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  Every Dream Has Its Brown Kitchen ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’ These words from my partner, on an ordinary weekday afternoon in January, started the journey towards a dream. Jules decided to take early retirement and suddenly our house was on the market, and we were looking for property in Plettenberg Bay. We had often thought about where we would like to be once we had both retired and had visited places along the Garden Route, finally settling on Plettenberg Bay as our destination. One day. Perhaps. It was nice to think about but seemed not much more than a dream. The ‘For Sale’ sign went up on the pavement. We had to find somewhere to live. My eldest brother has lived in Plett for 20 years and started the search for us. Eventually, he found a place that seemed ideal. We bought it   before our Johannesburg house had been sold. And before we had seen the property on which we had made an offer. One thing you should never trust are estate agent’s photographs. As a life c
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  Parakeets, Rats and Budgies When you feed the birds, you feed the rats. My desk looks out onto a bird feeding station. Every morning, I put out a range of seed, rice, sunflower seeds, apples and sometimes, grapes. Within minutes, the tree is a feathered wonderland. Johannesburg is classified as an urban forest and the birds make the most of the trees in our garden. Frequent visitors to the feeders are the rose-ringed parakeets. Their bright green plumage and sassy character make them entertaining visitors. But they are also alien and feral. They dominate the food and chase the smaller birds away. Every now and again, a blue budgie flutters in to defy the bully birds, on the run/fly from his cage and looking for a meal.   I open my curtains to the noise and movement and the birds are my symphony as I work. He comes over the top of the wall. Down the tree, along a branch, fat and sleek and looking for apples and seeds. He is a brown abomination of fur with a tail as long as a
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Horatio - Stone of Heart & Hope “’Hope is the thing with feathers” Before lockdown, all dressed up and ready to go. I taught English for 39 years. For most of those years, I had a faithful classroom companion. My pet rock, Horatio. He became a legend. If you ask him for his story, he will maintain a stony silence, but I feel compelled to speak on his behalf and on the behalf of all unrecognized treasures that give us hope. I love stones and rocks; I have always had a passion for them. I can remember as a little girl of seven or eight, spending a Christmas holiday searching a lush Uvongo tropical garden searching for the perfect stone. There were banana trees, frangipani and hibiscus hiding ants and geckos. I adventured like a little Durrell amongst them until I found my stone, it was beautiful. The smooth surface was cool in my hand, solid and telling me stories. I washed and wrapped it. I can still see the paper, green with tiny silver stars. On Christmas morning, I
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I am the Captain of My Ship …of My Small Ship Snacking on a peanut butter ball and drinking coffee while cruising on a little flat-bottomed boat, the world was a distant reality. The lake was still, a new sun painted the landscape into a live Pierneef. In front of me, clouds skimmed the Waterberg Mountains, catching their slow reflections in the water. On the skeleton arm of a tree, long stranded in the lake, a cormorant curved a sharp beak to preen its feathers. As we puttered past a reed bed, a hippo, alarmed by our presence, surged to the surface. It was there and then gone in a moment, leaving us startled and laughing in delight. I imagined it, invisible beneath the surface, gliding on pointe across the muddy bottom of the lake and away from our intrusion.  I try to capture moments like these. Not just on camera but in the fabric of my soul. There was, however, a picture of me, standing at the front of the boat and laughing at the camera. I posted it on Faceboo
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Life is Urgent Finding Solid Ground  I’ve seen the world From upside-down And heaven is on The ground. The view, from flat on the tar in the middle of a busy intersection, is terrifying. Pinned under my red and white scooter after an encounter with a delivery van, time changed shape. I watched as taxis, cars and trucks rushed through the intersection and all I could think in that strange moment was: Life is urgent. Life is unexpectedly urgent. At 64 and being knocked off your bike, life is urgent. When you’re confronted by an irritable elephant, bearing down on you, life becomes urgent. Life is urgent as you read this.  I feel like I have been knocked down again. This time, it’s not a van carrying dog food that’s flattened me, or a trumpeting elephant, but the silent and stealthy COVID-19. Recently, I was asked to give a definition of resilience and for me, the best way to think about resilience is not how we’ve been knocked down, but how quickly we get up.
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Tigers and One Red Kite

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  This strange season Two things I can’t get used to – the different smells and the sky. I brace myself as I walk out of my door every morning. The air smells like hot, sweet petrol. Breathing is like biting off chunks of air. I asked XinXin this evening if the sky ever cleared. “Oh, yes, one day last year the sky was blue and there were even clouds in the sky.” The sun is a hazy patch in the smog as it rises in the morning and then is not seen again. I watch from the window in my room as the orange smudge marks another day in China. Behind is me the ironing board bed, already made. On the dresser, a green flask of tepid water and a pear that looks like a Harvest moon. On a good day, the tops of the buildings are visible. My eyes are constantly gritty, and my nose runs non-stop from the irritation. When I get home, I’m going to lie on the grass and feel the space under my tall African sky. The low, grey sky makes this a strangely closed, colourless place. There are no
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Now is the Time for Courage

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A new year beckons. Before you know it we will be challenged by another 1st of January.  It's time to effect the change for which we yearn. Along come all the hopeful resolutions that briefly see the light of day before dying their usual death. Don't make resolutions - again I spoke to a group of people recently and asked them if they had made resolutions for 2020, many of them had. Most were horrified when I told them to ditch their grand plans as they would cause more stress than they were worth. The 1 st of January is like some magical line in the sand – there is a vague hope that we can step across the line and suddenly be all the things that we haven’t been for the last X number of years. The right inspirational moment Things that need to get done, get done. If you amputate a finger while cunningly carving a radish to decorate a salad, you don’t sit on the couch waiting for the right inspirational moment to go to the closest casualty room. You put your finge
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