Last Word - Dearie. In Rude Health

Last Word - Dearie. In Rude Health

- Harold Strachan

BY THE MERE AGE OF SEVENTY I HAD become Durbs’s ace art restor-er, you see, in which capacity I had now arrived at Pixley Arts, down the beach end of West Street, and there come upon an old schoolmaster from Maritzburg College days examining certain water color paintings of the Drakensberg in the Pixley gallery window.

Ha Strachan! said he. How do you remember my name after so long? said I. Because you were always so impudent, said he, and wrote with your finger in the dust on my motor car Pinch-Arse old Pee. You may remember it, a 1936 Hudson Terraplane, dark bottle green, so the writing showed up clearly. You also used to do sarcastic drawings of the staff which you would then circulate amongst the boys, including one of our Latin Master, in suit and tie and riding a bicycle with a 12-bore shotgun tied to the frame and off to shoot guinea-fowl, as was his habit. In the staff room we conferred on disciplining you, but headmaster Froggy Snow refused to cane your backside lest he appear a bad sport. The staff then felt that fact itself was evidence of your being manipulative, and the prefects hesitated to do the job lest they get mocked too.