AUNTIE ANN

Shorts, turbans, red lipstick and painted toenails ... oh, the glamour!

My mother's younger sister, my Auntie Ann, didn't live in Ouma's house, but she often came for holidays. She was a typist in the Landbank in Pretoria.

I thought her very glamorous because she painted her fingernails and her toenails red; she wore eyeshadow, and mascara which she put on with a miniature black toothbrush. She spat on the little tablet of mascara, rubbed the toothbrush vigourously over it and applied it to her lashes. How I coveted that little doll's toothbrush! She smoked through a cigarette holder; she had perfume called Evening in Paris, in a little blue and silver bottle; she wore slacks and shorts and sometimes she sat on a deck chair in the garden wearing a set of lounging pyjamas in green and black stripes, that tied in front and left her midriff bare. My mother and my Aunt Sue did none of these things.

Auntie Ann's boy friend was Uncle Wiener. She had a photograph of him on her dressing table, in his uniform. She told me his full name was Louis Maurice Wiener Forget, (For-zhay - Uncle Wiener was of French heritage). I used to chant it when skipping. It is a good name to skip to.

He was a Captain in the Army, serving in Egypt. Dealing with General Erwin Rommel and his tanks. Auntie Ann was always writing letters to "Uncle Wiener in the desert up North" which we then walked to the corner to post. I thought The Desertupnorth was the name of the town where he was.

Funny about that … my niece Belinda told me, years later, that when she was a little girl in Rhodesia, she thought Downsouth was a placename, because people always called South Africa "Down South".

In Pretoria, Auntie Ann lived in Eaton Hall. I didn't know that this meant she had a flat in a building called Eaton Hall. The only Hall I knew, was the Kimberley City Hall, a very grand edifice with an imposing flight of steps leading up to a portico with corinthian pillars. I thought it only proper that a glamorous person like Auntie Ann should live in such a building in Pretoria.

I gleaned from my mother and aunts' talk that she worked in a place called The Typing Pool with a lot of other ladies whom she referred to as "the girls". The head typist was Miss Itsy van Zweeten, who had been overseas several times and had a coat and skirt that she got in Belgium. I imagined them doing their typing at little tables round the pool, wearing swimming costumes and flowered bathing caps. (I had seen Esther Williams movies.) All except Miss van Zweeten, who was in the Belgian coat and skirt.

During the war, there were RAF and WAAF people stationed at the SA Air Force base outside Pretoria. What with Uncle Wiener being Army, Auntie Ann didn't think much of the Air Force. She spoke slightingly of the Raffs and the Waffs who spent their time swanning round town dancing and drinking cocktails while Uncle Wiener had to get on with the fighting in The Desertupnorth.

I had great admiration for the legendary Uncle Wiener who was single-handedly holding the enemy at bay. Every night when I said my prayers, I added "…. and please take care of Uncle Wiener in The Desertupnorth."

If I had met a Raff or a Waff swanning round our neighbourhood, cocktail in hand, I would have given them a piece of my mind.