Bill''s Retirement

Anniversary Letter
2015
Yahoo reminded me that the 1st July is the
anniversary of my retirement from Eskom and Charles
Irons asked me how long it had been. I did the
necessary research and found my diary entry for the 1st
July 2007:

Sunday 1st July 2007

My first day of proper retirement. Of course, I
did not go to work yesterday either, but that was
because it was Saturday and not because I had retired
yet. William pointed out that if they phoned me from
work and wanted me to come in, I would have been
obliged to as I was still an employee. That made me
very careful of answering the phone. Fortunately, my
conscience was not put to the test. Nobody phoned
me from work nor anywhere else and I stayed away.
Of course, today was Sunday so I would not
normally go to work either. But the difference was
that yesterday I was an Eskom employee and had a
work to go to today I am an Eskom pensioner and
there is none whither to go.
In my first few years after retirement I was dutiful and
sent out an annual post retirement letter to all my family
and friends. I have been lax about this for the last year
or two but decided that this year I should return to good
practice and let everyone know about the State of the
Cairns.
Generally, the state of the Bushveld Cairns Branch is
good. Jill and I are happily ensconced in Modimolle
(Nylstroom) in the Province of Limpopo in the north of
South Africa. We live in Kokanje which is a well run and
pleasant retirement resort, have a comfortable and
pleasant house, live satisfactory and (I hope) useful
lives, are healthy (or as healthy as we have a right to

Some of the incredible flowers in Namaqualand - a farm

house near Kammieskroon

expect), are blessed with good friends and a wonderful

family.
Retirement is not, as any retired person will tell you,
a time of relaxing and doing nothing except watching

the grass grow greener and the trees grow taller.

Retirement is a time for wondering how one ever had
enough time to go to work. Jill and I seem to be
constantly busy with one thing and another: Jill plays
jukskei and that keeps her busy (she has stopped being
the secretary of the Kokanje Jukskei Club, but that has
done little to relieve her load) I am chair of the Kokanje
Bowls Club and that is a job and a half I am also chair
of Korek (Kokanje Rekenaar Klub our computer club)
which is a job that confuses me as I am still trying to
work out what a computer club does. One of the things
that I know that the Computer Club does is include the
Digital Photography Club under its umbrella, and both
Jill and I have a lot of fun playing being photographers.
We are also both quite heavily involved in the local
churches. I use the plural 'churches' because our
ecclesiastical position is so confusing that we have
given up trying to work it out ourselves. Techically we
are members of the local Anglican Parish of Modimolle
which has four congregations in the townships of the
area and we are committed to taking one service a
month at one of these congregations. However, for our
regular worship we tend to drift towards St Michael's,
which is the only English speaking church in Modimolle
and which is an United Church between the Anglicans,
Methodists and Presbyterians. We are also committed
to taking a service there once a month. And then, to add
to the complexity, we are frequently asked to help out at
the Methodist Church in Warmbaths.
I have enjoyed being involved in these services. Jill
and I take turns: either I lead the service and Jill
preaches or the other way round. (If it is a communion
service, Jill has to preside over the Eucharist but I can
lead the synaxis). We try and organise it so that each
congregation gets us in rotation so that they don't have
to put up with me every time.
We have not been idle on the travelling front at all.
Since I retired we have made trips to KwaZulu Natal,
Memel (a couple of times to see our good friend Schalk
Steyn), Mapungubwe (three times), the Kruger National
Park (six times), Botswana (four times), Caprivi,

A nearly complete convention of Cairns: Back row - Marie-Jo, Kaylen, Yolande, Patrick, Peter, John, Gawain, Bill, William.
Front row: Margaux's friend Roxie who was substituting for Grace stuck in Cape Town, Margaux, Jill, Taryn with Kirsten,
Loreley ... and Micador.

Zimbabwe, New Zealand and Singapore, and the West

Coast to see the Namaqualand flower extravaganza.
Our last trip was to the Kruger Park in May. I must admit
that we are beginning to find camping is a little hard on
old bones and so I am not sure that we will be living in
tents much longer.
We belong to the local bird club the Bosveld
Voelklub (not to be confused with the Bushveld Bird
Club which is from Tzaneen) and enjoy participating in
their meetings and outings. We are not exacly expert
birders, but have learned enough to fool most people
that we know what we are talking about. The 'most
people', of course, does not include some of the true
experts in the club and we sit humbly at their feet trying
to learn more.
I said that our health has been as well as we could
expect and we are very grateful for that. We know now
that growing older is not for sissies and we have to
endure the normal complaints of sore muscles, bones,
high blood pressure, and so on. Last October (on
Halloween no less) some test results came back to
show that I had occult blood in my stool and that meant
travelling to Pretoria for a colonoscopy. The doctor
removed a nasty polyp that was presumably causing

Well I have to have a picture of Grace don't I? Here she

is with Jill eating Sushi at the waterfront in Cape Town
the problem. Unfortunately there were further
complications and I had to have a second colonoscopy
a few days later. I do not recommend overdoing these
things. I have just (29th June) come back from a follow
up procedure and passed the examinations with 'A's in
all subjects.

Our grandchildren count now exceeds our children

count as Peter and Taryn had a lovely little girl, Kirsten,
in August last year. So the grandchildren now range
from Loreley who is 19 and a sophisticated University
student, through Kaylen (16), Gawain (14) who are both
high school students, through Margaux (6) to little
Kirsten who will be a year in two months. A good string.
William is back working for Eskom. (He has been
doing the same job for the past twenty years but has
been outsourced to one company, had that company
sold to another company and has now been insourced
by Eskom again). He has been diagnosed with
haemochromatosis (an excess of iron) and struggles
with that. Haemochromatosis does not stop him doing
crazy things like adventure racing and this year he
participated in (and completed) the Expedition Africa
race in Swaziland which involved racing by foot, bike
and canoe for six days over mountains, down rivers,
over waterfalls, and through caverns. Yolande is still
with ABSA and still has to travel quite a lot through
Africa doing audits.
John is economising with Rand Merchant Bank as a
currency exchange fundi. I see John quoted regularly in
the press and have spotted him occasionally on
television. (I would spot him more frequently were I to
watch Bloomberg more often). He, MarieJo and
Margaux have a lovely house in Sandton. We bumped
into John by accident when we were in Cape Town last
year which shows that one can never escape family
even when one thinks one is safe.
Peter and Taryn have a nice house in Parkhurst and
seem to be having a ball with their newest family
member. Having a baby around does not seem to
cramp their life style too much and they still manage to
rush off and do hikes and things in unlikely places.
Peter is still with Sasol and seems to be working hard.
The crash in the oil price has meant that he is less likely
to suddenly rush off to Kazakhstan or somewhere that I
am never quite sure where it is. Taryn has just started
working for KFC in their development section so the

Our house in Kokanje. Note some interesting details:

Jill's bike parked on the stoep, Bonsaitjie San on the wall,
all the bird feeders.

next time you get some fried chicken that is not

unhealthy, greasy and tasteless you can thank her.
Patrick and Grace are now well established in Cape
Town after their stint in Botswana. Patrick is a financial
journalist working (mostly) for Moneyweb and seems to
have found a niche there. He does do other writing too
and we expect the blockbuster best seller from him one
of these days. Grace is now working with an NGO in
Cape Town
And that is the moss that the rolling stones have
gathered in the recent past.

The Kruger Park is full of elephants - this picture from our

last trip