The Madd House

It appears that this was to be one of our chill days.   We have one or two of those on our holiday, thank heavens. We watched telly and ate and chatted and then we chatted and ate and watched telly and kept promising ourselves that we would get up and do something.   But that just didn’t happen until much later. Séan, Jerry and I landed up having a late lunch/early supper at the Cattle Baron in Table View.   In hindsight it was educational ‘cos I got to teach/reiterate to Jerry how one behaves when the bread is brought at “fancy” restaurants. On the way home Jerry promised me a game of Monopoly but **sigh**, this was not meant to be.   Chris had been busy searching for a trial version of pc chess for me and in the process ended up with all manner of other things too which meant that the evening was passed with Jerry usurping Chris’ pc and playing exciting games. Sunday saw a chilled morning and then we all headed off to watch Chris work.   He is a professional musician

We headed off, in the morning, to the station at Rondebosch.   Today was the day for our big train adventure.   I can recall, as a kid, reading about children who would travel by train to spend their holidays with cousins Jack and Stella (or similar old British names) and this is how I felt – except we were just going for a short visit to cousin Alan and his wife Gertie. Alan and Gertie live in Jo’burg but own a lovely house in Fish Hoek and I have been promising them for years to visit them in their soon-to-be retirement home on one of the occasions when we’re in Cape Town. After an uneventful journey we arrived at Fish Hoek station and stepped onto the platform, immediately spotting first Gertie and then Alan.   Once Jerry and I had trawled through the smelly subway we were gleefully greeted by my cousin and his wife who had found parking directly across the street from the station. We were rushed, first, to the house for some refreshing Coca-Cola, and where we oohed and

I fitted a walk in – just a wee one around the neighbourhood.   I’ve already managed three so far this holiday – this can only be a good thing. Then the day began properly with an epic game of Monopoly played by Chris, Jerry and I.   What huge fun.   Chris plays like a master with many years’ experience and pretty soon I was out on my bumterara.   As the banker, though, I was still involved at a certain level and got to watch Chris slowly annihilate the small nine-year-old girl to whom said Monopoly was given by Father Christmas.   She didn’t complain, mind you, we just had such fun. The weather was cool (wonderful relief) and so I told Jerry that an “inside” adventure would be on the cards.   This saw us heading off to Canal Walk.   Now I’m not very fond of malls .......... actually, I loathe malls with every fibre of my being, so I put on my octopus hat, I mean my optimist hat off we went. The first order of the day was lunch.   With some rather grotty KFC under the belt

Considering the previous late night it was surprising that we were up as early as we were.   Unfortunately the heat wave had already been up and about for some time and as a result by the time we were bright eyed and bushy-tailed it was unbearably hot.   I had to dash off to fetch my cell phone that had been left at the Maraises ...... don’t ask ...... and stopped off to clean out the flavoured and sparkly water stock off our local supermarket shelves. I had promised Jerry a visit to the Cape Town Science Centre.   This is one of her favourite places in the whole universe so we usually visit the Science Centre at least lots of times while we’re in Cape Town. So in our semi-melted state we set off to find the new venue of the Science Centre.   Only one wrong turn (which we quickly discovered, fortunately) and we retraced our steps – stopped to ask (we are girls, after all) and there it was. We spent four hours, Jerry and I, me sitting at a table in a through draft with a gi

Why do we do this to ourselves?   Rush around like termites before a storm on the last day before Christmas?   I had prided myself that most of my shopping and wrapping was done before we left for holiday and yet somehow there were still one or two pressies to buy and late morning on 24 December saw me sweating through the malls with the other panic stricken shoppers. One could barely move and it appears that panic (of whatever form) makes one lose one’s natural humanness.   People push you out of the way, stand on you, swear at you and just generally behave like piglets in a rather cramped sty.   Fortunately I was on my own (Jerry and Séan had headed off on their own anxiety driven adventure) and so I was able to elbow, swear, scowl, growl and stampede with the best of them.   Huge fun!!! J The day passed and calmed considerably after a while.   Pressies were wrapped and placed under Chris’ tiny tree, sweets and nuts were strategically placed about the house and we slid into

I had promised Jerry that we would go to the beach early in the morning but (1) the day before had been a long one (2) Chris’ foster cat thought new folks in the house was novel and spent the night running up and down us while we tried to sleep (3) I completely forgot to set my alarm clock so ...... ...... I only woke up at 08h00. The beach was really lekker, though.   It was nice and cool and although we saw weather approaching it went west and didn’t stop shining once.   We got a teensy bit sunburnt but nothing we can’t handle. The beach we chose was quite quiet when we got there and gradually got busier.   The amount of larger chicks t hat arrived (some scarily in bikinis) made me feel somewhat skinny and we had a good morning ... except when Jerry got too adventurous and earned a mouthful of sea water. The arvie was spent cleaning up a bit and generally chilling.   Supper at the pub at Mountain View Farm (the name of the pub escapes me) while we watche

It started with a flight that was a little late ...... not badly so, mind you, but just enough to get everyone waiting huffing and sighing. And for once we didn’t have yowling babies on the ’plane ... well, ok just one but only on descent and I’m pretty sure its Mommy didn’t realise that depressurisation can hurt a baby’s ears. But I digress, what we DID have on the ’plane were the Fiddle Family.   Sheesh!   These guys couldn’t sit still.   First their seat was dirty and needed cleaning by the airplane staff, then their little boy needed a booster seat, then they kept standing up and taking things out of their hand luggage whilst making everyone else trying to board wait for them to finish. The entire flight they were like a jack-in-the-box, constantly jumping about and changing places with each other, moving their hand luggage about, pouring expensive mineral water into plastic tumblers, and ooohing an aaahing over pictures of their little boy on some flat tablet machiner