93) Off to see the world
Doug and Jonathan both wanted to go overseas to “see the world” so they planned to go together. Jonathan kept trying to tie Doug down to a definite date for them to go overseas but Doug was not really ready to go, he kept finding reasons for delaying the trip. Eventually Jonathan decided to go alone and he started to prepare for his trip. He resigned from Eskom and for a short while worked for a contractor in the Sasol plant, where oil was made from coal. He worked pretty hard there and made good money. One thing he needed to do was to change his Apprenticeship certificate. As an English speaking South African his certificate should have been issued in English but there had been a mix up and his had been issued in Afrikaans. The Afrikaans certificate read “Met Lof” which means “With Distinction” We were sure that if he needed to show his certificate to anyone in England while he was there they would not understand and might think it was something to do with a ‘meat loaf’. Jonathan telephoned the apprenticeship board in Pretoria and we went through to collect his new English certificate. While there we bought his plane ticket using some of the money that he had earned on the Sasol contract. I think he paid R999 for his ticket as I remember he paid in cash and he gave me the one rand that he got for his change.
One of the things I wanted Jonathan to do before he left was to sort out all his belongings. When his dad had gone overseas many years before he had left things with his mother. While he was away she and his step dad had moved house a few times and his mother had passed away so a lot of Jonny’s things were mislaid and he never did find them. I told Jonathan that if he got all his stuff together into a few boxes I would look after it and would take it with us wherever we might go but I did not want to carry his rubbish all over the place. If I knew that his boxes contained things he really wanted I would look after them for him. He started to sort out a lifetime of accumulated belongings. He spent a lot of time sitting on the floor of his bedroom looking through all of his stuff and trying to decide what he wanted and what not. Then he would get a call from friends who wanted to see him before he left and he would leave all the things strewn across his floor, he kept saying “I’ll finish it tomorrow”.
He never really got it all done. When it was time to take him to the airport in Johannesburg to catch his plane he still had not sorted out all his stuff or even packed his suit case properly. He was shoving things into his suitcase as we were shouting “Come on Jonathan, it’s time to go”. I was sure he was taking much too much and quickly put the case onto the bathroom scales before we left. I thought it weighed about 97 kgs. As he was only allowed 22 kgs of luggage I was furious that he had not listened to me and sorted things out properly. I got out my calculator and worked out what I thought he would be charged in excess luggage fees. Jonathan was not at all concerned. He said that if he was going to be asked that much (more money than he had) he would just give the things back to us and he would go with his toilet bag and his camera. When we got to the airport he checked his luggage in and was not charged a single cent. I could not work out what happened. I know my maths is not so great but he did have a very heavy suitcase. I might have made a mistake when I put it on the scale; we were in such a hurry and maybe my method of working out the charges was wrong but I still think he should have had to pay something. Maybe he just smiled sweetly at the young lady at the desk and she took pity on him.
Doug arrived at the airport to say “Goodbye” and for a while he was sorry that he had not listened to Jonathan’s nagging and that he was not going too. He promised that he would follow very soon and would get in touch with Jonathan so that they could meet up. About a week after Jonathan left Doug came to see us and said he had lost Jonathan’s address and phone number so could I give it to him again, which I did. A few weeks later Doug came round again and admitted that he had once again lost the address and phone number so we laughingly put it on a piece of cardboard. Writing information on a piece of cardboard is my mother’s method of not loosing it. She always said that a piece of card is much easier to find than a piece of paper so all important information should be put on card. The next time he came and asked for the address once again we gave him on an even bigger piece of cardboard that we said was even harder to lose. He would come every now and again and each time the piece of cardboard got bigger and bigger. He said he could not understand where he had put the last one but promised that this one would be put in a safe place. When a couple of months later Doug did get his act together and leave for England a friend of his was helping him sort out his things and pack his belongings. She told me that she was amazed to find all through his cupboards and draws pieces of cardboard of various sizes with Jonathan’s name and address on them. They were tucked away in nice safe corners and pockets everywhere. But Doug had not taken the address with him, or maybe he just lost it on the way there. When he arrived in the village that Jonathan was living in he did not have a telephone number or an address to contact but by doing a pub crawl around the small village he managed to find Jonathan.
Once in England Jonathan went to Cheddar and stayed with my elder sister Dulcie and her husband Alan. He met is cousins Martin, Frances, Paula and Clare for the first time. They were good to him and helped him to settle in well. By then my mother had sold her home in Swansea and was living in a flat in Cheddar also. Pretty soon Jonathan got a job with a man that was “restoring antique furniture” but from what Jonathan told me I think maybe he was actually “manufacturing antique furniture”. Next he got a job as a tour guide in the Cheddar Caves. The Caves are the main attraction in the area, part of the Cheddar Gorge and the Mendip hills. There were quite a few guides and they came from all over the world South Africa, Canada, Australia, America and any other English-speaking country. As guides were only employed during the summer I suppose the local young people were not really interested in such temporary employment. Jonathan told us that the job could be rather boring and so to liven things up some of the youngsters would make up some amazing and funny stories about the caves and the tourists usually just believed them. I wish I could remember them. I do remember some of the funny questions that the tourists asked though. One lady after having been all around the caves asked, “Where is the Gorge?” She thought the “Gorge” was a big fat man who ate too much, too quickly. Another lady amid questions about the age, size and make up of the stalagmites and stalactites asked, “What time does the bus leave?”
While in Cheddar Jonathan met a lovely Australian girl, Siân Kenvyn who was later to become his wife.
Eventually Jonathan got a permanent job in his trade as an instrument technician. It was with a large company called Honeywell. He was based in Devon and rented a furnished house there but he did a quite a bit of travelling all over the place and managed to see much more of the United Kingdom than I had when I lived there. He worked in different types of factories but mostly in the dairy industry.
In November 1989 he decided that he could not face another winter in England and was ready to move on. Siân was keen to go back to Australia and he wanted to go with her. By then we were living in Natal and they flew back to Australia via South Africa and spent a month with us on their way.
One of the things I wanted Jonathan to do before he left was to sort out all his belongings. When his dad had gone overseas many years before he had left things with his mother. While he was away she and his step dad had moved house a few times and his mother had passed away so a lot of Jonny’s things were mislaid and he never did find them. I told Jonathan that if he got all his stuff together into a few boxes I would look after it and would take it with us wherever we might go but I did not want to carry his rubbish all over the place. If I knew that his boxes contained things he really wanted I would look after them for him. He started to sort out a lifetime of accumulated belongings. He spent a lot of time sitting on the floor of his bedroom looking through all of his stuff and trying to decide what he wanted and what not. Then he would get a call from friends who wanted to see him before he left and he would leave all the things strewn across his floor, he kept saying “I’ll finish it tomorrow”.
He never really got it all done. When it was time to take him to the airport in Johannesburg to catch his plane he still had not sorted out all his stuff or even packed his suit case properly. He was shoving things into his suitcase as we were shouting “Come on Jonathan, it’s time to go”. I was sure he was taking much too much and quickly put the case onto the bathroom scales before we left. I thought it weighed about 97 kgs. As he was only allowed 22 kgs of luggage I was furious that he had not listened to me and sorted things out properly. I got out my calculator and worked out what I thought he would be charged in excess luggage fees. Jonathan was not at all concerned. He said that if he was going to be asked that much (more money than he had) he would just give the things back to us and he would go with his toilet bag and his camera. When we got to the airport he checked his luggage in and was not charged a single cent. I could not work out what happened. I know my maths is not so great but he did have a very heavy suitcase. I might have made a mistake when I put it on the scale; we were in such a hurry and maybe my method of working out the charges was wrong but I still think he should have had to pay something. Maybe he just smiled sweetly at the young lady at the desk and she took pity on him.
Doug arrived at the airport to say “Goodbye” and for a while he was sorry that he had not listened to Jonathan’s nagging and that he was not going too. He promised that he would follow very soon and would get in touch with Jonathan so that they could meet up. About a week after Jonathan left Doug came to see us and said he had lost Jonathan’s address and phone number so could I give it to him again, which I did. A few weeks later Doug came round again and admitted that he had once again lost the address and phone number so we laughingly put it on a piece of cardboard. Writing information on a piece of cardboard is my mother’s method of not loosing it. She always said that a piece of card is much easier to find than a piece of paper so all important information should be put on card. The next time he came and asked for the address once again we gave him on an even bigger piece of cardboard that we said was even harder to lose. He would come every now and again and each time the piece of cardboard got bigger and bigger. He said he could not understand where he had put the last one but promised that this one would be put in a safe place. When a couple of months later Doug did get his act together and leave for England a friend of his was helping him sort out his things and pack his belongings. She told me that she was amazed to find all through his cupboards and draws pieces of cardboard of various sizes with Jonathan’s name and address on them. They were tucked away in nice safe corners and pockets everywhere. But Doug had not taken the address with him, or maybe he just lost it on the way there. When he arrived in the village that Jonathan was living in he did not have a telephone number or an address to contact but by doing a pub crawl around the small village he managed to find Jonathan.
Once in England Jonathan went to Cheddar and stayed with my elder sister Dulcie and her husband Alan. He met is cousins Martin, Frances, Paula and Clare for the first time. They were good to him and helped him to settle in well. By then my mother had sold her home in Swansea and was living in a flat in Cheddar also. Pretty soon Jonathan got a job with a man that was “restoring antique furniture” but from what Jonathan told me I think maybe he was actually “manufacturing antique furniture”. Next he got a job as a tour guide in the Cheddar Caves. The Caves are the main attraction in the area, part of the Cheddar Gorge and the Mendip hills. There were quite a few guides and they came from all over the world South Africa, Canada, Australia, America and any other English-speaking country. As guides were only employed during the summer I suppose the local young people were not really interested in such temporary employment. Jonathan told us that the job could be rather boring and so to liven things up some of the youngsters would make up some amazing and funny stories about the caves and the tourists usually just believed them. I wish I could remember them. I do remember some of the funny questions that the tourists asked though. One lady after having been all around the caves asked, “Where is the Gorge?” She thought the “Gorge” was a big fat man who ate too much, too quickly. Another lady amid questions about the age, size and make up of the stalagmites and stalactites asked, “What time does the bus leave?”
While in Cheddar Jonathan met a lovely Australian girl, Siân Kenvyn who was later to become his wife.
Eventually Jonathan got a permanent job in his trade as an instrument technician. It was with a large company called Honeywell. He was based in Devon and rented a furnished house there but he did a quite a bit of travelling all over the place and managed to see much more of the United Kingdom than I had when I lived there. He worked in different types of factories but mostly in the dairy industry.
In November 1989 he decided that he could not face another winter in England and was ready to move on. Siân was keen to go back to Australia and he wanted to go with her. By then we were living in Natal and they flew back to Australia via South Africa and spent a month with us on their way.
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