It's been that kind of day again. Grey, cool, windy, no rain. Traditional Western Cape Easter weather. Drear, I think, is the word. My elder daughter's just returned from the mountain top. It's ugly up there. Extremely cold and wet. Lots of old people walking around in shorts and sticks. They must be foreigners.
She's given me a strip of bark off a paper tree. Seriously. It's extremely soft, almost spongy, and its texture is very much like cardboard.
These two crows have been hanging about our place for over a year. Quite what they're waiting for, I've no idea. Unlike the other birds, which tend to follow set routines, these two patrol the area somewhat haphazardly, sailing in when least expected.
They remind me of the old Buccaneer fighter-bombers we used to shoot at when I was a kid in the navy. We'd use a couple of WWII-era Bofors guns, but the bombers would be gone before the first shells exploded in far-off puffs of black and grey — usually off the wrong side of the ship.
"The starboard side; the starboard side, not the fucking port side," I recall the gunnery officer screaming in frustration.
Eventually they'd fly over at stalling speed in a vain attempt to save our gunners' dignity. But it was no good. Our gunners had no dignity. Our frigate was, to all intents and purposes, defenceless.
Fishing boats used to mock us, and factory ships chased us out of our territorial waters.
The Buccaneers didn't laugh at anybody. Heavy bombers, they were sitting ducks for fighters. A Mig-29 wouldn't break a sweat shooting one out of the sky. But the Buccaneer pilots knew this and accepted it. They were hard men. Their job was to drop big bombs, which they did with unerring accuracy — usually on defenceless refugee camps in Namibia and Angola.
Enforcing apartheid was not all fun and games. Ask the Americans and the Israelis. They know.
Bar the homeless, the tramps, the whores, and the usual detritus flowing like effluent from suburbia's drain, there are few refugees in Kenilworth. I guess the crows, like the Buccaneer pilots, don't care. They prey on other birds or, like the seagulls blown in on the high sea winds, scavenge whatever they can find, their harsh, throaty cries broadcasting success.
In 1976, we sailed into Las Palmas, an island belonging to a Spanish enclave off Morocco. Drifting in to the quayside, I saw — through one of the dining-hall scuttles — curio sellers and hawkers lining the harbour wall. Alongside me, a leathery, taciturn petty officer remarked dryly: "Fucking crows."
I was only eighteen then. I had no idea we were supposed to hate the Spanish. It took me years to learn that white people in general, be they South African or not, tend to despise other nationalities, races, and cultures. It took me only a short while longer to learn that their suspicion, bigotry, and loathing are underpinned by an unhealthy dose of fear.
It doesn't appear to strike them that their chosen crows might be unperturbed by their all-too-apparent dis-ease.
