When I moved from Pretoria to Durban at the beginning of 1959 to attend pharmacy school I started to keep a record of my activities and my expenses in a diary that I have no recollection of how or from whom, it was acquired. It is a three-day per page book published by Abbott Laboratories, a pharmaceutical company, and it has a bright orange-brown cover. Some entries are brief, others are long, and some comprise only a name. This was the start of a habit I have maintained to this day. For many years I used an annual diary published by May and Baker; their diaries were the perfect size for my needs. Then I progressed to slightly larger ones published by Sabax. Then as I moved up the hierarchy over the years I was presented with desk top diaries, some even with my name engraved on the cover. The ultimate was a leather-bound Filofax. I knew I could not do better than that!
Over the years I carefully stored the diaries in a box about 20 cm x 24 cm x 27 cm in size, then I needed a second box, then a third……. Special care was taken of these boxes whenever I moved house, and they were then stored on the top shelf of the most suitable cupboard in my bedroom. Included with the diaries were all the notes I had made during my travels. These notes were on sheets of paper and in notebooks and the first of these dates back to 1964.
Towards the end of 2015, I spent longer than usual in my place in South Africa and decided to start a project that had been on my backburner for several years. Starting in 2008 I have written “travelogues” about all the road trips I have undertaken with a friend here in the USA. The first of these started off as a letter to friends in South Africa, but as I did more of these trips the “travelogues” became more ambitious and longer with more detail. My goal thus was to combine all the writings of all my travels in one manuscript. Perhaps one day someone would find them interesting.
I knew I would not have the time to do this while in South Africa, as the diaries were too numerous for my carry-on luggage, and I had no intention of risking their loss in checked luggage, so scanning them seemed the best option. I decided to scan the pages of those diaries containing the most interesting information, but first I set about reading through those dating back the furthest.
But for the sake of this particular narrative I must digress. When I first started spending lengthy periods in Peachtree City with my daughter and her family I joined the local library. One day I browsed the information board and spotted a notice asking if anyone was interested in joining a free-thinking group to discuss various writers such as Darwin, Richard Dawkins, Richard Harris, and subjects such as religion, and science. I contacted the number on the notice and chatted to the writer, Shelby. He informed me that I was the first to respond and then he told me a little about what he had in mind. It was all very interesting and he agreed to contact me after he had received more enquiries. Shelby phoned some days later and gave me the date for the first meeting of the Peachtree City Freethinkers Discussion Group. This was in early January 2008. Thereafter we met regularly on Wednesday evenings and the group’s numbers gradually increased. After a few months Shelby told me about someone who would be joining the group and that this person was from Zimbabwe. Furthermore this person had lived in South Africa and also in Scotland. Shelby thought I would be interested in hearing this because he knew that I was from South Africa and had lived in Glasgow as well.
The person he mentioned was Tim and during the next few years I learnt from Tim that he had been a student in Durban, where I had lived for many years. He had also lived in Glasgow, Scotland, where I had worked periodically for a number of years, and had then moved to the USA. I had visited Zimbabwe once and now our paths had eventually crossed here in Peachtree City, where we also now had mutual friends and acquaintances.
But to get back to the diaries. I started reading the oldest one, the one for 1959, which was the year I started studying at the Pharmacy School in Durban. In addition, to earn my keep, I had also managed to find part-time work in Gaylens Pharmacy located near the Durban Post Office, a little over one mile from the Pharmacy School. I worked in the pharmacy’s dispensary on those afternoons when I did not have classes, on Saturday mornings, and during vacations. As I paged through the weeks and months, reading about movies I had seen, the people I had met, the places I had been to, I then incredulously came across an entry for Saturday 24th October. It read “Did a script for a particularly nice student, Mr B”. Could it possibly be the same Mr B from Peachtree City?
I immediately sent Tim an email to ask him if he had been in Durban at that time and if he could remember if he had had a prescription filled. In his reply he confirmed that he had indeed been in Durban at that time and that he had had a prescription filled in the pharmacy. Amazing.
Tim the particularly nice student, had gone on to obtain a Ph.D. in Behavioural Science from Lancaster University and is now VP and Chief Scientist at NorthPointe Institute, USA.
I can confirm that Tim is still particularly nice. He and his wife have been living in Greenville, South Carolina for the past three years, and that move is certainly Peachtree City’s loss.
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