Ulfdav’s slant

Bev as a small child
Hi my name is Bev and there were three children in my family. I have twobrothers. We first lived in Joburg and then in Benoni and after that in Cape Town. My parents owned a book shop. People had all kinds of different jobs when I was a child. I remember some people wanting to be book keepers. I remember being a naughty little girl but I used to love playing with my dolls and teddies.

Primary school days
I went to school in Joburg but not to just any old school - it was a girls’ primary school. I had to walk everyday to school. I suppose we had similar subjects to the schools today but I am a bit out of touch with school subjects these days. We didn’t write in cursive but in print, and we used pencils and fountain pens. We had no computers, unfortunately. They hadn’t been invented yet. They dealt differently with naughty children in those days. Naughty children were sent out of the class and the boys got smacked on the bottoms with a cane. At break times we mostly played games like hopscotch.

As a teenager
When I was a teenager we wore the same kinds of clothes that we wear today, but ladies wore more skirts and dresses. People made their own clothes. I didn’t have a cellphone because there were no cell phones in South Africa at that time. I used to love climbing trees in my spare minutes. I remember climbing this massive tree when I was not supposed to and I got into big trouble for that. My mother was very strict. We always had towalk behind my mother. My dad left the family when I was fifteen years old. I contacted my friends by walking to them. It was much safer to walk around in those days. I went on my first date when I was 18. When people went on dates in those days they they normally had dinner at home and then they listened to rock ‘n roll music. Sometimes they went out to the movies or the drive-in where you watched the movies from your car. In those days you either went to the bioscope (movie house) or to the drive-in. Families used to go to bed quite early in those days. I didn’t really watch movies because we didn’t have a television. On Sundays we had roast chicken for dinner and veggies during the week. We had a servant who helped us with cleaning our house. I met my husband through my mother. We got divorced later when my children were at High School.

How has South Africa changed since Bev was a child?
South Africa has changed dramatically. Those were the Apartheid years.

Does Bev have any interesting information about her own grandparents?I had a darling granny whospent a lot of time with me. My grandpa died when I was a young girl, so I don’t remember him.