Life Trove

"I loved school. I studied like crazy. I was a Class A nerd." Maya Lin

Memories of my first year (Vista Nova)

During my first year, I went to a school called Vista Nova for children with learning and other disabilities. The reason for this is that I showed learning problems with things like telling the time and doing up my laces and so on. In addition to school, I also had special remedial lessons from Mrs Roberson, a private remedial teacher, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

On my first day, I remember feeling pretty terrified, especially of the bigger, older pupils and I remember being horrified when I was told by one of them that another pupil had misbehaved and had been sent to the headmaster for "cuts." I didn't realise that this was the school term for corporal punishment with a cane (which still would have scared me somewhat) and I took its meaning literally.

After a while, I started really enjoying school. I made some good friends and I enjoyed the lessons and my confidence grew as I found myself doing class exercises more easily than most of the other pupils (obviously their learning disabilities were greater than mine.)

I remember one time when I got a little too confident and cocky in class and talked when I shouldn't have, I was made to put my hands on my head and keep them there for the duration of the lesson. After a while, it was torturous on my poor arms and shoulders. I didn't like the punishment much but it was far more tolerable, I thought, than the dreaded "cuts."

Every Friday afternoon before we went home for the weekend, we would all go into the school hall and watch a movie. I loved this part of the week more than any other. It is where my love of movies originated.

I have one particularly vivid memory from Vista Nova. First of all, let it be known that my father used to be a dentist. One day, when I was 6 years old, I was sitting in class listening to my teacher. She was reading us a book called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Suddenly Mrs Ford, another teacher who taught the older children, came rushing into our classroom. She said in a loud voice, "I want Myburgh!" Then she grabbed me by the arm and walked me out of the classroom and down the school corridor. I was terrified. I didn't know what was going to happen. Maybe I had done something wrong!

She walked me to her classroom and made me stand in front of all the children. Everyone was looking at me. I didn't know where to look so I looked down at my feet. Then she said, "Myburgh, open your mouth and show them your teeth!" So I did. What else was I to do? Then she said "Students, look at his teeth. These are the teeth of a dentist's son. Look how they sparkle and shine! You too can have teeth like this if you look after them." Then she said "Thank you Myburgh - you can go back to your class now." I ran out of the classroom, wishing that my dad was an engineer or a business man or fireman - anything but a dentist.

Memories of Prep School (St Georges)

My progress at Vista Nova was such that it was decided I was potentially ready for "normal" school. My teacher's name at my new school was Mrs Allen and she was very sweet and affirming and I really liked her.

My reading and writing was far behind everyone else in the class so I had to do extra reading in the afternoons after school. I was a driven little guy (why, I'm not sure, because my parents never pushed me) and I caught up within a couple of months. And then I kept working and soon, in tests and mini exams, I was right at the top of the class. And that is pretty much where I remained for the rest of my schooling.

It did take it's toll though. Deep down, I felt inferior to the other kids because I had had to go to a "special school" to start with. I thought the only way to do well was to work harder than the other kids - that I was inherently dumb. And when I found myself at the top of the class, I felt that my teachers expected me to stay there. All in all, it made me feel very anxious before any kind of test or exam. I would start studying earlier than anyone else and I would feel extremely nervous on the day of the test.

It was this situation that inspired my poem: "Little Boy"

Little stick arms pumped to the sky
Little thin legs lifting high
Little eyes fixed in a hungry stare
Little pink feet dangling bare
Little teeth clenched through flaring lips
Little frame rising on contorted hips
Little boy launched in a furious leap
Little boy lands in a sandy heap
Little boy striving non stop since birth
Little boy desperate to prove his worth

My most memorable teachers in Prep School were Mrs Basson and Mrs Mallett. Mrs Basson was a tall, regal woman who always took immaculate care of her appearance. She also always wore a wig. She was my teacher when I was 8. Mrs Basson was famous throughout the school for her dreaded bat. If you spoke in class when you shouldn't or didn't do your homework, she would take you up onto the mat and give you a solid smack on the butt with it. It always made such a a rifle like crack when it made contact that the whole class would wince in sympathy. I only had the bat once in my year and to be honest, it sounded a lot worse than it actually was.

Mrs Mallet was a large woman with a booming, strident voice and she always carried a big wooden ruler that she would rap against the wall to make a loud noise if she was angry or wanted everyone to be quiet. But she never once hit anyone with it. I was scared of her to start, but soon I began to realise that under the tough exterior, there was an extremely caring, affirming and wonderful person. She was the kind of person you felt you could confide in and who would give you gentle words of encouragement. But woe and betide if you misbehaved or made her lose her temper. She had a very low tolerance for laziness or bullying or serial misbehaving.

When I was 9, I had Jenny Mallet as my teacher and I loved her class except for Fridays when we would conduct one of her dreaded mental tests. Jenny would shout out "times table questions" in rapid succession and we would have to write the answers as quickly as we could in to keep up. And you certainly didn't want to get more than a few wrong or you would be in big trouble.

Jenny loved sport and she coached Under 9 rugby (the barefoot league as it was known.) I really enjoyed rugby though I wasn't very good at it to start. According to mum, I used to stand on the field and suck my fingers. Later on, however, I flourished on the field and I won an award for most improved rugby player.

Jenny taught swimming too and her strident voice would boom out across the pool as she stood, bouncing on the diving board, giving instructions to the swimmers. The more excited or upset Jenny got, the more she would bounce and we often anticipated her bounces becoming sufficient to launch her large frame into the pool. But it never happened while I was there. However it was rumoured that a few years previously, Jenny had got so upset with a student who would not follow instructions that she had leapt off her perch into the water below with a mighty splash and dunked the poor chap. This was a school legend and I very much doubt it ever actually happened.

One of my most vivid memories from school happened when I was seven years old. I had to have an operation on my legs. I went into hospital and came out with my legs in plaster paris. I could not walk for 6 weeks and had to move around in a wheel chair. When I was in class, I could not walk to the toilet. So I used to pee in a bottle in class. Then, when I was finished, the bottle would be put on the floor beside me.

As soon as the bottle was on the floor, my teacher (Mrs Allen) would start to watch the students carefully. She was looking for someone who was or had been naughty. Then she would say "Right, Patrick, you haven't done your homework." Or "Nicky, you're talking in class." - "Go to the toilet and empty out the bottle!" They would come over to me and take the bottle and look at me as if it was all my fault. So for 6 long weeks, I was the class punishment.

The highlight of my school day was eating hot lunch. This was prepared specially for the boarders but day boys who paid extra could have it too. Being a sugar fiend, I loved dessert most of all, especially the chocolate instant pudding they served every Wednesday. Some of us made a concerted effort to befriend the cooking staff so we could get extra helping of our favourite dishes.

Some teachers, especially Jenny Mallet, were very strict about us eating all our food. This wasn't a problem for human garbage cans like me who liked everything. But it was a real issue for poor pupils like Sean Peche, for example, who hated fish which was served like clockwork every Friday. Sean hated Friday lunches and he literally used to gag his way through his fried fish under stern watch from Miss Mallet.

One day, Sean had a bright idea. He ate his gem squash and then packed all his fish into the gem squash skin so tight that it had the density of a blackhole and then turned his squash upside down on his plate to hide it. But hawk eye Miss Mallet was wise to rush ruses and she made Sean unpack the fish from his squash and she made him eat it and she wouldn't let any of us leave the dining hall to go play until he had finished every mouthful. How he didn't throw up I don't know - he certainly came close several times.

Other memories I have of prep school:

Getting a lift to school with the Rusconis. This is how I met Julian, my oldest friend to this day
Reading The Hobbit in class and loving every minute of it
The day Patrick lifted his desk lid to find a large, steaming dog turd on top of his Latin books. The phantom bogger as we called him struck a few more times with other students and then it stopped. No-one ever caught him. To this day, I suspect Andrew Miller.
A ruby tour to Port Elizabeth where we triumphed in one game and were thumped in another
Our annual rugby match against an Afrikaans school in Paarl. The pupils there were brought up on boerewors instead of breast milk and they were absolutely huge. Some of them had thicker arms than our legs. It would take 3 of us (one on each legs and one round the waist ) to bring one down. Mum used to die a million deaths when she watch us play. Especially when she saw the parents of the kids wearing the same rugby kit as their boys, standing on the sidelines waving their flags and screaming "murder them!" in Afrikaans at the top of their lungs.
Going to Graaf Reinet with Robert (a school friend) to spend a holiday with Juffrou Nel (our Afrikaans teacher) to work on our Afrikaans language skills
Winning many books at the annual prize givings. We always got to choose our books which I loved
Joining the St George's Cathedral Choir and attending on Friday nights and Sunday services. I loved the choir and especially our choir master, Barry Smith. Our choir was extremely good and we won many school Eistedford awards in the inter school competitions
Singing carols at the Christmas Cathedral service, anticipating the school holiday to come
When I was 9, appearing with the Choir on television. I didn't actually get to sing though, only mime. The older boys (Choristers) did the voice over and we had to mime the songs. But of course, to make it look realistic, we had to know all the words by heart which took some doing.
Excelling at long jump and high jump. When I was 9, I broke the school high jump record which remains to this day; one of my proudest moments. When I was 10, I won the high jump and long jump for not just my age group but the age above me too - which meant I got 4 mini cups as well as a large cup for earning the most points in my house.
Soaking in the tub after Saturday rugby matches, especially if we played in the rain
Taking the part of Huckleberry Finn in the school stage production of Tom Sawyer. This was a major school production and it was many, many hours of work but I enjoyed every minute of it. My most vivid memory was having to smoke a pipe on stage in one of the scenes. I used my Gramp's pipe and he taught me how to smoke it! Those were obviously the days when smoking had not yet been vilified.
Our annual 10 km marathon run along the upper Table Mountain road and how bushed I always used to feel after it.
Swimming the breastroke (my favourite stroke) in the school gala with such gusto that I would immediately get out of the pool and have to go and throw up in the toilets. And while I was doing so, hear the retching of other poor pupils who had also overdone it in their races.

Memories of High School (St Georges)

I didn't enjoy High School as much as Junior School. I got on the wrong side of one of the "popular" students (I later discovered I reminded him of his "goodie two shoes" brother who he disliked immensely) and being both popular and a boarder, he and his friends gave me a really hard time - not physically but emotionally. Added to this the feeling I constantly had to be at the top of the class, and school became very stressful at times.

There were some good times, however, especially in the latter part of my high school years when the guys who bullied me matured along with the rest of us and stopped.

My favourite teacher in high school was undoubtedly Gordon Howard, my biology teacher. He shared fascinating facts and stories with us, very often out of the prescribed syllabus. We also used to discuss all sorts of interesting and controversial topics in class, many of them not biology related. Gordon was an artist in his free time - he drew amazing pictures of lions and cheetahs and other wild African animals . To get inspiration for his painting, he travelled to game reserves during the holidays to take photos. He was a passionate photographer. In fact, he was passionate about just about everything. He also had one of the first personal computers (a prehistoric XT) and he was extremely excited about its potential - he was a visionary in that way.

It was Mr Howard who kindled my love of nature and the outdoors. He also sowed the seed of my love in technology. It was due to him that I decided to study Botany and Zoology when I left school. It is partly due to him that I always have had a fascination with cameras and photography and that I'm now a passionate photographer myself. The power that a good teacher can have is extraordinary. It inspires me to try to be a good teacher myself with my class.

Another teacher I will never forget (but for entirely different reasons) was our Std 8 Maths teacher. We only had her for a month as she was standing in for Mr Norton, our 82 year old teacher who needed to go into hospital for a heart complaint. I don't remember her name but she was young, very pretty and Polish (which added to her exotic appeal.) She used to wear a different coloured ribbon in her hair every day and each day, before she came into class, we would try to guess the colour of her ribbon. The whole class had a major crush on her. We’d often behave badly in class with other teachers but we were like meek puppies when she was around.

One of my greatest joys in high school was acting. Like my grandfather, I really liked to act on stage and I took part in several school plays. Because our school was male only, I did have to play a few female roles and I reluctantly admit I was pretty good at it. My highlight in this regard was playing the part of an elderly, prim and proper spinster on a plane who foils a hijack attempt. I studied my grandmother's mannerisms for hours to get inspiration and I really gave it my all. I was really chuffed when I won an acting award for the role.

Final Years

I decided to leap out of my stereotype as a female "actress" with avengeance in my final year. I applied for the role of Pharaoh in Joesph and his techni-coloured dream coat. I had to cycle onto stage on a bicycle in a cycling suit with a padded crotch and grab a microphone and sing an Elvis Presley type song while gyrating my hips. I had a ball doing it and it made me popular through out the school which I hadn't experienced since Prep School. The only embarrassment about the whole thing was having to perform on the 3rd night when my grandmother was in the 2nd row. I made the gyration of my hips a little bit more subtle on that night.

During my last couple of years at school, I developed a really strong passion for bird watching. This was first ignited by Tony Verboom, a very close school friend of mine, who took me off on one of his birding trips. We spent the morning in a local swamp, crawling on our bellies, getting knee deep in mud and thoroughly filthy in our pursuit of lesser spotted thing-a-me-bobs. And I absolutely loved every minute of it, especially when a beautiful osprey flew over our heads. From then, I lived and dreamed birds and cycled to the local birding spots every weekend in pursuit of new species (or ticks as we call them) in order to increase my life list. I also joined the Cape Town bird club and went on some great hikes with them.

They call us birds "twitchers" because when we see exciting new birds for the first time, we get so excited that our legs start to twitch and then our arms - so much so that it becomes hard to see through our binoculars. I like to say I have only twitched a few times in my life: when I saw a Narina Trogan (in Mkuzi), a Pels's Fishing Owl (in Ndumu), my first sea eagle (in Nepal) - and when I saw Ally for the first time (in Kleinmond).

Since my school days, birding has continued to be a passion and I have travelled the world in search of new ticks. My goal when I was young was to see 1000 birds in the wild. In 2007 at the age of 37, I achieved this target.

In Standard 9, I went on school trip to the Okovango swamps in Botswana. There were 9 of us packed into the back of a smallish camping van and we drove all the way up North to Botswana and Chobi and Victoria Falls. There was one very memorable night when our wheel came off our car and we were left stranded in the desert. I absolutely loved my time in Botswana and Zimbabwe and saw many new birds including "Jesus birds" than walk on water over water lilies, huge Marabou storks and brilliantly coloured Carmine bee-eaters.

Another thing I loved doing in my final years at school was paddle skiing down waves at the beach. Mum and dad were very supportive in taking me down to the beach to pursue this new hobby.

Something I didn't enjoy quite so much was learning to drive which I found somewhat difficult and stressful at first. During my first lesson with a driving instructor, the traffic light turned green but instead of moving forward, the automatic car I was driving started to vibrate thunderously without moving anywhere. "What is happening?" I shouted over the din of the engine. "You've got your feet on both the break and the accelerator!", the instructor shouted back.

Four weeks later, I did my practical driving exam. And to my mortification, I failed. Not because I didn't do a right hand turn properly. Not even because I went through a red light. I failed because I hit a pedestrian. I was waiting for pedestrians to cross the road at a crossing. It was in the middle of the city and their were many of them. I was worried the examiner (who was sitting beside me in the car) would think I was unassertive. So I edged forward - and hit someone softly on the back of his knees with my bumper. So I didn't kill anyone - or even injure them. But it was certainly enough for the examiner to sternly tell me I had failed and I should take him straight back to the depot.

Other Memories of high school

Here are some other vivid memories of high school

Having lots of laughter and fun with Julian and Kaffin - and talking an awful lot about sex
The time when our maths classroom started smelling. Everyone looked for the source of the smell but no-one could find it. The foul odour got worse and soon we were doing Maths on the lawn outside. A professional was brought in to investigate and everything was cleared from the room. The odour persisted. So the professional unscrewed the black board off the wall and a large piece of foul, rotting fish slid down the wall. No-one ever found out who put the fish there. To this day, I suspect Andrew Miller.
Mr Hart storming into our history class one day and having a raving argument with our history teacher (and headmaster), Mr Cannon. We were all gobsmacked and watched with our jaws open. Mr Hart then stormed out of the classroom. Mr Cannon turned to us with a smile and said "Right, guys, what just happened here." We realised it had all been an act. We all had to give an account of what Mr Hart had been wearing and what had been said. Many of us disagreed with each other on finer points. Mr Cannon then said, "If you can't all agree on something that happened just two minutes ago, then how can you believe everything that the historians say." It was a good lesson.
My first computer - a Commodore 64 which I loved. I got into programming and created a game that was thousands of lines of code. Then one day, in the middle of it, the tape got corrupted and I lost everything. I unfortunately stopped programming. If I hadn't, who knows, I might have been motivated to study programming at university which I would probably have enjoyed a lot
My first blue movie (given to me by Kaffin I think when I was about 14) - I can still remember the shock (and thrill) when I snuck it into the video recorder at home
Watching Shakespeare Plays at the open air theatre at Maynardville
Swimming before school
Playing computer games like Commando, Beach Head and Pole Position - to play a game, you had to load the tape which took about ten minutes!
Sleeping on the patio at home
Studying Latin with Ray Suttle and doing my final year projects (four 10 page essays on Roman history). The project I enjoyed most was doing a reconstruction of what life would have been like on the day that Mount Vesuvius buried the city of Pompeii.
Preparing for my final year exams, covering the dining room table with my books
Taking Jane and Wendy to my Std 9 and Matric dance. Jane wore a bright yellow dress that went well with the painting of the bright yellow moon on the wall (the theme for the evening being the dark side of moonlight.) But I didn't mind a bit - she looked great to me.
Family holidays to Natal (Drakensberg and Midmar Dam) and to Mauritius. I celebrated my 18th birthday in Mauritius. Mum and Dad organised a special yacht cruise to mark the big day but I got so sea sick that I had fantasies of jumping off the boat into the ocean. Just when I thought I felt as bad as anyone could possible feel, the staff brought out a buffet including smelly eggs stuffed with tuna. I proceeded to feed the fish.
A trip to the Kruger National Park and a private game reserve with my friend, Colin Strain, where I saw my first wild leopard. Unforgettable.

My teachers

Mam and Ray Subtle, Mr Burton, Mr Andersson, Mr Snaydon, Mrs Allan, Mrs Basson, Mr King, Mr Sturges, Mr Wolke, Jenny Mallet, Erla Nel, Acort Seally, Mr Cannon, Gordon Howard

My classmates

Sean Peche, Nicky Eaton, Collin Strain, David, Liakat Haswary, Tony Verboom, Pierre Basson, Andrew Miller, Bobby Fabre, Leon, Christopher Peace, Rodney (Fish)

Me in school uniform