There are Ants in my Sugar

by Annica Foxcroft

There Are Ants in My Sugar is the warm hearted, engaging and humorous account of Annica Foxcroft's exile to a pondokkie in the country, when unexpected financial hardship overtook her family during the 1960s.
Annica is a sassy young woman to whom the city chic of Johannesburg and the dire warnings of her decorator friend Harry still cling like French perfume, as she is dumped unceremoniously on a plot in the dark, landing on a pile of blackjacks. She has to adapt and make a home for her baby daughter and aging husband amidst boreholes, long drops and Aga stoves.
There are Ants in My Sugar will have you chuckling all the way to its joyous conclusion; even in 1960s South Africa there was some justice for all...

(From Publisher).

Annica Foxcroft was born in colonial Durban, lived for a few years in the Transvaal countryside, and since then has lived and worked in the melting pot of Johannesburg. Along the way she has seen South Africa in various guises.
Her career has been in marketing, particularly of language and communication skills development. She is co-founder and owner of Languageworks.
Her keen perception of people, quirky humour and love of language in all its colourful eccentricity shines through in her writing. A generous and loyal spirit, she is able to take us with her on the bumpy ride through memory and mishap to transforming laughter.

This is 'an escape into the country tale' with a difference. The narrator and her family are forced to move to a run down property after suffering a financial setback. She had thought she was doing the right thing by marrying a rich man but the eccentric inventor thirty years older than her should have come with a health warning. The rented property to which they were reduced had no electricity, no water in the bathroom, and a magnificent kitchen consisting of a coal stove and a crooked tap plus an untamed garden. It was a considerable shock to the system for a white South African of the nineteen-sixties used to being sheltered and pampered at every turn to have to undertake hard labour. There are unexpected benefits in the form of the new acquaintances she makes. There is Joshua the Sangoman, May her indomitable maid, Ben a Jewish pig farmer and the Indians who run the local general store all with completely different views on life.