Climbing a Tower

I've been up in the clock tower of the Dutch Church in Prince Albert.  I’d heard that British soldiers used it as a look out post in the Boer War and that they had graffiti-ed their names around the place.  I was told I couldn't go alone but the woman in the church office said  that her husband would take me when he wound the clock up at 7.30 on Wednesday morning. 

Jan is 72 and says he thinks he is one of the oldest people in the area still winding a church clock..  He also wasn’t sure if I could make it to the top of the tower.  There were lots of stairs but some were more like ladders.  One rather unpleasant ladder had very widely spaced rungs, so you  had to stretch your feet out in hope. “I brought two kids up here the other week,” said Jan, “and they were fine on the way up but I had to carry them down.”  He was probably silently calculating my weight and wondering if he was up to the job.   We both made it up there okay, anyway.

He winds the clock three times a week.  It was made in England, as was the church bell and the organ in the church.   The graffiti on the cupboard casing round the clock works is all polite.  People have been going up there for over a century and just writing their names in pencil.  I only saw two soldier entries.  One said “British Bulldog – Africaans Terrier” and the other was by Private J Hicks who had written his name and added that he was in one of the Staffordshire Regiments and something else which was indecipherable. 

 I wish I'd had a torch with me but couldn't have managed one as well as the camera. 

I did get down alright, in spite of Jan’s misgivings.    And it was still only 8 o’clock so I went for breakfast with Jenny, Tony and Angela at a very nice shop and café called La-Di-Dah.

And then saw a notice that I wouldn't expect to see in England or France.