Steve

Born in the Union of South Africa. Raised in the Republic. A Pinelands boy and a Capey at heart, a joller under the spell of Devil's Peak, the Moon in Hermanus and the seductive charm of the Gardens. The four most important events in my life were losing my virginity at 15, my first LSD trip, making love under the threat of the Immorality Act and being arrested in 1976, the only White guy among a group of 'Coloured' schoolgirls' protesting against Apartheid. Never a team player, I've had to start my own businesses to survive. I did OK as a South Africa's first PC magazine publisher, IT PR consultant, computer journalist and software publisher, (and among many other things, a tally clerk counting tuna in CT Docks on Taiwanese fishing boats, a Caltex oil refinery operator, a scaffolder in central London and an industrial spy!). I first came to the UK in 1971 on a one-way Luxavia flight. I attempted to hitch-hiked back to SA from Norway but turned around in Ethiopia and went back up the Nile to the UK in 1972. I have been living here since 1989 and more happily since I met my wife in 1990. We ran a software business in Old Brompton Road, London, for many years which allowed us travel internationally. We have made many trips to SA together. I am proudly 'a ware soutie'. Most South African women and Black people are unfamiliar with this SADF Afrikaans insult made towards Englishmen with one foot in SA and one foot in the UK and a large or small part of their manhood in the sea. Every day is wonderful! I'd love to be in SA and go for a dip! Suip from a bottle of 'soetas' before catching crayfish on the edge of the sanctuary at Paternoster, boiling them up in an old paraffin 'blik' on Shelly Bay Beach. Those were the days. My great enjoyment now are the stamp and postcards shows that are drying up as old toppies pop their clogs. My only regret is that we do not grow younger! But we can try!