Marion Edmunds reports on an old man who runs a pharmacy which occupies the ho ttest piece of undeveloped property in Camps Bay. But he’s not selling
HE is not selling at any price. Not his pharmacy nor the fittings nor his flat above – although he is regularly pestered by developers. They’re willing to p
ay R10 000 per square metre to turn his Victoria Road place into a beach-side night-spot or an exclusive guest house.
“People say I’m balmy, batty to keep on working at my age,” says 90-year-old P hilip Isaacs, possibly the oldest working pharmacist in the world. “But I say to them, ‘you have to have something to get up for in the morning’. After 66 y ears here, it’s a lifestyle and I wouldn’t be doing anything else … It’s not for sale.”
Isaacs moved down to the Cape from Kimberley with his young wife in 1931. They made their home in the flat above their shop, 10 strides from the sand, with
an unparalleled view of the deep blue sea which stretches beyond palm trees an d sandy beach to meet the sky at the edge of the world.
“When I arrived here people lived a simple village life. We were connected to Cape Town by tram which went over Kloof Nek, and by buses … and if a bus cam e in the morning, and a regular commuter was not at the stop, they would wait around a couple of minutes in case he had been delayed … The buses used to d rop off my stock.
“Camps Bay society has changed over the years.”
Nowadays, jostling for parking space opposite his pharmacy is a constant strea m of smart cars filled with tourists or Capetonians heading for the beach, or the upmarket Blues restaurant or the Bay Hotel. On hot days, parking is imposs ible to find, and the restaurants down the street are crowded by the sort of p eople that crowd glossy cigarette advertisements or star in Baywatch, all at p lay under their tans and sunglasses.
Isaacs’s shop is a cool sanctuary in all that heat. It’s dark, a little dusty, and no music plays. Isaacs, standing behind a counter, is at attention the mo
ment the door-bell rings and a customer steps, often a little tentatively, int o his domain.
Many are people he has never seen before, nor will again. Bikini-clad sun-babe s straight off the beach looking for lip-ice and suntan-cream, tourists in sea rch of holiday remedies, a young man, 30-something, looking for a pick-me-up b ecause he had just had his Christmas office party, but needs to be awake for a “long night ahead”.
Isaacs is able to help them all, and within seconds finds their remedy. He add s the prices on a piece of paper and enters the total on an elementary till wi th a handle which cranks open a drawer for change.
“People are surprised I don’t have a computer. I don’t think they teach adding to children any more as we used to learn it, I think they all learn on comput
ers. When we were young we learnt reading, writing and arithmetic and we used to practice our writing on sheets of papers with lines.”
Isaacs can still quote the last verse of his school hymn, sung at Kimberley Bo ys’ High. The words speak of days of sportsmanship, when bad losers were a dis grace, and honour and victory were worth fighting for. He carries this code in his heart, one suspects, and it is for that he is so much admired in his comm
unity. The local newspapers celebrated his 90th birthday, for example. Fifteen years ago
he received Rotary’s Award of Merit for 50 years’ service to the community –
he has his certificate at the ready, such is his pride.
He has preserved the old-fashioned look of his shop – teak fittings, half-empt y glass cabinets – with the same gentlemanly defiance with which he treats the property developers.
Many people have offered to buy the fittings, but he wants to keep them just a s they are, and possibly leave them to a museum of pharmacology.
He works seven days a week, from 8.30am to 6pm, and only closes up a little ea rly if the wind is howling and the rain lashing down. “In all the 66 years tha t I have worked here, the sea has three times come into my shop,” he says. “Th e first two times were not so bad, but the third time was some 30 or 40 years ago. I was talking to a customer and I noticed this big black thing coming tow ards us.
“I looked up again and I realised it was a wave which had not broken. It only broke just outside the shop, where that car is parked now, and came in the doo r, right through the shop into my flat and then it drew back, and as you know when water pulls back through a small space like a door, it sucks. So much of my stock was sucked out to sea.”
The wave was seen as an act of God, and he could not claim from insurance. But he and his shop have survived to tell that tale; they have weathered the dram
atic changes in South African society over the last century and are now withst anding the onslaught of the property developers too.
To retire on the proceeds of a lucrative sale would be anathema to Isaacs, a m an who has made his living for 66 years from a decent day’s work.