“Disappyears”, that is what we are going through. Sporadic lock downs, interspersed with activity which is, sometimes, frenetic mean that the last two years have just disappeared. This might not be the case for everyone who receives this letter, but the time has certainly been accelerated by our own advancing ages, 74 and 76. We continue to work, albeit at a largely reduced pace, collecting stories for MENU and publishing them. We are in pretty good health, although John had a nasty fall several weeks ago which resulted in a badly bruised left leg. Fortunately, nothing broke. Our diet has evolved into something close to the Banting philosophy, minimizing intake of starches and John has lost about 11 Kg. His weight seems to have stabilized at about 84 Kg. Lynne, who follows the same regime and is the healthy meal planner and the cook, and eats less, has not lost anything like that – different metabolisms, very frustrating. We believe that working is a good recipe for a healthy senior citizen life, with good mental and physical activity.
We have been making the most of the time available to us. Lynne has been very busy in our little garden – she says it is very good exercise; vegetables flourishing down the side of the house in space freed up by the removal of two large sunlight-robbing trees and beautiful flowers in the front garden. Household maintenance - using previously unavailable time to do what the house needs; installing a retractable awning to give shelter from the sun when we entertain or simply relax on our sea-facing deck, with new covers on the outdoor seats to match the awning;
building a large “unit” to house the new, larger, Smart TV, valuable storage, books, ornaments and other stuff;
making a headboard for the guest bedroom; a new electric oven which replaced the old, temperamental gas unit. That was a bit of a joke. It took a year to find a gas technician to remove the old oven and sort out the piping. In that year, the new AEG oven stood in our hallway, in its packaging, until a man was found who could come and sort out the ancient, now illegal, gas installation and issue a compliance certificate. Then we had to call electricians to connect the new oven. The cost of all that was significantly more than the price of the new oven! Oh, and then it took months to get the gas oven collected by the person (struck down by Covid) to whom it had been donated. The 1924 model cast iron gutters were, at last, replaced with new, seamless aluminium which is similar in style to the old gutters and don’t leak, or threaten to kill anyone walking underneath them. As the downhill side of the house is more than six metres from gutter to ground, the threat of a section of heavy cast iron falling on someone was quite alarming. So now we are broke but the house is looking quite good.
We love to travel. Since our first long road trip together in 2002, from Holland to Tuscany and back, we have travelled to interesting places most years, usually to somewhere where one of us, but not the other, has been. So we have been to the Netherlands, France, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, England, Scotland, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, Greece, Hong Kong, Vietnam; the visits to continental Europe and the UK have been road trips of discovery and re-discovery of at least four weeks. Then, after our circumnavigation of Great Britain in 2019, during which we suspect that we contracted a version of Covid before it hit the news, the world hit a wall. So 2020 was far from being twenty-twenty vision. Our world became circumscribed, our home, the shops… Lynne was going stir crazy and we desperately needed to get away for a while.
So, this year, another voyage of (re)discovery. Lynne had not seen much of the Karoo, other than the bit one goes through in the ±1500 Km of the N1 between Cape Town and Johannesburg. John’s mother was born in a little village called Nieu Bethesda, near Graaff-Reinet, in 1909. His grandmother’s family had farmed in the area, called the Camdeboo, since the late 1700s. We’d thought of undertaking a four week road trip to see the Spring flowers in Namaqualand, driving up to Upington and then down through the Karoo to the Eastern Cape, the Garden Route of the Southern Cape and then home. But sanity prevailed. The Spring flowers are hugely dependent on the rain. Weather forecasters can’t be trusted and it has been a long, long cold and wet winter; blame la Niña. So to book that part of the trip in advance was deemed to be too much of a gamble, especially under the threat of another lock down.
It became a wonderful two week 2700 Km road trip, starting in Calitzdorp, the home of our country’s answer to Port, where we spent a couple of days visiting our wine farmer friends and tasting their products,
before taking the dirt road over the Swartberg Pass, which nearly scared the bejasus out of vertigo-afflicted Lynne,
to the pretty little town of Prince Albert and then on to Graaff-Reinet, Nieu Bethesda
and, eventually, to the Addo Elephant National Park, visiting two other, smaller, national parks en route.
We spent three relaxing days there and then a few more along the Garden Route of the lovely Southern Cape, visiting friends in Keurbooms and Knysna,
before going to Robertson for more visits to wine-farming friends. If you are interested, look in the November and December sections of our Blog Archive. Each story has a link to the next at the end
A dictionary definition of the colloquial South African word Mampara is “a person lacking intelligence or sense”, but our Sunday Times uses it in their Mampara of the Week section as a derogatory title for someone, usually a politician, whose stupid decision has caused harm to the country. Their latest is a British politician named Sajid Javid. He received the accolade for not only shooting the messenger, but then claiming credit for being the messenger. When our South African scientists identified the newest Covid variant, he rewarded us by banning all travel between South Africa and the UK, which cost our economy billions in lost revenue from cancellations of hotels, tours etc. at the height of our nearly recovering tourist season. One small group of two luxury hotels reported that that they lost R40 million in cancellations overnight. And then Jaid stood up in the UK Parliament and claimed credit for telling the world about the new variant. The Omicron variant, which some believe originated in Belgium, has proved to be relatively mild in its effects on vaccinated victims, fortunately, but there is a kind of rough justice in the French ban on any travel to France from the UK. Sorry, UK friends and relations, but he hurt us very badly.
Family matters: Clare continues to prosper as Academic Manager of the SA College of Applied Psychology. Like so many people in the Covid area, she works, mostly, from home. Pam, her mother, still works part time as a consulting nursing sister at a pharmacy. Our sister-in-law, Stephanie, sadly lost her mother in September. She just made it, by a day, to her 99th birthday. Dick, her husband, lives with Stephanie’s sister Nicola in Kent. He is 98 and still in pretty good shape. Stephanie herself had a very nasty riding accident – she has been a top class dressage horsewoman for many years – and spent a month in intensive care. She has recovered remarkably well from intensive surgery. Bill continues with his very successful career in the hotel industry, although, like everyone in that business, the last two years have been crippling. Their son, Richard, is in the money market and manages the investments of various clients, including Bill’s. Victoria, their daughter, has followed in her mother’s footsteps and has won several dressage championships.
Our two cats, Thomas and Rory are in good health, although Tom is starting to show the effects of advancing age at 12. He is very clingy and constantly seeks, nay demands, attention. Rory is more independent, but still loves a head butt or a cuddle if it is not too intense. He is an intrepid hunter and brings us occasional rodent or bird trophies, not all dead. Trying to trap an escaped mouse or shrew can be a bit frenetic. His latest was a live, fortunately undamaged juvenile fiscal shrike, which woke us, flying round our bedroom at 5.30 am. The koi in the pond appear to be in good health, although it is difficult to see them through the algae growth. We have tried a fish and environment friendly algaecide which didn’t do anything other than cost money. Suggestions will be valued.
How long can this continue? Apparently experts tell us that all major pandemics have lasted three and a half years before burning out. That means we have just under two more years to go. So get ready for that pivot, or that side hustle or finding another way to pass the time at home. We have had our two vaccinations, and a booster is promised by the Government in January. We have stayed well and been as careful as we can.
Among the activities we have engaged in over the last many years have been the monthly meetings with the Oenophiles, the wine club which we joined in the mid 1990s. Covid has curtailed that completely. Our last meeting was in July 2020. Social distancing and availability of suitable venues have restricted opportunities and who knows when we will be able to resume.
We have not been able to do our usual December holiday/escape by the sea sadly, as the 4th wave, called Omicron, came along. We are looking at places to go to as soon as we can, but if you have any recommendations we would appreciate them, must be somewhere quiet, facing the sea and not too far, given the terrifying price of petrol now. We have found a marvellous house and cat sitter, Mel, whom the cats seem to dote on, possibly more than us, we are convinced she is a cat whisperer.
Almost a postscript. A friend who visited last week told us, a few days later, that she had been tested positive for Covid. We went to a testing centre yesterday morning and have been notified this morning that we have our test result is negative. A huge relief and Christmas plans can go ahead.
We hope that you will have a safe and happy Christmastide and that 2022 will bring relief from all the nastiness and loss of the past two.
With our love and a wish for health, peace and some sort of prosperity
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