I have great pleasure in introducing you to South African-born Rory Taylor, the self-styled ‘Makatini from Cape Town’. Rory is the only son of my fun-loving and adventurous late cousin, Tommy Taylor, who came from Scotland to live in South Africa with his wife Nancy, in the seventies.
I’m old enough to recall Rory’s great-grandfather, Thomas Taylor, a well-respected Edwardian gentleman, and wife Edith, who lived in my home town of Edinburgh for much of their lives. They had five children, and Rory is the grandson of their youngest: my uncle Captain Charles Taylor, who served as an officer in Royal Navy submarines during World War II. He was also an outstanding master mariner in the Merchant Navy, piloting ships on Glasgow’s River Clyde.
The Taylor family’s action-packed, pioneering spirit lives on through Rory and Taylor-Made holidays. Rory spent some of his teenage years exploring the awesome Kloof Gorge, in the Krantzkloof National Park, a place I was lucky enough to visit when staying as a guest of his parents in Durban’s beautiful garden suburb of Kloof, in KwaZulu-Natal.
Rory was inspired to base his blog persona on the ‘Makatini from Edinburgh’, a comic character in a nineties TV advertisement for a Cadbury’s lunch bar, exclusive to the South African market. He was named after ‘Tap Tap Makhathini’, a legendary boxer. The ad shows a tug of war between kilted participants in military uniform. Each has a typical Scottish name beginning with Mac, revealed by a roll-call. A notable absentee, devouring his lunch bar for extra strength, isn’t ‘MacAtini from Edinburgh’ as believed, but the ‘Makatini from Maritzburra’ (Pietermaritzburg, Kwazulu-Natal).
The play on words, and the Scottish-South African connection, continue with ‘Taylor-Made’ and the ‘Makatini from Cape Town’. Watch out for his further adventures here!
Author: Marie-Gaye Barton