Month: December 2024

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Island Blog – The Silvermine

We went there today, early, for a picnic and swim. In 1665 someone reckoned there might be silver to be mined here. There wasn’t, but the river was dammed in order to check for it, and the dam is a big and glorious lake now. Many, very many, come here to swim and to enjoy a day by water in what is now a Natural Reserve. There can be baboons, there can be snakes, but with the shouts of delight and the ebullience of human voices, an encounter is a rare thing, thankfully.

We arrived with swim kit, dogs, food, a rug, a few towels and we found a space. The space was small and spiky grassed, but it was good enough. We had walked by many larger spots, already taken, even though we came early. We settled. Just behind us, on the slatted walkway, we heard others walk by, also looking for a place to land. You always hope for good neighbours, at this point if you come with two dogs, one a puppy. We found them, or they found us. They also had a pup, a curious but beautiful mix between a terrier and a something else with long legs. She barrelled into our midst, soaking and shaking, eyes bright and we laughed and said hallo. Then our resident pup did the same, only he has a much fluffier coat. I heard, through the big ass grasses, children squeal and chuckle as they cuddled him. That’s the thing about the Silvermine. Although we are all on the same shoreline, we are naturally divided, with these big ass grasses and they are so big ass, a total view block, some even taking out sky. And, yet, we can still, if we want, connect.

We swam, we played table tennis in the water, we watched the dogs swim, catch ball, and all the while the afternoon moved on, tick, tock, as more people came and as others left. I wondered how this place will be when the gates are locked, when the sun is gone and the night falls dark on the Fynbos.

Silver or not, we found it on this very happy day.

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Island Blog – The Pretend and the Real

There’s a thing after a big occasion. It’s a bit of a down in the boots. The build up to something takes frickin ages, months of thought and prep and unholy panic. And, then, the day comes, as it always will, skidding in too fast, knocking those who aren’t prepared right over on their butts. We get through it, love it, hate bits of it, and then the night comes like a full stop to all that thought and prep and unholy panic. And, even though it is done for another whole year, there’s a wistfulness squirking around because for one day everyone got together, rising above the ordinary, the boredinary, the slough and chuff and scuff and dribble of the next bit, which is much longer than a bit. It’s going to work again, to school again, to facing the weather again without the lift of pretence. It’s like stepping out of fairyland and back out onto the street, wetter and colder than before.

I get it.

Oh, I know I am in Africa and Christmas was super hot and sunny, no need for a merry fire in the grate, no need for candles, which, by the way, would have melted into puddles by 8 am, but I still need to come home to the ‘street’. It wonders me, this whole shift, not just mine across timelines and a gazillion air miles, but for everyone else. Life will never stay still. Such a damn nuisance, that. But, it is how it is, and the slump after two days of festivities will affect all of us, no matter whom nor where we are. We love to celebrate, to have fun, to lift ourselves up and away from the pressures of our lives, to pretend, just for a short time. I believe this to be a strength, because I have met many, so many, who say MEH to celebratory felicitations. That saddens me. You, my friends, have lost the child in you, and that is a massive loss. We love to play, however stiff and starchy we may become, through pressures, hurts, wounds, damage and disappointments. Good news is that the child still lives in there, somewhere. And, the most playful people I have ever met, have always been the most broken.

We make resolutions. We break them. We set them too high, way above the beyond of what we can reach just now. We want to change, or we would never set these damn things, these Don’ts and Do’s that may never be us. I just decide to be more playful, to see the fun or to initiate it. To laugh more, to share smiles, to say hallo to anyone, everyone. To bring out the little girl I once was, before the pretend became a conscious decision, when it just happened because it was real.

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Island Blog – The Trouble with Labels

I would say, and have said, how much I hate labels. Let me explain. The first time I met them, there were four, written down and explained by an author whose name escapes me. At first, it felt reassuring to discover I was thus labelled, at some big business meeting, somewhere, way back when. It was exciting, because it was as if I had finally discovered me, the who of me, and it explained a lot – why I never had my endless questions answered, why I was the LOUD in the room, how I could walk into any gathering like a new adventure just arrived, startling everyone, and, unfortunately, receiving glares and go-aways from those in the other three categories.

Over many long years, with that label pinned to my chest, I have spent time breaking it down, because it was so finite, and that sort of blockage is anathema to me. Life and people are a flow, ever changing and adapting, so that labels, fine on something you want to buy, are little short of irrelevant when it comes to human beings. When I look back at the definitions of each of the four tyrpes of human, I can see myself in every one of them, at times, when required. Let me list them, if you don’t know what I mean:-

Choleric – strong-willed, passionate, direct. Melancholic – introvert, sensitive, suspicious.

Phlegmatic – neat, diplomatic, reliable. Sanguine – extrovert, optimistic, talkative.

I am all of these, when I need to be. I believe we all are. How would we not be all of them at times? One label does not define any one of us. Take People Pleasers, for example. Does anyone want to be stuck in that set of chains? Of course not. I can happily relate to my passion for making sure others are happy. I am sensitive and observant and can make a room of mis-matched humans into a happening, a melding of unlike minded souls, just by choosing the right music, the right time to say something, the right time to say nothing and just to listen, the right time to move towards a soul alone and to engage with gentle questions. All this does not label me a people pleaser, and leave me there because I, like you, am moving on. Life is swerving us, compromising our decisions and choices, picking away at our incomes like seagulls on chips, and we are adapting because we are strong and resolute. We are passionate but suspicious. We turn out neat, can be diplomatic and reliable, as we can also be strong-willed, optimistic and sensitive.

What we are, if a label is ever required, is dynamic. I, and you, I’m guessing, have denied self in the interests of others and the situation. We have been determined and strong-willed when a situation requires a leader and we are that leader. We have been introvert at times, extrovert at others. We have flexed and moved, stopped and turned to stone, elevated another, then thought that one through and grown wings for ourselves. We are passerine.

This merry season is a challenge for so many, perhaps for us all. Moneyed up or not, there is pressure. Please remember how far you have come, through (very possibly) many ghastlies, and who you are now. Not one label, not two, not twenty two. No labels. We are extraordinary humans, able to twist in any storm, able to guide others to safe landing. We are quiet and we are the voice that saves the day. We are passionate but able to hear another’s opinion and to consider. We are neat but don’t judge those who are not. We are suspicious but not of everything and everyone. We are always reliable, doing every task whether someone is watching or not. We are talkative but can laugh when someone says Shut up. We are all of this.

Someone recently asked me my advice for the day. I could only think of one thing.

Keep moving, watching, listening and learning, and, above all, recognising and saying hallo to every single person you meet along the way. They just might need it.

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Island Blog – Birthday, Trees, Luck Dragon.

Today is Friday 13th December. I know you know that. For some, both the date and the day bring collywobbles. Such a lost word, and a good one. Moving on. It is memoric for me, for our family, because it is a birthday. This boy was born in a frickin snowstorm and in an old folks home on an island because that is what there was. He spent his first few days in Matron’s bottom drawer. He survived all of that and is now a spectacular man, husband, father, although I leave his family to qualify any of that.

As for us, the we in Africa, in the sunshine, far distant from the birthday man, from the minus degree thing that’s going on in the homeland, we moved easy. An early walk, barefoot and skimpy clad to the Indian Ocean, to watch the Luck Dragon/ big dog bound and bond with a load of other dogs and owners as the whapshuck of light-lit waves, the height of walls, pounded onto a slop sand beach. Boom, and boom as the cusp curved and smashed against shell and stone, rounding into gentle . Such is a massive ocean, whispered in, or blocked by the resolute rocks of centuries, and the ocean will respond, raunchy and irritable, banging against resistance, with an attitude I wish I had learned.

We did our own work for a while, a morning while. Let’s walk again. This time among trees. I get that, the need for trees, and not the scrub trees of the bush, bent into an apology, but the huge wide-spread oaks and fever trees and pines and others with fat trunks and an eye on the sky. It’s Friday and we just can go, permission given. And we do. We load up the Luck Dragon and we head for the trees. It’s a drive, traffic is a Friday thug, but we get there and we walk through the space and the silence and the water and the trees and we forget the traffic and the tension and the demands of life and we grow silent. We watch the Luck Dragon welcome every other dog, enchant everyone who sees his smile and his permanently wagging tail.

And we drive home, the echoes of our time under the trees, beside the water, within the peace, still holding us in stasis.

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Island Blog – Drifting, White Teeth and a Cobra

I have been wondering, to be honest, why I sort of float through the days In Africa. Heretofore, I would not have defined myself as ‘floaty’, although I definitely can be at times, as if I have momentarily lost my way, looking about me in the hopes that my way will de-mist itself and reveal. Those times might have occurred in vast, and, as yet, unvisited, railway stations or when I walk up to the woods behind my home and can’t remember why until I do. The former is understandable. I am a very small and lost old woman in what feels like a panic zone and the only way to remain upright and in control of my luggage is to stand well back whilst I mind the gaps. The latter is considerably more pleasant. After all, I am at home (ish) and it is a simple task for me to turn, return to where I was when i chose to go up into the woods, relocate my purpose which is always on the other side of a doorway, and begin the process again.

There is no such logic in Africa, not for me. I believe it is because I am constantly awed, by the people, the languages and their percussive melodic phrasing, by the build of summer colours, smells, sounds and the suddenness of encounters on pavements, beaches, everywhere. Let us say we are travelling somewhere to get something. A perfectly normal thing. In the passenger seat I observe that very few drivers indicate. In fact, I wonder why the car manufacturers bother with the expense of indicators, so infrequently are they employed by the driver. A car, truck, fire engine, police car, woman, man, black, white, just drift left or right as if there were’nt another 450 vehicles swapping lanes all around them. There seems to be no car rage at all, if you don’t count the swearing within the vehicle nor the swerving and a lengthy comment by the car horn.

I’m watching bougainvillea scoot by on a high wall, crisped up with very sharp, security, knife blades, hibiscus the width and breadth of a small Scottish cottage, palm trees holding fragile bird nests, black faces, white faces, sun-burned skin, half naked tourists, the flash of white teeth in black faces: pavements too sizzly for dog paws, boats floating, ocean waves rising all turquoise and white-topped to crash down on laughing swimmers. Endless big homes, gated, locked, secured, beautified with spectacular colours; dwellings of tin and plastic, bunched together, a community. A seaside town, brightly painted, quirky, vibrant, offering fabulous food so cheap, everything fresh, great service, tiny bill. Colourful clothing. Africa. We arrive to buy the thing and I drift into the Exit until called back. I was watching the people, the movement, the whatever. I’m ok with it.

It isn’t the same as it was last time, up in Kruger Park with the definite chance of meeting a giraffe on the walk to dinner, and the absolute…….no walking after dark #leopard. Do I miss that? At first I did, but then I remind myself how completely terrificated I was just taking the puppy out for a pee in the morning. I could have met snakes of all varieties, warthogs (grumpy shits with big tusks and barely a brain between them) giraffes (don’t mess with that neck of steel). But, to be honest, none of that happened. My imagination has always got me into trouble. I can make a tiny thing into the end of the world as we know it, in a nanosecond. It isn’t a gift. So when my son called out, in this Capetown garden, whilst we played a gentle game of scrabble with no rules……oh look, a Cobra! I leaped onto the stoep, my heart playing jambells and dissonance.

Then I heard the throaty roar and saw the damn thing shoot by. Told you my imagination was trouble.

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Island Blog – A Mordant Flexibility

Any journey can be a pain in the ass, or a wonderful thing. It can also be an ok thing, which is not much, really, and not a time that will be remembered, just a ‘meh’ journey, like a crosspatch trip to the food shop, all those drivers who don’t indicate or stick to their lane, or the bus that shoots past your stop, etcetera, etcetera. I like the full word. Thing is, you never know at the outset. All you know is that you are driving from here to there, but the in between is an unknown, even if, un-trafficked up, you know it like you know your own name. There was rain, Hallelujah, and a traffic overdose. As we realised that the speedometer was not going to rise far beyond stop, and for flipping ages, we began to share thoughts. Issues arose, thoughts tumbled like cats over us, ideas butterfly-ed around the car, a Wimbledon of play and respond, as we sat facing the same way, the way of the snake of cars. You could feel the grumps from others, gringe-worthy green, puffing through slit windows, see it on the faces of those who absolutely did not want to be stuck beside the besider.

And we talked on, about thoughts on things which, very possibly, have never been thought about before, or not for a long time, at which they all woke up in delight and joined us. We discussed concepts and precepts and pets and how to break into change and what to order for dinner. In short, we flew. Subjects listed, elevated, flew, curved and landed with a stasis and a depth they didn’t have before. T’ween two like-minded humans, a journey that should take 40 minutes, but instead stretches out into double that, in that precious catch of time, of (if you like) enforced sharing, a new new can begin. It happens in the waiting, inhabiting the waiting until it eases fright muscles and begins to flex. Ok, we are late. We can do this fraught, or we can engage with where we are, and make it a new thing. And that new thing can couture a map for the next journey, define it with a fineliner. We find our way like five year old kids on their first day. Every single time.

We drove all the way there, and turned back, without achieving our goal and on a different route. Capetown traffic is, basically, a test of character, for sure. Attitude is good. We laughed at the push of humanity, the aggression, the arrogance, the fast pace we know is alive and kicking, but not one we want, nor value. You could say we achieved nothing. We would say we defined a new map.

Not bad for a Friday all subsumed with ‘deals’ and ‘offers’ and consumer beckoning and the biggest advertising push of all. That if you buy this, own this, everything around you will turn into a perfect life.

Such a lie.

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Island Blog – A Thingummy Tree, and a Surprise

Another lovely warm morning, too hot, actually, to read my book in the full sun. I look to the Thingummy tree over there, all that dancing shade and the two pigeons coo-ing on a branch. David Bowie, I think, as I take in their colourful feathers, flagrant and sparkly bright, as most creatures are in Africa. They even coo musically, more the beginnings of a melody and not irritating at all. Beneath is grass trying to grow, elephant grass, tough and fat-leaved, but failing somewhat in the growing palaver. Mostly, I notice, there are ant mounds, wee ones, not termites, little tumps of sand with an air hole I am careful not to block with careless step. I consider what to lie on that close to the ground. I’m thinking snakes, beetles, all those other crawly things, none of which I mind as long as they don’t sting or bite me. I haul out a yoga mat, towel, pillow, book, glasses and the ever necessary water bottle, and lay down. All goes well for sometime, the shade most pleasant, the David Bowies hopping around me, the flying things remaining in the air. So far so good. I had just finished The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, a fabulous read, and, becoming completely captured by Marjam Kamali’s The Stationary Shop of Tehran, I failed to notice that something was crawling up my body. It, or she, had managed quite a distance over clothing, and it wasn’t till she arrived on my shoulder, and tickled, that I snapped my head around to look. It’s always wise to look before swatting in Africa.

The sun was almost blocked out and I kid you not. This insect is huge. 2 inches long, an inch deep, scaly and brightly striped, red and black. She was, I swear, as startled to see me as I was her and, I confess, I did swipe her off, apologising as she plumped to the ground beside me. She took a minute to gather herself and then, snail-slow, no hopping, she began to wander into the bushes. She is a female African Great Grasshopper, at least seven times larger than the male and spectacular to look at. Our encounter, albeit harmless, kind of put me off lying there like bait. I read the same page twice, darting looks over my shoulder and jumping at every tickle. Ridickerluss, I know, I know, but once the thinks think me, I am done for.

I had made a promise to myself on the yesterday, I remember, and when all my hearty thoughts rushed in like I knew I had to push them away and just go. I couldn’t take a bag, a house key, anything pinch worthy, particularly not on a Tuesday when dawn rises with a lot of noisy lid closing as many poor folks, knowing it is bin day, riffle through old rubbish to find whatever they can to eat, to sell, to repair, to make into something. Not a day to be leaving a bag on the beach, even if it is always in sight. Starving folk run fast. So, cozzy on, shorts and a sun top and the always bottle of water and off I set, marching down the road towards the Ocean. Skies scud skimpy clouds, the blue endless and white teeth flat welcomes and greetings from black and coloured faces. I met the fire service attemting to stem a burst water main, a massive burst of water arcing way over my head, and we joke about me getting soaked so ‘move quickquick Ma, Ayeee!’ The car guard who watches over parked vehicles wishes me a lovely swim, and on I go, ducking under the road, dodging piles of kelp, through the freshwater flow from the Flei (marshland) and onto the white hot sand. No more thinks are thinking me as I strip off and head for the waves. The water is warmly glorious, the waves lifting and lowering me, the salt delicious on my skin. I swim a length or two, then sit dripping myself dry in no time. I watch other swimmers, dogs in the water, children at play, and I smile.

I surprise myself sometimes, when the thinks don’t think me and I take action.

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Island Blog – Sun, Rain and I will Tomorrow

It may appear that, now I’m in Africa, I have less to say. Of course, it isn’t that, not at all, but more something to do with the sun, the beckoning, the light that opens up a day into a ‘let’s go’. It’s the same back home when the sun finds it in himself to show up at all, and we all respond, leaping into shorts despite the freezeback wind and the threaten of clouding somewhere over by. Kids want the beach, a picnic, play and more play, and thus everyone and anyone heads for the sea, or the river, or the pool if there is one in the vicinity. So, my musing will have it, sunshine and water are strongly linked. Very few will choose a cinema matinee or a visit to Great Aunt Granola in the nursing home. Not on a sunshine day. The film will show again, and she can wait a day or two as it is sure to rain tomorrow or the next, as it always does.

In Africa, rain is a blessing, and a challenge to drivers. I imagine it is also a challenge to those who live in townships, all those roofs fashioned from sheets of tin if you’re lucky, bits of tarp or bin bags if you’re not. But rain brings instant life to soil, fills water tanks, cools broiling bodies, eases tension. The drivers, as aforementioned, however, panic. Slippy roads stultify and confuse, it seems. Capetown, and other places, go slow, and I mean very slow, so that traffic convergence becomes traffic hesitation. Windscreen wipers swing like crazy and every other vehicle flashes emergency lights at any opportunity. It’s hilarious, unless you’re in a hurry, and a bizarre to me who knows rain in every state from slightly slippy road, through compromised vision to roadside puddles deep enough to sink my mini.

I walked again today down to the Indian Ocean. Sounds so majestic. She is warm and wild, her waves no hawking spit but rising above the horizon, backlit by sun, clutching kelp and shells in her grasp, to boom, and I mean BOOM onto the wide arc of white sand. She has a lot to say, and loudly. I felt it today as I read my book, the sonar wave shooting up the beach through me and knew I was connected, as we all are to all things, all the wild things we have, unfortunately forgotten in our rush for worldly gain. I watch dogs scuttle and dash in and out of the waves, their humans wandering besides. I see kite surfers fly above the crests, and canoeists paddle out to investigate rock formations. I hear children laughing as they tumble and shriek through the shallows.

My walk here takes me through an underpass, meaty with kelp-throw, a rush of freshwater strictured after big moon tides and very gloopy to navigate. Then I meet the ocean, flooding like she has a load of tongues, no two with the same sweep. One ankle deep, the next losing most of my legs to the swirl. I chuckle. My feet are safe, sand locked, my frock hem-soaked. I read a while, watch a train chortle by just above my head, wish I had brought my swimsuit. (is that what it’s called these days?)

I will tomorrow.