The Grinch and the New House

We moved into our new house last Tuesday which was made all the more exciting for The Ginger Prince by it being an actual building site complete with at least eight workmen at any one time (to whom he kept shouting “Men working!”), multiple open paint cans and two ladders to cause mischief on. Oh, and no furniture. It turns out we needed to construct a wall in the garden, fix the electrics and plumbing, re-plaster and paint the walls, mend and polish the floor boards, install a gate and alarm system and (most satisfying of all) remove all the 1970s tiles that had been glued onto the ceiling throughout in order to paint and restore the tongue and groove wood underneath. Not much then. When I say ‘we’ did it, I mean in the sense that we contracted it all out. DIY is not really the South African way, it would seem, and if you ask about prices to hire a floor sander people look at you as though you are criminally insane, so when in Rome and all that. I am sure, however, that AA would like it to be known that the de-construction of the filthy aviary in the garden cost him two of his very own weekends. All that is left there now is a bare wooden structure that may one day house a swing or slide, the occasional mouse in a trap and bare earth soaked with AA’s own blood, sweat and tears.

 Who knew bossing people about would be so stressful and time consuming? For around a month I have been meeting with tradespeople, arranging quotes and driving to Builder’s Warehouse almost daily, since our team of workmen come without transport. Hard to believe that a month ago I didn’t know my bags of cement from my tile grout and now I am a regular in the ‘contractors’ isle of Builder’s Warehouse and often have a tape measure in my hand bag for no specific reason, just in case.

In the week we have been living here the workmen have dwindled to one hard working Malawian without much English who TGP thinks lives here, in the attic (?), and follows around all day in spite of being ignored, or perhaps because of it. Our furniture has steadily grown from nothing to what can almost be described as too much and, after an unsuccessful attempt to make a stir fry with a plastic fork, we have finally unpacked the essentials; kitchen things, Lego,  and lots of toy animals.  Our original projected budget for the work on the house was an actual joke (that we keep on the fridge for amusement) and we have overspent by so much that we left ourselves with almost nothing for furniture. In the absence of Ikea, or any other decent budget furniture store, we have been trawling the murky depths of Gumtree and thereby routing through garages and living rooms of everyone on this peninsula from emotional ex-pats returning home to a Christian who tried to convert me and then sold me a bracelet for 20 Rand (£2) which I was too embarrassed not to take, along with a huge dining table (which was an absolute bargain). I am most proud of my mismatched dining chairs but the best Gumtree bargain of all is a King Size solid brass bed which was only 1,000 Rand (£100).

Three things I have learned from my Gumtree experience; 1) that Gumtree is addictive as well as hard work 2) that not everyone is going to be totally normal but most people are quite honest and 3) that taking a toddler to a stranger’s house is almost always a bad move for everyone, but very particularly for that stranger’s pets.

                Toddlers greet change with suspicion and in the weeks leading up to the move TGP would slide suspiciously over to where I might be packing a box and all but accuse me of maliciously hiding his toys. Sometimes he would use trick questions and mind games like asking me where his toy dinosaur’s Mummy is, when he knows I know we never had a Mummy dinosaur or asking today, in a throw away fashion, if all his choo-choo trains were still at the old house . He clamoured to be taken round to the new house when it was being renovated, since that is where his Daddy spent many weekends and evenings, and when he got here he would run around in excited circles, but now that we live here he seems deeply confused.

To be fair there has been a lot going on lately. TGP’s playmate for a fortnight, The Ginger Princess (my great niece and TGP’s second cousin), arrived amid the glamour of the airport, chewed on a few favourite choo-choo trains, splashed about in the sea as though she had been doing it her whole life and is now gone but not forgotten. TGP still discusses what she might be doing and whether or not she wants her milk. I would like to say he shared all his toys with her willingly but the best I can really say for him is that he got better about it over the fortnight.

 I would also like to say that I’m sure it will all calm down now but once a two year old starts on a chocolate advent calendar there are probably no moments of calm in sight. Christmas is not quite the fuss out here as it is at home but TGP still sings jingle bells to himself at least five times a day (both in English and in a made-up language of his own) and anxiously confirms regularly that Father Christmas has presents in his bag. His Mum, meanwhile, has just today started on her Christmas shopping and is finding moving, last trimester pregnancy and very hot afternoons greatly impede festive cheer. But I’m sure our next guests will cheer me out of my Grinch mood so roll on holiday season, all I need to do now is find us a tree to go with our previously enjoyed furniture.  

New dining room, complete with mismatched chairs and uninvited house guest.

Old dining room...

Horrible old 1970's ceiling tiles

New ceilings!

Best Gumtree bargain! (100 pounds)

Lounge (complete with rocking-zebra, every home needs one)

Bonteboks and Boys

I will finally have to accept that I have no sixth sense about gender and shelve my list of girl’s names (again) since a scan last week showed a healthy boy.  The Ginger Prince’s latest comment on the whole business was “I don’t want a brother” so it’s good to know he’s not sitting on the fence.

                 It is clearly whale season in more ways than one this October. At 22 weeks I look and feel as I did at seven months with TGP so have an affinity with the huge humpback whales still regularly spotted near our coast. These beasts have, however, recently received second billing to their more toothsome cousins the Great White Sharks who have been putting an ominous fin up in False Bay lately following a notorious incident about three weeks ago when a British ex-pat lost part of both legs after ignoring a warning to stay out of the water. This has been (very) bad for him, bad for Muizenberg surf-tourism and bad for the morale of all our forth-coming visitors who have united in vowing not to even look at the water whilst they are here.

           In the weeks since I have stopped being sick we have managed to tick off a few major items on our ‘to do’ list. I am no longer a patient of Dr Sinister and have met with a midwife who will see me through the rest of the pregnancy. Should anything untoward happen at delivery I have a back-up doctor who describes himself as ‘pro-natural birth’ rather than ‘pro-caesarean’ as seems to be the norm in private medicine here, bringing the caesarean rate up to 70%. Seems everyone is pro-something here and at least he seems better than the last.

          We have also bought an old Dutch house in Muizenberg village one street away from where we are currently living. Having been rented for around twenty years it has been the recent home to some thirty budgies in a giant ramshackle aviary, a dog that has claimed total rights to the garden and a man who has the worst personal habits imaginable, so it is in need of some love, paint and a whole lot of cleaning. After the predictable delays and complications we are hoping to get the keys on Monday and once the fumigators have been I think we will be happy there. I am hugely excited about living in a house with a proper garden for the first time since I was ten and it will be nice for TGP to have accessible insects to pester, mud to jump in and a bigger house to make a mess of. Perhaps it will even compensate for a little brother.

                To make the most of the good weather, the second trimester and the last opportunity before being swamped in muslin squares and sterilisers we are making an effort to do more activities in and around Cape Town. We took a boat trip to Seal Island from Simon’s Town, went to a fancy restaurant in de Waterkant specialising in dumplings as a birthday surprise for me  and had our first foray into local theatre at Kalk Bay Theatre a tiny converted church with an intimate audience of about twenty. We also took TGP camping in the Cederberg Mountains where we stayed in a picturesque campsite with a huge panorama of blue-green mountains and a big spider that kept glaring at me from the back of the toilet door. My days of therma-rests and pot noodles being well and truly over we packed the car up with a blow up mattress and a travel cot for James and worked our way through the food we had brought, until a huge male baboon ran away with TGP’s breakfast whilst he was getting changed in the tent.

More recently we went with AA’s parents, the first of our summer guests, to Wilderness the first major stop on the garden route, where we stayed in a log cabin in the National Park. It was beautiful, especially canoeing through the indigenous forest, but a very long way so our stop offs included  Bontebok National Park named after its friendly antelopes that come snooping amongst the chalets in the morning, and Albertina for lunch on the way back. Albertina is a one-horse town the charm of which wore off during the hour and a half we waited for our toasted sandwiches. By standing still and looking both ways down the dusty main drag you feel you’ve really seen it all and the best thing I can say about it is that if you ever visit it will make you appreciate wherever you live.

So keep your fingers crossed for us on Monday as I hope to get the keys to our new house, have my first pregnancy appointment since July and somehow fashion TGP into a ginger Dracula for a Muizenberg Halloween parade. Apart from a house move November is due to bring us hotter weather and some specially delivered company for The Ginger Prince in the form of The Ginger Princess, his second cousin, winging her way over from Manchester. There will be two of them. Watch out Cape Town.

Halloween Update...

We got our keys to the new place today and our Halloween treats were that the house was bigger than we remembered, with the potential to be lovely. Our Halloween tricks, however, included;

1 x dead rat (in the old aviary in which the many budgies used to live)
Lots x live mice (also in the old aviary)
1 x tenant (+ great big bear-like dog of tenant) still in the process of moving out as we arrived to take possession of the house (hopefully leaving even as I write this)
Lots x pieces of broken furnature and filthy dirty pots and pans left here

So Happy Halloween everyone!!

Scans and broken legs

We returned to South Africa two days ago to be greeted by a humpback whale in Muizenberg bay and a selection of curious baboons whilst walking in Tokai.  Our three week tour of the UK took in Edinburgh, Manchester, London and Oxfordshire where we visited cousins, aunts, friends, parents and new babies. Busy, but good.

 No sooner had we come blinking and red eyed into Heathrow after a sleepless night-flight than the rioters spread their unseemly way through the majority of the cities we planned to visit. But neither the looting nor the rain detracted from how good it feels to be home after a long time, to see friends and family, and to have that mixture of familiarity and novelty at once again seeing swans and green parks and tasting the tepid meat of a Gregg’s pasty. The novelty part, however, was short lived and after about a day it felt like we had never left.  

TGP was delighted to be fussed and petted from all sides and squealed at cows and sheep as we drove through the countryside, having presumably forgotten such things existed.   Around six weeks ago he broke his leg by standing on an innocent looking toy car in our front room that zipped away from under him, and he had to all but learn to walk again during our UK visit, happily limping from house to house and soaking up attention as he went. I must say though that considering how many different places we stayed he behaved very well, which is fortunate for me as I have discovered that it is hard to discipline a child who is limping without looking and feeling entirely evil. For three weeks TGP wore an immobilising full-leg cast, which was horrific for all. After much red tape our medical insurance company (Discovery Healthcare) decided not to pay for the treatment as they said that the Emergency Room in a hospital is not part of the hospital itself.  Be thankful that you have not had to listen to the full version of that rant as many times as TGP or AA, but also please be thankful for free healthcare.

Starting with Edinburgh, in the full soggy throws of the festival, we worked our way down to London and back up again. The further South we got the younger the children TGP met, and therefore the gentler he was instructed to be. There were cousins between the ages of three months and nineteen years, second and first, ginger and otherwise, new and otherwise, finally culminating with a boxer dog on the way up through Manchester again. With relief TGP curled up on the rug next to the (jowly and unimpressed) boxer dog whilst he kept a safe distance from the smaller of the babies muttering ‘’Gentle, gentle” to himself under his breath, as a personal reminder. One night I even heard him telling himself to be gentle in his sleep. All good practice since, as some of you already know, he is to become a big brother next year.

So I can now reveal that whilst TGP was bum-sliding across the floor in his cast his Mummy was puking. And then puking some more. Many of you have already heard in vivid detail about how bad the puking has been this time around and those even less fortunate have actually seen it (Strangers have also seen it; the revellers of the Edinburgh festival, the residents of Muizenberg). So if you haven’t heard from me for a while it is because TGP was immobile, I was medicating my way through almost three months of self-pity and AA was in denial about the whole thing. Ordinarily it is harder for fathers to be in denial the second time around but AA seems to be pulling it off. To be fair TGP and I cannot have been the greatest company lately.

Tempting as it is I won’t say “that’s the hard part done” (because all the mothers reading this will snigger) but at 16 weeks I can tentatively say that the puking seems to have stopped, just as the bump is beginning to show, and things are looking a whole lot rosier. As I ease into the second trimester, and bigger clothes, AA can emerge from denial and we can all start to feel properly excited about the little mite due to be born on the 22^nd of Feb next year, a leap year incidentally. In the meantime we still need to find somewhere for us all to live when we leave this place in December and hopefully find a replacement for Dr Sinister, my current Gyny/Obstetrician, who I foolishly opted for without a recommendation. He ‘up-sells’ scans (sometimes as little as two weeks apart) and tells me horrific stories about his other patients.

We will also be finding out if it is to be a boy or girl at 20 weeks this time around, an option that wasn’t available with my first pregnancy.  In spite of my 100% failure rate at gender guessing (having been fairly sure that TGP was to be female) I have a feeling that this time I am carrying a girl. If I’m right  I have all the left over girls names from the first time around, and if I’m wrong I have all the left over clothes, so either way it’s all good.

Shoebills and Sculptures

I’m not blaming him but since The Ginger Prince turned two the weather has taken a little turn for the nasty, just as news of the heat wave in the UK drifted across the Ocean. There are still plenty of bright, clear days but when it does rain here it does it properly, in sheets and for days at a time, rendering most of our usual activities impossible. And because the houses here are built with no central heating and thick walls to keep cool in summer the nights and evenings can get pretty cold. I remember happily throwing away my hot water bottle in Scotland, never imagining for a minute that four months later I would be scouring shopping malls in South Africa for one.

For entertainment through the winter months The Ginger Prince and I decided to arrange classes for ourselves. Since websites for businesses do not come as standard here if you want to find something you have to dig around for it in shop windows, local magazines and libraries rather than just pump it into Google. Eventually I found a Tuesday and Thursday morning Playgroup around the corner for TGP and a Wednesday night sculpture class in Constantia for me.  TGP showed no resistance to trotting through the gates dragging his bag behind him into three hours of painting leaves, trampolining (sometimes naked) and generally behaving far better than he would ever do at home. Before snack-time, these two and three year olds have to sit still at table and then say grace before receiving their peanut butter on toast. Too much wildness will result in having to sit with their hands on their heads. Since TGP can’t really talk and almost never sits still I was amazed at what a brave attempt he made.

My sculpture class comprises of around five women who are guided through their individual projects in a converted garage/ workshop within the large garden of a local sculptor. Clay, firing facilities, music and red wine are all provided whilst eccentricity, imagination and plain speaking are encouraged. The first person I spoke to had brought her pet cockatiel with her and throughout the two hours we sculpted she told the story of how she had cried all weekend because this pet bird had barely survived a hawk attack. This sparked a strange and circular conversation about whether or not it is cannibalism for one bird to eat another bird and how (from the strident vegetarian) it was actually cannibalism for any of us to eat meat at all, and at least a hawk wouldn’t know any better. Perhaps a good time for everyone to sit with their hands on their heads and wait in silence. The teacher, floating amongst us and giving very good and constructive sculpting advice, mentioned in passing that she had a ‘’zapper’’ for when hawks tried to take her pet ducks. I was interested to know what a ‘zapper’ actually was but I didn’t like to ask, nor did I like to mention that AA works in birds of prey conservation. Instead, to change the subject, I asked the vegetarian, sitting opposite me and meticulously coiling and shaping a beautiful large nude, and the woman next to her, making Christmas Decorations, if they were both from Cape Town. The vegetarian was from Jo-burg, the other one from Cape Town. And the vegetarian told me with a shake of the head ‘’And Cape Town is sooo backward...’’ a comment which the other woman did not appreciate and she laid her Christmas Decorations to one side and loudly defended her home town before being told by the first woman to be ‘’careful not to get her blood pressure up’’.  This kind of entertainment, set to music with red wine and endless amounts of clay to get stuck into was perfect for me and I’m looking forward to going back for more.

AA has just returned from a week long work trip in which he descended on the Benguala Swamp in Zambia in a four passenger light air craft and stayed in a luxury tented lodge from which he could travel by river boat to bother Shoebills, 5ft tall birds with massive beaks who eat snakes and catfish, in one of the most remote parts of the world. With no electricity or phone signal in AAs tent we didn’t speak until he got back, like in the old days. Meanwhile at home I hosted my first ‘’bring and Braii’’, where people come round to your house with their own food and you BBQ it for them, officially the easiest way to entertain. Especially as I wasn’t even really in charge of the BBQ. Everything went fine until two friends discovered their car had been stolen from just outside our house. I drove them to the Local Police Station in which TGP happily made friends with the prisoners who were brought in.

Due to events on the other side of the world I have just become an Aunite again, and TGP a cousin. Nothing will make you feel further away from home than a birth in the family but for the moment I will have to just look forward to August when I'm back, and make do with Skype till then.
                            

                                                                

                                                                    Benguala Swamp

                                                                      Shoebill Laughing

                                                                Shoebill not laughing              

Now we are two...

As some of you will know The Ginger Prince turned two a week ago and is now officially a big boy. It isn’t easy to plan a treat for a boy who’s days normally include trips to the beach, sightings of Sea Lions and outings to City Farms but I thought one thing we didn’t do every day was visit the penguin colony at Boulder’s beach. AA’s students were traumatising over their statistics too much for him to take a day off so it was just me and a Ginger Prince who had already worked himself into a lather of birthday excitement before he had even got out of his pyjamas. We took a 25 minute drive down the coast through St James, Fish Hoek, Kalk Bay and the lovely Simon’s Town to Boulder’s beach with TGP in the back adding the sound effects of ‘’Choo choo’’ and ‘’Arf arf’’ in places where he had previously seen both trains and Sea Lions.

                At Seaforth, the beach next to boulders from which you walk, our parking attendant guided us to a penguin nursing a chick in a tiny space under a shed in the car park. We peered for as long as we could until the mother started angling her head and launching her beak out as though planning to give TGP’s enquiring little fingers a peck. Penguins look adorable from a distance but up close they have little beady eyes and smell strongly of fish.

Seaforth Beach is ideal for toddlers because of the natural rock pools that form at the base of the boulders. It was into just such a rock pool that I lowered a naked and wriggling Ginger Prince and it was there that he remained, splashing and shouting at sea gulls, until I spotted two penguins hopping off  another Boulder and chased them with my camera, leaving TGP to beetle along after me. Drying a sandy, wet Ginger Prince is no easy matter when at any given opportunity he will wriggle free and roll once again along the beach creating a cement-like paste of sun cream, salt and sand. Once decent I took him through the walkway that looks down on Boulder’s Beach itself, where the colony of endangered African Penguins have chosen to make their nests for decades. It is consistently strange to see a Penguin in a sea that is warm enough to swim in and especially when they are there in such vast numbers and tame enough to come right over to the barriers. TGP almost took off in excitement and even made an attempt to get through the barrier which was unsuccessful, fortunately for the penguins.

As soon as AA got home TGP opened his presents which included some exciting items from friends and relatives back home and from myself and AA a red sports car with opening doors (very manly) and a pink pram (not so very manly). His face lit up when he opened the latter, as I knew it would having seen him make a beeline for them wherever possible, and he proceeded to fill it with dinosaurs and toy trains and rabbits and then clatter manically around the living room laughing.

Ordinarily TGP will eat anything with sugar in but even he made an exception for the birthday cake I made him. It was the second cake I have made as an adult and definitely the least successful. I somehow failed to patch together the right ingredients for my recipe and then thought at the last minute I could ad-lib. Turns out ad-libbing doesn’t work so well when it comes to baking and it seems me and Google mean different things when we say ‘’Easy’’. AA tried to force it down because he felt bad for me but even he has now given up.

Muizenberg

This is our second week living in Muizenberg’s Heritage Quarter. Although Muizenberg is classed as a coastal suburb of Cape Town it is very much a village from the inside; a village with a distinctive hippy/surfy feel.

 No sooner had we moved in than TGP put his ginger head as far through our next door neighbour’s fence as it would go in order to better view their two sausage dog and repeatedly shouted ‘’Wah-Wah- WAH-WAH!!’’ as the owners tried to enjoy their morning coffee in the sunshine, intending to kindly inform them that they had a dog.  We have further ingratiated ourselves with said neighbours by setting the house alarm off twice, once being at 7.00am on a Sunday morning. 

100 years ago this Heritage Quarter of Muizenberg was a thriving holiday destination for the rich and famous, including Agatha Christie and Rudyard Kipling until it plunged into some serious disrepair and was plagued by crime for decades. Residents have fairly recently set up the Muizenberg Improvement District initiative which, amongst many other things, taxes all the homeowners and with the money pays a private security firm (GRIT) to keep an eye out, provide a regular patrol and question anyone behaving questionably. This patrol, alongside the fact that neighbours live on top of each other here, allow more open living than in other parts of Cape Town to continue, with open fronted houses, on-Street parking and no security gates. GRIT are no neighbourhood watch. They drive a camouflage truck, talk constantly on walkie talkies and remind me slightly of the A-Team. TGP has made them the unlikely targets of his unrelenting friendship and whenever he sees them patrolling in their uniform shouts ‘’HIYA- HIYA!!!’’  and waves frantically, leaving them in the quandary of either deliberately ignoring a child or looking very un-SAS and stopping their patrol to admire whatever stuffed toy he wants to show them. I’m pleased to say they usually do the latter.

Last Friday we went to the weekly Muizenberg Night Market, held in the kitsch, fifties style Blue Bird Garage down the road. The ambience and food was amazing, even though I got so overwhelmed with food-stall blindness that I ended up mistakenly queuing for 40 minutes to buy a tofu stir fry from a surly Belgian in a pork-pie hat. Everything at the market was hand made and I bought TGP a pack of farm animal shaped short bread to compensate for the head coming off his very cheap toy horse, leaving him holding its decapitated body and crying into its neck.  My treat backfired when he tried to regurgitate the shortbread duck, thinking it was a real duck, pointing at his mouth and saying ‘’Quack, quack! Quack, quack!’’ in a horrified voice. It made me dread the day he finds out the horrible truth about his favourite food, wafer-thin ham.

The Ginger Prince loves the beach almost as much as he loves ham. I regularly release him onto the huge open space where he runs about mostly naked and gets so coated in sand that it can be found in his ears the following morning. When we get home I have to dangle him by one arm into the backyard and hose him down before he can be allowed into the house. He maintains a healthy respect for (or fear of) the ocean and no amount of coaxing will get him into the endless waves in Muizenberg. There is, however, a walkway that leads to St James beach where there is a tidal pool and rocks that provide a wave break. He is happy to be planted in these rock pools, amongst the huge sea anemones (and occasional jelly fish), for hours- in just a hat and sun block.

Our new house is lovely and it is the first time in TGP's short life that he has ever lived in a place with stairs. Halfway up our stairs a huge window looks out onto the side of Table Mountain and I have swapped the spotting of Phantom Quaggas for the spotting of Phantom Babboons which are more plentiful here. I did eventually see the Quaggas from our previous balcony so I hold out some hope for the Babboons. TGP doesn’t know about the Babboons but whenever I try to steer him downstairs he plants himself on a step and stares out of the window in the hope of a cat, the train into Cape Town that takes AA to work, or even a helicopter.

We have only lived here for two weeks but in that time I have noticed the following 10 things;

1)     There is never a time through the day that someone cannot be seen scuttling around a corner in a wetsuit with a surf board under their arm.

2)     If you hear a low siren from the beach a shark has been spotted (three times since we have been here) and the very hardcore surfers still ignore it and stay in the water.

3)     It seems completely acceptable to rent a shop, fill it with hand made goods, make it look amazing and inviting and then open for about four hours a day, three days a week, not including weekends, and somehow still stay afloat.

4)     Church is a big, big thing here and absolutely everything shuts on a Sunday.

5)     You need to put many, many coals on a Braai in order for it to actually cook your dinner.

6)     You shouldn’t feed baboons; it makes them attack humans which will eventually lead to their being shot (I haven’t done this, just been sufficiently leafletted about it and a much loved Baboon recently met this fate, to local uproar) .

7)     The multi-coloured beach huts which provide Muizenberg’s trademark image (below) are municipal, open and free for anyone to use.

8)     It was a big mistake to get all our books shipped from the UK because they are now a tower of boxes in the front room.

9)     The teeny tiny local pizzeria with about four tables shows classic movies every Sunday night.

10) I like it here.

           

Lost and Found

This week I lost a bracelet that AA bought me when we first arrived and that I was very attached to. On Tuesday, in an attempt to retrace my steps and find it, I walked back to Oude Molen eco village café to search where I had been sitting the day before. Just before the cafe I saw that someone in the Eco Village had flung all their belongings outside their house (which was actually more like a long barn) along with a hand painted sign saying ‘’Brik ‘n’ Brak’’. I cannot resist impromptu stalls and it was almost as if they had set a trap specifically for me. I steered The Ginger Prince in and rifled through all the items. I was more excited than TGP who thought we were going to see some horses and then had somehow ended up shopping. He kept looking up at me saying ‘’Neigh? Neigh?’’, but I pretended I didn’t know what he meant.

The mild mannered and eccentric father and son team who were selling up convinced me that they were African Art connoisseurs  and kept throwing things into the conversation like ‘’this used to hang in my gallery in town’’ and ‘’this is a very special piece’’. The prices varied hugely and it was a little like a mini-Ikea (complete with corrugated roof) in that you convinced yourself that because the little vases and things were a real bargain everything else was as well. I bought one small thing and carried on to the café (and the Neighs) where I looked for my bracelet with no success. As I sat drinking my coffee I thought about the great big African mask that had dominated a whole corner of the house sale and that I had dismissed as too expensive for brik ‘n’ brak. When I eventually winkled TGP away from the pigs and horses and dogs I went back for another look.

 There she was sitting on a chair in the corner, as huge, dramatic and unexpected as the first time. The son hopped over on his crutches and brought her out to show me. Having had the experience many times before (notably in Marrakesh) of buying some artefact that looses all its other-worldy charm the minute you get it home I was a little cautious. But it was just so hard to resist the idea that I had come by something so unusual in such an unlikely setting, it seemed almost like destiny. The father then came over telling me a story about where it came from (which I have now mostly forgotten) and both father and son insisted together that I had a real eye for African Masks and African Art in general ‘’Really?’’ I said ‘’ I don’t think I do, do you think so? I don’t know anything about this type of thing!’’. ‘’Yes’’ they agreed ‘’you definitely have an eye’’. And the more they said it the more of their things I picked up to buy.

Still unsure about the mask I called AA at work and there followed a miscommunication about the price (that he still thinks was deliberate) and he thought I was quoting him Rand rather than Pounds and so thought it cost £12.50 rather than £120. This type of thing happens a lot. ‘’Definitely’’ he said ‘’Go for it, if you like it’’ so I gave them £100 for it and picked up a couple of other little nik naks on the way. Father and son loved me so, so much. The son took me through to the back of their house/ shop/ barn to show me some of his more expensive pieces during which I also met his mother who was lying on a day bed waving away flies and watching television amongst an endless array of paintings and wall hangings. He then looked out the phone number of a real-estate friend of his in case I ever wanted to buy a house, obviously wanting to share my gullible nature about. Meanwhile the father plunged the enormous mask into a plastic bag (which detracted from its charm a little) along with my other purchases and I hung them all off the back of the buggy and clattered off on the 45 minute walk home completely weighed down by things I didn’t need.

Arriving home I arranged the mask beautifully on our formica dressing table, where she looked even more imposing (and possibly ridiculous) all the while convincing myself that AA would be smitten when he got home from work. And he was certainly shocked, particularly after the £100/£10 issue was cleared up. AA claims not to be superstitious at all but I think he found her presence in our home a bit unnerving and he wrestled her carefully into a cupboard ‘’for the time being’’. He was, all the while, making an effort not to touch her too much as he said it gave him Anthrax just looking at her since the back of her head is made of soft, very old, leather.

 She is an original South African Ceremonial Mask  and I have taken a photo of myself wearing it, just for effect (see photo below). I will never, never, ever be putting her on again as it was heavy and felt wrong. One day, when no longer living in rented accommodation and when we have a wall big enough to show her off (possibly not our little flat in Edinburgh), we will be mounting her on a stand and there she will stay and when we die she can be the thing that our offspring (TGP) can dread inheriting. I always wanted one of those things.

Pesky Paperwork and a New Home

Today it is 35 degrees, and officially too damn hot for ginger babies (and their mothers). Those who can have headed for the beach but we are again in car limbo, waiting on the car we have just bought, a very sensible Automatic Toyota, bought in pounds from a fellow Brit moving home.

     Stripping our direct debits back to the very, very bare minimum before we left was liberating but we are now in the process of slowly building them back up again over here. £175 a month insurance for hospital visits only will certainly make you appreciate the NHS. If we need to see a specialist or a GP outside of hospital we will still have to pay for it. Nor is banking free here. Our basic account is £10 per month, with a limit on transactions, so instead of paying for most things on card we get large sums of cash out of the bank. Council tax and utilities, however, are so little you don’t even notice them so I suppose it will all even out. 
We are also waiting to move into the rental house we have chosen. The house may not be as sensible as the car, but it has a whole lot more character. It is five minutes from the beach in the leafy and colonial heritage quarter of Muizenberg; a handful of hidden back streets full of second hand book shops and galleries and artist studios. The owners are a retired Dutch couple who live in Holland and winter here so the place is only available until December. 

There is a large veranda (or Stoep) to the front and a sunny little yard to the back with a covered Braai area. It is into this covered area that I will be popping the broken sofa that has been shipped all the way from Edinburgh, for the Ginger Prince to play on by day and a gift to neighbourhood stray cats by night. The place is entirely furnished and where our other 35 crates of nonsense are going to go is a different matter. Strange to think that when we packed up months ago in snowy Scotland we thought we couldn’t live without this stuff and actually haven’t missed it in the months we have been living with only what we had in our suitcases. With the exception of some things, particularly TGP’s toys.

Although not entirely child friendly and lacking a washing machine (!) the area has a great hippy, Boho feel. I have been exploring the hippy side of Cape Town more and more recently. Every week there is an outdoor market of some kind, selling farm produce and home made gifts. And Oude Molen is a great little Eco Village and stable that TGP loves because of its interactive farm. http://www.mothercityliving.co.za/oude-molen-eco-village-pinelands/

Our new neighbour-to-be is a local artist who makes sculptures out of things he has found on the beach. His house is bedecked with all manner of everything. See picture below.

I am hoping this will cheer me up when I’m dragging TGP to the launderette twice a week. 

Save me from The World of Birds

We have now been in Cape Town for just over a month and AA has settled into his job at the University whilst The Ginger Prince and I have got ourselves into a kind of routine.

My days of route taxis are over for the moment and I can now be found taking TGP out for his morning activity in a hire car, gingerly ploughing along a variety of practiced routes that I know won’t take me onto the Freeway, whilst everything beeps at me for going too slowly.  Every week includes at least one visit to Gymboree, a kind of toddler gym, and one to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. Not many places can remain tranquil once the Ginger Prince is in them but Kirstenbosch pulls it off beautifully. TGP collects sticks, paddles in streams and bothers local wildlife, whilst I sit in dappled sun at the blue green base of Table Mountain. 

Most places in Cape Town are relaxed and spacious but there are exceptions as we discovered when we visited The World of Birds in Hout Bay. Tranquil it is not. There is a never ending warren of ramshackle paths through aviaries full of literally thousands of birds from different countries bundled in together. To make the screeching and flapping even worse a colony of local wild Ibis have decided to make several huge nests on top of the expanse of chicken wire that forms the roof, giving the impression that there are so many of the creatures that they are actually blocking out the sun.

AA assured me it wasn’t cruel but, although TGP loved it of course, it gave me the creeps.

Whilst they called themselves a wildlife sanctuary the park looked like some eccentric individual’s bird and animal collection grown way, way out of control. There was probably a point in this person’s life when they could have stopped and thought, have I got enough birds in here? But they didn’t. Everywhere you look something flaps or a (wild) rat scuttles away from a bird feeder. There are also pens of multiple mammals including about 100 guinea pigs snuffling around a giant feeding bowl. It isn't that there isn't a lot to see; I particularly liked an area where tiny yellow monkeys frisk your bag for treats and play with your jewellery, but I have always thought moderation is appropriate where small animals are concerned.

TGP and AA are two of the most enthusiastic people I know and even they were shuffling feet as we traipsed through yet another circular Owl Walk and aside from AA registering his surprise that the eagle in the aviary wasn’t killing all the other birds no one said much. I became aware that we were actually walking through someone’s confused mind when we entered the Enchanted Garden which was an aviary full of literally hundreds of the kind of stone garden ornaments that can be found at any garden centre, piled up on top of each other, as well as the birds that had just happened to spill out of the other aviaries. 
The World of Birds is a modern day cautionary tale to hoarders, working on the principal that if you are going to have one of something you might as well have a hundred and fifty. The two strange notices below will allow you to make up your own minds. Suffice to say if you told me I had to live at The World of Birds in Hout Bay I would be straight back in that cupboard.

Hide and Scream

Yesterday I hunted down The Ginger Prince to investigate a suspicious silence, and found him in my room very carefully applying blusher to his bare bottom using my only make up brush.

     That is how my Saturday began.

Later, in the early evening, we lit a small Braii out on our balcony and then AA left for the shops. I often play a basic version of Hide and Seek that TGP enjoys so I ran into an obvious hiding place- inside a tiny space in his wardrobe with the door open so he could spot me.

 As normal he came giggling in and then I heard ‘’BYEEEE Mummy!!....’’ and with a sickening click he pushed the wardrobe door shut. There was no handle on the inside and the space was about five foot high and perhaps two foot wide. As time passed and I accepted that I was totally trapped I felt panic begin to rise, mostly panic on behalf of TGP who was crying and howling and banging the other side of the door and who was also in a flat with a lit Braii, but also panic for myself. Within the confines of what is essentially the dimensions of a small coffin I briefly tried to kick my way out but realised that nothing makes you panic faster than trying to get out and not being able to.

Instead I ran through all the possibilities of what might happen when AA eventually returned. I knew he didn’t have keys and hoped desperately that he would hear TGP crying and realise that something was wrong and try to get a spare set from somewhere, rather than just think we had gone to the pool or for a wander and sit and wait for us on the steps. A long time seemed to pass and poor TGP’s crying turned to whimpering as he lay outside the door. Finally, I heard AA knock gently for a while and then more urgently. I shouted to him but knew that he couldn’t hear me so then I shouted to TGP ‘’go to door and shout Daddy!! Shout Daddy!!’’ but of course he cried more and pressed against the outside of my door. More minutes passed and the landline rang ‘’Get the phone!!’’ I said to TGP through the door. I had no idea what he would say given that his repertoire of single words including ‘’star’’,‘’bubble’’ and ‘’cat’’ were unlikely to convey the information that his Mum was locked in the cupboard and his Dad was going to have to find a spare key this side of Monday, or break down the door, or get the fire brigade. Besides this would be the phone that he is usually in trouble for touching. He just cried more and more and more. And AA’s knocking stopped. The phone rang and rang, then stopped, then more knocking, then rang again. I thought that he must realise at this point something was not right but I also had the sickening knowledge that anyone within the University Accommodation who had a spare key to the flat, the cleaning people and caretakers, would not be working until Monday morning. Knocking resumed and I started shouting again, really shouting as much as I could, and again TGP redoubled his crying and then to my massive relief I heard AA’s voice inside the flat and he opened the wardrobe door.

     Of course AA had heard TGP, but not me, and had eventually gone to get one of the security guards who look after the vehicle entrance. As I suspected no one had a key but amid general panic AA  went to the next door flat and shimmied round the wall that separates our two balconies.

     I have never considered myself to be claustrophobic but it took me a while to get my breath and calm down, and it felt like I was trapped for hours, even though it can’t have been much more than 35 minutes. TGP, who had been by far the most upset I have ever heard him, was absolutely fine. He sat happily eating popcorn in front of The Night Garden as if nothing had happened. 

To Pick and Pay or to Shoprite

In the last few weeks we have learned a bit about shopping in Cape Town.

AA has studied receipts obsessively and, after being shocked at the price of some Port-Salut early on, has made an effort not to buy anything imported. I didn’t actually witness this very expensive cheese sighting but I think the gist was that it was a lot of money for a very, very little piece of cheese. Pampers are also so expensive here that I may have to consider popping TGP in some local brand nappies and accepting the consequences.

The name Woolworths can be seen everywhere in Cape Town and whilst in the UK it is synonymous with failure and recession here it is all about luxury shopping. It is like a large, air conditioned, deli with high quality products and small(ish) queues.

Pick and Pay and Shoprite, the two local supermarkets competing for the average Capetonian’s custom, are much busier. If you look hard you can find most things you get at home but if you are careless you could easily end up going home with a big bag of frozen chicken necks.

I am not one for the totally-organic marketing around kids food in Britain and generally think that Heinz Biscotti are just more expensive Rich Tea biscuits etc but I realise that here I am going to have to start reading labels. Anything processed that might be vaguely appealing to children is sizzling with additives like Tartrazine that have disappeared from most kid’s food in the UK many years ago as they make children hyperactive. And if there is one thing I don’t need it’s TGP becoming more hyperactive.

 As you would imagine local food like fruit is fresh and cheap and amazing. We also had some fresh Kingslip fish that we bought in Hout Bay the other day at Fish 4 Africa, a wholesaler to the public. It was one of those places where they don’t mind shouting and slapping a big scaly tail around and where you feel a little silly asking for it to be gutted and filleted. All worth it though.

In terms of non-food shopping there seems to be an array of African artefacts at every touristy market that include carved ostrich eggs, bright fabrics and wooden giraffes. They are colourful and lively but not totally my thing. There is every chance that whilst waiting at traffic lights (called Robots here) some entrepreneur will offer you a range of items skilfully made of beads. But there is really good stuff to be had though amongst the market stalls in the less touristy areas. I spotted a few interesting items whilst looking for an illusive gift for a friend in the Long Street markets but didn’t have time to get stuck in.

Today was AA’s first day in work so TGP and I braved public transport and got a route taxi into town. Route taxis are mini-buses with side sliding doors that beep their way along given routes around Cape Town whilst a guy leans out of the window and shouts their destination. When they stop at lights the shouter gets out and touts for business and he quickly folded our buggy and popped us in. People say Britain has gone ‘’health and safety mad’’ but I can’t imagine the same has been said about Cape Town. The route taxis swing around corners, more often than not with the sliding door left open. TGP himself was delighted with the journey; constant beeping, windows down and music playing loud.

We were spat out at the Route taxi depot above the train station which was as un-buggy-friendly as a place can be with hundreds of beeping mini-buses, a whole lot of shouting and no pavement. In the absence of AA, my map and I had to make our way into Cape Town and we managed it. We had coffee and scones in The Scotch House, a little sheltered courtyard where TGP was able to safely potter about and point at ants. Then in our individual ways (me by looking at the art work, TGP by fiddling with the air vents) we absorbed a small exhibition of paintings done by black artists during the apartheid years. Long Street called me with its small boutiques full of light print dresses but TGP was having none of it so we took the train home. Cape Town station is big and shiny and airport like, having had a major facelift for the World Cup.

So I have got a vague outline of town in my mind but to really get to grips with Long Street and a strip of boutique and antique shops that run along the sea front in Kalk Bay I will need a day off from The Ginger Prince.  

Club Mykonos

The justification for booking a mini-break at a Greek theme resort in Africa is that this place is, as we imagined, toddler heaven. Mini-golf, a balcony and a sheltered lagoon bay combined with rides on a donkey called Chester = a very happy Ginger Prince.

The road out of Cape Town was dead straight and prone to shaky heat reflections. AA was driving whilst squinting for birds as I scanned the Fynbos (shrubs) holding out hope for some bigger beast. A mongoose ran out into the road and a little later we were scowled at by a bunch of ostriches and finally I spotted two zebras casually drinking and flicking flies with their tails. I never imagined that zebras just hung out on road sides, like deer do in Scotland, in a place where you can still see the jagged outline of Cape Town’s City Business District. As some of you will know unlike AA I am not one for the birds but flamingos and ostriches, like penguins, are so good they should almost be animals in my book. I thought TGP would be delighted with these unexpected sightings but he sat there in the back of the car, bare clammy legs folded up and nodded wisely before going back to looking at his picture book of farm animals. Sigh. How right we were not to book a Safari. It was a few days later, whilst walking in the West Coast National Park, that TGP uttered real shrieks of excitement as a tortoise popped its head out of its shell and scampered away from him.

Culturally driving away from Cape Town was like slipping back in time. If we had gone much further my tattoo might have come back in fashion. We passed a bar/club called Flamingos advertising Disco Dances and a Ladies Bar and then arrived at Club Mykonos, where it is still encouraged to perm your fringe, smoke inside and put all your rubbish in one bin. Our apartment looks right out onto a beautiful, secluded bay but something made me pleasantly nostalgic for holidays in the 80s. Unsurprisingly we are in the minority of non-South Africans here. Not too many visitors from Europe, what with the real Greece being right there, and everyone assumes we speak Afrikaans.

Having seen a wild ostrich for the first time it seemed only appropriate that we should come home and eat one. Our self catering apartment is equipped with a Braai (BBQ) on the balcony. Of course AA’s Braai anxiety dictated that we ate our slightly guilty ostrich burger well into the night and he followed it up with Boerewors, something like a huge, thin Cumberland, which he forced himself to eat about a meter of in one sitting, after his Ostrich burger, before predictably getting stomach cramps and meat sweats.

Another thing I have realised in Club Mykonos is that I have officially lost my nerve with the sea. There was a time when I couldn’t be near open water, day or night, without feeling the urge to pop myself into the waves but today I only managed a couple of flapping strokes before scampering back to my towel. The Atlantic ocean around Cape Town in unexpectedly cold but there is also a new element of slight shark-fear.

On the first Saturday we arrived in Cape Town, at around the time we parked in Camps Bay for dinner, someone was killed by a shark on Clifton, the next beach, and I read about the tragedy the following week in The Cape Times. The boy, who competed in the under 16 surfing championships and was a part of an initiative to teach poor South African children to surf, was bitten on the leg and drowned whilst trying to surf back to the beach. There are, on average, between one and two shark attacks every year around Cape Town so the chances of being involved in one, or even seeing one, are virtually non-existent.

Particularly when you take into account the risks we take each day on the roads.

I barely get by driving in the UK, where there is still some show of courtesy and you feel that people are genuinely avoiding collisions. I have only driven the hire car once but I get the impression that if you are slow and hesitant people will weave and duck around you to a terrifying extent. From the week after next until we buy a car, TGP and I will be confined to public transport and then I will just have to crack on and be a more aggressive driver and hide my fear.

But for now I am on holiday.

Sand in the Clark's shoes in Camps Bay

AA and I took The Ginger Prince to Camps Bay for his dinner last night. At home TGP is normally a victim of a 7.30pm bedtime but we thought that with some effort he could be flexed into a kind of holiday mode, long sleep in the afternoon and up late so we could have dinner together. On his very first night he sat very seriously on two cushions and ate Thai rice and dim sum with his hands whilst the waitresses fussed around him. People love TGP out here, perhaps it’s the novelty of his ginger locks.

Camps Bay is sensational in the way I imagine Palm Beach to be. The drive in reveals an extravagant wall of houses built up into the green of Table Mountain, huge rectangles of glass and pink or cream plaster, staring proudly onto the glittering bay.

The sea front is throbbing with wealth and fun. It is impossible to resist it but just as impossible to shake the uneasy feeling that whilst you are quaffing champagne and watching Ferraris drive slowly past you are walking distance from some of the worst poverty you have ever seen.

We parked up and went down to the beach. The parking system is one of the many things I will have to get used to out here. Most streets are lined with self appointed parking attendants in flack jackets and with good memories, they each seem to have a patch, spot a space for you, guide you in, remember your face and watch your car. As you leave they nod and you tip them around 5 Rand, which is very embarrassing if you don’t have change. For me R5 (or 50p) is a good price to pay not only for your car to be safe but for the streets generally to be semi-marshalled and for you to feel that someone is on the look out when you come back in the dark.

I marched TGP straight across to the beach and popped him, bare foot, on the sand, which I have been aching to do since the realisation that he has never walked on the beach before. It sounds like neglect until you remember that we live in Scotland and he only learned to walk in September. After a bit of squeaking and pointing at waves I popped him straight back into his sandy Clark’s shoes and socks because in spite of the sun going down I hadn’t creamed him up in his factor 30 and thought he might burn just from contemplating the sea. Preserving TGP’s skin tone, white with a hint of blue, is going to be an ongoing struggle for us whilst in Africa.

We walked the length of the beach and I was reminded of a more upmarket Rio, buskers, music, Street performers and people sharing bottles of wine on picnic blankets on the sand. The strip of bars and restaurants delivered either an Ibizan feel (big windows, breezy house music and tiny girls in huge sunglasses) or else more of an over 30s, crisp linen and big wine glasses, type of place with low level blues music and smooth, elegant looking staff. Everywhere is relatively pricy (apart from a Nandos that snuck in there somehow) and we went for linen and big wine glasses in a place called The Kove in which the clientele wore a lot of tasteful jewellery and looked like they dined out professionally. TGP and I had a minor disagreement about his going into ‘settings’ on my phone and changing things about (we have discussed this before and it never ends well). Whilst the waitress brought my Sauvignon Blanc, and clearly wondered why anyone would bring a toddler to a place like this, I was trying, to no avail, to exchange a selection of animals, and a book about north Atlantic Fish (one of TGPs favourites) for my own phone. Its hard to negotiate successfully with someone who is crying and wriggling and trying to boss you about in a language that makes no sense. When tired TGP, who is very good humoured normally, can turn into a Scottish Wild Cat if crossed, all thrashing limbs and claws as he wriggles out of your grip. He hates being told what to do, unfortunate when you are not yet two, as being told what to do is 90% of your day. When at last our burgers arrived (true Brits abroad) he tried to go to sleep on the sofa. Not really my vision. I had thought that we would do as the Spanish do and adopt a more liberal attitude to meal times and bed times etc but the thing is TGP, is not a Spanish baby. Far from it. And no one discussed the new holiday rules with him. So we left feeling guilty and slightly panicky about the fact it was 8.30pm and he wasn’t in his bed. Not very continental.