The Ties That Bind

It was a whirl of meetings and deadlines, a cacophony of fast cars and slow traffic, and a time of excessive life and poverty of living. In short, it was Jo’burg, a glorified mining town that never really came to terms with its short, ignoble history, and over which any veneer of respectability stretched too thinly to hide the cracks.

It has money, to be sure, but it takes its toll. I once calculated the price of residence – flashy wheels, expensive clothes, membership of exclusive clubs, all the paraphernalia that meet the approval of powerful friends and political allies – at half my take-home pay.

When I left to come here, I didn’t look back. I didn’t even look in my rear-view mirror until I’d reached Harrismith.

My favourite shop became Natal-Agri – merchant of gardening tools, plumbing essentials, and unfashionable but functional work clothes – and I became a regular, despite the manager frowning at my top-of-the-range SUV. When I turned native and bought myself a bakkie (white, of course), he was the first to notice.

‘Ja, nee, dis a mooi car, meneer!’ he said.

Six years later, dressed down to the valley’s yokel standard and free at last of any vestigial evidence of my previous life (clean shoes, tidy hair, a nervous squint), Mrs Dragonfly brought the memories vividly back one day when she rediscovered my tie collection. Over 200 of them: did I once really wear these? There were school ties, corporate ties, club ties, and the frivolous, colourful Friday ties I sported when the boss was away. Half of them still boasted the dribbling of long-forgotten lunches somewhere near where my sternum would have been.

I have kept two of them: the black one for funerals, and a blue-and-red nondescript one for weddings. Neither of these events features strongly in my diary and, besides, the dress code for valley funerals usually extends only as far as ‘iron your T-shirts, you slobs’.

The rest of them are destined for a new bedspread, a symbol of my sacrifice of the big smoke for a life of simpler pleasure. For reasons that now escape me, half my collection are bluish, so these will form the sky of the collage. The rest will create the Cathkin Peak skyline: so far, Sterkhorn consists of green dancing girls and Champagne Castle of yellow smiley faces, and I shall smile and dance every time my new quilt reminds me of the huge mine dump I left behind.