Matt becomes a firefighter

After a rigorous bout of training, Matt has become a voluntary firefighter and will join his friend and housemate Glen in fighting fires in the Western Cape. Doesn't he look great in his gear!

Stories about dad: Her beautiful face

Mum and Dad were never grandly demonstrative or effusive with their affection.

Dad was naturally introverted and emotionally reserved—though nowhere near as withheld as his own father, who took emotional distance to stoic extremes. Even so, I think Mum often wished Dad had been a little more openly romantic. She was usually the one to initiate a warm embrace. Dad would return the hug, but always with a faint undercurrent of discomfort around public displays of affection. Almost as an instinctive, conditioned defense mechanism to diffuse the intimacy, he would give her bottom an affectionate little pat, look down, and call her "Diddums"—his pet name for her. 

Yet beneath that quiet, self-conscious exterior, the love between them ran deep. You just had to watch closely for the moments when the guard came down.

Two distinct memories made that crystal clear to me.

The first was during a family holiday to Mauritius. We had spent an idyllic week soaking up the island sun, completely unwinding by the Indian Ocean. Free from the routines of the dental practice and the workshop, Dad was more relaxed than I had ever seen him.

On the transfer bus heading back to the airport, Mum and Dad sat together just ahead of us. As the lush landscape drifted past the windows, I glanced over and noticed they were holding hands—fingers laced together, quiet and still. It was something I had literally never seen them do before. There was such an unforced, luminous tenderness between the two of them in that moment that it moved me to tears right there on the bus. It etched itself into my mind as an enduring portrait of what they really shared.

The second moment emerged from a completely different, far more frightening setting.

Dad and I had embarked on a four-day canoe expedition down the Orange River. It was a magnificent adventure, navigating the wide desert gorges under the sun, and Dad was having the time of his life—until we hit the biggest rapid on the route.

Our canoe took on water, lost its line, and capsized violently into the boiling white water.

We both managed to swim through the currents and scramble ashore to safety, but the shock of the submersion completely shattered Dad’s nervous system. It psyched him out in a way I had never witnessed before. The trauma triggered an intense, lingering panic attack that hung over him for days like a dark cloud, so severe that he became convinced the shock had brought on a mild stroke.

Over the days that followed, as we paddled through the calmer waters, he kept turning to me with genuine distress in his eyes, repeating the same haunting thought:

"Graeme, I really think I've had a stroke... I can't picture your mum's face. I can't picture her beautiful face."

Eventually, as the days wore on and his nervous system slowly recalibrated, the panic receded and his mind cleared. But the phrase stayed with me.

In the midst of the most terrifying physical and psychological crisis of his life, when his brain felt hijacked by shock, his immediate, instinctive terror wasn't about his health, his safety, or his survival. His world narrowed entirely to the fear of losing the memory of the woman he loved.

Dad may not have been a man for flowery poetry or grand public romance, but when the waters ran rough, she was the anchor his soul reached for first.

Stories about dad: Dad’s petrol rebellions

My dad was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a reckless rule-breaker. In almost every arena of life, he was a steady, methodical man who respected boundaries, followed instructions, and kept well within the lines.

Except when it came to petrol.

The moment volatile hydrocarbons were involved, a rogue, undercover operative emerged from inside the mild-mannered dentist.

Every year, our family embarked on an annual holiday to Eight Bells, a lovely guest farm nestled in the mountains near Mossel Bay. The ritual always began in the pitch black of five in the morning, loading into the car while the rest of the neighborhood was fast asleep.

About halfway into the six-hour journey, with the fuel gauge hovering uncomfortably near empty, Dad would execute a maneuver worthy of a Cold War thriller. At the exact same undisclosed spot along the route every year, he would peel off the highway and pull deep into a concealed clearing out of sight of passing traffic.

While Mum unpacked breakfast—a Tupperware tub of cold sausages and pungent hard-boiled eggs whose sulfurous aroma I dreaded—Dad got down to business.

He would cast a furtive, conspiratorial glance across the empty veld to ensure no police patrols were lurking, pop the boot, and hoist out a heavy jerry can of illicit fuel. Under South Africa’s strict oil embargo and rationing laws of the era, hoarding and transporting private reserves of fuel like this was entirely illegal. Dad would place a funnel into the neck of the fuel tank and pour the bootleg petrol directly into the car, his eyes darting toward the tarmac like an international smuggler topping up between borders.

The dangerous streak didn't end on the highway; it was an essential fixture of our weekend family braais.

Dad cooked over a colossal half-barrel he had personally sliced and welded from a full steel drum in his workshop. His fire-building was a masterclass in structural engineering: he laid out thick logs in an immaculate, hollow rectangle, meticulously crisscrossing the timber to create an architectural chimney.

Any ordinary backyard cook might reach for dry twigs, pine cones, or scrunched-up newspaper to coax the fire to life. Not Dad.

He would stride over with his beloved container of petrol and generously douse the entire timber structure in fuel until the logs were thoroughly soaked. Next came the choreography: he would take precisely two measured paces backward, strike a match, and flick it into the hollow core.

WOOSH!

It was less an ignition than a localized sonic boom. The air would displace with a tremendous roar of heat and light, instantly engulfing the drum in a towering inferno of orange flame. The logs were roaring within a split-second.

Standing before the blast, his eyebrows intact and the heat reflecting in his green eyes, Dad would wear an expression of supreme, quiet satisfaction. It was as though the secret stuntman buried deep within his soul had been granted his ritual fix, leaving him thoroughly appeased and ready to return to his peaceful, risk-averse life until the next tank needed filling.

Memorable moments: Dad's bed bug fiction

Dad and I shared a deep love for the open road. In my late teens, we set off on some unforgettable road trips together—meandering along the Garden Route to Knysna, winding through the sheer rock gorges of the Swartberg Pass, and journeying north into the game reserves of Zululand.

Those long drives were a golden chapter for father-and-son bonding, set to an eccentric soundtrack. We blasted the Hooked on Classics orchestral disco hits on repeat, followed by rousing renditions of Pomp and Circumstance. Dad had his heavy video camera primed on the dashboard to record the scenery, while I was glued to the window with my binoculars, thoroughly obsessed with my new passion for birding.

Yet for all that warmth, I held onto one affectionate grievance from those travels.

During an overnight stay in Knysna, I pulled back my bed covers and discovered a massive, dead insect lying flat on the sheet. Growing up in Cape Town, where cockroaches weren't an everyday household fixture, I didn't recognize it.

"Dad, what on earth is this?" I asked, pointing at the carcass.

Dad leaned over, inspected the beast, and looked at me with an unmistakable glint in his eye.

"Oh, that’s a bed bug," he said casually. "Don't worry, that one's dead. But you'd better watch out—they usually travel in packs."

I was utterly horrified. I had heard dark tales of blood-sucking parasites, and the terrifying prospect of a pack of these armored, palm-sized mini-monsters lurking in the folds of my duvet waiting to drain my veins kept me awake with my eyes bolted to the ceiling. It wasn't until much later that I learned what a cockroach actually was and realized I’d been royally wound up.

Decades later, I emigrated to Sydney. I quickly discovered that Australian cockroaches were a completely different breed: monstrously large, terrifyingly fast, and endowed with the deeply unsettling ability to fly straight at your head.

But Sydney also had the real thing waiting for me.

Ally and I had rented a lovely flat overlooking the water, with the white sails of the Sydney Opera House visible in the distance. Ally’s sister, Kerry, had stayed with us for several months, occupying our spare room before eventually moving out.

Shortly afterward, my mum and Mike flew in from South Africa for a visit. To accommodate everyone, we handed them our double bed, Ally camped out on a mattress, and I volunteered to take Kerry’s old single bed in the spare room.

The next morning, I woke up in absolute agony, covered from head to toe in furious, itchy red welts.

Mum took one look at my speckled skin and gasped: "Oh no... that looks like bed bugs."

We hauled the mattress up and flipped it over. The underside was an absolute horror show—a writhing colony of bed bugs, completely blackened by thousands of tiny parasites and their accumulated waste. While Dad had joked about a solitary giant in Knysna, here was the literal definition of a pack feasting on me uninterrupted all night long.

The most disturbing revelation was that the infestation hadn't appeared overnight. They had clearly been biting Kerry for months on end, but because her skin simply never developed an allergic reaction to the saliva, she had lived alongside the horde in blissful ignorance.

It took three separate visits from a heavy-duty exterminator with industrial chemicals to finally eradicate them.

Scrubbing the bite marks in the shower, I found myself thinking back to that hotel room in the Western Cape. In hindsight, I almost wished Dad’s Knysna bedtime story had been true—because fighting off a visible, heavy-footed cockroach would have been far easier than waging chemical warfare against an invisible army.

Family stories: A high-seas recalculation

In the late 1960s, my mum—a spirited, pretty twenty-year-old English lass—boarded an ocean liner in London bound for Cape Town. She was setting sail for the southern tip of Africa in search of adventure, independence, and the open sea.

Early on during the voyage, she met a chap who seemed to tick every single box. He was handsome, charming, outgoing, and easy to talk to. Mum was thoroughly smitten with him, admiring him from across the deck and happily imagining the possibilities.

Then came the sudden revelation: he was a priest.

Mum was not religious in the slightest. In an instant, every single enthusiastic tick on her mental checklist was unceremoniously wiped clean, replaced by a single, definitive cross. Any budding interest evaporated on the spot.

Sharing a cabin with the priest, however, was a very different kind of man: a balding, slightly built fellow of a far quieter disposition. He didn't command the spotlight, but he had a kind and gentle presence, striking green eyes, and a lovely, warm smile. He had been living and working in London and was on his way back home.

Ah, Mum thought, looking at him with fresh eyes. He’s not bad at all.

His name was Ivor.

Over the remainder of the long voyage across the Atlantic, Mum and Ivor began talking on deck, sharing unhurried conversations, and steadily falling for one another.

By the time the ship dropped anchor in Cape Town, the connection was undeniable. Once ashore, the relationship flourished into marriage, and on their honeymoon, I was conceived.

I’ve always loved reflecting on the razor-thin margins of my own existence. If that charming chap had been a banker or an engineer, my mother might never have glanced twice at the cabin mate. In a very literal sense, I owe my life to a clerical collar.

Memorable moments: The four-person conveyor belt

There are certain family rituals from childhood that carry a special kind of warmth—simple routines that, in retrospect, anchor an entire upbringing.

In our household, dinner itself was rarely a grand conversational affair. We were very much a family that ate from trays balanced on our laps in front of the television, eyes glued to the screen while silence reigned. The real connection, as it turned out, was scheduled for immediately afterward.

Once the credits rolled, the entire family decamped to the kitchen for a communal washing-up session. It was in that small, steamy space that the day was actually unpacked and the real conversations began.

We ran a remarkably intricate, four-person assembly line.

Mum took the helm at the sink, washing each item down in a sink of hot, sudsy water. I stood beside her armed with a tea towel, drying each dripping plate as it emerged from the bubbles. Once dry, I would pass the plate to Dad. Dad would then turn slightly and hand the plate to Jo. And Jo would finally place it onto the shelf in the cupboard.

Dad, quite clearly, had negotiated the easiest job on the planet—a human relay baton whose sole duty was transferring ceramic goods across an eighteen-inch gap of linoleum. But nobody ever resented it. It was never about industrial efficiency; it was about the easy, rhythmic rhythm of all four of us working side-by-side in harmony.

That childhood assembly line left an indelible mark on me. To this day, I have an enduring, genuine love for washing dishes.

Whenever I’m on a weekend getaway with a group of friends, I am always the first to volunteer for sink duty. I love the simple, tactile satisfaction of it—the warmth of the water, the clean scent of the soap, and the quiet joy of watching grease and chaos turn into sparkling order. But more than anything, I love the kitchen companionship: the unhurried, companionable banter between the washer, the drier, and the designated putter-awayer.

A lovely photo of mum taken by Jo

 Mum had just had her hair done and looked amazing.

Family spend a few days in Hermanus

Mum, Mike, Jo, Antony and Matt rented a house in Hermanus for a few days. The whales did a spectacular display!

 

Jo's 54th birthday

A fun day celebrating Jo's birthday. The Botings were in town and all came over for tea.  Michael, Annelies and their gorgeous baby stayed over. In the evening, we went to the Happy Rooster, a very nice Portuguese restaurant in the Muizenberg station. 

Jo in her element

Happy mother's day

 

Sam's 26th birthday

A delicious breakfast to celebrate Sam's birthday. Jo was hiking the Plett Camino so was away. The restaurant was awesome. Most of us had Shakshouka. Sam loved the song I created for her.

A very cute and delightful doggie we met at the restaurant

Stories about mum: The final word from Hermanus

My mother never quite saw eye-to-eye with her in-laws. She was English, they were South African, and in their eyes, no woman on earth was ever going to be "good enough" for their beloved son. Mum spent years feeling judged and under the microscopic lens of their constant, silent criticism. While my sister and I doted on our grandparents and looked forward to their Sunday visits, Mum spent those afternoons in a state of high-alert irritability.

Eventually, they passed away at a ripe old age. As a final tribute, Mum and Dad drove to Hermanus—the seaside town my grandparents had loved—to sprinkle their mixed ashes from a scenic cliff into the ocean.

It was meant to be a moment of closure. Mum took a cup of the remains and cast them out toward the water. But at that exact moment, the Cape wind whipped up in a sudden, mischievous gust. Instead of drifting gracefully to the sea, the ashes blew straight back, coating Mum’s face in a fine, grey mist of her late in-laws.

"Good God," Mum sputtered, wiping her face in disbelief. "They're having a go at me even in death!"

A couple of years ago, I asked mum if she believed in life after death. She didn't hesitate for a second. "I hope not," she remarked dryly. "That would probably mean I’d have to see my in-laws again."

Memorable moments: The almond heist

When I was young, I was quite the pilferer. Looking back, I'm genuinely surprised it didn't lead to a full-blown life of crime. My operations were divided into two distinct categories: the sophisticated, high-stakes heist and the reckless, sugary smash-and-grab.

The flaked almonds were my "Ocean’s Eleven" moment. I would wait until the kitchen was empty, then strike. First, I’d liberate a razor blade from my father’s bathroom cupboard. With the precision of a diamond cutter, I’d slice a microscopic slit into the side of my mother's almond packet, edging out the nuts one by one. I’d then seal the wound with a sliver of cellotape so perfectly that the packet looked untouched. It was a literal heist, and Mum never cottoned on.

My other ventures were significantly less subtle. I had a habit of raiding the freezer for Mum's chocolate, an addiction that once got her so irritated she sent me off on my bike to the local café to buy her a replacement with my own money.

But my undoing was the condensed milk. I would steal the tins, retreat to my room, and indulge in the thick, sugary loot. I was eventually busted when Mum discovered a mountain of discarded, empty tins hidden in the back of my own cupboard. To this day, I can’t remember why I didn’t think to discard the evidence.

In hindsight, my criminal career had a very clear pattern: brilliant entry, catastrophic exit.

The almond job was all finesse—silent, precise, almost artistic. The chocolate raids were impulsive but survivable. But the condensed milk… that was less “heist” and more “crime scene preservation.”

It turns out I wasn’t caught because I lacked intelligence. I was caught because, at some point, it simply stopped occurring to me that crimes should include an escape plan—or, at the very least, a rubbish bin.

Memorable moments: The middle way

When I was seventeen, my family flew to Mauritius for a holiday. We touched down at the airport in Port Louis and boarded a bus to be transported to our hotel. Almost immediately, the journey took on a life-threatening quality. The driver operated the vehicle like a bat out of hell, hurtling down the center of the road with terrifying speed.

My mum, who has never been a calm passenger at the best of times, was visibly shaken. We were all sitting right at the front of the bus, giving us a panoramic view of what appeared to be impending doom. As we gripped our seats, we noticed that we weren't alone; many of the other cars were also straddling the white lines, treating the two lanes as one giant suggestion.

My dad, trying to make sense of the chaos, finally spoke up. "Wow," he said to the driver, "everyone seems to drive right in the middle of the road here!"

The driver let out a hearty laugh, not even slowing his pace.

"Yes!" he shouted over the engine. "You see, when the French colonized our island, they forced us to drive on the right. Then the English came and they forced us to drive on the left. Now that we are independent, we drive in the middle!"

It was the perfect lesson in post-colonial logic. While the diplomats were busy drafting constitutions, the bus drivers of Mauritius had found their own way to express their freedom: by occupying every inch of the asphalt at ninety kilometers an hour.

Memorable moments: The pearly white buttocks

In 2005, Ally and I flew from the gray skies of London to Croatia for a short break, desperate for some Mediterranean sun and the famous crystal-blue water. We checked into our hotel, dropped our bags, and immediately headed for the balcony to soak in the "gorgeous" view.

The view, however, was not quite what the brochure had promised.

As we looked out, an enormous, very white man walked past directly below us, speaking loudly in German. He was entirely, unapologetically nude. A moment later, several more naked people strolled by. It turned out our hotel didn't just have a sea view; it looked directly onto a nudist beach. We soon discovered that nudity is a massive part of Croatian culture—in some areas, there are more nudist beaches than "textile" ones.

True to the "When in Rome" spirit, we decided to embrace the local customs. We spent our days lapping up the sun; Ally went topless, and I went entirely nude. Ally even took a few cheeky photos of me standing on the shore, proudly showing off my pearly white buttocks against the Adriatic blue.

When we got back to London, I was eager to share the trip with my family. This was in the era before social media, so I sat down late one night to email a selection of photos to my mum in Cape Town.

The next day, I received a reply: "Lovely photos, Graeme, but that last one is rather porno!"

In my late-night exhaustion, I had completely forgotten the golden rule of travel photography: always curate your "mother-friendly" folder before hitting send. I had inadvertently sent my mother a high-resolution portrait of her son’s Croatian "full moon."

Memorable moments: The Paarl Gymnasium massacre

Growing up, my mother was the silent, steady heartbeat of my rugby career. I have the most heart-warming memories of her standing in the pouring rain, huddled under an umbrella, cheering us on through every muddy scrum and sodden tackle. Her love was as consistent as the Cape winter weather.

But there was one fixture on the annual calendar for which her nervous system was simply not equipped: the away match against Paarl Gymnasium.

Paarl Gym was an Afrikaans powerhouse out in the country, and to our prep school eyes, they didn't look like children—they looked like a different species. They towered over us, their forearms the size of our thighs. We were convinced they’d been raised on a strict diet of boerewors and biltong instead of breast milk. For them, winning wasn't just a goal; it was existential.

I have a vivid, slightly traumatic memory of three of us desperately clinging to a single Paarl player, hitching a collective piggyback ride as he thundered toward the try line, completely indifferent to the extra weight of three terrified schoolboys.

And then there were the fathers.

The Paarl dads didn't just spectate; they participated. Many of them wore the exact same rugby kit as their sons, looking like older, angrier versions of the giants on the field. During one particularly lopsided encounter, I saw a father reach down, rip a side flag out of the turf, and begin stabbing the ground with it in a rhythmic frenzy.

"Moer hulle, seuns!" he screamed at the top of his lungs. "Murder them, boys!"

Needless to say, the score was always catastrophically one-sided. I don’t think we ever managed to cross their try line, let alone win a match. I never blamed my mum for sitting those ones out. While she was happy to watch us get wet in the rain, she drew the line at watching us get systematically dismantled by teenage titans while their fathers reenacted medieval battle cries on the touchline.

A love of smoothies runs in the family !

And what colour coordination between blouse and smoothie !

Memorable moments: Highlander of the high school

Before I was born, my parents engaged in a titanic struggle over my identity. My father was determined to name me Lambert, after his own father. My mother, however, was equally determined that I would be Graeme.

Thankfully, my mother’s powers of persuasion won the day. I became Graeme Myburgh, and Lambert was relegated to the "middle name" safe zone—sandwiched between Anthony and my surname as a tribute to both my grandfathers.

For years, it stayed hidden, but in my final years of high school, the secret got out. "Lambert" became my nickname. To my surprise, I didn't mind it. My grandfather had passed away by then, and carrying his name felt like a quiet way to keep his memory alive.

It also didn't hurt that Christopher Lambert had just starred in Highlander. Suddenly, my "old-fashioned" middle name wasn't a liability; it was the name of an immortal, sword-wielding hero.

So in the end, Mum won the argument. No doubt about that.

But life has a funny way of balancing things out.

Because despite all that effort…

I still ended up being called Lambert anyway.

Memorable moments: The day the lightbulb went on

As a kid, I made a life-changing discovery: I could scale the great tree in our garden. I was obsessed. For a solid week, I spent every spare hour perched in the branches, a miniature king surveying the world below from my secret leafy fortress.

Then came the day I returned from school to a scene of devastation.

The tree was gone. My father stood there with a chainsaw, and my kingdom lay in a million splintered pieces. I was heartbroken. For years, I nursed a quiet, righteous "peevement" against him for destroying my favorite sanctuary without so much as a warning.

Then, I hit a certain age.

I looked back at the layout of the old garden and realized exactly where that tree had been located: directly level with my parents' bedroom window.

Suddenly, my father’s urgency with the power tools made perfect sense. Every married couple deserves their privacy—and no father wants his son accidentally becoming the world’s most innocent voyeur.

Postscript

I recently shared this story with my mother, expecting a laugh over my belated realization. Instead, she looked at me with total confusion.

"Graeme," she said, "there was never a tree outside our bedroom window. Dad chopped a tree down at the back of the house, not the front."

I told her I was worried about her memory, but she was adamant. "My memory is not what it used to be, but I'm pretty sure. Check with Jo."

I did. My sister’s response was a second, even more violent "chainsaw" to my childhood kingdom: "No, there was never a tree there."

I was absolutely shocked. I can remember that tree so vividly—the texture of the bark, the specific branches I gripped, even the caterpillars I used to watch crawling along the leaves. I had carried that tree with me for decades, using it to define my childhood sense of adventure and my father’s "ruthlessness." To find out it never existed is a staggering realization. It suggests that our personal history is less of a documentary and more of a convincing fiction. If the very foundations of who we think we are are built on memories that can vanish into thin air, it makes you wonder what else we’ve perfectly imagined.

Mum & Dad dancing

From the video footage that Jo had digitalised. It also stars Mike and Heather.