The Kuk-kuks that my kids got from this farm who reckoned that the batch of chicks they had sold to them would yield at least fifty persent of hens had their calculations quite wrong, as all but one of them turned out to be cocks. So the had gotten some grown hens, a kind of reddish breed, don't know what, and all was good for a while at the du Preez homestead.
In the meantime Bubby, the Boerboel dog had grown to immense size, and was growling at everything that came close to him and his food. I noticed once when Nina wanted to get him back into their yard enclosure that he growled at her, and a kind of anxiety took hold of me, but Nina just laughed it off. I was later too scared to go to their house, as this monster would sit and glare at me, growling softly, and I always felt extremely vulnerable. But if I spoke about it they were very nonchalant about it, and my concerns were made off as lightly as they could, and I started feeling like a real old worry pot, so I kept my fears to myself.
While I was in Scotland Karel had moved to South Africa, and as he is a sculptor, he was sure that he could make a living here. Irma was still doing paintings for the interior decorators, who were doing a big new hotel in Mauritius, but her working brought the first dark cloud onto her and Nina's horison. As the paintings Irma had to make was large, and there was a lot of them, she worked on the veranda, sometimes taking up some of Nina's space, and Nina moaned that Andreas couldn't ride his tricycle when she worked.
She then tried to work on the grass under the Pepper tree, but all the small seeds dropped onto the paintings, and then Bubby decided to walk over it, smearing the wet paint all over the place.As she was also very scared of Bubby, she asked Jan to keep him in the house when the children were outside, as he just did not like kids.
Relations deteriorated to a point where Irma moved away to Avontuur where she had a wonderful space to work, and Karel had a huge workshop.Where I had to in the past just had to cope with the peacocks and snails, I now had another pest in the form of the Kuk-kuks, who had the biggest bally feet I have ever seen on a chicken, and scratched so violently that they could ruin a flowerbed in a few seconds, and I feared for my garden once I started planting.
Skramunkel was now a bit out of hand, and I had to take a stick with me when I went to feed her, as she was quite scared of that, and as long as I had the stick, I could go in and put her feed in the bucket. It was now very dry, the rain just staying away, but I bought food, and also got hold of some lucern. But she slowly got to know me again, and after a week I was allowed into her camp without her trying to run me down.