My mother was a blue rinse and perm girl. She went once a week to the hairdresser and had her silver grey hair finely tuned to a purple-blue. She sat under a great hooded drier in small pink curlers until her cap of tight blue curls was ready to be teased and sprayed into a permanent fixture meant to last a week at least. Holidays were hell for her as she had to either find a new hairdresser or wash her own hair.
My father on the other hand had his own anguish to deal with. Leaving the farm meant leaving his cows for more than a week. Would they cope? Who would dip them? What if they became sick or calved in his absence. He couldn’t bear it.
My sister and I were privy to none of this at the time but later came to understand that these were two of the reasons that we only holidayed out of the country once every three years. Three to four weeks of misery for both parents. In between we would take annual week-long breaks within Zimbabwe. All done by car and none without the usual in-car fights and complaints all trips with children are prone to.
But the joy of getting there outshone everything. Every trip had a theme song. It started on the drive to wherever we were going and we sang incessantly along with the radio. Sandie Shaw sang me all the way to the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe. I did so hope that this might, just might, be the time where I would meet the boy of my dreams.
I wonder if one day that, you’ll say that, you care
If you say you love me madly, I’ll gladly, be there
Like a puppet on a string
The saga of The Monkees kept me amused up to the Wankie Game Reserve. First time I’d ever heard of lip-syncing.
Love was out to get me
Now that’s the way it seemed
Disappointment haunted all my dreams
Oh then I saw her face, now I’m a believer
Not a trace of doubt in my mind
I’m in love, I’m a believer
I couldn’t leave her if I tried
Disappointment definitely haunted me although I later discovered they hadn’t lip-synced their singing but ‘play-synced’ their instruments! Who can tell these days who is actually singing most of the time?!
And then, Under the boardwalk. This has to be the song of seaside holidays
Oh when the sun beats down and burns the tar up on the roof
And your shoes get so hot you wish your tired feet were fire proof
Under the boardwalk, down by the sea, yeah
On a blanket with my baby is where I’ll be
The coconut smell of Tropitone, melting ice creams, red skin and sore shoulders, carrying far too much to the beach, hating carrying it home later, and sand in everything! Isn’t that what holidays are about?
But, Dad never got carried away by the music. He and Otis Redding might have been Sittin’ in the morning sun but [he’d still] be sittin’ when the evening comes, Watching the ships roll in and then, despondently, [he’d] watch them roll away again, filled with thoughts of his cows back home.
And then again ... 