Lavender memories
LAST week's mention of the 1947 royal visit brought back memories for reader Heather Chick.
"I was four years old in 1947 and our home was on the corner of Boshoff and Pietermaritz Streets, in Pietermaritzburg. The royal motorcade was routed to come right past our house, turning on the corner.
"My father, recently returned from fighting in World War II and a keen photographer, was overjoyed and could barely contain his excitement at the chance of close-ups of the Royal Family, particularly of the two young princesses.
"By the time the motorcade came up Boshoff Street, our garden and its surrounding low wall, were crowded with people. My father's dream of being able to get good shots was shattered.
"But nothing deterred him. He jumped onto the running board of the royal vehicle to get his shots and was pulled off by some authority figure – probably a policeman. (These days he would have been put in prison.) But he got his photos of the princesses, developed them himself in our bathroom and I have them still, somewhere in our old photo collection."
Yeah, lavender memories.
Ten bob prezzie
SOMETHING similar also happened in Pretoria. An African fellow jumped onto the running board of the royal car and was immediately bundled away by the cops. It turned out all he was trying to do was give Princess Elizabeth 10 shillings for her birthday.
Twiggy
ANOTHER Maritzburg personality involved in the 1947 royal visit was one John Humphrey "Twiggy" Branch, who ran Twiggy's Pie Cart in the Market Square, a late-night diner.
Twiggy, a Cockney of acerbic wit and repartee, did a lot more than just run the diner. He also had a flourishing catering business and served the food and drink at all kinds of high-end functions.
He also had periodic problems with the bottle. He once managed to get picked up for drunken driving three times on the same day. When it got to court, the magistrate sent him to Fort Napier mental hospital to get sorted out.
Came 1947 and they laid on a huge dinner for the King in the Pietermaritzburg city hall. All the larneys were invited – MPs, senators, mayors, judges, the lot. And Twiggy won the catering contract.
He laid on a splendid dinner. Afterwards the catering staff were presented to the King. He congratulated Twiggy and said: "You really deserve a drink."
At which Twiggy replied: "No thank you, Your Majesty, I'm an alcoholic and I have to report back to the lunatic asylum in half an hour." (At which there was a series of thuds as aides de camp swooned).
Ker-runch!
TWIGGY'S Pie Cart was an institution. Its equivalent in Durban was Mick's Pie Cart, which operated down near the old station.
At Twiggy's, students, greasemonkeys, judges and lawyers, rugby players and others would rub shoulders late at night – nothing else was open - and exchange banter with Twiggy and his sidekick, Sam Naidoo.
Culinary speciality was the "cowboy" – pie, baked beans, curry and hotters sauce, sometimes with a fried egg on top. (This was the "cowboy with a hat on.")
Mick's had its own specialities, one of which was the "soup sandwich" – sloppy curry between two slices of bread.
In the early hours at Twiggy's I once saw a bloke deliberately drive his car into the pie cart with a sickening crunch – it was very stoutly built – because they said they'd closed. Then he chased the head waiter up Church Street, shouting: "Come back and fight, you coward!"
Nothing much else stayed open late in those days. Life was very dull.
The Raj trembles
HISTORIAN Peter Quantrill says that although British Prime Minister David Cameron might have mastered the pronunciation of Kabul – as noted last week - no current politician, American or British, has mastered the pronunciation of Afghanistan.
"Generally they make it sound like 'Aff gaan istaan.' The old Raj would tremble. The correct pronunciation should phonetically be: 'Uff garn istarn'."
Peter should know. He was born and educated in India (He finds it difficult to locate anyone in Durban who speaks Hindi). He went to Sandhurst, was commissioned into the British Gurkhas and served in Malaya and Borneo in the 1950s and 1960s.
Tailpiece
OXYGEN and potassium went out on a date. It went OK.
Last word
The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.
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