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“Ja, ons is!” skree die vrou terug, “wie is jy?” which is a polite Westrand way of saying “Wat soek jy hierso?!” now that I think about it. “Ek is Lohan en my oupa en ouma het jarre terug hier gebly.” I switch the bike off and put it on its stand so we can talk like normal people. The oom says something but I interrupt him — “Sorrie oom, ek kan niks hoor nie!” — while taking the helmet off my head and the ipod out of my ears. Now we meet at the hekkie. “I’m on my way to a braai in the area and stumbled on this part of the dorp”, I continue in Afrikaans. “My grandparents lived here and I last seen this place when I was about 10, maybe even younger.” The oom and tannie’s faces lights up. Its Friday afternoon and they’re enjoying the outside air while Night is slowly dropping her karos on the highveld. The jasmine bush is in full bloom, as they are at the start of summer, and a cool, sweet scent can be enjoyed all over this part of town. I re-introduce myself and we get down to the business of finding out what’s been happening the past 20 years to this little house. There’s somethng not right with the oom — he’s in his 50s but is slow of speech and it seems that his head is not allowing him to be as sociable as his heart wants to, but the tannie, also about 50-something, is friendly and doesnt’ stop talking and laughing. I later learnt that he’s been working underground in a Westonarea mine for over 30 years, when an underground train hit him, almost killing him and putting him on early pension. The tannie shows me around while I tell her how big everything looked when I was last in the yard as a laaite, how the apricots were always dropping fruit and how ouma made jam, juice concentrate, dried apricots, biscuits and who knows what else with the appelkoosmoes — apricot pulp — no wonder they decided to take the trees out, the stink alone was enough to drive one to the back in late-summer.

The single garage is as I remember it next to the brown facebrick wall that we did our balancing tricks on. Next to the garage there was an Andy Capp painted but this is long gone with a few brown layers of paint now gentrifying the corner wall where the compost heap was. The tannie now opens the gate to the back yard, and I can’t believe how not-big the yard is! I remember that when I was small I didn’t even want to go to the back of the yard. The grapevine is still there, as is the original vine that is now a spreading canopy over the silver-painted wire and steel structure under which we often braaied and spent time playing with Dassie and Liesl. The steps which Dassie so liked to bake in the sun on is all of 11 steps, I remember it as a friggin staircase that started waay up there and ended a breakneck mile below! Turned out to be less than 2 meters of climb, how disappointing. The house itself is repainted and still has a tin roof with pressed ceilings inside. The inside of the house is covered in carpet — the original wooden floors are still under it but looks bad, so the tannie says. The dining room is now also part of the kitchen, or rather, it is the kitchen, which makes sense as Ouma didn’t really have too much by way of a kitchen as I remembered it. Oupa seemed to have spent most of his time in this room watching TV, smoking Gold Dollar (when he still smoked, there was a Dick Tracy-like vibe in this room with sunrays beaming through horizontal blinds into the blue smoke), but mostly I remember him doing crosswords — he was the king of crosswords! — and listening to Radio Suid Afrika. Oupa Daan had a degenerative bone disease which calsified his spine, so he lost use of his arms for most part of my life that I can remember. In fact, I can’t remember him ever hugging me so it must have been very long. The single bathroom is pretty with the pressed celing intact, but the basin, toilet and bath were replaced at some stage, and I guess it was high time too as I remember the bath being rough to the touch even as a kid. The master bedroom is still the same room, and the other bedroom was turned into a second lounge. The second spare room is a spare bedroom/linen room and the tannie also confessed to not ever throwing magazines away when I told her how this room was a veritable treasure trove for us kids to get lost in when it came to exploring and discovering stuff. My grandparents never seemed to have thrown anything away and it ended up mostly here. There was even a pram of 19-voertsek with a spring suspension, holding a stack of Huisgenote of the sixties or seventies in it.

We’re now back in the hallway after I told her how upset my Mom was when I ran up and down the passge and caused the sideboard’s glass panes to break with my stomping. In the hallway there’s trophy cabinets stacked with, of all things, pigeon competition trophies. The oom was an avid aviary enthusiast, tumblers being his speciality (these are pidgeons that literally tumbles in flight, probably to dodge bullets or eagles, who knows). And the golden watch from the mine for 28 years of service. The lounge, where the oom is now sitting, is much the same with thick wooden doorposts and the round porthole — where another Andy Capp figure featured a long time ago — is still there.

I had to leave and thanked the oom and tannie for their time. They have children in Cambridge, too, when I told them of my sister in London. Its a pity I couldn’t take pictures — my phone was out of memory, again — but it was a lovely detour down memory lane on my way to an otherwise forgettable weekend. The oom doesn’t stop asking questions about my bike and for a second I contemplate taking him for a spin — knowing that he’ll be excited like a little kid if I do, I make an inner commitment to drop by again when its still light with a spare helmet packed. I was all smiles, and a bit nostalgic as I rode off glad that my free hour or two in the West went off like it did (even though tannie Ina and Ansie weren’t home when I was giving out hugs, dalk volgende keer, hoor!). Hope it brought some memories back to the Van Rensburgs, Schroeders and Johnsons out there (and who knows what other surnames my cousins all have by now, I’m too lazy to look it up!) What can you remember of Oupa and Ouma’s house?

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