One year on

I went to Durban on Thursday, my first business trip of this year.

It's still there. At the back, near the hangars. No other bits have been removed.


Having successfully avoided business travel since October last year I was a little out of practise. Yes I printed out my itinerary. No I did not take it with me on the actual trip.
My complete lack of interest in detail has implications in these situations - arriving at Avis to pick up a Budget car, for instance.
Or trying to check in to British Airways for the return flight when it's booked on SAA.(This is not the first time I've done that, once demanding they check me in for a flight to Bloemfontein. British Airways doesn't fly to Bloemfontein)

Scientist No 1 suggested I fire the minions. Tempting, but it wasn't actually anyone else's fault.
I'm off to Cape Town next Thursday and have already stored the itinerary in the car for easy access.

Little children, little problems

This saying used to annoy me immensely when Scientist No 1 and Child No 2 were little. People would give me that knowing look entirely dismissing the lack of sleep / teething crying / homework crisis problem I was talking about.
But while I was sitting at King Shaka International in Durban last Thursday the children sent me pictures of where they were

Scientist No 1....

Child No 2....


700kms away, doing mortal battle with the elements.

This is why parents of adults are grey.

The Resolutionites are back

Let me be perfectly clear about this; I am not a natural exerciser. My lifestyle and body type are not designed for athletic pursuits and I come from a long line of over-indulgers, wild drinkers and party animals (tweezer-lipped ancestral photographs notwithstanding)

Meet Scale-e; my nemesis. A spiteful distant relative of Wall-e

See the resemblance? Picture courtesy of Softicons.com


But I absolutely refuse to be punished for my lifestyle by my body. Which means there's a price to pay - so at least four times a week I get up at 4am and head for the gym up the road.
My cunning calculations resulted in a regimen of 1 hour on the recline-o-cycle to deliver maximum calorie advantage for the day. This allows me to eat (pretty much) and drink whatever I want without becoming the size of a comfortable dwelling for four (needs some fixing up).

This is not my gym. This is a hotel gym. 2 criteria for hotels - must have a gym and gym must open by 5am.


January is a tough time for those of us used to almost-empty gyms at 4.30am - it brings out The Resolutionites. They come in search of salvation, but few survive beyond February.

'And lo! The Resolutionites appeared to slay the fat monster brought upon them by their feasting ways.
And the Personal Trainer rubbed his hands in glee and said unto them "Go forth and stretch" for they were deep afraid.
And they did. And a mighty groaning rang out and there was much gnashing of teeth and cursing of muscles and some of them wept with pain.
And the gym companies were joyful and there was a great ringing of cash registers in sports equipment stores throughout the land'

Row, row, row your boat...

A peaceful stretch of the Crocodile River, near Hartebeespoort Dam.

My "Let's go river rafting" suggestion was met with some trepidation by the family. Child No 2 looked shifty and muttered darkly about "commitments". Scientist No 1, usually the first to be up for an adventure, said "When, exactly, do you want to do this?" and Walter (bless) looked at me over his reading glasses and just said "Great idea, let's book"
By "Let's book" he actually means I should go ahead and book it, so I did.
The first booking didn't turn out well. We were due to go on the 30th December, but the owner of the company called me late on the 29th to inform me the guide had just broken his ankle kloofing. No, they didn't have another guide. No, he didn't know when we could do it.
I requested a refund and jumped back onto Google.
There were some sighs (plans had been changed, people put out, and so on, you'd think I'd planned it that way) and more "what time, where, who"-type questions when I tentatively booked the 7th January with their social secretaries.
Of course this required specialised equipment. I bought water shoes and a heart rate monitor.

Not like Scientist No 1's water shoes, but then she does that stuff for a living

I packed a picnic lunch for afterwards, put on a whole bottle of sunscreen and we were off. With Walter it's a good idea to, um, be economical with the truth when discussing times. I told him we had to leave by 7am which meant we got onto the road at 8 and arrived in good time.

Actually we were early and had time to sit around waiting for the others

Child no 2 was NOT amused. Could have spent another hour in bed, at least. This is his FML look.

The year of the garden

Last September, when Scientist No 1's BFF asked us to host her (December) kitchen tea I smiled airily, said "what a lovely idea" and promptly went into a cold sweat. Misty visions of behatted maiden aunts sipping lapsang souchong from delicate bone china were brought crashing to (the very dry) earth when I looked outside.
Gardens are not for the faint-hearted. Or those paying private school fees.Perfectly manicured lawns, herbaceous borders and picture-perfect flowerbeds are the result of years of investment in both time and money.
Our garden consisted of patchy lawn, a few trees and the odd rose bush. Great for garden cricket, but clearly it wouldn't do for a maiden-auntish kitchen tea.

Before. Walter practicing his putting (or tapping, as I call it) near the water hazard.
This would need an expert. I called my grandmother.

Tiny toadstools in the new garden

No bigger than a fingernail....