The boyfriend writes a letter from Gaborones

June 1978 and a letter from the Holiday Inn in Gaborones, Botswana.

I had met Fred in the summer of 77, at the Wits swimming pool, with a casual 'may I put my towel next to you' and here I am decades later looking at his first letter to me.

At the time of the letter he was doing his MBA at Wits University and he was on a mid year holiday to the swamps in Botswana.

The innocent comment in the letter that 'we will be leaving at noon for Francistown to collect the boat and pushing straight through to Maun' could not predict the rather startling chain of events that ensued.

A breakdown... a trip to Bulawayo... an invitation... chucking in a job... a surreal evening... jail... deportation... a holiday.....

Another blog.

The envelop reminds me that I was living in a Berea bedsit at the time, 405 Panarama Place, on the Johannesburg CBD side of Berea.

The 70's were the brown decorating phase - so I had a chocolate brown feature wall and brown or beige everything else. I was content in my colour free space. How I love colour now.

I would catch a bus into town to which ever job I was in at the time. If not the bus, walk.

And that is how I came to be at the swimming pool, I had walked across from Berea to Braamfontein.

Fred and I did not connect that first day at the pool.

A couple of weeks later we bumped into each other at the pool again, he offered me a lift back to the bedsit and I accepted.

We have been together ever since.

The gang that Fred mentions in his letter.
From L: Fred, Dave's girlfriend Janet, Dave Hadfield, Lee and Neil