Paul Walters

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Coming Up For Air; Revisiting Cape Town, South Africa.

Coming Up For Air; Revisiting Cape Town, South Africa.


Twenty odd long years between visits is, as George Orwell once said,is a little like 'coming up for air.'

In a different time, when the world was younger than today, my parents brought me from England to this city that clings limpet- like to the bottom of the African continent. Then I was just a boy, teetering on the edge of adolescence.


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It was here, in the brooding shadows of Table Mountain, I entered the world of a South African education that was altogether foreign to me. Things were a lot different then.


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Apartheid was at its zenith and the schools I attended were there for the benefit of the privileged white population. Trains, buses in fact everything was rigorously segregated, even the queues in the post office were divided by a thin plywood wall lest the different races come in contact with each other.

I received what I now consider to be a questionable education, however I excelled at sport and led the life of a privileged boy, accustomed to having anything he wanted.


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I discovered the wonders that this, one of the most picturesque of cities on the planet had to offer as seen through the naive eyes of a 13 year old. The beaches, the mountains, the days at Newlands watching the cricket, or attending the titanic rugby matches played between the Springboks and the All Blacks where we stayed up all night outside the ground in the hope of securing a ticket.

I fished with my father on the rocks at Kalk Bay, met surfers who led me astray and fell in love for the first time. Life for me, apart from the draconian education system that bored and terrified me all at once, bordered on bliss.


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In my late teens I began to suffer from incurable curiosity, which led me to leave this place to discover what lay beyond the mountains that enclosed the city like a formidable fortress, not thinking at the time that I would be middle- aged before I returned!

I once knew a rather famous jazz trombonist, Eric Allendale, a giant of a West Indian, who wrote those memorable tunes, “Build Me Up Buttercup and Baby Now That I've Found You " with the group The Foundations. He was a wise and thoughtful man who once told me never to return to a place that has memories for, what you seek will no longer be there.... how right he was!


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I disregarded Eric's advice from long ago as right now I type this in my niece’s apartment that sits under in the brooding shadow of Table Mountain.

The weather is perfect, even though the city is currently in the depths of winter, and the Mountain stands as majestically as ever. A gentle South - Easter (known by the locals as the Cape Doctor) blows off Table Bay bringing with it a biting chill that keeps me indoors while I ponder my itinerary. Everything needs to be planned carefully as I am still on crutches and wearing an unwieldy ‘moon boot.’

I deliberately chose not to try and find old school or university friends; for they are now but faint voices, vanished and gone. This journey of mine is simply a wander down familiar lane ways to seek out something that perhaps was never there.


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The city itself has grown and prospered in my absence creeping up the slopes of the mountain and spreading south to Cape Point.

I rouse myself and brave the cold to wander ( read, hobble) to Cape Town’s main station through brand new inner suburbs where once, down –at- heel post war houses stood, now gentrified and populated by aspirational families forging the ‘new South Africa’.

I caught the metro line which took me to Kalk Bay gazing through the grimy windows at an angry sea pounding away at the rocks lining the tracks where, as a boy I spent hours at low tide scouring the rock pools in search of star fish.


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The train passes the ‘natural’ rock swimming pool where, as boys we swung from a rope to drop into an icy pond that sadly is now a multi story car park. The field where games of cricket were played is part of a sprawling suburb and the open bush land through which we used to walk to school is now covered by a giant shopping centre.

I avoided hopping off the train to walk past my old school or the family home (which I believe now is a large bed and breakfast establishment) preferring perhaps to maintain and preserve the memories (good and bad) I have of these places.

I almost broke the cardinal rule by trying to seek out my first love. What was I hoping for?  That she would be the same, untouched by the passing of time? I found her house and stood across the street like a sad voyeur hoping perhaps for a glimpse of her. After a while a mother and small child emerged and set off down the road. My love, like so many friends from that time had moved away and simply got on with their lives and I played no further part in their day to day existence.


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As I wandered away to the station for my return journey I stood on the platform and watched the small boats in the charming harbour of Kalk Bay, tossing and straining like horses in harness and thought of that wonderful but rather solemn quotation, “Of all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest of all is, what might have been."


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My visit to this city was short, and soon it was time to leave her beauty behind me, for even now, she is a captivating mistress. Reaching back three decades will always somehow be fraught with disappointment, for the expectations never quite match the current reality.

Eric Allendale was right in that regard, and as Paul Simon once wrote,

" Preserve your memories, they're all that’s left you."

Paul v Walters is the best selling author of several novels and when not travelling or cocooned in sloth and procrastination in his house in Bali he scribbles for several international travel and vox pop journals. His latest offering, Asset, is due for release in late 2017.


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Komentar

Paul Walters

6 tahun yang lalu #22

#28
Randall Burns thanks . Still hopping and right now in the words oldest desert in Namibia . Locals help me on and off buses, trains and all forms of transport. Methinks I might wear the boot for the rest of my days

Paul Walters

6 tahun yang lalu #21

Thank you, wise words as always #18

Randall Burns

6 tahun yang lalu #20

P.S. WoW! You sure are getting some miles on that "moon boot", I can just picture you "hobbling" all over the planet. LMAO!! :-)

Randall Burns

6 tahun yang lalu #19

Wow! Haunting post Paul Walters, attempting to relive yet release the past at the same time. We all have feelings like this but you've penned them brilliantly. Great quote by Eric Allendale, poignant to your article. Nice!

Lisa Gallagher

6 tahun yang lalu #18

I really enjoyed this read Paul Walters. I had no idea you spent part of your years growing up in Cape Town! Maybe if time stood still we'd want for more... more of our past that we are supposed to move on from? I remember my first love and I did find him................. oh on FB that is LOL. I never sent a friends request and I must say, he aged well. I pictured him to be a bit frumpy, not sure why. He had a fairly good shorter afro growing for a white boy back in the day. The photos are beautiful, the story was serene. I'm going to have the song "Build me up Buttercup," replaying in my brain tonight now, great song- sound advice!

Jerry Fletcher

6 tahun yang lalu #17

Paul, I don't know where the line comes from but your piece struck a chord in me and the words "you can't go home again." emerged from the mist. Each time I return to visit my growing up place in Ohio I struggle with the same kind of vanishments that you mention. It is at once disheartening and a justification for the mileage I've racked up elsewhere. Thank you for a glimpse into your view of a world city with both the eyes of a teenager and those of the man he came to be.

CityVP Manjit

6 tahun yang lalu #16

#15
I concur Deb \ud83d\udc1d Helfrich and their experiences as globetrotters). Yet when travel is simply a function of our work, it is the work we see. Now I can say that I took a work trip to Belgium, or a work trip to Brazil, or a work trip to South Africa, but that does not encompass experiences of what word "travel" can rise to as awareness, learning, appreciation and even (for sure) an international wisdom . When it is work rather than travel, even the Queen has to sit and watch how the natives dance for her, yet the countries she visited would be kinder to just introduce her to Paul or Dean and see how they both have learned to see the world and then let her go where she please, and in that regard even the Queen loses something when duty came first, unless of course when she is free.

Paul Walters

6 tahun yang lalu #15

Don \ud83d\udc1d Kerr A piece you may like

Paul Walters

6 tahun yang lalu #14

#15
Deb \ud83d\udc1d Helfrich Thank you for your rather insightful reply...much appreciated. I always feel some places resonate and some simply dont. Tomorrow I move north to Namibia.

Paul Walters

6 tahun yang lalu #13

#13
Many thanks

CityVP Manjit

6 tahun yang lalu #12

As I read this travel buzzes I am increasingly convinced that the travelers brain is far different perspective holder than a residents brain. I used to make the distinction between traveler and tourist, but it is fairly mute because both still travel, but a resident can reside in one place and never travel. Think Sara Palin the VP candidate in the Republican Primaries on the John McCain ticket, Palin it is said knew very little of the global world, remaining mostly if not all her life in the realm of the United States, and so the parody of SNL took hold where they project her saying "I can see Russia from my window" . I did go to South Africa but solely as a part of the organization I was working with and not as a traveler, and in comparing notes in terms of "travel", there is no comparison to my experience and the experience articulated here, it is self-evident in this comparison that I do not possess a travelers brain. I would not see or think about place in the way it is graphically and intricately expressed - and so it is I have not (at least to date) learned to see the world this way. In this buzz I can see how travel may enrich the soul and that I have the soul of a homeboy. It is never too late to cultivate or inculcate a new perspective, but sometimes we are simply who we are and so we can accept that as who we are, but a buzz like this is an appreciation of what is sensory to a traveler and in appreciating that, the genuine traveler provides an illuminating sight.

Lance 🐝 Scoular

6 tahun yang lalu #11

👍👌 👥ed 🐝🐝🐤🐳🔥🚲

Ken Boddie

6 tahun yang lalu #10

How fondly we look back and reminisce, At past 'what if's' cocooned in frozen bliss, But, as life's journey moulds how we have changed, Those we once knew are also rearranged, And places where we played down memory lane, Are oft transformed and seldom stay the same. It's good when we can catch up, Without attempts to match up.

Paul Walters

6 tahun yang lalu #9

Ian Weinberg Thanks Ian, my sentiments exactly

Paul Walters

6 tahun yang lalu #8

#7
Phil Friedman Thanks, much appreciated !!

Phil Friedman

6 tahun yang lalu #7

Well said, Paul.

Ian Weinberg

6 tahun yang lalu #6

Superb narrative Paul Walters Yes indeed, the ghosts of the past and all the emotions that are anchored thereto. And all the while the mountain gazes upon us, timelessly!
An astonishing memoir. We all have them. Yours is eloquent and in the here and now of the past.

Paul Walters

6 tahun yang lalu #4

#3
Gert Scholtz Thanks Gert, twas a strange visit for me, but it remains such a beautiful place !!

Gert Scholtz

6 tahun yang lalu #3

Paul Walters This is just such a superb piece, Paul. I enjoyed every word. Thanks for also triggering some of my almost forgotten memories.

Paul Walters

6 tahun yang lalu #2

Savvy Raj

Paul Walters

6 tahun yang lalu #1

Javier \ud83d\udc1d beBee

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