Bill Cairns: 2016.

The Year in Revue

With help from Jill who was there for most of it!

Once a year I think that I ought to write one of these and once every
two years or so I actually get around to doing it. This is a report to family and
friends about what we have been doing in the past year (as far as I can
remember anyway) and an update on our present state of health and comfort.
The biggest event of the year was the arrival of the next Cairns in
September. Nathan Thomas Cairns, son of Taryn and Peter, brother of
Kirsten is our number six grandchild and he equalises the boy girl numbers.
Welcome to the new Least Cairns!
The year started with us in Cape Town where we had spent Christmas
and New Year with the Cape Town Cairns splinter group (Patrick and Grace
with Ernie and Lexie). We flew back (a barbaric means of travel) and managed
to see Pete on our way to Kokanje. (Actually he drove us to Kokanje which was
good of him.) It took us some time to recover from the Cape and we
celebrated our recovery by getting Jill a new car a Toyota Etios. She was
immediately named Ducky (the registration is DKR = Duiker = Ducky). We
are very pleased with these our new wheels and I am particularly impressed
with the fact that, after inflation, the Etios was actually cheaper than the old
Tazz but has vastly more features ABS brakes, power steering, air
conditioning, central locking, a bigger engine with lots more power, and so on.
I am not one who thinks that the good old days (assuming they ever existed)
were better than today.
In February, we helped with the annual Nylsvley Bird Count. Our main
contribution was helping Warwick with the collation of all the reports from the
various teams that had rushed around the reserve. Jill cannot walk far and did
not go out, but I did join one of the Bosveld Volklub teams to do my bit with
the counting. It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed the day. But it was during the
counting that I had a bit of an epiphany: I was walking along with Christine
Roussouw and she identified about 10 birds from their calls. I could not do
that: not that I did not recognise the calls (I probably wouldn't have), but
because I could not hear the calls. Jill has been telling me for years that my
hearing is deteriorating (I have countered by telling her that she mumbles
more), and this experience really prompted me to go and have my ears tested.
Needless to say, Jill was right and she does not mumble any more than she used
to I now have a hearing aid and can hear birds that I never knew were singing
in my vicinity.
In March new ears and all we went off to the Kruger park with the
Tarbotons to attend the annual general meeting of Birdlife South Africa (called
Flocking in Kruger). It was a fun trip and Warwick and Michle were good
company. We enjoyed the conference and learned a lot. The park was tragically
drought stricken and it was heartbreaking to see animals searching for even the
tiniest bit of green grass to eat. The hippos were particularly pitiful. We seldom
saw any in the water (where there was any water) but rather saw them out in the
blazing sun, red from severe sunburn, vainly looking for food. We saw four
dead hippos some of which were nearly covered by vultures. (Apparently two
thirds of the hippos in the park died.) The really weird thing about visiting the
park in the drought was that it rained most of the time that we were there. It
was like spring with trees bursting into leaf and new growth of grass
everywhere. Unfortunately that was the last rain that they had until October
and the relief did not last long.
In April we had a fun long weekend with Pete, Taryn and Kirsten in a
small little nature reserve on the edge of the Waterberg called Shondoro. In
July we had a similar little holiday with Patrick in a (slightly larger) nature
reserve right in the Waterberg called Izinthaba. Both Shondoro and Izinthaba
are pleasant places to break away to and it was especially fun to be able to share
them with the kids. It was at Izinthaba that I saw Bat-eared foxes for the first
time. They are cute little beasties to be sure.
Also in April we attended a Krige Toenadering (a gathering of a sept of
the Clan Krige) in Benoni which was attended by a vast number of the
descendants of Jill's grandfather, Petrus Schabort (Tottie) Krige. All but one of
Jill's generation are still alive and the eleven living were all present together with
a mass of their children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. The

Bill and the Least Cairns

Ducky

Vultures around dead hippo. Next to Letaba

River.

Jill and Kirsten at

Shondoro

Bateared fox at
Izinthaba

Kriges are one of the oldest Afrikaans families in South Africa and it is good
that these old families keep in touch. (It was perhaps slightly ironical that
everyone there was English speaking!)
It was also in April that I ceased being the chairman of the Kokanje
Bowls Club. It was a rewarding, although difficult, job that I was quite
unqualified to do. But when did Donald Trump or I ever pay any attention to
our suitability for a job?
Grandson Kaylen had his 18th birthday in August and we went and
celebrated with him.

Krige descendents and hangers on

We took a major trip down to KwaZulu-Natal in September. Duty

called: it had been a long time since we had seen my sister Elspeth Blakeway,
Hilary's mother Esme Maud, Jill's sister Googs, or our old friend Schalk Steyn
in Memel. We spent a couple of days in the Drakensberg on our way down and
then saw the family in Howick and Pietermaritzburg and Pinetown. My sister
and her husband Vin Blakeway have moved into the Elizabeth Gardens
retirement complex in Howick (where my parents also ended up) and seem to
be quite happily settled. Esme Maud is now 97 and is amazingly fit and
cheerful. She took us out to lunch and we had a good chat. After lunch we also
had a chance to chat with Esme's daughter Bev and her husband John
Levengood. We promised to go to Esme's 100th birthday in 2019. Googs and
Mike Mulder are still ensconced in their house in Pinetown and we had an
enjoyable little visit with them. We travelled back to Limpopo via Memel where
it was good to see Schalk and then on we went to Wakkerstroom where we met
the Tarbotons and spent a couple of days chasing birds with them.

The cousins

Bill and Jill with

Elspeth and Vin
Blakeway

For some time my feet have been giving me a lot of trouble with the big
toe on my right foot growing out north west rather than north and then
coming back at a right angle to squash the next toe. My doctor said that they
would just cut the bunion out, but the foot specialist orthopod said no, he
would have to rearrange my whole foot. So at the beginning of November I
went into hospital in Pretoria and had a foot fixing surgery. I then spent five
weeks complaining bitterly in plaster and then next three weeks (which brings
us up to today) complaining some more. Things are now much better although
the foot is still swollen and red. I am sure that it will be better by Christmas
next year. My left foot also needs to be fixed and I have made a firm date to do
it in 2028.
William is still working for Eskom. Perhaps I should say that he is
working for Eskom again he was outsourced to Arivia which was acquired by
T Systems and then insourced again by Eskom. Three different employers in
four shifts without changing his job. He and Yolande have moved to a new
house in preparation for fledgelings fledge. Loreley has just finished second
year at the University of Pretoria and had to contend with a lot of Fees must
fall protests. Kaylen has just written matric and Gawain is following behind.
John is still doing his Economist thing as a foreign exchange expert.
Margaux is now eight and is at the French School in Johannesburg.

Esme Maud with Bev and John Levengood

Peter and Taryn are still in Parkhurst and have modified their house to
accommodate their new family member. Kirsten seems to have taken the arrival
of her new sibling without major trauma. Pete is still with Sasol and the whole
family will be going off to spend a couple of months in Spain quite soon.
Taryn has been on leave from KFC and will return to designing new fried
chickens once they return from eating tappas.
Patrick is still in Cape Town working as a financial journalist. He writes a
lot for MoneyWeb and I read what he has to say quite often. He is still playing
bowls and did go to the Interprovincial Tournament earlier this year. Grace
does a lot of contract work as an Occupation therapist and also does remote
teaching from home.
We are still happily living in Kokanje and enjoying the bushveld. Life is
good. We are involved with the local Anglican Parish and take a service once a
month at one of the township churches. We are used used less frequently by
the local United Church (St Michael's) and the Methodist Church in Bela Bela.

A very Happy and Healthy 2017 to all!

William and Kaylen at 18 years

Bill's new ear