SubJeff on 14/3/2014 at 15:48

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TTLG has members from all over the world, thanks to this great thing called the internet. 20 years ago we wouldn't have the community we have now. Anyway, I was talking about something from my childhood the other day, something fairly unique to the time and place (I think) that none of my friends or colleagues will have experienced. That's not to say no one else has experienced this but I've always thought it fairly cool and amusing. So here it is; read it / comment / discuss / love / hate / post your own. Whatever.


When I was about 14 or 15 years old we lived in the capital city. The capital was chosen as the capital because of its central location in the country I think, but it may been moved from the south because of politics post-independence. I forget now. The capital was hot, all year round, whereas the old capital was in a really cool part of the country; this was due to the British colonisers choosing somewhere they wouldn't sweat to death as the seat of power. Or so people said.

The heat in the capital meant that siestas were fairly common, especially for those people who worked in the morning and not in the afternoon, like teachers. I should explain; school hours were 7.30am to 12,30pm (12.00pm on a Friday) because after lunch it was just too hot to concentrate. Besides, there were enough hours in the day for classes. The period between 12.30 and 3.30pm was the hottest, and in the capital it floored you.

This was a dry heat so still, shade and iced drinks worked wonders. Unlike the humid heat of the Far East you don't just pour with sweat whilst sitting quietly. So after siesta time, at around 4pm, my mother and I would sit on the veranda with a cold drink. My mother would knit or sew or read and I'd find dumb stuff to do if I wasn't reading; shooting salt out of an air-pistol at leaves, peppering them with holes, building a dam in the storm drain and filling it with a hose, riding my bike around the neighbourhood seeing how fast I could go down the hill, how far I could jump using a ditch as a ramp or just seeing how far I could skid and how much dust I could kick up. The salt-gun was occasionally used as weapon against some large flying horror like the bees that were as big as a small apple. You know the kind; if they get indoors it sounds like someone is checking your walls for cavities as they knock knock knock along trying to find the way out. The salt never killed them but the spread meant I could be less accurate (and pellets were reserved for things that needed hurting, like snakes and feral cats or dogs).

At this point in time (as at so many other times) we lived in a semi-rural neighbourhood on the edge of town. There was no house behind ours but we did have neighbours on either side. The gardens were always huge, at least compared to most In England; anywhere between one football field in size to several. This was one of the smaller gardens we'd had but it was still a good fifty meters from the veranda to the gate.

So there I am, sitting on the veranda talking about stuff when in the distance I hear an odd sound. Now I'm used to hearing all sorts of birds and beasts out here, especially at night, but this is a new one. “Hooe yaaay” it goes. “Hooe yaaay totoe”. I just listen for a bit as it repeats and then stops. So I forget it. But here it comes again. “Hoooooe yaaaay tooootoe”. “Totoe totoe toooootooooe”. My mother calls one of the servants and tells him to get her handbag. I'm baffled. I want to ask what this noise is but my mother is obviously in need of something from her handbag so I leave it. Now it comes again, louder this time. It's a person and... is that.. “tomato" he's shouting?

Yes, it is. He's chanting as he walks down the street. “Tomato tomato tomaaaaato! Hoe yay tomato! “. Wtf? This is just bonkers. My mother takes some money out her recently delivered handbag and gets up to walk to the gate. I can't see the chanting man because my parents are very keen on the garden and the drive snakes around my target range of shrubs, but he stops chanting when my mother gets up to the gate. I hear a spoken transaction and here she returns with what I can only describe as a bunch of tomatoes. He starts of again “Hoooooooe yaaaaaaay tomaaaaaatoe! Tomato tomato tomatooooe!” and walks off to hawk his wares elsewhere. I never saw him; he must have turned back because he never walked far enough past the shrubs for me to see him. I just sat bemused. How long had this been going on? My mother said they come every now and then selling fruit or vegetables and thats how you know they are there. It's not dissimilar to the Rag and Bone men in England, of people hawking wares at a market I suppose.

I guess it was the musical poetry of it that got me. I remember the dust, the heat, the quite still of the post-siesta afternoon. I remember my mother in those days with her almost constant business and plans and routines. Most of all I remember that day because of the tomato man. I can still hear him now, and I do a pretty damn fine imitation. I've never forgotten his musical advert, a sound of Africa that somehow fit so well with all the other sounds.

Hoooooe yaaay tooooomatOE!

SubJeff on 14/3/2014 at 18:12

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Tell us about the noisy stuff.

And the goats.

SubJeff on 14/3/2014 at 19:42

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Tell us about life growing up in the robot factory ZB. What was it like being almost human but not human enough to play with the other kids?

SubJeff on 14/3/2014 at 21:01

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I thought it was funny too. Actually when I wrote the title of the OP I thought "this seems familiar" and later realised it was from some sci-fi.

I've only read Rendezvous With Rama though, when I was in my "cherry pick one book by sci-fi author X" phase, that died when I got back around to PKD.

YcatX on 15/3/2014 at 00:21

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No Arthur C. Clark?