Déjà vu

My first five years were spent in a wooden house on the Loquestown Road, that passed by the village of Glenmanus. The little house was one of many that ringed a large field, temporary accommodations that were provided by the local council for destitute or near-destitute families. It was just after WW2 and there was much poverty. Thanks to my mother’s uncle Bill and one of his fields across the road, my father was able to start his fledgling poultry farm, subsidized by his talent as a semi-professional pianist.

Eventually, my father was able to get an ex-serviceman’s mortgage, and had a small bungalow built on another of Uncle Bill’s fields, about a kilometer up the Coleraine Road, close by Ballywillan Church.

In that era our bungalow had no utilities. Water was carried from a nearby well. The toilet was a can in an outside brick house, that my father emptied on the farm’s midden heap. Light was by means of oil lamps. The only heat was from the kitchen stove and on occasional weekends, from a fire in the living room. The winters were bitterly cold, and we took hot water bottles to bed. I still remember there often being ice on the inside of the bedroom window.

In time, an electricity service reached the house, and the box room (store room) was converted into a bathroom, with the toilet flushing to a cess pool some fifty metres down the slope.

I left home for Canada when I was 18, in 1965. It was then that I realized how relatively poor my family was. We lacked so much that Canadians took for granted.  We had no central heating. My poor mother had no fridge. Perishable food was stored in a pantry, that had access to the outside air. She had no washing machine, all being done by hand, including sheets. She had no dryer; she depended on a clothesline and a ‘drying wind’ day. And a shower was unheard of.

Some years later, when I could afford to help them, I sent them some money to install a shower in the bathroom, and later, to install a heating system. The result was not a great success. There was not sufficient water pressure for the shower to be more than a ‘pissing flea’, and the central heating seemed to do little more that gurgle and leak. My parents remained by their kitchen fire and little changed.

Some many years later, I find myself in Cape Town. It’s cold and the lights are about to go out again for the second or third time today. Candles will be lit, or we will have yet another early night.

It’s like ‘déjà vu’ all over again!