He was not very big as spiders go, probably about five centimetres from the tip of one leg to the tip of the one opposite. (I almost wrote from, “wingtip to wingtip.”) He was also very low-slung. His belly seemed to scrape on floor or wall as he scuttled along.
On one day recently, Oom Wessel (not me) had a spade stolen that he had left outside, Bennie who farms with a modest variety of livestock lost one hundred chickens, a visitor from a civilised place called Johannesburg lost her car in a hi-jacking, a young man from the Pieterse
We were naturally outraged by someone defecating on our stoep. To be clear about this, we realised from the beginning that the responsible individual could not be much more than a foot tall. The size of the droppings told us so. Nevertheless, we felt this was very impolite. We first
I had a friend called Frederik. He was not what I would call a close friend, just a man I knew who did motor car repairs and service for Miriam and me when our car needed attention. The amounts he charged for working on our car were modest and the
In his famous musical, Alan J. Lerner suggested that we should “Never let it be forgot That once there was a spot For one brief shining moment That was known as Camelot.” It’s a charming thought and has grown out of the idea of a wise and just king who
I have heard it said that God placed dogs on earth to teach humanity about unconditional love. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of that statement, but if you know dogs it seems quite possible. However, dispensing unconditional love is not the only fine quality they possess. Another was demonstrated
The girl was very little, just five years old. Her grandfather, to whom she turned for information on every possible subject, was very old. Terribly old, she thought. He was probably the oldest man in the world. In fact, he was sixty years old. He had lived twelve times as
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Christmas is over. Thank heavens. Now the local shopping should stop, or at least ease off. Is Christmas shopping so bad? Well, yes, in the plotlands it can be very bad. A fever seems to sweep through the criminal community here. They are clearly believers in celebrating Christmas. I have
The start of the hostilities can be traced back to an absence of shade on our terrace. Miriam was determined that we should have shade and that it should be of the natural sort, provided by the leaves and branches of a tree. Accordingly, she set about acquiring a leopard