BOM Challenge # 4 & 5 Teen and School years

This was a great challenge to do and brought back to many fond memories of my youth gone by. I had to split this challenge up a bit as I found that I had quite a few photos. I have done 4 layouts titled:

Friends
The Athlete
Matric Year
School Years (I am still busy with this one and will upload once I have finished)

Here they are with all the journalling:

The journalling reads as follows:

My friends were a very important part of my life. I just so enjoyed being with them and socialising. We often had sleep-overs with midnight feasts!! I remember the one time we all stayed at a friend, Althea’s house, and decided to throw potatoes onto the neighbours corrugated roof at about midnight!! We would wait for about 10 minutes and then do it again. He was wild and we were all hysterical with laughter at waking them up. Then we proceeded to go up to the road armed with potatoes and eggs and threw some eggs onto the wall of one of someone we knew and stuffed a potato up the exhaust of someone’s car that was parked outside. We were bad, but it was such fun!!! In those days there were no videos and we used to hire 8mm reel movies.

My best friend was Ingrid (known as Gigs as her baby sister couldn’t pronounce her name!). She arrived in Durban in 1970 and was in my Std I class. The teacher moaned at her about something and I was so upset about this and befriended her and we have been great friends ever since!! She now lives in England but we still keep in touch. We have one of those friendships that we can just pick up where we left off – it is great.

We never had TV in those days even though it was around. In my primary school years, our neighbours Hilton and Deslyn and their neighbours Victor and Harry would come to our place and we would often spend Friday nights sitting round the kitchen table listening to “Squad Cars” and then playing monopoly or a card game. Other radio programmes I enjoyed were “Jet Jungle, Men from the Ministery, Test the Team and Kids say the Darndest things”. In later years I would go to our new neighbours, Eugene (he was really cute!!) and Deidre and would watch TV with them.

I enjoyed reading and often borrowed books from a friend across the road, Gillian, as she had a great collection. To name some would be Nancy Drew, First to Fourth Form at Mallory Towers, Famous Five, Alfred Hitchkock, the Hardy Boys and lots of others by Enid Blyton. When I was younger I used to read the Beatrix Potter books that my uncle had sent me from America and this is where my love for the figurines came from – I am now an avid collector and have quite a number of the various characters from the story books.

My friends stayed in different areas of Yellow-wood Park and we either rode our bikes or walked to each other’s houses. Gigs and her sister Marian and I went for a picnic on our bikes once and we took a packet of hand picked mulberries and when we stopped to eat them, they had leaked all over Marian’s school books! She was not impressed.

We often played schools in our kaya and in later years that is where I would go to tape music from the radio onto a tape. It was nice and quiet except when my dad decided to mow the lawn!!

On week-ends, we often caught the bus into town and went to movies. On a Saturday they used to have the Sterkinekor Kiddies Club. For less than R1-00 I could catch the bus (return) see a movie, have popcorn, coke and sweets and still have change!! Ice-skating was also a popular event for us, but this was a bit costly as we had to catch two busses to get to the rink. But we always had a lot of fun and I always came home sopping wet from all the falls I had.

In my teen years there was a group of us that always hung around together and we were referred to as “the gang” – Bev, Andrew, Gavin, Deryck, Derrick, Beverley, Gigs and I (seems I have a thing for Dereck’s!!). We often hung out at Andrew’s house in their double garage with his brothers Gavin and Deryck. In later years (with the help of us girls) we repainted and converted their maid’s room into a “den” where we often sat listening to music and chatting. They also had a caravan at Kelso and many a week-end we would catch a train and spend the week-end there – we certainly had a load of fun.

We all belonged to Junior Church and every Friday we had Youth evening and we would do something social. One of my favourites was going on a progressive supper where we started at one house and walked to the next to have the next part of the meal. In those days we walked everywhere and sometimes it was as late as 10:30pm. It was during this time that my friends got me to drink coffee as I didn’t like it and always wanted water!! We often went away on camps and one of my favourite was Teen Ranch in Isingolweni down the South Coast. Neville and Ruth van der Walt were our team leaders and we used to call them “Shrink and Stretch” because Ruth was so short and Neville was so tall.

The music I enjoyed was Abba, Fleetwood Mac, Black Sabbath (the song Paranoid was always played at the ice-rink and I have fond memories of this), the Who, the Beatles, Showaddywaddy, Clout, Rabbitt, Slade, Kiss and the Osmonds, to name a few. I still enjoy these groups and actually like any kind of music that you can dance to. I was mad about Rabbit, especially Duncan Faure and use to have posters all over my bedroom wall of all these groups and more! They came and played at the Durban City Hall and my friends and I went to see them live – we were screaming like crazy when we saw them!!!

I had a lot of friends and socialized in different ways with all of them – some due to sport, some because of school but “the gang” were the friends I saw most. I was fairly popular and was always involved in something somewhere. I was never a bully and was quite sensitive and got upset if people fought with each other, which sometimes did happen.

When I left school I went to Natal Technikon and my friends there were Deanne (who I ended up sharing a flat with after I finished Tech) Ingrid, Ronelle, Wendy and Alison. Ingrid and I ended up working together at Standard Bank, Mobeni Branch when I got my first job.


The journalling reads as follows:

I love sport. My dad was a great tennis player and I think I must have got his sporting genes. Both my parents were always at my sporting events cheering me on and encouraging me and this was a big thing for me to have them there

In my matric year I was house captain for Mendel and was the vice captain for the inter-school athletics team.

While at school I played the following sports:

v Athletics - each year from 1973 I made the inter-schools team for various events, and in 1977 earned the “Best U15 Athlete” award. This was my passion! I was in the open relay team at the inter-schools and we won the trophy
v Cross Country – this I enjoyed and it improved my 800 and 1500 meter times in athletics meetings
v Swimming – in my matric year I was in the synchronized swimming team and we won. This was the first time that Mendel had ever won!
v Hockey – made the first team in matric and played against a touring Cape team
v Netball
v Soccer – for a short while
v Badminton – winning quite a few trophies (which my son “sold” to earn extra pocket money!!)
v Gymnastics – I enjoyed this and often practiced routines with my friends at home
v Ballet – reaching grade 5 at the Royal Academy of Dancing
v Speech & Drama – earning a bursary to study speech and drama for a year with Professor Elizabeth Sneddon in 1977
v Music – reached grade 5 in the Trinity School of Music (London) for piano and grade 2 in theory, grade 2 in the Royal School of Music (London) piano and grade 1 in theory. Sadly my teacher passed away and I didn’t want to start with a new teacher in my matric year
v Modern Dancing – only did this in standard 9 for a short while
v Squash – this was an extra sport offered to the matrics and I really enjoyed this. My dad, brother and I often went and played during the week at the squash courts in Jacobs
v Dance Drama – did this every year from standard 6 to matric
v Tennis – for a short while. I made the semi-finals in a doubles tournament and then broke my collar bone. It was not a sport I really enjoyed.
v Table tennis – we had a table set up in our double garage and the neighbours used to come over – we had loads of fun.
v Girl Guides – from being a Brownie and progressing to Girl Guides. I gave up in std 7, having learnt a lot of practical things.

And the journalling reads as follows:

Matric at last! This was a good year for me as it spelt the end of school. Not that I did not like school, but just that I was now going to either go to University or Tech. I did not like learning and loved sport and if I could be doing some sort of sport training, that came first over any homework or learning. Needless to say I did not get a matric exemption so could not go to University. I chose to go to Natal Technikon and did a National Secretarial Course – Computers.

I was the Mendel house captain and the vice captain for the inter-school athletics team. As matrics we got to choose an extra sport and I chose squash – a game I really enjoyed and played well, often winning my games.

For my matric dance, I asked my neighbour, Eugene, to come with me and can you believe it, it only cost my parents R3-00 for us to attend! My other neighbour, Hilton, asked me to his Marist Brothers matric dance and there also had a farewell dinner later in the year. My mom made all my dresses that I wore to these dances.

And I used to think I was really fat!!!!

Reminiscing signing off ....