Wednesday, May 02, 2007

a hitherto unexpected talent

we interrrupt details of caught knitting's South African oddysey to bring you rather astonishing news...I appear to have found a sport at which I ain't half bad, the first time this has happened since I won form 2G's 220 yards heats in 1974...

had to go to an area meeting today and it concluded with tenpin bowling. am still feeling lousy, so almost said "no", but have always had a secret hankering to try. Got a strike on my third go, followed by either a 9 or a strike on all except one subsequent go (a miserable 8, followed by 1, so it still added up to 9). I was only bowling at about 5-6mph but just got the knack of bowling straight down the middle!

OK; I'm going to stick my trumpet back in its box now and snatch an early night!

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Durban Days


Well, whilst the Von Trapp family might advocate that you "start at the very beginning, the very best place to begin" I've decided to bypass details of our outward journey* and leap straight in to our first few days in South Africa, which we spent in Graham's birthplace: Durban, a coastal city in KwaZulu Natal.

Since I have never managed to master getting multiple photos to appear at the right point in any post I've decided to do lots of tiny weeny posts, with just a pic or 2 each. This probably means that the posts themselves will be in a rather strange order (germ-fuddled brain too dozy to try to think this through) but at least relevant pictures should be with relevant text!

Just to set the scene: most of our time in Durban consisted of socialising and visiting such important sites as "the house where we used to live", "another house where we used to live", "where I went to school", "another school I went to", "where my mother went to school". I do not, alas have a photographic record of either the socialising or the landmarks. But what I have captured are images of a wonderful "wildside of Durban" tour put together by Graham's friend Dave and lots of flora and fauna images from Durban Botanical Gardens and Mitchell Park. the picture with this post is of one of the many trees I fell in love with in the Botanical Gardens. I also fell in love with the crumpets (NB for non-South African readers, "crumpets" are not those lovely doughy things riddled with holes for soaking up maximum quantities of butter, no, South African crumpets are what my mother would call a "scotch pancake" and I would call a "drop scone". Follow this link if you want to read more about this muddled nomenclature. No matter what they're called, in the Botanical Gardens they are served warm, with maple syrup and cream. And you get 2 on a plate!)

If I were to try and encapsulate my memories of Durban in just a few words I'd say "humidity, birdsong, monkeys and fruit bat". Every evening as we dined with Denzil and Bobby we could see a fruit bat swooping around outside!

*fear not, gentle reader, you will get to read about the air traffic control strike at Paris Charles de Gaulle, but probably not for another couple of days...