the adlards

This year, for the first time since returning to South Africa from England, May felt like Autumn, not Spring, and the usual autumnal wanderlust bit deep.

Autumn was made for walking. At latitudes where the seasonal change is stark the reasons are obvious. “I could walk all day” becomes a mere 6-hour commitment, preferably with a measured break for lunch at a good pub.

Ah, well. Autumn came in May this year, there were no walks – and certainly no good pubs – but rather a lot of sitting about in the countryside drinking excellent wine while watching interesting thoughts meander through the mind with a kind of ecstatic detachment. Rather like a sort of existential game of Pooh Sticks, really. Delicious wine is the fat of this Land and we’re thriving on it.

The crisp switch into winter hasn’t all been soft and cushy, though. I have traded my triple-bladed, spring loaded, space-age branded razor for a good old safety razor. Remember those? The young call them cut-throat razors. Tush. They just don’t know what those were. These have an exposed blade that can cut; those have an exposed blade reminiscent of a machete. It’s “safety” as in “safety catch”; if you behave like an idiot you’ll still hurt yourself. The one I threw away had a supersonic name, as in “autopilot engaged, no danger here”, as in “dumbed down”, as in “boring”.

This winter I will hear each individual bristle snick as it’s cut in a close wet shave. Winter was designed to make me feel alive.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 24th, 2012 at 8:08 pm by james and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.