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