No Mad Man by Jonathan Townsend

No Mad Man by Jonathan Townsend 1 ONCE upon a time. I, Jonathan Townsend, was born under British-rule in Port Elizabeth, Cape Province, in the Union of South Africa, Planet Earth, in 1951 (Earth-time). Apart from once, at the age of two, losing my earth-mother for a minute or so, whilst walking with her at a busy road-crossing in the centre of the city, when I remember other earthlings concerned about me being lost and my earth-mother finding me again, I don't remember much. Towards the end of my second year on this planet, I moved with my earth-family to Ndola, in what was then Northern Rhodesia, also a British colony (presently called Zambia). (For the sake of brevity, I will from here on refer to any of my earth-family, or other earthlings, et cetera, in the same way that they refer to each other, e.g.: family, mother, father, people, humans, homo sapiens, or what have you.) Just as a long line of my ancestors had done, my father worked for the British colonial government (he as a civil-engineer - roads and bridges). My mother was an artist-painter and played the piano when she wasn't looking after us kids - she had the help of a black maid (we had a large house) and a black gardener (and a large garden). Although I remember more from my time in Ndola, not much of it has any bearing on the purpose of this account, so I'll proceed to the next stage. 2 FRANCISTOWN Again, two years later, we moved to Francistown, in what was then the Betchuanaland Protectorate (B.P.- the "Beepee"), also ruled by Britain, where I was legally-registered as inhabitant (in other words, my home was there) for the following period of 5 years (i.e., 4 - 9 yrs. of age). Francistown was a bush-town, and the bush ran almost up to our back-gate. We (us kids- especially my 4 brothers - Stephen, Mark, Alex, and Luke and myself, much less so our only sister Helen) played often in the bush, and on the 'kopie' (small hill) which was about 200 yds. from our home. Outside of our home, we had to be constantly on the look-out for snakes, leguans, scorpions, various insects, and other dangers. Large wild-animals stayed far enough away from us, although we knew well they were not that far away, because of the stories of occasional attacks on humans. Even some children had gone missing, and bones of children had been found, which were attributed to probable attacks by leopards. There wasn't a single stretch of tarred-road in the whole country then, and snakes often lay sleeping in the sun-baked gravel-roads and dirt-paths. We had to keep our eyes well-peeled for them, and on seeing one, would have to walk very quietly and wearily around it. A number of our friends caught snakes and kept them as pets, or sold them. I stayed away from most reptiles, but I did like gekkos and chameleons, and kept some as pets. My life in Francistown was filled with animals. We always had a dog and a cat, both of which helped to keep undesirable animals away from our house. We also kept chickens, one of which my father would on occasion slaughter by chopping off its head in our back-yard. It ( especially a cock ) would go, headless, jumping about as if it still had a head with brains to direct its body, and spurting blood in all directions as we all took cover. It wasn't so much the spurting, squirting, spraying, oozing, dripping, sticky, warm, red liquid abbundance which brought a shiver to my spine, but it was the thought that perhaps the mind and the spirit of the chicken was still alive trying to get at us for killing it. And it was the thought that, even after death, something still kept on going, which held me in awe and forced me to watch the spectacle. From an early age I was accident-prone, mainly because I was very active. I loved to play sports and do all sorts of things like climbing trees, and 'kopies' (rocky hills), going into old, disused mine-shafts, and so on, so it was inevitable that I would break something. But I also had relatively weak bones - I broke more than the 3 usual, and this was a tendency lasting throughout my life. Once, at the age of five, I was swinging on the branch of a mulberry-tree, when the branch broke, and I fell with the inside of my left-ankle onto the sharp edge of half of an oil-barrel with earth and planted-flowers in it, placed strategically with the intention of deterring us kids from climbing the tree. It cut deep into my ankle, right to the bone and, just before blood flooded the open-gash, I saw the bone and reckoned that I probably was an animal after all, like everyone else. I was a musical boy, often singing, and with dreams of becoming a musician. I was particularly influenced by the black music-groups I often heard playing in the 'townships' not far from our home. I heard them from home and would fall asleep with their tunes as a lullaby. I tried to learn the piano which we had in our living-room and one of the first songs I learnt was 'God save the Queen', which I remember being asked by my mother to play for her tea-party lady-guests. They encouraged me with their applause, of course. My parents sent me to a local classical piano-teacher. But the teacher, an oldish woman, expressed her frustrations by hitting my fingers with the sharp edge of a ruler for not holding my hands in the correct position. This caused me to become disillusioned with learning music, and I refused to continue with the lessons, which angered my parents, as they had already paid for lessons in advance. Disillusionment towards my prime object of identification - i.e., becoming a musician - from then on coloured all of my life's purpose, and I became rebellious. I was growing-up during the rhythm-and-blues/rock & roll revolution, and it was all over the place - on the radio, the movies, on records - and I could not have escaped its influence even if I'd tried to do so. The trouble was that I loved it - especially musicians like Chuck Berry, Bo Didley, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, who could produce heavenly sounds with their guitars and pianos using the most unholy of hand-positions - and even of feet-positions. My rebellion showed itself at school (a school only for white-kids - as was the rule in those days), from which I often played truant - to the point that my learning suffered and I got bad results, often failing my exams. Because none of my friends would join me in doing so, I often spent the time in the bush all alone. I learnt to see the bush as my escape, my freedom, my solace. But I needed food and couldn't stay there overnight, all alone, for fear of wild big- cats and the like, so I'd always go back home in time not to be found out. But 4 sometimes my parents found out and I suffered the consequences. I then took to stealing, or rather, pilfering - mainly from my parents, but also from shops - until I got into enough trouble to force me to stop it. The white population would on occasion organise horse races, usually between horses kept and bred by white-farmers. Most of the jockeys were the farmers themselves, but they would also use blacks. All of these jockeys would use sticks, whips and/or spurs to get the horses to run faster. On very rare occasions, a farmer, who was lucky enough to find one, would use a bushman (Khoi, San, !Xo) as jockey. Although the bushman would never use a whip or whatever, the horse with him on its back would almost always win. I often went to the black-townships which weren't too far away from home. I preferred the funny, friendly, relaxed, open, unpretentious, human, down-to earth black-world to the serious, stiff, 'cultured', 'superior', back-biting White-world. I was not a 'normal' white kid, and found much more tolerance and acceptance amongst the 'lower-class' blacks. I fell for several white girls though, one of whom, named Susan, was a knockout. But when I tried to get near to her, to profess my undying love for her, her parents, who guarded her from dirty little boys like me running around on the edge of the bush, got my parents to order me to stay away from her and her family. Her father was a District High-Commissioner from Britain who seemed to think that he and his family were above the locals, for neither was Susan allowed to have much to do with any of the other local kids. KIMBERLEY BOY'S HIGH (low) SCHOOL At the age of nine, I was sent to boarding-school at Kimberly Boys High School, in Kimberley, the world's most famous diamond-mine, in the Rep. of South Africa. Here, I was bullied for being tall. Shorter, power-hungry individuals will commonly attempt to humiliate tall people in order to psychologically enhance their power- status. My life there (especially in the hostel - Bishop's Hostel) became hell, with me constantly having to watch out for my tormentors.

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