A History linkup

(Wrote this during the great shutdown - but never published this at the time, so the date is wrong, but it needs sharing now.)

I'll have to find an old picture or two of us. This is a history lesson, it's not long in terms of years, but it's long in terms of miles. I'm sitting here writing this today, crying. My good friend Marinus has lost his best friend this week.

Marinus van Zyl

Marinus actually has many middle-names, he once recited them for us, there is a family tradition of giving each son and daughter in the family, successive names from the fathers middle names. A way of holding your family names which curiously would mean that sometimes your grandfather would have the same name as you. Marinus son, Manie holds this privilege, I hold the benefit of having met both of them. But let's start at the beginning. A bit of this is my history, just in my writing.

1991

Johannesburg city center. I'm pretty sure it was raining as I queued up to register for a programming course. I was a bit self-taught at programming at that time, but since I'm not university material, a practical course run by a certain company called "Van Zyl and Pritchard" was my way into the industry. It was a Cobol Programming Foundation certificate and going to be my ticket into programming. One of the training company directors was, Marinus father. A short course, co-incidentally also attended by one of his children, Marinus. I made one other friendship in that course in between lectures on a large yet packed second floor room. Craig Austin now lives in London. After lectures we would walk across town, run really most often to catch a train back home, and after that, a bus.