Prepare yourself my faithful readers; this blog entry feels like it might be a bit more serious than some of the others, which I hope won't mean that you flick to the next Facebook update.
My uncle Terry died last week. He wasn’t very good at accepting love and consequently we had drifted apart and we hadn't spoken or been in contact for a good few years. Consequently I didn’t believe that his death would mean much to me but I think it has probably impacted me more than I thought it would.
When I first arrived in London, I didn’t have very much money. I had come over to the Big Smoke wide-eyed and bushy-tailed to forge a new career path like so many others before me (for some reason London is massively popular with Antipodeans; it must be the weather; no – the tube; no – English girls (“The government” aka Mrs Hodson proof reads these blogs so I need to tread carefully here! ☺ ) A business that I had been a part of in Cape Town had failed; and given that I had arrived on the back end of the dot-com bust, jobs were hard to come by, especially since I had come from a bust start-up!
I remember interviewing for a banking job in this big drab slab of a building with lots of people in suits sitting in cubicles doing – well I’m not sure what they were doing – it was a bank after all! The job title was “Headcount Administrator” which sounded cool enough – and it paid decent coin. Until we got into what the job actually entailed. Yes you guessed it – working out on an annual basis, which unlucky sods were to be “rationalised” from the workforce! I would have gotten my own office; I was told the reason being because the work was highly sensitive. Nah; I reckon it was to protect me from being lynched by those cubicle dwellers who had been “let go”! Needless to say I passed.
So jobs were like hens teeth and cashflow was TIGHT but my Uncle, who lived in London, always managed to keep my spirits up. I remember my first encounter with him as if it was yesterday. (He had left South Africa many years before so I hadn’t seen him in ages.) We met in this dingy little coffee shop just off the Putney High Street. He sat, hunched over, drinking a double espresso reading a Private Eye. A box of cigarettes, half empty, lay on the table. I walked up, said hi – he said hi, and I sat down. No real emotion. No hugs. No warmth. No niceties. But he did ask me if I wanted something to eat (given that I had eaten a lot of beans-on-toast up to this point I gratefully accepted!) – and then he asked me about the political situation in South Africa.
He was a man with a steely gaze who looked almost into you when he was engaging about politics or the latest book he had read, but it was softened by a mischievous glint that told you that he wasn’t being all that serious! He was always recommending books for me to read and expand my perspective of the world and to give you a bit of insight I have three on my bookshelf that he gave me:
- “An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Philosophy” – this was before the days of the Dummies Guide!
- “Bosman at his Best” – Herman Bosman was one of South Africa’s greatest short story writers; a literary genius.
- “The CEO of the Sofa” written by PJ O’Rourke. My Uncle loved satire and O’Rourke was one of his favourite authors.
He helped me navigate those first few tricky months in London and the number of times he took my sister and I out for dinner – usually a curry or Thai – well, I lost count! I usually walked away (or should I say “stumbled”) from that sort of evening with a very fuzzy head and clothes that smelt like they had actually smoked the cigarettes! (In those days smoking indoors was standard and my Uncle didn’t hold back.). He didn’t have kids, and I think those times with Robyn and I careering around London, gate-crashing house parties, getting banned from the local boozer or just spending evenings in his flat talking – and drinking – and invariably listening to jazz at full pitch till the wee hours, were the closest he came to mixing it up with the young in his wider family. (Note: I am not advocating going out and getting pissed with your kids ☺ )
However my Uncle battled life. I interacted with him for a snapshot of his sixty-five odd years on this planet and I was witness to that red hot rod of self- destruction that threatened to beat him senseless with every drink that he took. He was arrogant enough to presume that because he had a fearsome intellect that he could control it, but he was wrong.
He moved away from London to Wales about six or seven years ago. I never saw him again. By all accounts he stopped loving himself (I question whether he ever did) and with that he stopped living.
I didn’t think that I would shed any tears for my Uncle knowing what I know about him. But I saw bits of his true self (my Mom described him as a very happy-go-lucky little boy) and I will cherish those memories – and read all the books that he said I should ☺
RIP Uncle.
OUT