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 4th 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 13th 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
