My Mother

 Lucretia Matilda Smith, my mother, was born in Cowbridge, In the Vale of Glamorgan, Wales (United Kingdom), in about 1891. I know little of my mothers past.  

As far as I know, my mother married a British airman, Robert Marshall,  during WWI. She gave birth to a daughter, Molly Ena, in 1915. For reasons unknown to me, she left Britain for South Africa and joined a married sister living in Durban. 

She was always a loyal British national; she referred to Britain as 'home' until she died in 1962. I am not sure of when she left Britain. It must have taken some courage at the time. The sea was bristling with German submarines. The British luxury steamship Lusitania had just been torpedoed without warning off the south coast of Ireland on May 7, 1915, with many lives lost.

A dressmaker and milliner by trade, she met my father, Pieter, in Durban, and they were married in 1927. Molly (Ena) was 12 years old at the time of their marriage. Having very different backgrounds, they did well remaining together for 35 years of marriage.

Glyn was born in 1935 when Molly was 20 years old. Glyn's arrival was very late in a woman's life. His mother must have been about 44 years of age; older women face a higher risk of giving birth to babies with defects. A study suggests that fertility rates drop close to zero at age 44.

We lived peacefully in Durban, South Africa, until WWII in 1940, and that changed everything. Molly's husband joined the allied forces and departed for North Africa and Italy. He served on the hospital ship 'Amra' for a period, and he returned unscathed at the end of the war.

Pieter applied to join the forces simultaneously, but his application was refused because he was a detective and sent to Port Shepstone for the duration of the war.

My Father

Pieter, my father, was born near Elliot in the Eastern Cape in about 1898. His father, the son of a Catholic Irish immigrant and his mother from a Protestant Huguenot family that dates back to the original European settlers in the Cape Colony. 

At about 17 years old, he worked on a railway line being built past their farm. Later, Pieter was involved in the German East African campaign during WWI. He joined the 3rd South African Mounted Rifles (S.A.M.R) on 16 June 1917 and was deployed in German East Africa. The army led by General Smuts was composed mainly of South Africans. 

 

He returned to South Africa to recoup in 1918 after contracting malaria and, and upon his return, discovered that his father had followed him from the Eastern Cape to Durban, where he had died. In 1919 he was discharged from the army, and he joined the South African Police in April 1920. 

At the commencement of WWII, from 2 May 1941 until 29 September 1945, he was transferred to Port Shepstone. Upon returning to Durban from Port Shepstone, he served as a First Class Detective Sergeant. During this time, he investigated 443 reported murders. He also investigated a wide variety of other crimes. 

One of his last duties was to persuade African inhabitants of the Cato Manor slum in Durban to relocate to Kwa Mashu, where housing was being prepared. At the time, the South African government was forcing residents to move by demolishing their shacks; it led to a great deal of conflict culminating in nine police officers being brutally murdered. Pieter subsequently met with the leaders of the remaining families and persuaded them to leave peacefully. Pieter was likely to have been instrumental in conveying this understanding to them; he was an outstanding Zulu linguist.

The period have lived in is undoubtedly astonishing and unique.

 I hope to write about all that has unfolded in my life over time; I am aware that my life has been very different. As I mentioned when I started, I write daily to maintain a degree of mental acuity. I may as well start from the very beginning. Failing that, I do not have too much else to write.

The period that both Myrtle, my wife, and I have lived in is undoubtedly astonishing and unique. A startling fact when one of the earliest humans, known as Homo Habilis, or the handyman, lived about 2.4 million years ago in  Southern Africa. We are probably here only because of an unbroken and distinct reproductive chain that began back then. 

Our parents were born during the final years of the 19th Century and have had to endure two world wars. Myrtle's family had a relatively stable life apart from contending with the Boer War from 11 October 1899 to 31 May 1902.

Without a doubt, the emotional effects and expectations of life had an impact on us. During our formative years, education development was retarded while many experienced people were away serving in the forces.

I was born in 1935, South Africa. In 1939 WWII commenced and lasted until 1945. It involved most of the world's countries—many of the men within our family and circle of friends departed for Italy and North Africa.

Return of the God Hypothesis

 I was highly impressed by Peter Robinson in Uncommon Knowledge on YouTube when he interviewed Dr Stephen Meyer about his recent book Return of the God Hypothesis. Typically, Peter Robinson has a very 'matter of fact' attitude when discussing something during an interview, but this time he found it 'so striking'.

In the past, I followed various discussions Dr Meyer had on YouTube about his books. I'd feel so sorry for him because of the unwarranted rude and vicious comments he encountered from the scientific community. Stephen Meyer has a Doctorate in the History and Philosophy of Science. 

I was particularly interested in his observations concerning the explosion of animal life during the Cambrian Period. He considered it a circumstance of intelligent design.

Workers building a railroad through the Kicking Horse Valley in British Columbia became aware of fossilized remains of extinct marine animals. The area called the Burgess Shale became one of palaeontology's most notable sites. Fossils were preserved in remarkable detail and contained an unprecedented number of species from the Cambrian period, which began roughly five hundred and forty million years ago.

The discovery introduced an anomaly known as the Cambrian explosion. Darwin's theory insinuates that life evolves gradually, but the Cambrian rock seemed to explode with new kinds of life. Darwin himself puzzled over what this might mean. As Darwin suggested in "The Origin of Species," if life evolved gradually, what would account for this explosion?

A couple of years ago. I embarked on a set of lectures on Genetics that were available from the Open University. I did it for no other reason than my interest in cellular activity. Without writing another book on the subject, I strongly agree with Dr Stephen Meyer. There is little we observe or understand without some mode of divine intervention.

Self-Centred Aspirations

 Within our self-centred aspirations, we tend to marvel at the progress of human civilisation, and we have taken its evolution for granted. For most of us, the past has not been experienced and is legendary. Still, the truth is that steam revolutionised our destiny in a more meaningful way than anything that has followed. In Britain, it was not until the Industrial Revolution that steam enabled the growth and automation of industry formally powered by water, wind or horse. 

The Industrial Revolution, beginning in Britain in the 18th century, facilitated a change from an agrarian and handicraft economy to one dominated by the enterprise industry. Steam-driven trains and ships provided the means to populate the world. No longer were industries limited by the availability of water and wind.

We have never had it so good. With all the talk in the media of self-induced devastation of our planet, is it possible that we are about to return to an agrarian way of life, cultivating the soil by hand and caring for one another? We cannot continue dredging the sea for food, drinking polluted water and draining the soil of essential nutrients. 

We need to return to regular church attendance if ever possible. There we must meet and learn about each other to recognise the needs or reasons to support one another. There is nothing more dangerous and desperate than despondent people.

Richard Dawkins, the atheist, preaches cause and effect or rationality to replace religion. That argument is ineffective without a core pursuit and for everyone to have a unified objective. 

Whether we accept the concept of God or not, God is an integral part of our inherited instincts and in our genes. My mother had a card that lingered about our house for most of my life. It depicted Christ knocking at a door, and we had the choice of acceptance. Nevertheless, whether or not we accept the sentiment, the influence remains. 

We can deny that God is within, whether active or not, but we are an incomplete human by lacking that gene and made in the image of God. Even our pet dog has retained its gene to be possessive of a bone. The dog's genes distinguish the fact that it is a dog.

I'm Feeling Very Guilty

A long early morning walk has left me feeling rather worn out and in need of a rest.  The weather, today is uncomfortably warm. It was a good decision for me to take an early exercise walk before the sun gained too much energy. Upon return, not feeling too energetic I decided to retire to the bed in my spare room. It was still early in the day and hardly a time for such luxuries. 

The sun was shining strongly on the window ledge and the breeze entering through the open window was pleasantly warm. Lying on the bed with my eyes closed and listening to my favourite collection of classical music, I was mentally conveyed into another world. I had recently purchased a Sony WH-XB900N set of headphones. It had not been my intention to buy such an expensive set for as far as I was concerned, I was not much of a  connoisseur of sound.

Here I was lying on my spare bed listening to my favourite music. I was utterly transformed by the clarity of the sound and the ambience of the occasion.  It was as though I was right in the midst of the orchestra or next to the musician. As I lay there with my eyes closed and caressed by the gentle warm breeze that entered through the open window, I could have been in any famous location. I could have been in any great concert hall in Rome surrounded by great gilded works of art or reclining on a beach on the Mediterranean coastline.

Indigenous Garden

While on one of my many many walks, I paused to admire a roadside garden. There was a notice on the fence advising those passing by that the garden was intended for indigenous flowering plants. I noted that there was a complete absence of bees and other insects, it left me with a strange feeling of fear and foreboding. It was a very quiet afternoon, no bird sounds, it was as if I was in another world and nothing was real. 

I have been around for a long time and when I was young there were many and diverse insects. It is both sad and alarming that younger folk today, who have not enjoyed my experiences would be unaware and indifferent. 

While lingering at the site, I was joined by a stately and elderly gentleman who informed me that a lady, now dead. had created the garden to attract bees and other insects. I pointed out the total absence of bees and insects and suggested that it was a sign of the times. He seemed to take exception to my remark, turned on his heel, and strode off. Either that or he was shocked at the revelation.