The healing time spent on “Stroma” outside Mbabane, on the Mhlambanyathi road, was a wonder. That part of Swaziland is rather like the Natal Midlands was: huge hills (they would possibly be considered mountains in Wales or Scotland) of somewhat rain-leached grassveld. The farm itself was a dairy outfit, though some of the slopes were taken up by wattle plantations. I slept very well there, partly because I had always loved the place and Kassie was my favourite aunt, but also because nights in rural Swaziland back then were an inky black darkness, and I could not walk at night anyway.
The more the appendix wound healed, the more I walked, eventually ranging miles, often to visit “Major Billy” on his farm on a hill distantly visible from Stroma. The Major was ex-British Army. Kassie believed that he had been, at the highest, a sergeant-major, but on retiring did what a lot of “poonahs” did: migrate to a warmer country, assume a la-di-dah accent, and live like the king they were not able to back in Blighty. Whatever his past, I enjoyed his company. He would have tea and a snack brought, and we would chat. He would take naps and bid me to stay and read to my heart’s content. Apart from his book collection, he had both Punch and Time mailed to him, so I was kept up to date with opinions!
It was soon apparent there was a problem with the way my appendix had healed. Stabbing pains stuck downwards from my abdomen, spiking sharply in my right testicle, and I had a dull ache in my lower right abdomen. My bladder seemed compromised, and I was never again able to urinate vigorously. Something was wrong—not terribly wrong, but uncomfortable enough that life truly was never the same again. Another outcome was that running really hurt. Part of this was natural while healing from the appendix op, but I never ever really enjoyed running again as I had done in my schooldays. For recreation, running was my first love. I don’t have regrets, much. Losing the comfort of wonderful, trance-like distance running, the rhythmic breathing, the lift that overloading on oxygen brings, is one.
Still, I could walk, and I certainly did that, increasingly as I got stronger daily. Mbabane was a few miles downhill, and I did that sometimes. There was a pub there with a regimental name, forgotten now. While enjoying a quiet beer there, a young Swazi lady walked up to me at the bar. With a deadpan face, she said, “Hello darling. Ten bob.”
I declined, and she instantly turned and went off to try someone else. The Argylls were in town, something to do with the coming Swazi independence changes, and she would have quickly “come right”, so to speak. Once she was gone, a drinker near me said, “Well done. Saved yourself from twenty-seven injections,” and all the patrons guffawed.
My family had spent two holidays on this farm: a Christmas when I was 22 months old, and a winter holiday in my eleventh year. I remembered very little about the first, of course, but on the second holiday, on one of the hikes we took with my father around the farm, I recalled asking him what the deep, metronomic noise was. Any kind of percussive sound is something that I have an advantage with: because nerve-deaf people hear through their skeletons, we are more sensitive to thumps, bangs, and crashes than others, and this was one of those. We eventually found the noise, which my dad said was that of a “ram pump”. He pointed to a little plume of water a few metres away, down in the creek.
I now wanted to find this again, and remembered that it was not far away down the hill, somewhere in the mounds of rock strewn about. These were part of an abandoned tin mine. I soon found the ram pump, still pumping its little jets of water into the creek, together with a deep thumping hiss or slosh inside the outlet pipe. That was what I was curious about. Following it, I made my way through the riverine forest upward until the pipe disappeared underground. By its direction, it was pumping water to the homestead, which was on the summit of the large central hill of the farm.
Crossing the pasture toward the house (whites of eyes, but the evil bull of our childhood was no longer there), I found the pipe surfacing near the house. It was no more than 18mm in diameter. I found this surprising, all the more so when Kassie told me that it was the sole water supply for the household and more. That little ram pump, installed on the farm before WWII, had worked non-stop jerking its little cupfuls of water up the hill through this pipe, into a tank on a stand near the garage, for all those years with no maintenance. Ram pumps need no fuel to work. They are free as the wind to operate. All they need is a fairly speedy head of water. On Stroma, the trickle of water in that forest ravine was the entire water supply for the farm.
It was a major lesson to me. I had often wondered why there were no windmills on the farm, something we expected on farms, especially in the Free State and the Karoo. Small as the stream’s flow was, Kassie explained, it was enough because of that ceaseless pumping. In our sleeping hours, the ram pump worked on, and always kept ahead of consumption in the house. When the tank got full, overflows led down the hill to other reservoirs and cribs for the cattle in pastures, and to the milking sheds.
Another weirdness about that farm back then was its silence. Even the Karoo had insect sounds and bird calls. Not a mossie to be seen or heard, nor were any small animals, not even rodents, visible.
“Hunted out. They grab the eggs out of birds’ nests, and leave nary a living thing,” Kassie explained.
I never pursued that. Were people starving? If so, why? I never found out. They all looked fine to me. The silence in the veld and the bush was eerie. I happen to believe personally that birdsong allows trees to grow, and conversely that, without birdsong, forest will not flourish. For me, then, the lack of birdsong is a calamity.
For my return trip to Pietermaritzburg, the routine changed slightly. Kassie dropped me for the railway bus at yet another pole with a nameplate atop it. This time it said “Matsapa”. It was a solitary metal pole in a deserted, uninhabited field. Today, it is Swaziland’s international airport.
Army: Tempe, Bloemfontein 1963
I entrained for Bloem on 4 April 1963. For the first two weeks I was subjected to the usual obscenities (everyone was) from screaming corporals. There came a day when the food did me in, and I was excused to lie in our bungalow to wait out the raging diarrhoea. The bungalows and the area around them were deserted; everyone was out on the parade ground.
While resting there, the handlebar moustache of Sgt-Major Frederick George Crumpton appeared at my window. FG Crumpton was what SA movies had always wanted: a Brit name, Brit handlebar moustache, and in every way a British Army stereotype—except he was Afrikaans-speaking. Sgt-Major FG Crumpton was a one-man, do-it-yourself cursing course. The first words he uttered to me in Tempe were:
“I’m not fucking mad, YOU are!”
And those words were by way of a polite morning chat. I figured Crumpton was looking out for people skiving in the bungalows. That, he might conjecture, could be me, but I had in fact reported to him that morning that I had diarrhoea and would be taking the day off resting in the bungalow. They were all conveniently close to toilets, exactly what I needed while passing whatever gastronomic disaster the army cooks had inflicted.
Crumpton peered into the window, then uttered a roar—some unintelligible, threatening words, as per usual. At first I thought he was on at me because nobody was supposed to be at the bungalows during duty, but I soon realised his focus was on his own reflection in the pane. Leaving him to rave for a few minutes as he cocked his eyebrows at various angles (first one side, then the other), I stood up and faced him through the window. He recoiled instantly, recovered, and sheepishly said:
“Just practising, you know,” and lumbered off, swagger stick tucked under armpit—the first and last time I ever heard anyone practising swearing. Or lion-roaring.
At roll-call when I was well again, Corporal Blignaut ordered me out of the ranks, strolled to the edge of the parade ground, gave me directions to the offices, and told me I was wanted there immediately (they always said “immediately”).
Standing for a while at ease at a desk, a staff sergeant finally deigned to look up at me, raising his eyebrows. I rapped out my name and number. He languidly reached out to a sheaf of papers, read one of them, and showed it to me—which he did not appear to really want to do, but explained that he was “required to”. It was a one-line letter stating that I was to be put on light duty on medical grounds while HQ waited for a “board” decision.
The next event in Tempe was the “muster”. It was explained that jobs would be read out one by one, and the first hands up got the job(s) until all were taken. Corporal Blignaut started alphabetically. When he shouted “Clerk!”, I shot my hand up (pushing pens is less smelly and easier than peeling onions).
“Naam!” shouted Blignaut, pointing at me.
“Cook,” I said.
“Ag nee man, we have already called Cook, it’s all taken! Jurre!”
“I don’t want to be a cook. My NAME is Cook. I want to be a clerk.”
“Over my dead body someone in this army whose name is Cook is not going to be a cook. Put him under Cook, and kick someone else out!” he shouted at the single-striper, who was not having any of it.
“ALL my fucking work!” the lance-corporal shouted back. “I am changing fuck all!”
A huge load of cursing followed. Finally, Blignaut had them put me down as clerk.
“Ok-Ok-Ok, hy skryf vir jou… fokken KLERK, Cook, NIE fokken KOK NIE, VERSTAAN JUFFROU? Fokken Klerk, fokken Klerk, fokken Klerk, fokken Klerk. DAAR!” He held the clipboard up and glared dangerously at the lance-corporal.
We were told we would report for training for our various jobs in some weeks. Corporal Blignaut, the next morning, took me to a silver-painted wire mesh gate, chained and padlocked.
“Guard this gate,” he said.
“But it’s locked,” I said.
“Ja. We don’t use it. Nobody ever comes through here. The trouble is, I has instruksins to put you on light duty, and the army doesn’t has light duty. So, this is what we got.”
And he walked away. The following weeks were spent at that gate, sometimes at night. It wasn’t bad. There was a sentry cabin. It was baking hot in the sun and freezing cold on night shifts, but at least it gave some shade from the merciless sun by day, and shelterfrom the freezing wind at night.
On one night only was my time there disturbed. I heard a grunt and someone shinning up the wire mesh. Feeling very pretentious, I shouted, “Wie gaan daar! Who goes there?”, only to find a panic-stricken troop clearly sneaking back into camp from a night out. I could smell liquor.
“Please don’t grass on me,” he said, and stood waiting.
I jerked my finger. “On your way.”
Discharged
Six weeks in, we were in a large building, stifling hot with a few hundred other NSMs, watching a movie on “The Splitting of the Atom”, when the doors were loudly flung open, washing the room in blinding Bloemfontein light. Two corporals entered. The movie was stopped.
“Waa’s daai man Cook? Hy’s in peleton nommer drie en hy’s nie ’n fokken kok nie, hy’s ’n fokken klerk!”
I got up and made my way to them. Everybody stared. I supposed I was in deep trouble. When we got out into the blinding sun, one corporal said:
“Gaan dadelik kaserne toe en kry jou fokken patetiese goeters. Jy’s UIT DIE FOKKEN WEERMAG!”
Back in the bungalow, I packed. It surely took me no more than five minutes. The corporals were waiting outside, and they took off.
“At the double!” they screamed, and I struggled along behind with the heavy suitcase and my trumpet case.
“Klim op!”
Why argue? I did as they said when we reached a Bedford lorry, and clambered up and in. All the way to the station, they lurched, braked, and accelerated, flinging me about as best they could—one peering back through the cab rear window, enjoying me bowling all over the loading bay. I picked up lots of bruises, but my heart was singing! Out of the army!
The truck screeched to a halt outside Bloemfontein station.
“Klim AF!”
I knew Bloem station well enough from all the family stops there on the way to the Karoo farms to know they had dropped me as far away from the platforms as they could. I was handed two tickets.
“You can’t kill k—–s, so the fucking army doesn’t fucking want you! Fokof nou!”
They jumped into the cab, slammed the doors, and roared away.
I lugged my suitcase a long way down the platform, where I eventually found I had to climb the overpass to get to my coach. One ticket was for the Bloemfontein-to-Ladysmith section. That train terminated at Ladysmith, so I would then have to change to the Durban train—possibly the Trans-Natal—in the small hours. I lay down in the heat, and giggled and giggled. Free within weeks!
I wondered whether I would again see my buddy Ian Coetser, at whose house I spent many a night listening to jazz in his den in Prestbury during his last year at Voortrekker High and mine at Maritzburg College. He was an ace conjurer and comedian. We had met when the Roering band played functions where he performed too. I had not yet seen him in Tempe, and now I never would.
Soon, I drifted off to sleep—something that we never got much of in Tempe. Most mornings we were up boning boots at 3:00 am. The corporals often screamed us awake in the small hours with trivial orders, just to rough up our nights. Beds had to be made with geometrically precise right-angled corners for inspection every morning. There was a set way to pack one’s belongings and leave them for inspection. Absolute uniformity was the order of the day, and no one I knew wanted to rock the boat. Those corporals had a huge thirst for messing with our lives.
We pulled into Ladysmith some time in the small hours. It was freezing cold. I debated sleeping in the compartment until daylight and perhaps some sun came, but it was no good: I was within 200 km of Pietermaritzburg. The pull was too great. I knew the Durban train would get to Pietermaritzburg just before daylight, but it would not arrive for more than an hour, and the waiting room was forbiddingly bleak.
So, I lugged my two cases out of the station and headed to the outskirts. Within half an hour I had a lift, and was dropped off in Scottsville, where I made my way to my mom’s flat, not far from the St Patrick’s Rd house (which she had sold in the meantime).
My mom was surprised to see me, but not as much as I had thought. It was she, after all, who had made the trip to Durban to set in motion my discharge, based on the recommendation of an ear specialist named Dr Leith, who feared that rifle fire would rapidly escalate the damage to my ears, and artillery fire would cause complete hearing loss.
A few months later, a postcard in red font arrived, confirming my discharge and that I was exempt from military duty. I still have it. You never know with these military types.
When I joined Chris Roering’s band in 1961, many of our gigs were played at the United Services Club, a short walk down from our St Patricks Rd house. It was a veterans’ club, hosting a “shellhole” of the MOTHS, or Memorable Order of Tin Hats. I was in particularly fine form on one of these gigs, and was approached by an enthusiastic American, who told me he was “up from the Consulate in Durban”. He sat with the band, and paid a lot of compliments about the music. Before he left for Durban, he drew me aside. After more compliments, he said he was sure he could get me a music scholarship to study trumpet and music in the USA! Wow! I went home breathless with excitement.
Guess what. It never happened.
First Year, UNP
I was allowed a late registration and began my university life on 8 May 1963. One pleasant surprise was to find Jeff Guy already there. He had returned from then-Rhodesia to begin his BA, and I found him as I entered the Intro Philosophy class.
That first lecture was delivered by Dr Wessels Brummer, a young lecturer who must have arrived fairly recently in Pietermaritzburg. I had not heard of him before. As a first lecture, I have to say it was a lulu!
“Today, we are going to do the Pre-Socratics. That is, people who came before Socrates.”
Thus began my first lecture. Brummer had a heavy Afrikaans accent, a pleasant enough, rather boyish voice, and I settled back to take notes. He continued:
“Now. There was this ou, Thales. He said: ‘What is the ultimate underlying substance of the universe?’”
He continued outlining who and what the Pre-Socratics were, and went on:
“The defining characteristic of the Pre-Socratics is they were of the primitif mentality. Not the modern mentality. When I say ‘my dog Spotty is cold, we must put on pants to him,’ that is the primitif mentality. A characteristic of primitif mentality is that you personify. If I say I must put on pants to my dog Spotty, I am personifying him. The opposite is the modern mentality. When a report in the newspaper says a fishing boat capsized and the crew perished, that is the modern mentality. Not ‘Koos died’ or ‘Piet drowned’, but ‘crew’. That is a classificatory term. Koos and Piet is not human beings, they is crew. That is the modern mentality. It classifies, it does not personify.”
My gaze wandered over the other students and met that of Jeff Guy. Wide open, his eyes displayed the purest of fun. The next time I came across an expression like that, it was on the face of Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, surveying the other inmates in a group session led by the forbidding Nurse Ratched.
Fine Art
I had elected English, Intro Philosophy, Special German, and Fine Art as my first-year subjects. All the lecturers interviewed me, outlining what I needed in order to catch up with what I had missed while in the army. They were all kindly and helpful. There was a mountain of reading, but the senior lecturer in the Fine Art department, Mrs Heath, pointed out that I would not get a pass for the June exams, because it would take a miracle to produce the minimum amount of drawing, painting, sculpture, and pottery to get a pass. She suggested I go hammer and tongs at the Art History part, and secure at least a pass in that, and it would prepare me for year-end as well. I worked as hard as I could. Predictably I passed nothing in June, but I did get through First Year, and moved on to Second Year, when I changed to full-time BA Fine Art. Back in Your Own Backyard
In the winter of 1964, a show had (at least a one-week) run at the Lotus Hall in Pietermaritzburg. I found the money for a ticket, and saw the show. The show itself, as in everything but the music, I admit I don’t really remember at all. This is no reflection on the show, nor the cast. It was, as usual, a problem with my hearing, worsened by the Lotus Hall acoustics. I had played gigs there with Swing Inc, so it was not a surprise to find that I was losing actors’ diction. Much of the show, as with all these hearing-challenged live acts, was a mystery to me.
What was no mystery at all was the music. The backing band was an unlikely line-up: two trumpets, piano, bass, drums. I found from the programme (a rather flimsy roneo print) that the trumpeters’ names were Denis Mpale and Elijah Nkwanyana.
In the weekend after seeing the concert, a rumour was spread that Andy Adamos, a BAFA student at UNP, and also the owner of the Wooden Horse (a nightclub in a little lane next to “The Twentieth”, a cinema—the “Twentieth Century”, I think it was a franchise back then), was hosting a live band on Sunday night. I had to go. I found there the backing band from the show I had just seen. A thrilling evening of jazz followed. The two trumpeters were very different when soloing: Elijah extrovert with roaring high notes, Denis with speedy fingering and an introspective Harmon mute.
I hung around for a while after the jazz blow was finished, hoping to pay my respects to the band, but they were surrounded by fans, and eventually my chronic shyness won the night. There was no sleeping after such an elevating evening, so I decided on a walk. Perhaps because of some preoccupation with music as a calling, and by way of a retreat into the whirlpool of regret over the difficulty of my father’s passing, my steps carried me straight down Church Street. I was once again, after a long while, on the way to the Mountain Rise Cemetery. Was I about to remonstrate with my ancestor about becoming a musician? I have no longer any idea, but certainly, his grave was where I was headed.
Near the lower end of Church Street, I passed “Hotelalabantu”, the local name for what was surely no more than a forbidding doss-house rather than a hotel. A bus was parked outside its front door. It was close to freezing point, and I noticed, as I passed the bus, that its windows were heavily steamed up. I wondered why. It was well after midnight, hours after that bus must have made its most recent trip. Passing alongside the bus, a movement above me caught my eye. I stopped and looked up.
Silhouetted on the misted window were two heads. For the most part, the lighting in “Back in Your Own Backyard” had put the band in silhouette. What I saw now were the unmistakable heads of Denis Mpali and Elijah Nkwanyana. I paused. Hanging around in some indecision, I eventually was driven to greet the two and pay my respects for a wonderful night of music. Both men were as still as statues when I climbed up the steps into the bus. They were motionless, obdurate in their greatcoats in the freezing bus.
This was deep in apartheid times. People became policemen as young as sixteen years old in those days. The sight of a young white man in a greatcoat in the small hours of the morning must have stressed them horribly. Awkwardly, I sat two seats away, introduced myself, and said my piece about the wonderful night of music they had given me. They relaxed visibly, thanked me quietly, and (what else?) waited for me to leave. Soon, a bottle of brandy came into sight. That was, in those days, illegal hooch, and I now got the picture. Firstly, the so-called hotel was undoubtedly a dreadful flea-pit, but even if it weren’t, booze would most definitely have been a no-no inside there. We shared a few quiet and awkward sentences, then I rose and left them to their bottle in that freezing bus.
“What a life,” I thought. “What a life. Maybe me dad was right.”
Nowadays, I realise that was a choice made by Denis and Elijah. They wanted to drink. Today, and before Denis died, this could happen in the comfort of a hotel room, with “legal” liquor. Elijah died young, so I doubt he ever saw any such comfort. I understood their wakefulness; I am still convinced that doss-house must have been a hell-hole, quite possibly no warmer than that freezing bus. As for sleep, my whole life I struggled to sleep after a gig, and even now, after a lifetime as a musician, in my late seventies, I find myself lying wide awake in bed, waiting for first light, so I can sleep, and I imagine Denis and Elijah were the same.
The cemetery, perhaps a mile away, was crisp and frosty, crunching underfoot. I paid my respects, turned, and walked back to my loft. Waking late, after a sound sleep, I sat up, the first waking thought being of Denis and Elijah in that frozen, cheerless bus, and found myself saying again: “What a life!” Hay Paddock
When my time ended at Miss Eleanour Russell’s loft, I needed to find new digs. Since I loved walking and running and there was not much of Maritzburg remaining unseen on those outings, I had noticed a few cottages in Hay Paddock that were curtainless, and therefore probably empty. I asked around until an older Pietermaritzburg resident told me that the Pietermaritzburg Municipality (in those days, it was “the Corporation”) had a housing department. I went to see them. There was no queue. The lady I spoke to was kindly—a kindly auntie, I thought.
She listened carefully as I described the few places that I had seen lying vacant. She was a little hesitant at first, but I noticed her eyes looking me up and down, and realised later that she was possibly sizing up my financial situation. I was happy enough in a faded tee and old pair of jeans, with painfully tattered tackies, but she appeared a little concerned, and disappeared into a back room. I could hear drawers slamming. She reappeared and set out a few offers. The cottage I liked the most was identified on a map she placed between us, and she said I could have it for a rental of R2 per month, after payment of a small deposit for electricity; the electricity bill would have to be settled by me monthly. Both electricity and rent could be paid at “Electricity House”, adjacent to the Bus Station.
I could not believe my luck, eagerly signed, and that’s how I came to live for two years in Hay Paddock, Pietermaritzburg, in a white cottage. It comprised one huge room leading to a kitchenette, that in turn led to a door to the stoep, leading to a bathroom with a chip geyser. There was a single light hanging from the ceiling in the main room, and a similar fitting in the kitchen.
Someone, I forget who, helped me move my bed and chest of drawers from Miss Russell’s loft. Furniture was a single bed, chest of drawers, and armchair. Visitors got the bed, I slept in the armchair. Other “furnishings” were piano, trombone, trumpet, vibraphone, easel. Neighbours 25m away on the East side were deaf, so they couldn’t hear my noise. No other neighbours. Just a hundred metres of savanna. Rent was R2.00 pm. Perfect.
There wasn’t much in the chest of drawers, and for the most part, my “outfits” were kept in a canvas UNP kit bag. I had one change of jeans and tees and underwear for daily wear. For gigs I added a pair of black shoes, black slacks & a long-sleeved white shirt, a black bow-tie (ersatz dress suit). I had a UN athletic blazer for travelling and cold weather, and a jersey. No raincoat. Walking in rain in Pietermaritzburg was pleasant. After being briefly drenched, the sun would come out and dry my clothes within half an hour.
For food and beverages, there was one each of gas ring, kettle, double boiler. I wanted, but never got, a toaster.
Carolyn Seawright
A very cold, distant, and disapproving Mr Seawright let me in and showed me to Carolyn’s room. She gave me a hero’s welcome. We had been writing letters during the vac, and it had been an agonising wait for them every time. To be together was a totally unexpected surprise. She made up a bed for me on a lower level of the house, a semi-basement next to the door of their double garage. I was made very comfortable, but of course got the evil eye from her father, Roy Seawright, as he sniffed disdainfully at me on his way to his car for work that morning.
The morning was to produce a much worse shock. Callie brought a newspaper to me. Still in her nightdress, she joined me on the bed and showed me a page:
“Is this… your John?”
Blazing out of the page at me were the words: “John Nesbitt Lloyd, 24”.
That was my John Lloyd, all right.
The Seawrights were wealthy. He was a self-made man, an engineer who had invented the rock-drill for mines. Then and for decades after, the family benefited from patent royalties. Every rock-drill manufacturer all over the world had to pay for the rights to the patent, and R.M.F. Seawright himself made—at his company, SECO (Steel Engineering Company)—reputedly the best rock-drills in the world.
Over breakfast cooked by their Mozambican cook, I told Callie how I had intended to stay with Lloyd and Lewin in Braamfontein and see her during the day, but the presence of goons in the deep shadows of their cars had spooked me into walking by and coming on down the long hill, past the zoo, to her.
The newspaper reported that John had been arrested. This was a week or so after Lewin’s arrest. What was going on?
Callie knew about John Lloyd, though she didn’t really know him personally. He had impressed her with his intellect within minutes. She knew he and Chris Roering were my main male friends at the time. I may as well say that Carolyn was my grand affair. I was to stay in their house a few more times, during all of which Mr Seawright tried his damnedest to catch us in flagrante delicto—which never quite happened, due to Carolyn’s acute hearing. She was able to hear even his breathing as he crept down the carpeted passage, hoping to burst in on us in the act. I kind of don’t blame him. Men of that generation could not stand the notion of a young man bonking their daughters under their own roof. Trying as hard as he did to catch us in the act, though, felt pervy and creepy.
Carolyn was seven years older than me. I am so naive that it took me half a century to realise that I was considered, and was, her toyboy. However, a few months before she passed, I was lucky enough to spend an evening with her. She was still astonishingly beautiful, and I felt as though the years had never passed. When I put the ’toyboy question’ to her, she said no—that I was more important to her than that. I thought that was very gracious of her, because I know she must have suffered somewhat at the hands of ex-lovers and her father. As far as anyone else could see, this was a purely intensely sexual relationship. It was. That said, it was also very natural. I was as naive as a young teen could be, and Carolyn was my sexual teacher. I was so besotted with her, that description would not have occurred to me. I mean, I should tell of the first time I hitchhiked to Johannesburg and stayed with the Seawrights.