Sunday 13 April 2014

Winter in Zimbabwe and Ingrams Camphor Cream


I do still miss, terribly, a place in time that was my Zimbabwe.

I had a flash memory the other day of cold winter mornings.
Walking to school with knitted gloves catching on (what we called) whitlow’s on my fingers.
Of winter dry cracked legs burning with the first slaps of  oh so cold Ingram’s camphor cream.  I can smell the camphor. How I loathed that stuff when I was a child. I wanted to smell like talc not insect spray.
Walking to school in winter. Nose dripping with cold. The only good bit was big breaths out into the cold, steaming  up the air. How cool was that!
I missed it all: the sting, the cold, the goosebumps, the smell. 
 
 
 

2 comments:

Bryan said...

My Gran (Bunny) knitted endless pairs of gloves for us. But riding through the vlei to school at 7am, where there was often a dank skein of mist lying over the dry river bed, those gloves offered little protection, the icy wind went straight through.

zimboinlimbo said...

It was unfairly cold!