While Dad was prone to stress at times and could get wound up by everyday pressures, he never lost touch with the excited boy inside him. Whenever a genuine milestone was on the horizon, the worry vanished and a radiant, infectious energy took its place—sweeping father and son up in the exact same wave of shared elation.
The earliest of those waves arrived with the construction of our swimming pool.
Jo and I were water babies through and through, and the realization that we were getting a pool of our own in the garden set our childhood imaginations on fire. We monitored every stage of the excavation like site foremen: the raw dirt crater carved into the lawn, the structural mesh, the smooth coats of render, and finally the brilliant, dazzling coat of sparkling white plaster.
Then came the agonising finale: the garden hose went in.
Jo and I hovered over the coping stones, willing the waterline to rise. As the saying goes, a watched pool never fills. The trickle seemed glacially slow, and our impatience was vibrating off the charts. Dad stood beside us watching the water creep up the slope, his green eyes dancing with our anticipation—until his own restraint snapped.
The pool wasn't anywhere near full; it had barely reached the shallow-end shelf, hovering somewhere around our knees.
Dad looked down at us with a sudden, conspiratorial grin. "Right then. In you go!"
We didn't hesitate for a split second. We leaped straight into that chilly, half-filled basin, splashing and tumbling through the shallows in a burst of sheer, delirious joy that remains one of the most vivid, sparkling memories of my entire youth.
Dad celebrated the milestone in his own signature style: he invited Gramps over, and the two of them sat side by side on the specially commissioned "beer step" built into the wall, clinking cold lagers in triumphant satisfaction. That pool went on to host decades of family joy—cooling off after scorching summer days, endless diving contests, and boisterous rounds of midnight Marco Polo.
A few years later, the excitement shifted back to the rails.
I was there for the culmination of Dad's greatest engineering feat: the completion of his very first live-steam locomotive. It had demanded six long years of painstaking craftsmanship. Every single screw, valve, and brass fitting had been turned and threaded by his own two hands on the lathe. It wasn't just a model; it was a breathing, mechanical masterpiece.
When the day finally arrived to fire up the miniature boiler at the club track for its maiden run, Dad was as giddy as a schoolboy on the last day of term. His pride and delight were so radiant, so completely infectious, that the whole family was buzzing. Climbing into the carriage behind his gleaming engine and feeling the real steam chug under his power, watching Dad beam from the driver's bench, was pure magic.
That mutual thrill came full circle when Dad took me into town to buy my very first electric model train set. We picked out the iconic South African Blue Train, complete with an expanse of glistening track.
To make the day utterly unforgettable, Dad went to a high shelf at home and brought down an old Hornby set from his own childhood—superb vintage steam engines and carriages that happened to be fully compatible with the new lines. "Here," he said, handing over his past. "These are yours now."
With that single gesture, my small railway empire exploded. In the storeroom right next to his workshop, while the scent of his cutting oil drifted through the doorway, I spent hundreds of blissful hours orchestrating lines and running Dad's vintage rolling stock alongside my shiny Blue Train.
He did the exact same thing with his stamps. During my school years, I fell into a feverish obsession with philately, pouring every cent of my pocket money into British mint issues and first day covers. I organized them with meticulous, reverent care.
Dad watched this quiet discipline unfold. One afternoon, he produced his own album—a rich, historic archive of classic English and South African stamps he had preserved since he was a lad.
He didn't just casually toss it my way. He looked at me with genuine respect and said, "I can see how much you value your stamps, Graeme, and how beautifully you look after them. I want to give you my collection—not just as a gift, but for you to be the official curator of it."
My collection doubled in a single heartbeat. It was an overwhelming, chest-swelling moment of honor. I spent weeks happily lost in the quiet thrill of integrating his youth into mine, cataloging history under the desk lamp.
Dad was always quietly engineering joy behind the scenes. When Jo and I dreamed of high vantage points, he built us a sturdy timber platform high in the branches of the backyard tree. I spent countless afternoons perched up there, legs dangling over the edge, gazing down across the blue expanse of the pool and feeling like the king of the world.
Later, when I was in my second year at university, an inheritance from my grandfather gave me the rare, life-changing opportunity to buy my first home in Fernwood Estate, tucked beneath the mountain near Kirstenbosch Gardens.
House hunting at that age is an overwhelming maze, but Dad became my steady, invaluable seer. He had an instinctive eye for structural bones, plumbing quirks, and practical value, guiding me patiently past the duds until we found the perfect gem. When the keys were in hand, Dad and Mum rolled up their sleeves and spent days beside me rolling paint onto the walls. His pride in seeing his son plant roots so close to nature was tangible in every brushstroke.
And then came the purchase of our family beach house in Melkbosstrand—perched right against the sand, opening onto crashing surf and endless horizons, ushering in a whole new chapter of shared coastal excitement.
Looking back across all those milestones—from leaping into twelve inches of pool water to holding the title deeds of a home—I realize that Dad's greatest gift wasn't just the things he built with his hands. It was the generous, unreserved way he stepped into our joy, offering his tools, his treasures, and his whole heart to make our world that much bigger.
I can be a bit of a burper from time to time. When a good meal or a cold drink hits the spot, there are moments when nothing feels quite as honest as letting out a deep, contented belch.
My sister, Jo, has never been a fan.
Over the years, Jo cultivated a particular facial expression reserved exclusively for my domestic transgressions: "The Look." It was a masterpiece of cold, withering disapproval designed to keep her older brother in line, and growing up, I found it genuinely formidable. The Look was instantly deployed for the cardinal sins of bodily noise—belching at the table, theatrical flatulence, and the unpardonable crime of failing to wash my hands after using the toilet.
Her childhood bedroom shared a wall with the loo, turning her into an involuntary acoustic auditor. She would sit in silence, listening intently for the telltale sequence of sounds. If the roar of the flush was not immediately followed by the distinct hiss of running tap water, her voice would pierce the drywall with absolute authority: "Wash your hands!"
Yet despite Jo’s vigilant policing, my gastrointestinal expressiveness was practically preordained. It is hard not to be a burper when you descend from an unbroken dynasty of them.
Dad was an unapologetic burper, particularly after cracking open a cold beer. Whenever he let one loose, it was never aggressive or uncouth; it was delivered with an aura of pure, unadulterated contentment. It was simply the sound of a relaxed man feeling entirely at peace in his own home, and it was one of his many quiet quirks that I found completely endearing.
The habit went back another generation. Dad got it directly from his mother—my beloved Granny.
Every Sunday, Jo and I would head over to Granny and Grandpa’s flat for a traditional roast chicken lunch, piled high with vegetables and followed by dishes of junket, a sweet, milky dessert I absolutely adored. Granny was otherwise the quintessential portrait of quiet, refined, ladylike decorum. Yet without fail, once the plates were cleared and the roast was settled, this gentle matriarch would let out a surprisingly robust, uncharacteristic belch.
Before anyone could raise an eyebrow, Granny would look around the table with absolute composure and offer her standard cultural defense: in Russia, she would explain, a hearty belch after a feast is not an insult at all. It is customary—an essential, implicit compliment to the chef signaling that the meal was thoroughly enjoyed.
Armed with that impeccable heritage, what chance did I ever have?
Society has an odd, squeamish relationship with the harmless noises of human biology. We treat burps and passing wind as catastrophic social breaches, despite the fact that digestion is a universal, non-negotiable process that clearly demands pressure relief. Clamping down on basic biology in the name of polite etiquette has always seemed slightly backwards to me.
As Granny knew, and as Dad so effortlessly demonstrated from his armchair: far better out than in.
When I look at the landscape of my life—at the things that bring me pure, unadulterated joy, the rituals that ground me, and the deep obsessions that fill my days—I see the hand of one man.
I am, in almost every way that matters, the living continuation of my father’s quiet passions.
Dad was a gifted photographer with a natural eye. You could see it instantly in the framing of his prints: a patience for light, composition, and human moments. Both my sister Jo and I inherited that precise visual gene. Along with Mum, Dad had an instinctive urge to keep a record, charting our childhoods frame by frame. When he wasn't carrying his still camera, he was hoisting his video recorder, persistently documenting our lives—filming the sacred, hilarious chaos of Christmas morning present-openings despite Jo and me groaning from behind our wrapping paper that we felt far too on-show. Later in life, that very same archival impulse became a defining part of who I am: an unshakeable need to capture beauty for posterity, to preserve family stories, and to build Life Trove, my beloved personal blog.
He gave me my wanderlust. He loaded me into the car for sweeping, formative road trips along the Garden Route to Knysna, through the rugged stone canyons of the Swartberg Pass, and into the game reserves of Zululand. Those journeys ran on an easy, unspoken synergy: me pressed against the glass with my binoculars, tracking birds in the bush, while Dad leaned into his camera to record our passage. Long drives, open horizons, and the thrill of discovery became part of my bloodstream.
He gave me my soundtrack. His cherished stereo system—a piece of equipment he treated with immense pride and care—played the backdrop to my youth. It was a joyful, eclectic rotation: Olivia Newton-John, the Grease soundtrack, ABBA, country classics, and the grand, soaring symphonies he loved, especially Richard Clayderman and the disco-orchestral hits of Hooked on Classics. Decades later, instrumental and classical music remains my truest comfort.
He gave me my adoration for dogs. Growing up, our home was never complete without four-legged companions: Cindy, Scamp, Tina, and Meg. I can still see Dad standing at the top of the driveway, firing tennis balls into the distance, or throwing his arms wide as he arrived home, sending Tina into frantic, ecstatic puddles of canine delight. That pure, uncomplicated love for dogs has anchored me across my entire adult life.
He gave me my love for screen and story. Our family was among the first on the block to get a television set, and later a VHS player. Saturday nights were a sacred household liturgy: settling onto the sofa with coffee and chocolate to watch Magnum, P.I., The A-Team, MacGyver, and Knight Rider, or getting swept up in grand television epics like Little House on the Prairie and The Thorn Birds. He and Mum would drive me out to Cavendish Square to catch classic cinema like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
He passed on his fascination with history. Dad was captivated by the Second World War—the very conflict where my mum's dad (my gramps) had served—and he sat rapt through every episode of The World at War. Watching it beside him ignited my own lifelong appetite for history and documentary. He cultivated my imagination with books, introducing me to Jock of the Bushveld and a beloved childhood tale about a blind lumberjack and his faithful dog that permanently hooked me on reading.
He gave me his humor—and that unmistakable, mischievous, naughty streak. Dad had striking green eyes, the exact shade I see in the mirror today. Whenever he delivered a cheeky double entendre, those green eyes would dance and sparkle with delight. More often than not, he would find his own punchline so utterly funny that his laughter would dissolve into an affectionate, wheezing coughing fit before the sentence was even finished.
He taught me the sacred art of the passion project. In his backyard workshop, surrounded by heavy metal lathes, cutting oil, and tools, Dad spent thousands of patient hours building miniature, coal-fired steam locomotives from raw steel. It was his ultimate sanctuary. He poured his creative soul into those engines, finding immense pride in their craftsmanship and sharing that devotion with kindred spirits like Jimmy, Derek, and Stan. I didn't inherit his mechanical hands, but I inherited the exact same soul: that fundamental need to retreat into blissful solitude, to lose myself in passion projects like Life Trove and Wisdom Trove, and to connect deeply with the rare few who share those devotions.
Above all else, Dad gave me my love of the natural world. He loved sleeping out on the patio beneath the open night sky—a habit I still treasure. He loved the ocean, catching Indian Ocean swells on his white polystyrene board, forging my own passion for open-water bodysurfing. He led our weekend pilgrimages to Constantia Nek, where we walked beneath the trees gathering pine cones to feed the family hearth. He guided me up Table Mountain through the rocky cleft of Skeleton Gorge, and he paddled alongside me through the desert canyons of the Orange River.
And from him came my deepest love of camping.
My absolute fondest memories of Dad reside in our annual "boys-only" camping trips to Uilenskraal, just outside Hermanus. Grandpa, Dad, and I would pile into Dad’s mustard-yellow Variant and make the pilgrimage to the coast. We always pitched camp in the exact same spot beneath an old, familiar tree.
The ritual was unchanging. We would drive heavy wooden pegs into the earth with a solid rubber mallet to erect the great orange tent for Dad and Grandpa, followed by my own smaller tent nearby. We'd unfold the weathered camp table and chairs, take a long walk along the tranquil waters of the lagoon, and settle into the evening.
At night, Dad and I would slip away for a stroll through the adjacent campsite, wandering amidst hundreds of dark, dilapidated caravans. In the gloom, the rows of silent vans felt spooky and mysterious, but I never felt a single prickle of fear. Walking in the dark beside him, safe inside the shelter of his gentle presence, I would often be overcome by a sudden, private swell of love so profound that my eyes would literally well up with tears. On the way back to the tents, we'd duck into the little camp shop to pick up bars of mint chocolate.
The mornings were a feast. All three of us possessed formidable appetites. We would haul out an ancient, heavy iron frying pan and balance it over the heat, piling it high with bacon, eggs, sliced bananas, thick bread, and tomatoes. The sizzle and rich, gorgeous aroma rising into the salt air was pure, intoxicating anticipation.
When I was young, I didn't see the depth of what I had.
Gramps was the larger-than-life figure in our family orbit—flamboyant, charismatic, outgoing, and effortlessly demonstrative. As a boy, I idolized that swagger. I held Gramps up as the hero on the pedestal, and in doing so, I undervaluated Dad’s quiet, self-effacing reserve. I took his patience for granted. I pushed against his steady boundaries during my prickly teenage years, unable to comprehend the immense gift of a man who ruled not with an iron fist or performative charm, but with steady, unconditional kindness.
Dad passed away in 1995. He left us far too early, when I was still too young to understand how quickly the runway ends.
What I wouldn't give to sit across from him today. To have a quiet hour in the sun, to share these rich, enduring passions with him as an adult, and to finally thank him properly for the entire architecture of my life.
I cannot pull up a folding chair beside him at Uilenskraal. I cannot ride beside him through the Swartberg Pass, or step into the oil-scented air of his workshop to watch him turn brass on the lathe.
Yet every time I frame a photograph through the viewfinder, every time I hike a rugged trail, every time I pitch a tent under the trees, throw a ball for a dog, or smile at a cheeky joke while my green eyes twinkle—I realize he never truly left. He is woven into the very fabric of how I experience this earth.
He gave me the best of who I am; and in every joy I carry, my father lives on.
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.
Dad was never the flamboyant, life-of-the-party type. Left entirely to his own devices, he wanted nothing more than to retreat into the quiet solitude of his workshop, spending uninterrupted hours milling brass and steel for his beloved steam locomotives.
In large social gatherings, his natural shyness took over. Even at the legendary braais hosted by his friend Stan—who lived right on the beach in Melkbosstrand and had an actual miniature train track winding through his garden—Dad was often the quiet, observant figure lingering gently on the periphery rather than commanding the room.
Yet introversion was only half the picture. With a select circle of close companions, he completely blossomed.
Around people like Derek, his dental partner John Sawkins, and especially Jimmy—a lovely, elderly friend who lived just down our road by the local park—Dad was warm, utterly relaxed, and full of effortless camaraderie. In those intimate settings, there was endless laughter.
You see, Dad’s quiet reserve was paired with a wicked, playful sense of fun that leaned unapologetically toward the cheeky, naughty side. Whenever he launched into a joke or an irreverent anecdote, those striking green eyes would dance and sparkle. More often than not, he’d find his own punchlines so genuinely hilarious that his laughter would dissolve into an affectionate, wheezing coughing fit before he could even finish the sentence.
That mischievous streak was on full display every Christmas morning.
Dad delighted in wrapping practical items in cheeky double entendres. One year, he handed me a carefully wrapped package with a tag that read: "To help with your screwing technique." Inside was a brand-new set of screwdrivers. Another year, he presented Gramps with a parcel marked: "For a man who likes a bit on the side"—which was, of course, a jar of English mustard.
His cheeky imagination peaked when I was invited to a 21st birthday party by a ballroom dancing friend named Sally.
The invitation called for fancy dress with the theme "Dream Time: dress as your favorite dream or your worst nightmare." It was ripe for creative interpretation. When I mentioned the dilemma at home, Dad didn't miss a beat.
"Put on a pair of pyjamas, jump fully clothed into the shower, and go as a wet dream!" he offered with a grin.
As brilliant as the concept was, a soaking-wet pair of flannel pyjamas on a freezing Cape Town winter night felt like a swift route to hypothermia. Sally and I opted for the warmer, safer route, heading into town to a costume hire shop instead.
Dad’s irreverent wit remains one of the qualities I cherish most about my memories of him. Behind the quiet exterior, the conservative shirts, and the steady dentist's hands was a man who saw the absurd, playful side of human nature and refused to take life too seriously. It was a wonderful legacy to grow up around—and the very spark from which I inherited my own lifelong love of humor and mischief.
Dad was extraordinarily mechanical—so much so that he carried a quiet, lifelong regret about choosing dentistry over engineering.
Around the house, he was endlessly handy, keeping household appliances humming and personally servicing the engines of his red Beetle and mustard Variant with consummate ease. But his true mechanical genius reached its zenith in his backyard workshop. Amidst the sharp tang of machine oil, turning lathes, and racks of precision drill bits, Dad pursued his greatest passion: engineering miniature, fully functional, coal-fired steam locomotives from scratch.
These weren't flimsy models; they were heavy, magnificent works of industrial art. Engineered to precise scale, a single locomotive took him years of patient milling to complete and possessed enough genuine boiler power to haul seven fully grown adults around a club track.
Naturally, Dad harbored a deep, unspoken hope that his son would inherit the mechanical torch.
Alas, genetics had other ideas. I simply did not inherit that gene. Years later, when I sat for a comprehensive career aptitude test, the results laid it out in cold, indisputable numbers: I scored comfortably above average in nearly every category, except mechanical reasoning—where I landed squarely in the bottom ten percent.
To Dad, who could read an engine diagram like a second language, my total ineptitude with tools occasionally brought him close to despair. He would look on with quiet disappointment as nuts, bolts, and spark plugs failed to ignite even a flicker of curiosity in me.
Thankfully, the mechanical gods sent an apprentice in the form of our close family friend, Julian. Julian was gifted with the exact engineering instinct I lacked. He and Dad bonded effortlessly over calipers, blueprints, and lathe chucks, forging a rich, shared passion. Dad happily mentored him through his projects, and Julian eventually went on to become a professional engineer.
Yet for all my aversion to spanners and gear teeth, I still carried a genuine fascination with the magic of trains, particularly steam locomotives.
I loved climbing aboard the carriages behind Dad’s hand-built engines as they chugged around the club circuit. I cherished the sensory joy of the open-air miniature railway on the Sea Point promenade—riding the little engine along the Atlantic shoreline, the salty breeze in our faces right after a visit to San Marco for ice cream.
The breakthrough moment arrived on an afternoon Dad drove me to a local hobby shop to pick out my very first Lima model train set.
Inside the shop, the gap between engineer and dreamer vanished. We stood before the glass display cases equally starry-eyed, buzzing with the exact same boyish excitement. He admired the scale accuracy and the motor design; I fell in love with the sheer poetry of the rolling stock.
Back home, I cleared space in the storeroom immediately adjacent to Dad's workshop and laid down an expansive electric track.
Over the years that followed, as I steadily built up a magnificent collection of carriages and engines, an easy harmony settled over that corner of the back yard behind the house. Through the adjoining doorway, Dad would spend long, contented hours turning brass and steel for his heavy steam engines, while I spent hours orchestrating schedules and watching my electric Lima train glide across the miniature rails.
I was never going to turn a brass cylinder on a lathe, but in those quiet afternoons beside the hum of the transformer, father and son were finally running on parallel tracks.
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.
When I was young, I flirted rather heavily with hypochondria. My imagination was prone to running riot, seizing upon the most minor physical anomaly and instantly spinning it into a medical crisis.
The peak of this adolescent anxiety arrived when I was thirteen.
One day, I made what felt like an apocalyptic discovery: several tiny, distinct lumps on my testicles. For weeks, I carried the secret in sheer, silent terror. My frantic brain cycled through every catastrophic scenario imaginable. Was it a rare, disfiguring skin disease? Was it terminal cancer? Each day the dread grew heavier, until the need for certainty finally overpowered the intense embarrassment of being an adolescent boy.
Desperate, I approached my dad and asked if he would take a look.
We stepped out into the yard and walked into his workshop—that familiar backyard sanctuary surrounded by his model trains, metal lathes, and tools. Standing amidst the machinery, I dropped my drawers.
Dad leaned in, took a calm, clinical glance, and looked right back up at me.
"No need to worry, son," he said softly. "Those are just hair follicles."
It was a moment of extraordinary, quiet grace. He could so easily have rolled his eyes, condescended to my ignorance, or made a cheeky joke at my expense. But there was not a trace of mockery in his voice—only steady, matter-of-fact reassurance that dissolved weeks of fear in a single breath.
Standing in the sawdust and grease of his workshop, pulling up my trousers with a profound sense of relief, I felt a deep surge of love for him. In a world full of big anxieties, Dad's gentle, steady way was the safest place to be.
There is a tired old playground idiom that tells men to "Stop being a pussy and grow some balls." As an anatomical metaphor for toughness, it could hardly be more inaccurate. The female anatomy is engineered with enough elasticity and sheer physical resilience to pass a human child the size of a small volleyball into the world. Testicles, by comparison, are ridiculously exposed, unarmored liability zones where the slightest misdirected breeze can reduce a grown adult to a whimpering puddle.
Like almost every man, I have had my fair share of painful education on the subject.
During my school rugby days, a couple of mistimed tackles connected directly where they shouldn't have, producing that hollow, nauseating ache that radiates straight into the solar plexus. Worse still were two distinct occasions in my life when I managed to catch skin in a trouser zipper.
It is a uniquely primal form of terror. The second time it happened, the teeth were so hopelessly snagged that I had to take a pair of scissors and carefully cut the shorts right off my body just to survey the damage. In those desperate, cold-sweat moments of entrapment, the frantic male brain invariably throws up a wild, unhinged question: Should I just yank it?
The answer is always an emphatic, horrified no.
Yet my personal mishaps paled in comparison to what happened to my dad when I was seventeen.
Dad was out in the garden cutting down an overgrown tree. In an effort to get a cleaner cutting angle, he climbed up and braced himself across a high branch. His footing gave way. He slipped off the perch, dropping hard and straddling the branch beneath him with the full momentum of his body weight—compounded by the heavy, steel weight of a petrol chainsaw landing directly between his legs.
It was pure agony. It wasn’t just a momentary shock, either; the trauma was so severe that the injury haunted him for months afterward, requiring strong prescription painkillers just to get through a normal day.
Years later, while chatting with a good friend who had given birth to two children, the subject of bodily suffering came up. Operating on a generous helping of male ignorance, I floated the theory that both sexes possessed their own equivalent pinnacle of agony: women had childbirth, and men had a direct blow to the groin.
She looked at me with withering amusement.
"Hah!" she scoffed. "You try getting kicked in the balls non-stop every two minutes for ten straight hours, Graeme. Then you might have a rough idea of what women actually go through."
I shut my mouth and conceded the point immediately.
When I was a teenager, my parents were remarkably enlightened when it came to household curfews. I was never saddled with a rigid, ticking-clock deadline to be through the front door, but there was an unspoken, mutual understanding that I wasn’t to take the absolute piss.
One Saturday night, however, a party got the better of me. When I finally glanced at my watch and saw the hands creeping past one in the morning, a sudden jolt of teenage panic kicked in. Even the most relaxed parents have their limits, and 1:00 AM felt dangerously close to overstepping the line.
I resolved to execute a masterclass in covert night-ops: I would slip into the house in total, ninja-like silence so nobody would ever suspect when I had returned.
I clicked the front garden gate open without making a sound, easing it shut behind me. I crept onto the pathway on tiptoe, holding my breath as I slinked past my parents' bedroom window. So far, pure stealth. I slipped through the side gate by the front door, which led out onto the dark poolside patio—my preferred, discreet route to the back entrance.
It was pitch-black out on the tiles, with only the faint shimmer of the pool water to guide me. Blindly navigating the dark, I was fumbling forward when my foot collided hard with something large, solid, and yet alarmingly squishy.
Instantly, the darkness erupted with a low, unmistakably human groan.
My heart nearly launched itself out of my ribcage. In a split second of icy horror, the layout clicked: on hot summer nights, Dad loved dragging a mattress or lounger outside to sleep under the stars on the patio.
I had literally stepped directly onto my sleeping father.
I froze, bracing myself for the immediate explosion—a barrage of shouted questions, furious demands to know the time, and the inevitable fallout of blowing my cover in the most catastrophic way possible.
Nothing came. Just the distinct, swishy rustle of nylon as he shifted in his sleeping bag, followed by a heavy, groggy sigh.
Taking no chances, I abandoned all dignity and scuttled like a frightened crab across the remaining tiles, slipped through the back door, and bolted into my bedroom.
The next morning, I walked out to breakfast with my stomach in knots, dreading the confrontation. Dad was sitting there as calm as ever, sipping his tea. He looked up, greeted me pleasantly, and said absolutely nothing. Not a single word about the time, the noise, or the rogue teenage foot that had landed on his ribcage in the dead of night.
To this day, I still can’t say for certain whether Dad somehow miraculously drifted straight back to sleep, or if, in his typical gentle wisdom, he woke up, understood everything in a flash, and decided to let the intruder off with a silent, benevolent pass.
For most of our youth, Dad was decidedly, magnificently uncool.
His everyday wardrobe consisted of aggressively sensible button-downs paired with high socks pulled taut against knee-length, unfashionable shorts. But his absolute crowning glory of uncoolness was his fleet of cars.
He owned two vehicles: a battered red Volkswagen Beetle and an aging, scuffed VW Type 3 Variant station wagon. Today, vintage Beetles are prized counter-culture icons, but back then, an old red Bug merely functioned as a bright beacon drawing unwanted attention to your total lack of street cred.
The Variant was worse. It was painted a truly dreadful, unappetizing mustard yellow, covered in scratches, and treated entirely as an industrial workhorse. Dad used it primarily to haul his heavy model locomotives and track gear back and forth from his beloved train club. To him, the aesthetics were utterly irrelevant. Being naturally gifted with tools and mechanics, he kept both engines purring in immaculate mechanical order. As long as the pistons fired sweetly, he saw zero reason to waste good money replacing a car just because the exterior looked like it had survived a minor skirmish.
My sister Jo, however, was in the full throes of teenage image preservation. The mustard Variant was her ultimate mortal enemy.
Whenever Dad came to collect us after the final bell, Jo laid down strict tactical protocols: under no circumstances was the yellow monstrosity permitted to breach the school gates. Dad was politely instructed to park two blocks away in a discreet side alley, allowing her to slink out to the car under cover of relative anonymity.
Dad never took offense. He simply took his post in the backstreet, engine ticking over quietly, perfectly amused by her youthful paranoia.
Then came his fiftieth birthday—and with it, an astonishing, wholesale metamorphosis.
It was as if a switch flipped overnight. Dad grew a full, distinguished beard that immediately gave his face immense warmth, gravitas, and character. He ditched the drab conservative palette and started striding around in vibrant, brightly patterned short-sleeve shirts—pioneering the vibrant aesthetic years before Nelson Mandela made the Madiba shirt a global fashion statement.
To complete the transformation, he inherited some money from his own father and promptly traded the dusty air-cooled fleet for a sleek, second-hand BMW.
In one glorious leap, our quiet, sock-pulling dad had become the coolest man in Cape Town.
The irony, of course, was cruel in its timing. Jo would have given anything to lean against that gleaming BMW right outside the main gates as crowds of schoolmates walked past. But by the time Dad finally arrived at peak cool, her school days were behind her.
When it comes to alcohol, I have always been decidedly uncool.
I grew up in South Africa, where beer isn't just a beverage; it is a sacred cultural institution. It is considered the ultimate man's drink, and sharing your first cold beer with your father as you cross the threshold into young adulthood is practically a mandatory rite of passage.
When my turn came, my dad was genuinely thrilled to initiate his son into the fold and share his love of a good brew.
From the very first sip, however, the experiment was a disaster. I hated it. It was far too bitter, entirely devoid of sweetness, and had no appeal to my palate whatsoever. The only conceivable way I could stomach it was by diluting it heavily with lemonade to turn it into a weak shandy—and even then, I would have dropped it in a heartbeat for a sweet apple cider. My poor dad must have looked at me and wondered what went wrong: his son had arrived at manhood with the drinking preferences of a child in a sweet shop.
A few years later, as a student at the University of Cape Town, I decided to join the university wine club. In truth, my motivations had very little to do with viticulture and everything to do with the strategic opportunity to mingle with tipsy girls.
The wine club, I quickly discovered, operated on a rigid, unspoken caste system of sophistication:
Given my relentless sweet tooth, there were no prizes for guessing where my tastes landed. I found red wine far too sour and acidic, and dry white wine was, well, entirely too dry. While the serious connoisseurs swirled their glasses and pontificated on hints of oak and leather, I was happily lingering down in the subterranean dessert-wine section, thoroughly unbothered.
As the years rolled on, I drifted away from alcohol altogether. I simply stopped enjoying the taste, and more than anything, it just made me feel sluggish and tired. So, I packed it in completely.
These days, when I finish a long trail and join my hiking mates at the pub, I don’t order a crisp craft ale or a stout. I walk straight up to the bar and ask for a soda, lime, and bitters.
Naturally, this is considered the height of social heresy. My friends love their beer, and ordering a sparkling cordial in an Australian pub is hardly the blueprint for rugged coolness. In the beginning, there was the inevitable good-natured ribbing, but over time, they’ve come to accept that Graeme simply drinks pink fizzy water.
And really, who cares? One of the greatest dividends of growing older is that you finally become completely comfortable in your own skin. The exhausting urge to posture, to perform masculinity with a pint glass, or to drink something you loathe just to blend into the herd simply evaporates. There is immense freedom in standing at the bar, decidedly uncool, knowing exactly what you like and letting the rest of the world get on with their bitter beer.
During my final year of school, I was right in the thick of my rebellious phase. In my eyes, my dad could simply do no right. I found him far too conservative, too quiet, and exasperatingly mild-mannered. I was convinced that other fathers possessed an effortless dynamism that mine somehow lacked.
Then came a trip to the Kruger National Park that shattered my teenage illusions in an instant.
I was invited along by a school friend and his family to stay at a luxurious private reserve on the outskirts of the park. My friend’s father seemed to embody everything I admired at the time: remarkably wealthy, magnetic, outgoing, and brimming with charismatic energy. Compared to Dad's gentle, unassuming presence at home, this man felt larger than life.
One afternoon, my friend and I set out on foot into the reserve to track some wildlife. Before we left the lodge, his father handed him his expensive camera.
"Be careful with it," he warned, his tone firm.
Half an hour into our walk, our patience paid off: a magnificent eland appeared through the bush. My friend raised the camera to line up a shot, fumbled with the strap, and the camera slipped from his fingers, crashing hard onto the rocky dirt. When he picked it up, there was a visible, undeniable dent in the casing.
The colour instantly drained from his face. A wave of panic took hold of him. He wasn't just disappointed; he was terrified of what would happen when we returned to camp.
"How on earth am I going to explain this so he won't be furious with me?" he muttered, pacing back and forth in sheer distress. "I’ll tell him I took a bad fall. I have to make him believe me."
Then, right before my eyes, he did something that chilled me to the bone.
He dropped to his knees on the gravel track, reached down, and forcefully raked his bare leg across the jagged stones, scraping away layers of skin until a raw, bloody graze opened up across his shin.
Oh my God, I thought, standing there in stunned disbelief.
As I stared at the blood on the gravel, a profound realization hit me with the force of a sledgehammer. If I had dropped my own father’s beloved camera, Dad might have sighed, felt a little disappointed, and maybe reminded me to use the strap next time. But never in a million lifetimes would I have felt the need to mutilate my own flesh just to shield myself from his temper.
In that single, shocking moment on a bush track, the scales fell completely from my eyes. The charisma and swagger I had so admired in other men suddenly looked hollow, while my father’s quiet, mild-mannered gentleness revealed itself for what it truly was: a rare and magnificent gift.
Standing beneath the Kruger sky, nursing another boy’s self-inflicted wound, the foolishness of my rebellion washed away, replaced by an overwhelming, permanent gratitude for the gentle man waiting for me at home.
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.
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.
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.
Every Christmas morning when Jo and I were growing up, our household fell into a rhythm that felt entirely sacred.
Gran and Gramps would arrive, Mum would pull a hot tray of freshly baked mince pies out of the oven, and the entire family would congregate in the lounge to open presents. Christmas carols drifted softly through the room from Dad’s music system.
Then came the inevitable ceremony within the ceremony: Dad would haul out his heavy video camera, rest it against his shoulder, and hit record.
Without fail, Jo and I would immediately groan and protest. "Oh no, Dad! Put it away! It makes us feel so on show!"
Dad wouldn’t say much in return. His eyes would simply twinkle with quiet amusement, and he would keep on filming anyway.
Because he held his ground, everything was captured for posterity. The camera panned steadily around the circle, recording each of us as our turn arrived to unwrap a gift. There were the sentimental treasures, but mostly there were the gloriously eccentric family jokes: Jo presenting Gramps with a hand-knitted willy warmer, or Gramps handing Dad a small parcel with a card that read, "For a man who likes a bit on the side"—which, to everyone’s relief and laughter, turned out to be a jar of English mustard.
Dad has been gone for a long time now, having passed away in 1995. But those tapes - spanning Christmases, family milestones, and road trips to Zululand, the Drakensberg and Swartberg Pass - have become our family's most cherished possessions. Now digitized and lovingly preserved, they are priceless windows into a world of laughter and youth that we can revisit whenever we need to.
As teenagers, Jo and I thought Dad was just being persistently annoying with his gadgets. In reality, it was pure wisdom. Dad understood something fundamental about time that we were far too young to grasp: that the ordinary, slightly embarrassing moments of family life are the very things that become sacred once the people in them are gone. It remains one of the greatest, most enduring legacies he ever gave us.
In my mid-teens, I went through that familiar, prickly rite of passage: an intense, reflexive rebellion against authority. Whether it was the rigid rules of school or the quiet boundaries set at home, I bristled against all of it.
I directed most of that restless friction toward my dad—something I carry a genuine pang of regret about now. To my teenage eyes, he seemed overly conservative, too measured, too bound by conventional lanes. Naturally, I took it upon myself to act as his permanent ideological opposition. If Dad said something was white, I felt a deep, instinctive duty to argue that it was unequivocally black.
The absurdity of that contrarian streak reached its absolute pinnacle one evening as I was heading out the front door to a party.
Dad looked up, completely pleasant and entirely without agenda, and said, "Bye Graeme, have a good time."
I scowled, gripped the doorknob, and snapped back: "Dad, don't tell me what to do!"
Looking back across the years, Dad was remarkably wise in ways I was far too self-absorbed to appreciate at fifteen. He was gentle and patient, mostly enduring my prickly defiance with the quiet composure he brought to everything else. What stings with hindsight is knowing how brief the runway really was; he would only be with us for another ten or so years. I only wish I’d had the maturity then to cut him some slack, drop the argument, and appreciate him for who he was.
His profession as a dentist
How I inherited many of dad’s passions
