In the 1920s, Bronwyn Davids’ great-grandpa Joe McBain built their family home in Lansdowne. In this memoir, Davids vibrantly recreates life lived in this house for generations: There’s doekpoeding for Christmas; helpful neighbours dropping by for advice and chommies playing kennetjie. But this is also an account of a gut-wrenching loss. Set against the background of apartheid forced removals, this is a charming and authentically South African family story that will stay with you.
Оглавление
Bronwyn Davids. Lansdowne dearest
Family tree
Author’s note
Drawing of the Mcbain property
In my thoughts
Placing
Home, sugary home
A garden contrary
Let hands make
If music be
Exhale city, breathe in country
Excision
Up, down Lansdowne road
Rebel
The dissembling
And then it was no more
In my words
Endnotes
Glossary
Acknowledgements
Table of Contents
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BRONWYN DAVIDS
Lansdowne Dearest
.....
The old man had always been more of a father to his grandchildren than Jack and they worshipped him for it. He taught them how to build and garden and fix things. Some days he’d walk all his grandchildren and their friends to the Youngsfield airstrip, which was busy during and immediately after the war years, to watch the planes come and go.
Some days he would just sit outside the kitchen door on a wicker chair, smoking his tobacco pipe, reading the Cape Times in the morning and the Cape Argus in the afternoon and drinking coffee, waiting for visitors. Somebody would always pop in for a chat eventually.
