Carol’s Column

It all began when I was a birthday gift

Many years ago the phone rang and a voice said: "Hello, my name is Euan Crawford and I have a suggestion for you." There was a twinkle in the softly spoken voice so I listened.

"Look, you might consider this funny," he said, "but it's my wife Marion's birthday and she really enjoys your column so I thought I'd give you to Marion as her birthday present."

I was speechless. The man was obviously deranged.

Euan sensed my reticence. "I thought I'd book a table at a terrific restaurant for lunch. You'd arrive and then five minutes later, I'd drop Marion and she and you could have lunch together. I know she'd love that."

I was disarmed and charmed and, of course, went to the lunch. This is how our close friendship with the Crawfords began.

Euan Crawford was a dentist, Marion a statistician and together with their two daughters, they enjoyed the things we did. The bush, fishing, diving and snorkelling, walking, long braais and lots of talk about politics and everything else ridiculous.

It was Euan who informed me of the sheep farmers of Scotland who discovered that if they capped their sheep's teeth, their ewes would live until ripe old ages. What's more, these teeth-capped geriatric sheep always produced two lambs at a time (as opposed to their younger, less fertile sisters).

I thought he was joking until he showed me the medical journal from which the article had come.

Euan was unusual. Gentle and understated yet with a wickedly intelligent humour, he refused to charge his patients who couldn't afford to pay, with the result that probably the majority of the disadvantaged community in Johannesburg had dental treatment by Euan.

Once, when snorkelling with Euan off the Robberg at Plettenberg Bay, he tapped me. "A shark," he mouthed and pulled me. Away I thought, but no, it was towards the very large, sleek grey-white shape. He motioned me to be still - which I was as my heart had stopped beating for this was the first time I'd ever seen a shark at such close quarters.

The streamlined creature stared then swam into the deep.

"Did you ever see anything so beautiful?" said Euan as we climbed on to the rocks. He was elated.

The Crawfords acted on their beliefs. Marion Crawford went to jail for refusing to register her domestic under the apartheid laws. They were, she said, iniquitous and she would not be part of such an evil system. The first white woman to go to jail by defying the pass laws, it was a courageous stand.

Euan, cerebral, extremely well-read and delightfully offbeat was uncompromising about things he felt mattered.

His dental surgery was like no other. He had a picture window in his torture chamber (the place of drilling), which looked on to a miniature homemade bird sanctuary.

Momentary pain was immediately alleviated by the ongoing bird activity.

A middle-aged hippie in the finest sense of the word, my jeans-clad friend would take off with a backpack to hike up Africa, across India - anywhere remote, unusual, intriguing.

He walked everywhere and would think nothing of trotting from Norwood to join us for a meal in Parkwood.

Last Thursday, while walking home, a three-ton runaway truck knocked him down.

He died instantly.

Knowing Euan, somewhere he's smiling wryly saying: "The chances of this happening are how many in a million? Couldn't I rather have won the lottery?"

One of the better people in life is physically gone but each time I think of Euan, I smile. I was so privileged to have known him.

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