FLIPPING BOOK CHRONICLE 2024

and asked me to speak.

the first time I, a simple farm boy, ate chocolate-coated biscuits!

Robin and Jane were married, with me as best man. Their reception was held at the Sunnyside Hotel in Parktown, previously the residence of Lord Milner, the British governor general. Robin’s visits in his youth to Heavitree, where our major line of business was a dairy, must have been a thread in his ambition to become a dairy farmer himself. Hence his acquisition of the farm Kentucky in Curry’s Post. He was proud to supply milk to our alma mater Michaelhouse. It was at Kentucky that Robin and Jane established the home in which their children were born and raised. I had the honour of being nominated godfather to Christopher. Samantha came as au pair to us in England in 1989 between school and university. She was dearly loved by our four daughters. We all admired Jane’s heroism in rising early, driving to Cowan House to collect Nick, and taking him to swim at the heated town baths at Pietermaritzburg. He was cured of his asthma and, as a byproduct, became an Olympic swimmer, representing South Africa at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Most of my own working life was spent abroad but Heavitree Farm remained a focal point in my own family’s lives. This gave the opportunity for Marie France and me to maintain our friendship with the Folkers (and indeed the Porters) with visits to Kentucky or dinners at Old Halliwell nearby. And after Robin and Jane’s marriage had broken down, we were present at the wedding at the Curry’s Post church of Robin with Gerry. It must have been providence which guided him to choose as his new partner an angel who dedicated herself to caring for Robin for the many years he suffered from emphysema. It was her care and love which enabled him to live longer than the doctors had predicted. The last time I saw Robin in the flesh was after derby day at Hilton in June. Elated by the victory of the Michaelhouse XV (including my grandson Tristan Ardé) – the first victory in ten encounters – I found him in bed watching the match on YouTube. I joined him, the two of us sitting together on the edge of the bed like two excited boys, cheering on Michaelhouse. It was then that Robin told me he had been in discussion with his minister about the form of his funeral

It is one thing to display the virtues of courage and cheerfulness, and to perform good deeds, from a position of financial security. But Robin displayed his true strength of character and the virtues of love, compassion and tolerance when he was considered down and out. His first marriage had ended in divorce. He was forced to stop farming at Kentucky and sell up, and his emphysema prevented him from pursuing the construction business which he had set up post farming. But he remained resolute and cheerful to the end, doing good works as you shall hear in another tribute, and in setting up a workshop at home where he made dolls’ houses and more robust toys, not only for his own grandchildren but for others. A message from my daughter Beatrice talks of “admiring Robin’s beautiful dolls’ house in the children’s room. What a special gift he made, full of love and care and stories behind the tiny furniture.” Godspeed, my old friend, Robin Ernest Anthony Folker. NASH, RODDY Born 1948, Died 2024 Michaelhouse 1962-1966 Roddy Nash spent a sixth form year at Michaelhouse preparing for UK A levels to follow in his father’s footsteps into Middlesex Hospital Medical School in London. His results weren’t spectacular but he did succeed in getting promoted from the fourth team to receiving his colours in the first team rugby. He got into Middlesex by a process that would not be possible nowadays. He was embarrassed enough to work really hard for the first exams and came first. Thus, realising that the English weren’t that clever, he slacked off enough to train and enjoy his rugby. His father Bobby Nash was the school doctor in the 1960s. Roddy became a consultant general surgeon at the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary in 1986, when only six surgeons covered specialties like GI tract, vascular and hepatobiliary. Later, he specialized as a consultant vascular surgeon, pioneering work on early detection of abdominal aortic aneurysms in the late 1980s and early 1990s, saving many lives through early intervention.

But Robin’s and my memories were more about his visits to our farm, Heavitree, some distance from Estcourt town. We would go out with pellet guns to shoot doves, and we formed that special camaraderie of men who hunt together – even at a tender age pre-puberty. On a recent visit Robin recollected how, on a cold winter day, we would put our hunting trophies, no more than doves or the occasional pigeon, on the ice which had formed in the pools of the river flowing past the old farmhouse. My mother was adept at getting us children out of the house, packing up a picnic basket that we would take down to the same river. We had a camping site on a large rock overlooking the river which we called Round Rock. Robin and I went on together to Cordwalles prep school, and the Folkers sadly left Estcourt to return to Durban. But that did not bring an end to our friendship. My elder brother, another Robin, and I would be put on to an SAR bus outside the Hotel Estcourt which would take us down-country for the annual Kloof Junior Tennis Tournament. The Folkers had built themselves a new house in Hillcrest in the grounds of Merickton, the grand Cape Dutch house belonging to his mother’s parents, Gubby and Gran, and named for many generations of Scottish forebears whose Christian name was Meyrick. During these visits we would be treated as members of the family by Mr and Mrs Folker and participated in their post-dinner entertainment of charades. Robin and I went on from Cordwalles to Michaelhouse – with one important difference. He took a diversion via a cramming establishment here in Howick, set up by Denys Parmiter, who had been our headmaster at Cordwalles. So Robin was one year ahead of me in class at Michaelhouse. He was in Farfield and I was in neighbouring West. We both played for the Michaelhouse First XV, although in different years, and Robin went on to play as lock for Natal under-20. Robin studied at Natal University and I at Cambridge. But none of these divergences impinged on our friendship. By happenstance it was in Johannesburg, where I was working after university, that