So, here's a view from my walk to work. It's about 15 minutes brisk stroll from the main station in Cape Town to the Added Value offices in Hope Street in a suburb called Gardens. So called because the Dutch, back in the 17th century developed a fertile vegetable garden on this site to feed the East India Company workers. By the 18th century, Company's Garden, the central green space, had become a tranquil horticultural garden full of fountains and lakes and stately buildings. It has the same feeling today, and forms a wonderful part of my route to work. The building in this photo is the SA National Gallery, and of course that's Table Mountain (complete with the 'Tablecloth' of cloud) in the background.



We've had a very busy week, again. We moved on Sunday, to our more permanent home only a couple of kilometres from the girls' school in Rondebosch. I'll really miss the views and the space around the old place, (here's a photo of the view we had from our old veranda), but it's great to have a place of our own where the maid from the big house doesn't let herself in unanounced every five minutes and then proceeds to re-arrange my cupboards! I was concerned the girls would really miss our little home, and especially the 4 horses and 3 dogs, but they immediately set about making themselves a den in the garden here and have been fine all week. Plus we've been given an open invitation to go back to Charlie's anytime we wish - he will miss the help of the girls on a Sunday morning when it was their job to muck out the stables.



We've got a roomy cottage now, in the grounds of a large house. Our 'cottage' has 4 bedrooms, each with its own bath or shower. As well as a private veranda and garden to the front and a small yard at the back, we have the use of the large garden that comes with the big house, including a pool for the summer. Our landlords are lovely, an English woman and an Australian guy. Just like Charlie and his family before, they have made us very welcome.

I went to the theatre on Tuesday evening, to see Waiting for Godot at the Fugard theatre in Cape Town, starring Sir Ian McKellan and Matthew Kelly. It's the same production that has been running in the West End and was fantastic. A lovely, small and intimate theatre and a brilliantly staged production. I expected Sir Ian to be excellent, but Matthew Kelly was a revelation. I wouldn't have known it was him if I didn't have the programme in front of me.

On a different note, I've been watching my favourite TV programme of the moment, Jozi H. It's like a really terrible ER, set in a central Johannesburg hospital, Jozi being the newer, hipper name for Joburg. Instead of gangland shootings and car accidents, people come to the hospital having been poisoned by witch doctors. But the thing that's most startling is the ads in the breaks. Last break, three ads about HIV and one about a funeral plan. Two million children are orphaned thanks to AIDS in South Africa alone every year. Two million! Using the supermarket toilets with the girls the other day, we were confronted with posters advertising suggested foods to eat if you're HIV positive. And yet the immigration department only want to know if Neil and I have tuberculosis, not our HIV status. We had our medicals and chest X rays last week, as per the terms of our visas. The medicals for the four of us cost around £50, as opposed to the £88 EACH our GP in Kingsclere wanted to charge. Glad we waited until we got here!


Lastly for this week we went to the Cape Town Book Fair on Saturday. In the children's section, there was a wonderful, funny and lively talk by Chris Van Wyk, the man who adapted Nelson Mandela's autobiography, 'Long Walk To Freedom' for children. He told a story about how Nelson Mandela used to steal honey from hives as a child, and what a dangerous thing to do that was. He then told the children in the audience to imagine taking a microscope into a bee hive. 'Do you know what makes the buzzing sound bees emit? If you look very carefully, with a very strong microscope, you'll see each bee is blowing a minature vuvuzela!' (Vuvuzelas being those instruments, based on a traditional Zulu horn, that were blown incessantly during the World Cup).
Well I laughed anyway.
We now posess two vuvuzelas, and they are seriously loud.


We're off to Hermanus this weekend for Lottie's birthday and to do some whale watching, with any luck. Hermanus is about 2 hours from Cape Town, half way between the Mother City and Cape Agulhas, Africa's most southerly point. Southern Right whales come to Walker Bay to calve and bring up their young between June and December. Apparently you don't need to go out in a boat, though that is spectacular. On any given day you stand a good chance of a decent view from the cliff paths, so here's hoping. I might be able to post a photo of a breaching whale next time.