I had the delightful experience of participating in some traditional games on Monday evening, including bokdrol spoeg, which translates roughly into spitting-dry-antelope-shit-into-a-bucket-placed-some-distance-away. Never one to shy away from a test of skill …
I shall have some stories to tell in the US next week.
I am sitting in a game lodge awaiting the start of the working week. We drove past a herd of almost-snoozing zebra on the way in. I hope I get to see some daylight over the next few days because it seems quite a beautiful place in the dark.
Mark, Anne and Daniel popped in this afternoon. It was wonderful to see them and how Daniel has grown! They’re in the midst of the post-move-from-the-UK thing and it really takes me back. Our experiences differ significantly but much is the same. Is that called a generalism? Or a universal truth?
On Wednesday morning I left home at 5 for a trip to Joburg. When Michelle went out a little later in the morning she discovered that someone had jumped the neighbour’s wall and stolen about a square meter of paving from our driveway.
The police said they thought it was a prank. Pretty serious prankster to carry away that many bricks don’t you think?
One week in The Wild. No mobile reception, no interweb. Just perfect.
We stayed at De Hoop, which is a marine reserve and at this time of year midweek has a very sparse human population in contrast to a burgeoning population of baby creatures of all kinds, from whales to tortoises. The girls were in their element.
We were befriended by a pair of Frankelin – impressively identified by Josie as CinderellaBirds named Cinderella and Prince Charming – who brought their nine baby CinderellaBirds to visit. Sophie was SO excited by the variety of birds visiting our veranda. She learned quite quickly that running at them to try to pick them up was unfruitful.
We explored rock pools, slid down sanddunes, crossed a river with the car on a pont, lost a tyre on dirt roads between Malgas and Witsand, got stung by bluebottles, looked at property in out-of-the-way places and generally lost ourselves. It was one of the best week’s holiday we’ve had.
Pics in the gallery.
MGW takes no prisoners. The Spring rains brought snails to the Cape Town garden. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of snails. Each evening just after dark a foray party would head into the front garden and ruthlessly stomp fifty or sixty snails. Then My Sister In Law intervened. If snails were human I’d call her a humanitarian. I guess in the event she’s a snailitarian. Anyway, snails started being collected in 500ml containers and transported to a nearby park for release. The roads were checked for snail trails to make sure they weren’t returning.
Eventually a day came when Josie decided she – “and Dad” – would like to cook and eat the snails they were collecting. I’m still not absolutely sure who put her up to that. For the past two weeks we’ve had a tank full of snails purging their little guts of anything poisonous by feasting on fresh lettuce and mixed veg every morning.
Today was cooking day for the snails. Yes, I have slime on my hands. Unremarkably, after washing snails, plunging snails into boiling water and simmering snails, shelling snails, cooking snails in stock and arranging fetchingly on princess plate Josie wasn’t having any of it.
[Pokes a snail] “Dad, it’s quite squidgey.”
“Yes it is love.”
“I don’t think I quite want it.”
“Are you sure, because you won’t have another chance?”
“Could you keep it in the fridge until I’m five?”
“No, but if you want snails when you’re five we can cook some more.”
“OK. I don’t want these ones Daddy.”
Daddy ate two and won’t be trying this again.
We’ve had a wild and woolly couple of weeks. Chidlers Birthday Parties, grownups birthday parties, meeting old friends, contracting horrible horrible horrible gastro bugs, and working our respective bottoms off.
We met up with Dave Rogers a couple of Sundays ago after a seven-year hiatus in the relationship. It was great to catch up, reminisce and solve the world’s problems over breakfast. That night Josie started with the bug and was up about seven times in the night. In the morning I flew to Joburg to start a week of workshop presentations.
The bug hit me on the Tuesday. We had a half-day workshop that morning, ending after lunch. I had a big breakfast, which I like to do before these things and then headed to the other hotel. I got there and pretty soon had to dash to the loo. I thought it was nerves, which was disturbing because I don’t really feel nervous before presenting any more. I told me to pull myself together and headed into the sessions. I struggled through the morning and after everyone had left was more ill than I remember ever being. Ever. In the lobby facilities of a very swish 5-star hotel while people queued up outside the cubicle. Fun. I managed to get a car back to my hotel without causing damage, then spent six hours with the airconditioning on maximum heat, wearing all the clothes I had with me, feeling terribly cold, experiencing dim tunnel vision and being continuously sick. I thought I was dying. But I wasn’t. I drank all the fruit juice in the minibar that night and took a full day of meetings the next day.
I had it easy, of course. Michelle had two little girls with the same illness. It’s had a long tail of fever, headaches and exhaustion which has been hard on all of us.
Last weekend Mark came over having returned from the UK. Today Anne and Daniel join him, so pretty soon we’re hoping to be seeing the whole Midgley clan.
Next week the unimaginable happens. We’re going on holiday. For a whole week. Can’t wait.
See? Not a word about treeh … oops.
Yes, it’s another blog about treehouses. Trusses are finished. Window framing is done on one side, when the other side’s done we’ll start cladding and it’ll be finished before we know it.
I was ably helped by Sophie and Tigger this weekend.
The moment James realised the wood stock wouldn’t last the weekend. Fortunately rain stopped play.
We’ve been in Cape Town a year. Hard to believe. It seems just yesterday that we were raising walls, signing armed response security contracts and generally settling in.
Moving was a very spur of the moment decision – I remember walking down Fleet Street in the dark thinking, “Let’s go to Cape Town for a few months” when the phone rang and MGW said, “How about going to Cape Town for a while?” Done. We are not, I’m pleased to say, repenting at leisure.
Our experience of moving is that establishing ourselves always takes a lot longer than we expect. The bigger the move the longer it takes. Nonetheless, we have made more progress in turning our house into a home in the first six months after moving in than we made in the same period in our previous four houses.
The year has broken down into three clear parts for me: four months of feeling like a tourist, four months wondering whether we’d made a terrible mistake and worrying about anything from security to government to financial stability, and four months just getting on with things. Time has flown.
Today Michelle helps out at Granny Doff’s white elephant sale (?!) and the girls and I hope for sunshine in which to keep building the treehouse.
In friends’ news, Mark Midgley arrives in Cape Town tomorrow and Etherel’s a dad!
that doesnt have to do with the flippin treehouse.
sophie had a busy day today at phisio then straight off to ofra (the activity workshop) to try out a new session for children of her age (rather than her tagging along to the class for jo’s age), we had great fun and needless to say she was lying with her snuggly blanket on the armchair next to her bed befor bathtime had even begun. her eyes were closed before i left the room tonight. jo spent a busy after noon with granny and grandpa were she baked crunchies amongst other things then cam home to supper and then the heffalump movie which she has watched everyday for about the 10th day running i think, at least. she also dressed up in her tigger suit, again , for about the 7th day. still at least its not a spiderman outfit.
i go to sleep tonight, alone (because james is in joburg), safe in the knowledge that the geyser probably wont burst and rain water through the roof , because it did that last night and has now been replaced.
oh bother i forgot to set my snout beetle traps with fresh apples. heres hoping they dont eat all of my seedlings while i sleep x
We had a sunny weekend. Play once again suspended until the next one.
We also finally succumbed to facebook this weekend, so not quite so much building happened as might otherwise have been the case.
Quite soon now I shall stop blogging about the treehouse exclusively – hang in there.