SOUTH AFRICAN FLEMMER FAMILY SITE
WHO'S WHO IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN FLEMMER FAMILY
HOME | WHO'S WHO INDEX| PREVIOUS ENTRY | NEXT ENTRY | WEBMASTER
HERBERT
Kate
Herbert Kate KATHERINE ANN7 HERBERT (STEPHEN WILFRED6, RONALD
HAROLD5, HAROLD4, JAMES BROADBENT3, JAMES BROADBENT2, THOMAS1) was born 22 March
1978 in Moedersbond Hospital Pretoria South Africa. She is the granddaughter of
KATHLEEN NORAH7 FLEMMER (MARIUS TOGER6, HANS CHRISTIAN5) born 12 August 1914 in
East London South Africa, and died 31 October 1972 in Cape Town South Africa.
I was born on
22 March 1978 in Pretoria - of all places! My parents are Stephen and Judy Herbert.
Of my grandparents, I only met two - my father's father, Ronald, and my mother's
mother, Renee. When I was four years old, we moved to Johannesburg and shortly
after that my brother Nicholas was born.
We spent seven good years in
Johannesburg and I have lots of fond memories of this time. It's still the longest
time I have ever stayed put in one place! We then moved on to Cape Town where
I spent a year at school in Claremont, before we were off AGAIN (it's a theme!)
- this time to Canada. It was completely different to anything I had ever seen
and was quite hard initially - being an awkward 13 year old - to fit in. Still,
Canada proved quite a good place to be - despite fact I never really learnt to
ice skate or ski! However, my dad's company had other plans and just two years
later we were moved to Holland. Again, was a completely different experience but
we soon settled into a lovely house near The Hague. I went to the British School
in the Netherlands and really enjoyed it - still in regular contact with lots
of my old friends from those days. In fact most of us have ended up living in
London.
After finishing school in 1996 with some good A-level results,
I spent a year in Cape Town having fun before starting university in York, England.
I decided to do an English Lit honours degree - and it turned out to be a good
choice, as we only had one two hour class a week and no compulsory lectures!!!
I made some really good friends at York - and living in York itself was a treat
as it is a lovely city, still surrounded by Roman walls. It's also true that everyone
is much friendlier 'up north'. York was also a good base to travel from, being
half way between London and Edinburgh, so I did get to see most of England, Scotland
and Wales.
After graduating in July 2000 (mum, dad and brother flew
from SA to witness it!), I moved to London and after doing some temping work landed
a job with a PR company. The work itself was very interesting, lots of media training
for big corporate types - the company itself couldn't really offer me much in
terms of a career. So in May 2001, I packed it all in and went backpacking around
Australia on my own for four months.
As you can imagine, that wasn't
too much of a hardship! Travelled all over the east coast and, in Melbourne, managed
to meet up with my cousin Matt and his lovely wife and also Granny Lucy. I also
managed to fly to, perhaps my most exotic holiday location yet - the Solomon Islands,
near Papua New Guinea. The diving there was incredible!
Decided the rest
of 2001 was a write off and so ended up back in Cape Town for Christmas - and
stayed and stayed! Was the first time I had had the opportunity to spend time
in Cape Town with my parents for years - and of course, spending time in Kalk
Bay is always a pleasure! After four months I realised that I had to get back
to real life and earn some money [read: father was keen for me to get out and
earn some money] so I headed back to London, where I have been ever since (well
give or take the odd fantastic holiday funded by Dad).
For the past few
months I have been working for the Department of Health in Whitehall. It's been
quite a good job, I write up reports for the Chief Medical Officer. These go on
to his website. Sadly it is not a permanent position and appears to be coming
to an end very soon. I'm hoping to get a job either as a Private Secretary to
the Chief Medical Officer or move into the charity sector and work for a charity
with links to Southern Africa. I have started working for a charity called Starfish
in my spare time - a group of South Africans living in London who raise money
for children orphaned by AIDS I'm still enjoying being in London - most of my
friends now live here - university, school AND South African ones! In the long
run though I would like to settle back in South Africa and hopefully this will
be possible within the next five years.
HOME | WHO'S WHO INDEX| PREVIOUS ENTRY | NEXT ENTRY | WEBMASTER