Ruth's Real Life

  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...

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 Fac...