THE BLUE CRIMPLENE SAFARI SUIT
A true story by SOPHIE NEVILLE
Sophie: We have a new chef called Josie, who has a lot to say about unexpected deliveries. Another lorry load of frozen food came today. She thought they were bringing penguins, but they turned out to be more chickens, which we had no idea what to do with. Penguin was just the name of the frozen food company written on the side of the truck.
On Sunday afternoons, just as we are about to flop, a rather dismal child of twelve comes over for a riding lesson. He calls me Tunnie, which means Auntie, but I can't bear it. I don't feel old enoug. It's like being called a tuna fish. Nicky says you spell it Tannie but they say Tunnie. Repeatedly. Anyway, he spends the weekend with his daddy and comes here to ride before being collected by his mother and her new husband.
Today the enormous father, Dupe du Plessis, arrived, clad in a light blue crimplene safari suit with long knee socks to match. He sat down on a small white chair in our garden and started drinking from a bottle of vodka he produced from his otherwise empty briefcase.
DUPE: Cermora.
SOPHIE: Hou hun dit met yoo, Omm?
DUPE: Hoot donkey, en yoo?
SOPHIE: Baaie hout.
Sophie (cont): It was terrible. He stayed all afternoon and started crying when his son was driven away. Great big tears were splashing into his drink. I hardly know him and had no idea what to talk about, so I started watering the vegetable patch from a standpipe in the orange grove. It’s coming on well.
DUPE: Spinach! Why are you growing spinach?
SOPHIE: It's for our guests.
DUPE: Kaffir food. You're nothing but a kaffir lover. And do you know something? There's nothing I hate more than a kaffir lover. You Rooineks are all the same. I'm telling you; I am going to murder you and no one will find the pieces.
SOPHIE: At this point Josie came along and asked if he would like to stay for supper.
JOSIE: We’d love you to stay.
SOPHIE: Don't offer him spinach.
Sophie (cont): We didn't. We ate, appropriately, Potjiekos, a Vooretrekker stew that Josie heated up from the night before.
JOSIE: I think we need Nicky’s help. He's roaring drunk.
Sophie: Nicky normally doesn't eat in the evenings but speaks Afrikaans and I thought would be able to placate him.
JOSIE: He's just desperately lonely. Imagine having to go back to an empty house tonight.
SOPHIE: And Nicky proceeded to pour him another drink. Ooooo. Once he got going I thought he'd never stop.
DUPE: This country was bought with blood. And the river will flow with blood again; YOUR blood.
SOPHIE: I heard a crash and looked out of the window.
JOSIE: Buffalo! There are buffalo in the vegetable garden.
SOPHIE: My spinach! They'll trample the spinach.
DUPE: Ach, no problem. They're just wildebeeste.
JOSIE: They're not.
Sophie: Dupe was off, clambering down the garden path. We looked at each other appalled. Buffalo are terribly dangerous and will gore you to death without any hesitation. We peered into the gloom. There was silence and then a lot of crashing. A buffalo charged out from beneath the orange trees, leaping the cattle grid at the end of the drive.
DUPE: A knife! Get a knife. Get a knife.
JOSIE: Oh, flip, they've got him.
Sophie: She went cautiously outside, followed by Nicky. I rushed into the kitchen where I obediently found a carving knife then walked, tentatively, past the bougainvillea looking under the orange grove. Dupe was lying on his back at the end of the garden with one leg raised awkwardly, while Josie and Nicki dropped to their knees beside him.
DUPE: Where is that knife?
Sophie: I ran down to find the girls were completely helpless, rocking on their heels, in gales of laughter. Dupe was lying on his back, trapped with one leg in the air, sticking up at an odd angle. His long, powder blue knee-sock was twisted round the garden tap, at the top of the stand-pipe. He needed me to cut him free.
With love from a very tired spinach eater,
Sophie
An extract from a collection of 'Ride the Wings of Morning - Letters to and from Africa'
For more:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ride-Wings-Morning-Sophie-Neville-ebook/dp/B007RONM52/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
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