Pebbles in the rain…

CHRIS BENNETT reflects on words and music.

I HAVE been savouring the sound, the sight, and the smell of the rain.

From my Morris chair in front of the French windows the raindrops, fat as grapes, clatter and rattle on the quivering banana leaves; they splash into the birdbath, huge drops, slow and lazy, as if a thunderstorm is on their minds. They sound like pebbles; come to that they look a bit like them.

Most of my life I have thought of Natal, as it was formerly called, as a province with a climate not unlike that of New Zealand, only warmer. I remember when I was young a visitor from England stayed with us at my parents’ home in Auckland; he commented to Dad on the richness and greenness of New Zealand.

Dad countered with, “Well it would be rich and green; the sun shines 365 days of the years and it rains 365 days of the year”.

Here we have a little more variety, although the cane and banana farmers are probably not all that pleased with the quantity.

Picking a dry and sunny day I recently browsed in Ronnie’s delightful bookshop in Umtententwini, where I came across a copy of one of my favourite books, Lawrence Durrell’s Prospero’s Cell.

It was an early Penguin edition in fair condition. I was tempted to buy it but hesitated because I already have a copy. The temptation arose because the book on the shelf had belonged to Edgar Cree, the musician and conductor, who retired to Durban and in his last few years broadcast a pretty programme called From My Window: the Sea. His crisp and elegant signature on the title page of this edition of Durrell’s memorable book denoted his ownership. Dr Cree was an SABC colleague with a most likeable nature; for a non-musician like me anyway.

That moment in Ronnie’s opened a floodgate of memories and a slight whiff of nostalgia, memories of the Johannesburg City Hall, and M1, the great broadcasting concert hall* in the studio block of the Auckland Park complex; not quite a longing for the past, which afflicts all of us at times and in various ways, but more a remembered journey, a happy and long one.

Although I didn’t know it at the time I would not have been displeased with the destination of that journey: retirement on the wonderful South Coast, arguably the most agreeable corner of Africa.

The rain, mean and scarce though it has become in recent years (I keep a journal) was nevertheless very welcome, and pleasantly cooling after a few sticky wickets, or maybe I mean weeks.

* Studio M1 housed a platform big enough for a full symphony orchestra; a concert pipe organ, as big as some in European cathedrals, with two consoles, one under the pipes in the traditional position and another in the auditorium; the hall had raked seating and held (and this is a guess) two or three hundred people. The recording desk was built by Rupert Neeve of England. It was the rehearsal room of the National Symphony Orchestra, highly rate around the world. Edgar Cree was its conductor. Sadly this facility has been mothballed, or so I am told.

CB

22/4/11