3 Sisters, 2 Brothers, a Dad, and a couple of old friends...

The long story I had planned on writing this past Sunday has kind of faded away along with the thoughts and ideas I'd planned on pounding out on my keyboard and onto the blog. But since the Missus keeps hoarding my PC at home and work has been busy this is the first real chance I've had.

It's not eally as exciting as it sounds, it's really just an account of the events of the weekend, pre-Sunday, and the pre-ceding history that make the events a little interesting.

Friday: 
We were invited to a braai at a strangers house in Century City, which in it's own right is not the most thrilling occasion to share with the world, I mean as South Africans we braai all the time for no reason at all other than as an excuse to socialise randomly with copious volumes of alcohol consumption, and I didn't do the cooking so the food will only be mentioned in passing.

The interesting fact is the people we were invited by. They are a couple with a 3 year old daughter who are friends from London, they were in Cape Town for a couple of days for a wedding so we took the opportunity to meet up. South African bloke Brett, his wife Ilaria is Italian, with little Madison.

The food was, of course, a braai, with meat, and potatoes, and rabbit food (salad). Very nice braai. That's the food. Whoopee. The "braai-master" was rather arrogantly possesive of his braai and how the food was cooked, to the point he insisted on dishing up our meat in even portions. There were around 12 intrigued adults at the party, with 3 kids.

Madison & Tammy - 4 Feb 2008

Madison & Tammy - 11 Feb 2011

Liezel and I met Brett & Ilaria around 3 and a half years ago in London, in St George's hospital in Tooting. Liezel was in hospital with Pre-Eclampsia, the complication that caused Tammy to come into this world 3 months early. Ilaria was in the same ward as Liezel at the same time, and they got talking... the guys came to visit and we got talking, and of course ended up in the local pub, The Colliers Tup, for a few hearty drinking sessions.

Anyway, Ilaria was discharged from hospital without further problems to go on to have her baby at full term, while Liezel stayed in to have Tammy, which is another long story for another day in the near future.

A few months after when Tammy & Liezel were both home we got together with Brett & Ilaria and baby Maddy again, which resulted in some adorable photo's of the two little ones dressed in white baby growers cuddled up in a strange C-shaped pillow, like the one on the left.

We got together as families a few times after that, Brett and I had a few more serious sessions in the Tup.

Then in April 2008 we moved back 'home' to South Africa and we haven't seen each other since. They now live and work in Switzerland, lucky buggers! Must be an awesome life! I've been to Geneva and it's a beautiful place!

Well the Friday evening visit was fun, great to catch up again, but unfortunately short lived as I had to be up early on saturday morning for a long drive into the middle of nowhere and back, in a day...

Saturday:
Sucker I am I was up at 04h30 on a Saturday morning. The mission: my brother and I drive our injured dad up to 3 Sisters in the middle of the Karoo, to meet Ronny so she could take him the rest of the way home to Gaborone, via a stop-over in Kimberley.

I met them at Warryn's (my younger brother) place where dad spent the night; we piled into dad's hired Toyota Corolla, and headed off into the sunrise towards the vast, magnificent expanse of the Greater Karoo. Little bro & I took turns driving the ridiculously weak vehicle (remind me never to buy a Corolla, seriously crap car! My Polo is much better!), while dad relaxed in the passenger seat nurturing his two broken ribs. It's the first time in ages that just the three of us were together, alone, for some "quality time", and probably the longest ever! We spoke about all kinds of interesting manly stuff like sport, women, etc; but naturally the dominant conversations were regarding careers and jobs and financial futures, as always. Though I don't feel uncomfortable over these chats like in previous years, I used to dread the "what are you doing with your life?" speeches from dad and much of my adult life I felt inferior and a failure because I wasn't able to impress and make him proud. It felt as if I was always making excuses and coming up with feeble attempts at making an impression, none of which ever worked because little that I attempted came to fruition, as far as dad was concerned. For whatever reason that was, I always felt belittled and intimidated by dad, who himself has made a great success of his career life. Even now when we spoke about my ideas for a future business and my current job etc I got the feeling he wasn't even interested, let alone took anything I said seriously. But I suppose I can't blame him, based on past experience.

To be honest I understand he meant well, that he wanted the best for us, like any parent would; and in hindsight in some ways I regret not taking his advice and utilising his help differently. I admit I fucked around irresponsibly for too many years of my early adulthood, didn't take the seious stuff more seriously and I hated being harassed and picked on by dad about my life all those years.

Fortunately in the last few years I have grown up and realised the errors of my ways, and I'm doing something about it. My wife and I are trying hard to build a decent life for ourselves and a good future for our daughter, and we are proudly doing it all without any handouts or bail-outs. We have a nice, comfortable, secure home that is ours, and we've built ourselves up through the job ranks quickly in the last few years and will continue to do so, especially Liezel - she's damn good at what she does - me, my best bet is starting my own company sometime soon as possible because my current job won't get much higher without major tertiary education, I will strive to achieve that business and work as hard as it takes to make it a success!

My biggest regret in life is not going to university after school and getting a decent qualification; but someday I swear I will get a degree... someday when I can afford it I will do it, no matter how long it takes!

Boo hoo for me, I'm not looking for pity, just telling it how it is in my head. The fact is I don't feel that way about dad anymore and haven't for a while. To be precise since my daughter was born I felt I achieved the most perfect thing ever and I know I'm a great dad, and I'm damn proud of myself and my little family, whatever anybody else thinks! The other stuff will come in good time!

Also, dad has chilled out a lot since Tammy came along, we actually get on quite well for the first time ever and I'm really enjoying the relationship! I look forward to seeing the old fart these days and I love seeing him with Tammy, that kid has a tight grip on his heartstrings! He's a good man, one I admire now and respect, and I hope and pray he takes care of himself and sticks around for a long time to come because we still have a lot of catching up to do, let alone lots of fish to catch!

I've veered off course here...

At around 11.30 we arrived at Three Sisters, a remote filling station in the middle of nowhere, a place that felt as hot as what I imagine hell must be like! We delivered the package and sent him on his way to Kimberley with Ronny, dad's lovely wife.

The road back was interesting. Along the way we saw a derailed freight train and stopped to have a look. It seemed to be a grain carrier, according to the security guards patrolling the site the train crashed because a bridge was damaged by massive flash floods 2 days earlier. The engines were still on the track, though clearly derailed, but the cars were trashed! Quite a sight!

Then, to really spice things up, we got delayed in Laingsburg, which was even hotter than Three Sisters, because some dumb idiot crashed his big flatbed trailer into our car (actually dad's hired car) and smashed the front right fender! The damage wasn't too serious, the car was still drivable, thank fuck, and the fender was secure enough to hold on back to Cape Town. But we needed to get a police report which took some time because there are forms... long, tedious forms... and of course the local cops were in no hurry, us being their only action for the day, most probably!

Anyway, after the drama was finalised we all shook hands like gentlemen, swearing under our breaths soon as our backs were turned, and headed on our merry ways once more!

The second half of the journey was spent with Warryn taking hundreds of pictures of the landscape from the car window, most of which were blurry, out of focus, off contrast, or missed completely! Thanks little bro for the time consuming job of deleting and filtering down to the remaining decent few. To give due credit he did also land a few decent shots, thanks to the law of avereges I suppose!

Back in Cape Town we stopped for a quick beer at the Dros, I dropped Warryn at home, then headed back to my house to commence drowning my thirst further with half a bottle of my usual whiskey.

Dad's broken ribs:
Now the reason this whole adventure took place in the first instance is the fact that daddy dear managed to injure himself in quite dramatic fashion on Tuesday, landing himself in hospital for 3 days.

He was in town for the week for the annual African Mining Indaba, a big conference for the mining industry.

The story goes that he got to his hotel room on Tuesday evening after an evening of dinner preceded by a boat trip. As he sat down he felt bad pains in his chest, poor bugger thought he was having a heart attack and probably left skid marks in his jocks as he fumbled with his phone to call for help. The ambulance arrived and rushed him off to Christiaan Barnard Hospital in the city, where they did tests and x-rays only to find his heart was still marching on like a battle-hardened soldier but he had two broken ribs! Not just cracked, but severed, broken!

The bizarre thing was that he didn't know how he broke the ribs because he hadn't felt pain before. Surely you'd know if you break bones in your body! I've never had the misfortune of breaking a bone, but I believe it hurts like a bitch! So how did this mysterious injury just suddenly appear, unprovoked. There was not even bruising until 2 days later.

Well, gradually the story emerged of a fall on the boat which started as a light stumble that didn't touch anything, to quite a bad fall that involved connecting the railing with force. I wonder if there were a few beers involved, but so what if there were... the deck was still just as slippery!

So anyway, the doctor forbade dad from flying again any time soon, or from driving a vehicle. And being the stubborn bastard he is with the patience of a brick there was no way on earth he was going to hang around in Cape Town, helpless as an invalid, for who knows how long. So we clubbed heads together, co-ordinating with Ronny and decided to do the trip that we did on Saturday.

By Sunday evening dad was returned safe and happy to his own home to be pampered and fussed over by his loving wife! I just hope he takes it easy to recover as soon as possible without doing something silly and causing more damage!

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That my friends, is all I'm contributing to this story! I had more planned, but that will have to come another time, along with the long mental list I have in mind of topics for my blogs!

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