwiches in our time. The country was still fighting a terrorist war and our husband all had a certain amount of military commitment but we all helped each out and if any woman who was on her own needed a handy man for something there was always someone who would help out.
I have mentioned before a friend called Geraldine Norton, when I first met her she was living out of the suburb in a house on an experimental tobacco farm, but they bought a house opposite us later on. Her husband was an electro- plater and worked with Rhodesian Airway. Their three boys were Kevin, Andrew, and Rodney and were a similar age to mine so they all played together. I always remember that her boys were lightly built and could run like the wind and my two were much stockier and usually beat them when it came to swimming. I have a theory that one is either a swimmer or a runner and not usually both. Geraldine drove an oldish VW Beetle and when it was her turn to collect the kids from school they would be packed in like sardines, with most of them wanting to get a turn in the ‘dog box’, the small parcel carrier behind the back seat. I remember once Geraldine and her boys had spent the afternoon with us and left to go out to the farm for their supper. After supper when I wanted to give Dominic his tablets I could not find them. I searched everywhere and began to worry that maybe one of the Norton boys had picked them up. The phenobarb were very bitter in taste and I did not think any child would pop the whole lot into their mouth but I thought I had better be on the safe side and call Geraldine because if they had taken them it could be very dangerous. I rang and rang but got no answer. I thought it was strange, as she had said that she was not going out that evening. I started imagining all sorts of things and got quite worried. If I remember rightly Jonny was away and I did not have any transport so there was nothing I could do except keep looking for the tablets. You know what it is like when you have looked in all the likely places you start looking in the unlikely places, in the oven, in the fridge, that sort of thing. I eventually found them in the broom cupboard and was very relieved to see them. I can’t for the life of me think why I would have put them there.
Geraldine was a very talented knitter and decorated the most fabulous birthday cakes. She showed me the correct way to cast on when knitting and she once made a lovely snakes and ladders birthday cake for one of my boys, it was Dominic I think. Until then they had had to put up with my very amateurish efforts. The very first time I tried to make one I made an aeroplane for Jonathan. To me it looked more like a tombstone than an aeroplane but Jonathan was pleased with it so that was all that mattered. I made trains, boats, Donald Duck and Noddy too but nothing as good as Geraldine’s. Teaching me the correct way to cast on was easy enough but she battled to teach me how to pick up the stitches around the neckline so she just gave up and did it for me herself. What a help that was.
Once we were talking about Scrabble, it really was all the rage at that time, and I told her I had beaten Jonny in the game we had had the previous evening. She said “I never beat Ginger, he wins all the time” Feeling a little smug I said “Jonny and I are pretty even, sometimes I win and sometimes he does” Her answer was “I never win, but then Ginger is very clever” I am sure she did not mean it to sound as if Jonny was stupid but that’s how it came out and we had a good laugh over it.
One of the teachers at the infant school while Dominic was there was Wendy Hall. When we first met her she and her husband Stuart had three little boys Ian, Robin, and Alex and she was expecting another baby. It was another boy whom they called Andrew. She was a natural teacher, she really loved the kids. She was a real mother hen to her little brood and always called them her “Chickadees” even when they were grown up and at university. She and Stuart were great fun and we often got together to play Scrabble. She was very gullible and many times when we played when it was Jonny’s turn he would say something like “How do you spell quintessential?” or some other high scoring word. Her eyes would nearly pop out of her head, she would say “You haven’t got that have you Jonny?” and he would say “No I just wanted to know how to spell it” He caught her again and again. We went to visit them when they had just had a new pool built. By then their youngest son Andrew, who was always called Dooby, was about two. He wanted to show us how he could dive so we all had to sit and watch. He went to the other end of the garden and shouted, “Watch me”. Then he ran across the lawn, up on to the veranda (He was so small he had to stop and climb up the step), he ran along the veranda, climbed down the two steps, across the lawn near the pool, onto the cement surround of the pool up to the side of the pool, then he stopped to make sure that everyone was still watching and jumped into the pool. We all applauded and said how clever he was so he did it again and again, each time with the long run up before dropping off the edge. He was sure that the longer the run the better the ‘dive’ so he tried to make it longer and longer each time. Dooley could not manage to say “Dominic” so he used to say “Donimic” instead so that became the Hall family’s name for Dominic. And when he went to visit them when they had moved to Port Elizabeth many years later when he was a working lad he was still Donimic.
When the junior school decided to start Mini Rugby there was an article about it in the local paper. Until then only the high schools played rugby and the juniors played soccer. The headlines of the article were “The Rugby Coach wears lipstick”. Of course it was a very eye catching headline but when one read the article it explained that the new coach who was starting up mini rugby at the school was a lady called Maureen Richardson. Maureen who had grown up in a large family of boys and had joined in with them when their father had taken but as in those days girls just did not play rugby she could not put her ability into action and the best she could do was to train the little ones. It was a pretty hard job to try and get these lads into some sort of shape. I remember watching two lads from the same team during a match having a tug-of-war over the ball, they both wanted to score the try. There was one lad, Stuart Pettigrew who was the star of the whole team. He was a soccer player and did well at that but I think Maureen used to twist his arm to get him to come and play with the rugby team, as he was the only one who really shone. I remember he had bright red hair and freckles and eventually went to South Africa to the jockey academy at Summerfield. If one of the other lads had an slight injury during a game Maureen would replace them pretty quickly as there was always far more boys who wanted to play than places for them but when Stuart went down Maureen would just shout “Come on Stu, get up, get up, get up”, our team could not manage without him.
Maureen’s son was with my two in the cubs and scouts and each year they would all compete in the Scout cooking competition. It was always held at the caravan park on the Old Umtali Rd. An area would be roped off and small teams of boys would have to set up their fires, cook the food, dish it up to the judges and clean up after them. There were marks given for the taste of the cooking, the presentation and the cleanliness of the site. By the time we were first involved Maureen and her son were old hands at it. Although we parents were allowed to watch we were not allowed to give any help or advise, so the trick was to give them a lot of training beforehand and make sure they knew what was expected. One year Maureen had given her son a small container with some scouring powder in it so that he could get his pots and pans bright and clean after he had finished the cooking. The only problem was that she had also given him a container with flour in it so that he could coat the meat patties in it before he cooked them. Not being an experienced cook the lad got the two mixed up and coated his patties in scouring powder. We wondered what the judges made of that but we know that the team did not realise the mistake until they tried to scour the pans with flour.
Maureen, Geraldine, Wendy and I were on quite a few different committees together; I know we were all on the Scout committee at the same time. I remember going to a committee meeting at Wendy’s house one evening. I thought the meeting had been set for 7 o’clock but found out when I got there that it was not going to start until 7.30. Wendy said “Don’t worry about that, we can have a bit of a chat before the others get here, and we can have a drink too” She asked me what I wanted, I asked for a fruit juice but she wanted us to have a ‘real drink’ I did not know what to ask for so asked if she had any Cinzano, she did not have that so I asked if she had any sherry. That was a negative too so I went back to the fruit juice. Wendy said “No we are going to have a real drink, come on what will you have?” I could not think of anything else so said, “Have you got any brandy?” She said “Yes, yes, yes I have brandy” She poured all that was in it the bottle into a glass. There had not been more than a tablespoon left bottle but she was happy that I had my drink and with the glass filled up with some sort of mixer I was happy too. At about 7.30 the rest of the committee members started to arrive and Wendy offered them all drinks too. (I am not sure what she intended to give them as there really wasn’t a lot in the drinks cabinet) “Come on, come on” she urged, “have something to drink, but you can’t have any brandy because Marina has just drunk all of it”. A whole tablespoon full and she made it sound as if I had had a bottle full. I teased her about that for years.
Stuart was a metallurgical engineer and was offered a better job in Bulawayo so the family all move there, we missed them although we did keep in touch for many years afterwards. Loosing Wendy as a teacher was a blow to the school too. She had always taught the kindergarten class and was not supposed to teach them to count to more than twenty but when she went to Bulawayo she got a job teaching the children in the second year and they were allowed to count up to fifty, I think it was. In the weeks before they were due to leave we teased her that she would have to learn to count up to fifty now. She told us that one of the mothers had actually said “So you will be teaching second grade now, it must be nice to get that promotion after all those years of teaching the kindergarten.
We always seemed to be raising money for something or other. We held jumble sales, raffles, dances and even a baby show. Either for the school, the scouts, the swimming club or the church, we must have baked hundreds of cakes and made a ton of sandwiches in our time. The country was still fighting a terrorist war and our husband all had a certain amount of military commitment but we all helped each out and if any woman who was on her own needed a handy man for something there was always someone who would help out.
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