In a borrowed tent.

I am steadily becoming obsessed with history. Those quirky stories of everyday life that get lost in time. The long legged man's great grandfather was a commander in the Boer War. He remembers his grandfather telling the children stories that his father had told him. Nobody wrote them down. I wish I could go back in time and take notes.

Recently in Churchhaven, I found this old milk bottle buried in the sand. Perhaps from the 60's or even the 50's, it bears the instruction: This bottle costs more than ten cents. Please rinse and return promptly.

I could find no information about the Union Dairy Farm - according to the bottle, they were on the Ou Kaapse Weg in Tokai.

My generation all remembers having milk and juice delivered in the morning. The feeling of pressing down the foil cap with your thumb...

Over lunch at the Chapman's Peak Hotel, my friend the potter and haiku writer told me that he remembers this:

he grew up in East London and early mornings were heralded by a barefoot Zulu milkman, who would come along pushing his red and white painted wooden handcart, milk bottles clinking.

His name was Milky and he wore blue overalls with Model Dairy embroidered on the back, and copper bangles around his wrists and his ankles. In the winter, he had a lantern hanging from his cart.

My friend also told me that his daughter had given up her long years of Philosophy studies to devote her life to the baking of biscuits.

That sounds like a wonderful life to me. 

through a hole

in a borrowed tent

the Milky Way

- Steve Shapiro