Sixty years ago I lived on the Cape Flats near Cape Town. I was a pug nosed kid then, with holes in the back of my pants, an acre of freckles and ears that stuck out at right angles from my head. I was an adventurous boy, I hunted tortoises in the nearby woodlands, othertimes (unknown to my mother) I went further out on the flats where the trees had so many boemslang (tree snakes) hanging from the branches that they looked like Christmas trees! 

We were doing okay then; Dad had work – he’d got a job on the railways and that seemed to have settled him – he had stopped coming home with a bloody face and things at home were pretty good too; he and mom had stopped rowing.  I remember one particular Saturday around that time; the sky was blue, mom had made lemonade, we had mealies (sweetcorn) thick with butter and we played games in the front yard with mom and dad. Granny came at two o’clock.

We kids stripped to our underwear and soaked each other with the hosepipe and we ran round the yard until we nearly dropped. We played French cricket. (Do kids still play that?) You held the bat in front of your legs (which become the wickets) and the other players one at a time tried to hit your legs with a tennis ball while you tried to hit the ball with the bat. We rolled around the yard, we played tag, wishing the day would never end. But - eventually the sun got low in the sky. Granny went home, mom tidied up, supper came, my brother and I listened to Adventure Man on the wireless and then we kids went to bed. A perfect day; the kind of day that sticks in your memory for the rest of your life, the kind you sit your grandchild on your knee and tell her about.  

I must have slept a little but I remember waking and realising that mom and dad were still up. I knew that dad would be sitting in his usual place reading the latest science fiction magazine – his favourite then was John Campbell, the editor of Astounding Science Fiction. I knew he’d be sitting there twirling a lock of his hair between his two fingers as he always did when he was reading.  I could hear mom and dad talking quietly in the front room.

I couldn’t get back to sleep and my mind began wandering around the pitch dark room. Then slowly my eyes got used to the dark and I began to see the faint outlines of things. Across the room I could see my brother fast asleep in his bed and breathing very softly. I decided (smiling in the darkness) that in the morning I was going to show him the lizard I’d seen impaled on the barbwire fence behind the loco-sheds (probably done by a butcher bird). He hated dead things!  

I probably heard the noise for the first time about then. It is impossible to spell - but the nearest I can get is:  shririp!  - but that is completely inadequate. I could not identify it. I wondered about it for a while and then dismissed it from my mind. I coiuld hear a fly in the room. I wondered how long it would be before it settled on the fly paper which dangled invitingly from my lampshade.  Sometime later I heard the noise again:

Shririp! 

I heard water run and guessed that mom had put the kettle on for tea.  I could hear the faint sound of the radio. Then mom’s sewing machine started.  

Shrirp! 

I thought of my experience with the boemslangs. I became convinced that they had followed me home! So I jumped out of bed, roused my brother and we both ran into the front room screaming: “There’s a snake! There’s a snake!” The trouble was that my Aunt Muriel had had a cobra in her bird cage not long before and that was fresh in mom's mind - so she screamed and of course that brought the neighbours. Mr Hendryk brought his shot gun. Then the police sergeant who lived at the back of us arrived revolver in hand. About two hours later after a thorough search of the house and nothing found the house emptied again and we all went back to bed. My brother slept with mom and dad and I went in the spare room just in case.       

About three months later we had just finished our supper which included our favourite:-mealies and butter and were sitting down on the stoep for a game of whist. There was dad, mom my brother and my sister. My sister fetched the cards and we sat down. Dad and I won the first hand and my brother was dealing for the second when: 

Shririp! 

I froze. I looked up and saw that the noise was coming from Dad. He had a piece of mealie stuck in his teeth and was trying to suck it out!