Growing up, there were several key lessons that my mom passed down to us as kids. Many we still practice to this day, and some may have slightly fallen by the wayside (like the importance of eating apples). Most of these lessons and memories invariably stem from the kitchen, where many an afternoon, my mom would be cooking or baking up a new concoction that was to serve as our feast that evening. But one lesson that that my mom taught the 3 of us, that still sticks with us to this day, was to make sure we ate enough fibre.
(Because Moms care that way).
And a key tool in the battle of the High Fibre war, was this wonderful rusk recipe amicably nicknamed, “Hardloop Beskuit”.
Hardloop because they’re so easy to make – and hardloop because, well… you know.
So – after adapting the recipe to suit UK ovens and ingredients lists, we thought we’d share this winner with you as a perfect rainy-day dunking spectacular.
Written and published on The South African Magazine: 27 June 2016.
For the first time since 1993, I felt a certain rumble in my belly this past week. It wasn’t the the dodgy butternut soup I’d had at lunchtime, but rather an old familiar friend which I thought I’d buried a long time ago. The friend that tugged at the hearts of so many South Africans in the early 90s when we were all faced with 1 big change ahead.
So how ironic to sit here – a South African expat now living and working in the UK – contributing to this economy, this culture, this commercial growth plan – and to once again, feel the same unease that we felt all those years ago – when faced with something so big, something so unknown – that despite what the media reports, and the politicians falsely promise – almost puts us right back to where we were in the early 90s in South Africa.
Make no mistake – I never left South Africa for a better life. I didn’t choose to leave because I’d had enough. My life path ended up this way due to a very happy cross-cultural relationship. But so many of my friends living in the UK, did. They left out of fear. They left out of circumstance. They left for a better life. And now – we all sit with the same unease. Brexit.
Amongst subject conversations with fellow-South Africans this weekend, were those of leaving for Canada, weighing up a Zuma-nation vs a Non-EU Britain and hopeful petitions for a second referendum. There are couch-politicians name-calling those who didn’t vote in the same way and referring to them as racist, idiotic nazis. There are others who didn’t bother voting, but are now signing petitions to u-turn a result of a democratic process simply because they don’t like what they are hearing. There are those who, after they had voted, started to research and clarify what the EU actually was.
We know that change isn’t easy. And there are many of us who may feel disappointed, frustrated, even angered by the results of this ‘process’ – but there’s one thing that stands firm for me.
We are South African. We are, each of us, born with a culturally-rich desire to do, desire to achieve, desire to succeed. We are overcomers of turmoil – we are problem-solvers and fixers. We get the job done, and we know how to live – no matter of location, circumstance or standing. Yes – we may already be packing our bags, heading for the hills – or we may be burying our heads in the sand until all of this fuss blows over – but whatever it is, there’s something inside each one of us that instinctively reminds us that we can do this.
The sun will still rise tomorrow. That deadline that’s looming, will not move. The beer you have in the fridge will still be cold ready for that braai you’re planning.
So get busy doing.
One thing you cannot deny about living in a little town in the English countryside, is the invaluable opportunity to be exposed to the worlds of Thomas Hardy, Beatrix Potter, Jane Austen (amongst others) and their gardens of hedgehogs, robins, honeysuckles and stone cottages. Before moving to Dorset, never in my life had I experienced the true wonder that is known as the Dawn Chorus. (And I don’t refer to the woman who auditioned for Britain’s Got Talent 5 years ago, that lives down the road).
You find yourself setting your alarm clock to simply catch this sound splendour that is created by local Robins and Sandpipers, Redshanks and Finches and Gulls. You could stand for hours, looking out of your bedroom window, listening to the sounds of a new day completely consume you of your evening’s rest.
I remember, on one particular occasion, volunteering to taxi my Englishman and his friends to and from the local pub. It was a warm summer’s evening and I was thoroughly excited to be driving my new little VW Beetle convertible that I’d just purchased. My cuckoo clock had just chimed 2 o’clock (am) and I hopped into the Beetle and zoomed through the country lanes, roof down, to pick up the partying lot. Even then, at that time of night, the birdsong guided my drive. Even at that time of night, these feathered friends had something joyful to sing about. Even at that time of night – the evening skies shook with their twitters and chirps.
Much was the same fascination the moment I saw my first badger. A real, living, breathing racing-striped badger. The animals I’d come to know in the pages of Kenneth Grahame, where a toad lived in a hall and a mild-mannered mole decides to leave his spring-cleaning habits and explore the riverbank. Little stocky characters they are, and speedy too. We’d seen a glimpse of a badger running along a country lane one evening, in the light beam of my car, busily looking for evening nibbles and snacks. You can understand my excitement at the opportunity to watch them scurrying about at a local farm that had set up a badger hide. A controversial idea, given the recent flurry surrounding culls and bovine TB in the area, and one that was, no doubt, frowned upon by some local farmers. But a gift of an opportunity to experience a precious insight into a creature that I’d only had the opportunity to imagine, before then.
Dorset is a beautiful place to live and to visit. As I let the Spaniel out for her evening constitutionals before bedtime, last night, I stood in our garden, as the stars flickered brightly in the black sky overhead, and the frost started icing the grass, closed my eyes, and listened. An owl, a seagull, and even a faraway fox. All going about their normal lives and completely unaware of this foreign voyeur.
Summer in Dorset is a picture of true heavenly beauty. The vivid green of the rolling hills moulding shapes under a piercing blue sky. Heavy leaf-abundant trees create draping canopies over the small country lanes leading to little areas yet to be explored, and the sound of the ice cream van interrupts a lazy afternoon of gardening and house maintenance.
On one particularly sweltering summer’s day, where most people seek shade and swimming pool relief; where the allure of melting ice cream cones and suntan lotion seems to be the activity du jour, you wouldn’t be to blame should you happen to find yourself in the heart of the Blackmore Vale, and more specifically in the sprightly little town of Sturminster Newton, drinking tea.
And that’s exactly what Englishman and I decided to do.
Across the bridge, just on the hem of the town, lies a beautifully restored Georgian building which is home to Rob & Michelle’s Comins Tea House, a tea-sanctuary that welcomes all visitors that walk through the door with muted scents of faraway lands and abundant hospitality.
Englishman and I had met Rob at a local country fair, and we’d decided to pay their tea house a visit. With my love of tea, and Englishman’s love for trying new things – it was the perfect combination for us to enjoy and be educated. More than this though, it was the thrill of finding something slightly different to the run of the mill tea and coffee shops you see dotted on every corner, in our own countryside. A little piece of a faraway land, at home, like us, in a little corner of the UK. It hardly mattered that we didn’t know our Assam from our Matcha, our Oolong from our Sencha, finding this little oriental gem was a treat that we’d both been looking forward to.
As we slowly made our way through our first cup of Oolong, with Rob carefully taking us through the traditional Gongfu tea ceremony, we chatted about the life of the teahouse, and the course of events that had brought them to this point. Rob, a self-proclaimed former tea sceptic, and his wife Michelle, had walked the Indian tea lands, smelt the leaves, felt the earth beneath their feet – and had lived and breathed a journey that would change their lives forever. And in this brief moment of sharing something so foreign, we all had a commonality that bonded us, over our little clay tea cups.
And as the day grew longer, and the 3rd hour had passed, and we’d tried the frothy Macha and the ice cold Sencha, time had escaped us completely, we’d realised. We’d chatted with a resident local called Chris who told us about travels, while philosophically sipping his Houjicha and we’d enjoyed the stretching afternoon sun that was creeping in from the patio outside, and warming the tips of our toes. We’d listened to Rob’s stories about creating the counter in the shop out of a local Ash tree, and the vintage school chairs that he’d sourced from an antique dealer in Cornwall. But most of all, we’d experienced something new.
As the River Stour meandered its way around Sturminster Newton and the Dorset sun set over a hill shrouded by a herd of lazy fresians, we felt blessed. We’d found something new, something foreign, but at the same time, something so familiar. And most of all, we felt welcomed, and we felt blessed.
The day I bought my first pair of proper Wellies was an exciting day. Ok, albeit being from a general well-known DIY store, but new Wellies they were nonetheless. I could say gumboots, but it wouldn’t have the same charm.
Wellies.
We’d been planning a trip to Wales, and I thought the visit (in the heart of the summer) required Wellies – you know, for sploshing around mud puddles in etc. Perfect excuse.
So I trundled back home, with a pair of spotted Wellies in the car, a bag of prawn-flavoured chips (because that’s what they are), and a new pair of secateurs to attack the Willow tree in the front garden that had decided it was growing a Belieber mop. I was nonchalant in my own little world, driving up the main road, when I spotted three High Vis bodies standing outside of the pharmacy. Arms folded. Stern Look upon faces. One with a notebook. They didn’t look like the law, but who was I to know. Instinctively I check my speedometer and notice that I’d been travelling slightly over the 20mph zone, and my foot extends to the brake pedal and casually slow down. Not making eye-contact as I pass, I make my way home.
Whilst crumbling my last Peppermint Crisp over the tart I’ve just made, I think about the High Vis brigade that I had just noticed and recall an advert for a community speed watch campaign that was being launched in our town. Living in the quiet countryside, where the largest criminal activity is perhaps a garden shed that has been broken into, or a drunken brawl that ended up with a blue eye and a sore head (I jest), I’ve become almost distant from the constant reminder of The Law, no matter the capacity thereof.
I look out of my lounge window and I see 2 school-kids walk by, a little lady on a motorised scooter, and a man with his dishevelled Springer Spaniel, and I feel miles away from the people selling their wares on street corners and robots (because that’s what they are), and beggars at the highway off-ramp intersections. I feel miles away from guys earning their keep by looking after my parked car, and feel stupid at the countless times that I felt irritated by their directing my reversing out of a parking bay, while I knew perfectly well how to drive! Ironically, I find myself suggesting exactly the same when I look at the way some people drive and park in the countryside. I hypocritically add, “One thing they could do with here, were some car-watch guys to help these people park”.
My beaded artwork of the African women hanging up their washing, hangs on the wall in my lounge. And I remember meeting Oscar on the corner of the N2 and Somerset West’s Victoria Road, where he was hard at work with this creation – and his fingertips bleeding from the countless time the wire had pierced his rugged skin. And I remember buying this massive work of art, while knowing that my flat was already packed up and ready to ship – and not knowing how I’d get this to the UK.
But here it hangs. And suddenly, it dawns on me that the High Vis Beliebers, fulfilling their role of traffic speed management, are no different to Oscar, nor to the tannie that bakes pancakes outside of the Bonnievale Spar on a Saturday morning. They’re merely doing their bit for their families and for their community, regardless of how it may appear to anyone else.
And suddenly, I feel very small, and so I put on some Johnny Clegg.