On Friday afternoon Helen and I arrived at the airport for a weekend away to a secret destination. Unfortunately about 5 minutes after we were due to board our flight, they announced that all flights by our chosen airline had been suspended. After much chaos and uncertainty, it gradually unfolded that the airline had entered bankruptcy proceedings, so we would not be flying to the coast for a weekend away at my family’s beach house after all!

Luckily, we instead got ourselves dressed up, and headed to the referees annual gala ball instead. We had a fun-filled Oscars-themed evening finished off with a nightcap in a cosy hotel bar near home.

On Saturday morning, we awoke from a lovely lie-in, and I made us coffee and tea in bed. On returning to bed, I turned to Helen and said, “I love waking up next to you”. And Helen somewhat sleepily looked over with a smile, nodding at hearing something that I say almost every day. I continued, “How would you feel about waking up next to me for the rest of your life?” At which Helen smiled even more. I pulled out a small box I’d left next to the bed, and asked her, “will you marry me miss?!” At which point she grinned from ear to ear, and kissed me (she did also eventually say “yes”). Then I opened the box, and Helen’s expression turned from joy to confusion, as she saw a ring-pull from the top of a ginger beer bottle inside the box. I then pulled out the cushion inside the ring-box, and underneath it was the actual ring – a vintage late 1920’s to early 1930’s gold ring with diamonds in a platinum bridge. 

We are both thrilled and hope that you will all share in our happiness that we are now engaged!

A-Z an Epic trip to Zimbabwe

Much of the below is taken directly from Helen’s notes on our trip – a huge thanks to her for this.

On Saturday 13th  October, Helen and I woke up as the sun rose, made ourselves a quick cup of tea and then began our drive to the airport in Porky (my little red car) - eating leftover Egg Foo Yong, from the night before, on the way. We indulged in a 2nd breakfast at airport: sharing a waffle at a coffee franchise called Mugg & Bean, then we had a third breakfast on the plane before landing in Harare. Perhaps this was a portent of the week of eating to come!

Flying in over Harare, it looked very dry and brown from the sky – not surprising considering the time of year. October is known as ‘suicide month’ in Zimbabwe as everyone is waiting desperately for the first rain showers of the season – and each day as clouds build up, but then there is still not a drop, it is said to drive farmers that little bit closer to suicide! On arrival, we got through the “international” airport quickly (not difficult given that it was a tiny building) and it was interesting to note the number of signs in the airport written in Chinese. It would seem that the rumours of Chinese takeover of Zimbabwe have at least some basis. We happily met up with the rest of our group: my parents Keith & Pam, and my brother Andrew & Romain. Unfortunately Pam and Keith’s luggage had not arrived from their Kenyan flight but they were determined not to let it get them down, so on we went.

Our pilot Ed escorted us through immigration and onto our private light aircraft – a Cessna 8 seater. It was a small plane, and the flight was rather bumpy. About half-way into our hour-long flight Helen started to turn a rather green shade of pale, and had her eyes firmly shut as she breathed deeply. Unfortunately ten minutes before we landed she had to ask for a paper bag – but seemed to perk up rather quickly after parting with some part of our earlier breakfasts. We landed on the dry and dusty Dandawa strip in the Mana Pools National Park on the northern tip of Zimbabwe, not far from the Zambian border. We were welcomed by a wall of hot air as we climbed out of the plane and onto an open-sided game viewing truck driven by our camp manager Andre, who took us to our home for the next 2 nights.

Kanga bush camp is a luxurious tented camp built around ivory and nyala trees, overlooking a small waterhole that attracts an incredible number and variety of animals. The camp pumps water daily from a nearby borehole which means that it’s a permanent source of water. The interior of the park is very dry this time of year so Kanga pan with its constant water source is well frequented. It is an oasis in what feels like an incredibly isolated and uninhabited part of the world.

Kanga is a relatively new camp that has only been around for 2 years since the tourism industry took off again in Zimbabwe after contested elections. Troops of playful wild baboons were drinking, frolicking and lazing near the water. Luckily they are still too wild to get too close to humans and their stuff (for now). Within minutes of arriving at the camp, we were treated to spectacular elephant viewing - and as the afternoon wore on, the sightings didn't slow down: wart hog, zebra, kudu, eland, hyena & and fish eagle were all spotted.

As the sun set and our party sipped sun-downers on the raised wooded deck overlooking the pan, we were treated to a humorous tussle between 4 elephants who'd worked out that a nearby pipe pumped out fresh water from the borehole into the pan. Much giggling ensued as these creatures sneakily pulled the pipe from each other as we sat only a few meters away. We ate a sumptuous dinner of grilled bream from Kariba lake on the deck with the other guests & guides that evening, and caught a glimpse of a lioness and a few wildebeest with the aid of spotlights. We were escorted through the un-fenced camp to our rooms (Helen and I stayed in tented hut number 3 out of a total of 6).

Our tent was on a raised platform, like the dining area, with an open outdoor shower and running water toilet. The tent itself was mostly mesh-sides to let the breeze low through – which meant that from our bed we could see quite a bit of the water pan and the trees and bush around us through the mesh walls and doors. Helen had a very interrupted night, with her sleep being disturbed by giant elephant stomps around our tent, me waking up every half hour imagining that some animal was about to actually walk into our tent, and a suspected kill in the early hours of the morning with a stampede through the camp and lion howls.

On Sunday morning we had a 5:00am wake up, as was to become our norm during the holiday, and we got dressed and joined the others for tea and coffee & maize porridge (with lashings of butter & brown sugar for some of us) on the deck, followed by a walk in the bush for a few hours with our guide Shaun. We spotted a lioness & her cub, sausage trees & their heavy fruit, fresh kudu remains after a kill likely from the night before (the leg we found on the ground was still soft and rigor mortis had not yet set in) and we tracked various animal prints (lion, cub, leopard, various buck and all their accompanying dung). We were back at the camp by 9 and the heat was already setting in but Helen and I were hankering for some grub over and above the muffins on offer, so the staff very kindly whipped up another pot of mielie meal (maize porridge) for a ‘post-breakfast’ snack.

The rest of the morning & afternoon was spent lazing on the deck or in our room with a view (of baboons’ bums). We relaxed and enjoyed watching elephants up close (including a teeny tiny baby not more than a few months old) as they bathed and wallowed in the mud, ridiculous looking warthog with their toothbrush tails, zebra, guinea fowl, 2 fish eagles singing to one another, and hundreds of baboons bending over & ungraciously revealing their bright pink bottoms to us with every sip of water from the pan.

Considering how remote the camp is, and that it runs off solar power for lights and a generator for a few fridges & freezers, the spreads that were put on at mealtimes was remarkable. Our drinks were always icy cold, the salads were fresh, and the overall cuisine varied & delicious. That afternoon Pam and Keith’s luggage arrived along with a new set of guests - 2 British women (including a doctor from Newcastle) and their guide Doug. At first we were quietly pleased, as the previous other guests had been a couple from Botswana: the wife being a very generously built woman whose passion was photography. Which meant that she would plonk herself down in the middle of one of the two sofas on the deck early in the morning, and thereafter would not move for the entire day except for meals. However, we weren't that pleased about our new arrivals when their guide promptly picked up the tea time coconut cake and placed it in front of his guests at their table, seemingly for their exclusive consumption! Luckily they improved as the evening wore on.

On Monday morning Helen and I missed our wake-up call before sunrise. Apparently, two tents and probably 40 meters away, my parents could clearly hear the staff outside our tent calling out to us: “wake up, wake up!” But I never hear anything like that anyway, and Helen was dead to the world after two nights of disturbed sleep. Later, Helen woke up to the call of 2 fish eagles singing to one another. We strolled to the shaded deck and realised that it was past 8 o clock and that the rest of our group were out game viewing on the truck. Perhaps we were more horrified at the thought that we had missed breakfast, so we asked the staff if they'd kindly whip up porridge and toast – which they did. As we were tucking into freshly made toast, the others arrived back and we discovered that breakfast was still to come!

Later that morning John Stevens, our host for the next 4 days, arrived to pick us up, accompanied by his son-in-law Milo Harrup who run Mana Pools Safari Company. With them we began our game drive transfer to Mana Pools on the banks of the Zambezi River. John is a well-respected guide: having been the park warden for Mama pools for many years. His enthusiasm for the area is quite infectious. We drove around 60km through dirt road, past ‘Crouton’ Forrest, a few baobab and sausage trees, passing zebra, waterbuck, elephant, and eland (biggest buck in Africa).

We drove into Trichilia (sausage tree) camp. Set on the banks of the Zambezi river was our canvas tented home for the  next few days. We were greeted by all the staff on arrival, and each of us given a cooled damp facecloth to freshen up. This eco friendly camp runs almost entirely on solar power and a gas oven for cooking. Generators are not allowed in the river-front concessions. Because the camp was exclusively ours for the next few days, it was made up of a tented kitchen and washing up station, a dining area under a large open-sided gazebo, and 3 tents had been erected for our party – each with a veranda overlooking the river and Zambian mountains in the distance. Leading off each tent was an enclosed open air bucket shower and long drop. Even a little splash pool made of canvas and pumped with fresh river water daily had been erected to stave off the midday heat.

The next few days were spent experiencing one of Africa's great walking wildernesses – as our mornings typically started just before 5am when we would get up and have porridge and tea and coffee for breakfast just as the sun was coming up. By 5:30 we’d be on the open sided safari truck watching a bright red sun rising in the distance. In the mornings we’d usually drive to somewhere, and then set off on foot with John and our tracker whose name might have been Orbit, or Aubert, or Obert, we never did quite figure it out. On Tuesday morning our aim was to track and find lion. We spotted a buffalo kill from the night before, found lion tracks and followed these on foot for a few kilometres. Eventually we caught up with a pride of lions made up of several females as well as a few juvenile males and two maturing cubs.

On Wednesday, we drove for an hour to the far eastern side of the riverfront in the park – to an area known as the Wilderness. There the road stops and the remaining area can only be explored on foot. We followed and observed up-close, another smaller pride of lions, including an impressively maned adult male. Thereafter we walked several kilometres and saw varied bird-life, a hippo returning to water, and Helen and I thoroughly enjoyed the comedy of watching Pam, Andrew and Romain slowly get as close as they could (walking in single file across a flat  sandy plain) to three dozing warthogs.

We learned over the course of our walking treks, that the key to approaching all of these wild animals on foot is to walk slowly, never to appear to be stalking them or being sneaky, and not to look them in the eye or make it too obvious that you’re watching or make them feel like they’re being stared at. Even with lion, we were at times able to walk within 30-40 meters of the pride before they became uncomfortable and would move another 50 - 100m meters away from us to re-settle in another patch of shade under trees. John was always careful not to allow us to bother the animals by ensuring we keept a respectful distance, and he carried a rifle with him, which he would load when we began to walk in more dense bush – the animals that most seemed to worry him were elephants with baby calves, and buffalo.

On Thursday morning we set out to track leopard and ended up walking many kilometres, but the reputation of a leopard for being incredibly difficult to track is not undeserved, and we were forced to abandon our search in the end despite feeling several times that we had come tantalisingly close to finding the owner of the paw-prints we followed. We did however come across a pack of about 17 wild dog under a large African fig tree. We were able to approach on foot quite close to the dogs, who were all dozing in the shade. A few kilometres drive up the road we also saw the pride of Lions we had seen on Tuesday morning. As the sun rose in the sky, we decided that the wild dogs and lions clearly knew what they were doing, so we returned to the shade of our camp to eat and cool off in the plunge pool.

That evening we went back to see the Lions, and for the first time during our trip, we felt a considerable presence of other people there with us – until then we had felt alone during our explorations of the park, and often we had been the only humans within a radius of many kilometres. Although the lions were tired and dozing, with almost 20 people sitting on various parts of a fallen tree about 50 meters away, some of them did at least seem to scan the watchers. It didn’t escape my or Romain’s attention that they seemed most interested in the only two children there – and particularly in a rather chubby little fellow who we immediately dubbed ‘sausage roll boy’, as the Lions clearly ear-marked him as the most easily attainable snack among all of the on-lookers. As we departed from the throng to return to the wild dog, we also saw another vehicle we had passed once or twice before: containing a group of four rather distinctively unattractive people (Andrew dubbed them ‘the uglymobile’) – an older couple and a younger pairing who we couldn’t figure out: she was painfully thin (and promptly became known as Skeletor) and he was bulgingly fat. At first we thought he was the older brother who always got the first helping of food and left her with nothing but the scraps, but later he put his arm around her and we all tried not to think too much about how she didn’t drown underneath him if he got on top of her!

Moving on from the Lions, we revisited the wild dogs we had seen earlier in the day. They were still napping and not doing much at all. We didn’t walk up to them this time, as another group were already on foot in the vicinity and there is a sort of code of honour among the guides not to disturb one-another’s groups. But John is a savvy veteran, and we waited around because he predicted that with only a sliver of the new moon and therefore not much light in which to hunt at night, the dogs would get up just before sunset. True to his word, as if at some signal, first one then another dog slowly roused himself, wagged his tail a bit and then began sniffing about and nuzzling his friends in the pack. For about ten minutes there was much sniffing and bounding about, then when the alpha female roused herself, they began to walk away parallel to the road but through the trees about 100 meters away from us. We drove along the road hoping to follow them as we saw occasional glimpses of white-tipped tails lolloping along through the bush. As they approached a more open plain we could tell that the pace was picking up, and by this time we were driving along the dirt road at about 20km per hour, straining to see them in the distance. Then suddenly, we could see that the pace of their run had picked up tremendously, and seemingly out of nowhere, several of them shot in front of the other car ahead of us on the road at top speed. We reached the place where they had crossed the road seconds later and knew that they must have been close to making a kill. We stopped and for a moment it seemed that they might have gone too far from us. But then we heard them making noise, and jumped out of the truck to follow them on foot through the darkening evening. By the time we approached the dogs, some 150 meters from the road, there was almost nothing left of the kudu they had brought down. With only a few scraps remaining which were being carried away to feed the cubs. It was a truly incredible experience to arrive literally within a few minutes of the kill being made and a stroke of tremendous luck - even someone like John had only seen this a few times in his long career. With a small bark as a signal to the other group within the pack who were presumably hunting elsewhere, the wild dogs disappeared into the night just as quickly as they’d arrived.

On Friday, our last morning at Mana Pools, we walked along the Zambezi river and enjoyed the abundance of bird life. We also watched a hippo walk into the river down one of the ‘chutes’ in the otherwise steep river banks - surprised at how narrow the chutes seemed in comparison to the girth of the hippo. Later in the morning, just as I was ready to consider this the least interesting of all our walks, John showed us tree that used to be a favourite leopard spot. We were standing right under it when a flicker of a tail caught Helen’s eye. She looked over at John who mouthed 'leopard' excitedly. The leopard eyed us cautiously from the dense foliage of the high branches, flicking her long spotted tail vigorously. Baboons nearby started to howl and cajole her as she slid down the tree and landed on the ground with a surprisingly heavy ‘thud’ – making us realise the power as well as the stealth of such a magnificent animal. Before we could react, she dashed swiftly out of sight. It was a great sighting on our last day in Mana!

During our time at Mana we spotted a huge variety of animals, a brief listing includes:

Buck:  eland, waterbuck with toilet seat markings on their bums, kudu that look as though they’ve had cake icing drizzled over them, and plenty of impala (so common they are called mana goats)

Of the big 5: elephant, leopard, lion, and buffalo

Wild dog

Crocs and Hippo’s

Baboons

Civet, honey badger

Favourite birds: carmine bee eater, violet breasted roller,

After our exciting leopard spotting, we returned to camp for a last breakfast. Then two transfer vehicles picked us up around mid-morning and we started the long sweaty trek towards Lake Kariba. Temperatures outside were soaring, and as Helen and I and Andrew and Romain rode in a dilapidated mini van (with “full aircon” according to the driver) it was closer to 40 degrees celsius. So we kept the sliding side door on the side of the vehicle wide open for some air circulation – never dreaming that we would have done this in an area of wild animals before, whereas now we all felt rather casual about nearby antelope and the occasional elephant in the distance. An hour into our 4 hour journey, on a long stretch of dusty road through a forest of leafless trees that appeared dry as a bone, our driver decided to stop the vehicle and have a pee in the bushes. As if this was a sign to the car, there was a sudden popping noise and a woosh of water onto the windscreen as the car’s radiator burst! Luckily Pam and Keith were ahead of us in an old Landcruiser so we radio’d them to turn back. Anxious to get to Kariba, we all piled into the remaining functional car along with all of our luggage, and waved our dejected second driver ‘au revoir’ as we carried on - another 100km of dust road through the park, then up windy roads overtaking large trucks, and somewhat alarmingly passing truck carcasses on unforgiving bends in the road. Arriving at Kariba, we hopped onto a speedboat transferring us 60km south west across the lake.

After our epic journey, we were delighted to arrive at Musango safari camp located on a small island just off the shoreline of Matusadona National park. Here the focus was on water activities: riding a pontoon boat around the islands while game and bird watching from the water, and fishing. Saturday began with a sunrise trip out to identify birds, feeding fish eagles, and fishing (bream mostly, and the odd tiger fish). The fishing skill was largely that of our young guide, Adam, who taught us neophytes how to hook worms, how to strike when we felt the bream bite, and later, with live bait, he taught us to cast, and then once he had managed to strike a tiger fish, he let first Keith and then Romain each reel in a fish that is famed for its fight.

Andrew and Romain very kindly gave Helen and I one of the two cabins that had a plunge pool directly outside and we enjoyed a wonderfully lazy afternoon in the main swimming pool as well as in our delightfully cool neck-deep plunge pool. It was an odd feeling standing in the plunge pool and being observed with curiosity from not more than 10 meters away, by the resident bushbuck who clearly wondered why we were in her territory. We all hopped onto a large catamaran in the evening, sailing towards Bumi Hills as we enjoyed game viewing, getting temporarily stuck on a submerged tree and toasting our eventual freedom with sun-downers. We were all tremendously relieved that our boat captain’s sudden foray chest deep into the water to free the catamaran from the tree had not resulted in anything more than him getting wet – given how many crocodiles there are in the lake and how many stories we’d already heard of both people and local wildlife being eaten by the crocs.

On Sunday, we squeezed in a last sunrise ride on the pontoon, catching a few small bream to be used as tiger fish bait. After a hearty breakfast we took a boat and road transfer to Bumi airstrip, where we met our charter flight to Harare. Luckily this time it was a larger, better air conditioned plane and everyone arrived safely in Harare with their digestive systems undisturbed. Helen and I bade farewell as we flew back to Johannesburg and real life, while the others stayed on to enjoy another week in Leopard Rock and Inyanga.

It was an amazing, unforgettable trip which Helen and I both thoroughly enjoyed. Pam and Keith were incredibly generous in sponsoring the trip for all of us, and we are already dreaming up how we can possibly re-pay their kindness, as well as where we should all travel to for our next great adventure.

As I see the clouds of a possible thunderstorm begin to tighten across the skies outside my window, I am reminded that Spring has begun in Johannesburg. This means an end to predictably blue skies and cold nights, and instead sometimes we wear shorts and soak up fabulous sunshine, while at other times we find ourselves freezing at night, having just packed away all of the winter blankets when a new cold snap arrives!

With August being an often dry and dusty month of dreariness, the Olympics seemed like a good excuse to rouse everyone from their winter hibernation. So, on the Friday night of the opening ceremony Helen and I hosted a fun-loving group of friends to my flat  - with everyone coming dressed either in the colours of particular countries or as athletes of some Olympic sport. To liven things up and help people not to only talk in little groups among themselves, we organised two teams among all of the party attendees, and had our own mini-olympics consisting of events to challenge many different skills. For mental athletics we had a quiz on the history of the Olympics. For cardiovascular stamina we had a team balloon-blowing contest (each member of the team had to blow up a balloon in a relay so that when they finished, the next team member started – with the team with the longest string of balloons at the end winning). And for balance and agility we had a relay-race of egg-and-spoon around the balcony. Later in the evening we also had beer-pong for those in need of liquid refreshment. It was a fabulous event with a great group of people and although we only got to bed at 2am and I had to be up fairly early the next morning to referee, I had a super time not only watching the Lord of the Rings and Village People (er, sorry, I mean the Olympic Opening ceremony) but also sharing many good laughs and a few beverages with friends.

On Tuesday the following week, we saw snowflakes flurrying down outside our windows across the city of Johannesburg. It is not a common occurrence here, and people were running around like Japanese tourists with cameras snapping at everything. It was actually still above zero degrees, so the snow melted almost immediately, but considering how almost all houses in South Africa have no central heating, or even proper insulation, for many it was a bitterly cold snap of weather. Helen and I were slightly worried, as they closed parts of the national highway to Durban and we were scheduled to drive down for a long weekend in Durban only two days later. As it turned out, our drive saw us pass through at least 100km of terrain in which all of the higher hills, often right down to the side of the highway, was blanketed in snow. In fact at one point we had to turn off the highway because a stretch of it was still closed due to ice. This meant that we got stuck in a tail-back of traffic in which a 3km drive had taken most of an hour. Thinking we were being smart, we turned right and went the country-side route, instead of following thousands of others (this was driving on a Thursday public holiday when a significant number of people had all decided to take a long weekend holiday) who went left and through a nearby town called Estcourt. Our increasingly mountainous route over gravel roads was fine until we got to one high point where the snow seemed to have melted into the gravel to make the road a mudbath. We passed one small truck which was parked on the side of the road, apparently abandoned at some point, but didn’t think too much of it, simply being happy to be on the move again. Then we got to the muddiest stretch of road in which a large truck was simply stuck in the middle, having jack-knifed so that the cab and the trailer were pointing in very different directions. As we surveyed the situation in front of us, a 4-wheel drive vehicle which had been following us, cautiously drove through, and despite suffering some wheel-spin, was able to grip enough to wade through the mud and over the contours of a slight dip in the road, up onto a dry section of the track. Helen was driving at this point, and as we passed to the right side of this truck, with a rather steep bank down into the valley on the other side of our car, I could feel that the wheels were beginning to slip and slide over the surface of the mud. Helen quite rightly decided that in an automatic transmission vehicle, she wasn’t comfortable. So before we could get stuck, we stopped, and swapped seats. I then cautiously got us moving again, then gunned the engine slightly as we slipped and slid along the curves of the road, but managed to navigate our way to the firmer parts and up onto the dry road again. Even as I write this I can recall how drenched in sweat I felt, with my heart pounding in my ears, by the time we realised we were out of the worst of it and in the clear. The drivers of the 4x4 in front of us had very graciously waited to see if we were ok (having followed us for the past 25km of dirt road probably assuming, as we did, that our satellite navigation gps was taking us on a good route) before departing. So I think we would have managed to make a plan even if things had taken a turn for the worse, but I am incredibly glad that it all turned out ok anyway. Surfing is fun on a board, not so much in my poor car Porky, who was covered in mud outside and in!

Luckily the rest of our weekend at the coast: first in Shaka’s Rock on the North Coast, and then in Durban on the beachfront, was relatively uneventful and enjoyable. We relished the warm tropical weather of Natal, and enjoyed a good few swims in the sea and the pool, as well as tasty meals and fun walks and cycling along the Durban beachfront. The only sad part was visiting the father of a very close friend of Helen’s who succumbed to cancer earlier this year, leaving Helen and several of her friends bereft of a fun-loving and lively companion. It seems so unjust that people in their youth should be taken away from the world and all the marvels it contains. Though a man of few words, it was apparent that the father was very grateful to us for our visit, and for me it was simply another testament to how wonderfully supportive of others Helen was throughout this difficult time. 

For amateur players, the rugby season is now nearing a close, with only a few weeks left. Luckily, my knee injury seems to be past me and I have once again been enjoying Saturdays out running around. A few weeks ago, in one of my first games back after my lengthy invalidity, I was sent to referee an Under 21 age group match between two fairly large Afrikaans rugby clubs: Alberton and Brakpan. For those of you as unfamiliar with Johannesburg as I was until very recently, neither of these areas on the Eastern side of Johannesburg are celebrated as renown cultural or philosophical centres, but rather for their somewhat industrial aspect and the earthy character of their predominantly Afrikaans-speaking inhabitants. Perhaps I should have been less surprised then when it turned out that qualifications as a boxing referee would have been more appropriate for this match. And after a series of incidents, culminating in a scuffle in which the one team’s coach charged onto the field and jumped on top of his own player to stop him throwing punches at members of the opposition, I was rather disappointed to have to call the game off in the interests of player safety. Fortunately, such incidents are rare, and for the most part it has been a good season with enjoyable games of varying quality being played in many different parts of Johannesburg which I am now able to pinpoint almost solely by the locations of their rugby stadiums (don’t ask me anything else about a lot of those areas though!)

Being the trouble-maker that I am, my membership of the provincial rugby referees society has not come without its difficulties. Not least when I foolishly wrote an open email asking whether it would be a good idea for the society to show more transparency in the way that referees are selected for games and which games are refereed by whom. That was a week of e-mails and back and forth recriminations with various elected and unelected committee officials that I really didn’t need to have added to my plate. In the end, the query seems to have been fairly amicably swept aside, for now at least, in the name of practicality. More recently, the committee of the union seemed to be highly concerned that referees are choosing to leave our province and instead to officiate games in neighbouring provinces. I seem not to have learned my lesson however, as in response to this I have offered my services to the committee to put together an anonymous online survey to the referees society members, to explore what is happening among members and where we as a society can improve – thus far my suggestion seems to have fallen on deaf ears!

Life has otherwise been a delightfully humdrum sort of domesticated existence. Helen and I try to go to the gym a couple of times per week, often doing circuits one day, resistance exercises and free weights another, and sometimes swimming, as well as fitting in a jog around the neighbourhood from time to time. We have also been taking the odd urban hike: nosing around houses and properties in different neighbourhoods as Helen wears in her new boots in anticipation of our walking safari holiday with my parents and brother in October. Although Helen has been working very hard, and I have been doing a fair bit of research into ideas for more entrepreneurial ventures in the future, we have often still found time to watch an episode here and there of a Scandinavian thriller (‘The Killing’) given to me by my folks for Christmas, and also to watch an occasional movie on our lazy Sunday afternoons on the couch.

As the weather improves (though not this afternoon) we are of course finding ourselves invited out to more social events again, and have enjoyed catching up with friends and meeting new people as well as trying new locations. We recently even enjoyed dinner out a local Nigerian restaurant for which I had bought a meal voucher. The food was quite tasty, although not outstanding, and it was somewhat amusing to discover that the menu was in fact a fiction, as there were only two principal main courses on offer on that night (and no starters, and no dessert). Nevertheless, with a spirit of adventure, we’ve kept trying new things – including drinks on the verandah of a very posh hotel, and even having a test drive of a car we both like the look and feel of (the Nissan Quashqai) despite neither of us necessarily being in a position to actually buy a new car at the moment!

Professionally this has not been a year of particularly significant challenge or growth for me, but my job pays decently, and has allowed me time to explore options and possibilities for the future. Not something I take for granted at a time when the global economy continues to be a source of general gloom. With South Africa’s political landscape having particular effects on how large corporations are run, combined with my own tendency to want to do things my way (I fear I hear a few sniggers out there at this admission), I am increasingly looking at more entrepreneurial ideas – with a feeling that this is a good time in my life to take a few more risks and try to make something happen for myself. As always, Helen has been incredibly supportive, and I consider myself very fortunate indeed to have her in my life.

With Winter tending to lean towards more indoor entertainment, we have also been to see several entertaining events – including a one-man comedy show called ‘Defending the Caveman’, which gave some incredibly broad brush strokes to the many differences between men and women, and the effects these differences have on how we interact, but did so in a way that was humorous and often insightful. I unashamedly laughed like a Hyena with a breathing problem the first time I saw it. We also saw another local comedy act which I didn’t enjoy as much perhaps because I was tired. Unintended comedy value has also been afforded by the recent bumbling performances of the Springboks for whom a new coach seems to have heralded the dawn of a past era of rugby tactics. I do not much look forward to tomorrow’s game against the New Zealand All Blacks in the land of the long white cloud. It is a sorry state of affairs indeed that I find myself feeling much more cheered by my recollection of a movie called ‘Searching for Sugarman’ which Helen and I both thoroughly enjoyed, despite my having no knowledge of any of his music before seeing the movie. I highly recommend the film to any of you who have not seen it. We also recently enjoyed a few hours of warm sunshine and a picnic at the Walter Sisulu botanical gardens on the west side of Johannesburg, listening to an up-and-coming Afrikaans rock band called ‘Die Heuwels Fantasties’ (The Fantastic Hills). Johannesburg continues to be a city full of hidden wonders and a constant stream of events which will no doubt give us many more opportunities to enjoy spending time with friends and family as Summer nears.

For those of you who have not already seen, there is pictorial evidence of many of these events on facebook – here:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151996918240584.897924.713605583&type=3&l=f214c8732e

It is amazing how the year seems to be flying by. Already we are half-way through July and I find myself wondering how the time can go so quickly!

Right now we are suffering some proper winter weather in Johannesburg: the worst of the latest cold front seems to have passed and the skies are blue and sunny again, but has been a bitterly cold wind blowing, and I realise again that houses here (with single-glazing, draughty windows and doors, and tile floors in many places) are wonderfully built for summer, but deeply chilling in cold weather. Still, it seems we’ve done better than other parts of the country where rain has been torrential, and there has even been snow (and not only on the high mountains where you would expect!)

Of late, life has been unusually domesticated for me because I’ve had an on-going issue with inflammation in my knee joint which started in mid-May and still hasn’t cleared up. My physiotherapist is a very nice lady, and we have good conversations, but I still would prefer not to be swiping my credit card quite so regularly while then finding that the next time I try to go for a run I end up with a sore knee again. Hopefully however the end will be in sight soon, and I’ll be able to get back to ‘proper’ Saturdays filled with refereeing and some more regular tennis and maybe even basketball on week-nights. At least Helen and I have been able to get to the gym a few mornings per week to keep me sane.

It seems like it has been far too long since our Easter break, which was the last proper length holiday we’ve had. Nevertheless, we have managed to do some fun things since then. In late April Helen and I took the opportunity presented by a long weekend, to travel down to the Drakensberg mountains in Natal. There we had a lovely time hiking, swimming in marble pools, and enjoying cooking over a gas stove with head-torches and sleeping in a tent (although I think we safely established that we have a two-day tent rule, if we’d been there another night we’d have opted for a B&B :o)

On the 4^th of May, Helen’s sister, Kylie, gave birth to a lovely little boy, Heath, who has since been showered with affection from doting grandparents, uncles and aunties – including Helen who, like the rest of us, has been smitten by his cuteness. Kylie and her husband Nick have done incredibly well since then, coping remarkably with the stresses of having a new-born who is not able to communicate other than by smiling or howling, and Heath has had some traumatic and sleepless nights with various ailments. Kylie likes to send out a picture of him each day to a few of us, and it certainly reminds us of the sleeplessness they suffer at times, when those emails are occasionally sent at 4:45am and we know that Heath usually feeds at 12, 3, and 6am.

Helen’s birthday is on the 13^th of May, and we went out to one of Johannesburg’s oldest bars, the Radium Beer Hall, to celebrate by listening to two excellent local South African bands – the second of which, The Black Cat Bones, were an exceptionally good hard rock/ metal act. It was great to be joined by several of our friends, and to celebrate with some of Joburg’s most awesome carrot cake - which I somehow managed to keep a secret from Helen until we brought it out at the bar after our pizza dinner.

Without much refereeing on my plate, we have been exploring a little bit more of Johannesburg in other ways: whether it’s been playing adventure golf one evening with a few mates, or pottering around antique shops to see all the old, weird and wonderful furnishings and decorations (and piles of utter junk) that are on sale, or visiting an art gallery to see an exhibition of works protesting the way leading politicians in the ruling party of the government have been enriching themselves through their offices. This exhibition originally included a highly controversial painting of Jacob Zuma, which was no longer there by the time we visited the exhibition, but which made headlines around the world for depicting our country’s president with his penis hanging out of his trousers. All of the images we saw in the papers blacked out the offending appendage, but judging by the size of the blanked space in all of the media coverage, Mr Zuma should have been quite pleased with the portrait.

We also enjoyed several culinary adventures: including Ethiopian food in a restaurant so new that they didn’t even have wine glasses, let alone a liquor license; and a ‘proper Indian’ food experience in the traditionally South Asian suburb of Fordsburg – where most residents are also muslim and one is therefore not permitted to even bring alcohol to drink in the restaurant. Another highlight was attending two different musical performances in botanical gardens: on Mother’s Day (celebrated in South Africa in late May) we went to Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens on the West Rand, but unfortunately our picnic with music was rained out and we soon all scuttled off to visit Kylie and Nick and Heath. On another Sunday, Helen and I and a friend of ours Claire travelled to Pretoria to see another local hell-raiser, Afrikaans rapper Jack Parow: the performance was excellent (although admittedly I was slightly surprised to see so many Afrikaans children in the crowd given the descriptively profane lyrics) and we were disappointed to only see the last part of it (not realising that unlike at most music concerts, the Botanical Gardens concerts start and finish right on schedule.)

June is always a good time of the year from a sporting perspective, and my disappointment at not being able to referee much was somewhat alleviated by being able to watch some excellent NBA Finals basketball (even if I still am not a huge fan of Lebron James, despite appreciating his incredible athleticism, I was deeply impressed as ever by Dwayne Wade’s play while clearly injured), as well as some excellent rugby as the Springboks hosted England for a three test tour. The first of these games we watched while visiting Parys, an Afrikaans town on the banks of the Vaal river which is just inside the Free State Province. We enjoyed the game and had a fun night celebrating our friend Rudi’s birthday in raucous style, including nearly setting the dining room table alight with a spilled fondue burner, and ending up dancing in the one and only night-club of Parys. Although not far from the golf estate where we were staying, I tried my best to avoid having our friends drive around somewhat under the influence of alcohol, but after I discovered that Parys did not offer a single taxi driver who was on duty, I was forced to give up when my efforts to find out how to solve this included making a phone call to the local police station who informed me that it was not normal practice for them to have officers carrying out drink-driving patrols on Saturday nights as they lacked staff numbers or resources for this!

The following Saturday I took Helen’s brother Bryan with me to Ellis Park to watch the second test. I have joined the Springbok Supporters club this year, and was very happy to find that we had been allocated seats 8 rows up from the field, which gave us a fantastic view of play and a great feel for the vibe. It was only the second time since SA v Ireland in 2004 (ironically, the second test under the direction of our last World Cup winning coach, Jake White) that I have seen the Springboks play in South Africa. Bryan and I had a great time and then joined Helen and Elaine, Bryan’s girlfriend, for gourmet hamburgers and drinks and dancing afterwards.

It really was a rugby month, as the following weekend Helen and I travelled down to Port Elizabeth to see the third and final Springbok test, and also for me to show her a little bit more of my home-town. We had a lovely time, including a Saturday morning run to the beach (after which my knee promptly felt sore again!) and a swim in the sea which was surprisingly temperate for mid-winter, a brunch at which we bumped into an old mate of mine, an evening out after the rugby- eating and chatting with my PE buddies of old, and then an enjoyable visit to my old friend Frank’s new family home for a braai on Sunday (I did also manage to squeeze in a second swim in the sea on Sunday morning). We were very lucky to be with Frank, as there was a sudden mad dash for the airport just after we finished lunch (Frank lives about 5 minutes drive from the airport, although almost everything in PE is less than ten minute’s drive) when there appeared to be a conflict between the departure time and the boarding time on our flight tickets. (Stupid airline, stupid flight reschedules, stupid mis-print of boarding time on boarding passes... stupid me for not having checked it out earlier!)

Lately, I’ve had Helen to thank for a few other funny and even inspiring experiences here in Joburg. Along with my friend Bruce, we recently joined a walking tour of public art in Johannesburg’s downtown area, which for many years was considered to be a no-go zone, but is now enjoying a marvellous revival as a multi-cultural African hub with vibrant commerce, throngs of residents and urban bustle all-round. It was not only inspiring to see many different forms of public art funded by the city council, but also to meet local people, see all of the weird and wonderful shops (apparently there’s a shopping tour) and explore whole new corners of our very own city on foot. The following weekend, on Saturday morning I was able to join Helen and her group of friends who every month gather for a craft club (where each time a different member of the club hosts the others for a meal and helps them to develop their skills in a particular craft – in the past they’ve done flower arranging, jewellery beading, cake decorating and many other creative things). Normally men are not invited but in this case the hostess decided to break that rule, and we all set off for a 5km walk after which the ladies paired up to write some very amusing poems which they then read out to the men who acted as the judging panel. It was a fun day out, and I didn’t envy either of the other judges - being husbands of highly competitive participants!

That evening we also hosted a group of friends at my flat for games night – we had a lively bunch and I think everyone enjoyed playing 30 seconds (a game in which you have a series of names of people and places on a card and 30 seconds in which to get your team-mates to guess as many as possible by describing the name without using any part of the words on the card – e.g. if they need to guess Air France, you might say, “it is a company that flies you around, and the capital of this country is Paris”). Needless to say, such things become highly competitive at times, and also result in lots of fun debate – especially when one of the guests turned out to be more than a little inebriated and rather belligerently Texas Republican! It was a busy weekend as the following morning Helen hosted her family at her flat for a brunch to celebrate her sister Kylie’s birthday – by Sunday afternoon we were rather happy to lie on the sofa and watch a movie. 

Last weekend Helen and I met up with Bruce, up in Joburg again from his medical work in the town of Potchefstroom, and a number of his friends, some of whom I have known since my last time spent in Joburg for two months in 2004, but had not seen more than once since then. We enjoyed a lovely braai in Bruce’s girlfriend Lexi’s lovely home, including some very well-aged red wine from the mid 1990s and a few tots of 12-year old Scotch to send us home happy. Saturday morning saw us up bright and early to prepare for the annual potjie cookoff in Northern Johannesburg. Potjie is considered to be a traditional form of South African cooking, although all it really entails is an open fire heating a stew which is cooked in a heavy cast-iron pot. The competition itself was all in aid of charity and each team tried to raise as much money as they could by offering games to be played (shoot your mate with a paintball gun, throw darts at a board with small prize vouchers as well as money, run an inflatable obstacle course, defeat your friend in a game of beer-pong, etc) as well as a variety of foods and drinks. The atmosphere was actually a bit like a country fair. Luckily our team included some excellent chefs, so all Helen and I had to do was organise drinks – which sold surprisingly well despite it being a bitterly cold day. Our team’s theme was “flaming hot” and we all wore devil’s horns and hell-ish outfits – and to go with this theme I had added raw chillies to some of the bottles of alcohol we served, so perhaps it was the warming effect of these which gave them some appeal on the day. Although in fact our best-selling drink was a local favourite ‘melk-tertjie’ shooter (so named because it tastes quite similar to a traditional milk-tart dessert) which basically consists of vodka, condensed milk, evaporated milk, and a sprinkling of cinnamon on top. We were not fortunate enough to place among the top finishers in the cook-off competition, but it was a great fun day out and everyone had a good time cooking, eating, playing games and meeting lots of other young people from around the city.

Life in Johannesburg continues to be great fun and I feel very much at home here now. I have a range of different friends with whom I enjoy everything from sports to partying to political and philosophical debates, and every week it seems that there are more new things to see and do, and whole parts of the city yet to be explored. Although my career has not settled down yet, I feel like my efforts to determine the broad outline of my long-term future are making good progress, and with that long-term vision in mind, I hope to begin to make inroads into new ventures and begin again to be stimulated by new learning and experiences. Helen’s new job (as of February this year) is starting to settle down a little as the team she now has working for her have begun to hit their stride. She still works hard and enjoys continuing to meet lots of different clients and stakeholders while working in a vibrant young company with a great product and good prospects for continued growth.

It is a tremendous comfort to me that whatever path I may choose professionally and personally, Helen is a rock of stability for me and I really feel that I have met my match in such a remarkable woman. At times it has been difficult to be so far away from my own family, but Helen’s family have been incredibly welcoming and I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know each of them at Monday night family dinners and games of rugby and other get-togethers. The future is never certain, indeed there will no doubt be plenty more surprises in store, but Helen and I are very lucky that we can support and care for each other as we plan for a shared life together, and I look forward to many more adventures with her by my side.

Several of you have asked about photos on this blog, but rather than cherry-pick them, I ask you to look at my facebook albums where I’ve posted them:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151626154655584.859624.713605583&type=3&l=2a23ca34e8

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151795015555584.872349.713605583&type=3&l=4087ae0fa0

Running Along Nicely

Last week was my first holiday since Christmas, and Helen and I decided to do a bit of a road trip to explore more of South Africa, which has been one of my ambitions since I returned here. We set off from Johannesburg in the faithful Porky (my little red Chevrolet Aveo) on a surprisingly damp and windy Saturday morning. It seems that Autumn is most certainly on its way, and we felt the chill keenly when stopping in the open plains of the Free State Province to re-fuel and buy snacks along the way.

We stopped off for lunch in Bloemfontein, and as Helen spent some of her childhood there, we decided to go and find her old house and also visited the girls school where she was a scholar in two separate periods of her junior-school life. It was fun to see how little everything is in schools when you’re a big person - and to remember how big they feel when you are only 3’9” tall.

After many hours of driving we finally reached Beaufort West shortly after a brilliant sunset over the mountains in that part of the Karoo. We were very happy to arrive at our camp, and after some confusion over which unit we were staying in, our cottage in Karoo National Park. It was fantastic to spend two lovely nights in a peacefully quiet place where there is very little artificial light, only brightly shining stars and a moon so full that it cast shadows. Having had a hankering for ribs for some days, we enjoyed cooking them over the braai and eating them with salad. Actually, that wasn’t the only thing that got cooked over the braai – I was a little exuberant with the benzene as a quick fire-starter and lost a few hairs on the back of my arm as there was a surprisingly large whoosh of flame as soon as the match hit the wood! But luckily no harm done.

Sunday was spent lazing in the sunshine reading on the sofa which we dragged out onto the balcony of our cottage. It was a great luxury to be able to relax away from any cares of work or normal life. We had actually hoped to have a nice long run in the park as part of our training for running Cape Town’s Two Oceans Half Marathon the following Saturday, however we learned that the park has at least one lion, and therefore while walking tours are arranged, these are with a guide who carries a gun, and guests in the park are not allowed to walk or jog outside the camp by themselves!

On Sunday evening we took a drive out to find a nice spot for a drink to watch the sun go down. We saw quite a few antelope and even some mountain zebra along the way, and eventually picked a spot with a view (we only saw one other car in the drive) and got out of the car and sat on some rocks with drinks. The open expanse of the karoo mountains around us was a dramatic setting for the blues, purples, greys and gold colours we saw in the shifting skies. I got a helluva fright when we were packing stuff back into the car and Helen suddenly jumped in alarm, I whipped around expecting to see a lion eyeing me up as a snack and instead, once I had receovered my wits, got to listen to Helen competing with some antelope who had made a funny snorting noise on seeing us, to determine which of them could make the loudest tttthhhhpppp noise at the other!

On making our way back to camp we discovered that in fact there was a barrier across the road barring the track we had taken, which had been locked closed for the night. With no cellphones with us, and no sign of anyone else in the area, and none too keen to walk too far from the car in the dark, we got out of the car to find out if we could open the barrier. Not surprisingly, the chain and padlocks, holding the two booms across the road together, did not budge. However, I soon discovered that the end of one boom was not fixed to the pole on which it pivoted, and was in the process of lifting the swivelling end off its post when the family of some park employees drove by (resulting in some hasty re-shuffling of the boom to a half-cocked position not quite back on its post!) They kindly called someone in the main camp who graciously came to let us out by the more traditional means of unlocking the padlock. 

We enjoyed another lovely braai that evening (minus flamethrowing tricks) and then relaxed under the starlight and almost complete stillness on the sofa which we moved in front of the outdoor fireplace to ward off the chill in the air. Living in a big city it is easy to forget how much ambient noise there is all the time, and the Karoo was a welcome contrast of peace and tranquillity.

The next morning we set off for Tulbagh, which is a less well-visited but very beautiful part of the Cape Winelands, about 90minutes north of Cape Town. On the way, we had lunch in a small restaurant in Ceres, which is a town famous in South Africa for its fruits. Although there was quite a lot of driving both to Cape Town and on the way back, it was most enjoyable for the Helen and I as time to chat together about ourselves, our families, our friends, and our experiences in life, and just to learn more about each other and how we think about things. We had luckily found ourselves a promotion deal which allowed us to stay on a wine farm called Rijks, in a beautiful hotel with scenic mountain backdrops and a lovely swimming pool, all at a very reasonable rate. We finally managed to have a little training run that evening and both found that the lower altitude and wide open spaces made for seemingly effortless running.

We enjoyed Rijks so much that we requested a second night (at the same discounted price), and spent Tuesday cycling around the different wineries not having to worry about driving to Cape Town afterwards. Our first stop was at Twee Jonge Gezellen estate (“two young bachelors” in Dutch), home of Krone, a Method Cap’ Classique sparkling wine (Champagne in all but the fact that the grapes are grown in a different area of the world) which is produced in an incredibly careful and labour-intensive process (with everything from picking the grapes at night, to turning the champagne bottles by hand as part of the process of getting the sediment re-absorbed, all being done by hand). Thereafter we stopped at several other more traditional wineries (with mixed results – in one winery the highlight for us both was definitely the small snacks served with the tasting rather than the sugared vinegar in the glasses). Cycling around was a lovely way to shake off any effects of the alcohol, and because it was a very hot day, we actually found it quite a workout. We did also stop in the middle of Tulbagh where there is a street of restored historical houses, many of which date back several centuries: now containing small museums, quaint coffee shops, a choclatier, and several curio shops selling succulent plants and assorted crapola that people buy to fulfill their need to clutter a house with junk.

On our first night in Tulbagh we ate a platter of traditional local foods in a restaurant which was tasty although not outstanding. On the second night, it being our anniversary of being together for five months (feels oddly like we’ve been together longer, given how much enjoyment has been packed into that time) we splashed out and ate at Rijks, including ordering a bottle of Krone  - it seems that touring a winery does inculcate some brand loyalty!

The following morning was my birthday and Helen thoroughly spoiled me by filling the room with balloons and giving me lots of presents. I also received a present and a call from my parents from the UK. We enjoyed swimming in the pool and a leisurely breakfast, as well as a cheeky tasting of Rijks own Pinotage wines (it did feel odd tasting wine at 10:30am), which are a particular specialty of theirs. Thereafter we drove into Cape Town and happily settled into the flat in Greenpoint which my cousin Shaun very kindly let us use. It was nice to have a home base for the rest of the week, and the location was very convenient for much of the city. It being my birthday, we made our way to Clifton beach (and were met there by my old friend Andy Young, out from his current work in Bermuda to visit his family) where we braved the frigid waters of the Atlantic for a refreshing swim.

For my birthday evening we met several friends: Andy, his brother Bruce and Bruce’s girlfriend Lexi, as well as Kait (who unfortunately was beset by car troubles) and another friend of ours Paddy. We ate at Cafe Paradiso on Kloof Street, and had been hoping to enjoy their outdoor tables, however the wind was howling a gale so we instead got warm and cosy inside. It was a lovely dinner and great fun to catch up with friends and share some laughter and stories. I was also lucky enough to chat to my brother later in the evening when he very kindly called from London.

On Thursday morning I played some tennis with Andy and Bruce, and then later Helen and I went on a tour of the Houses of Parliament (free, and extremely well-done and very informative) where it was very interesting to see how the buildings’ evolution in many ways mirrored that of South Africa’s political systems and representation. Thereafter we collected our race numbers for the Half Marathon (and waded through numerous stalls in the convention centre trying to promote weird shoes, odd medicines, and even stranger ‘energy’ foods for serious athletes). In the afternoon we had lovely hamburgers at Royale on Long Street (definitely a recommendation for Cape Town tourists) and enjoyed a bit of browsing in clothes and interiors shops, including a stopover in a surprisingly expansively stocked antique shop where Helen was able to get a tiny dose of her fix for old and beautiful things (tasteful things, not quite the same as the knick-knacks in Tulbagh – although I suppose one man’s Nik-nak is another man’s Ghost Pops – sorry, private joke for those of you who aren’t familiar with South Africa’s brands of chips or crisps as you would know them in the UK). It was a lovely hot day so we made our way to Lluandudno beach where we enjoyed the sun’s warmth, and also swam again in the cold Atlantic (I’d estimate that the water was about 12-13 degrees Celsius) and even Helen got in up to her neck, albeit very briefly.

That night, we enjoyed a fabulous Mexican meal at El Burro, which is opposite the Soccer World Cup stadium in Greenpoint. It was for me among the two best meals of our trip, and somewhere I would also thoroughly recommend to any visitors. Unfortunately we were rather conscious of our impending run, and therefore chose not to also sample their extensive and tasty range of cocktails.

On Friday it turned out to be a grey and rather gloomy day. Mindful of our run the following day, we took it relatively easy (I had a nice nap on the sofa at mid-morning), although it was nice to get out and shake off the bad weather by climbing Lion’s Head – unfortunately there was no view from the top at all as a result of the heavy cloud. In spite of the conditions, Andy joined us for another swim at Clifton beach; this time Helen decided to remain on shore! We also took in a movie at the V&A waterfront: Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was a star-studded cast, and a good fun film which will no doubt pique interest in travel to India, although one does sense that some of the character development was over-accelerated in the movie, whereas no doubt the book the film was based on took a bit more time about it.

Up at 4:30am, we still found ourselves running late and desperately trying to find parking near the start of the race. After a bit of a mad dash to find the start and get our bag stowed with the bag-keepers, we began running about 9-10 minutes after the first half marathon runners had set out at 6am. Within 2 km however we reached the back of the field and from there we slowly worked our way through the pack a bit. I then left Helen to run by herself as I know she enjoys getting into her own rhythm and space. I had been a bit worried by the profile of the race shown in a diagram, which made the hills look incredibly steep, and also showed that at least two of those hills were several kilometres long. As it turns out, while the half marathon is probably not as scenic as the Ultra marathon (also run on the same day, but 56km long) it still weaves its way through some lovely suburbs in the shadow of the mountains and the terrain is challenging but not ridiculously so – the hills were long but fairly gentle. Perhaps having lived on a rather long and steep hill in Harrow for so many years has warped my expectations in this regard. On this particular morning however, with rain forecast, about 9km into the race the heavens opened. It was not drizzle, nor even hard rain, those sorts of rain were how it began, but by the 11km mark the rain felt like a monsoon. I suppose the positive aspect of this was that there weren’t too many people suffering heat exhaustion, nor would dehydration have been as much of an issue. But it did make your waterlogged shoes and socks feel several kilograms heavier. 21km was a nice distance: it challenged without proving insurmountable, and I found myself getting stronger as the race carried on and many others seemed a little dispirited by the continuing torrential rain. Despite a slow start, I managed to finish the race strongly, overtaking a lot of people in the last 5 kilometers. I did note a sign where I had 4km left to run, which showed that those running the Ultra would have covered 52km to that point. I am deeply grateful not to have subjected my body to that stress, given that my knees started to stiffen up almost immediately after I crossed the finish line and began to stretch. Helen finished not long after me and by this time, with both of us thoroughly wet and rather cold, we shiveringly walked back to our car 2km away rather than join the huge queues for the shuttle buses back to the parking.

I think we were both hugely relieved to enjoy hot showers and warm clothes as well as a nice soft sofa. Helen had a well-deserved nap and I pottered about and did some reading. Later in the day we made our way to a steakhouse and watched another movie – this time we saw an excellent locally produced movie called Material, which was set in Johannesburg’s Muslim Indian community and has sparked my interest in further exploration of pockets of Johannesburg where I have not yet been (there don’t seem to be any rugby fields there, hence my ignorance!) That night we ate at a homely little Italian restaurant down the road from the flat and finally spoiled ourselves with some well-deserved wine after the long run.

On Sunday we began our lengthy journey home, but not before we had a quick swim in the apartment block swimming pool, having found we were both very stiff and felt a bit geriatric trying to get out of bed in the morning. We drove most of the day, thankfully soon leaving behind rather grim Cape Town weather and emerging into karoo dessert sunshine, stopping only briefly for small snacks and fuel along the way. We spent Sunday night at a delightful farmhouse called New Holme Guest Farm, between Hanover and Colesberg. Not only were the host family very friendly and welcoming (including the kittens playing in the gardens) but the food they served was simply fabulous traditional local fare. Springbok joints as well as karoo lamb pie, with pumpkin fritters, fresh traditional farmhouse bread, and malva pudding and cheesecake as highlights of the puddings. The next morning, Easter Monday, we had a nice short walk around the farm to ease our legs and then hopped in the car and made our way back to Joburg, enjoying some good laughs and great chat along the way.

It has been a jolt back to reality going back to work and not being free to do as I please, nor to see as much of Helen as I had become used to, as she sinks her teeth into the uphill climb that is her job at the moment. The team of two others she is supposed to be managing, and probably needs to expand to three staff, is currently zero, as one is on maternity leave and the other is no longer working for the company - so Helen is doing the work of three people and not surprisingly finding she barely has time to keep her head above water. I at least have the luxury of working from home at times like this week when my boss is away at a conference in London and the office still feels rather empty with others away on leave. But this has been a short working week, with the weekend coming up already. Soon reality must bite, and I must start to make more strategic decisions about what to devote my energies to in the next while. But for now it’s nice to have refreshed the soul and created some wonderful holiday memories.

If you are keen to see pictures from the holiday these can be found here:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151408478405584.834917.713605583&type=1&l=fa5dae71c2