Cuffs Of Gold

"Kill me" I said to my partner,
"Take my freedom away from thee".
Home of my own - financial bond,
May destroy my soul that's so free.

"So where to" I ask myself,
"Do I want to go down there".
Near to the fear - societies weight,
That compels me this cross to bare.



"Don't worry" they all try to tell me,
"With children you'll never be sorry"!
Strife of my life - ball and chain,
As much fun as a garbage lorry.

"Paint walls" my mother instructs me,
"You're worse than a cockroach that crawls".
Thrill of my drill - domestic bliss,
The end of my bachelor jôls.



"No guts" my devil mocks me,
"You're the joke of a thousand buts".
Weak and too meek - a spineless shit,
Without any real nuts.

"Do it" my angel soothes me,
"Drag yourself out of the pit".
Sign of the time - growing up,
Oxycute emotional zits.



"It's done" we sigh with relief,
"We actually had some fun"!
Smile down the aisle - keep the pose,
We sprinted that final run.

"Good luck" they all wish us,
"She'll keep you out of the muck".
Love of my life - Débra Pautz,
Forever stay my "Buck" ;-)



Psyching myself up to propose, convincing myself up to get married, and then revelling in the event!

Having lived through my parents volatile union, I was totally anti-marriage by the time I met my future wife in early 1983. I started writing this 12 years into our relationship when the "So, what's next?" thoughts began invading my consciousness, and I started experiencing family and peer pressure to conform. A few boozy counselling sessions with Hartmut von der Ohe gave me focus, and Débra and I married in our 13th year together. Soon thereafter, I relocated to the Czech Republic and we spent our first year together on opposite sides of the planet!

I finished this piece on a frozen bus, in the deep snow on the road from Brno to Prague. My company did not have company cars back then, and I could not afford one, so I had caught a lift (in a Škoda 120) to Brno where I spent the day working at a campus recruiting event. The old run-down bus was the only way I had to travel the 210km back home, it was the worst winter in 75 years, I was feeling pretty miserable and was really missing Debs.

Penned on May 5, 1994 & December 9, 1994 (in Pretoria, South Africa) and on December 8, 1995 (on a cold bus from Brno to Prague, Czech Republic).

Cheers, MAlfaRK ©

1975 CBC Pretoria Std. 7 Timetable

This it my Standard 7 (9th Grade) school timetable from 1975. I was at Mount Edmund, Christian Brothers' College (CBC), Pretoria, South Africa where zealots of the cult of Jesus worked hard at trying to wash my brain! If I remember correctly, school started at 08h00 and wrapped up at 14h00. Classes were 40 minutes long and the breaks were 20 minutes each.



The fifth period every day was CD - Christian Doctrine (read Christian Indoctrination). There I was exposed to the belief that a cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepaphically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree. Yes - it all made perfect sense to me ;-)

From the age of 13 through 18 (1973 - 1978) I worked Saturdays at Jix Hobbies - South Africa's oldest hobby shop. When I started I made two Rand a morning - that's a whopping £0.16 / US$0.27 / €0.18 at today's rates! That job screwed up my teenage social life, but as my folks were not flush with cash, it was something I had to do. Back in those days the shop was on Van Der Walt Street, one shop up from the corner of Pretorius Street. I was a counter hand, shelf packer and duster. And, believe me, it was an endless battle against 50 years of accumulated filth! Looking back now, I do wish I'd bought up all the old 40's, 50's and 60's Dinky Toys and Corgi toy cars that no one wanted in the 1970's! They would have been excellent investments.



Flying. After work at Jix I would regulary trek out to Pretoria Radio Flyers airfield at Zwavelpoort, east of the city, where I would revel in the customers writing off their expensive toys :-) Due to urban creep, the club was forced to relocate in 2001 and is now in Rietvallei.

Cheers, MAlfaRK ©

CBC Pretoria Bus Passes 1974-1975

I was schooled at the Loreto Convent, Pretoria (age 6-8) and Mount Edmund, Christian Brothers' College (CBC), Pretoria (age 9-17). In Standard 6 and Standard 7 my folks gave up on the school commute, and I had to ride the old college school bus from Lynnwood Manor to Silverton. It was an antiquated green and white Bedford, and not my favourite mode of transport! As we were probably the final stop on the route, all seats were usually taken, by the time I boarded, and I generally stood up front, next to the driver - a middle-age, balding and mostly sweaty Afrikaner. I was there on that fateful day when the bus got a front wheel puncture going down the hill close to the CSIR entrance. We went off the road and into the bush, and miraculously the bus didn't roll. I have the full story written up in an essay somewhere, but need to dig up that old textbook in my archive! Anyway, here are the bus passes from 1974 and 1975.



Here are the backs of the bus passes from 1974 and 1975. They are signed by the school Secretary, Mrs. Tudhope. She, her son John and daugter Avril stayed at the Cambray flats, close to my parent's place in Lynnwood Manor. I had a secret, long distance crush on Avril back in those days. I think she went to school in Lyttleton and wonder what ever happened to her?



In 1976 I blew my savings on a 50cc motorcycle, and my world changed forever! The wall in the background to the left of the attached photo is more or less where we used to catch the college bus in the morning.



Cheers, MAlfaRK ©

New York - September 11, 2001

New York - September 11, 2001

Many will know John Chatterton from his excellent History Channel series Deep Sea Detectives. He is also one of the guys I rode through West Bengal and Bhutan with back in October 1999. A small group of us on that trip got on so well, that we rode together again, doing Northern Thailand (including the "Golden Triangle") over Christmas 2001.

Debra and I were privileged to attend John and Carla's wedding in Nan, Thailand in 2002 and to have visited with them when they still stayed in New Jersey. On that occasion (in 2000, if I'm not mistaken), he lent me his Harley and we spent a fine weekend riding, eating, drinking and socialising. You can read more about the man on his website - including his dives on the Titanic and his discovery of the German submarine U-869.

On September 11, 2001, after the attacks on the World Trade Centre, I reached out to John (who I knew was working in New York) to find out if he was okay. This is his harrowing first-hand account of the catastrophy sent to me and Terry Clark, Managing Director of The Classic MotorCycle Magazine in the UK, who also rode Bhutan and Thailand with us. I posted it to my old website (with his permission) when I received it on September 14, 2001. Today is the eighth anniversary of 9/11 and so I though it would be appropriate to repost it to my blog.


Terry & Chris and Mark & Deb,

As of Tuesday, I was the diving supervisor for a commercial company doing bulkhead remediation work underneath the World Financial Center in New York City for the Battery Park City Authority. Parts of Battery Park City are built over the waters of the Hudson River, specifically over the train tunnels. The current phase of the job required that we dive from (two) access openings (5' x 10') adjacent to West St. and then out to a distance of about 900 ft to the west and under the WFC. The two access openings were directly across the street from WTC Tower #1, one across from the south face of the building and one from the north face. Behind us was World Financial Center. On Tuesday, inside the access and under the WFC itself, I had 4 tenders in two boats, about 500 feet in, and then 4 divers in at varying distances up to 400 feet beyond the remote tender's station. I had 3 men on the surface at the access opening.

I was going to put my wet suit on to make an inspection dive and take some measurements, but stopped to make a phone call in the office trailer. As I was talking, I heard a whoosh then an explosion, then a larger explosion. I opened the door of the trailer and stepped out to see the fireball coming out of the south side of Tower #1. To avoid the falling debris, I ran back into the trailer. As the debris stopped falling, I ran along West St. to the north access where my men were working. Along the way I passed innocent injured and dead caught unaware by the falling debris. Under the WFC, the divers were unaware of any problem, other than "a gust of wind". One of my topside men actually saw the plane hit the Tower. We hurriedly got all of the men out of the access and on the surface as quickly as possible, and completed the head count just as the second plane struck the south side of Tower #2. We evacuated the area towards the water (we ran like hell), and from a reasonably safe distance I saw both towers collapse, first Tower 2 then Tower 1. Just as the ensuing dust and debris clouds from Tower #1 were closing in, I was evacuated from the bulkhead by boat to New Jersey. The evacuation was very civilized, women, children, and the elderly being loaded first.

Yesterday, I returned to my former worksite. The damage is far more than you can ever comprehend from watching it on the small screen. I am certain that more buildings will collapse, or have to be torn down. Paper, small debris and dust are everywhere. The large debris is like a mountain range, and the rescuers like little ants. Hundreds of rescuers have already died in the original collapse, and the very dangerous rescue work continues without much conversation. Just the occasional nod of acknowledgement or necessary communication. No one says "good morning". Many of the rescuers are volunteers from New York's construction trades and they are working without pay. Some are police and firemen from neighboring areas.

As for my job, the car I left behind has just plain disappeared, like our crane, and a bunch of other equipment. Some pumps and compressors are still there, crushed and burned. Of the 4 trailers on site, I can only find the remains of two. My engineer's trailer was used as a command post by the Fire Department. When Tower 2 collapsed, the trailer and everyone in it was crushed. New York's top 4 firefighters were killed there. When the planes hit the buildings, they cut off possible escape for the people on the floors above. No one on the upper floors could possibly have survived. Some of the remains of these poor people have been recovered from where my job site was. The death toll will be thousands of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, friends, firefighters, and policemen. We are a long, long way from resolution.

Right now in New York, we are sad and tired. Later, I assume we will be very angry.

Thanks for the kind thoughts.

John Chatterton

PS - Carla is stuck in Buenos Aires. Hopefully she will fly home tomorrow.


John posted me some of his photographs on October 1, 2001 (all photos © John Chatterton):

"My Job Site Pre Construction"


"After My Jobsite 9-13"


"My Job Site Fenced In"


"Looking at Tower 1 from Jobsite"


See more of John's 9/11 photos on his Facebook page.

Thanks again for sharing John. Thinking of you guys and hope to see you both soon.

Regards, MAlfaRK ©

Two Rivers

SA WINS GOLD MEDAL AT VENICE FILM FESTIVAL

Yes, it’s true! But the headline dates back to 1975!

My late father, Beaudry Glen Pautz (known to all as Beau) was a passionate aviator, and a writer and raconteur by profession. He started his career in journalism at the King William’s Town Mercury in the late 1940’s and 50’s and moved on the East London Daily Dispatch in the 1950’s and 60’s. His contemporaries there included Donald Woods, Allister Sparks, John Dewar, et al. From the mid-60’s through the end of the 80’s he was Press Officer and ultimately Head of Public Relations for the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Pretoria, South Africa. As a key member of the Information and Research Services (IRS) he became a respected science writer…and not a “sign writer” as quoted in an obituary (in a South African newspaper that shall remain nameless) following his untimely death in 1990.

In the 1970’s and 80’s my father became deeply involved in film and video production for the CSIR, establishing a small audio-visual studio on the campus in Pretoria East. Beau was a gifted wordsmith who became immersed in all aspects of film-making – script writing, filming, directing, editing, producing, soundtracks and commentary.

On some of his most notable documentaries he collaborated with Hugh Whysall and Duane Rogers of Killarney Film Studios (the team responsible for those great Gunston “surfing” commercials) and in 1975 the three of them produced a documentary for the CSIR called "Two Rivers". It concentrated on two South African rivers – one polluted and one clean - and predicted the environmental problems that South Africa and the world would face in the final quarter of the century, and beyond. Incredibly, it foreshadowed Al Gore’s Nobel Prize winning film, “An Inconvenient Truth”, by 31 years!

"Two Rivers" was entered in a film festival in Venice in 1975 and went on to win the Gold Medal for documentaries! I still have the medal (at least, I thought so - for the life of me, I can't find it)...



I only remember seeing the documentary twice – once at the Christian Brothers College in Pretoria where I went to school and a second time before the main feature film at a cinema called The Oscar in Sunnyside, Pretoria in 1976 or 1977. The version we had for the school screening was on 16mm film, and I remember the overwhelming sense of pride in my father’s creation…and how my partially brain-dead teenage friends really didn’t give a damn! In recent years I searched the internet in an effort to find out more about the documentary (and to possibly get a copy of it on DVD), but found absolutely nothing about the film.

However, as I also worked at the CSIR between 1985 and the early 1990’s, I knew how the place worked and was certain that there would be a copy of the movie in the library or in the archive. So, I contacted my father’s successor in Public Relations who put me in touch with Ms. Annette Joubert, an Archivist with CSIR Information Services. Annette did some great detective work and eventually managed to trace the film as well as the Diploma di Medaglia d'Oro in the CSIR archives!



This was a great breakthrough, and Annette went out of her way to facilitate the migration of the film to DVD (using the same facility in Pretoria used by the National Audiovisual Archives), and arranging for colour copies of the diploma. I put up cash, but Annette must take credit for doing all the work and for delivering the final product to my mom’s place in Lynnwood Manor.

It’s interesting to note that the Diploma from Venice is attributed to Hugh Whysall who, in the film, is credited as Writer & Director. And rightfully so. My father, Beau Pautz, was the Associate Producer, and he retained the gold medal that I inherited following his death.

It pains me that this award winning movie is never mentioned in the annals of SA film history, has probably never been shown on television in South Africa, and that (in this era of environmental awareness) it has not been given the credit that it is clearly due as an early attempt to alert people to global warming more than 30 years before “An Inconvenient Truth”. As far as I am concerned, in the South African context the achievement of “Two Rivers” should rank up there with Charlize Theron’s Oscar and Gavin Hood’s blockbuster movies! It has been all but forgotten and that’s one of the reasons I’m writing this blog. Perhaps I’ll send the link to Al Gore at climatecrisis.net and to the environmental programmes 50/50 and Veldfocus on South African television to see if they want to give it some exposure.

Here’s a photo of Beau working in his studio at the CSIR in late August 1979:



I miss my father – he was a complex and fascinating man, and a great role model. But his written, audio and visual works live on. I have been researching my family history for almost three decades now, and the rediscovery of this film is certainly one of the crown jewels in my family history collection! I am proud to have resurected “Two Rivers” and am pleased to finally be able to give credit where credit is due. So here it is for your viewing pleasure. The old film has acquired tones of sepia with age, and the style and commentary is typical of the seventies, but the message remains a good one...



My late father's 15 minutes of fame - decades ahead of its time!

MARK LYNDON PAUTZ ©