Ancyent blog26 High school, wrapping up grade 12

 

And so to the last few months of 12^th grade ….

 

I turned 18 towards the end of 12^th grade, which made me eligible to obtain a driver’s license.  The first step was a written exam to get a learner’s license.  As I mentioned in “Ancyent blog24 High school, grades 9 and 10”, unlike in the US one had to be 18 before one could obtain a learner’s license.  There wasn’t any minimum time requirement between obtaining a learner’s license and obtaining a full driver’s license.  I think some of my classmates who had already been driving on farms or surreptitiously on public roads may have obtained their driver’s license on the same day as their learner’s, or at least with a few days.  I had not tried driving previously and wasn’t particularly interested in being able to drive.  But I realized obtaining a license was a necessary evil, so I obtained my learner’s license very soon after turning 18.  My parents then paid for me to have a few lessons through a driving school, including taking the driving test using the driving school’s vehicle.  In between lessons I practiced in my mother’s Ford Escort with one of my parents in the passenger seat.  Much of the practicing with them was on the roads in our neighborhood, on roads that had been built but with no houses yet (see image below).

Roads in Fern Glen.  The roads below the red line were laid down several years before any houses were built there.

Back then almost all cars in South Africa had a manual gearbox (stick shift in American).  I don’t know if one was allowed to do the driving test in an automatic.  I think if one did one’s license was endorsed to say one was licensed to drive only automatics.  A part of the test involved pulling away from a stopped position on a steep hill (of which Port Elizabeth has plenty).  That is trivially easy in an automatic.  A manual requires much more coordination.  For those who don’t know, one has to engage the handbrake, then release it while simultaneously letting out the clutch and pressing the accelerator (gas pedal in American).  Once one is reasonably good at this, one can hold a car stationary on a hill by finding just the right balance between letting out the clutch and pressing the accelerator.

Aside:  Why is it that so many words related to vehicles differ between American and British/Australian/South African English?  Automobile/car, gas/petrol, hood/bonnet, trunk/boot, gas pedal/accelerator, stick shift/manual … .

The driving school’s vehicle was a Volkswagen Beetle with dual controls.  The clutch on the Beetle was very forgiving, making pulling away on a hill reasonably easy.  The clutch on my mother’s Escort was much more sensitive and difficult to master.  My father became very impatient with my struggles to get the feel of the clutch.  Eventually I became fed up with his irritability and told him I would never drive with him in the car again.  I may not have done so until about 20 years later when he and his new second wife, Margie, visited us in Seattle.  My mother was more calm and so I continued to practice with her in the car. 

After a few lessons from the driving school, I took and passed the driving test.  I haven’t been able to find my old driver’s license.  I don’t even recall what it looked like.  It may have been just a piece of paper.  Unlike in the US, one didn’t have to have one’s license on hand when one was driving.

I had a couple more driving lessons when we lived in Seattle.  We didn’t have a car in the 3+ years we were there, but I needed a license to be able to rent a car a few times when we went on vacation and around the time Lisa was born.  The latter was also when my father and Margie visited us.  They were hoping to see the new granddaughter, but Lisa was late and they had to leave on the next leg of their trip before she was born.  Part of the reason for having lessons was to use the driving school’s car for the test.  I learned something that I hadn’t seen before – and that people here in North Carolina don’t seem to know about.  Seattle has many steep hills.  When people park on a hill, they turn their front wheels so that they are again the curb (kerb in British or South African English), as an extra precaution against rolling down the hill. 

As mentioned earlier, to pass matric one had to pass both official languages and in aggregate.  For the aggregate, one’s first/home language was scored out of 400, the other 5 subjects out of 300 and the aggregate percentage obtained by dividing the total by 19.  At Grey, English counted as our first language.  If one took Afrikaans Higher rather than Afrikaans as second language, then the score for Afrikaans was also out of 400.  To pass, the score out of 400 was considered as being out of 300.  In order to pass Afrikaans as second language one had to get at least 120 out of 300 (that is, 40%) but if taking Afrikaans Higher this meant needing at least 120 out of 400 (that is, 30%), making it easier to get a passing grade.  (I ended up with an E, that is, 40-49%, so passed even without that additional help.) 

Some of the books we had to study in Afrikaans Higher were in Dutch rather than Afrikaans.  I presume that was because back then there weren’t sufficient appropriately literary works in Afrikaans.  I had enough difficulty understanding Afrikaans, making Dutch almost indecipherable.  The only book in either Afrikaans or Dutch whose name I remember was a verse drama (in Afrikaans), Germanicus, by N.P. van Wyk Louw, one of the greatest Afrikaner poets of his era.  The book was set in ancient Rome.

I think our edition of Germanicus looked like this.  (Image found on the internet.)

Here are the few textbooks I kept:

Matric math book and the 4-figure tables we had to use to find logs and trig functions, before the days of pocket calculators

Poetry books from regular English class (left) and Literature class (right).

To improve our Afrikaans, everyone in the school, not just those taking Afrikaans Higher, was supposed (or at least strongly encouraged) to subscribe through the school to the weekly magazine “Huisgenoot” (literal translation “Home Companion”).  Our Afrikaans Higher teacher, Mr. Le Roux, was responsible for the distribution of the magazine, so we usually spent at least one of our Afrikaans classes each week doing the distribution.

I think there were just 7 of us who continued with Afrikaans Higher through 12^th grade.  As can be seen in the prize list below, I received the bilingualism prize.  I certainly wasn’t bilingual then, though I am reasonably so now.  But the prize was awarded to the boy who took Afrikaans Higher and managed the best average for the two official languages.  I wasn’t the best at Afrikaans but was substantially better than the other 6 boys in English, giving me the highest average.

As noted earlier, there was a “Speech Night” and prize giving towards the end of each academic year.  It was before the final exams for the year, so the prizes were based on work up to that point in the year.  As can be seen below, along with the prize for bilingualism, I received the prize for math and shared the prize for physical science.  Also, I was the “Std. X Dux” which is roughly the equivalent of the valedictorian at a US high school.  At least it didn’t require me to make a speech.  If so, I would have regarded that as a punishment rather than a reward.  (My brother Mick was also a prize-winner that year, receiving one of the class prizes in “Std. VII”, that is, grade 9.)  The prizes were mostly books – selected from those that the school bought, rather than us being allowed to request specific books.  At least they were nicely bound.

Program for Speech Night (and prize-giving) November, 1972.  My brother Mick is listed in the “Std. VII” prizes.

Two of the prizes I won in 12^th grade, for math and physical science.

Each award had a certificate inside, such as this one.

Because we had to choose our book prizes from those that had already been bought by the school, the choices were rather limited, with it being mostly the binding that made them special. 

Class prizes in lower grades weren’t bound; they had just a dust cover with the school crest.

It rankled somewhat that sporting achievement seemed to be rated higher than academic achievement.  The school had a three-level award system for each sport, with the levels being referred to as “Colours”, “Merit and “Team”.  (“Merit” is now called “Half colours”.)  These are based on the same principles as awarding of a “blue” or “half blue” which originated at Oxford and Cambridge universities.  From Wikipedia: “A blue is an award of sporting colours earned by athletes at some universities and schools for competition at the highest level. The awarding of blues began at Oxford and Cambridge universities in England.  They are now awarded at a number of other British universities and at some universities in Australia and New Zealand.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_(university_sport).

Boys who received “Colours” wore a white blazer on special occasions, rather than the regular school blazer, as seen in the photo below.  For normal everyday occasions they wore the regular blazer but received a yellow star-shaped patch to sew above (or it may have been below) the school crest on the pocket of the blazer.  Those achieving a “Merit” award received a red star and those with a “Team” award a green star (maybe the colors of those last two were the other way around.  The current criteria for the awards for each sport are detailed on the school’s website at  https://www.greyhighschool.com/sports/awards/.  I don’t know if the criteria were quite as formally specified back in the day.

At some time between when my brother Mick reached 12^th grade and when my other brother Ian reached 11^th grade, the school added “Colours” awards for academics, with Ian being awarded academic “Colours” in grades 11 and 12.  Criteria for academic “Colours” are also on the website, at https://www.greyhighschool.com/academics/awards/.  The photo of the 1979 Grey honors board near the end of this post shows Ian’s name in the section “ACADEMIC STD 10” which is a list of those who received academic “Colours”.  The “(Re)” after his name means that it was a re-award, that is, that he received academic “Colours” in 11^th grade too.  Ian is also listed under “PREFECTS”.  Mick and I were not prefects.  Ian had more self-confidence and leadership potential than the other two of us.

I was reasonably close to earning a “Team” award for athletics (that is, track & field).  The requirement for the “Team” award was to be part of the school’s team in the three athletic meets in which the school competed – a dual meet (with Pearson High), a triangular meet as mentioned in “Ancyent blog25 High school, grade 11 and most of 12” (I think the other two schools were Kingswood College and Graeme College, both in what was then called Grahamstown and now is Makhanda), and a meet with many more schools (from the school report it looks like this was called the Hirsch Shield).  I ran in the first two meets, both of which were on our school’s track.  I wasn’t selected for the third one, probably in part because Grey sent a smaller team to what was an away meet in a different city.  Although I played various other sports, I had no chance of earning an award for any of them.  For instance, for rugby one had to be a regular member of the 1^st team to earn a “Team” award whereas, as noted earlier, apart from once making the 3^rd team, I didn’t get beyond being in the 4^th team.  

The boy in the middle in the front row is wearing a “Colours” blazer.  (Photo from the prospectus on the school’s website.)

Every year the Rector produced an annual report for the School Committee (and all the parents of students) on the school’s performance over the course of the year.  Below is the full report for 1972 to show the breadth of activities.

Grey 1972 Annual Report, cover and back page.  The “Business Game” item at the top of the page reminded me that I had been part of the school’s team, though perhaps n 1971 rather than 1972.

Grey 1972 Annual Report, pages 1 and 2.  Most noteworthy is the first paragraph under “Scholastic Achievements” showing that 6 students failed the matric exams at the end of 1971.  Supplementary Examinations were essentially a do-over, written a month or two after the original results were released.

Grey 1972 Annual Report, pages 3 and 4.  Notable here is the range of sporting activities (continued from the previous page).  

Grey 1972 Annual Report, pages 5 and 6.  I am mentioned in a couple of places on page 5, first under “Grey Union” (continued from the previous page) and then under “Science Club).  Several of the people I have mentioned previously, or mention below, are also listed under these two activities – Rodger Meyer, Jeremy Clampett, Neil Solomons, Glyn Williams, Paul Liesching, Colin Steyl, and the two teachers involved, Gordon “Billy Bauer” and Don Gibbon.

Back then South Africa was quite homophobic.  (It may still be, though in 2006 South Africa became the fifth country in the world to legalize marriages between same-sex couples.  I think that was partly through the urging of Nelson Mandela and enlightened religious figures such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu.)  Single-sex schools were probably particularly homophobic.  There was one boy in our class, whose name I am omitting, who some in the class thought was gay.  He was often teased about that.  I don’t know what evidence they had for assuming that.  He probably wasn’t gay – and may have been the first in our class to get married (to a woman).  He was still married to her when I happened to be in the same Facebook group as his wife a few years ago.  It is because she mentioned how long they had been married that I think he was the first to marry.  (That Facebook group has since been archived.)  Of course, just because he married a woman isn’t proof that he wasn’t gay, but that he was still married to her just a few years ago makes it less likely.

Statistically, it is quite likely that some of the boys in our cohort were gay.  However, I wasn’t aware of any and had (and still have) no interest in whether or not any were. (I also wasn’t aware of which of my classmates had girlfriends.  I have always been somewhat of a loner and didn’t go to any teenage parties.)  At the time I didn’t even know that a couple of people I interacted with were gay.  As I mentioned in “Ancyent blog24 High school, grades 9 and 10”, Ron Whitehead, who along with his wife Ann, had looked after us during our parents’ first overseas trip, later came out as gay.  Also, in “Ancyent blog15 Our old neighborhood in PE, part 2” I wrote that when I re-established contact with Anthony Swart, who was a year younger than my brother Mick, lived next door to us back then, and also went to Grey, he told me that he had come out as gay and had been with his partner for 30 years.  Unfortunately, I have lost contact with Antony again.  The only email address I have for him was at the real estate company for which he worked, and both the email address and the company appear to be defunct.

 

When I was in 12^th grade one of the boys at Grey went a little crazy.  We came to school one morning to find that part of the cricket pitch had been dug up and someone had painted a strange slogan in red on the (white) cricket sightscreen.  I couldn’t remember what it was, but an old friend, Roger Gates, said that it was “ZIGALO” and that this may have been followed by something like “was here”.  The culprit turned out to be one of the boys in the school, Steve Beynon.  Roger said that Steve was in the same math class as him.  Before it was known that Steve was the culprit, one of the others in the class, Julian Every (mentioned in “Ancyent blog24 High school, grades 9 and 10”), said loudly that the guy who did that must be made.  Roger went on to say that Steve, not having been caught yet, indignantly refuted that.  The only other thing I remember about Steve was that he was a good soccer player.  Roger said he thinks that Steve passed away in 2024.

 

Some of my classmates were guilty of a couple of pranks on our last few days of grade 12.  (There may have been more than a couple, but these are the only two I knew about at the time and I haven’t seen reports of any others.) 

The day of our Valedictory Assembly (the last assembly of our high school career) started with the Rector’s academic gown having been placed on the weathervane at the top of the school’s clock tower overnight.  During the night a storm blew the gown onto the flagpole, where it was discovered by the Rector on his 6 AM walk around the school.

One of the culprits was Paul Connell, of the Porky deafness tests back in grade 8.  In Paul’s words:

“Stan Edkins had no idea who had done it, so he asked for the culprits to go to his office. We knew he had no idea who had done it, but there is no point in doing it if no-one knows who it was, so Gimme [Grenville Walter of the “hydrogen floor-ide” quip mentioned in “Ancyent blog25 High school, grade 11 and most of 12”] and I traipsed off, passing about 400 pairs of eyes and reveling in our 15 minutes of fame.

“A postscript to the story – at the European reunion last November [in 2011?], the [current] Rector was at our gathering at the Surrey Oval.  (They always come out to our gathering because it coincides with the Autumn Rugby tests in the UK!) and the story was told.  He asked how we got in to his office, and I told him, thinking our method would have long been sorted, but it appears that the technical trick played was still there, 50 years later.”

I’m not sure what the “technical trick” was.  Paul had broken into the Rector’s office on a previous occasion.  The Rector found out about that occasion too and demanded that Paul tell him how he had got in.  Paul told me back then that he hadn’t wanted to give away the real way he had managed to get in.  So he told the Rector he used a method that he (Paul) had heard of but hadn’t tried – that he had cut a credit card-sized piece from a plastic lunchbox and had slipped that into the door at the level of the lock and used the plastic to push the latch bolt back.  The Rector demanded that Paul show how that was done!  So Paul had to demonstrate something he wasn’t sure would work.  Fortunately for him it did.

Paul and Gimme received “six of the best” for that prank, as did Glyn Williams for the next one.  For details of this one I’ll defer to a report written for the school’s alumni magazine 50 years after the event.  I hadn’t been aware of some of the background aspects before reading this.  The final paragraph mentions a “Farewell Lunch”.  I don’t recall there being one.

The Piano Prank

Looking Back with Ian Pringle

THE VALEDICTORY SERVICE OF 1972 AND THE PIANO PRANK

 This incident took place 50 years ago and when this Class of 1972 gathered together this year at the Reunion to celebrate their 50th Anniversary that prank of note was recalled with hilarity and amusement. It was not however an exactly amusing event to some all those years ago and their Valedictory Service was almost scuttled. Charles Marais was Head Boy in that year and it was only through him that Rector Stan Edkins was pacified and the proceedings of the day were completed.

This episode has never been recorded and may now well rank as the iconic schoolboy prank to ever have been played out at Grey and we would like to thank all those involved, including the prankster, for making it possible for its publication. In earlier years it may well have been regarded as being of a sensitive nature but herewith follows the story as written by Charles who recalls vividly the events of that day.

The Valedictory Service in the De Waal Hall at Grey High School in 1972 began like any other and ended equally much the same as most others. It was however what happened in between that set it aside.

Once all were assembled in the Hall, the Rector, Deputy Rector and prefects were on the stage. The Staff and guests were on the balcony, Robert Selley was seated at the piano offset left of the stage. The Grey boys filled the hall seated in their classes facing the stage.

Silence descended, The Rector announced the hymn “Oh God our Help in Ages Past” (prophetic as it may have been for the following half hour) and nodded to [music teacher] Robert Selley to play the opening chord, which he did but instead of playing F# maj what came out was a chord never before invented by Beethoven or Mozart. It was indeed a ghastly sound… Selley looked in disgust at the piano keys and repeated the chord but with the same result…. Selley looked at Edkins and shook his head and with it, his ample silver fringe [bangs in American English] followed suit and he stood up from the piano stool and theatrically reversed from the piano which would have done Liberace proud. Edkins, by this moment, wasted no time, suspecting terrorism, without a word, turned from the lectern and hastily departed the stage.

There was a moment reminiscent of the effects of a stun grenade in the De Waal Hall like all the air was sucked out of that space…..the shock effect was profound… then chaos descended in a crescendo of explosive noise. No longer was anyone concerned with who was going to be announced as prefect or any other items on the agenda for that matter. In that moment of madness, several prefects jumped off the stage to investigate the piano, led by Deputy Head Boy Bernie Going. While they were scrutinizing the disabled instrument a bemused Robert Selley stood a few paces away shaking his head. The noise in the Hall grew to unsustainable levels … Deputy Rector “Mossie” Long was held frozen in suspended animation for no one could blame him it was unimaginable, one of the great ceremonies of The Grey calendar had been upended. Charles Marais the Head Boy jumped up probably more out of instinct than anything else and with some choice undignified shouts of “Shut up” brought the noise to a halt and announced belatedly that what had happened would never happen again at The Grey.

As though that would remedy the situation... closing the gate after the horse had bolted, besides moments of great originality only have to happen once. Steve Marais added extra merriment by taking photos of Charles on the stage and got a death glare for his trouble in recording history.

It was a few more moments before the prefects found the offending reasons why the piano had been deactivated. A few pieces of scotch tape had been placed across the short vertical part of the piano keys sticking the keys together…completely invisible. Genius in its simplicity. Bernard motioned to Charles that all was sorted. The prefects returned to the stage and Robert Selley to his stool at the piano, although tentatively. Charles Marais then quietly asked Bernard Going to hold the fort while he went out to invite Mr Edkins to return…and with a similar announcement to the school body he left the hall.

Out in the Quad Charles saw the Rector pacing away with his gown blowing out behind him, going away from the hall and War Memorial. Charles caught up with the Rector who was clearly distraught. Charles told the Rector that Bernard Going and the prefects had located the problem and that all was normal again and that he could return to the hall. The Rector stated that he was unable to speak and could not return. Charles implored him to return stating that the Matrics of 1972 could not leave school before the Valedictory Service was completed, it was a right [sic] of passage, and besides the new prefects still had to be announced. The Rector was not ready yet so Charles then took his hymn book from his pocket and handed it to Edkins suggesting that the Rector read from it until his voice returned to normal again. So the two of them went round and round the quad …the Rector reading and Charles listening until Charles could confirm that the great man’s voice had settled down. After about three rounds of the quad, they reentered the hall. The Rector in front was followed by Charles who then took his seat. You could hear a pin drop. When Rector Edkins reached the lectern he looked out over a sea of faces each wondering what would happen next…and for Edkins that must have been a difficult moment knowing that the perpetrators were in the audience staring up at him. The Rector then said, “The boy responsible for this abomination will leave the hall and wait for me in the office.”

After quite a few loaded moments, there was the sound of a chair moving and Glyn Williams got up slowly and turned and slowly walked, head down, and exited the silent hall at the back. The Rector then made the announcement of the hymn, nodded to Robert Selley to play the opening chord which Selley did and the Valedictory went ahead as normal as though nothing had just happened a few minutes previously. The order had returned.

Glyn Williams – The Piano Man is now an attorney in Cape Town and has regularly attended his reunions over the years. We asked him what took place when he owned up and after he left the hall? He replied that a highly upset Rector Edkins confronted him and told him to leave the school immediately! Glyn duly obliged and he then spent the next two hours wandering about Mill Park before he decided to call on the Rector. He duly apologized, took his punishment like a man and was banned from attending the Farewell Lunch but allowed to sit and write his final examinations. With that Glyn became a Grey legend!

 

The last paragraph of the above article mentions writing final examinations.  The Valedictory Assembly was on our last regular day of high school.  After that we had to return for our final examinations.  We came in just on the days we had an examination and only for the duration of the examination, which we wrote in the De Waal Hall.  We still had to wear our school uniforms on those occasions.  For the examinations the desks were spaced widely apart, and we may also have been assigned seats at random, to try to prevent cheating.  The invigilators (“proctors” in the US) were independent of the school, rather than any of our teachers.  I presume that was to prevent teachers providing hints.  Each school tries to get the best results it can, so that it can boast about them.  Having independent invigilators reduces the risk of schools “cheating” which I am sure must have happened in some places.

Cover of the program for the Valedictory Assembly.

Order of the Valedictory Assembly service.

Also in the program was this listing of all of those in 12^th grade in 1972.  The (B) next to some names indicates they were in the boarding house.  I don’t know why that was important enough to include here.

The program also had a photo of all of us.  (This is the same photo as in “Ancyent blog25 High school, grade 11 and most of 12”.)

The matric exam period was spread over at least a couple of weeks in late November and early December.  The exams were all graded centrally, rather than at our school.  This took a few more weeks.  A list of those who had passed was distributed to local newspapers.  In Port Elizabeth this was the Eastern Province Herald.  Copies of the issue with the results could be purchased from just after midnight on the day the results were allowed to be reported.  Many kids gathered outside the E.P. Herald building to purchase a copy of the paper as soon as it came off the press.  To the at least mild amusement of my parents, I was not one of the many, preferring to be asleep at that time.  In mitigation, I was reasonably certain that I had passed, though maybe a little concerned about Afrikaans – as noted earlier, we had to pass both official languages in order to pass overall.  I was more interested in what my overall aggregate was.  That was not reported in the newspaper – just a list of who had passed at each school in the area.

Full results were mailed at about the same time, arriving a few days after the newspaper listing who had passed.  As can be seen below, my overall aggregate (“Grand Total”) was a B (70-79%).  Despite being one of the top schools in the country, no-one at Grey achieved an overall A aggregate that year.  I was rather disappointed to receive just a D for Literature (though happy to receive an E for Afrikaans Higher”).  If I had taken geography rather than literature (or Latin), perhaps I would have managed an A aggregate.

My official matric exam results.

My official matric certificate.

When I visited the school in 2019 I found that my name had been added to a couple of honors board.  I don’t know what the “(CROLL)” after my name and the next two means.  I presume it has something to do with us being the top 3 students because we are the only ones out of alphabetical order.  The “FIRST XV” refers to the 1^st rugby team (there are more than 15 players, so I presume there was a number of games one had to have played to qualify).  The “FIRST XI” refers to the first cricket team.  I don’t know why there are fewer names for the other sports, such as just 3 names for (field) hockey.  In the one for my brother Mick’s 12^th grade year, some of the sports have “COLOURS” before the name of the sport.  As noted earlier in this post, there were three levels of awards for each sport, with specific standards required for each.  The top level is “Colours”, the next is “Half Colours” (which was called “Merit” back then) and the third is ‘Teams”.

 

Grey honors board for 1972.  (The sun was shining through a window and although I tried various angles, this was the best shot I was able to get.)

Grey attendance at National Youth Science Week honors board.  Although I did well enough to attend in 11^th grade, neither I nor anyone else at Grey made it in 1972. 

Grey honors board for 1975.  My brother Mick made the honors board in his 12^th grade year.

Grey honors board for 1979.  My brother Ian also made the honors board in his 12^th grade year, in his case not only for his academic performance but also as a prefect.

So ended my time in high school.  Unlike many of my peers (and my brother Mick), I was sad that my high school days were behind me.  Apart from a few annoyances, such as cadets, I had felt comfortable in that environment.  I wasn’t in a hurry to move on to the next stage of my life which, after a summer break of about three months, involved heading off to university.

Final report, giving not only academic standing but also a list of extra-mural and other activities.

Above is my final report from high school, somewhat like a letter of reference.  Although this is dated February 1973, which is after the external matric exam results were released, it was based on the last internal exams, at the end of the third term, rather than the external matric exams.  I didn’t do anything to try to make myself look good on this report.  Unlike here in the US, at least back then applications to universities in South Africa depended primarily, if not entirely, on final grades from the common external exams.  One didn’t even have to write an essay as part of the application.  I applied to just one university – the University of Cape Town (UCT), the alma mater of both my parents.  There is a university in Port Elizabeth, at the time called the University of Port Elizabeth (UPE) and later rebranded as the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.  UPE was dual medium (English and Afrikaans), with courses in some departments being taught in English and in other departments in Afrikaans.  Math was one of the latter.  My Afrikaans still being very poor at that stage was a secondary reason for not applying to UPE.  My parents used to refer disparagingly to UPE and some of the Afrikaans-medium universities as “tribal colleges” with Afrikaners being the “tribe” in this case.  That was probably partly snobbishness and partly because of perceived lower standards, or at least they didn’t have the same level of international recognition as UCT and the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits, which my brother Ian eventually attended).

I didn’t know what I wanted to do in life, though going to university seemed to be a good way to postpone having to join the real world.  According to an item on page 2 of the Grey High 1972 annual report, the school had a School Counsellor, Mr. J. van Zyl, who supposedly gave career information (as well as providing help with study methods and guidance with personal problems).  Maybe I didn’t know (or was too shy to ask) but I did not receive any kind of career guidance.

After high school most of my peers did their compulsory national (military) service.  Some of those of us received a deferral to go to university first.  That had both positive and negative consequences.  The biggest negative is that those who did national service in 1973 (directly after we finished high school) had to serve just 9-11 months whereas for those who went to university first the requirement had increased to 2 years by the time we did ours.  On the positive side, those of us who obtained qualifications that were at least of some use to the military served in ways that gave us an opportunity to gain practical experience, as well as avoiding being on the front lines.  I ended up being an officer in the South African Navy, where I captained a desk, working as an operations research analyst.  The experience I gained there benefitted me when I had to get my first real job, as I will explain in a (much) later episode.  (My brother Mick qualified as a social worker and served in that capacity, but part of that involved being at or near the front lines, including going into Angola, even though officially South African troops did not set foot in Angola.  Mick hasn’t been willing to say anything about his time on the front lines, other than to say he declared as many people as possible as being unfit for combat duties.)

 

Ancyent blog25 High school, grade 11 and most of 12

Grades 11 and 12

Our class master in grades 11 and 12 was Peter “Percy” Crundwell, a gangly young man who was also our English teacher. I got on much better with him than with Mr. Deetlefs, our class master in grades 9 and 10. I don’t seem to have a class photo from either 11th or 12th grade, just a large photo of our whole cohort (from all 4 classes) towards the end of 12th grade.

The whole 1972 Grey 12^th grade cohort.  “Percy” Crundwell is the teacher third from the right (at the back).  “Bushy” Edkins, the Rector, is on the extreme right, his deputy, “Mossie” Long is the third teacher (fifth person) from the left and “Billy” Bauer is the second teacher from the left.  The boys in the front row are the prefects.  (The two small circles at the bottom of the photo are holes from a 2-ring binder, the usual type of binder in South Africa, in contrast to the 3-ring binders used in the US.)

Behind us in the photo is a statue of a javelin thrower.  This was made by one of the art teachers while we were in high school.  For some reason it is a little smaller than life size.  The statue is still there, as can be seen in the photo below.

Javelin thrower aiming to send the spear into the war memorial at the end of the school quad.  The school’s assembly hall is behind the memorial.  Photo taken when we visited the school in 2019.

Close-up of the war memorial, with the names of those from the school who died in World Wars I and II.  Photo taken when we visited the school in 2019.

View across the quad from the war memorial side.  Photo taken when we visited the school in 2019.

Each year there was a voluntary national science exam for (white) high school students.  The 100 students with the highest scores received a trip to attend the National Youth Science Week in Pretoria in July (during the winter break).  When I was in 11^th grade, three of us from Grey made the top 100 (or, actually top 104 because of tied scores).  The other two from Grey were in 12^th grade.  Grey won a prize for being the school with the largest number of candidates writing the examination.  No-one from Grey made the top 100 when I was in 12^th grade.  It seemed to me that the type of questions had changed between the two years.  There used to be a science newsletter for high schools, probably distributed either monthly or quarterly.  Along with articles about science, it had information/profiles about important South African organizations and people from scientific fields.  In 11^th grade I had made the top 104 just from my general knowledge about science.  In 12^th grade the exam seemed to focus more on people and organizations, such as knowing who the Director of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) was.  This favored those who had done rote learning using the newsletters.  Even if I had known about the change in emphasis, I wouldn’t have bothered to try to memorize that kind of information.  I think my score in 1971 was one of the tied scores at the bottom of the 104.  I don’t know what my score was in 1972, except that it definitely was not in the top 100.

There was also an annual Math Olympiad for high school students.  Although I took that test at least once, I didn’t do very well.

Certificate for National Youth Science Week selection.

The school report for 1971 includes mention of the National Youth Science Week in the section on “Scholastic Achievements”.  The same section mentions the new school subject “Literature” mentioned towards the end of “Ancyent blog24 High school, grades 9 and 10”.

I don’t remember any of the places we were taken to in Pretoria during the National Youth Science Week, though presume the CSIR was one of them.  We did have a trip to a gold mine near Johannesburg, about an hour’s drive from Pretoria.  We weren’t taken down the mine though.  Among the things they showed us there was how they acclimated new recruits to working in the hot environment way underground.  (The gold mines in South Africa area are among the deepest in the world, with some extending more than two miles below the surface.)  To acclimate, the (Black) recruits had to exercise for several hours a day in a heated room, with the exercise seeming to consist only of stepping up onto a bench and back down, repeated ad nauseum.  I don’t remember where we stayed in Pretoria.  Apart from the trip to the gold mine, the only thing I remember is buying tots of brandy from one of the guys from another school!  When we returned to Grey I wrote a piece for Grey Matter, the student-run school newspaper.  If I recall correctly, it wasn’t published, because it was regarded as being unsuitable.  It may have been too cynical or at least not serious enough.  I wish I had kept a copy, though the only way to have made a copy back then would have been to write it out by hand a second time.  (This was in the days before desktop computers or word processors.  The pages of the newspaper had to be made up on special stencil paper on typewriters.  The newspaper was printed using a small printing machine operated by boys on the Grey Matter staff.  Traditionally Grey Matter was run by 11^th grade students, so at the time I wrote the piece the staff would have been my classmates.)

To get to the National Youth Science Week we had to travel by train.  I think the travel time was around 20 hours each way.  There no longer appears to be a train service between Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth) and Pretoria, so I can’t find information on how long the trip took.  It was definitely overnight, so we had to be in a sleeping compartment.  The sleeping compartments were small, with bunks that folded down at night.  (Train staff came around to do that and put linen on the bunks.)  There were four bunks in a first-class compartment and six in second-class.  If one’s party had fewer than 4 (or 6) people, one usually ended up having to share a compartment with strangers.  

South African train from back in the day.  Except on the famous Blue Train, the carriages were the color of those in the photo.  South Africa still had steam locomotives then.  According to the Internet South Africa was one of the last countries still using steam locomotives.  That was apparently partly because although South Africa was blessed with many natural resources, oil was not one of them.  With various embargoes during the Apartheid era, oil was hard to come by.  There was plenty of coal.  Coal was even used to produce some oil.

Another South African train

First class compartment on a South African train.  In this photo (found on the Internet) the top bunks have framed photos on what was their underside when the bunks were folded down.  The silver thing in the middle is the cover for the wash basin.  The green on the seats/bunks is the color I remember.

On the return journey one of the strangers in my compartment was Dr. Benjamin Tucker, a district surgeon in the Port Elizabeth area.  The Dictionary of South African English defines a district surgeon as “A medical doctor appointed by the government to serve a particular district in supervising vaccinations, post-mortems, and the general health-care of people for whose welfare the state is responsible.”  https://dsae.co.za/entry/district-surgeon/e02001.  Dr. Tucker didn’t strike me as being particularly bright.  Apart from not seeming very bright, he didn’t know all the rules of chess.  I don’t know how we came to be playing chess against one another, but when I advanced a pawn to the last rank and wanted to swap it for a queen, he said that was not allowed.

When I arrived home, I told my father I had shared a compartment with Dr. Tucker.  From his reaction it was clear that he didn’t have a very high opinion of Dr. Tucker.  Dr. Tucker later became infamous for his role in the events leading up to the 1977 death in police captivity of the Black anti-Apartheid activist Steve Biko.  Dr. Tucker lost his medical license because of his improper and “disgraceful” conduct in those events: https://www.nytimes.com/1985/10/17/world/pretoria-doctor-loses-his-license.html.  For more on Steve Biko see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Biko especially the section starting with “Death: 1977”.  I remember my father on several occasions mentioning the name of Dr. Ivor Lang, another district surgeon, who is mentioned in both the New York Times and Wikipedia links here.  The Wikipedia entry mentions the friendship between Biko and a White newspaper editor, Donald Woods.  A 1987 biographical drama movie “Cry Freedom” is based on the friendship between Biko and Woods.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cry_Freedom

Satirical songwriter Jeremy Taylor wrote a (satirical) poem about the capture of Steve Biko.  Words: https://3rdearmusic.com/lyrics/nighttore,  spoken by Taylor:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saleU4XscLo.  An extract from the poem:

“And as sure as God made the heavens
And divided the day from the night
So made he mankind in like fashion
And divided the black from the white.
And never the twain shall mingle
Any more than the sun and the moon,
So said Lieutenant Oosthuizen
To Major Andries Kuhn.”

In 1971 a campsite was donated to the school for “lea77dership training”.  This was called Sonop (Afrikaans for sunrise).  It is in Hougham Park, which is about as far east of the school as Kabeljous is west.  (The campsite at Kabeljous is mentioned in “Ancyent blog24 High school, grades 9 and 10”.)  My only memory of that is walking along the sand with some classmates and Mr. Crundwell when I was “caught short” and needed to go behind some bushes.

Hougham Park, where the school had a campsite.  I don’t know exactly where it was (is?) though remember walking over the sand dunes.

In 1971 I was one of the producers of Std. 6 (8^th grade) plays.  I have no recollection of what the play I produced was about.  Perhaps it was this play by Mark Twain https://www.dramanotebook.com/plays-for-kids-and-teens/the-burglar-alarm/  The Monkey’s Paw one listed in the program may be the following, the names of the characters are slightly different: https://www.pioneerdrama.com/Script_Preview/MONKEYSPAW_2780_Script_Sample.pdf.   A search on the other titles didn’t seem to find anything relevant.

Cover of the very professional looking program for the “Standard Six Plays”.

The plays, producers, and actors.  Don’t ask me what “Burglar Alarm” was about.

I was a member of the school’s Science Club, becoming a committee member in 1971 and the chair in 1972.  I don’t know how I was persuaded to be chair.  The club was small and there was probably no-one else willing to do it.  I have never been chair material and was even less so then.  I have no imagination or initiative, and minimal leadership ability.  (My leadership style is along the lines of “I’m going this way; it is up to you if you want to follow me.”)  I don’t recall organizing any particular activities for the club except a tour of the hospital where my father worked.  I see in the school’s annual report below that we also had a field trip to the local airport.

In 1971 one of the science club field trips was to the rather Communist-sounding P.E. People’s Observatory (P.E. being short for Port Elizabeth).  The volunteer who showed us around used to make reflecting telescopes and he tried to teach us to make our own.  I found an example set of instructions on the internet: https://www.instructables.com/Reflective-Telescope/.  That seems to assume one can just buy the “Primary (Spherical) Mirror”.  Maybe one can now – and maybe one could even back then.  But the observatory volunteer made his own and showed us how to do so too.  That involved starting with two glass disks of the appropriate size and then using one to grind the other to make a concave surface.  Once a suitable concave surface was obtained it needed to be coated with a reflecting material, before following the steps in the link above.  How to grind the mirror is described in this link: https://starrynova.com/telescope-mirror-grinding/.  The grinding takes many, many hours.  I spent several of the many, many hours on it but eventually gave it up as being too much work.  Besides, I was more interested in the theoretical aspects of astronomy, rather than in actually looking at stars and other celestial objects.

The “Science Club” entry under the “Societies” section of the school’s annual report for 1971 (my 11^th grade year) mentions building telescopes and lists me as a committee member.

Another intramural organization I belonged to was Grey Union.  From the description on the school’s website at https://www.greyhighschool.com/intramurals/grey-union/,  this organization has remained much the same as it was back then:

“The most prestigious Society at the school, Grey Union is a Service Society which helps to organize clubs and traditional school activities, as well as doing charity work for the community. Being run by Grey boys, it provides leadership training for its members, who are represented on the committee by Grade 10’s, 11’s and Matrics. Activities are arranged for the enrichment and involvement of members, keeping them in touch with both local and community affairs. Boys may apply to join Grey Union in their Grade 10 year.”  

I served as one of 11 Grey Union council members in 1972.  One thing I remember doing in that role was being responsible for organizing (and undertaking) collection of donations at school gates before the 1^st rugby team’s home games.  Grey Union often had debates or speeches by boys at meetings of the organization.  On one occasion a classmate, Rodger Meyer, gave a speech on the evils of what he referred to throughout his talk as “racicism” rather than “racism”.

Something I had forgotten about until seeing a mention of it in the school’s Annual Report for 1972 (see “Ancyent blog26 High school, wrapping up grade 12”) was that I was part of the school team that participated in the national schools’ Business Game competition.  I was probably in the team in 1971 –the 1972 Annual Report says the team did well whereas I don’t think we did well when I was on the team.  The competition involved deciding how much of our company’s budget we would spend on various aspects, such as R&D, and advertising, and whether we wanted to raise or lower our prices for whatever the product was supposed to be.  Each school’s set of decisions was fed into a computer, which presumably then took into account relative pricing of the product and other factors to work out whose company would do best in terms of overall financial performance.

Report card at the end of the third term in grade 11.  See above for more about the National Youth Science Week comment by the Rector (in this case instead his deputy, Mr. Tommy “Mossie” Long; mossie is Afrikaans for sparrow).

At the end of 11^th grade I again won a class prize – and was the “Std. IX Dux”, that is, the student with the highest aggregate in standard 9.

Program for speech night and prize-giving when I was in 11^th grade (1971).  I see my brother Mick also, won a class prize, in “Std. VI” (8^th grade).

As I mentioned in “Ancyent blog21 Primary school years, part 2” soccer was not an official school sport at either Grey Junior or Grey High.  But several of us from my year continued to play pick-up soccer games during both the short break (recess) and the lunch break.  As at Grey Junior, I was responsible for bringing the plastic ball we used.  I don’t know why it seemed that it was only my cohort that played soccer and not those in grades above or below us.  By 12^th grade there were just a few of us left playing and then we used a tennis ball rather than a larger one.

 

Running in grades 11 and 12.

Most of this is a repeat of parts of “Ancyent blog18 Prehistoric Running, Part 2”.

 

In “Ancyent blog24 High school, grades 9 and 10”, I noted that in 10^th grade I finished 64^th in the annual inter-house cross country race.  In 11^th and 12^th grades I improved to finishing 32^nd and then 6^th, in the latter case coming in ahead of the captains of the cross country and track teams.

I’ve tried to recall the route of the school’s cross country course, but after more than 50 years many details are sketchy.  The start was on one of the rugby fields, approximately where I have written an S in the image below.  We had to run across the field and then up a short but steep embankment onto the next rugby field.  The arrow in the lower image shows the direction we went and the embankment is circled.  In the photo it doesn’t look very steep, but from memory the slope was more than 30 degrees.  I have always been a slow starter in races, so each year by that point was about at the back of the field of 200 runners.  I don’t recall where exactly we left the school grounds, but after doing so we crossed a couple of roads and then went clockwise around the nearby golf course.  From the extreme left in the image there was a fairly gentle but quite lengthy uphill stretch under pine trees.  That was my favorite part of the course, partly because each year I passed several boys there.  The uphill may have been gentle but was enough to punish those who had started too fast.  After we exited the golf course property, we re-crossed the roads and eventually finished on the cricket field, about where I have written an F.  I don’t recall where we re-entered the school grounds and made our way to the finish.  A rough measurement on Google Maps puts the length of the course at about 3.6 miles / 5,8 km.

Best guess as to the route of our school’s cross country course.  Image from Google Maps.

The embankment near the start of the course.  The arrow shows the direction in which we started.  Photo from Google Maps.

My favorite part of the cross country course.  The strip of trees looks narrower than I remembered.  The course went from right to left in the photo.  Photo from Google Maps.

After I’d been running for a year or two I came to the realization that my favorite part of rugby practice at school was when we had to run around the field a few times to warm up or cool down.  However, I continued to play rugby at high school and intramurally in my first year or two at university  .

My performance in the school’s cross country race when I was in 12^th grade must have attracted the attention of the powers-that-be as it led to me having to run a few track races.  A couple of weeks after the inter-house cross country there was an inter-house track and field competition.  First there was a 3,000m race on a separate day from all the other events.  I had to run the 3,000m for my house (Thurlow house).

All my running to that point had been in soccer boots with molded rubber studs (cleats).  The image below is the closest I could find on the web to what my boots looked like when new.  On the day of the 3,000m I lined up with the rest of the field on our school’s cinder track.  (As I mentioned in “Ancyent blog23 High school intro and grade 8”, the track has gone the way of the dinosaur.  There is no track visible on Google Maps now and so I presume the school uses a nearby municipal synthetic track.)  As we were lining up to start the 3,000m Tommy Dean, the school’s head groundskeeper, saw my boots and said I couldn’t run in those because they would damage his track.  I showed him the soles, which were smooth because the running I had done had worn the studs down completely.  So he let me run in my boots.  I have no idea what either my time or my position was other than that I finished somewhere in the middle of however many took part.  The next day at school a teacher who I don’t think had ever previously spoken to me stopped me in the corridor and said something like “You ran a disappointing race yesterday.”  I don’t think I said anything in response, partly because I hadn’t been disappointed – I hadn’t gone into the race with any expectations.  Also, I was surprised that a teacher who I didn’t know had expectations of me based on one cross country race.  I had gone through school trying to stay under the radar.  I was clearly not quite as invisible as I had thought.

Soccer boots with molded rubber studs.

On the day of the rest of the inter-house track meet I may have run a distance relay, but don’t recall what distance.

Despite the “disappointing” 3,000m I was selected to run for our school in a couple of competitions against other schools, one a dual meet against Pearson High and another a triangular meet (I think the other two schools were Kingswood College and Graeme College, both in what was then Grahamstown and is now called Makhanda).  Both meets were on our school’s track.  No-one suggested I should train with the track team, so I just continued with my usual runs from home.  I wouldn’t glorify those runs by referring to them as training.  Apart from one day when a friend, Jeremy Clampett (mentioned in “Ancyent blog23 High school intro and grade 8”), and I did a run from school, all my running was on my own.  Again, I don’t recall what events I ran at those track meets, though I think it may have been more 3,000m races and distance relays.  I’m fairly sure I didn’t run a solo race shorter than 3,000m.  I have no recollection of how I placed and even back then don’t think I was ever told my time for any of the events, if my times were even recorded.

At about that time I got my first pair of real running shoes.  They looked very similar to the ones in the photo below.  I wore through several pairs before more substantial ones became available.  Now I would get injured even just looking at a pair of running shoes as flimsy as these.

My first “proper” running shoes looked much like these.  The company that became ASICS was called Onitsuka Tiger back then.

 

I usually arrived at school early, often sitting and reading in the school library until the bell rang for the first class.  I was never late for school (or for a class at university).  In most classes in high school (and later at university) I used to sit at or near the back.  In both physical science and biology I was among a small group of good (at least academically) students who sat right at the back.

One day in the physical science lab when we were learning about acids, someone knocked a beaker containing hydrochloric acid onto the tile floor, where it started fizzing.  Quick as a flash Grenville “Gimme” Walter shouted out “It’s making hydrogen floor-ide.”  The nickname “Gimme” was apparently because when he was young he couldn’t say “Grenville” but instead said his name as “Gimme”.  Gimme later moved to Australia and is now Emeritus Professor in the School of the Environment at the University of Queensland.  Maybe he never liked the name Grenville because I see that academically he goes by “Gimme H. Walter” as on this website https://environment.uq.edu.au/profile/21782/gimme-walter.  Another example is this book he authored https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.1201/b16805/autecology-gimme-walter-rob-hengeveld .  Don’t ask me what “Autecology” is.

Three of the guys who sat at the back with me in physical science and biology were Peter Bond, Neil Solomons, and Rodger Meyer (he of the speech on “racicism” mentioned earlier).  In biology, when we had to dissect a specimen we had to work in pairs.  I always teamed up with one or other of the three.  They all planned to go to medical school and were keen to practice dissection.  I was happy to let them cut while I just watched.  I wasn’t squeamish, just didn’t have the coordination for dissection (which is part of the reason I didn’t try to follow my father into medicine).  All three eventually became doctors, along with another two boys from our year who I hadn’t known were interested in medicine.  Peter and Neil were in the same dorm as me at university.  In the mid 1980s Peter was my primary care doctor until Riëtta and I left Cape Town.  Neil emigrated to the UK in 1981, moved back to Cape Town from 1984-1986 where he specialized as an ENT, back to the UK in 1986 where he added a specialty in plastic surgery.  In 2010 he moved to Penang in Malaysia, where he started a new Plastic Surgery service.  He was later diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer and passed away in 2021.  Rodger was in medical practice for many years and is still working part-time in the Cape Town area, mostly in a managerial role.

As I noted in “Ancyent blog17 Prehistoric Running, Part 1” several of my classmates belonged to surf lifesaving clubs.  From Wikipedia: “Surf lifesaving is a multifaceted movement that comprises key aspects of voluntary lifeguard services and competitive surf sport.  Originating in early 20th century Australia, the movement has expanded globally to other countries including New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa, the United Kingdom.”  See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surf_lifesaving.  The competitive part involves several different events, some entirely on the beach, such as beach sprints and “flags” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_Flags_(sport).  Others are in or on the water, such as surf ski races.  Surf lifesaving had an event called Ironman long before Ironman triathlons.  The surf lifesaving version is much shorter, though also involves multiple disciplines, usually including swimming, surf ski, and paddle board  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironman_(surf_lifesaving).  I mentioned in the part about grades 9 and 10 that Ron Whitehead, who along with his wife Ann, had looked after us during our parents’ first overseas trip was president of the Summerstrand Surf Lifesaving Club, Summerstrand being one of the local beaches (and a corresponding suburb).

Presumably because I was a reasonably good swimmer, Neil Solomons and other classmates tried to persuade me to join one of the clubs.  Neil was a long-time member of the Kings Beach Surf Lifesaving Club.  I declined, partly because of laziness but mostly because getting to the beachfront regularly would have been a hassle.  I would have had to take two buses in each direction.  As noted in “Ancyent blog24 High school, grades 9 and 10", several of my friends had mopeds.  I presume those who were lifesavers either lived close to one of the beaches or had mopeds.  As it was illegal to have a passenger on a moped, I couldn’t get a ride to the beach with a friend.

 

When visiting Knysna, either with my parents or later by myself (and eventually with Riëtta), one of the things I was tempted to do was to swim across the short stretch of water between the Heads.  The shortest distance between the two from an easily-accessible starting point is about 790 feet (240 m), certainly not an insurmountable distance for a reasonable swimmer.  But I was always counselled against trying it because of the strong tidal current.  I still wish I had ignored the naysayers.  I would have planned to start swimming as the tide was turning to flow inwards, so that if I had been dragged off course I would have been dragged further into the lagoon rather than out to sea.  I would easily have made it back before the tide turned to flow outwards.  Also, I would have aimed to do it close to a neap tide, to reduce the strength of the current.

 

The channel between the Heads at Knysna that I wanted to swim across.

This shows most of the Knysna lagoon, with its size suggesting that the tidal current in the channel between the Heads is quite strong.

In terms of pool swimming, as at Grey Junior, at Grey High we had do this for one period a week during the first and fourth terms, through grade 11, including doing various written and “practical” (pool) lifesaving tests   See below for my last certificate for one of these.  I have no idea whether there was a Gold level beyond Silver.  The school’s long-time swimming coach and pool superintendent, Francis Horn, retired at the end of 1971.  As I mentioned in “Ancyent blog20 Primary school years, part 1”, when teaching us life saving he used to remind us to remove “toffling apples” from the person’s throat before applying mouth to mouth resuscitation.

Highest level I reached in pool life saving.

Near the end of grade 11 there was an inter-class swimming gala.  I don’t recall if it was just for those in grade 11 or for grades 8 through 11.  One of the events was a relay – either a freestyle relay or a medley relay.  I also don’t recall whether it was 4x50m or 4x100m.  Because I was about the fastest in my class I had to swim the anchor leg, which would have been freestyle even if it had been a medley relay.  Our school had numerous good competitive swimmers.  In fact, one of the other grade 11 classes had 7 boys who had represented not just our school but our province in swimming meets.  So they had almost two full teams of top-class swimmers.  Our class had none.  What chance did we have?  Well, this isn’t a David versus Goliath story.  The first team from that other class had finished the race before I even hit the water for my leg!

In the part about 9^th grade I mentioned that Big Walks were a quite popular method of fundraising.  In 12^th grade one of my friends, Colin Steyl (mentioned earlier in the part about cadets) did a fundraising Big Swim, swimming 5 miles in what I presume was a 50-meter pool.  I thought that if he could swim 5 miles then so could I.  I decided to try doing it in our backyard pool at home.  I calculated that it would require swimming 660 lengths.  I did it without telling anyone either before or afterwards – I don’t think I told even my parents.  If I recall correctly, I had just one short break, to go to the bathroom.  I have no recollection of how long it took.  As that was well before I first had a digital stopwatch, I didn’t have a way to track my time.

 

In the second and third terms of the school year we had phys. ed. (PE) twice a week.  In the first and fourth terms one of these was replaced with swimming.  As I noted above, we had to do swimming through 11^th grade.  PE was also just through 11^th grade.  I don’t know why we didn’t have swimming or PE in 12^th grade.  That’s just how it was.  In the very last PE class in 11^th grade the PE teacher, Cliff Hopkins, had set up a variety of activities in the gym.  One of these was high jump.  Being the last PE class, we weren’t asking it seriously.  Glyn Williams and I decided to do the high jump (or at least jump on the landing mat) simultaneously.  Cliff Hopkins saw this and wasn’t amused.  He gave us corporal punishment on the spot, rather than in the Rector’s office, hitting us with some kind of bat.  It wasn’t very painful – not nearly as painful as the corporal punishment meted out to Glyn for the piano prank to be described in “Ancyent blog26 High school, wrapping up grade 12”.  Cliff’s wife was also a teacher, but at the school where my mother taught.  Cliff and his wife visited our house on at least one occasion.  What I didn’t realize at the time was that Cliff was one of the top road and cross country runners in the area.  He was still running well several years later when I had become more serious about running.

Something else that stopped after 11^th grade was me riding my bicycle to and from school.  I must have decided that it wasn’t “cool” for someone in 12^th grade to be riding a bicycle to school.  I’d been riding regularly before that, with my briefcase on a carrier at the back of the bicycle.  On days when I played sport after school, I strapped a kit bag to the briefcase.  I had bicycle clips to keep the lower part of my school trousers away from the chain and other moving/dirty parts.  During the school day I kept the clips in a pocket of my trousers (along with multiple handkerchiefs).  I had a lock that I used to secure my bicycle in the bike racks during the day.  I had lost the key many years before but could open the lock by wiggling it.  Not exactly the safest way to ensure my bicycle wasn’t stolen. 

Bicycle clips for trousers, somewhat like the ones I had, though mine were a silver color.

Back in those days Port Elizabeth had an Oceanarium, with performing dolphins and penguins, among other sea life.  The complex included a museum and a snake park, both of which had previously been at another location.  The Oceanarium opened in 1968.  (The complex was renamed Bayworld in 1999 https://www.bayworld.co.za/.  I am glad to see that the dolphins don’t appear to be there now.)   The complex had a tea-room, called the Oceana Tea Garden.  That may have been operated by paid staff on weekdays but at least on weekends it was operated by volunteers from various organizations.  One of the organizations that served on one Saturday per month was the Medical Wives’ Association.  My mother was responsible for that organization’s service at the Oceana Tea Garden.  Along with teas, scones or crumpets were available with jam and cream.  (English scones, not what Americans refer to as scones.)  There was also a separate room with a hatch where one could purchase sodas (from a soda fountain) and soft serve or packaged ice cream.  I often manned that hatch on days when my mother worked there.  When I was there my mother paid for a serving of scones with jam and cream for me, as well as a Coke float.  I worked out how to get the soda fountain to make the Coke extra syrupy by pressing the lever of the soda fountain in just part of the way.

When I was in 11^th or 12^th grade – or maybe in the summer break between the grades – my mother arranged a part-time job for me at an ice cream parlor, the Sugarbush.  I was useless and resigned after either the first or the second day.  I could never remember the ingredients in sundaes such as the Banana Boat.  Worst of all was trying to make chocolate-dipped ice cream cones.  One first had to put soft-serve ice cream in a wafer cone, tap the cone so that the ice cream was firmly in the cone, then invert it in the hot/liquid chocolate, so that a layer of chocolate solidified on the ice cream.  When I tried to do it, either the ice cream sank down into the cone rather than sticking up out of it, or when I turned it upside down in the chocolate the ice cream fell out of the cone into the chocolate.

 

Around this time my parents had the final addition made to the house.  I know it was after 1970 but other than that I am not sure of the year.  They hired Ron Whitehead (mentioned in “Ancyent blog24 High school, grades 9 and 10”) as the architect.  The addition was a new living room in the front of the house, with the old living room being converted into a dining room and a rather narrow study, and the old dining room becoming a utility room off the kitchen.

One of the features Ron designed in the new living room was a brick wall, with bricks of various colors as in the photo below.  In a different part of the brick wall (above the drinks cabinet) Ron wanted the bricks to be very irregular, including sticking out varying amounts.  He had great difficulty persuading the expert bricklayer to make things irregular rather than very regular.  Ron even pushed and pulled on the bricks to show the bricklayer what he intended 

Part of the brick wall in the new living room 

A view of our old house before the final alterations.  The added part was in front of the room on the left (and the entrance was moved).

Another view of our old house before the final alterations.  Part of the swimming pool can be seen in the background at the far left.

As I mentioned in “Ancyent blog22 Primary school years, part 3” I used to sing in the church choir.  I continued doing so through high school.  The size of the choir dwindled until there were only about four of us left, one of the others being an elderly man, Mr. Boreham, plus the organist, Miss Armstrong.  Towards the end of my time in high school my father (and mother) started attending church regularly.  In my father’s later years he used to say that it was because of me that he became religious.  Maybe he started going to church because I was doing so, but I certainly didn’t proselytize.  Also, when he was becoming more religious, I was losing my religion, so definitely would not have been trying to influence him.  The main reason I still sang in the choir was because I didn’t have a good exit strategy.  But as soon as I finished high school I stopped attending church and since then have been only for weddings or funerals.

The third of the photos above reminds me of two incidents, one before the final alterations to the house and one afterwards.  My father liked being involved in things.  Soon after starting to attend church, he began serving on various church committees, not only for our own church but in the broader diocese.  Leadership of the Anglican church (and most other English-language churches) was strongly opposed to Apartheid, even if not all the congregants felt the same way.  By that stage many of the committees at the diocese level had become open to people of all races.  One day a Black priest who served with my father on one of the committees came to visit.   (In terms of South African racial categorization, he wasn’t actually Black but “Coloured”, that is, mixed race.)  He had his two young sons with him, Ben and Dom, who must have been about 5 years old.  I remember them standing with my father next to the gate in the wall at the far left in the photo.  The boys had been crying.  The priest, whose name I don’t recall, said that they had just come from walking along the sidewalk near a local beach.  The boys had been crying because they had seen other kids playing in the sand and had wanted to do so too.  But that was not allowed because beaches were reserved for use by specific race groups, with signs such as in the image below.  How does one explain something like that to a 5-year-old (or to anyone, for that matter)?

Apartheid sign at a “White” beach.

The other incident occurred after the remodeling because I remember being in the new dining room.  One evening Philip Russell the Anglican bishop of Port Elizabeth, and his wife came to dinner at our house.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Russell_(bishop)  Bishop Russell said he had just come from his office near the top of Ford House, which may have been the tallest building in Port Elizabeth at that time.  He said he had seen snow falling past his window, though it melted before reaching the ground.  Snow is unheard of in Port Elizabeth, and if he hadn’t been a bishop I would not have believed him.  (Bishop Russell later became Archbishop of Cape Town, a position that also made him the official head of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.  He was succeeded in that role by someone you may have heard of – Desmond Tutu.)

 

The parents of one of my friends, James McPetrie, moved to Cape Town at some point while we were in high school.  (His parents called him by his middle name, Lindsay, but we all knew him as James.)  James stayed on at Grey to finish high school, moving into the Grey boarding house.  About once a term there was a boarder “leave-out” weekend, which was when boys in the boarding house were allowed to leave for the weekend.  Most of the boarders were from farms and towns relatively close to Port Elizabeth – too far to commute to school each day but close enough to get home for a weekend.  Cape Town was too far for that to be feasible for James, even for a long weekend, so he sometimes stayed with us on a leave-out weekend.

On at least one of those weekends, James and I walked a couple of blocks east of our house and bought small bottles of brandy at a bottle store (liquor store in American or bottle shop in Australian).  We had to walk back with our purchases next to the busy Cape Road.  I presume we bought it on a day when we knew my parents were going out in the evening.  I don’t recall actually drinking the brandy, though we must have done so.  James later worked as a “Professional Associated Valuer” for the City of Cape Town for 30 years before retiring.  About four years later, in December 2014, he suffered a fatal heart attack.

A bottle store was also sometimes referred to as an “off license” because it was licensed to sell alcohol to be taken off the premises, as opposed to drinking on site as in a restaurant or bar.  At that stage even beer and wine could be purchased only at a bottle store, not at a supermarket or other type of store.  The bottle store may still have been unaffiliated at that stage but after being refurbished it became part of the Solly Kramer’s chain.  That had definitely happened well before my parents moved to Pretoria.  There is still a bottle store in the same place, though I see on Google Maps that it is now the “Ultra Liquors – Newton Park”.

Location of Ultra Liquors, previously Solly Kramer’s, on the corner of the William Moffett Expressway and Hurd Street, two blocks east of our old house on Malvern Avenue. 

Back in the Apartheid era this, and presumably every, bottle store had separate entrances with essentially separate stores for White and Black people.  In the “White” part one could browse the shelves and look for what one wanted.  In the “Black” part there was counter service only.  Sorghum beer, which was sold in cartons similar to milk cartons, was popular among the Black population in the area.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umqombothi.  Apart from being a traditional drink, I presume part of the attraction was that it was cheaper than the lager beer, sold in bottles and cans, that was favored by White drinkers.  I tried sorghum beer once, but it was not my cup of tea. 😊  (Tea is actually not my cup of tea either.)

My father used to have a fairly extensive collection of liqueurs which he kept in an unlocked and easily accessible cabinet.  I don’t recall if the cabinet even had a lock.  Sometimes when my parents went out in the evening, I sampled a few of the liqueurs.  I was particularly fond of Cointreau.  On the other hand, I disliked Drambuie.  Looking it up, I see that it is made from Scotch whisky, which helps to explain why I didn’t like it.  You can call me a Phillistine, but I have never acquired a taste for whisky, not even when spelled whiskey. 

The only “international” trip we took as a family was in 1972, to what was then Rhodesia (before that it was Southern Rhodesia and it is now Zimbabwe) .  I don’t remember very much about the trip.  We went to Victoria Falls and at various places had some of the most succulent meat I have ever tasted.  We also visited one of my father’s sisters, Beth, her husband Gordon, and their children, Lesley and Rory.  My memory had been that they were in Salisbury (now Harare) but Lesley has since informed me that they lived on a farm about a two-hour drive west of Harare.  One evening when we were there, I went to a rock concert with my cousin Rory, who is about 18 months older than me.  I had thought that that was in Salisbury, but it must have been in Hartley, the closest town to the farm.  Lesley thinks that maybe the concert was when we were in Salisbury and that I went with my only other paternal cousin, Blair, son of my father’s younger brother, Derrick.  Derrick, Blair, and Pamela, Derrick’s second wife, were apparently living in Salisbury at the time.  But Blair is a couple of years younger than me and so probably wouldn’t have been able to drive and thus not able to get us to a concert.

On another evening I was in a bad car accident with Lesley, who is a year or two older than Rory.  I accompanied Lesley when she drove her brother back to his boarding school, Guinea Fowl High School, about a two-and-a-half-hour drive south of the farm.  (Rather strangely, the school does not appear to have a website, just Facebook and Instagram pages.)  On the return journey it was dark.  We were going at about 70 miles per hour about 110 km/hr, which I think was the speed limit on that two-lane road.  Lesley asked me to change the station on the radio.  Being useless, I was struggling to do it, so Lesley leaned across slightly to do it herself.  She must have gone off the road and then over-corrected because the next thing I remember was being churned around much like when caught by a big wave while body surfing.  Considering the era, we weren’t wearing seatbelts – if the car even had them.  I crawled out of the car unscathed, other than probably being in a state of shock.  The driver of a car that had been ahead of us said he saw the headlights doing cartwheels and turned back to investigate.  Lesley was hurt – it turned out later that she had broken some vertebrae.  The other driver and his wife helped get Lesley out of the car.  The accident happened somewhere between Gatooma (now Kadoma) and Que Que (now Kwekwe).  The details of what happened after that are hazy, probably because of having been in shock.  What I had always “remembered” was incorrect.  My memory had been that our helpers drove us back to my uncle and aunt’s house, and that Lesley was in pain and lying down on the back seat, unable to help navigate.  Lesley recently told me that our helpers took her to Gatooma Hospital, and she didn’t know what happened to me after that.  My memory is that somehow I managed to guide the driver back to Lesley’s parents’ house, despite it being dark and with me having been just a back-seat passenger on the couple of occasions we had driven there.

 

My father liked to be in charge of things (which is a characteristic I definitely did not inherit).  So, for instance, he chaired the organizing committee for the biannual congress of the South African Society of Anaesthetists held in Port Elizabeth in 1972.  I have only his word to go on, but people apparently said it was the best conference of the society ever.  I presume that was because of all the outside activities he arranged, rather than the content of the talks at the conference.  After my parents moved to Pretoria my father chaired the organizing committee for another edition of the society’s congress held at Sun City.  Casinos were not allowed in South Africa at that time but Sun City was in the quais-independent “homeland” or “Bantustan” of Bophuthatswana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_City_(South_Africa).

 

Folder from the conference my father organized in 1972.