I’m so rusty at this – it’s been ages since I wrote anything. Covid is paralysing for so many reasons.  A tiny part of it is how it makes telling a simple story seems so pointless, but I need to get over this: simple stories bring familiarity, comfort and even surprise. Let me tell you one, no, two little stories.

They have a common thread. Story 1 starts in the early 2000’s: my daughter is living in England and she’s having a health issue. Thousands of miles away, I feel pretty helpless.

When she flies over for a visit we see that she’s experiencing bouts of abdominal pain and I get her to my fabulous GP. She tells him her UK doctor sent her home with Gaviscon and told her she may have the start of an ulcer. Dr Goldberg disagrees, but he can’t schedule any tests as she doesn’t have enough time in Cape Town. He advises her on what to tell her UK doctor if it continues and she flies back.

Cut to a few weeks later when the phone rings at around 8pm and she’s crying in agony on the other end of the line. Alone at home, she can’t walk and feels she can hardly breathe for the pain. I tell her to ring off and make sure the door is unlocked, I’m calling an ambulance. Somehow I figure out how to dial 999 with the UK code and explain to the call-centre that she’s alone at her address and, for all I know, she has a rupturing appendix. A calm voice on the line takes the info and tells me to call her back and stay on the line. My daughter answers in 2 rings, but she can’t even speak – I keep talking to her until, around 7 minutes later, I hear the paramedics coming in.

It took a while, but she ended up having a routine operation and has never looked back. I’m grateful that it didn’t happen during Covid, but my heart goes out to every calm responder and paramedic functioning during this crisis.

Story 2

My stepmom’s partner has travelled to the UK in 2014 to help his ailing parents. His mother passes away and it turns into about 9 months during which time he has to sort out her estate and move his father to a care facility. He calls home every day to chat and destress until a day when he doesn’t call. One day turns into two, three and my stepmom is getting worried – she tells me over tea on the balcony in Muizenberg and it worries me too because it’s not like him at all.

She goes home, but the situation is playing on our minds, so I call and ask if she’d like to see if we can contact him another way. She gives me his parents’ address and we Google the closest police station. It’s an odd call, but they’re fabulous – we give them the circumstances and ask if they could do a drive-by. They agree, take my number and we wait. After about 45 minutes the phone rings: a lovely man from the other side of the world tells me that they’ve visited the house which is locked up and silent, but they chatted to neighbours who say that her partner told them that he’s had enough, he is flying back to SA tonight!

And that’s what happened.

RIP Cliff – 10 January 2021