the adlards

We dragged ourselves out of bed on Sunday having slept very little after the flight. We had a quiet day clearing the stinky fridge, unpacking and slipping back into our normal pastimes: staring vacantly into space and reading property websites.

I blame this rapid slump into normality for all that follows.

On Monday (day 2 following a month away mind you) Michelle found, viewed and fell in love with a house in Hatfield. I saw it on Tuesday night and we offered on Wednesday morning. Our house will be ready to go on the market by the end of the weekend.

You should understand, by way of background, that househunting is something Michelle does for fun. Perpetually. One might almost say compulsively. She undoubtedly has a better understanding of the property market in our corner of Hertfordshire than many people in The Business, so her pace is perhaps not to be wondered at.

MGW has been persuading me for some time that we should consider Hatfield more seriously in the where-to-bless-with-our-presence stakes. I have a wise friend who once said of the persuasive powers of wives: “You know it’s not about whether you might win, it’s just how long you can hold out.” He’s right, of course, and so was she.

It was weird getting up this morning, coming downstairs to see the brilliant sunshine streaming into the livingroom and then realising we probably shouldn’t dash outside barefoot it being two degrees. Yes, we’re home again. We don’t have three quarters of an acre and the fridge does smell like three-week-old milk, but it’s home nonetheless.

It was hard to leave Cape Town, we had a wonderful time.

It was particularly hard to leave because, having packed and prepared everything on Friday evening Sophie threw up all over her sleeping bag and all over Michelle’s travelling clothes. I popped the things in to wash and then as I started them in the dryer the power went out. At 3.30 on Saturday morning when Michelle was feeding Sophie the power was back on and the clothes were nearly dry so I set it for another hour and crawled back into bed.

The rest of the trip was as smooth as twelve hours of air travel with two Very Small People is ever likely to be. BA at Cape Town didn’t call parents with children first (they insisted they had but we wouldn’t have missed that), so we were crushed for half an hour behind security barriers holding children, hand luggage and pushchair. On the plane Sophie threw up a feed once and Josie wet her seat twice (in addition to going to the toilets with me quite happily on two or three other occassions). She was badly frightened by the flushing noise on the trip out and evidently needed prompting as a result. I’m not sure what the cleaning regime is between long-haul flights, but I hope it includes steam cleaning of kids’ areas.

At Heathrow the luggage took upwards of an hour to hit the belts although belt four was the only one in use. We eventually found ourselves as one of five small groups standing about staring vacantly at the empty belts when a voice helpfully informed us that golf clubs, skis and other unusually-shaped objects were at the other end of the baggage reclaim hall. Sure enough there was Josie’s zebra-on-a-stick (hobby zebra). One frustrated taxi driver and we were home …

I suspect normality will come as something of a shock.

We’ve been having sporadic power cuts in Cape Town all week. Word from East London is to expect up to nine hours without power every second day. Factories have been warned that they may need to close one or two days a week. The impact on the economy must be outrageous. Cape Town is keeping the Waterfront (premier tourist spot) lit to try to minimise the impact on tourism …

Today’s papers suggest that key senior nuclear engineers have left, leaving something of a skills gap. I suspect the engineers who designed and maintained the entire grid left some time ago, leaving something of a skills gap. When you allow your entire grid to become heavily reliant on a single nuke and then someone drops a bolt into one of its two reactors and the other is due for routine maintenance you probably don’t have competent people making the decisions. Either way you’re in trouble. Unless you’re in the butane supply business.

Today’s outage has gone like clockwork – the paper said 2pm to 5pm and the clock in the kitchen must be exactly two minutes slow. If they can manage the crisis that well for the next eight months I’ll be impressed.

The elections went off well yesterday though I haven’t heard any results yet. I watched five minutes of possibly the worst election programming ever on SABC last night. Ever. There was no continuity and the person selecting the shots needed training and quite possibly medication. When I got to the point of screaming “Switch! Switch!” when they were using the wrong camera we flicked over to watch the last day of Ewan McGregor’s Long Way Round. Elections are stressful enough without incompetent broadcasters.

It was good to spend some time with Pete & Ros at Cefani. Particular highlights were playing bat-and-ball and frisbee with Pete and the wonderful time Josie and Sophie had with Ros. On the last night Josie was playing her name game: “Who’s that?”
She was Ros and Ros was Josie.

Nothing, though, was quite as spectacular as Pete doing 360’s on the paddle ski in the lagoon. Well, not quite doing as such …

When we we were called for boarding at the airport in East London to fly to Cape Town we dutifully queued and gave our passes to the gate attendant who waved us out onto the tarmac to walk to our aircraft with a cheery, “It’s the one in the middle.” We’ll suggest it as an approach on our return to Heathrow. “It’s the fourth on the left Sir. Do mind the engines …”

It.is.unbelievably.hot
We’ve bought fans for both girls to help them sleep, but are flying to Cape Town this afternoon where, it seems, there might be no electricity to run them.

We’ve had a wonderful time in East London. Michelle’s Mum and Dad have a beautiful pool overhung by trees and palms. Josie has learned to swim (ably demonstrated when she waded out of her depth in a lagoon this week) and the rest of us have just lived in the pool.

We’re looking forward to Cape Town – hope their power supply holds up!

Gareth and Kerry and the twins came round last night. Those boys are machines – they’re fantastic. Lend a whole new layer of credence to the theory that life’s blessings and challenges are made to measure. Yes I know that sounds like a thinly disguised version of “the punishment fits the crime” but you know I’d never say anything like that. If ever there was a dad made for a pair of boisterous, fearless two-year-old boys it’s Gareth.

We had a wonderful evening together braai’ing in the rain while the kids with the requisite motor skills ran themselves ragged. It was good to catch up – I hope the next opportunity is not too long in coming.

You know you’re in Africa when …

• If you stay in your chalet in a clearing in the coastal forest you might never see another human being.
• If you walk through the forest to the endless soft white beach, though you walk for miles you might never see another human being.
• You do meet plenty of birds, monkeys, zebra, antelope, snakes and spiders.
• It can be tipping down so hard that you can’t hear yourself over the sound of rain on the roof, but you’re still sweating freely in the heat.
• The entire roof of the structure you’re staying in is made of asbestos. And.nobody.cares.

Of course you’re also never so far from a cell mast that you can’t blog …

I’m pleased to say I not only survived my week of introspection, role play and skills honing but thoroughly enjoyed it, made new friends and learned a great deal.

Now I’m sitting in Cape Town airport waiting to board a flight up the East coast to rejoin The Three. I can’t wait. I’ve had a wonderful day with me ol’ pop in Cape Town. Cape Town has some beautiful parts but far more beautiful people.

I’ve just moved from home to an hotel where I will be spending the rest of the week honing my influencing skills. I promise to return absolutely incorrigible.

The change of scene is good for me. I’m really missing The Three, but a really very good dinner this evening in a beautiful hotel has helped shift my focus. I’ve been out for dinner on my own before and found it to be an alternately lonely, disturbing, even traumatic experience. On each of those occasions, though, Michelle was no more than a few hours drive away rather than the current 8,000 miles. And of course the most poignant instances occured in late adolescence, so this could just be a product of age. This evening I happily entertained myself evesdropping on a pair of divorcees with the most outrageous 70’s hair (they’d spent the day in the spa and clearly received some poor advice regarding permanents from a stylist). They were discussing their various blind dates. New stylist … dates who can see … who knows, there might be a correlation.

I’ve just read my father’s tribute to his mum and am battling to focus the old eyeballs as a result so please excuse any typos …

This morning in the dark pre-dawn I was standing in the parking lot of Morrisons posting two months of recycling into the bins. I will finish my chores …