The hustle and bustle of Ermelo

I remember well coming to Ermelo as a young 24-year-old lad.

Ermelo was this quaint little town, so neat and tidy with flower-lined streets, stately old buildings, the rows of old shops in Kerk and Joubert Street, the John Little building on the corner of Kerk and Naudé Street and many other places one would associate with a small town.

Everybody seemed to know everybody and striking up a conversation with familiar faces down-town on a Saturday morning was commonplace.

As the years went by, all this changed, some for the better and some for the worse.

The familiar faces soon became lost in the sea of expansion. More buildings were erected, some, sadly, in the place of the old landmarks.

The expansion of the business sector gradually added more and more faces to the down-town stalwarts as more and more people came to live in the town and work in the CBD.

For some people life has become a rush from one day to another, from one event to another. I sometimes stand amazed by the way some folks are in a constant mad dash, hardly ever stopping or at least slowing down to smell the roses.

They don’t seem to have time for a friendly chat and go from place to place without looking left or right.

With the price of fuel constantly rising, and visiting family and loved ones in other provinces becoming less frequent, those few familiar local faces are fast becoming our “new” families.

So, we need to chat to each other and share the latest news, share trials and tribulations and even befriend a stranger or two.

This holds true especially for families whose children have flown the coup and are living in other towns and cities and even abroad.

So, next time we see people chatting in the middle of the aisle and blocking the way in the supermarket, let’s have a heart and not get angry.

We’re only chatting to our new families.