So it turns out that what with hot weather, no turkey and general lack of festive fuss Christmas does not feel so Christmassy in Africa. The few half-hearted decorations on the beach front in Muizenberg were hidden by the swarms of people who descend there over the holidays to eat picnic lunches and play in the waves and there is little interest in the dejected looking Santas roasting in their suits in the Shopping Centre Grottos. In the privacy of our own home, however, I seem to have worked The Ginger Prince into a UK style Christmas frenzy. Each morning preceding the big day there was an advent calendar palaver as he tried to climb up the kitchen units often at least partially naked (because it’s getting so damn hot) shouting “Christmas Treat! Christmas Treat!” putting one in mind of Gollum and with the chocolate securely in his hand he scampered off into another room to nurse this treat until it melted.
My sister and her boyfriend have come, whizzed around Cape Town and surrounding areas, pruned our garden, sorted out our BBQ area and dining room, entertained TGP and are now sadly gone. They did leave the guest suite ready, however, for our two new guests, friends from Scotland, who arrived four days later, on Christmas Day itself, just slightly behind Santa’s sleigh and also bearing gifts. We had Braai and treats in the garden on for Christmas whilst TGP splashed about in his new paddling pool and then a week later yet more Braai and treats in the garden on New Year’s Eve. This time thrown into the mix was a New Year ceremony that we adapted from all the dippy hippie things we have ever done and which included a Tibetan Prayer flag hung in the garden, the symbolic ringing of a bell to signify bad things departing and good things arriving and the planting of a Pomegranate tree underneath which are buried all our hopes and dreams written on little pieces of paper. As a final touch the earth around the tree was watered with water gathered from two oceans (Indian and Atlantic) whilst on the way to Cape Point a couple of days before. These are the types of things you do when having a sober New Year, or at least you do if you’re me. AA made a truly admirable effort to ignore these goings on and concentrate only on the spatchcock chicken he was BBQing until all the weirdness had stopped and he felt he could safely drink fizz and join in a painful rendition of Auld Lang Syne sung along to You tube cheered all the while by the lie in I had agreed to giving him, since I would have no hangover to nurse anyway, whilst I took TGP to the huge and empty Noordhoek beach on New Year’s Day.
I am now a scary seven weeks away from another (hopefully better) childbirth followed by the reality of having two kids, neither of which seems to have sunk in yet. A week or so ago I went to the gym, for the first time in probably about six weeks, and whilst in the middle of my lazy pregnancy work out, which principally involves watching sky news whilst ambling on the cross country ski machine, I was approached by a big, camp, shiny face who asked me if I was having a boy or a girl and when it was due. Upon being told I was having a boy in February he said that he had ‘sensed’ I was having a boy as he does psychic readings and that when I walked in he had watched the whole birth play out. He went on to tell me that if I thought the baby was coming on its due date I was in for a ‘big surprise’. Of course I loved all this and, having been re-assured that the birth was fine, I asked him if he had any tips for names since I was totally stuck. Once again he said that he could have told me that we hadn’t decided and that yes, he knew the right name but wouldn’t tell me because I needed to get there on my own. I was generally delighted with this psychic gay premonition but my sister pointed out that predicting that someone who is seven months pregnant is going to have a baby is proof of nothing. No pleasing some people.
