the adlards

I remember a creperie we used frequent in the summertime that seemed to have a resident swarm of wasps. It was a slightly scary novelty – not quite a right of passage into summer, but perhaps something that proved to us that this actually was summer. We used to capture them under glasses and move the jam to other tables to draw them off.

We were a little unprepared for summertime in Africa. Within days of arriving I wrote this post and now recognise the onset of spring by the seeming impossibility of keeping small bugs out of my glass of wine. As the warmer seasons progress the tiny wine bugs progress to enormous great flies that sound like the doodlebugs in my Grandma’s stories of the Blitz and make me duck involuntarily. The best thing for them is a stinky-red-top-trap hung outside. I topped ours up last week and the drone of flies inside the trap awaiting certain death by drowning or old age was like a herd of lawnmowers. I feel rocks.

I was looking away when the last two wickets fell to Ntini so I thought it best for the team – and by extension the country – to blog rather than pay strict attention to the game. The West Indies will crumble as I ramble.

Last time I was at Newlands was also to see South Africa play the West Indies. It must have been sometime between 1980 and 1984. Dad bought the tickets that time too. We sat on the open stands opposite where I’m sitting now and it was chilly and new and grown up and wonderful.

Today I’m relaxing with Dad and Ben and I can report that watching test cricket in the sunshine is a good way to unwind on the last day of holidays.

Some pics from Christmas and New Year in the gallery now. Other’s took more (and probably better) pictures which I’ll post when I can get them.

Not that that was necessarily the highlight of the season of course. It was also the first Christmas in about six years that the intermediate-level Adlard brothers had been together. We ate together, drank together and even occasionally talked to each other. It was fun to have everyone together – for the first time counting spouses and children. My American brother hadn’t yet met Sophie and my recently de-emigrated Australian brother is always fun to have around.

One of the highlights (of the year, I think) for the Three and me was the rehashing of most of our kitchen in the week preceding Christmas. The most wonderful thing about this kitchen is how well it fits. It fits our character so well it’s almost like an extension of us, it fits the house, it feels good and right and like the centre of the home should. There are things we bought on our honeymoon that were precursors to this feel and so many contributory things that we’ve collected or just admired on the way. It should be obvious that we love the kitchen – and it all came together in a couple of weeks. We found freestanding units at Kims – one of our favourite places – remotely in mid-December and got the appliances we’d had our eye on the next weekend. Against all odds Kim delivered the units two days before Christmas, so we ripped out the old kitchen (and had it taken away by two men with a horse-drawn cart) and put the new one in. After a few protracted kitchen remodellings in previous houses it was refreshing to have one come together in two weeks with a total of about seven hours of work.

We had everyone round for dinner on Christmas Eve in the new kitchen, which was wonderful. The culmination of dinner (which had been spectacular in its own right) was the production of a flaming Christmas pud – the first I’ve made from scratch and delicious btw. Unfortunately I had given no thought to the capacity of the dish I had placed the pudding on before pouring a ladle of burning brandy over all …
Ladle in his left hand, platter in his right he poured. As he did, Grandpa shifted his seat back bumping a plug which tripped the electrics plunging everything into appropriately theatrical darkness as rivulets of flaming brandy began to run off the plate and down me arm. I’m glad I wasn’t wearing my spandex reindeer suit because I would.have.been.toast.

‘Twas a bitter-sweet experience. The pain has outlasted the pudding. The story will outlast the pain.

Now Granny and Grandpa are in Gauteng to celebrate Uncle Ted’s 60th birthday on New Year’s Eve; Ben and Anna returned yesterday from a visit to friends in Mamelodi; Pete and Ros have driven up to East London to visit the house they’ve poured so much heart and soul into and to decide whether to stay for a bit. We’ve enjoyed a weekend on our own recharging and preparing for the year ahead.

Here’s to a wonderful year ahead – may your houses and hearts and lives be full. Happy New Year!

At the end of a long day I have whipped up a little cream sauce with shallots, garlic and gammon (leftovers) on tagliatelli.
Food always comes to those who cook.
Thanks Al and Deb!

.. and coming to see us soon 🙂
North Carolina was beautiful last weekend and it was great to see everyone.

Michelle and the girls are just the other side of that body of water … .

So I needed to get some laundry done when I got to the hotel and sent off the minimum required to get home in a more-or-less sanitary state. My socks n’ jocks came back beautifully pressed, lovingly folded in monogrammed tissue paper and tastefully ensconced in what can only be described as a gift box. God forbid anyone should see my smalls being whisked along a passage on their way back to me. No-one would have guessed what that box contained. Fortunately I had sent only socks without holes in. One can’t help feeling the effort wouldn’t have been worth it for holy socks. Sorry, holey socks. In this hotel every (cleaned) sock is a holy sock.

As I’ve started rediscovering the ability to sleep (I slept nearly 10 hours at Ben & Anna’s two nights ago and haven’t wanted to stop since) I’ve regained my capacity for higher-order thought. Higher-order in the most purely subjective sense, I hasten to add. This is fortuitous as I’m surrounded by some very intelligent and interesting people. Unfortunately (though you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise) much of what’s intriguing me touches broadly on the field in which I work, so writing about it here is Not Allowed. I shall leave the rise of a New Technocracy and its confluence with internationalism and the old ideas of energy accounting to others to write about.

Some pics from San Francisco in the gallery. Disappointingly non-representative of the experience, but there for your viewing pleasure nonetheless …

It’s been an amazing week. Pick my jaw up off the ground amazing.

I’ve met amazing people, seen amazing things, been frozen in Yorkshire and overfed in California. If there’s a thing this week, though, it had to be visiting Google’s campus in San Jose. It was like walking straight back into the best of dotcom culture but on an unimaginable scale. Never mind product, their achievement in remaining true to that ethic and scaling it hundreds of times over is just staggering. That will stay with me.

Tomorrow I will drop my bags at the airport and take the transit system into San Francisco, change to the cable cars down to Fisherman’s Wharf where I’ll eat crab on the sidewalk and wander. When I’ve had my wander-fill I’ll get back on the cable car, possibly picking up a martini at Top of the Mark, and head back to the airport for the redeye to Atlanta and Raleigh. After a day with Ben and Anna I begin the last leg before getting back to the Three.

Apologies to those of you who’ve tried to comment and failed over the past few weeks. That’s fixed for the moment …