John and Nola on one of their epic bicycle rides
Our view of John and Nola when we were young was that they a strong and a different sort of energy with them when they visited us. When you are very young, it's hard to actually see people, isn't it? Rather you feel them. Their scent, their colours and facial expressions and this and the variations in their timbre of a voices turns each person into a buzzing, moving cloud.
While talking to Mom and Dad, I rubbed my face with my hands. It was a reaction to tiredness. When I looked up they were both staring at me.
"Why, that's exactly what Grandpa John used to do." said Mom.
When Nola was with John, he was in command and her acquiescence release an energy that brightened her psyche. This glow that Nola had, she shared.
In the 60s and 70s in the Lido Hotel, a beautiful 1930s building full of curves, squads of waiters, kitchen staff, cleaning staff and ground staff jumped to it. Their performance was monitored carefully and they were either rewarded and praised or disciplined. The forward looking management wisdom of Norman Vincent Peale was humanely implemented. Briefly, we were witnesses to the purpose and drive behind John and Nola's successful hotel. It hasn't done so well in the decades since. But business is picking up I hear. Perhaps they should invite ITV to film an episode of Poirot there. The hotel would write its own story.
There was a breakfast gallery laid out with wicker chairs and tables. Like the deck of the Isle de France liner. We were served an English breakfast with Melba toast. Red carpets went up flights of white stairs. Bedrooms were full of soft upholstery - texture nightmare. The back of the kitchens smelled of rotting vegetables and little metal chimneys steamed, dampening the stucco. The white sides of the building were clean, but black wires interrupted the smooth curves, stretching away at angles.
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We stripped and dived into the water and it was silk against the skin and between the legs. To feel the water flow over you like that - like the long hair of a beautiful woman around your thighs.
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The highway that went past in front did not have all that many cars. Many stopped to buy liquer at the bottle store. Many people stopped to have a drink at the bar. No women were allowed. There was a seperate ladies bar. There was also a very large ballroom in the middle of the hotel. Perhaps it was only in use once while we were there. When we were toddlers. But we weren't allowed to peek.
The story is that while Mom and Dad lived at Nelly Road they became vegetarians. Nelly Road was a sort of communal hang-out for all their friends. Pam showed me what it used to looked like. We drove along nelly Road and couldn't find it. But the houses along there were much th same. I was still learning to speak and so confused breakfast and lunch and someone had taught me to ask for whisky when I meant milk. Apparently, when John and Nola visited Nelly Road one afternoon I went up to them aged three and asked for my breakfast and whisky.
In fact my Grandmother Lisa secretly fed me chicken liver in schmaltz in the garden because she was so worried about the damage a vegetarian diet could do to a child. The twins were only babies.
My first memories were of the farm at the back and being taken to see a calf. There was a grating so the calf couldn't get out without getting its leg trapped and so we had to be careful to keep it in the paddock. It nuzzled our hands with it's soft face and we patted it.
On other visits John took us with the milk produced on the little farm to the dairy and we watched them making butter. On another occasion - I was 12 and the twins were 10, he brought us along to see a pig being slaughtered so that we would understand where bacon came from. My God. That's where bacon comes from. We watched a litter of piglets being born and when the runt couldn't get to his teat, we took him back to the house and nursed him by the fire with Nola's help. It died anyway. These were lessons.
The pool at the Lido was huge and the water was fresh yellow river water. You could just see your feet at the bottom in the shallow end. We must have gone several times before we left South Africa. It felt very familiar. When we came back to visit again it was full of weed and we paddled Mike's canoe around it. The last time we went they had urned the pool into a trout pond and when you threw feed onto the water the surface churned. later they replaced the trout with goldfish, but while they were away, the person they left in charge netted all the goldfish. They came back and there was no sign of the man they had left in charge and there were no goldfish. They didn't understand and assumed the goldfish had caught an illness and that they had all died.
But when they phoned his home he couldn't come to the phone because he was busy, the little voice that answered them explained why.
"My daddy's in the Goldfish business."
Our Eikenhoff Halls also liked small dogs for some reason. I know there was Pluto. He was dad Mike and John's dog. But then the dogs seemed to get smaller and smaller. The last was a Terrier or a Jack Russell, I think.
Grandpa John insisted on buying British cars and so had another Austin Morris in 1972. This was a mistake. Because the pressure had leaked from one side of the suspension, he had to drive it lopsided all the way to Pretoria. We listed to the right. My head high and John's low and tilting in the driver's seat. We laughed at the car, but John didn't.
'These are good cars.' he insisted.
To save petrol coming back from Johannesburg he used to turn off the engine of the car. We were on a long slope. Listen, said Grandpa John. And there was only the sound of wind rushing rubber whining at first then whirring, then humming. he turned the engine on when we reached the last flat.
John and Nola came to visit us wherever we were. They came to the UK, to Tanzania and Kenya. This was because they managed to get British passports and were allowed in to African countries. We looked forward to their visits. John always had lots of good advice and they had some money so they would treat us to a meal or an outing.
They were freer than most people in some ways. freer and less inhibited than my Mother's side of the family was. Sometimes this open approach is misunderstood by Europeans as signalling a lack of good manners. This is not the case.
John and Nola sought life affirming pleasure, not at great expense and certainly without ay real indulgence. John and Nola were nudists and they visited nudist beaches over many decades. They bought one yacht and moored it at Chichester and then bought another, Autumn Venture, which was blue and white and 30 feet long, and they moored it in the South of France.
When we were older, we had just come back from India, they took us to the middle of Monte Carlo harbour in Autumn venture and Nola insisted we strip before we dived in. We did. We stripped and dived into the water and it was silk against the skin and between the legs. To feel the water flow over you like that - like the long hair of a beautiful woman around your thighs.
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Picture from Visiwiki
When John reached 80 they decided the time had come to do something special and so they rode on bicycles all the way from Johannesburg to Cape Town and Durban. They got into the papers with that feat and Nola sent us all copies of the articles.
They were also continually experimenting with animals. Nola had many pets. She kept a flock of doves which would land at her command - and a flock of sheep. They read books on ecological living well before we did. Nola really. John had always believed in self reliance. Perhaps David, my Dad's older brother was sending them the reading material from California. And so they ordered and tried different things from the Mother Earth's Almanac and I am sure David's interventions made their lives richer.
It was John who taught me to make a paper kite and fly it in the highfeld at the back of the hotel. I think he did this with all the cousins. It was beautiful to see what human work could produce. He was teaching the value of work and how so many things were not necessary. You could make them yourself. He despised consumerism and gimmie, gimmie, gimmie. John and Nola shared a lot of their values.
The notorious vibrator belt machine
I remember John on a diet. He drank (?) whole pulped up orange ground up together with the peel, and there a machine in the corner that wobbled and vibrated your flab until you had lost all feeling. It felt a little obscene. John didn't believe in doctors at all and he passed that on to dad. If you looked after yourself and let nature help you then most of the time that would be enough. Getting a pacemaker inserted to sort out his arrhythmia was anathema to my father.
Nola was appreciative of our youth. I remember she used to bite our bums with gusto when we were barely teenagers and she made the best Moules Mariniere I have ever tried.
It's a very simple recipe. I am sure you all know it, but just in case.
Moules Marniere
- Put the mussels under cold water for half an hour or so. The mussels will open.
- Clean all the mussels and throw away the ones which are still closed
- Fry chopped onions and herbs in butter in a big heavy pot with a lid.
- Add white wine.
- Pour in the mussels and cover the pot.
- Pour in half a pot of single cream (optional).
- Leave it to boil - simmer for about 10 to 15 minutes.
- Discard the mussels that are not open.
- Pour, clattering wetly into deep dishes.
- Eat with good bread and a white wine.
John and Nola knew the value of many things. Not all things but many, and they shared what they knew with us.
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