John & Lynne Ford
60 Arthurs Road, Sea Point, Cape Town 8005
+27 21 439 3169 ● +27 83 229 1172 ● +27
83 656 4169
17th December
2015
A mathematician friend once explained
that the years pass by so quickly as one ages because each successive year is a
smaller percentage of one’s elapsed time. We suspect that this is influenced by
the amount of activity one has fitted into the year. John having reached the
age of 70 in a year in which we have done an unprecedented number of things (as
those of you who read our MENU
will know) has seen 2015 whizz by and events of a year ago seem as though we
only just did them.
Right now, we are having a short summer
holiday in a small self-catering flat a few metres from the beach at
Paternoster, on the Cape’s West Coast, enjoying a week of minimal activity,
enjoying each other’s company and, of course, enhancing the time with some good
food and wine.
We have visited some wonderful places in this country (Bartholomeu’s
Klip, The Karoo, Robertson, Stanford, Heidelberg, Elgin, Hemel & Aarde) and
had some very special experiences, like having dinner on Queen Mary 2,
but the
highlight was a three week trip to Istanbul and Greece. We flew with Turkish
Airlines and had five days in Istanbul before going to Greece for two weeks. The
flight was good, but we started our Turkish experience with a small hiccup.
John applied for his Turkish visa on the internet and received it in 15 minutes.
Lynne was told (by the airline and the Embassy) that she didn’t need one with
her British passport. Wrongly. After queuing for about an hour to pass through
immigration at 4 am, she was sent back to the beginning of the queue to buy a
visa and then had to queue for another hour while John waited. Brits be warned!
We rented a small self-catering apartment 10 minutes walk from Kumkapı, the square
which is full of restaurants. We walked all over the centre of the city and
used all forms of the excellent and affordable public transport, which uses a
similar card system to our MyCiti card and the British Oyster pass. We ate some
very good and some fairly ordinary street food and had one excellent lunch at a
restaurant
called Asitane, which features classic Ottoman cuisine. Naturally, we visited
all the palaces and mosques, took a wonderfully enjoyable boat trip on the
Bosporus, did most of the “must dos” and took hundreds of photographs.
You can see the details of this
and all other aspects of our trip, if you wish, by clicking on the links at the
end of this letter.
After Santorini, we spent two days on
Naxos and could have spent longer. It is smaller, quieter and we had wonderful
accommodation, which made a tremendous difference. We took a bus ride to the
centre of the island to see some of the real, less touristy aspects and walked
round the main village and seafront. Next time we will stick to smaller
islands. This was John’s first trip to Turkey and Greece, Lynne had lots to introduce
him to.
Then it was on to Athens for a couple of
days, seeing the obligatory sights,
The early part of the year is when our
friends from the Northern Hemisphere visit us and we were very happy to see and
entertain several of you this year – and look forward to seeing even more in
2016. With the collapse of the Rand through the dreadful mismanagement of our
economy by the government and, especially, our embarrassment of a president, we
have become a very affordable destination.
The year has been marked by the arrival
of a new great nephew, James, son to Richard and Candy, and grandson to brother
Bill and Stephanie. It has also, very sadly, been marked by the loss of old
friends, especially John & Bill’s childhood friend Harry Robertson in
Hawaii. We celebrate the arrivals and mourn the departures. Another sad premature
departure from kidney failure, was the demise of Hamish, our beautiful ginger
cat, at the end of last year. This was followed by the happy arrival of another
full-of-character ginger, Rory with the magnificent tail. It is hard to believe
that the tiny kitten who arrived in January is now this long, elegant creature,
who is as soft as butter and so affectionate.
John’s 70th birthday last
month was an occasion for great festivity, with Bill and Stephanie coming from
Johannesburg to join us for the weekend. We had a small family dinner, followed
by a lunch party the next day for a couple of dozen friends. Lynne made some
wonderful food and a few of our best wines in our cellar played their part.
Just a few days after his birthday, John had a truly life-changing
experience: a second cataract operation. His right eye had a new lens implanted
in 2011; now it was time for the left eye. After wearing spectacles for 60
years, he is now able to see clearly without them, thanks to a very good
surgeon and lenses from Mr Zeiss. You will only know the sense of freedom when
you’ve lived with the restriction. After years of being short-sighted, he now
uses reading specs when the light is a bit dim. Lynne is steeling herself for
the same procedure and is still not quite persuaded that the procedure is as
quick and as painless as it is. (I am a coward and will wait for the last
possible moment and lots of tranquilizers. L). We are both very fit and active
with just a few indications of age creeping up on us, like stiff bones in the
morning). The only medication we take is Omega 3 oil capsules and fresh fruit
and veg. We could be slimmer but look what we do for a living: eating and
drinking professionally is rather a challenge and this year we had five months
of events with canapés and both put on about 5 kilos more.
We have made an important change, one for which our country’s
infrastructure is partly responsible. When we closed our shop nearly 6 years
ago, we took the business on-line. This worked quite well until the Post Office
started to disintegrate. It has now reached the stage where one cannot rely on
orders reaching customers in good time – and the costs have doubled at the same
time, making them disproportionate for small orders. So, sadly, Main Ingredient
has all but expired. We still take special (fairly large) orders for food items
which cannot easily be accessed by some of our customers, but we are
concentrating on writing, photography and tours, which keep us very busy and
which we are enjoying. MENU,
our weekly newsletter, is reaching a wide audience and the associated blogs are
being read by upwards of 15000 people each month, over half of whom are outside
South Africa. The Main
Ingredient website (www.mainingredient.biz)
is now the home of MENU
Next year might well see more travel and we plan to make changes to our
house, such as the installation of a photovoltaic electrical system. The
capital expense of this is more than justified by the rising cost of
electricity, not to mention possible unreliability of our supply. Lynne’s
British pensions have given us more cash to achieve things we have planned for
a while, and the travel.
So life trots merrily along and we are thoroughly enjoying these senior
years, thankful for being able to enjoy them with good health and the means to
be comfortable.
We hope that you will have a very good and happy Christmas and that 2016
will be a year in which life brings you health, comfort and a lot of well-being
