prayer for the ones we love

One morning this week, an elderly neighbour was murdered on his farm in, to use the now commonplace South African phrase, "a hail of bullets".

The killers fled across country and, I believe, set a fire in the veld on one of the only windless days we've had for weeks. A column of dense black smoke like that from burning tyres or petrol rose as I drove to town that morning. I recall thinking how totally unwarranted this seemed since nothing remains in our winter weary veld to burn so ugly and black. Farmers raced from all sides to fight what became huge fire across acres of precious grazing, effectively reducing the manhunt.

With visibility down to nothing, a head-on collision on the only access road to the farms on that route killed two people and caused a three hour delay that backed up trucks and traffic from the Bethlehem intersection all the way to the Sterkfontein turn off.

My father was stuck on one side of the back-up trying to get around the mountain to help fight the fire, I on the other trying to get back to the farm so my mother would not be alone. What came to me was a fierce pride in the men who came from every direction bringing their fire teams and bakkies and water pumps. Actual, real men who work hard and stand their ground and yes, wear khaki and have sun burnt arms and no smooth moves. I'd rather have a real man like this at my shoulder any day than one who can glide and tiptoe his way around a slippery stock exchange floor.

Eventually, a figure in a fireproof suit, welding gloves and goggles, waved me through the metal of car wreckage.

By the end of that day, after the smoke and the blood and the screaming, the fire was stopped, the dead were carried off. Somewhere, the people who love them felt around the ragged holes of lives most terribly altered. Familiar stars crept out above the now quiet mountain. I called my cats home a little earlier than usual.

And because this is Africa, and because we are farmers, and because none of this is new, we somehow absorb it. So when dawn comes, we throw up a prayer for the ones we love and rise and let the dogs in and put the kettle on for tea and go to the veranda and scan the sky and go forward into another day.

fire and rain

Wind and fire and yet no rain ... the best part of my life I've been around farmers whose eyes search for rain unconsciously, even when they're occupied elsewhere and even in their sleep, their inner man hunts the sky and listens for changes in the wind.

We've had weeks of demon wind howling through towering dust devils and firestorms laid by arson. Everywhere is loss and blood chilling horror that fire wreaks on animal and plant life in the platteland, and that we forget so blithely when hiding in cities.

This could be hell.

Of a morning I find myself on my stoep with tea, eyes doing that farmer's skysearch, all senses prickling. Come, rain.

people get ready

So much has happened in the last few weeks.

The Polar Bear swim was a great success in spite of the local rag basically ignoring it. Actually, I think the editor does a grand job given her ... well anyone with such an unfortunate ... well, anyway. People swam in the murky town pool and lived to tell the tale; ate curry and drank beers; bought jumble and showed up. Those who supported it were all lovely and will be thanked in heaven. The SPCA lives to breathe another day. Just.

My brother - fierce as a wolf; ineffable as a shooting star - was pronounced an Ozstraylyn Citzyn. He did it in just two years (takes longer if you live in a nice place like Sydney. Cleverer than they look, those Oztraylyns). But what years. This is a man who walked off the plane and started work and didn’t stop till he did what he went there to do. Hard yards in the worst of outbacky places, surrounded by the ugliest, stoopidest, reddest rednecks ever to swagger God’s green earth (I saw them and it's all true). Hope Oztraylya appreciates what they get when the crème de la crème of South Africa’s bloodstock goes to live in their big red flat country.

A local boy fell and died on a ledge below Thukela falls in the berg. I’ve been there on a day when the mist was too thick to see my feet. He fell on a fresh clear morning with views forever. Some things cannot be understood.

Caspioni (Princeling has mysteriously acquired an Italian accent) has a friend. Lulu. Soft grey with wild cat markings. After a week she’s learning to purr and to luxuriate and be cuddled after terrible months in the cold clutches of a cage at the SPCA.

Saw three Mountain Reed Buck silhouetted like a bronze at the top of Oliviershoek. The baboon tribe reappeared on the road after being gone for ages. Sixteen Guinea Fowl came to the lawn fresh out of winter hiding. I know Winter is vanquished because this week the Dairy Farmer again began his evening ritual of clanking the lid of the old aluminium milk can on the veranda where he keeps crushed mielies for the birds. This only happens in Spring and Summer and Autumn.

And tomorrow is a total solar eclipse. The notion is riveting. I smell change.

just swim really really fast

Being very brave about winter but still find myself counting the weeks in my head when stripping off at bath time. Speaking of stripping and water ... our SPCA is on the verge of collapse for lack of funds.

The solution: the annual Polar Bear Swim on July 26th!

How obvious.

Having volunteered to rouse public interest, discovered that people flee like roaches at the mention. Can’t help thinking something more inviting (a hot toddy drinking competition?) would elicit more excitement.

clawpower

I promise this is not going to become one of those blogs people have about their ugly, stupid pets. Just wanted you to see how much Prince Caspioni has grown. But not that easy to take photos of a kitten when it's eyes are open, apparently.

So this is him with his two best friends, Footone and Footwo. Where they go, he goes. He likes to make holes in them. Making holes in everything with his mighty clawpower is Caspioni's new fave thang. Princeling, Footone and Footwo playfight and race each other round the house skidding on rugs and afterwards they sleep tangled together at the bottom of the bed under the downy feathers of ducks like the ones Caspioni dreams of one day making holes in. That sleeping-in-a-box thing when he was a baby? SO over.

hyena laughter

Came across the most hilarious blog.

Loved the couples therapy post and her Other Writing I Have Written stuff.

Can't tell you about it - you'll either scream with mad laughter or you'll think it's ditsy girlie kakalaka.

I love it. Laughed like a hyena til my stomach ached.

Go here : www.fakeinterviewswithrealcelebrities.blogspot.com

the it of itness

Massive frost in the night turned into the most glorious morning and became a day so beautiful - still, cloudless, blue, sunny ... the Free State winters I remember and dreamed about when I lived in NastyTown.

In blue pyjamas I sat on my front step, a block of sandstone. I looked at the mountain and she looked back. I put my nose into the steam of morning tea.

This is it, the very It of Itness.

the princeling

I've waited a long time to allow another cat into my life.

When Cleo was dying my thinking went, "Do anything, everything. Whatever it takes, she MUST live". I willed her, begged her, to get well; kissed her fur and murmured over her for months. And she tried, so very hard, to do it for me, my beautiful kit. The vet was young and anxious. He poured over fat volumes of veterinary theory. He gave me tracts and pages to read, explained the options in painful detail. But he was baffled. Books were useless. She died in my arms after months of medication, hospitalisation, a feeding tube plugged into her stomach, and as a last resort a massive blood transfusion. Cleopatra Mouse Catcher Queen of Dragon Slayers, never will there be another like you.

But it seems there are others and they're, well, like themselves. Take Caspian. He's clearly royalty. The moment people meet him they know this.

All of three weeks old and still nursing, he was found abandoned and alone. For the last two weeks he's been bottle fed by a rotating collective of human mothers. This week has been my turn. Small as he is, he's clever, funny and brave as a lion. He's going to be a huge male cat one day. He purrs like a diesel engine. He travels to the office with me during the day, along with a collection of toys and foods, blankies and cushions, hot water bottle... At night he sleeps in a box within reach of my hand, waking every three or four hours for a feed and a chat. Looks like we're in this for the long haul.

So, naturally incapable of letting anything simply be, I'm compelled to understand, analyse and interpret his arrival. Of all the cats I've had the opportunity to take on since Cleo, why this one, why now, and what does this portend? On the surface, it's obviously to do with releasing, risking and seeing again the possibility of a safe, happy future. And then there's the timing. Full moon, winter solstice. Unseen and impossible to believe, but from tomorrow the days will get longer and spring is closer daily. Before you know it, I'll be basking like an otter at the dam. And I've realised how in love I am with my life after so terribly long and that this alone - even without all the other wonders and miracles - makes my desert trek of the past year a thousand times worthwhile.

That's pretty momentous stuff wrapped up in one tiny feline.

Heartsease Cottage

This weekend marked almost exactly a year since I first started my move to the mountains and my cottage is finally habitable, furnished, stocked with delicious edibles and wine, curtained, polished, serene, ready to welcome guests.

On a perfect night with the swelling moon rising in a clear, glittering winter sky, the mountain a vast shape in the darkness above, gathered faces of old friends and new were lit with firelight. Indoors, golden light, warmth, music. Moroccan lamb cooked with almonds, honey, apricots; couscous; excellent red wine; warm, creamy deserts; music unearthed at last from a box under twelve other boxes, dusted off and played after so long I'd forgotten I had some of it; the table laid with familiar crockery and cutlery, lights and candelabra ... home.

Friends from Jhb and Cape traveled down for the weekend. The holiday rolled out in the sweetest, bluest, sunniest days of rambles along golden cliffs and dusty farm roads followed by brilliantly starry, freezing nights; lazy meals with family and friends, stretching out in front of the evening fire and hearts ease at each day's end.

What sanity and peace to be at last in my own beautiful place. Every morning that I step outside on grass thick with white frost, or say goodnight to the incredible arc of stars, I count myself the most fortunate of people and am so grateful for this place, for the intense tempering I've had in the last few years and above all for the deep privilege of my fine, great-hearted family and for the love and friendship of wise, loving, accomplished, trueblue people.

winter dreams the same dream every time

Have the worst flu since, well, since the last time which was years and years ago. I never get sick.

I don't doubt for an instant that this constitutes a stern telegram, or a text message rather, from the universe warning, “All is not well with you, young 'un.”

A recent dunking in the fastrushing River of Luurve, has given my wobbly-legged newborn life a bad dose of total drippiness. Chills, coughing my heart out, chest pain, bouts of weepies...

Who'da thunk it could come to this?

The vexing thing is that three months ago I had earned a certain degree of hard-won emotional equilibrium. Now here I lurch, slugging cough mixture and self medicating with CorenzaC like one undone.

Yet still I'm overcome at times by waves of gratitude for the experience and the deep knowing about which Tom Waits sings so wonderfully,
"You Can Never Hold Back Spring"

cinnamon rooms

My tiny house on the farm is finally starting to look like a home.

Space scented with huge cinnamon sticks found in a Joburg industrial catering shop where the flour comes in 50kg bags and everything is done on a grand scale. The walls are rough textured - an accident of my budget constraints that just works beautifully (tough exterior Cemwash paint aptly named ‘Clarens’). The uplighters are chicken nesting baskets based on an old French design from a garden shop (on sale of course). The kitchen dresser was a hideous monster inherited in the original building. Everyone shrieked 'burn it!'. But something told me transformation was hidden under five layers of variously coloured, gluey, oil paint (I counted because I did a lot of paint removal with my own fair hands). And there was.

I have yet to spend a night in the cottage (waiting for the rings so I can hang the curtains), but very soon I will be installed with dear books, sounds, fire and grace in a place that is entirely me and entirely mine and created from my own vision, energy and labour.

That’s freedom, right there.

everything will be okay

My great aunt is 83. She taught my father to read when he was a child using for his first book, ambitiously, Jock of the Bushveld. She has lived for decades on the side of the steepest possible mountain overlooking False Bay, first with her husband of 57 years and now alone. She is my godmother. We clash because, I suspect, we're alike in some ways. She is very willful.

So a fortnight in Cape Town. Quiet daily rounds, no news consumption and a strong focus on digestive systems and whether or not they worked and, if so, when and how and with what outcome? In between, I had some enlightening moments that arrived quite delicately and without fanfare.

Every day began with a pre-dawn walk with Phoebe, the small fluffy white and black dog. Off I'd go up the lane with Phoebe in pitch darkness, turn up the high road to our viewpoint. I would give her innards time to produce (a report would be expected later) then we'd wait for sunrise over the mountains; Hangklip and Gordon's Bay and Sir Lowry's Pass spreading towards Muizenburg and Kalk Bay, eventually us, then on to Simonstown and the last rock in Africa. Then back down for breakfast.

One morning there was a naval exercise in the bay. Seven gray battle ships, three submarines, a helicopter and a naval plane.
“Maybe we're being invaded,” said my aunt. “More toast?”

Upon a day I saw a perfect double rainbow and got showered in a monkey's wedding while on my afternoon run up and down Fish Hoek's seriously challenging hillsides. Quite often they were long runs because I was lost because the streets are laid out as a maze. My hams ached from all the hill work. Over the years, whenever I've been there, my overriding impression is that of a retirement community. A handful of people are under 107 years old. Also, there are almost no level streets. Instead there are countless lanes consisting of steep stairways, so goodness knows how the population survives to such advanced ages.

I met my aunt's old neighbours and some new ones and caught up on the goss about the street where she has lived for so many years. There's a story about everyone. One neighbour, 40-ish, always kisses her hand when they meet.
“He's Dutch,” she said.
Another neighbour took her for a drive to Simonstown and back in his sports car because, he told her, “The bible says we must be kind to widows and orphans”,
“Well, I'm a widow and an orphan,” she said.
A Coloured woman arrived one night in the dark.
“Oh mizzsparks I just hed to come see you since you were inhospital,” I heard.
“Christine,” breathed my aunt. “How truly lovely to see you”.
They vanished inside and there was a long murmuring conversation. Later I heard from my aunt about Christine's many troubles including an unemployed, drunken husband and a teen daughter on tik.
All kinds of people and small moments.

The ancient torties in the bottom of her garden produced an egg a few years back and the only child of Torty and Tortyboy now makes a third in their little family. It's like Abraham and Sarah. There was a mild panic when we didn't find the young one for a few days and touching relief when we located her.

So I toddled around with Phoebe twice a day and did a few little odds and ends around the house and went to bed early with a DVD on my laptop. (I finally watched As It Is In Heaven (utter beauty), The Tiger and the Snow (whimsical Tom Waits cameo and song)). Somewhere along the way, a shift happened and I knew everything really is going to be okay at last. Not perfect or necessarily easy, or even what I want or wish or strive for, but right for me and whatever lessons I have to learn. And then my time will come and, like everything, I'll die. And, until then, it'll be okay. So, for now at least, I've stopped hurling myself against the bars.

On my last evening, after supper, she casually showed me a narrow tin box the size of a slim pencil case. A feeling, or a presence or something, flew through me like a malachite bird. Her father, my great grandfather, was a young man and a newly qualified doctor when the Anglo Boer War broke out. He traveled from home in Devon to stitch up and salvage the broken and sick Boer and Brit. Among his field equipment was this narrow box painted matte black.
“What do you think this is?” she asks.
The split lid creaks open. A stub of yellowish candle stands in a small base. There's a small section for storing matches. On one side there's a raspy patch for striking a light. On top, a round eyelet for hanging on a nail or twig or threading a bit of twine through and stringing to your belt. When it's open, the door acts as a windbreak. The black paint is camouflage, the unpainted silvery interior reflects light. The whole thing is simple yet ingenious. A mini lantern for seeing your way around the aftermath of a battlefield in the dark. Holding it I have a curious flash of where it's been, what it's seen, and the man whose it was and the work he did then and later in France and afterwards back in his practice in Johannesburg.
“I think he would have liked you,” said his daughter. “I wish you could have met him.”

bird man

There’s something fascinating about a person who simply makes their life where it is and accepts it, just the way it happens.

They're not like the restless, driven, riven, always searching the horizon, curious to know what lies over the hill and sending their minds scouting ahead swarming with possibilities. As I imagine it, these people simply live each lone day, moment by moment. It's not to say they're happier than others, and I don't envy them or yearn to know their secret to life. I'm just interested that such people exist and I wonder how it feels to be without this quick urgency of marrow and veins.

There’s a man in town who works the till in a small convenience store selling cigarettes and cold drinks; sweets, bread and newspapers. It’s the sort of shop where you can buy one cigarette and a box of matches. He keeps a canny Portuguese eye on any kids who linger too long over the chocolate bars. The Sunday papers can be bought on Tuesday or for as long as they remain in an unsold heap beside the entrance - a perk of small town life that’s hard to come by in cities where the weekend's stone cold news is wiped away by Monday morning. When you stop by for some slightly old, and therefore slighty chewy and much improved, marshmallow mice with liquorice tails sold loose from the open box on the counter by the till, he scoops them into a vapour thin plastic bag using bare fingers and tosses in one extra (which you pay for) to make a round number.

We've barely spoken and I haven't asked his name, but I saw his eyes fill with what looks like love when he fed a flock of wild pigeons on the pavement outside his shop one evening, as he does every day.

I heard that someone once ran over a bird and killed it in the street and that the cafe owner wept.

luurve, thar she blows

It’s been a while, I know. Fortunately I am not paid to yerble on about my life and so I get to post when I feel moved to do so. And I do it purely dear reader, and entirely, for luurve.

Ah yes.
Luurve.

Yesterday in Clarens I wander into a shop selling herbal unguents and oils. There is a large sofa against the wall. I like a shop with a sofa. It says, this not really a place of trade, of mere buying and selling. This is a stopping-off place, a place where you can learn something. A place where you can try the wares and, if you’re lucky, meet outlandish people who have a yarn to tell.

On the sofa a smiling oldish man in shorts and sandals and bare skinny legs with dry skin watches who comes and who goes. A very pretty shop assistant looks up from her painting at the till then goes on with her art. Big glass bottles with brass taps gleam with oils yellowgreen, rose and ochre.

“You’re Edmund Cressy,” I say to the man.
He leans back and his smile doesn’t change.
“That’s right. And you’re … wait, I know your face...”
Pretty soon we’ve figured out who we know in common.
Old timers from along the Lesotho border, we two.
He has an antique water mill on his farm nearby.
“Works every day” he says. It’s featured in a coffee table book about mills. “Look” he says and shows me the page. “But I’m bored of it. Divorce is a terrible thing. You divorced?”
Before I have to answer he plunges on without me.
“M'wife left and took the kids to Majorca.”
Kids? He’s 65 at least.
“Oh,” I say, putting my feet carefully nowhere near my mouth.

He sells me a bottle of organic rosehip oil (good for skin). In my hand he places some roots that look like shrivelled apricots left out too long and a sheaf of brochures about the organically grown medicinal plants he produces. Sausage tree and helichrysum and pelargonium. All cures for something.

“I stopped her spending R1500 a day.” He narrows his eyes at the golden hill visible in the doorway behind my shoulder. “I started to hate her for it.”
I clutch my dried roots, my bottle of precious oil.
“Had a good offer for the farm. Might take the yacht and go to St Helena.”
Up prick my ears.
I remember hearing about him years ago when I lived around these parts. Hearsay is he made and lost his millions buying old shipwreck sites unseen and roaming the oceans hunting sunken treasure.
“Bought the rubbish dump for a pound few years ago. Might sell the farm. Go salvage the bottles.”
“Napoleon’s?” I see him aboard a schooner with white sails and a tanned, young, freewheeling crew, their sun bleached hair tousled by the wind.
“He was allowed six bottles a day. Vineyard in the Cape. They might buy them off me.”
He smiles at me.
“I think I will sell. Vanish for while.”

Now why does that sound so compelling?

how to pick up a sailor

Someone in my building (I think I know who you are) gave my cell number (without asking me tsk, tsk) to a local yokel. The result was a baffling phone call from someone, who for the purpose of this blog, we’ll call Frikkie.

Ring ring.
B: “Hello?”
F: “Haylows”
B: “Hello?”
F: “Heylows”
B: “Yes. Hello. Who is this?”
F: “It’s, um, it’s, you know, FRIKKIE” (Shouting in case I don’t hear so good)
B: “Who?” (Thinking who the hell is this?)
F: “FRIKKIE. FRIKKIE.”
B: (Fergd’sake) “Who are you?”

And so on.

Frikkie (surprise) is a local bachelor, never been married, whose claim to fame is that he apparently makes tons of dosh from investing in beef cattle and various farming ventures. After he told me in his mangled English where I’d met him (exactly once, in my office building when he came to see his accountant whose rooms are next to mine) and who I literally instantly forgot because he’s just so totally forgettable, the poor rich beige thing.

He called on Saturday evening to invite me to lunch on Sunday.

Now, see, that’s just doff.

I made up an excuse and said in my most rounded English tones
“But we must go for coffee sometime…”

Dear heavens.

Whatever next?

I have no idea how this stuff works.

So, as always when attacked by puzzlement and confusion, I turn to the trusty Internet, which is where I get all my information about life’s important stuff such as “How to Choose a Divorce Lawyer”.

Along with some other very interesting snippets set out on “Dating 101” I have now learned “How to Pick Up a Sailor” and I copy it here for your convenience. You never know when it may come in handy, besides which, a darling friend of mine says one should try to learn something new every day.

How to Pick Up a Sailor

Step 1: Visit port towns or cities with large, rotating sailor populations.
Step 2: Frequent bar and restaurant establishments in the vicinity of docking areas.
Step 3: Visit areas that hold Fleet Week celebrations or similar Navy-based military events.
Step 4: Keep apprised of current world affairs and the Navy's involvement in those affairs.
Step 5: Learn key sailing terms and become well-versed in navy terminology.
Step 6: Get a clerical job in the Navy so that you will have access to ship schedules and personnel records.

Good luck.

not quaint but scary

Found this shoppie in Kestell which is a dreadful little dorp over QwaQwa way. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s quaint, cause it ain’t. What it is, as Eloise would say, is scary.

the empress

When I get back from town in the afternoons the dogs go berserk until I take them out for their walk. It’s endearing how quickly they’ve latched onto this as their daily rite. Their doggy hearts are broken if I fail them, which I sometimes do.

So, although longing for tea and starvingpracticallytodeath hungry, I usually let them drag me out the second I’ve changed my shoes and grabbed a hat.

Yesterday was particularly, incredibly gorgeous outdoors. You can’t describe what it’s like here at this time of year. People have to experience it. It’s to do with the quality of air and light and a sense of deliciousness, of abundance and this tremendous contentment and at the same time a desperate knowledge that you have to soak it all in NOW, and save it somewhere in your internal batteries before the brutal winter closes everything down.

Yesterday the mountain was shining like an empress, watching over the farm and all the creatures that live worshipping at her feet.

Julia and the guys from the QwaQwa University natural sciences department, Michael and Irwin, climbed it recently.

Their outing began with getting two vehicles stuck fast in axle deep mud by the river within fifteen minutes of setting off. It ended after midnight with a third vehicle wedged on a huge rock in the wetland surrounded by very curious cows who watched four of us milling around falling over each other in the pitch dark trying to jack, dig and push it out.

I think the whole jaunt was doomed because they weren’t actually invited to go up in the first place. You don’t just storm up mountains like that. Just went stomping and yelling up her slopes, grabbing plants and frogs for their laboratories (which I find a bit upsetting, to tell the truth, though I haven’t said anything).

Hollander Irwin, clutching his spiky blonde head in actual, genuine despair, swearing most foully and heaping furious blame on Australian Michael who remained annoyingly bouncy and kept coming up with new, totally unworkable solutions. It ended after midnight with beer and food and my parent’s house full of complete strangers (after Michael and Irwin called some friends to come over for a drink). All these people coming and going and yakking away at the top of their voices while frogs wrestled in Michael’s specimen bag. Slightly mad. My 75 year-old parent’s faces were lit up. They had the most fun of everyone, I think.

I didn’t go up that day. It was too hot and just didn’t feel right.

When she calls me, I’ll go.

Ul's

Divine Julia turned 49 a week or so back and threw a small party at the dam on what may have been the last truly, fiercely blue day of summer.

People came from all nooks and crannies including the two of her four chillens who are still way too self-involved to have the faintest clue what a woman - O what a woman! - they have for a mother.

“Just wait,” I tell Julia at the times when they say unspeakably cruel teenager things to her, “One day - like when they’re 45, I think to myself - they’ll realise how amazing you are.”
Not sure it helps her right now.

About ten of us spent the morning cooking, eating breakfast and yakking in the sun; sipping icy Ponzgraz and leaping from the cliffs into glittering water.

There were some people I’d never met.

A slack, pasty, trembling person crouched in the shade of an umbrella.
“I’m a novelist,” he blurted.
His eyes quivered on Julia’s riveting, tanned, bikini’d body.

He claims to have been a recce.

My bullshit radar went off with a deafening, redlightflashing foghorn alarm.

I know what the carriage of a former elite soldier looks like. I recognise the force field that goes with such men.

I could be terribly wrong. But if I am, if he was a recce, then there's something badly squiffy-’n-twisted with this one. He wrote a book about his experiences, which won awards I'm told. In Afrikaans, thank merciful God, so I never have to read it.

I fled early, gripped by bile rising inexplicably in my throat.

Lame ducks and oddballs excluded, it was a good day.

Above all, to dearest Ul’s, one of very few who understand my native tongue in this surreal journey I’m on, may you have joy in abundance forever.

winter

Winter came last night. You wake vaguely in the night to a rushing wind. The air chills. Leaves from the oak tree which were green yesterday are suddenly brown and scrambling across the tin roof. In your sleep you sense a new arrival drawing in under cover of night, purposefully setting up camp like a caravan of travelling people. Meanwhile, Summer is slowly dismantling. Down go the gaudy tents. Reluctantly frivolous drapes are torn away. The pipers and dancers and music slows.

For a few weeks the two camps share the landscape. There’s a little of each – some of Winter’s steady chill balances Summer’s giddy fuss. Everyone seems to get along so well. “It’s perfect,” you think, “why don’t they both just stay?”

But the truce never lasts.

There’s always that morning when signs of the night's big fall out lie everywhere like a massacre. The earth is frozen. Plants hang dead. The air is silent in the aftermath. And Summer’s caravan is gone, doing a midnight flit over the pass heading north, abandoning their place to narrow-eyed Winter ones who have no songs.

You know they’ll be back yet you always miss them.

But they haven’t gone yet. A few weeks still.

Denys Reitz

Just discovered that the great grand daughter of Denys Reitz, writer (Commando and others) , freedom fighter and contemporary of Jan Smuts, lives in town. The Reitz family apparently has a long history in the area. Totally fascinating. Gonna meet this woman.

Must also do a piece about Percy Fitzpatrick, writer (Jock of the Bushveld), farmer, politician, businessman, whose farm, Buckland Downs with it’s once-beautiful sandstone Herbert Baker house lies not far from where I sit typing this. Interesting interesting interesting. Must re-read Commando.

In back of mind, think about having to drive thru the pre-dawn for three hours to Big Smoke for nasty meetings tomorrow. Sick dread and twisting insides alleviated only by thought of seeing friends and having a browse in Exclusive Books and Seattle which I miss hugely. Back is damn bloody aching like hell. Dammit. What is wrong with you, back?? Don't you know I need you strong and true right now?

snakebite lady

Trekked off to a farm yonderside of Warden yesterday for an electromagnetic therapy session with the woman (doesn’t want to be Mentioned By Name and never advertises) who may or may not be a quack, but who is famed for healing the puff adder bite victim.

The idea is you get hooked up to a small machine that reads your body's electromagnetic fields (?) and produces a biofeedback report ,then zaps you with the appropriate balancing energies.

Sounds exactly whacky enough to be interesting to me (I speet on your conventional medicine).

Met the therapist in her little house slap on the bank of a fast, full river on a beef farm. Perched on her red velvet living room furniture drinking instant coffee and dunking rusks while a Jack Russel named Tequila sat at my feet staring intently at my every gulp. All very normal in a Free State sort of way.

The whole schpiel would take too long to describe, and anyway nothing happened. Just sat there making small talk while ‘the machine’ did it’s thing.

Despite my scepticism, the feedback accurately reported all my physical crumblings including pinpointing the back and neck pain, and some other stuff.

Feel a bit woozy and stiff in the neck today and I imagine the shoulder injury is easier. A bit like the day after physio. (The wooziness may be from staying up far too late, partly due to my bedroom last night being full of beetles, mozzies, bugs, crawlies, mantises and insects of all shapes. Get the message: Do not leave windows open at night, dummy. Somehow I always think this is the night the insects will stay away. Haha. It's delicious air or insect-free sleep. Prefer delicious air).

So, back to the shape I'm in ... go back for the next session in a week or so.

Will see how things go in the next few months and letcha know if I'm heeealedHallelujahGlorah!

Empire party and Vincent Maher's blogette

You may think all I do is moon about in the mountains ooing and ahhing at Nature.

I do that.

But I also sometimes scrape the mud off my face and make for the Big Smoke to see people and enjoy traffic and the indifference of shop assistants.

I went to a verrry ritzy partay a week or two ago and had a smashing time with Darling David Bullard – who is a perfect gent and a mensch and a fantastic dancer - and met the Maverick magazine publishing genius bloke, also known as Branko Brrrchigggchk (shuddup, that’s exactly how it’s pronounced) and had an almost-conversation with him about his new baby, Empire Mag, before he bolted for the undergrowth. Maybe he thought I was angling for a job like all you other journos who were snarfing down the Saxon champers.

I met this Vincent Maher guy, who I emailed for my MA research because, When I Was a Student, I believed he was some kind of New Media fundi at Rhodes and I thought he would be useful to interview. My Network now tells me (oh yes, I have a Network, people) that he referred to me in his blogette after the Empire party.

Well, just to put it straight: I did email him. Three times. And he never, ever replied. Truth. When I mentioned it to him he denied it in a round about way. Looong, convoluted wriggle about some clever email filing system he invented (snort!) which loses his mails.
Yawn.
I suspect sheer, ivy-wreathed Rhodes snottery looking down on Witsies inhabiting their ugly, grey concrete campus which, admittedly, resembles Hitler’s bunker. And I won’t tell you about how VM kept trying to sneak a look down my dress. Nearly fell off a table doing so. Rhodes! I ask you, with tears in my eyes.

But lemme tell you this much. Empire can throw a fabulous party. Thank you DDB and BB.

TikTak

The new puppy is getting all the laughs and cuddles these days, but my old Tiks is still Top Dog Wot Rules under the kitchen table.

She's 14 or 15 or 17. A few mornings ago, she was seen trotting off with the puppy, making for the calf pen. Tiks does have some truly disgusting habits. Scoffing calf manure is just one of them.

You could just hear Taks saying, "Come on Yung'Un. Follow me. I'll teach ya sumting."

Love this hoary old face. Here's to you, grumpy Tikala the Disgusting.

elephants on main street

The police patrol was out this morning as I got into town.

It gave me a big kick to see the beauties.

Leapt out of my car to take photos.

The cops loved it.

The horses looked at me calm and curious.

There’s nothing as beautiful and miraculous as a horse. Except a whale. And an elephant. And a porcupine. And ... and ... and

Animals are just the absolute it-ness.

Which reminds me, go to this site for the best of wildlife it-ness.

shopping in van reenen

Last week I went to sniff around in the ghosthamlet of Van Reenen, teetering at the top of the pass that takes you over the mountains.

There was once a busy dorpie here with a red brick station building and sturdy railway houses that would be wonderful to renovate.

Bit of a vrot place to live today, among derelict buildings and goats.

Still, you can get excellent tea in a sweet cafe in the decommissioned church next door to the abandoned petrol station.

There are a few little ghosthamlet shops, like this trading store managed by a lady in a large green headdress who is visiting her neighbour when I arrive and must be yelled for to open up.

In the window they have :

Some red hats
Some silver pots
A pair of shoes
A dumb valet

In the window on the other side of the door:

A milk can
Carved wooden snakes
Aprons
Wall hangings
Farm equipment

I like this shop.

snakebite and backache

It started raining this afternoon. After weeks of exquisite weather that had me telling everyone who doesn’t live here to get down quicksharp to witness how breathtaking the Free State can be…
“Come before Winter,” I tell everyone.
Ja, fine.

The rain on my big sash window with the vine outside and the rock pigeons canoodling on the gutter – well, it just made me wistful, then sort of sad, then just sleepy. Plus my back hurt, as it does pretty much constantlywithoutletup, so I lay down on the rug in my office to ease it and to wonder to myself if the ceiling really is five metres high, which is my estimate.

Then, with my neck on my gym bag (which was kicked under my desk weeks ago and carefully forgotten) I dozed off. Amazingly comfy. I confess I quite often lie down like this to rest my back and think about the ceiling, particularly when I feel a bit low and need a think. And I do generally find myself having a nap and I always feel better afterwards. Funny.

The thing with the aching back led me to investigate a woman who does healing based on the principles of quantum physics with some kind of equipment apparently developed by Nasa.

I came across her through a story told by the friends of a woman who was bitten on the foot by a puff adder while fetching in her washing. There was not one professional in South Africa at a poison clinic or snake park or hospital who had a clue what to do.

The Bethlehem hospital said they’d keep her for observation.
“Stuff you,” she said and went home to the farm.

A retired vet, who treated horses for snakebite in Tanzania back in the day, recommended hot poultices.

"Sometimes it worked," he said.

The victim’s friends rallied for round-the-clock hot towel duty and called in the quantum woman.

While this story has a happy ending for the victim and her limb, that grouping of words scares me ... venomous snakebite, Africa, no-one has clue ... you’d think SA doctors would be snakebite experts by now, unless all our experts have exported themselves.

So I’ve an appointment Monday to meet the healer on her farm near Vrede. Maybe this quantum cleverness can sort out my aching aching aching back. It's been hurting for years so I’m sceptical. Have done everything from special doo-dads in my shoes, physio, excruciating Swedish massage, Chinese pressure points to that weird creature in that weird suburb in Joburg with her postural alignment gibberish. Oy. So far, nothing.

But it’ll be a nice drive. And the Free State is looking lovely.

across the river and into the trees

Cellphone reception is rubbish where I live. It’s to do with having a bouncing signal and a mountain in the way.

Consequently, on the farm my phone rarely rings by day and almost never at night when normally the only sounds come from gigantic crickets under my bedroom window and sometimes the all-night bellow of a mama cow searching in heartbroken vain for the calf that The Dairy Farmer has that day wrenched from her breast.

So if my phone does shriek at 2AM I respond the way I did when I lived alone on a property in the Big Smoke and would wake from a funnynoiseinthenight.

My heart goes nuts and flings itself wildly against the bars of its cage. Adrenalin thunders. Sweat pours. Eyes bulge. Ears roar with terror.

My cell rang very late the other night and my system embarked on its full dance routine. When my heart stopped hurling itself painfully into my ribcage, I listened. From Belfast in Northern Ireland, a voice said that Ruth, a beloved family friend who we knew since I was five, had gone.

I’ve sometimes wondered if, when I die and they do an autopsy, the doctor won’t say,
“Haibo! Students, look here now. Not only was this heart broken in many places, but it also had multiple, very tiny but perfectly formed heart attacks throughout its adult life. Lovely. Hand me that pickling jar.”

Then my dear old heart will bob around gently in this big bottle on a shelf in a lab somewhere. Occasionally med students will zoom in through the glass and stare at me and say, “Check this old fossil. Sis, what a mess, hey?”

They’ll notice the raw gash that Ruth’s leaving has torn in it, even though I know she was tired and sick of hospital walls. So instead of that scene, I’ll imagine she walked with me down to the river on the farm. It’s a bright morning, the way it looked today when I went for my run, with lacy mist rising, green willow trees and waist high grass. I hear her gravelly Ulster voice and feel a quick squeeze. “Bye-bye, my wee love” and she steps into the water, sloshing happily across. Then, wringing out the hem of her skirt, she grins triumphantly from the other side. Happy travels, Ruth.

swimming

Heat heavy as a rockfall promises to frazzle my whitey skin like a roasting chicken.

The nearest pool is the Sterkfontein Dam, which I can see from the farm.

No other swimming compares. This is not like other dams. At high altitude it’s more an alpine lake than your murky, reed-choked grasp of dams. The water is cold and clear thanks to the sandstone valley that forms the dam basin. Distance turns it Aegean blue; close up it's transparent seagreen.

But it’s the views and the space. Vast. Empty. Mostly sky. On the horizon the Drakensberg and the Malutis merge.

It never gets tired, this looking.

A swallow’s nest dandles right over the water, tucked into the frailest crack in the overhang of the small cliff. The bird harries me, anxious when I swim by.

I like having this 20 km stretch of open water to myself, shared with birds – vultures and swallows, bald headed ibis, hawks, kites and familiar others whose names I’d know but for the fact that the plates in Roberts are frustratingly incomprehensible - a truth SA’s bird lovers can never whisper for fear of being dragged from their beds and shot by Twitchers at Dawn.

Swimming in this wild place stirs memories of my twelve-year-old self who was free and brave.

In summer, huge electric storms roll over the escarpment in bruised cloud masses, writhing with the most ferocious and terrifying lightning I’ve experienced.

Somewhere, Discovery probably, I learned lightning can strike from 30 km away. A few years ago, when he least could afford it, a single strike killed ten of my father’s cattle in one fell swoop as they sheltered under a gum tree.The other day he told me how when he was a boy he found all the farm carthorses killed like that. They lay together in a field like warriors, their beautiful great bodies still steaming. It was so fresh that as he climbed through the fence into the paddock the residue of the charge knocked him flat.

Wind driving a storm shamboks the water. Coldbumps fleece my limbs. Time to scramble barefoot up the rock face to where I parked and drive away down the hill, past fields of haymaking. Home through the shimmering day, skin quietly singing of tomorrow’s sunburn.

"there you are," said my mother

The winter day dawned last year when a decade of survival in the killing machine that is Johannesburg was over for me.

I loaded my car and drove east. I crossed the Vaal River. When I came to the mountains I turned right and stopped.

"There you are," said my mother.

You'd think I'd just stepped outside and let my tea get cold.

Surrounded now by great blue mountains and small green hills, sky sky sky, I have time to put my tongue carefully along the sandy strange skin of figs and ponder this freedom thang.