NABLOPOMO | Diary of an Adventurous Retiree

NABLOPOMO

Baby Brother reminded me of the history of the name Quintella. Ever since he was a small child he has had an insatiable appetite for things of yore so he was always attentive when stories of the past were discussed. As he was much younger, he spent more time alone with Granny, soaking up her stories and storing them away in his encyclopaedic memory. It was the previous owner of the property that named it Quintella and this was after a town in Spain that she had visited. Granny and Grandpa liked the name so they kept it.

When we were very young two of my mother’s siblings were still living at home – Tony, the oldest was a bachelor till I was 10 or 11 and he took a keen interest in us all although we all knew and accepted that Big Brother was the favourite. Then there was Lee, the baby sister who I can still remember being in school uniform! Unfortunately, when I was seven, she was whisked away to Australia by her husband and has been there ever since!

Uncle Toto and Gramps, with Big Brother totally involved in the construction and design, built us a treehouse like no other. It was high in a gum tree in a faraway corner of the garden. This was no ordinary plank on a branch; this was like a real house with windows and curtains made by Granny and a leak-proof roof. It had proper little cupboards that were well provisioned and we ascended via a ladder that was nailed to the trunk. It even had a telephone – one Big Brother made with jam tins and string.

Imagine the modern child playing with those in this day of high technology. We would call down to gran and she would answer in a serious tone of voice or call us down for meals. How many hours didn’t we spend in this our very own house imagining we were shipwrecked or abandoned and having the time of our lives with no adult interference.

Miles away at the other end of the garden there was a swing made from an old tyre. Is there anything more thrilling to a child than to swing as high and as dangerously as possible. Uncle Toto used to say how high do you want it – how hard must I push and we would yell – “Give me “the works” Uncle To – Give me the works!” And with his powerful arms he would push and we’d go around in ever widening circles, higher and higher and higher till we screamed in glee.

The garden and house were haunted! Or that is what some people thought. Granny said they were friendly spirits and that it was a happy home and there was nothing to fear. But one of Mom’s cousins when sleeping over, awoke one night and encountered a ghostly woman who frightened the daylights out of him. None of Gran’s reassurances put his fears to rest and he never slept over again!

In one nook of our magical garden was a rather spooky fishpond. It had the clubhouse on one side (more of that another time) and bushes and hedges surrounding it so it was sort of separate with a little gate that opened into the nook. An eerie silence hovered over it, but it didn’t bother me and I would play there quite often. Granny told me that she’d seen the ‘lady’ there a few times. “She was searching,” she said, “looking under the bushes and into the pond, but she never spoke.”

“Did you speak to her, Granny?” I asked.

“No – I just watched her and wondered what she was looking for. Then one day I found it.”

“What?” I asked. “What did you find, Gran?”

“It was a brooch – a ruby brooch – it must have been precious to her.”

I felt a chill of excitement race down my back. “Did you tell her, Gran. What did she say?”

“No, I never got the chance to tell her. She never appeared again.”

“I think she must have wanted you to have it, Gran.”

“Yes, now her soul can rest in peace because she knows her treasure has been found.”

I haven’t thought about that story in years and wonder now what happened to the brooch because I can’t ever remember Granny showing it to me – but perhaps she did! Maybe Baby Brother will know.

Perhaps she looked like this?

Besides all the clocks and watches in my grandparents’ house there was also a magical piano. It was a pianola and didn’t this give us some good times. All we had to do was insert the paper roll and pump the pedals and hey presto you had music! I found this definition in Wikipedia.

“A pianola is a self-playing piano containing a pneumatic mechanism that operates the piano action via pre-programmed music recorded on perforated paper. ”

Here is a picture of one just like it.

The songs it played are as clear as ever in my head – There’ll alway be an England while there’s a country lane tra-la-la (We were very Colonial in those days) And Be my love, Violetta which we loved as we had an aunt by that name! I remember Grandpa singing loudly to the music when we played and of course we would join in too.

I loved visiting my grandparents with my parents but also on my own or with one or all of my siblings. Not a hair was turned, when even as young as 8, I would catch the train from Fish Hoek and take the half hour trip alone to Plumstead. Packed bag in hand I would walk to Ophir road but sometimes Gran would meet me on the way. Even if I was the only grandchild there I would amuse myself in the neverending garden. There was just so much to explore. Pretend games were the order of the day – I would be a pioneering explorer or a princess lost in the woods waiting to be rescued – usually by Grandpa calling me to tea or lunch. One could not starve in our magical garden though – it was dotted with every possible fruit tree and berry bush – there were loquats to gorge on, the juiciest nartjies to pick and suck and loganberries on the hedge which sometimes left dreadful stains on one’s clothes. We also had plums, peaches, nectarines, quince, oranges and lemons. Then there was the vegetable patch. Uncle Toto even grew mielies and potatoes. So if we were besieged in the treehouse we got our supplies from the land!

Of course Granny, being a ‘real’ old fashioned early 20th century grandma, was constantly in the kitchen cooking wonderful meals, baking scones, chocolate cakes and milk tert not to mention the delicious jams and preserves she produced. Did I mention the fig tree? Big Brother developed a taste for fig preserve, I am sure, from the wonderful ones Gran did from the spoils of that tree.

The days seemed endless, the love eternal and the sun always seemed to shine. But no, I do remember winter. More on that and other memories another day!

It is National Blog Post Month and I have decided to take the challenge. This means I have to do a blog post every day of the month of November. NABLOPOMO So join me or not as I waffle about whatever comes into my head each day this month.

Perhaps this is a sign of old age but I have found myself dreaming of the good old days and I mean the really old days of my distant childhood! It’s fortunately the good memories that have resurfaced and the love I feel for those who have gone before me have come flooding back.

There is a place I like to return to in my memory. A place that if I think about it played a huge part in shaping who I am today. My grandparents had a home on an acre plot in Ophir Road, Plumstead, Cape Town. It was called Quintella – I never thought to ask why it was called this but I always loved the name. Today I googled it and found that it a girls’ name meaning First Rose. This is what else I found about the name. “Quintella are lively, imaginative, enthusiastic and optimistic. Quintella are expressive and inspire others wherever they go. Quintella possess great verbal skills which make them good comedian, artist or writer.” And that is a perfect description of the home I remember so well! It was indeed a lively place with plenty of opportunity to use your imagination. There was plenty of optimism and enthusiasm and inspiration coming from both of our grandparents,our parents and our aunts and uncles. There was lots of talking, lots of laughing and lots and lots of creating.

The house was a simple one made in parts of brick, tin and clapboard. Well the internal walls were of clapboard and you could knock on them which when we were kids was so much fun.

A long unpaved driveway led all the way to the shed at the end of the property but there was a clearing under the pine trees near the gate where visitors parked their vehicles and then walked to the kitchen door which was where everyone entered. There was no front door as such. The door from the dining room led to the front garden. The property boasted the most beautiful and enormous pine trees – we called them Denneball trees as the Afrikaans word for pine is denne. The ‘denneballs’ would fall to the ground and the nuts from them scatter on the drive way. I grew up on those nuts; sitting on the back step smashing them open with a rock was the best way to enjoy them. We even fed them to the fox terrier, Atom who just gobbled them as eagerly as we did.

Now Atom – he brings back some good memories. There was Sparky his wire-haired mother too – She produced litter after litter of pups much to our delight as there is nothing like a warm puppy to love. But how sad we were when they were sent off to new homes at six weeks of age. Atom was a lively, smooth haired black and white bundle of energy. He romped with us and we never tired of throwing a ball for him while Sparky was gentler and quieter and guarded us with her life. When my baby brother was still in a pram she never left its side and growled at whatever stranger wanted to peep in at him.

The kitchen was large a the hub of the home. Granny presided and there was a big wooden table in the middle. Everything happened at that table – it was the work surface, the breakfast nook, the place where the horse meat was cut up into chunks for the pets who knew exactly what time to come and catch the pieces as they were thrown to the kitchen floor.

Granny was a proper granny. They broke the mould after she was born. She had white hair and wore glasses. She was plump and soft and warm and cuddly. She had a wide lap and loving arms. She never got cross and had endless patience and a million stories. Granny recited the most delightful poems and sang the sweetest songs. She smelt powdery and flowery and she was beautiful. We all adored her and wanted to spend every spare minute with her. We loved our grandpa too. He was bald and bony and jovial and fun. When he sneezed we all jumped out of our skin it was so loud. His hands were like sandpaper and he could scratch your back without using his nails! “These are working hands,” he boasted. “Not the hands of a nancy boy!” O how we loved those hands! Grandpa could do anything. He could make anything. He always had a plan. “I could have become an engineer,” he told us. “But I was poor and my mother couldn’t afford high school let alone university.” Because grandpa was a very clever man – an inventor – he always had bright ideas for doing something better. Gramps was never still – he was always hammering, fixing, making creating – gadgets for the home – (the toilet roll was a musical box) go carts for us to ride and kites for us to fly. He was a real hands of grandpa! When he was sitting still, it was at his workbench in the clock room – he would sit with magnifying monocle squeezed on one eye mending an endless number of watches and clocks. It was his hobby and a way of making extra cash. The clock room was where we as children slept when we stayed over. The walls were lined with a variety of different loudly ticking clocks, waiting to be returned to their owners and these cuckooed and chimed through the night as well. But these friendly, comforting noises did not disturb us at all. Nor did Grandpa’s own Grandfather’s clock in the dining room. How I loved watching him winding and setting it. It kept perfect time and I loved that old clock chiming the quarter hour and gonging out the hours.

There are many more memories which I think I’d better save for future posts. My grandparents set a very high grandparenting standard. And so did my parents – what hope have I with such an example to follow!

I have been a granny for 18 years now and I realise that I’m a 21st century model. They don’t make them like they used to!