APartridge

(note to the reader: I don’t know what this is. It may be a chapter of something bigger or just left alone as an experiment in massively overdoing descriptive language. Who knows? I’m seldom in control of these sorts of things). The key was right where he said it would be. The lock clicked, door swinging silently inwards on well-maintained and freshly oiled hinges. I stepped into the narrow hallway, ivory-pine tinted wooden flooring, a small and old-fashioned telephone table to the right of the door. I smiled, running my hand over the surface of the table, remembering similar ones from other-nether worlds, rotary-dial telephone still plugged into the wall. A blue notepad and pencil lay neatly next to the telephone. I lifted it and turned the first few pages. Nothing but slight indents: a firm handwriting. Beneath the table a closed telephone book, on a wooden slatted shelf. I knelt down and ran my hand over the spine. Cracked, well used, some dog-eared pages, perhaps turned in as b...

So back in 1989, whilst in Standard Six (Grade 8 now, I believe) and travelling to a neighbouring school for an athletics meeting, I had to stand for the duration of the trip as all the seats had already been taken. Standing in the aisle, I had one hand on those handle jobbies that hang from the ceiling, and bracing myself against the turns and the stops and the starts with the other hand on the back of the seat next to me. Most of these buses were not in a great condition. Sure, they ran well enough and I don’t recall ever having a breakdown en route to a sporting event, but the interior was (mostly) not well maintained. They weren’t dirty, per se, but the plastic of the seats were often cracked or broken, and most of the wooden seat backs were scratched into as years of travelling pupils added their story to the cornucopia of graffiti already etched into them. Food wrappers were kicked aside, tin cans rattled around as the bus took a turn, even the windows were not immune to Ma...

This morning my wife, both children and I took the 24.1km drive out to Canal Walk to watch their latest holiday theatre for children, Alice in Wonderland. After the success of last year’s Peter Pan, we happily invested the ninety-five bucks per person only to “see the look on their little faces”. Having left at 10h00 and only a third (if that) of the route done, we hit major traffic. By 10h25 we realised we weren’t going to make it in time for 11h00 and turned off the highway, hit the nearest Checkers and exchanged our tickets at the Computicket kiosk for the 12h30 show. Once done, and having contacted each of the other three families to let them know we were not going to see them, we back-roaded it through and arrived in time for some KFC before we joined the queue. The kids all agog at the lights and the pageantry, we got some great seats in the third row, centre stage. Created by theatre duo Fred Abrahamse and Marcel Meyer of Shakespearian-stroke-Baxter Theatre fame, it was su...

Sometime in the region of 1995 or so, give or take a year, myself and my friend Hoover decided to get a place together. It wasn't much. Neither were our salaries, on the odd occasion that we actually managed to get our acts together long enough to earn one. Within a week of moving in, and now getting hungry and increasingly unwilling to keep hitting our folks up for food, we knew that we had to attempt cooking. We knew whiskey. We didn't know cooking. This was going to be a whole new kettle of fish. In retrospect, the first meal should have set the scene, should have given us an indication that cooking was not for us and was best avoided. We'd gone out to do a little shopping, and included in that shopping was a pack of twenty-four uncooked mini-pies. You know the kind: you get your chicken, your mince, your spinach and feta, and whatever else. We also bought a baking tray, because this sounded smart and oh-so cosmopolitan, and a tin of Spray and Cook. We'd both see...

When I was in high school, I would spend some of my school holidays working at a dog kennels and cattery in Vereeniging. Only 60kms from my home in Johannesburg, the dog kennels were in the rural outskirts of the city. Nothing much grew in that part of Vereeniging. This was not the agricultural centre of the city. Any greenery or plant life was the sole reserve of the residence or business itself, fed mostly from boreholes. No rivers ran close enough for irrigation purposes. The dog kennels were owned and run by Aunty Jean Aucamp, an old family friend. She had taken her retirement savings and invested in this business. Sometimes, I used to think, she bought it as a place to keep her cats and whatever money came along as a result was a bonus. She was one of very few people I have met that I can truly call a saint. The house itself was very old. Creaky wooden floors, huge rooms, ornate cornicing and carved ceilings. Wrought iron light fixtures festooned most rooms, and the kitchen ...

My story starts, I would think, in about the late '70's or early '80's, in the southern suburbs of Johannesburg.   My mother, a stay-at-home mom and chronic cleaner, got it into her head to start herself a small cat-breeding business. Whether she was simply bored, or expected that it may somehow turn into a viable concern, is lost to me. The initial stock (if we can call it that) was brought in, large caging areas were built, various sundries and whatnots purchased, and the whole show hit the road. The mechanics of this operation is not really important. She started small, a few kittens here, a few kittens there, specialising in Persians. It got so that a house full of little fur balls was the norm; it was nothing to have five sleeping on your bed, another four finishing your breakfast before you got to the table, six more staring at you from the top of the curtain rail. And the house never smelled, as you'd be expecting. All credit to my mom, the chronic cleane...