Friendship and the excuse for a braai

 

Subject: Friendship, and the excuse for a braai.

It's funny and rewarding how events in life offer so much for us to learn from. Our relationship with people usually sits on top of the tree, it's the most lasting but it's also the setting those people were raised in which made all the difference.

I have a friend who is not at all well, he is a proper friend who you would always be rewarded with a warm sincere welcome when in their company, not the reaction  of competing forces but a quiet respect which makes such a meeting so rewarding. He is from South Africa and grew up, often as a young person barefoot  in a rural community of a small platteland town, where interpersonal relationships were paramount. Manners maketh the man as they say. Opa and Omar  kept watch from their stoop as the children learnt not to stray too far from an unspoken respect people had for each other, a simple  inter personal respect which becomes ingrained and stays their whole life. A firm handshake on arrival and another when leaving, seals the social event and becomes a bond until the next meeting.

My memories of that intimate respect and bonheim,  came to me when remembering my first evening in Cape Town. It was Christmas Eve, 1962, arriving from a partially chaotic journey from Europe we were transported  into this peaceful, social lagoon, and a house in Camps Bay owned by Cecil and Nina Austin. After the bish-bash competition for space and recognition in England we were shown the delightful, unassuming hospitality of Cape Town by Cecil and Nina.  An amazing, adagio display of impeccable warmth and good manners every time we visited them. Not only did their house provide a panoramic  view looking out over the ocean, the twinkling lights of Camps Bay and Clifton Beach edging the sea, paradise to our proletarian eyes, the balmy air, the sound of the cicada and the distant crash of the surf enhanced by good food and excellent company, made this one of many happy occasions for this impulsive 21 year old Yorkshireman.

Cape Town of the 1960s, (I was only there a year before moving on to Australia) was a beautiful majestic place, majestic in terms of its scenery which encompassed the huge backdrop of Table Mountain on who's slopes Cape Town nestled between it and the ocean. With the mountain behind the city descended in tiers, Orangezicht  and Vredehoek the highest suburbs , the loverly and exclusive Mount Nelson Hotel with its guarded, gated entrance and manicured lawns. Across the road the upper entrance to one of the cities great pleasures, the ubiquitously named 'Companies Gardens' flanked by the heavily tree lined Government Avenue, itself flanked by the Houses of Parliament. A place to walk and escape the bustle of the city, the lawns and walkways, the statues and park benches, the squirrels ever alert clinging onto the trunk of a tree but quite happy to take nuts from your hand.

The lower gates took you out past the St George's Anglican Cathedral onto Adderley Street and down past the what to us in those days were expensive shops such as Stutterfords. Adderley St became the imposing Heerengracht with Jan van Riebeecks statue gazing out to sea towards the docks and the piers alongside which the great P&O liners lay prior to setting off with their £10 settles to Australia. The Castle ships with their precise routine of a Tuesday arrival from Southampton and a Thursday departure back to the Uk. The expectation of tourists and immigrants on Tuesdays as they left the ship to walk into town and the more teary departure of friends and family leaving to go to Europe, (some for good), on Thursday. The pent up emotion as the ship eased away from the dock, the paper ribbons  grasped tightly one from the ship the other by those standing on dry land,  the ribbon growing tighter as the ship pulled away the emotion bubbling over in tears of sadness and laughter until the ribbon parted and the umbilical cord broke.

Happy times under what seemed a never ending blue sky and the excuse for a braai