END OF AN ERA

Saturday 3rd October, 2026 - THE END OF AN ERA!

Early on Saturday morning my good friend of 61 years - John Ivy - died. Though I had not seen John since him and I spent an evening together at Gerard Jammine’s house in Pretoria a little over two years ago - shortly prior to his bypass and subsequent strokes - I felt utterly bereft when Carol sent me a message early on Saturday morning saying that he had died. While on a short stay over in Pretoria with Pat's sister I had planned to call Carol on Saturday morning to try and arrange a quick visit to see John in the afternoon, only to find her devastating message shortly after waking up, which only made my sense of loss more acute.

Have a good afterlife my friend - travel well! Your soft laugh will remain with me always.

 

John and I revisiting Dune 7 where we had sand-skied all those years ago - near Rooikop outside Walvis Bay (2016)

John cooling down in the Hoarusib River near Purros after some hot work digging Bill's car out of the river bed

Atop a lookout point above the Hoarusib in the Kaokoveld

At the iconic 'Red Drum' the day after we descended Van Zyl's Pass and traversed the beautiful Marienfluss in 2016

___________________________________________________

On this very same day I finished reading 'Clea', the final book in Lawrence Durrell's famous 'Alexandria Quartet', probably for the last time.

I have read the Quartet, and parts of it, umpteen times over the past 60 years - it has been a travelling companion of mine always - and knowing that this is probably the last time I will read it, along with John's passing, it represents the "End of an Era".

Durrell's brother, Gerald (of animal book fame), possibly sums up Lawrence's abilities as an author best: “…. Larry was designed by Providence to go through life like a small, blonde firework, exploding ideas in other people's minds, and then curling up with catlike unctuousness and refusing to take any blame for the consequences.”

Putting down Clea for the last time was an act of saying goodbye to a host of friends who have inhabited my life continuously these last 60 years ........ L.G.Darley, the narrator of three of the four volumes (who has the same initials as Durrell), Jacob Arnauti (Justine's first husband), whose book Moeurs about her is a book within a book, Ludwig Pursewarden, an eccentric English Poet, Aphorist and Novelist, and author of a revealing and concealing trilogy called God is a Humorist ..... also Pursewarden's beautiful blind sister, Liza. There is also Keats, a hack journalist and potential novelist, as also the myriad characters that inhabit Durrell's fictional Alexandria: Pombal, Scobie, Memlik, Capodistria, and the beautiful and enigmatic Melissa.

But let us not forget the main characters whose names are the titles of the four volumes: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive and Clea, all indelibly intertwined with Leila and her two sons, Nessim and Narouz .......... Individuals whose personalities both invade and pervade every page of this immense experiment in literature that Durrell undertook all those years ago (the 1950's) - a Time/Space Continuum - which allows the reader to begin anywhere in any of the four volumes and meet, enjoy, and live with all of the amazing characters as one moves through his never-to-be-forgotten Alexandria.

Thank you Lawrence for leaving me this legacy, my life would not have been the same without it.

SOME NOTES FOR CLEA (Attributed to Pursewarden) THAT I HAVE CARRIED WITH ME ALWAYS:

Art is not art unless it threatens your very existence. Could you repeat that, please, more slowly?

As you get older and want to die, more a strange kind of happiness seizes you; you suddenly realise that all art must end in a celebration. This is what drives the impotent mad with rage. They cannot provoke that fruitful compulsion of the Present, even though their scrotums be as hairy as Cape Gooseberries.

Language is not an accident of poetry but the essence. The lingo is the nub.

Death is a metaphor; nobody dies to himself.

There must always be a breath of hope if you are to fully enjoy the quality of our despair; yes, and also remember that where there is faith there is doubt.

Art is as unimportant as banking, unless it comes from a spirit in free play - then it really is banking.

Vision is exorcism.