Harry's Tales: Little Girls
Affectionate grandfather Harry Wroth tells tales about his grand-daughters when they were young.
We owned a large house with an enormous swimming pool on the hill at Humewood. The pool had been installed prior to the Municipality enacting any by-laws regulating maximum depths, thus there was some three metres at the deep end. All other regulations were complied with.
My two little grand-daughters were visiting and while the bigger one rode her tricycle around the pool, followed by her envious little sister who kept bumping into her big sister's trike, a foreseeable accident occurred. They could both swim so I was not unduly worried, just wary.
The bigger one, Veronique rode into the pool, head over heels, nogal. She clung to the trike as it sank. Her little sister, Genevieve screamed, Veronique surfaced screaming! I calmed them down by jumping in and retrieving the "drowning" trike.
They were not concerned about themselves. Their worry was that the trike could not swim! The joys of being Granddad and a relatively young one at that!
A younger Veronique used to say nathels and tathels for nails and tails until she saw a dog with two tathels? The little lass was growing up very fast. I remember her mother, when as a toddler, referred to grasshoppers as hoppergrassers. A younger Veronique was re-painting a genuine flowerpot while her artistic mother was gardening nearby. Her mother suggested some change in what her daughter was doing.
Veronique responded, "You're the gardener and I'm the painter!" Independent little lass, this one. So Granny asked her if she was the painter and her Mum was the gardener what was Granny? Her reply was, "You're the baker Gran! Gran baked for a Home Industry but had a wonderful Xhosa lady who did most of the baking. So Gran went on to ask her what Elizabeth was? Her immediate reply was, "She's Afrikaans!" She knew that Elizabeth spoke another language besides English but as yet was not aware of Xhosa.
