the power of dreams
When I was nine years old, I was at school at Loreto Convent in Hillcrest, Pretoria. Next door was the boy's school... Christian Brothers College. Some of the older girls managed a few snatched words through the fence, but for those of us in Std 2, it was a place to be avoided. Except, that is, for one glorious day in July or August 1969 when we headed off, single file, to the CBC hall to see the Apollo moon landing. I can't remember whether we saw the landing on the actual day, but I do remember crowding round the tiny television - the first I had ever seen - and watching the grainy pictures of the moon landing. And, strangely, I remember the dusty smell of the hall, and the sunlight coming through the cracks in the black curtains, high up on the walls. And the wooden floors, scuffed by decades of boy feet. It was a pivotal point in my life. I remember a few years before being taken outside by my father to see a satellite... one of the sputniks ... passing through the night sk...