Dear Philip,
Your Mom and I became best friends at Kingsmead - having been thrown together by our respective mothers when she first arrived at Junior School. I don't think we actually hated each other on sight when we were small, which often happens when parents want you to be friends, but we certainly became good pals by the Senior School. I don't actually remember her parents all that well. My mother was quite friendly with them I think; as war refugees the Jewish community took good care of them.
At school, our main drawback was that we both enjoyed talking and flouting petty rules, and consequently spent our senior years being punished for indulging in both a little too readily.
There was a system of "Preps" - each level of which would confer greater privileges on those who rose in the ranks from Junior to Middle to Senior Preparation. These elevations coincided more or less with your rise from class to class, finishing at Matric level, where if you were not a prefect or sub-prefect you were certainly in Senior Prep.
Eve, however stayed resolutely down in Junior Prep for about three years, and I was twice demoted from Middle to Junior for bad behaviour, and so would meet my best friend after school more often than would otherwise have been expected. This wilful failure to conform cemented our camaraderie no end.
We also, I remember, one day rode round the out-of-bounds Rosebank shops on our bikes with our hated brown stocking rolled down to the ankle and our suspender belts (that dates us!) tied flagrantly round the handlebars. Seen, reported, and duly punished of course. We were the 'bad' girls, so bad that I even confess to doing a bit of cheating at an exam or two.
Eve was alphabetically placed a seat ahead of me being 'St' while I was 'Su' - which made it possible to quietly roll marbles wrapped in paper to and fro on the floor with answers to maths questions hastily scribbled thereupon. Just pretend you had dropped your pen or rubber and bend down and hey presto! Cool, we thought it. Sorry, dear children, to cast aspersions on a Mother above reproach in all other respects; its just that maths was not one of our strong points.
At Wits we were less joined at the hip, as she fell in love with your Dad and was thus entirely taken up with him and their political activities. I thought it was very advanced to commit to a chap so early on in life, but it proved to be the most enduring of marriages and they were, as you know, entirely of a mind. A real love story.
It was only in later life, over these last 10 or 15 years I suppose, that Eve and I became friends again, but sadly only pen-friends because of their move to Matumi which was rather out of the way for an intermittent visitor like me. She and To always asked me to come and visit but I could never quite make it.
We did meet up at that Old Girls meeting in Jo'burg you mention, and I was thrilled to see her again amongst the many other unfamiliar yet familiar faces of our school contemporaries. I would always have had more to say to Eve than to most because our political colours matched so closely, and we also shared a sense of anarchy and humour.
Oh, and by the way, her nom de guerre at school was, predictably, 'Evil.' As inapt as a very tall person being dubbed Shorty. She was, I need hardly add, good all through.
Your Mom and I became best friends at Kingsmead - having been thrown together by our respective mothers when she first arrived at Junior School. I don't think we actually hated each other on sight when we were small, which often happens when parents want you to be friends, but we certainly became good pals by the Senior School. I don't actually remember her parents all that well. My mother was quite friendly with them I think; as war refugees the Jewish community took good care of them.
At school, our main drawback was that we both enjoyed talking and flouting petty rules, and consequently spent our senior years being punished for indulging in both a little too readily.
There was a system of "Preps" - each level of which would confer greater privileges on those who rose in the ranks from Junior to Middle to Senior Preparation. These elevations coincided more or less with your rise from class to class, finishing at Matric level, where if you were not a prefect or sub-prefect you were certainly in Senior Prep.
Eve, however stayed resolutely down in Junior Prep for about three years, and I was twice demoted from Middle to Junior for bad behaviour, and so would meet my best friend after school more often than would otherwise have been expected. This wilful failure to conform cemented our camaraderie no end.
We also, I remember, one day rode round the out-of-bounds Rosebank shops on our bikes with our hated brown stocking rolled down to the ankle and our suspender belts (that dates us!) tied flagrantly round the handlebars. Seen, reported, and duly punished of course. We were the 'bad' girls, so bad that I even confess to doing a bit of cheating at an exam or two.
Eve was alphabetically placed a seat ahead of me being 'St' while I was 'Su' - which made it possible to quietly roll marbles wrapped in paper to and fro on the floor with answers to maths questions hastily scribbled thereupon. Just pretend you had dropped your pen or rubber and bend down and hey presto! Cool, we thought it. Sorry, dear children, to cast aspersions on a Mother above reproach in all other respects; its just that maths was not one of our strong points.
At Wits we were less joined at the hip, as she fell in love with your Dad and was thus entirely taken up with him and their political activities. I thought it was very advanced to commit to a chap so early on in life, but it proved to be the most enduring of marriages and they were, as you know, entirely of a mind. A real love story.
It was only in later life, over these last 10 or 15 years I suppose, that Eve and I became friends again, but sadly only pen-friends because of their move to Matumi which was rather out of the way for an intermittent visitor like me. She and To always asked me to come and visit but I could never quite make it.
We did meet up at that Old Girls meeting in Jo'burg you mention, and I was thrilled to see her again amongst the many other unfamiliar yet familiar faces of our school contemporaries. I would always have had more to say to Eve than to most because our political colours matched so closely, and we also shared a sense of anarchy and humour.
Oh, and by the way, her nom de guerre at school was, predictably, 'Evil.' As inapt as a very tall person being dubbed Shorty. She was, I need hardly add, good all through.
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