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. 

The phantom Quagga 15.01.2011

We arrived into a baking African day all crinkly and long-sleeved and unprepared for the heat. You never feel so British as when you arrive in a foreign country after a night flight, clutching your BA in-flight magazine and a warm bottle of Evian.  Our combined baggage weighed in at between 80 and 100 kg, packed in three enormous bags, so TGP and I waited, blinking in the sunshine, as AA negotiated them into the AVIS hire car. TGP pointed in disbelief at the butterflies and very, very slightly different type of pigeon and I thought bless you, what are you going to say when you see a big fat Ostrich? 

We are staying at the base of Table Mountain in the staff quarters of University Halls of Residence. Admittedly most of Cape Town could be described as being at the base of Table Mountain but we are really pretty close. Even with my rose tinted glasses on (literally and figuratively) there is no denying that from the outside the halls look like a prison. Pre-fabricated apartments that shake when the famous Cape Town wind is up arranged in identical blocks with identical balconies set around a courtyard. It even has huge gates slide open when you nod at the security guard. But there is a nice expanse of grass for TGP to play football in (once we get him a football) and an inviting green swimming pool into which I will soon be dipping my pasty self. I guess when you are from the UK security is kind of synonymous with crime and detention but here it is just part of residential life. 

TGP was first in the apartment and he ran around shrieking as though to say ‘’You guys! Wait till you see this place its AMAZING’’. Amazing to the under twos indeed because there is nothing to break and for someone who has lived in a house of ‘’no’’ for months whilst we pack our stuff that is a delight. And having been strapped into a sky basket for the best part of a day it must be a relief to have actually got somewhere. As I look around now there is not much I can see that is not made of cane or MDF but I like the little caravan kitchen with its built in formica dining area and we have a balcony from which, if you crane your head around, you can get a good old peak at the Jurassic Park expanse of Table Mountain . TGP loves the balcony and the fact that he can wander in and out at will, sometimes naked but for his Thomas slippers. For him it is the ultimate in freedom and he feels that he is getting away with something slightly naughty. Having roughly measured his big head against the railings there is really no way he can get out. 

So yesterday was our first proper day of holiday and we went up to Rhodes memorial on Table Mountain for a little look see. We went for a short walk during which TGP picked up lots of sticks and tried to poke locusts. And these were some big orange and yellow, bitey looking, locusts.

I took a long dilly dallying walk up Long Street to meet my friend from home, DB, for lunch. You almost can’t take Long Street in there is so much going on from little trendy boutiques with handpainted signs to people lined up on the Street outside the mosque facing Mecca and praying because they can’t all fit in. This place reminds me of a noisier Sydney with a twist.

DB had been here over a week and yesterday was his last day so he was able to feed me with information whilst I troughed down Kingslip (fish) and drank Chardonnay in the windy courtyard of a tranquil restaurant on Long Street. The wind in Cape Town is dangerous because you can burn without realising it and whilst sitting in that courtyard I secured my first patch of traditional stripey shoulder burn.

I need to squeeze myself into bed for a 40 winks before TGP wakes up. Yesterday AA and I decided that, since won holiday, we should relax on our wicker furniture and share a bottle of fizzy booze (Robertson Winery, £3.99 and could be passed off as champagne). And we are on our holidays we are also the proud owners of a munchkin who wakes up between 6.00 and 8.30am.

I keep obsessively checking the side of Table Mountain for a flash of black and white and experiencing phantom Quagga. For those who don’t know a Quagga is a zebra but one bred to have a bum a little bit like a horse (like an extinct type of zebra used to) and therefore looks like a horse turning into a zebra. I haven’t actually seen one. But they are up there, Quagging about, allegedly and it is surely only a matter of time.  

The off 14.01.2011

Day two and The Ginger Prince in question is having his afternoon nap (Well, shouting in his travel cot).

     We flew out of Edinburgh on Wednesday night with the hour and a bit planned turn around in Heathrow turning into a stressful 40 minutes, which included falling up the escalator whilst running and holding a child.

No fool wants to sit near a toddler on a long haul flight and I could see people watch us embark, sweaty and late, and twist their head phones and eyeshades in their hands whilst they silently prayed. I am now that person people dread on public transport. Our seats were right at the front, loads of leg room and a territorial man in khaki who may have been Dutch but never spoke and resolutely ignored The Ginger Prince as he said his new word ‘’Hiya’’ over and over and over again.

TGP’s bed was a sky basket, something like a car seat that attached to a flip out tray in front of us. This meant our TV screens couldn’t pull out but I didn’t like to complain as I felt it might sound selfish and bad parentish. So a tired and protesting TGP was strapped into the above and stared around, all big eyes and twitching anemone hands, as the plane started to plug itself in to various movies and prepare for night mode.

AA and I had a sneaky mini bottle of white wine each after take off and tried to seem locked into conversation so that TGP would fall asleep. It sounds harsh to freeze your own son out but the key thing when dealing with a sleepy TGP is to avoid eye contact at all costs as it leads to the immediate stretching out of arms and pleas for release. I was not about to release him from his sky basket.

That wine tasted good. For the month leading up to that glass of wine, throughout the shipping of all our stuff, the fanatical cleaning of the flat, the ensuring all our bills are up to date, the visa paperwork to get us here, I thought of that glass of wine on the flight and decided that was when I would finally relax and the whole debacle would be out of my hands. It did feel appropriately treat like. Especially when, after a few false starts, I saw those long ginger lashes draw closed. And we had a second little bottle of wine to celebrate the peacefully sleeping TGP. Because, as parents of a toddler will know, our flight being fine or being hell on earth all rested on those little peepers staying shut.

 The last month or so has taken its toll on all of us in different ways. AA has been complaining of tightness in his chest and has been possessed with an urgent, exorcist style, manic energy that made him compile lists, and subcategories of those lists. For months in our home you could have found bits of paper with titles like ‘’car’’ or ‘’flat’’ or ‘’money’’ and a bunch of rabid writing underneath. For months he has had things written on his hands.  I have been exhausted and TGP he has not known what is going on, but has been completely sure that whatever it is was something he wasn’t consulted about. When we had all our stuff shipped he came home from nursery looked around the room and started giggling and running toward the curtain, his favourite hiding place, as though I had hidden all his toys and furniture and clothes in there. No such luck, my friend, they have begun their eight week journey to South Africa.

Deciding which of your possessions should be shipped to another country is a sobering experience. Especially for a known hoarder. Even more especially for two hoarders. AA and I hoard very different bits of things in very different ways. I have a longstanding collections of Precious Things that stretched the length of the mantelpiece and then formed two pools of stuff at the side of the hearth. The Precious Things include a glass duck someone brought me back from Whitby, countless shells I have kept to remind me of countless forgotten beach walks and even a miniature stapler. It is the latter that AA uses against me. Miniature stapler and the whole job lot are in a freight carrier making a slow sea journey towards us. When starting a new life you never know when you may need to clip together tiny, tiny pieces of paper, or look at shells for that matter.

By the end we were desperate to get rid of anything. Two friends came round the night before we left to bring us pizza and say goodbye and one left in my winter coat (which I must admit suits her better) and a George Foreman grill under her arm whilst the other was given two box sets and a camera. It was like a tombola.

AA’s is in denial about being a hoarder, but will happily wash and save a plastic fork. His hoarding is not out of sentimentality but an aversion to waste. Any kind of waste. Even of things that are broken and have no use in life. This can be summed up by relating two facts. Fact one; AA once tried, very recently, to sell VHS videos at a car boot sale, not new ones, no, no, these were films he had taped off the telly in the 80s and early 90s, complete with adverts and a bit of the news. Fact two; there is a completely broken Ikea sofa currently on its way to South Africa to meet us. It cost £50 off Gumtree when we bought it and then it lost its legs leaving the sitter now only about 5 inches off the floor. Admittedly we are a family of hobbits (AA sometimes claims to be six foot but I think he must be a short six foot) This sofa is travelling around the world to be with us. I still can’t believe he got it under the wire. My defences must have been low.

We have also said so many different permutations of goodbye it is impossible to count. There have been goodbye lunches, goodbye dinners, goodbye coffees, goodbye play dates. People saying goodbye to The Ginger Prince who looks blankly back and says either ‘Hiya’ or ‘Bye’ depending on his mood.

In my limited experience I would say that going away is not nearly as hard as preparing to go away. Preparing to go away is like standing still with a fixed grin whilst waiting for someone to take your photo. For months.

Credit where credit is due TGP, a person normally famed for his mischief, was amazing on the flight and we all managed to get a few hours of jerky, neck aching, sleep.