Transcriptions are like puzzles
by Annemarie Krzesinski, TEPC transcriber
When you start, transcriptions are like puzzles. Can you read the handwriting, do the words make sense and if you cannot make out all the letters, can you at least make an educated guess? Every inventory is different, and poses an adventure and a challenge. You have to be patient, meticulous and probably rather finicky but it great fun when you start to get into life as it was then: the people, their names and families, their homes and possessions, their social and financial circumstances.
I remember the unusual stories about people. Someone who drowned in the Lourens River. An Englishman who went missing. A housewife who died at the age of seventeen, leaving behind two children, aged one year and one month, and not much in the way of possessions. The lady with the snuff-shop in her backyard and a signpost. People who had to plead for leniency in repaying debts after years of crop failure – and others with 1000 cups and saucers or 20 bags of silver money.
Among the pots and pans, pigs and sheep, silverware and linen, it is the unusual or odd thing that makes me sit up and smile. A verkeerbort, tiktakbord or tokkodielje bord for the game we call triktrak, a game my father taught me, and four speksteene beeltjes, soapstone figurines, like those in my parents’ bookcase, brought back from Java by an uncle. A chess set (schaakspel), two draughts-boards, backgammon plus the men (verkeerbort met schijven), lotto, packs of cards, dice and a billiard-table with a green cloth. A piano, flute and German flute, violins, violin strings and music, a harpsichord (clavecimbal), an organ-case with short pipes and a case full of instruments belonging to the organ. A telescope, astrolabe, barometer, magnifying-glass, spectacles and burning-glass. A money-box (spaarpot) and iron cash-box. A note-book, paper, pens and sealing-wax. A spinning-wheel, a potter’s wheel, a printing-press. A linen-press, a meat-safe, a small curiosity display cabinet (rariteijtskasje), a small windmill, an oyster gridiron (oesterrooster), a dovecote and a birdcage with Dutch canaries. All this gives a perspective on the continuity but also the futility of things.
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