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Herbs

2011-12-01T03:52:00.001-08:00

I have just been givena bag of freshly picked organic sweet basil. It smells like summer.The first basil culinary delight we indulged in was a Caprese salad.Tomatoes and basil, the perfect combination to grow together, and toeat together.

I do not have a herbgarden at the moment, probably for the first time in years. We moveso much, but my terra-cotta pots make the journey with us, and arenormally planted out with lavender, rosemary. thyme, mint and basil(come summer).

Not so this time.

My pots stand empty andstrung with cobwebs on the back stairs.

Still, I can takepleasure in others' gardens, and always have anyway.

I remember myPakistani neighbours, in shalwar kameez beneath warm black wintercoats, standing out at the beginning of a chilly English summer,tilling their small rectangular patch in front of their terracedhouse.

Coriander seed, that'swhat they planted, just beneath the sand, waiting for just a littlesun, to burst up and out in leafy, fragrant greenness. They pickedthe fresh leaves, and I would sample it later, in delicious plattersof aromatic curry, generously brought to my door. The seeds theygathered, to be planted out the next year, and some they dried, tosee them through the winter months.

Herbs have beenimportant to me for as long as I can really remember. In the SouthAfrica of my youth herbal knowledge, for the most part, extended toparsley in the kitchen, and lavender in the garden. My mother grewlavender, and I used it to make 'Lavender Water”, in myGrandmothers cast off '4711' bottles, which I adored.

There were always allthe indigenous herbs though, their secret magic and mystery shared byless and less, and relegated, for the most part, to rows of LennonsBoereraad on the dingy shelves of a country store, serving onlythose who could afford no other medical attention.

All that is changing,more and more.

Here in Knysna, I takemy various woes to a Herbal Practitioner, who, in high heeled wedges,and with a flick of sun bleached hair, mixes up my potions in theexclusive part of town. They all taste vile, as, to my mind, realmedicine should.

My organic basil comesfrom the vegetable gardens with a view up at the Epilepsy Centre.

I recall, in its headyfragrance, my best and most extensive herb garden, grown, years ago,just outside PE at a similar centre.

I had sixty two herbsthere, some small seedlings having been transported in back seedtrays, on my lap, on a midnight flight from Cape Town to PE.

I was keen, and young.My enthusiasm drove my team of two large men, given to me by EbbaBooth, a somewhat awesome German lady, who ruled Lake Farm at thattime, with a cigarette in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other.

My two helpers were inmy charge, and I worked them hard, myself armed only with theobligatory cigarettes and coffee. I overdid it on numerous occasions,and one of them would chase me menacingly with a raised spade orpitchfork, whilst the other huffed and grunted threateningly, to putme in my place.

I left Lake Farm justas the garden really bloomed, and it was a comfort, at the time, toknow it continued growing without me. I don't think it remains today,there has been building, and no one ever loved it well, like I did.

Still, other herbgardens have been grown and left since then.

I've always known theyhave the capacity to heal and cure, and just never really took enoughtime to study them fully.

Now, with my presentage upon me, I am looking to them and their secret ways again.

And those pots arecalling me.

Bus Ride

2011-11-18T00:41:00.001-08:00

I have just been on a long bus ride.
I rode one way by day and one way by night.
Part of me had been looking forward to it, the reward being friends waiting on the other side. The other part of me is travel weary, and even one travel bag is too much for me. I am earth bound these days, and my footsteps are heavy.

I had a couple of good thick books for company , and a bottle of water. As it turned out I had a television as well, relentlessly turning out Morality Plays, like in the Middle Ages. I tried to zone out and read, or look out the window, but television is intrusive by nature and penetrated my consciousness. And so I watched segments from my seat.
I was tempted to tell the girl in front of me that I am not, because she might not have been aware of the fact, a double amputee. I still have both my legs and they are extra long ones. I sighed instead and groaned, I think, but she still lay back in her seat, as far as she could, leaving me in a perfect position to see the mousy brown roots of her auburn hair. I could have rested my book on her middle parting, and, in fact, it was difficult not to.

I was the only person reading on the entire bus. Books have definitely gone out of fashion. Cell phones are in, and with a little or a big screen, they provided enthralling reading and general entertainment for everyone around me, for the six hour duration of my trip.
I felt completely put out.
My reading material didn't help I suppose.
It dealt with Womans' Troubles, and I did try to get excited about the virtues of 'the Dark Goddess', the reclaiming of the 'Crone' and the 'Wild Woman Within', but it was hard. The moral tone of the films being shown, just added further to my feelings of conflict.
The story on the screen of Jesus, as a waiter in some diner on an American back road, in the middle of a hurricane, didn't help in any way either. There He was, Jesus, doling out toasted sandwiches and advice on how to avoid Hell, all with a beautific smile, and an apron.
No,it didn't help, not in any way at all.

I was traveling my own highway towards my 49th birthday, due to be celebrated in two days time, and the countryside (I have traveled that road too many times) somehow held no interest for me. Change was blowing through me, and I was restless, trapped between a reclining seat and a television set.

A young boy got on and sat next to me in Swellendam. He was unkempt, but I am a chatty passenger, which is probably, to some, the most dreaded kind. Anyway I ascertained by and by that he was at a 'special' school and was having a birthday the same day as me. He had been quick to tell me about his ADHD problems and how he was two grades behind where he should be.
I think I went on a bit too much about the awful school system and how I feel about education and learning and incorrect judgments being made on children. I wanted to tell him, basically, that he was wonderfully good enough, no matter what, but I got lost in the telling of it, I think.
I hope I redeemed myself by eventually saying something like, 'we all get where we need to go in the end anyway'...or something like that.
I hope so, and I got to my destination eventually too, and to the embrace of my friends.

The return trip was by night and I took the very front seat with a wide spread of window. I tried to fill both seats with my books and bag and water bottle, but I had to eventually give the seat next to me up. A rather large lad took it in the end and I spoke to him as well, even though I didn't really want to. I realized that I am a bit of a compulsive talker.

He got out at every stop to smoke with loads of others. I looked down at them all,standing in a loose ring, stamping their feet in the cold and conspiratorially sharing cigarettes. I would have liked to join them, that happy band of disparate people, united in their comradely addiction, hugging themselves and flicking ash around.

I don't get out the bus if I can help it.
I like the neon glow of petrol stations at night, with their gleaming metal motor vehicles, pausing for thought during a long journey. I like the idea of junk food on a journey too, but, like smoking, I don't do it anymore, and could hardly endure the returned lad and his brown paper bag of chips and a burger.

My little birthday boy was not on the return bus, although we had parted with the cheerful assumption that we would see each other on our return.
I was sorry.
I had joked and told him that we would both be a year older when we saw each other again.
I was sorry I had missed him, but more than glad to get home.

Call back the past

2011-10-27T22:32:00.000-07:00

I have always loved history.

In fact, I loved it so much that I chose it as a third 'learning' subject for matric – and the truth was, of cause, far from the history books of South Africa in those days.

I know that there remains a gap between what is truth and what isn't, when it comes to History.

Nevertheless, the past still holds, for me, an allure, which the present, simply does not.

I have always been intensely enamoured with the Victorians, the Edwardians, the Georgians, and their Poetry and Literature. I have a penchant for those in this group of people who lived, or at least desired to live, outside the frontiers of the conventions of the day.

I day dreamed my way into some of their bohemian lives. As a young woman, I sometimes wore coloured stockings, and eventually a bob, and Victorian shawls and brooches, like some D H Lawrence heroine.

I have always allowed all sorts of characters from the past , to crowd out my reality, at will.

The truth is, I suppose, that I don't much like 2011.

Its too lonely for one thing, with the technology of the day masquerading as closeness, but in fact bringing distance of global proportions.

I long for long letters, and languid days of company and conversation. I long for the time before telephones and emails, and definitely for the time before the dreaded cellphone, which has become the intrusive soundtrack of humanity, with its beeps and buzzes and bizarre tunes.

Still, with no time machine at hand I must, it is the only way, seek solace in film and books and old maps and photographs.

Here in Knysna I've been reading books about the old life. From my wide white wooden verandah I look out at the lagoon and try and imagine it all.

The mysterious George Rex, in his day, with his misty imagined past (who really knows the truth), had this whole beautiful stretch of blue and green world as his idyllic playground. There was no other European here for a while, until the ships came sailing , braving the devastating sand bar, to tie themselves to an island, that would later be claimed by a family of blonde, Nordic Thesens.

I do try and imagine it all – the winding road to George, through dense forests bursting with elephants, in which lived communities of forest dwellers, that hardly ever saw the sun.

Such a different world!

The approach of summer makes me long for old Africa anyway.

I dream of tents and living simply, with a river running passed our camp, and the heat crackling with cricket sounds, just beyond the tree line.

I remember the smell of canvas in the coolness of the night, and the starry sky appearing again, as if it hadn't been there all the time, in the city.

I'm reading a book about Denys Finch Hatton – the real person, not Robert Redford.

What a world there was then, for adventurous types. Sure, he came from a privileged class, but there was a window of wonder at that time, and he and his friends, just caught the end of an Africa, which was vanishing at the hands of the Colonialists.

Denys, they say, had a great love for Africa, and planes, and bohemian women. He, said Beryl Markham, invented charm and so, luckily, could indulge all three, although with loves like that, one was surely going to kill him.

It's just that the world seemed to be so much more interesting then. Maybe because so much was as yet undiscovered, in a technological sense, and the very naivety of those past heroes pushed them on.

I probably just need to go camping again.

I remember us loading our old Cruiser, with tents and boxes, and taking to the road less travelled. We used to open the windows and let the dust blow in and over us.

We left behind houses, and our normal restricted life, which by necessity held us in.

In the past, there definitely were fewer boundaries, and border posts, keeping people out, keeping people in.

The world, it seems to me, used to be a more tolerant place, for a restless spirit like mine, although the price of loneliness, intrinsic to rootlessness, no doubt still had to be paid.

For now, I'll pace the verandah.

Karate Kid

2011-10-21T02:30:00.000-07:00

My daughter is going on a camp this weekend. L and I don't think it sounds like a lot of fun - more like an army boot camp. She's looking forward to it, it's her first Karate Camp or Gasshuku, to be correct.
I must say that's one of the things I like most about the Martial Arts - the words. To me they are good ' beat them up and spit them out' words.
Which is quite fitting, really.
.
The location holds promise, being on the site of the Sedgefield lagoon, and there is the possibility of her achieving her first grading on the white sands of the beach in the back ground.
But its going to be hard work.
As it is her classes are two and a half hours long, twice a week. I hope she enjoys it and comes home with a spanking new yellow belt.

I have dabbled in the Mystic Eastern Martial Arts myself a little, at odd times in my life. I remember trying out some Yoga positions in the Family Room of my childhood home. I got a book out from the library. I was always interested in just about anything, and made little personal studies of all sorts of things. The contortions and extraordinary achievements of those elastic Yogi men are something astonishing to behold, and to read about.

Well, you need a little guidance when it comes to Yoga.
I tried to stand on my head during the course of my first lonely lesson, and dislodged some delicate fluid balance in my ears. I was deaf and dizzy for a while after that.
Balance, I now know, is a fragile but deeply essential thing.

People who do Yoga age incredibly well, in my experience. They have supple and lithe bodies right into their eighties. At a rather stiff nearly fifty, it seems to be a worthwhile goal to aspire to.
And yet, as with many other things in my life - I just don't get down to it.

In Cape Town years ago I did Tai Chi for a while. It was marvellous. I went with a friend.
A Great Master visited our very junior class once, and I tried to make sense of his, no doubt, very wise words. Probably a whole lot was lost in translation, but my thoughts did wander off a little, and I'm sure I missed the important bits.
Nevertheless I didn't let that put me off, and I did persever for a while longer. I was also very inspired by those wonderful images of Eastern people in business suits, on their way to work, doing Tai Chi in a park somewhere, with their brief cases placed patiently beside them.

Now that, it seems to me, is balance.
If you have to wear a suit, and catch a commuter train, and live in crowded Tokyo, in a high rise apartment, to pause under a tree to do some slow mo moves, must make it all somewhat more bearable.

My daughter hated me when I practiced 'The Form' at home. She was very little and she cried.
I think it was the detached and far away look in my eyes. I was outside, next to a bush in our Plumstead garden.
Images of hippies in 'Hair' were being played out in my head.
The theme tune was 'The Age of Aquarius' - there was a flower in my hair...
My daughter has always hated that 'hippie' thing.
She would do 'Tai Chi' quite happily in a business suit..

Maybe I should try Tai Chi again.
It strikes me as being a nice slow place to start.
At least my daughter should be more supportive now.
We call her our Lethal Weapon.

.

Ferraris

2011-10-13T22:23:00.000-07:00

We heard a helicopter first and L and I ventured out onto our wide white verandah. The helicopter whirled close, with a cameraman leaning out and forward. We know him as a friend and thought he was maybe waving, but probably not. Those moments are not for multi tasking, but only for focus.

Still, that drew us out further. L remembered reading something about Ferraris gathering, and travelling, from place to place. It was all very hush hush, as befits such a show of immense wealth in this land of ours. But hush hush, Ferraris are not, and wandering down the Knysna hill we live in, the roar of their engines rose up to greet us.

Despite myself, the growl of an engine does get to me. Not quite like L, granted, as a watcher of Grand Priz with a memory for every combination of XZ L or G behind a cars name, he is in a different class.
Like Ferraris.
They aren't really cars anymore.
Sure, they have four wheels and ride on roads, but there the similarity ends.
Icons, works of art, a showpiece of immense wealth, a toy....all 45 of them stood,edgy but still, like wild stallions.
Over R100 000 000,00 worth of them.

We wandered amongst them, low and gleaming, parked at the Shell Garage, and L was engrossed, cell phone held high.
Their redness reminded me of shiny, glossy, lipsticked mouths.
Sensual, sexy, slinky, are just some of their characteristics. Their low roar and sheer animal-like energy takes your breath away.

Who owns these things?
Well, there they were, mingling with each other, besporting red Ferrari peaks.
Shame, L had one once from the factory in Italy. Even that he has lost lately.
To be honest, they do seem untouchable, these riders of red steeds, and I am not someone who stands in awe readily.
What was there to say anyway?

That was a few days ago.
Yesterday was very different.
I visited the Epilepsy Centre and met some other folks there.
They came right into my space at a moments notice. Blue was their colour mostly. Overall colours.
So today I have been thinking about balance and how all man is created equal.
Not a new thought.

It just struck me how a thin black layer of kevlar , aluminium and steel provides such a impenetrable shield.
No need for hand holding there.

I felt the hands from yesterday though for hours after.
The addictive thing about being with vulnerable people, is the knowledge of how me, standing next to them, just balances some kind of scale.
And I am not even a powerful person.
The frailty of a person who could be thrown down and taken to the land of fits and tremors is not for the faint hearted.

I just know the manner in which I would rather be whisked off, from 0 to 100km/h in 4 seconds, in a zig zag of red like a lightening flash.
If I could have choice, that is .

What's in a name

2011-10-06T23:07:00.000-07:00

Sometimes weeks of my life run to a theme, some thought that dominates, some idea that pops up again and again. I don't choose it particularly. It chooses me.
Lately its been Names.
Not that names have not featured in my life before now, naturally.

For example, I have a little dog called Teaspoon.
Her name played a big part in us acquiring her. She was featured in an advert stuck on the door of the Superette in Kommetjie. Her owner made other claims about her, apart from her name. She was meant to be a bomb disposal expert, for instance. And some other things besides. When we met her, scuttling into the yard under the wooden fence, well, she wasn't even cute.
Her name was everything.
We kept her.
Over the years she has grown into it, the extraordinaryness of her name. That, and her oversized ears, and her bad manners where little children are concerned, or older men, or anyone who comes near my husband. Shes grown into having a penchant for a mohair blanket (or any blanket for that matter), and never grown out of a deep hatred for the car.
I might even make the claim that her name saved her, absolutely.

I've been reading two books about a child with the unusual name of Turtle. She held on and would not let go, like a certain kind of Turtle, who only releases its grip when the thunder claps. The idea is that if you hold on tight enough, you will be safe against most things.
Her name saved her too, in a sense.

Personally I have never felt the need to change my own name. I might have been forgiven for wanting too. There were always far too many of us. I was never, by way of example, the only one in my class. Not ever, right up to matric.
This phenomenon continued into University, and then, strangely, stopped. I think after that they all changed their names.
True, I have been given other names, in friendship, in intimacy, by lovers, haters, teasers, children, parents and those who feel fondness for me, generally.
Somewhere within the bigger picture of things, my name must be saving me too, one day at a time, because this name is mine, somehow unique, even within a large cloud of others.
Like a snowdrop.

Lately, over the last few weeks, I have met quite a few folk with rare and unusual names. Names that have made me smile. Names that have made me wonder.
These names, filed in a list at the soup kitchen I help out at, have attached themselves to waifs and strays, either by choice, or accident, or maybe, by another.
At first glance they appear to be a group of men in serious need of saving. But then, apart from a tatty set of random garments, their name, is just about the only thing they have.
The job of saving then, is probably done.

So, as I learn their names slowly, week by week, I greet each one with the weight a name deserves. They look at me clear eyed and me at them, and as all do not have English as a mother tongue, I wonder if they even understood, when first they heard their own name, the deeper meaning.
Well, it doesn't matter anymore, that much is surely true.

The day at the soup kitchen begins and, with a tub of samp and stew in hand, I await Johnny and his glorious surname, Be Good, with his snazzy red shoes, to give me his lopsided smile.
There is one man whose name I hesitate to call out, when his meal is ready- Banana - echoing around the church yard.
General's name is perfectly apt as he is large and black, but also unemployed and hungry.
There is sweet Breakfast who comes round often, although we serve him closer to Lunch...
And there are some others, with rare and beautiful names, who I am only getting to know.
But my favourite of all, has to be that of a man, with a bowed and humble head, who seriously told me that he has but one name only, and that is Splash, and there it was, written down.

I have always liked to give names to things, or even change them. I changed my husbands name when we first got close, to a veriation of his name no one else used. Now I use only a letter, L, in referrence to him. As he got bigger to me, his name got smaller.
We seem to make the things we love as diminutive as we can.

Or maybe we reduce the names of those things, that to us, are big and beautiful and terribly important, to hardly any sound at all, maybe just a breath, a sigh - like the Ancient Hebrews, who didn't mention the name of G-- at all.

Diets and Barbie

2011-10-01T00:10:00.000-07:00

I grew up with a mother who was constantly on one sort of diet or another. The Grapefruit Diet, the Drinking Mans Diet, The Egg Diet, Weight Watchers and Weigh Less...
She did them all.

Now in her seventies, she is finally perfectly slender, and will be for ever more. One diabetes scare did that.
Scare tactics, it seems, work.
I remember my mother having two wardrobes. A fat wardrobe, and a thin one. She yo-yoed between the two. Or she did, until Prudence. Prudence was our maid when I was in my teens. My mother managed, rather miraculously, to remain in a thin phase during her tenure with us.
Prudence was not, you might say, thin.
She was also, to put it mildly, a superlative cook.
Food in our house underwent a transformation under Prudence's reign. We had eaten vaguely grey cuisine before her. The live- in lady who raised me cooked for us during that time. Her name was Sarah and she came from a different culture, one devoid of spice, colour or flavour.
We knew no better. What she cooked, we ate.
Prudence changed all that .

She also changed my mother's wardrobe, by removing the fat range of clothing all together. We found the evidence in the postbox. There was a wad of photographs of Prudence waiting with the mail one day. Pictures of Prudence modeling my mothers fat summer selection, albeit with the ensembles looking somewhat tighter all round. It seems the maid next door had second thoughts about sharing the spoils of my mothers dieting, and she gave the game away

Prudence was duly fired. I regretted the change that brought to our menu. More than that, I regretted, bitterly, the discovery that Prudence had also liberated all my collection of Barbies from the suitcases they were stored in, recently relocated, to the top of my cupboard.

I adored Barbie. For years and years Barbie and her collection of friends and outfits were the only desire of my heart. They were all I ever wanted for birthday presents, Christmas presents, and any other monies gathered in between.
Long before 'Friends' was ever a hit TV show, Barbie and her buddies lived out their perfect world in their special suitcase , carefully packed and stored, as a child, beneath my bed.

My sister was my favourite Barbie playmate. Only she had the same ideas for the complicated sagas, romances, tragedys, soap operas and thrillers we wrote for them.
These adventures would drag out, day after day for the entire six week Summer Holiday. They were played out in Roller Skate Sports Cars, and Biscuit Tin Boats, all around and in the swimming pool in the yard.
I think I played my last game when I was thirteen, although I would not admit that for years.

So Fat Brown Prudence stole Skinny Blonde Barbie, and Perfect White Woman Barbie ended up in some Port Elizabeth township, in the Seventies

I'm not sure what that says really, but I myself have disproved many of the anti - Barbie theories.
I have never aspired to be a kind of Barbie, with a body shape that some say is not humanly possible. I grew into a very tall, long limbed, long haired, bespeckled adolescent, whose favourite attire was straight jeans, veldskoens and cheese cloth tops. I have never owned a pair of stilettos in my life, or worn anything even close to the colour Barbie Pink.
So much for that then.

And then I hit the forties.
Suddenly the kilograms that I had previously effortlessly shed, stubbornly refused to shift.
I find myself having to diet.
There has been no health scare yet, for me, but there might be
.
So, with Spring in the air, I phoned my mother for a few dieting tips. She was happily eager to give them to me. I think, in a way, she had been waiting for the moment.
Nature over nurture every time.

I need to set a goal for myself.
An After model, to go with the present Before one.
Somewhere between Prudence and Barbie - like a real South African.

Sort of Spring

2011-09-24T09:30:00.000-07:00

In some ways this is the worst time of year.
Waiting for Summer.

I took my daughter shopping on Saturday. I had noticed that she was looking particularly bedraggled. It was probably not really her, as such. Everything looks that way to me at this time of year.
The soggy sad shivering end of a season that simply will not die.

But died is what most of her jeans have done, with splits in the knees and her skinny's suffering from winter weight gain. And then there are those tired winter woolies that keep on having to be pulled out from the back of the cupboard because, oh dear, its chilly again.

I conned myself into Spring. For a day. For a shopping spree. The shops, in case you haven't noticed, are bursting with Springiness. They made me feel the same. For a short time.

I am a very bad shopper. My daughter, is worse. She was grumpy by the time she had sloped off to the changing rooms for the first time only, heavily laden. I was grumpy by the time she came out. I got grumpier as I was forced to stand in the narrow changing room passageway, as she tossed clothes at me from inside the cubicle. I was denied entry. Her body, which was created in my womb, has now become a High Priority Secret.

This is strange to me. I have always been quite free and easy about bodies, perfect or not, with their wobbly bits holding not that much fascination, one way or the other. Bodies are bodies. Maybe its the nurse in me, or maybe the artist, or maybe I have just forgotten what its like to be thirteen.

More than likely. I have forgotten a lot. Like what it feels like, to try on one garment after another in a tiny space, with a mirror that reduces ones bodily proportions to those of a vertically challenged circus person that people might pay to see..

For many years now I have used the same trolley for my clothes as I do for my mince and veg.
Mostly my wardrobe is made up of the type of garments that have labels in Small Medium or Large, or Extra Large, for that matter. Trying on is really not necessary. The rest of my collection has simply 'happened' via jumble sales and other people's delightful cast offs.

So, you understand, my daughter really hasn't had a shopping role model.
In other words, its really not her fault.
She hated it, but we emerged with a couple of items. I think the most joy both of us had was finding some really 'cool' stuff for her brother who, at 17, has less interest in shopping than he does in shower gel, and that is saying something.

I blame the time of 'Sort of Spring' that we are in.
I eye my sheepskin boots with something akin to nausea most mornings, sliding them on with a 'not again' sort of sigh. I cannot believe that at the end of last Autumn I felt excited about boots.

How I long for slip slops, sun hats and loose cotton tops.
Of cause my daughter cannot yet wear the clothes she begrudgingly bought. We are having a cold spell again, and those purple 'chubbies' are back out in full force.
Who can blame her?

Pass the blanket.

Soup

2011-09-08T08:21:00.000-07:00

One day this week I helped out in a soup kitchen.

The kind folk here at the Methodist Church in Knysna dispensecontainers of soup to over a hundred hungry people, every Tuesday and Thursday.And there are a few other soup kitchens too, in other parts of town.

I was quite sick that day, and as a result experienced it allthrough a feverish haze.

Still, I have dispensed soup before, and when L picked me up, andtook me home, to fall headlong into my sick bed, the memories tumbled around myhead before I slept.

Times spent in such different realities to my own linger on in mymind, anyway, like some dream or hallucination.

Memories of spaces and shadows falling into grotesque shapes,under bridges, under foggy, dim, street lights, late at night, came back to mein my delirius sleep.

I remembered other times spent with people who live on the street,who gather in dark corners, mostly out of sight, with some security only lentby a concrete wall or a reinforced pillar, holding up a highway, way up above.

Those in need of soup, to be sipped, slowly, into a body not muchused to food, can be found in these sorts of places.

We joined them, a twenty something me and a couple of others,under the P E freeways, a long time ago.

Port Elizabeth had a docklands like no other South Africancity. It was bounded by a row of strip joints and sleazy nightclubs in oldwarehouses, which let out into the underbelly of the freeway network.

It was a labyrinth of concrete pylons, holding up highways goingno where - a world of cold cement and tar-kept back from the sea, by chickenwire fences, and a row of faceless buildings,with the waves so near youcould smell them crashing in the cold air curling round.

I remember fire lit faces with toothless smiles.

The people gathered under the bridges, warming themselves aroundthose fires, mostly smelt incredibly bad. I, then not much accustomed to them,recoiled a little. But, I had a friend who brought her small, three year olddaughter with her, and she let those dimly lit women dandle her, which theyloved to do, and stroke her little smooth head, and she was not a bitafraid.

And so, I let my hand be held, by one lady, who, still somewhatdrunk, wanted to sing me a song, in exchange for my offered, polystyrene cup ofsoup.

Everything changed for me after that.

Similar hands took soup from me again on Tuesday. Hands with longnails, ingrained with grime. Thin wrists emerging from stiff cuffs, ringedround with dirt. Grey hair tangled into dreadlocks, hanging down alongsidethin, crusty and lined faces.

They sat on the wall in the sun, and waited for their number ortheir name to be called, graciously accepting soup and samp, from my hand totheirs. I had had no part in the expense or preparation of the soup, andwondered at myself, in between helping to wash containers, dry up,dispense, receive, smile, chat briefly, lapsing into my words used for thoseunknown to me, 'love', 'sweetheart', ' my dear'...

That turn of phrase, resident now in my speech, found its waythere during my time in England. It has settled into my vocabulary,comfortably, cheek by jowl with 'skat', 'liefie' and other all encompassingterms that cover a wide variety of folk, and roll, effortlessly off my tongue.

I used those comfort words first, when working with the Homelessin Guildford, Surrey.

There, in that lap of luxurious Southern England, I spent sometime, distributing soup and sandwiches. The Homeless there, when unable to makeuse of the various shelters, also gather in similar dark corners.

We found them, in the icy winter, by breaking through thebarracades of back, boarded up windows in a multitude of 'squats' - a darkwarren of connected terraced houses, abandoned and derelict.

Finding our way in, in the freezing dark, was the stuff of clothes,jeans and arms, being hooked on nails and shattered pieces of wood. It wasclambering up, over, through, crumbling, tumbling, falling down stairs stuff,and missing a pothole and losing your foothold in the ripped up floorboards,and following a thin beam from a headtorch lamplight stuff - at leastthat is how I remember it.

The people we found were wrapped round in a blanket and still andstiff with cold and alcohol and drugs. I am not sure how welcome our sudden,bursting upon them presence was, really.

But stumble over them we did.

And they mostly sat up and took the Sainsbury sandwichesfrom us - yesterdays fare- but quite exotic with tastychicken tikka, or prawn cocktail fillings, inbetween two soya seed, sourdoughor rye layers of slightly curling bread.

They, the forced to rise for us, recipients of our worthy gifts,were grateful for the most part. Mad for the rest.

One man, I remember, jumped at us, and swiped at us with a plankof skirting board, like a raging demon in the dark. We beat a hasty retreat andI panicked that I would not find my way out, but I did, and tumbled out, backinto the dark, tangle weed garden. Quite safe.

I will, I think, be back at the soup kitchen, this Tuesday.

Being older, and more cynical about myself, I do wander why I doit.

Without thinking too long and deep, my more philosophicalside might present an argument about balance or justice or just doing good.

But probably its just because I like it.

Just because I like to do it.

Feed people.

And I like them, those of the stripped away gaze, andthe open eyes, of the stale sweat smell, and the stench of alcohol and dirt. Ilike the held out hand, the bad toothed smile.

Maybe it is a kind of love.

I surely hope so. Then it is something more than like, and senseor understanding is not necessary.

No answer. No solution to be found.

Just a cup, from hand to hand.

Ballet

2011-09-01T07:01:00.000-07:00

The Ballet came to Knysna.

An old friend bought me and my daughter each a ticket. Turned out she bought a load of tickets and on the day we all followed her, splendid as she is with grey plait and jaunty hat, to take our front row seats, amongst the other ballet dames, with grey coiffed hair and legs crossed neatly at the ankles, in the Knysna NG Kerk Hall.

Ballet is not new to me, although seeing it so close up is not something my daughter takes for granted.
My sister did ballet for years. We started out together as little girls, me dropping out early and moving sideways to the more heavy handed (or footed) tap. Even the satisfying clickity clacks bored me pretty quickly and I moved out yet again. I found my niche in drama as siblings tend to unconsciously give space to each other , leaving my sister to the delights, and there are many, of ballet.

The most impressive things about ballet, to me as a child, were the concerts. Concerts and costumes. I remember my mother hunting down seamstresses and fumbling, panic stricken, with paper templates and dress patterns. A sewer and a maker of anything creative my mother was not. She was a secretary and an earthbound gardener. She still is.

Ballet teachers are a different breed. My memories of them are of tiny flexible feet, fluttery fingers, and feathery beehive hairdos. They are eternally cast, for me, against a backdrop of church halls and rows of little girls with buns, clattering around and thumping jumping, spinning and falling.

The soundtrack is one of piano playing, by a retired ballet dancer, looking up and over all from behind her spectacles, while the teacher loudly shouts out single words - in French - plié, pirouette - and first position, second position, third...
It was all fascinating for a very young me, sitting on the church chairs at the back with my mother and other mothers, fretful over the next concert and the whispered expense of it all, the bother...
But it always came together in the end. Temple Bell costumes, Thailand style, scratchy I thought, and stiff, with a large headdress which my sister wore without a murmur of complaint. She only vomited a lot, as I recall. Excitement did that to her, always. And so, she glided out from the wings, in tutus, Polish Mazerka peasant dresses or as a Temple Bell pretty pale beneath all that make up on a totally empty stomach, with my mother praying silently that she would not faint.

As it turns out Ballerinas and empty stomachs seem to go together.
You have to be light.
There's a lot of leaping and jumping and catching that goes on. I saw that close up in Knysna the other day. The dancers were right on top of us all. I loved being so close up. Its so much nicer than looking down or up to a performance on a stage. I did that often in the P E Opera House, growing up, where we regularly went to see Capab Productions and Phyllis Spira. Once two men stood up in long black coats and threw single stemmed roses at her feet. I was awestruck by that, feeling, for a moment quite transported to London or Paris, forgetting the limited charms of the Opera House, with its tiny stage and musty dimly lit foyer.

My sister danced on that Opera House stage later, many times, when she got older. I did moon over the star dressing room, the tutus all squashed together on a rail, the strange turned out feet and the delicate but hollow thunk thunk ballerinas make rushing about in points.
I tried to be very small backstage, so as to be smiled upon by a totally transformed face, now sporting eyelashes as long as a birds feather.

Oh, the magic of it all!
The magic of the dance does linger. I dreamt of the Knysna visitors that night.
I remembered
the hooks and eyes holding the extraordinary tutus of lace feathers sequins satins brocade and gossamer floating tightly together
the delightful lycra bottoms of the men
quivering fingers and gently perspiring foreheads
glossy lipstick smiles exactly tilted necks arms elbows knees ankles toes
lifts and legs and tight holds releases spins stops..

There is always an element of imperfection to any live performance, a crackle on the soundtrack, a piece of loose cellotape, a slipped strap, a feather fluttering down, a wiff of cigarette smoke from a fleeting flying figure...
the illusion slips
I enjoy the little girls, who run onto the sheets of floor covering laid down specially for the dancers, once they have skipped finally behind the velvet curtain. At their age no imperfections can be seen.

And me, I was transported.
Probably by their awesome commitment almost more than anything else. Their work. Their striving and attaining perfection in their craft. Their ability to transport me, in lifts and tilts, and to be so balanced...

I remembered other church halls.
Thanks Fi.

Pizza

2011-08-25T12:29:00.000-07:00

Last night we ordered takeaway pizza.
We wanted to treat our children, and so, while they tucked in I watched them, and realized that pizza has always been part of their lives, something they know.

Not so for me.
Archie comics arrived at my childhood house in mysterious ways. I don't remember ever buying any. Comics were frowned upon in my house, where good literature was always highly praised and encouraged. But it was in the pages detailing the antics of Veronica, Betty and Jughead that I first encountered these strange, platelike, floppy, edible things called pizza, which I pronounced piz - za, without the obligatory, inserted T.
They were a mystery in the then South Africa, alongside 'Sea Monkeys' and that empowering ingredient that transformed the guy on the back page advert, who never had sand kicked in his face again.
If you know what I mean, then you know.

That was then.
And me, growing up in a suburban house, set like an island in a sea of mown grass in P E, glimpsed the bigger world as best I could.

There was one big exception to the comic rule in our house.

Every Friday the British mail arrived, and we would stop, on our way home from school to fetch our magazines from CNA ( as long as there had not been a workers strike in Britain). We bought chocolates too, and home at last, shed our uniforms for an afternoon, bare legs hanging over the side of the sofa, of reading.
Chocolate melting on my tongue on a carefree afternoon still fills me with guilt free pleasure. No homework, no sport, just the antics of 'Patty's World' in 'Pink' magazine, and posters of David Bowie and David Cassidy and the Bay City Rollers to drool over in 'Jackie' with my sister.
My mother paged backwards and forward through her 'Womens Weekly', which educated me all about the Royal Family, and 'Mills and Boon' romance. We always had 'Look and Learn' thrown in for good measure, no doubt to assuage my mothers guilt of all the frivolity
.
Everything was always depicting the wrong season, winter in summer, summer in winter, and the special enclosed gifts never arrived. I don't think I ever heard a song or saw a moving image of any of the pop stars on the posters, which my sister and I stuck up on our bedroom walls.

When I first arrived in London later, fully grown , and surfaced from the tube somewhere near Trafalgar Square it was all so familiar. The train out from London through the suburbs, clattering between the backyards of the terraced houses was as known and loved as chocolate on my tongue.
It took years before the reality of its strangeness overtook me, my deep Africanness surfacing and totally swamping every other thing.

Then, memories of lying ill as a child and listening, against my mothers wishes, but she was at work, and it was just me and my nanny Sarah then, at home, to Springbok radio all morning, would come back to me.
I balanced the leather encased transistor radio on my stomach and it was so close to my face that I was reflected as in a mirror in the silver metal lines across the speaker. I stared into my own eyes staring back at me and listened to 'Under the Jacaranda Tree' and other stories so gripping to me then, that I would often have to fake an extra day of illness so as not to miss the next installment.

I fell under the spell of serials in England much later, when the dreary dark afternoons kept me housebound with my baby and I had only the telly for company. The Australian soaps in the afternoon filled the screen with sun and sea and funny accents.
But my downfall really, were the British series, when, on my little snowflaky screen I followed the antics of all the 'East Enders', and, with chocolate in hand, and baby sleeping, it was the British mail all over again.

My love of magazines was born then I suppose.
The black and white 'penny horribles' Sarah read in her room, and the Afrikaans radio dramas in the afternoon she listened to whilst ironing, were out of bounds for me. Mom came home then, and I picked up my real book, probably a classic, maybe Wuthering Heights - again.
I loved them passionately too, its true.

But, what sweet memories.
Archie comics, being read with my damp swimming pool hair dripping and making the print run, whilst lying on a towel in the sun.
Those British mags being poured over too, by other far away girls, who were, I thought, like me, but were really oh so different. They had 'fellas' and 'discos' and called their sisters 'our Kate' and wore their hair loose to school, and their ties pulled down.
And food like pizza was being eaten, and people all went to the 'pub' .

None were like me, lying in a sick bed, with no TV yet , but only a transistor radio for company, and a nanny called Sarah, who came in from hanging out the washing, to pull my bed straight, and plait my hair back very, very tightly.

And if I was very good, she would make me french toast with Worcester Sauce, and bring it to me , on a tray.

Fevers

2011-08-18T11:30:00.000-07:00

Its been the time of fevers in our house for the last couple of weeks. No doubt its linked to the time of year, a new school, new viruses.

I took my thirteen year old daughter into my bed the other night, like my mother did before me. L had to sleep on the sofa, or her bed. He opted for the sofa, her bed being one large knot of blankets and sheets. We extricated her from the tangle like from the tendrils of some tropical plant. Her fever was so high she was hot to the touch. I watched over her all night, whilst she tossed and turned and muttered strange delirious strings of poetic words.

I was a very feverish child myself. I think I ran a fever with every virus I had. I also had illnesses like tick bite fever, hepatitis and my sister the deadly encephalitis. My mother tended us both faithfully, folding cloths soaked in vinegar and laying them across our brows.

Some illnesses I came home for, having left some lover who proved unable to tend to me. My mother changed my soaked sheets and pajamas as faithfully as if I was still a young child.
I sailed the seas of my fevers like a drunken sailor, muttering muddled thoughts through parched and thirsty lips. Indeed, the days after a fever feel like those of a man who still has his sea legs on dry land, with a rolling gait and a far away horizon in his sights.

Rudolph Steiner has a thing or two to say about fevers I believe.
I spent some time at a Waldorf School, my son in the Nursery and me in an office. The fantasy world of washed through purple and lilacs and pinks coloured both our worlds willingly. No nightmares there I found, only a dreaminess, and a welcome escape from the harsh reality of the divorce we were enduring at the time.

I think my son had some fevers then, And I, comforted by some dear women, almost 'brides of Steiner' I fondly remember, rode those fevers with him. The Waldorf world has no fear of fevers. They are seen as necessary times of travel, of journeys almost, to the other side. Times when 'we can truly be ourselves.'
And, when they, the fevers pass, we awake afresh to a new, bright day, alive with possibilities.
I do remember that feeling.

In those Waldorf days I was wracked with pain mostly, emotional, spiritual and physical. My body was bent double often then, with the passing of agonizing gall stones, so 'galled' was I with an individual, I suppose. Our bodies do, it seems patently clear, mirror our minds and our emotions.

So, very healthy now, my thoughts have turned to illness.
I watch my husbands eyes grow bleary and red rimmed, watery, his pupils like two swimming fish in bowls, when he is sick and tired. Those fish flash their tails at me, like warning flags of approaching illness. Stress does it too.
He hardly remembers having a fever - only I do, nursing him once through the high temperatures of pneumonia, when he made the transition from bachelorhood to me and mine. That was a long bridge to cross.

No doubt my daughter has made it over some high suspended crossing with this latest illness of hers. It is a time of change for her in body, mind, place and face. I remember her as a baby, emerging from fevers to reach another milestone. She took a sudden step, uttered a clear loud word, slept through or tossed a bottle aside for a sippy cup.
And never looked back.

In my nursing days I held many a hand whilst feverish eyes flickered and bodies shook and sweated and fought that within which needed to be dealt with. I felt I might have steadied them as they made some crossing.
.
I left some folk after a fever. Some left me before.
All I know is something changes with a fever.
Something new begins.

Broken

2011-07-28T07:18:00.000-07:00

I read an explanation of the word SHALOM once. It was, 'nothing broken, nothing missing.'
I always remember that, when interpreting it the more common way, Peace.

I watched 'Eat, Pray , Love,' again the other day. There is a scene with the Elizabeth character, in Italy. She is with her somewhat frightening, brusque and honest new Italian landlady. The lady is outspoken, and decidedly disapproving of Elizabeth when she says softly that , No, she has no husband, that she is, in fact, divorced. After a few more broken English questions to her about her divorce, Elizabeth quietly admits, 'We broke it..'

We broke it.
Any divorced person knows that there are few things in life as broken as a divorce. Shattered, messy, scattered,destroyed..done.

I love it when scenes in films get played backwards. When, for example, a child dives back up, from the deep water, up, up, through the air, back up to the diving board.

Or, when the many shattered shards of a piece of precious porcelain gather themselves together from their watery puddle on the floor, and gather that puddle back into their belly, and then, reformed now, as a pretty painted jug, they travel upward through the air, to be clenched again (obviously not well enough, not tightly enough) into some delicate ladies hand.

I wish some things had never been broken.
At nearly fifty I wonder if it could have been possible to keep more things whole, in one piece.
I watched something on YOU tube that explained (quantum physics, I believe) that there is a theory that everything started out the size of one (maybe green) pea.

There was a Princess once who knew the power of one tiny pea.

I rather like the thought of a play backwards of the moment of creation, of all of us and the cities and the seas and the planets all zooming inward and squeezing down to fit in, cosily all inside each other....

To me God IS the Big Bang.
Or maybe He is the Pea.

He is a lot of other things too.

But the most comforting thing to me right now, as I survey, from a great height, another broken scattering on the floor of my life is...
That He is surely SHALOM, or one small pea, containing all the pieces.
Healed and whole.

Commitment

2011-07-21T06:06:00.000-07:00

I have been away from home for a long time. Five weeks. To me, that is a long time. Long enough that when I opened the door of my home and walked inside, and sniffed the air, it smelled different, not like me/us any more.

The cups and plates and cushions and other things were in different places and spaces and it felt like someone elses' house. It took me a while to settle back in.

Still, I was happy to be home. Very happy. My dogs were happy, one thinner, one fatter. They were both strangely subdued. And so was I.
It took me a few days to make one decision. And this was it.
Time to commit.

Commitment and I have a long history.
The thing is - I seem to do it. But actually I don't.

One of the first things we did when back in the Garden Route was to take a young nineteen year old Dutch boy bungy jumping.
He wanted to do it. He booked a jump as early in the morning as he could. He hesitated only because he did not understand the instructions to jump. They were in Afrikaans. And there was music playing. Loudly. Even we could hear it, from the viewing station across the gorge. He was on the curve of the arch beneath the bridge. The highest bungy jump in the world.
I suppose they play the music to help the jumper. Similar music is played in clubs in Amsterdam. Here it beat out along the fynbos covered ravine running beneath the bridge and out towards the river sky sea.

When he jumped I screamed. He, was silent. He said he was aware of the air rushing passed his ears. Silent.
That's commitment.
You make a decision and you do it.
No turning back.

I have moved over fifty two times since I was eighteen. I think that might be a world record.
My children have moved about fifteen times. They are grumpy about it - but I am not very sympathetic, really. I tend to hold the view that not moving and staying in one place is only the accepted thing because most Western people do it.

So I tell my children that they could have been the children of:
- the touareg (my daughter retorts that at least the tent would have stayed the same - and all your friends travel with you.. and the desert is the same just about, wherever you go...)
- yachties (same argument more or less, the same boat, the same sea...)
- the maasai, who have no respect for borders, but only for lions, and own nothing but a stick and some pretty impressive beadwork ( the retort to this, from my son, is that the masai have sold their souls for wristwatches and photograph money and would probably live in a house in a security complex these days, if they could..)
- circus people (a friend pointed out that maybe, to them, we ARE circus people..now theres a thought - the juggling, tightrope walking, performing dogs, clowning....hhmmm)

But even circus people settle down eventually. Retire- to some caravan in a field where they let the grass grow up around its wheels. And yachties possibly throw the anchor one last time, or move into an upside down boat that they make into a home, maybe, complete with chimney. I'm not sure about the tuoareg, or the maasai, but their lifestyles are endangered and the lure of the west is getting to them too.
Which leaves us.

Moving is tiring, and the temptation to follow our noses over the next hill or beyond the next bend in the road is loosing its appeal.

Bungy jumping is expensive, but worth it I am told.
So here goes.
Lets stay!

New Books and Horses

2011-07-01T10:40:00.000-07:00

I wrote a book a while ago. I haven't done anything with it since I wrote it. I wasn't sure why until I met with a writer/editor friend the other day.

I met her in a cosy restaurant on the edge of the horsey set. I like it because people(women mostly) trudge through with manure and mud still on their boots. They have riding hat hair, and horse neck grime under their finger nails, from holding the reins against sweaty damp horse necks.

I have always been a great horse lover. My parents let me learn to ride a horse, but not a bike. Our road was too busy, they said. I nearly broke my neck on a horse a couple of times.
Its a while since I rode a horse. I lived in Greyton for a time and rode with a group of women, all, like me then, in their early forties. They all fell off, one by one, until it was only me left. They broke arms, collarbones, and fractured a skull. I decided, if I was next, I might kill myself. I stopped. But I regret it. At the time I thought I still had children to raise. Indeed I did, but life is risky nevertheless, and so you may as well ride, ride - the world is wide.

I was always a bit of a daredevil on horseback. There is a famous story in my family of me taking off with the Xhosa groom over the Katberg mountains on one of our family holidays. I do remember him daring me to race - he was on a naughty pony, and me on a horse sick to death of carrying tourists, no doubt. I think I lost control. I remember dodging overhead branches, but clinging on while the groom beat me, anyway.

I can still feel the elation of galloping, standing up in the saddle, leaning forward, hearing the wind in the horses nostrils. Great. I would like to feel that again - but I think I have become a real scaredy cat, the thing I have always despised above all else.

So, I like driving the roads of the mink and manure set. I love pausing for riders and their large rumped, sashaying tailed mounts, trotting on the side of the road. I love the the tap tapping crop and clicking tongue riders, with matching blonde swaying ponytails and straight up down backs.
It's a treat to meet at the horsey deli, then, to discuss the publishing , or not, of my first book.

Officially, actually, its not my first. I wrote another one years ago, locked into a centrally heated flat in the dark of northern England one dismal bleak winter. But thats another story.
This second first one was a sort of rewrite of that other one, a sort of gathering together of pages of scribblings from piles of moleskins, printouts, tapestry,tie dyed,pretty printed covered books that I have lugged around with me, for years.
It feels like that, like a shedding of skins and skins. like a lizard

My friend was marvelously helpful, basically giving me permission to leave the manuscript in a drawer and move on, for now, to my second book, which is, well, champing at the bit, to be written.

Its like a wild horse, a new book.
Like a herd of wild horses.
Like a herd of wild horses all tossing their manes and neighing and stamping and pawing the air to be let free.

Its terrifying though.
They feel impossible to ride.
So, I suppose I'll just let them go and watch for a while.
New books and horses are like that. To me anyway.
Never totally under control.

Waiting

2011-06-23T08:20:00.000-07:00

It seemed like I waited forever. That's the thing about waiting. It feels like that. Like forever.
I learnt a thing or two while I was doing it though:
1. Waiting is stressful
2. Waiting is boring
3. Waiting teaches patience
4. Waiting is best done indoors:

in a waiting room
womb
tomb

This waiting was done in three places.

I have the best friend in the world - who let me wait part of the time in a large flat in her garden. I was alone most of the time. I made new friends:
                                                        the bed
  the fluffy red blanket
  some books
  a couple of grey squirrels
  decaff - cappuccinos
  a cosy trendy deli
  some horses wearing blankets in a green field
  some leafless oaks
  a new meditating me
my interior room

Later I moved on - not alone anymore, to a cottage in a grassy field in the country outside Greyton. I had my family with me by now, but new friends were waiting, nevertheless:

  a light lit swing bridge at the bottom of a green
  slope.
  a large lazy river under it.
  a wood fire
  other beds
  a sunny stoep

There were naturally more cappuccinos and lots of mist. There was a misty road out of which overall clad men emerged on bicycles, their startled eyes glowing in our headlights.

When you are waiting you consciously pass time. You think a lot. You worry. You make Plan A Plan B Plan C...then you stop. And wait.

Our third stop was a suburb house in the city. We carried in bags, wetsuits, books, computers,surfboards and too many suitcases. We planned to stay a while. We unpacked. We were still waiting but we settled in. We stocked the fridge. We introduced our little dog. We made new friends:

Two sweet black dogs
some books
seriously sharp knives
non-stick pans
television
the best bed

And then the waiting stopped. Just like that.

Winter Castles

2011-05-27T06:06:00.000-07:00

I can't make up my mind whether I like Winter, or not.
I think it depends on the duration. And the depth of cold.
England was too much of both. So was the Langkloof - and with no central heating!
Still, there is much to enjoy in a month or two of mild chill.
Stripy socks. Hats. Fires. Mohair blankets. Bredies and Pies and Soups. Boots. Books in bed.

And a winter beach.
Last weekend I bullied my two children into leaving the comfort of their books and face book and all screens in general to venture out with me and L into the icy outdoors.
The drive out was a miserable one, but I remained unfazed by our two gloomy backseat passengers.
The final idea had been L's, when he said something like -if we were tourists what would we do?.
And so we headed off to Noetzie.

We had both been there years and years before.
I did not remember the turn off being through an informal settlement. No doubt it had not been. These places almost suddenly appear. The road sides were lined by structures that had truly embraced the term 'lean to'. Lean too far and they would topple their bright turquoise, purple, red selves right into our path. They cheerfully teetered into the banks of nasturtium leaves, whilst the children outside their toppling houses waved. We waved back and proceeded on.

Down the gravel road we drove, leaving all behind us until it was all trees only on either side. And then we entered the Pezula Estate zone, of mansions perched in fynbos behind electric fencing, with soulless sheets of glass eyes staring with a lonely gaze down towards the sea.
We passed on, and our passengers cheered up, and we remembered other trips down gravel roads, dragging tents and gear to isolated spaces, and it felt a little like that again.

The parking lot was not quite deserted. L and I both know crime stories that have happened at Noetzie, but we both said nothing. Deserted places in South Africa always cause us to hitch our senses up a notch, pull out our antennae, as it were, and become a lert, in the African sense.
We met two fishermen on the steep path down. They were tired and armed with long rods and knapsacks. We greeted them, and they us.
I relaxed a little on the descent of bricked path. That had not been there before, and was built no doubt, by Pezula who have privatized a section.
A castle.

By way of explanation we told our two children (bright eyes now, with the assault of sea air and pungent fynbos, and the shiver of steep cliff to our left) that the castles built at Noetzie beach were a kind of folly. I forget the story, or history of it all, but the fact is - someone one or some people built six stone castles down there on the sand sometime last century - simply, I suppose, because they could.

By the time we made the final descent of 132 steps to the sand the children were ahead of us, and we were warm. L and I followed the bend of river around the corner and peered up at the castles and peered down to the sea, and ended up perched on an abandoned lifesavers chair - to keep watch. The children, meanwhile, with sticks in hand, followed steep tantalizing pathways up between stone walls and hanging vines, to wave to us, after a while, from blind, glassless windows in the very top, decaying castle.

They came back eventually, to say that apart from some graffiti about heroin the castle was absolutely clean and tidy, as far as abandoned buildings go. Only a rich kid shooting up then, took shelter once, it would appear. No shack dweller, wandering down the dirt track, past the shut away Pezula houses, came upon, and decided, on a cold day, to set up home in a castle by the sea. No dirty rascal making a bid for being King of the Castle.
It would be too lonely down there. There is a desolate lack of company - only a colony of seagulls gathered together on the icy sand, and two back birds with spread and drying wings on the foamy waters edge. No Ubuntu. No community in Castle land.

Even I was glad of two smart figures with large cameras glimpsed behind the buttresses of Pezulas private luxury castle. And there were one or two other tourist strays coming down with clicking cameras.
The ascent was harder work and my heart beat alarmingly. No fear now though, the spirit of adventure had caught up with us by then

We were a cheery lot on our return, and threw all final caution to the wind at the Knysna Heads, where we drank wine and ate pizza on the way home.

Tourists we remained, until the end.

Crime and Punishment

2011-05-19T07:07:00.000-07:00

Some people tell naughty children that the police will come and get them, if they are not good. No one ever told me that. But I heard it. I still do.

Good cop, bad cop has become an accepted turn of phrase.
It is a reality of life anyway, on which it just, well, depends, I suppose.

The police have been there, in my life, always. In fact, they are one of my earliest memories. I remember waking in the middle of the night to the sound of them hammering on the door of the servants quarters in the yard. The door of the woman who worked for my parents. Real fear gripped me as I heard their loud voices demanding that she open the door.
I loved her. I was little, and she was like a mother to me.
I heard my father open the bathroom window and talk to them, and then shut the window and tell my mother softly that they were checking passes. My mothers ghostly form drifted into the room I shared with my sister, and touched us both and whispered to us to go back to sleep.

I remember the police vans of the time, with the brown fingers of the men in the back wound around and gripping the wire mesh. I was not sure that I could trust them for myself, but I was told I could.

At university and in the communal houses of my early adulthood I knew the sound of the security police kicking open a door and bursting in. In their uniform of tight jeans, running shoes, leather jackets and moustaches, in the Eastern Cape, I knew some of them by name. Their faces had shouted into mine a couple of times.
I would be lying to say I was not afraid , but being young then, and white, I had felt invincible.

Not so, anymore.
L has been hijacked too many times. Once with a gun to his head, and the trigger pulled, but the stolen, mismatched bullets stuck in the chamber. That drove him to a solitary life on the Crocodile river, with an old land rover and a long drive back to Jozi.
Another was with AK47's in a barrackaded schoolyard .
There was another one, but the details get confused after a while. That drove him back to the Fairest Cape.
The point is, we have not, not been touched by crime

So, last week I did not march into the police station because we do not understand the issues around crime. I served on the Community Police Forum in the Langkloof precisely because I try - to understand the issues, that is.
I marched into the police station because, a short while earlier my son - my seventeen year old, tall and lanky son, with a new cell phone, a bank card, a snazzy purple asthma pump and no doubt a wad of crumpled tissues(rhinitus) , in his pocket - had come riding home on his very good bicycle, with his beanie on his head - visibly shaken.

The two policemen who stopped him now know the exact contents of his pockets - because they made him empty them. They know how good his bike is because they checked it over. They know the colour, curl, length and height of his hair because they pulled his beanie off and checked it out as well...

I have been told that they - asked where he had been, whether he had been using, what he was doing there (on the streets of Sedgefield), whose bank card he had ,how his asthma pump worked (he had to demonstrate),whose bike it was - because they can and will stop, search, and make a young man spread his arms on the bonnet of their vehicle and pat him down, wherever and whenever they like.

I took the complaint as far as my son would let me, which wasn't very far.
He is not very happy.
To him the police are far from being friends.
I understand the feeling.
I thought those days were over.

Every Mother has her Day

2011-05-14T00:17:00.000-07:00

This morning I woke up thinking I hadheard my Mothers voice.

I experienced a moment of confusion,like when a dream crosses over into reality and voices escape frominside to outside, for a moment.

She is not here, where I am, but isalive, and living in a city far away.

This morning her voice brought meintense comfort. Like when I was a little girl, and I would awake toher, and reach out my arms , with eyes still shut.

Every week I phone her, and eventhough our roles are beginning to reverse, the roles of carer andbeing cared for, she can still be, for me, a warm voice of comfort.

A lot of our lives have been lived overthe phone. That way our voices could be any age, and I forget that myface is becoming more and more her face and I am aging. And I forgetthat she is getting old.

There were many years when we lived onseparate continents. Years when most of what we said was conveyed inletters ( mine since returned to me, a big bundle tied with string –I can't recall where they are even now.)

Phone calls were for Christmas andbirthdays. There were a few years of New Years Eve calls, when I wasstill young and it was a tipsy delight to phone all and sundry at twoin the morning for a slurred 'Auld Land Syne'.

Our lives intersected at times backhere at home and we connected, mostly in quaint towns but also busycities. I was always a faithful visitor – dutiful, perhaps makingup for the grey hairs she claims I gave her, which I have now.

I gave her plenty of scares I guess, bydisappearing on yachts for weeks on end and doing other dares thatshe probably guessed at, but didn't know.

So, when Mothers Day comes round, likeit did a while ago, I phone, of cause, and I do miss her.

She and I have had our lonely spells,hers by staying, and me by going, but we are grateful for the phone.Its not that we have always been the best of friends, but her imprintis so strong on me that , wiping away the mist on the mirror, Icannot avoid her.

I can only hope that my voice will be asoothing balm (it must be the right time of day, you understand...nottoo late, when the weariness of the day has taken its toll.), for mydaughter in her life. It does not stand to reason of any sort,because, there has been hurt, and fear, and doubt, along the way.

A voice can be like a refrain, or afamiliar song, that takes you back in time, to moments well lived,and loved.

I live in Sedgefield, and my mother inCape Town – and I miss taking her out to a special lunch on aspecial day. I would like to think that these days it is more megiving and her receiving. But, no, it is probably not yet quite that.

Some say that you only truly grow upwhen your parents are no more.

I am still a very needy me , sometimes,and I do not yet feel fully grown.

All this, settles down on me right now,as we plan my daughters first trip to England.

She goes without me. Already we haveour skype conversations planned. She is the wrong age to confess tomuch anxiety or to express that she will miss me too very very much,as I would want her to.

I realize that I am the one staying,for the first time now, while she will go.

Many a call was made home by me, fromchilly England, to my mother, sitting sunny by the pool, with asmokey braai in the background, that I could almost taste with thememory of it.

With skype I'll get to see my daughter,and hear her, and that will be for better or for worse.

I'm not ready for any role swopping –but it seems it happens, ready or not.

A right Royal affair

2011-05-06T04:08:00.000-07:00

Of cause I watched the wedding.

There were many complaints from those who claim to be anti- Royal, and some whinging on about money being wasted and how inappropriate it all is in this day and age...

I remember similar comments about the World Cup and the money being spent by our poor nation to host such an event. I explained in an e-mail to a friend in Britain that a party is important sometimes. A moment in time in which to forget the tough times, the violence, the disillusionment, the discord - and join together and at least believe, for a month or more that we all love each other and are united as South Africans.
It was a great moment.
It seems the same may be true of Britain, and I for one sat in my African living room and thoroughly enjoyed it all.

Life is too serious at the best of times, and lately I really believe in the Power of the Party.
And I try to still believe in weddings. I've had two, and the only Royal thing about both was probably the jelly and the icing.

The first one was the most in contrast to the Royal one witnessed in London the other day - and with all its political correctness and lack of spending it still didn't last.
So, theres no guarantee..

I bought the dress for that cross racial/ cultural wedding in a pre-democracy South Africa in a Surf shop the day before the wedding. It was plain white viscose and I wore purple shoes. My parents bought me flowers and the groom was jazzy in dreads and an Indian waistcoat!
The black community I worked in was bused in and my dress was later stained by the blue dye in the icing of the slab cakes we cut into hundreds of squares for the children whom I carried around the reception. Only immediate family from my side were present, due to my choice of groom, and all in all it was rather a gloomy affair.
There was no dancing, just eat and drink, and our Azapo and other friends, who thought they were 'communists' would not enter the church, but languished outside until it was all over. I do remember a young 'comrade' wrote us rather a nice poem which he recited mid floor whilst the cake and cokes were consumed.
We were idealists, thats for sure, and probably more than a little self-righteous.

That marriage, like many similar ones of the time in South Africa, ended in tears and confusion and disillusionment. So, I don't hold 'doing what appears to be the right thing' in such high regard any more. Its alright, you understand, but me and my second husband swung round more to the 'Carpe Diem ' maxim, I suppose.

That second marriage was just about 100% a gift from friends. We fell into it after two years of living together, probably more so that my children could legitimately say Daddy, and some misled idea of religion. It was a day of fun in the sun played to a Van Morrison soundtrack with friends outside under the Oaks. We ate Nandos from a trailer and tent and there were no speeches, no table settings, and was similar to the first in that I carried around children again (this time my own) and very little money was spent.
Still, the dream of marriage is one that brings a tear to even a jaundiced eye.

Maybe Wills and Kate want to have kids, and being Royal they need to be on the right side of the blanket. Or maybe it was more. Married they certainly, in a sense, already were.

It was also a gift I suppose, to them, by tax payers money, and then in turn another gift to all of us, the satellite viewers. Deep in our psyche is the desire of the mystical union, expressed in different ways, in different cultures.

In the end money has nothing to do with it.
Its all a dream. A hope. A fantasy.
Long may it last.

The Luck of the Draw

2011-04-29T11:43:00.000-07:00

Its a long time since I have done a dot to dot puzzle. I was always rather fond of them and used them to teach my children how to count. They are such a good marriage of right and left brain, aren't they? A combination of numbers and art as the picture magically appears.

Art and Maths are the opposite ends of the scale and passion of my sons schooling - one being hated and one being loved. It was in the pursuit of the one that I took him and a fellow art student to visit a local artist the other day.
Here in the Garden Route are many dabblers in Art and a few famous names also, hidden as they mostly are amongst the mountains and dunes.

Beatrix Bosch lives on the ridge of the dunes of Wilderness and has had an open house for the month of April - an exhibition contained within her house - and so we popped in. We were on our way to George for Art classes and she was alone when we visited, and we spent longer than we intended and were late (although, of cause we did not miss anything really). We stayed longer because we were invited upstairs to her workroom - which we could not resist and lingered longer there, fingering her piles of skins and admiring her newest work in process.

I glimpsed her bedroom to one side and heard the radio for a moment before she clicked it off. I had willingly toured all the huge art works downstairs, and talked about them, felt them, smelt them - praised them.

But, I have to confess my eyes kept wandering to the huge panoramic views of the crashing sea and beach stretching the entire length of the house, visible through the wall of windows. I noted that her bed was placed so that she could see it - the crashing sea.
I enjoyed the twinkle in her aging eye. The sadness too, was there, because of longing and missing and getting old and things ending, I think. I imagined the legendary parties (she said with up to two hundred guests) that used to fill the place in the seventies...
I saw one photo of her in the sixties, so pretty and vital. I remember her comment of how her and her late beloved husband used to run down the wooden walkway to the beach, with bicycles, and haul up amazing and twisted lumps of drift wood, which he made up into sculptures..

It was she who interested me , almost more than her creations of leather (purple, red, orange, turquoise, black) and wool, hanging heavy on every wall. I thought of her strength in bone and muscle and mind as she created, letting the leather speak to her, against that backdrop of sea and sand.

So I left late, but still sad not to stay longer. She seemed lonely, and would not deny it, because she is quite recently widowed and alone. After all, there is surely no way to separate the Creator from her Creation. The Artist from her Art.

In preparation for teaching Art I am lately swept away into the world of Artists. Enthralled by the stories of Gauguin, Modigliani, Kandinsky, Rousseau, Picasso and the rest. I think of Paris and poverty, of mistresses and madness, paint and passion, light and laughter.
The Creator and Creation, all jumbled up and impossible to separate.
Dots and numbers, dots and numbers..

I spend a lot of time these days thinking about the act of creation and how it starts with one dot.
One number, or a lot of dots and how they are joined and become the numbers, the sequence, the picture...
And I think about Beatrix - on her duney hilltop, within her walls of bright and brilliant leather - looking out at the sea with her artists eye.

You are sixteen, going on seventeen...

2011-04-21T03:39:00.000-07:00

My son just turned seventeen.
As always, for me, a birthday brings with it a bittersweetness, especially when it is one of your children, getting older, moving on.
And now, its strangely winter, a sad and sudden end to summer, and I close my eyes and think of England...

My bonny bairn was born in the borders between England and Scotland. The Scottish nurses hailed him as the future President of South Africa, seeing as he was born on the cusp of our new democracy. They tucked him into the car, sheilding him from the icy North Sea wind. A lazy wind they called it, "Why go round ya, when it can go right through ya.."

That was all after the panicked removal of me and my belly on a dark night, in an ambulance, through the border hills to a 'proper' hospital where he would be born by emergency c-section. We were accompanied by our Scottish nurse in the back of the swaying ambulance who got herself high on the 'gas and air' which she repeatedly offered to me and then enjoyed herself.

For most of the journey her face was covered by the large black rubber mask - I was attended by her halo of golden curls and her beautific (read stoned) smiling presence. She later visited me in the maternity ward and presented me with a knitted pink jumper for the babe - an honour she foisted on all the babies she accompanied in the ambulance.

With hindsight I think that what I was going through was pretty much like what was happening in the run up to the vote. A mad rush to rescue a life on the brink of tragedy, with a crazy angelic being in control, with a home knitted jumper as a reward at the end for the creature that had been born - a being that she was a little confused about - what was it?

Ten days later we travelled to Glasgow to vote for our exciting new country. I was nursing a baby and a hacked and black laced up wound and the air was icy and grey. The voting hall had an air of a party where hardly any guests had turned up, but those who had made it were determined to have fun nevertheless. A couple of women yululated and some elderly folk punched the air with their fists and muttered 'Amandla' I think.

Our Manchurian friend kept us laughing by peering hopefully out the doors in expectation of more exuberant voters, but to no avail - only a trail of bleak grey Glaswegians huddled or tottered by, ablivious. We were left to sit upstairs in our apartment , coaxing life into our sooty coal fire and had to be content to watch the scenes of sun beating down on those long snaking columns of queues in our home country
.
I nursed my baby and sipped soup and sobbed with the missing of it. The loneliness of it - us mothers know the new baby tears and fears. And I had it for both those new babies then, mine and the other mine (that longed for country of jubilation and joy) .
I have never stopped regretting not being here, and being there...

Still its now seventeen years of democracy and boyhood. Seventeen seems to be nearly manhood, but the British have the best word - a lad.
Lads can be loutish, funny, irresponsible, adorable, sexy, hunky, sweet, violent ,maddening, charismatic,scary unforgettable,loud, thoughtful and relentlessly cheerful.
A lot like our democracy.

Timing is everything

2011-04-13T22:08:00.000-07:00

Timing is everything.

I sms'ed that to afriend the other day, and I've been thinking about it ever since.

I remember a film I sawonce, with Gwyneth Paltrow, called Sliding Doors. Basically, as Irecall, it was about the difference a second or two can make. You getinto a lift, or you don't because the doors slide shut. You meet theman of your dreams in that lift – or you miss him....and life isdifferent evermore.

The other morning Iwandered down to the Lagoon, like I often do. I had something on mymind, and needed to think it through. So I sat on a bench covered inmosaic (a Sedgefield thing) to do just that – a sort ofthink/pray/meditate thing.

What I heard was adistinct voice telling me to Pay Attention.

Check the details.

Stay in the moment.

So, I noticed peopleout on the muddy flats, pumping for prawns, and others joining them,and others leaving.

Two women, withrugsacks and prawn pumps were passing behind me. I turned to them andasked them what they were doing. They told me, stopping their longgumbooted strides, to smile, to unpack their rugsacks to show metheir handlines, to explain how they pumped for bait, then moved overthe lagoon to a fishing spot where, they assured me they would, sometime that day, catch a fish.

For the pot, forsupper, for the family, or the neighbour.

They greeted me andmoved on, and I watched them till they entered the lagoon and wadedout, maybe feeling my eyes on them.

The timing of fish andhook and bait.

Timing of seasons andcurrents and desultary conversation.

Sliding doors.

Chance encounters.

I went home gratefulof meeting them, and their generosity for allowing me to glimpse fora second the pace of a lifestyle, probably generations old, and thatit is still continuing.

There was nothingspecial about them or me that day – but the timing was never theless perfect. I think of them often at that time of the morning, andit is a comfort to know that they continue, most days, with theirrhythm of life and me with mine.

And I remember, moreand more these days, to pay attention.

Check the details.

Stay in the moment.

Timing is everything

Once outside PrinceAlbert, on the pass, we came upon a man, stumbling towards us, hisface a mask of blood. We stopped. He staggered. Before us on the passroad was a car. There were three bodies. One flung against the cliff,where a smear of red paint showed me the car had ripped through. Onewas in the road. One was near the edge, where the road gave way to adeep and unforgiving ravine. The car was twisted and still.

I got out. L tried hiscellphone. The children peered anxiously at me from the back window.I moved from one body to the next. Some were still, some moaning.Another three people were still in the car. The wandering, bloodsmeared man approached me again. He reeked of alcohol. The man on thecliff side also did – his trousers were down, and I noticed hisDaffy Duck boxers. Another car stopped, another one drove on,shouting that there was no signal there, in that sweeping corner ofhuge mountain, grey road and green ravine. He would drive on to makethe distress call.

I got back in, and wedrove on.

There was a man withlatex gloves, and a medical kit – and another now stopped, who weremoving amongst the injured, tending, touching – in a way that Icould not.

Sliding Doors.

A moment before wewould have been facing that red out of control metal

coming careeringtowards us, from side to side, ripping along the cliffside andacross, to be propelled back off barriers and rocks, to eventually bestill.

How many avoidedaccidents have there been?

Timing is everything.

Be in the moment.

Pay attention.

So we are faithfullymoving forward on this journey, trusting that no opportunities arebeing missed.

That danger, has beenavoided.

That secret other lifethat could have been, but isn't.

Re:treat

2011-04-07T22:46:00.000-07:00

I have just returned from being on retreat.

The retreat was held in a secluded place in the country. A silent, hidden place amidst mountains, with a stream, trees and an overgrown pathway to a beautiful waterfall.

To me all that was, neither here nor there.

Most, being city folk, hotfoot it out, retreating willingly and longingly from the madding crowd, towards the silence and serenity.

I, coming from the Garden Route, and very recently before that, coming from an even more hidden place, ran, full tilt, towards the city and my friends, tolerating the location, outside the city walls, for the greater good.

Four of us shared a room. Four maturing ladies, finding ourselves on single beds (me on the bottom bunk!), reverted very quickly to girlhood.

I have a favourite film - Out of Africa - and apart from the allure of Denys Finch-Hutton, it is Karen Blixon on her farm in Aafrika that delights me. Her story telling, whilst seated around a lace and crystal dressed table, on tapestry chairs, being waited upon by men wearing white gloves....is the stuff of dreams.

She was a great weaver of tales, as Isak Dinesen or Karen, and to me, the greatest of all is the tale of Babette, and her feast.

It turned out that , this retreat, held on a kind of African Farm, contained within it many types of Babettes, for me.

There are some friends who live within a fearless abundance, that has nothing to do with money. During this weekend I was at the receiving end of some of that.

And , as weekends like this are meant to be a drawing closer to God by drawing away from worldly things, and drawing towards the spiritual, I found, like Babette,that the opposite proved to be true.

There was a Narnia moment when I was tempted, like Edmund, by the indulgence of Turkish Delight, and I , like him, could not resist!

An abundance of them had been tossed to me, where I lay on my bunk bed, while we chatted and laughed, pretty hysterically , before we slept.

My last waking memories are of a friend spraying me with Issy perfume, so that my crumpled down sleeping bag released that heady fragrance at every restless turn, throughout the long night!

There was an exploration of deep matters of a spiritual nature which I participated in, in a manner of speaking.

But the greater thing was just Being.

Just being with all of those Babettes who shared with me their passion for shoes - sixty three pairs! (What have I being doing with my life? Obviously not shopping nearly enough!) and their passion for books and their husbands and dancing and wine and food and music and smoking cigars and Italy and laughing (rude and crude) and our children and each other and thinking ....and God.

So, even though Edmund was tempted and indulged, it all turned out alright in the end. All safe and happy because Aslan dealt a final blow!

And Babette blew every last penny of her winnings on the greatest indulgent feast for all her friends, and they ate food they never even knew existed and despite a resolve not to, they enjoyed themselves and laughed and drank and ate and found that by doing all that they could, finally, love each other.

I was so sorry to leave them all.

To say goodbye.

What fun it was!

What a treat!

Thank you

Someday Sunday

2011-04-01T18:20:00.000-07:00

Its Sunday as I write this and it is striking me again how much Sundays have always been hard work to me.

Maybe its because I grew up in the Suburbs during the Apartheid years. On a Sunday everything was closed. Everything. Even the Portuguese shop down the road only opened long enough to dispense the Sunday Papers and other essentials before closing down. And the afternoon would descend like a heavy blanket. Of silence.

Those days are over, but like a hangover lingers, that dread of Sunday afternoons lingers. I like to try and con myself that it is in fact not Sunday - to trick myself into weekday activity. But that defeats the purpose. The day of rest will not be fooled, or take it, as it were, lying down.

That is, after all, what Sunday afternoons are for. As a little girl I knew that, with heavy lidded parents dozing over the piles of crumpled newspapers scattered on carpet and couch, we were not going to be doing anything exciting in the near future. A quiet game of Barbies on the floor in our room with my sister was about as interesting as it was going to get !The entire suburb dozed...

I lived in England for years and felt it still, and although not as many shops closed, and hardly any one went to church, Sunday still refused, on the whole, to do very much at all.

The thing is, Sundays, to me, are relentlessly and achingly lonely. And silent.

Where is everyone?

Resting, I guess, on this special day, especially put aside for it.

I can't help thinking that Sundays are incorrectly named, not being very 'sunny' in my opinion. They should be called Saturday, seeing that a lot of 'sitting' is done.

Which brings me to the Sabbath question. For a while we considered swapping the days - in terms of rest anyway. In those days we were still pinning 'rest' in the Biblical sense to a particular day. All that has changed now, and anyway, Saturday refuses to rest, just as Sunday, well, refuses to do anything else.

Even beaches seem to be melancholy on Sundays, with beach umbrellas, even, bowed in sombreness. My favourite records pulse out through the tepid Sunday air, with hushed tones.

It is a dilemma I really have tried to beat back in a variety of ways.

There was the busyness of church for a time. The morning rush, the hour or so filled with singing preaching fellowship, filled up an hour or two.

Driving back to a lonely lunch was even harder then, for me. And the thing is, even being with loads of people does not dispel the gloom. Sunday invites her dreary self to come on in and sits herself down amidst the happy throng.

Even the solution of water does not work. I am like a kind of pill that dissolves in water, it being medicine of a sort for me, but somehow, the water beneath the surface of the pool, when I dive in on a Sunday, is more silent, even still, than on other days.

Ho hum. Glum.

I need to shrug it off.

I have a memory of my father mowing the lawn on a Sunday morning in a string vest. Or him and my mother pushing the long blue pole of the pool vacuum, which I could see over the wall surrounding it when I skipped home from Sunday School.

He would sit in the cool shade later, and drink a cold beer (letting me sip the foam) and tell my mother, again, of the little suited man, Bible under arm, who would pause on the pavement to shake his head at my perspiring father, hard at work.

We work often on a Sunday, behind our computers, with music playing and maybe a braai fire beginning to smoke. No matter what we do, the Sunday afternoon settles down eventually.

Its with a sigh of relief that I notice the sun going down, marking the end of another Sunday.

It feels disloyal to dislike Sundays though.

It also feels unfair to think that Sundays are forever old, when the obvious desire is to be forever young. But thats just how it is to me. And old, even as I am closer to it myself now, than to youth anymore, has never been the most desired thing.

I have worked many a Sunday during my motley career, and even a working Sunday felt different from every other day, its true.

Rest, of cause, is important. Maybe I could take my day off on a Monday instead.

But I've got a feeling that days of the week are like children in a family, where birth order somehow defines something of who you are.

And so the world turns round, to a count of seven, and Sunday has no intention of changing who she is, for me, any time soon.

Breakers

2011-03-24T08:20:00.000-07:00

Surfing has been breaking through our lives for the past seven years or so like a long long set, rolling in. L and I love the sea, as I have said before. One of the first times L went walking at Noordhoek with me and my two children, my little year old girl turned herself to the sea like an iron filing on paper. She stretched out her arms and propelled herself on sturdy chubby legs toward the waves, unfriendly as they are at Noordhoek. Crashing freezing sucking huge. We reset her on a straight course and she rotated again and again towards the foamy magnet.

Our son rode his first waves at Muizenberg while I sat huddled under a towel on the windswept beach, being sandblasted along with some other Moms with flasks of hot tea. L and I paced the shoreline and tried to spot him out at the back line. He was fearless at ten and would ignore our calls and time out hand signals.

JP's leg was taken by a Great White one blue day at Muizenberg just as we pulled out of the parking lot. We missed the sight of it all, the bloody foam, the horror of him on the beach, turning the colour of the sand as his life ran out - nearly.

It was hard to return to the sea after that. Gary from his surf shop on the Muizenberg strip led the children back. He did handstands on his board to lure them back to the fun of it. The sirens rang at every nervous sighting but they had always been there of cause. And are there still, and soon we were surfing under the warning flags flying and the shark spotters declared that from their high point they could see nothing, anyway.

We took a group of boys and boards to surf most Saturdays, and when they were done, they ate hot boerewors rolls that splattered fat over freezing fingers in the back seat of our Cruiser, with hoodies pulled low while their fringes dripped and they talked about waves. And the years passed, with L and me eating beachfront bistro breakfasts and befriending other surfing Moms and Dads. We waited for the children to come, shivering to us, so that we could warm them with hot chocolate and praise (yes we did see you on that wave...it was you..yes).

And when we left the Fairest Cape we missed that most - that view from Boyes Drive, of straight white lines on the endless streaky blue sea some days and the surfers (we called them sea lice from up there..)

Of cause L had been one of them a long time ago. I always say I have the photographs to prove it all - the combi, the girl, the dog, the long hair, the surfboard. Some his age are still out there on the waves, all crusty and craggy and still living the kiff life we sometimes dreamt of.

But now we find ourselves in the Garden Route, savouring the delights of Buffels Bay. A hidden place to us before now, that beach has opened up to us like an exposed secret. L and I, we walk almost all the way to Brenton some days, with the hard sand under our heels, and we peer into the high and dry jellyfish wobbling like misshapen crystal balls along the water mark.

Our girl is mostly surfing now, still turned as she was, to the waves. She crouches low and rides long sometimes. We watch them now from the big square deck there, sheltering under the canopy of umbrellas. Our boy hauls out the longboard and rides - still, lean and lazy to the shore.

We watch them as always and they come out and find us for their reward of steaming salty vinegary chips perhaps, or, with the sun beating down, a lime milkshake in a lime green retro glass like a vase.

Sometimes in the heat I grab a boogy board and head on down myself, to be pulled to shore by a foaming breaker. I no longer stay in long enough for the rhythm and rolling of the seas tugging to come back to me, at night before I fall asleep.

But dream I do, of stepping out into liquid, and riding.

Booked

2011-03-18T12:33:00.000-07:00

Years and tears ago I went for a job interview for a librarian post.

I had no reason other than that I love books ( by the way my friend thinks I don't like Kindles because I do not have one – I am not convinced. I am reading a twenty year old book from the library at the moment – it has thick pages, smells musty and is all out of shape. I love it – it calls to me – its also a Cormac Mc Carthy – so that may have something to do with it. And for those who have gone before a helluva lot of it is in Spanish, so...)

I also wanted to be a librarian because the post was at the Port Elizabeth Library, which I adore. It is an old Victorian building, with Queen Victoria standing in marble outside. It is a cluster of small rooms, two storeys high, ringed round with narrow balconies. I spent hours in there at one time, sitting in the reading room, with all the homeless men taking shelter from the rain, reading newspapers.

I applied for the job, and got an interview. A problem presented itself. At that time I had no decent clothes. I earned my living by waitressing and rented a room in a tatty house, writing most of the day away and working at night. My diet consisted of cigarettes and souvlakia at the restaurant. I walked everywhere. My shoes were down at heel.

I borrowed clothes from my mother for the interview. Her shoes were too small, but I squashed my feet into them. I fought my long, permed hair into a scraggly bun, and, with my 'John Lennon' glasses perched on my nose made my way to the interview. My reflection in the shop windows on the way told me I looked like Barbara Woodhouse, the dog trainer.

I made it through to a final interview – and then – the other girl got it. I was gutted.

A librarian I was never to be, but my love for that library continues and my love of books is relentless. I am a seeker after libraries, and never have been as disillusioned as with a library in a rural town which once spent thousands on a new floor and did not buy a single book. Who, I feel, even notices a bouncy floor when you have a good book in hand.

Walls could fall around me, trains rattle through my station stop, aeroplanes take off...

I suppose I am a reading addict. The sort that reads anything anywhere, any time. It was a difficult day when I could no longer read any label on any product anywhere and so had to join the ranks of the spectacle necklace brigade. I need to read the cereal box while I eat my breakfast, the menu of cause, from cover to cover (even if only drinking a cappuccino),and every ingredient label on any supermarket produce.

I am, anyway a great fan of packaging, and would hate to miss a detail. I am also a loo book reader, and if no book is present, will read the aerosol spray can. I read the bubble bath, the toothpaste, the dental floss – give me a moment to spare and I will fill it with print.

At the moment I am not part of any book club and I adore book clubs.

It's something about the women, the eating, the wine, the book grabbing, the wine drinking, the laughing, the frowning ('you mean you didn't like it...?').

Book clubs are book insurance. You are always covered in an emergency. So is the floor beside your bed normally, because I always took at least three extra 'just in case' books.

The only thing winter is good for I reckon anyway is reading in bed. Warm, but with freezing hands I constantly pat the duvet as I read – I suffer from 'I've lost the bookmark' anxiety. Loosing my place phobia is the only phobia I've got!

But, even though I have no Book Club in Sedge I do have the market.

O yes, and a few marvellous book stalls there are too. My daughter says the owners are not really my friends – they just see money when we approach and that's why they greet us so warmly!

I disagree.

Only a good friend really knows ones taste in books and will point out possibilities. And only a good friend lets one run up a tab like every good bar man who understands need when he sees it – for that book you have to have but have already spent your last rand.

And only a friend will hunt around for another of that one book...that one special book that was there last week and is now sold!

We have piles of unpacked boxes of books and are filling our shelves with new second hand ones instead. How I love someone elses book, with their names scribbled inside, sometimes an address, sometimes a message.

I linger over them for a minute, wandering..

So, Kindles are probably great for aeroplanes and suitcases and travelling light. But this love affair, with musty, dog eared or glossy beautiful fascinating books is an addictive one.

Hope you enjoyed the read!

Just for the record

2011-03-09T22:38:00.000-08:00

It started in a small way.
Sedgefield has, in my opinion one of the best markets in the country.
Actually, it has three markets.
We started out at the food market, which serves, again in my opinion, the best cappuccinos on the Garden Route.
That's all it was, in the beginning.

Then we discovered the felafel's ( I dream of Israelis every time I take a bite!)
Then we discovered the cheeses, the olives, the breads..
We enjoyed the French music, the delightful dogs on leads who became like particularly characterful friends because you see them every week.
But it all got rather expensive – and so a change was called for.
We visited the Middle market.

There it also began with just one purchase.
Although I paused for a long while before making my selection, running my hands back and forth along the plastic CD spines. Flip, flap, pick up, put down, whilst calling out to L, or him to me,
'O remember this!'
or, “ This brings back memories,” pausing to savour a flashback so vivid sometimes, it took my breath away. Music does that. Takes me back, to a far away memory, and I can smell, feel, almost touch it all..
I think our first choice was decided by the stall holder, who lures you in by playing some or other CD and puts the cover on display, under a tippex on black plastic sign saying 'PLAYING NOW'
So, we took home Donovan, all mellow and yellow and young.

Of cause, it was not difficult to move from listening to Donovan, stretched out on the couch one lazy Saturday afternoon to thinking about other couches, and other music
.
We had a room just for my sister and me when we were growing up. We named it 'The Clutta” and celebrated it mostly by playing records. Although it was the late seventies we were about ten years behind in our music tastes – mostly fuelled by 'Bluesway', a record library in Port Elizabeth whose records we borrowed and shamelessly taped.

Oh, and if we really loved something we visited Michael's Record Bar down a sleazy side street off PE's Main Road, where I asked the Afro haired guy behind the counter to spin a record for me, and then joined the other 'hippies' on a couch in a dark corner. We all donned those cool big padded headphones and he was generous, and played the whole record for you sometimes. And you could smoke while he did it, and stub out your stompie in one of the large psychedelic ashtrays.

Those were the days of Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Bread, Patti Smith, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin....
I would listen to them all later, lying on my belly on 'The Clutta' floor and warble along to the words, all printed out, as they used to be, on the record sleeve..

A few years later my best friend at Rhodes came to love old Joni as much as me, but I do remember her squinting at me once, through a haze of cigarette smoke and saying, ' Joni is so cool, and these words are fantastic - but what the f........ is she on about?”

And so that's how, L and I came to buy a turntable last week. From the CD man.
We got talking about all those wonderful records sitting in a tin trunk in storage. We got talking about the extraordinary, and now lost pleasure, of studying record sleeves, many of which are works of art, I think.
We talked about the pleasure of slashing the sealed tight plastic wrap off a new, imported record. Of sliding out the record, balancing the disc between middle finger and thumb, before settling it on the turntable and sending the whole thing spinning... then, watching the stylus touch the vinyl, wobble, wobble ,and there it is. Pure, full sound, washing over you.
Bliss!

We've been doing just that. For the whole of this last week.
Our children are delighted with it all. Our youngest – just thirteen, has become an expert, delicate handler of the magical black discs. They have heard my favourite Joni's a few times now. I find it irresistible to cook by, to warble along to.

The only thing is – was one side always so short? It seems to take the time of chopping one onion, finally sliced. Maybe an onion and a green pepper, finally sliced.

It could be a nuisance, but while the novelty of it all has not yet worn off, my daughter is always available to turn it over. She even likes some of it.
Although it bounces at times. And crackles.
But it feels good – just like James Brown.
Even though I still don't always understand Joni Mitchell.

Bellissimo!

2011-03-03T22:26:00.000-08:00

I have just been to watch 'The Tourist' with Angelina and Johnny Depp. I am particularly fond of Johnny, although, one doesn't really know him as such, does one, as he is always behind some mask or another. The 'Mad Hatter' make up, or crazy Jack Sparrow with four sets of extra eyes, or all emo like in Edward Scissors hands.

In The Tourist he presents his real face - I think - but without giving too much away - we don't really know that because....

But I digress. The real reason for me going all the way to George, to the Big Screen was.....Venice.

Glorious Romantic Enigmatic The Last Place To See Before You Die - Venice.

I have a bit of an Italian thing going on at the moment. It started a while ago, with my good friend Jamie, who I took a virtual cookery tour of Italy with. L fed the relationship when he bought me the 'Jamies Italy' cookbook for Christmas...and my food has had an Italian flavour ever since.

A good friend once commented that, no matter what our financial circumstances are we always have a good bottle of Olive oil . Its true, I have fed the family solely from our vegetable garden at times, but those veggie roasts were always a feast - because of olive oil. The Italians, naturally , know that, a couple of tomatoes, a medley of peppers, a zucchini complete with gorgeous yellow flower, a good glug of olive oil... Voila!

I have noticed that it is also a phase Hollywood seems to be going through at present. A lot of films are being shot in Europe. Bored, no doubt, by the pace and face of Manhattan and other city scapes they have swapped all that modernity for Tuscany, Provence or the ancient, cobbled, scooter driven lanes of the Old World. Like Venice.

Or Rome.

I watched Eat Pray Love the other day. I thought I was going to enjoy Julia Roberts (always been a fan) , but as it turned out it was Rome that captivated me. Rome and the Italian language, the gestures that accompany it, the food, arriabatta, carbonara, spaghetti, pizza, puttenesca,minestrone...tiramisu!

La Convivialita!

A language of foodie love making. Sensual. Indulgent. Excessive.

I have been teaching my son all about the Renaissance. Italy is conspiring to captivate me with its allure at every turn. Michelangelo, da Vinci, Donatello, Raphael...and on and on. We pour over photos of painted ceilings, that huge exquisite David, those multiple complex sketches of helicopters and other contraptions, way before their time in that one Italian mind.

I teach him Drama also and of cause it has to be Romeo and Juliet, and so am I thinking of passion, tragedy, and the masked balls .....

Italia is everywhere I look!

The last straw was a wedding.

Family of L made their way to Mossel Bay the other day. A wild girl women, once a rebellious family member, now a serene and beautiful, elegant woman was to wed. And her groom, complete with an entourage of brothers, sisters and children, was to fly in.

And of cause, they all are Roman, those to-be in-laws. When we met, the first thing I thought was that the children (adolescents) had skin like alabaster. They had dark hair, dark eyes, a little English and dispensed kisses, left, right, left....I was enthralled.

The wedding vows were on the beach, and we were all dressed in white, or the colours of the sand, and the gazebo wedding bower was strung with shells. A pod of dolphins blessed us all with some foamy surfing tricks, just as the vows were said.

There was a posse of paparazzi cellphones, and in some photos the Italian groom was strung with vine like seaweed and shells. I thought he might be like Neptune or some other Roman god.

Later in the Restaurant shack, tottering on the dunes, we ate seafood with a mussel shell, and the blonde bride and her dark haired man put on Swing and danced it for us, barefoot.

There was an orange moon that came up over a purple and turquoise sea and all, like statues holding cellphones aloft, recorded it all.

But not me.

I watched, from the shadows, attired also all in Roman white, while those children,with names like Renaissance painters, flitted like moths in cream and white lace and kicked off their shoes and danced ...

So, all this has been good for Steves Trattorio in Sedgefield. It's the closest I can get right now to Italy. It has da Vinci sketches on the wall and the most excellent pasta and pizza.

We drank wine there the other day with our meal and made plans to go. Dreamy plans to go to Italy. Soon. To trawl the galleries and canals in gondalas and to eat and be merry.

La Dolce Vita!

Jump

2011-02-26T01:19:00.000-08:00

The children were meant to be in school this year. I was totally convinced of that. I cheerily gave away every last home school resource I had, convinced that the season of homeschooling was over. We had all done a year of 'normal schooling' and it seemed that that was going to be the way for the years to come.

Without going into all the heart rending, nail biting, stress inducing, confusing and seemingly chaotic events that led to us approaching the start of the first day of school, and it passing us by...

The end result is us at home again - unprepared, unequipped, unhappy at times, and less anxious as each day goes by.

Leap - and the net will appear...so said....

A friend of ours told a heart stopping tale the other day, about how, as he approached Port Elizabeth he spotted, out of the corner of his eye, as he sped over the Van Stadens Bridge, on the other side of the road, on the outside of the bridge, a woman, hardly hanging on, leaning out, over the terrifying abyss.

I remember the little details he related about the encounter. Her neatly placed size seven sandals, left side by side on the side of the road. Her bare feet on tip toe, balanced on a pipe on the outside of the bridge. Her hands, her mere fingertips, hardly holding on to the railing, supporting her body as she leaned out and away.

He tells how he ran to her, and while the police kept back the onlookers, the hooters, the jeering passing motorists, he spoke to her for two hours. Two hours of begging, pleading, weeping, whilst she, nonchalantly, adjusted her grip and looked out and over, as if already committed to the jump.

After two hours he, and two policemen hauled her over.To safety.

He had been the net for her that day, there being no physical one that could ever have saved her.

So, that story reminds me of how I felt at first, when the abyss of homeschooling opened again before me. Terrifying, and yet inevitable. It was calling me towards it, dangerously, destructively and unavoidably.

God does that sometimes. He closes every other door, so that the only open one has got to be Him. He is the open door. Even if it feels as wide and open as a gigantic chasm yawning around us as we hang on by our finger tips.

Jump.

Leap.

Fall.

And He will catch you, one way or the other.

Even if it is being caught up in the air before the hard rocks hit as they come rushing up to meet you.

It is extraordinary how things work out if you listen. If everyone around you is aware, catching that fatal glimpse out of the corner of their eye, and stopping, running over, to extend that helping hand.

People are on the look out for us, like a highway patrol, and as we await the arrival of our curriculums, we have in the meantime a standard of education that we have not had for years.

The net appeared, and we are safe.

Every day is that 'leap of faith' -which is of cause not one at all.

Carl Jung said - I no longer believe - I know.

So lets do it - JUMP

To be of Service

2011-02-17T00:10:00.000-08:00

Here in our new home we are in the service industry. We are cleaning pools. The business belongs to a friend and L is working with him.

L is a technology man. A screen man. A friend called him the 'computer whisperer' He has a deep, clear, intimate knowledge of what makes a computer what it is. He has that with dogs too. I never thought that computers and dogs had anything in common - but lately I have changed that view. L understands both intimately, and I always thought was never happier than with dog beneath him and a screen before him.

Until now, that is.

Until I saw him doing pools.

It is summer now of cause, and that does help.

Most of the pools are on the rich side of town. A place where the houses are situated on the sides of fynbos covered dunes with views of the white and blue sea. The pools are mostly of the rim flow variety and if you lie on your lounger, and blink your sunglassed eyes to the horizon, the edge, the very edge of your infinity pool blends with that view beyond. I suppose.

To the pool man rim flow pools are trouble. They collect algae and are mostly inaccessible. They cling to the edge of cliffs and are threatening to life and limb, as you balance precariously on the edge, hanging onto the brush pole like some flapping sail in the breeze.

Pump rooms too, we have noticed, are built as an afterthought, for midgets, or other circus acrobats who are double jointed and can manage to remove sand from the filter, with head down, posterior to the ceiling and one leg in the air, because there simply is no room for it in the room.

One day, with my neck ringed round with the bright blue coils of the vacuum hose my daughter declared that I looked like a model of alternative fashion. Edgy pool haute couture. Pool punk fusion fashion. I think of it every time I negotiate the steep slippery marble steps down to some pool, with swinging bucket and pipe necklace like some ramp model on acid.

The sea is in the reclaim business. I note that whilst waiting, dip stick in hand, whilst L calculates quantities and mixtures in buckets. There is rust to be found on the metal furniture, left alone outside the shut up houses, and work for the maintenance man in leaking downpipes and peeling and warping wood work. Plenty of work for those in service. In fact, at this time of year those are the only vehicles to be seen on that side of town. The pool man, maintenance man, garden man, domestic services, electrical services, builders. It keeps us all busy, our small vehicles struggling up and down the paved dune roads, laden with an assortment of gear.

The temptation is there some days to fall, headlong into one or other cool swimming pool, when the sun is beating down and burning as we splash our way with chlorine and acid and purifiers and sand and salt. We never do. The pools all overlook each other in order to overlook the sea. They jostle for position in their quest for location, location, location.

The lagoon will do for me.

When I stay at home our son accompanies L and they work hard side by side, mostly in silence, as most men do. But they come home hungry and brown and tired.

My husbands hands smell of chlorine when they find the keyboard again. His shorts are damp here and there. White dots are appearing on his t-shirts and his face is sun burnt.

He's happy, he says, squinting into the sun, with dripping hands, as he reads the colour of the water, lying there, squinting back at him.

The Pool Whisperer.

Four Aunties and a Funeral

2011-02-05T12:38:00.000-08:00

There are some members of my family that I have not seen for thirty years.

Thirty years!

Lately that number has been coming up a lot. I am forty eight, so thirty years ago I was just eighteen.

It was the end of school, the beginning of Rhodes.

It was 1981 and the state of emergency.

It was Detention without trial.

It was a time of hiding the Freedom Charter and pictures of Mandela.

It was a time of dancing to Ska till the security police came, kicking down doors and shouting in our young peachy faces.

It was a time of sitting cross legged, long haired and learning to roll our own.

And for me it was a time of turning away from Aunties and Uncles and family Christmas conversations about Blacks and Reds and Coloureds and Kaffirs and dying a red death in a dark bed.

As a smaller girl I had looked up to them all. They were a particularly raucous bunch of South Africans and 'Rhodesians' who descended to the beach for the summer holiday. They gathered in groups and braaied and drank and partied.

No New Years Eve ever has lived up to those. I remember bowls of upturned trifle on an Aunties head, green hose pipes spraying water through windows, everyone in the pool at midnight and hooting loudly whilst slurring the words of Auld Lang Syne.

I was in awe of the Aunties, smoking endless cigarettes, shrouded in a gray haze,with long painted fingernails, perms and streaks. The Uncles gathered in a different smokey cloud of braai burning, sunburnt bellies,and tall chilled glasses of beer. I avoided them, especially the one with a wandering hand which once crept up under the edge of my adolescent denim shorts!

By eighteen we had all had enough and our branch of the clan dropped off the family tree. The rest grew on, flowered in unattended weddings, blossomed at baby baptisms, and shivered with the winters of funerals. I was absent from all.

Until last month.

Most of the spouses of my mothers siblings have passed away, but it was only last month that her oldest sister, with a life of eighty odd years, well lived, passed away. The remaining family was gathering, not far down the road, in Port Elizabeth.

My mother, drugged up to her eyeballs (she has a fear of crying, flying, lifts, buses..) stumbled off the bus into my home. We completed the journey together, L and me and my parents...

Here in Sedge lives one of my oldest friends.We have thirty years of friendship under our belts. We have allowed our hair to go grey together and have given up smoking (a long time ago). Nowadays we spend time contemplating each others' children, because it all seems so sudden and so slow that so much has happened to us somehow.

So, grey haired and hanging onto my courageous L we swept into the church foyer. My mother, still drugged, was steaming ahead, keen to see, leaving my frail father concerned with keeping up, with a desire to comfort. I took him under my greying wing, and down the aisle we swept. My mother was lost, almost blindly feeling her way down the aisle, towards the coffin, covered and waiting.

So some turned, and their faces were hazy to me, like sketches rubbed out and drawn over with a deeper line. Some stood, and they met my eyes.

'Carol,' said some, to me - my mothers' name.

They realized their mistake almost immediately, as I gathered my mother in, propped her up,and propelled her towards them.

I was her, was the realisation that came to me. Thirty years ago, when she was forty eight.

So what does it all mean?

A slight crises.

Pilates classes and a decision to not go grey just yet.

A happy trip to the hairdresser.

Oh yes.

A decision to seize the day again, and again.

To not take one precious intake of breath for granted.

To treasure time.

To forgive everything.

To remember the good.

To love.

To live.

I guess its just another midlife crisis.

So what's a Slow Town?

2011-02-05T05:20:00.000-08:00

Sedgefield officially is - a slow town that is. I saw a photo of a man with a certificate from some place overseas. The gist of it is, Sedge entered, qualified and got it.

I thought Joubertina was pretty slow. Twee Riviere more so. They were so slow in fact that I got into the habit of never wearing a seat belt, never stopping at stop streets - just a gentle pause on the brakes, and through we go.

At first I did that in Sedge. I soon stopped, especially in the Silly Season with all those GP number plates.
They are not slow, although having said that many was the time when I found myself trapped behind an abandoned GP SUV in the carpark road whilst family members unloaded, loaded, disembarked, chatted and ignored everyone else - very slowly. They had embraced Sedgefields status whoeheartedly, and who can blame them really - they only have two weeks.

Sedge has a different kind of slow.

Slow has something to do with the tortoises. There are many around, some real, some not. Some are huge and mosaiced, some huge and emblazoned with the South African flag, outside the tourism office.
The Island is an unofficial tortoise sanctuary. I lived there once, and exceeded 30kms on the gravel roads sometimes. Frantic residents ran out often, waving at me to slow down. My dust was landing on their rose petals. I had a babysitter waiting - and I've never squashed a tortoise yet. And I did slow down.

Thats what Sedgefield forces you to do. Slow down.

Speed cops hide beneath trees all season long on the N2. Cameras are almost permanaently in place. The slowness gives you time, as you saunter down that particular strip of N2 to admire the worst part of Sedge. The shop fronts. And the row of horses/zebras that surely everybody knows. They stand in an arty row, frozen for many years now, looking good for their age.

Now that only the locals remain,they breathe a sigh of relief that the GP drivers have sped off and having spent cash like lottery winners the town can survive til next time.

Sedge locals rarely speed off anywhere, and anyway we can't afford to. So generally we cruise around, with our windows down, sunburnt arm on the sill, a warm breeze ruffling our hair. Why seal yourself in a bubble of aircon when the air is filled with african aromas of the sea and fragrant fynbos.

There is the adrenalin fuelled side of Sedge. Which isn't slow at all. Kiteboarders skimming over waves, surfers gliding in to shore, paragliders leaping off Cloud Nine. Thats another signature of Sedge, those paragliders hanging about the hill most days. I counted thirty up there one day, just dangling.

When all the extreme sport is said and done though things do seem to slow down a bit. I mean, who has the time to hang out in the sky most of the year, or surf in the middle of the day. Or sit around the beach restaurant with their bare feet dug deep in the sand, drinking beers?
What work does anyone do around here? Whatever it is, I guess we do it slowly.

There is always time to relive the moment just one more time, to tell the tale of that big wave, and share a slow smile, a chuckle.

There is a love song about a 'slow hand', a caress. Thats it for me. The wind through your hair, a sip of something cold, the sun on your face.
Life that caresses your senses.

Slowly does it.

2011-01-26T08:32:00.000-08:00

I am a sea person. I have not so secretly always known this.

And now I have returned to the joy of it. The sea. We again partake of the early morning walks along the foamy, gritty edge, hair blowing, jeans wet with the surprise - the surprise cold dangerous thrilling salty - waves! Oh, how I love it.

I also thought I loved the mountains. And I do. But the thing is I don't enter into them, thats the thing. I am not a climber, roamer, or a clamberer over rocks and cliffs. No hiker over hilltop or dale am I.

In a way I wish I was. I admire those intrepid explorers wearing thick socks and boots, with knapsacks and knowledge of lichen and moss and all manner of flora and fauna.

I just am not and I think its too late for that.

I am a water junkie. Nothing sets my spirits soaring like a quick fix of sea spray and sandy toes. A plunge into the salty lagoon washes all sadness away, as I turn round and round in the shallows, to emerge with that particular sea sticky salt hair and a damp towel clinging - to drive home and leave behind that maddening wet seat behind the steering wheel.

The other day I took to the waves in a dangerous sea that had rip tides, crazy cross currents and a powerful undertow all happening more or less simultaneously. I was not foolish, but it did toss me about a bit, and it sorted me out for the whole day.

The sea seems to enter one through your skin, like osmosis, and take up residence in ones soul. Thats the thing about the sea - the entering into. The being there, the being part of, the being covered over, contained therein thing that the sea is and does.

Lovely stuff.

So, here we are, in Sedgefield by the Sea, having abandoned the greener pastures and soaring mountain ranges of the Langkloof for the long sandy beaches, craggy cliffs and moody lagoons of the Garden Route.

The thing is, as I mentioned before - I am a sea person, a water person. Even sitting within earshot of it is good for me. L and I have a favourite spot, a restaurant where the tables sit on the sand, the waitrons have bare feet and only a pile of dune separates the patrons from the sea.

We were in danger of making some time there a habit at first, having swopped 'pink ladies' -the apples of the Langkloof - for another type of 'pink lady' -a tall glass of gin and tonic swirled with bitters! Time and our budget put a stop to that, but its good to know its there - waiting.

Its taken time to adjust after this last move. Every time we move it gets harder. I have become a tired gypsey it would appear. But going down to the sea each day, to the lonely sea and the sky has made it easier to steer this tall ship. This feels like a safe harbour, and, as always , we made it through the turbulence yet again.