An Entertaining Picnic at Admiralty House

Attending a performance by the South African Navy Band is always a huge treat. Even more so, when it is preceded by a leisurely picnic on the lush green lawns of Admiralty House. Last Sunday, four of our friends joined us for just such a picnic.

When we arrived in the pretty suburb of Simon’s Town with its quaint village atmosphere just before 13h30, a long queue of fellow-picnickers was waiting impatiently for the gates of Admiralty House to be opened. As it proved a little challenging to find a (legal) parking spot, or at least one that was unlikely to irritate the locals by blocking access to their properties, three of us were dropped off to join the queue in the meantime and to nab a spot on the lush green lawns.

We found the perfect picnic spot, right on the edge of a line of trees. V had calculated correctly that the sun would move across to the left and behind the trees, thereby ensuring us progressively more shade. This was most welcome, as it was a very hot day indeed.

We spread out our picnic blankets, set up four folding chairs (appropriately – given that we were surrounded by Navy sailors – called “Captain’s Chairs”!), and started to unpack all our goodies.

What a tasty looking spread! Olives, tomatoes, peppadews, a large salad, various spreads and dips, loaves of ciabatta bread, and grilled chicken from Woollies! All accompanied by refreshingly cold rock shandy, iced tea, sparkling water, and fruit juice.

Excellent food!

When we do picnics, we do ‘em right!

C, who happens to be a pastry chef by profession, had baked us some pecan pies, cheese cake and peach pies for dessert. Supreme decadence!

When we had eaten quite enough for one day, we tidied up, tucked the leftovers into the cooler bags with the freezer blocks, and got ready for the performance by the SA Navy Band, which was due to start at 15h00. And so it did. Even in Africa, where everything else works according to that indeterminate concept known as Africa time, the military is known for its punctuality.

The band members, all in spick-and-span white uniforms, took their seats and launched energetically into their first catchy tune. They played an impressive range of pieces, from more classical military-style marches via big band jazz to African pieces that make you want to leap up and dance to the rhythm of the drums. They also gave us a few unusual treats, that I shall tell you about!

The SA Navy Band always delivers a great performance

Trombone, clarinets and drums

Trombone, alto horn and clarinets

Cdr Leibbrandt, the Director of the SA Navy Band, warmly welcomed us to the beautiful grounds of Admiralty House, before introducing the next piece.

Cdr Leibbrandt welcomes us

The grey-haired gentleman in the photo below is WO2 Willie van Zyl; he played the clarinet and the saxophone with such passion and energy that he had us all spellbound.

WO2 Willie van Zyl on clarinet

Clarinets, drums and trombone

One of the drummers/percussionists made us gasp with his vigorous, enthusiastic and occasionally wild style of playing! Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a clear shot of him because there were too many heads in the way!

One of the most entertaining pieces the Band performed was a most unusual version of the Post Horn Gallop. One of the instruments used was the traditional post horn:

A traditional post horn

But the other was a homemade instrument called “die tuinslang” in Afrikaans, meaning “the hosepipe” (or translated directly, “the garden snake”). It consisted of a piece of hosepipe (!) connected to a black plastic funnel on the one end, and with a kind of mouthpiece on the other end.

Much to our amazement, WO Mkhize was able to create beautiful music with this odd instrument! It sounded almost exactly like the posthorn, albeit less brassy and more … er… hosepipe-y? … Er… um…

The "tuinslang": a very curious instrument

If you don’t believe me or want a copy of the video clip to hear what it actually sounded like, let me know!

This was followed by an exciting, foot-stomping compilation of Johnny Clegg tunes. Two of the band members had dressed up as tribal African dancers, complete with animal skins, ankle bracelets and head gear. They were excellent!

Getting ready to do the famous Johnny Clegg leg-lift

Lightning-fast leg-lift-and-foot-stomp

They chose some members of the audience to participate in the dancing, and even persuaded R Adm (JG) Louw, Flag Officer Commanding Naval Base Simon’s Town (!), to show off his African dance moves. I thought it was very sporting of him to play along, and he did get a resounding round of applause for it.

R Adm Louw moving to the rhythm of the drums

The two dancers returned the Admiral to his seat, and promptly roped in a few more men, to whom they tried to teach the famous Johnny Clegg leg-lift-and-stomp. When this failed pretty abysmally, they got them to perform the Macarena instead, all to the thumping rhythms of Johnny Clegg’s “A Great Heart”. It was very funny!

The men

The group of ladies, who were “on stage” during the next piece, Johnny Clegg’s “Osiyeza”, fared a little better, but – probably to prevent injury – the two dancers decided to let them sway from side to side instead! Once they seemed confident with that, they added on some extra moves, which looked like “throwing a spear at the wildebeest” and “doing a victory dance when you return home with meat for the family”. I think that was the gist of it.

Brave warrior women!

After the cheering and clapping had died down,  R Adm (JG) Louw gave a more formal speech about the role of the SA Navy, reiterating the fact that it is “the South African people’s navy”, and inviting all of us to attend next year’s drydock concert at the start of the Navy Festival, sometime around 05 March next year. He told us that they were expecting an Army Band from Germany to fly down for the festival and to join them for the concert. It promises to be an awe-inspiring event.

Formal speech

He then auctioned off a couple of special bottles of wine in order to raise funds (I can’t remember exactly for what). In that way, they quickly made a couple of thousands.

That is a seriously big bottle of wine!

After that, it was time for more music!

Drummers

Tuba section

Another unusual treat was a fabulous performance of a very catchy tune by a pair of talented xylophone players (“xylophonists”???!). Their little wooden mallets flew through the air and ratted and tatted against the wooden slats without missing a beat or hitting a wrong note. It brought back such happy memories of playing the xylophone in the Orff orchestra at school! (Although I doooon’t think I was quite as fast as they were!)

Xylophone player

From time to time during the performance, the audience was asked to sing along with some Christmas carols. Sadly, this was a flop. Although everyone had been given song sheets, only one or two handfuls of people actually sang. Perhaps they were struggling to get the right pitch or didn’t want to sing too loudly off-key?

The children, though, had absolutely NO PROBLEMS singing. Within minutes, a small group of little kids had assembled in front of the band, clustering around two microphones. They sang “Away in a Manger” so lustily and without the slightest trace of shyness, that they received loud cheers and applause from all the adults. Beaming with delight and excitement, they scampered back to their proud parents.

Carol singers

Their enchanting performance was followed by a solo, sung beautifully by PO Twala, and a few more big band pieces that gave the brass players a chance to show off their skills.

Soloist PO Twala

WO2 Willie van Zyl on saxophone

WO Mkhize on trumpet

And then, all too soon, the concert came to an end with a hand-clapping rendition of “Anchors Aweigh”.

The final tune

Feeling a tad melancholic, we packed together all our picnic paraphernalia, and joined the long line of people slowly filing out of the grounds of Admiralty House, and ambling down to their cars. I really hope we’ll be able to go again next year. What a wonderful treat this had been!

Two hyperactive spiders

Last night, we returned home to find two spiders busy constructing an intricate web. Two webs, to be precise. Right next to each other.

Their webs were suspended between the roof of the carport and the washing line, and – thankfully – just above our heads.

My initial fright on almost touching the sticky threads with my head on the way to the back door,  gave way to curiosity.

I grabbed my camera.

Both spiders had a bulbous, almost spherical body, probably about the size of your little finger(tip/nail) [the actual dimensions depend on whom you ask].

Spider weaving a web

In the next shot, you can clearly see the silvery threads of the web.

I think it’s actually very beautiful! Look!

What an intricate web!

It was really difficult to get a good picture though. The camera was struggling to focus.

Firstly, the wind was fairly strong, and blustery, and so the silvery web was swaying back and forth. Secondly, the spiders themselves were engrossed in weaving additional threads to strengthen the web, and running backwards and forwards and around and around. And, thirdly, it was dark. I kept having to wave my arm to trigger the security light to turn on, so that I had enough light to see the spiders.

“How am I ever going to get a good shot to post on my blog?!” I wailed in despair.

Hubby obligingly took the camera from my hands and devoted the next half hour to playing around with the camera settings and taking one picture after another, until he had some good images. So it is thanks to his perseverance that you are now able to see what spidery creatures currently reside under our carport roof.

And he was lucky enough to witness the moment when a hapless Christmas beetle was windblown into one of the webs. Within moments, the spider – racing around and around its prey – had wrapped it up in a deadly and sticky cocoon.

A captured Christmas beetle

Here is a close-up:

A terrifying close-up

Scary, hey?!

These spiders sure are excellent predators.

P.S. This morning, however, there was no sign of the web – or (disconcertingly) of the spiders. Perhaps they are only active at night? We’ll have to double-check later tonight.

A red polka-dot teapot

Last weekend, we bought ourselves a new teapot.

Here it is.

"World, meet Our New Teapot"

You might think that purchasing a teapot is a simple and straightforward task.

It is not.

When our trusty old teapot started to develop a whole network of hairline cracks, we decided it was time to let it go before it cracked completely and caused third degree burns on an unsuspecting visitor. It had served us well for many years, although it regularly dribbled tea onto the white kitchen counter.

(Some advice, if you ever have an opportunity to choose the colour of your kitchen counter: Pristine white looks fantastic. In theory. And in cooking books. And in home decor magazines. But it is the most unforgiving of colours. It practically invites you to spill tea on it. Or beetroot juice. Or carrot juice. If you can, choose any other colour of the spectrum, and you will need far less time, energy and toxic cleaning agents trying to scour off the stains.)

Last weekend, we walked into a shop at the Howard Centre that sells beautiful crockery.

Including teapots.

“We’re looking for a teapot that doesn’t dribble,” Richard announced to the friendly sales assistant.

“Oh?!”

We picked one we liked.

“Do you mind if we test this before we buy it?”

“Er… sure.”

She filled it up with water from the handy kitchen sink, and handed it back to Richard, helpfully placing a mug on the counter to act as a receptacle.

We observed closely, as My Man, the Engineer, tilted the teapot forward, allowing some water to flow out of the spout, before tilting it back again.

Dribble-dribble-drip. The water ran down the side of the spout and onto the counter.

He repeated the manoeuvre, just in case his pouring technique was faulty.

Dribble-dribble-splash. (Thank goodness, it wasn’t tea.)

“Hmm, okay, we’re not going to take that one then.”

We looked around the shelves a bit more, scrutinising the spouts of the teapots on display. It all has to do with the shape, you see. It needs to have a slightly pointed tip. Almost all of them, however, had a rounded tip.

At last, we found one that had a slightly pointed tip.

It happened to be a white one with red polka dots. As all the other teapots of the same colour, shape and size had rounded tips, I personally think that this one was an anomaly, or that something had gone wrong with the mold.

But I really liked the funkiness of the colour scheme.

And – it passed the in-store dribble test!

So we took it home.

Our polka-dot teapot is waiting for visitors

P.S. Unfortunately, judging from the state of our kitchen counter, although it dribbles less than our old teapot, it is not 100% dribble-free. And the tea does not flow out as smoothly or evenly as it should, most likely because the spout is a bit uneven inside.

It seems that we will need to adjust, refine and optimise our tea-pouring technique. I think we just need regular practice.

So, would anyone like to pop over for a cuppa?

A Spider in the Kitchen

Early in the morning, when you stumble into the kitchen with eyes still sleep-heavy and your mind not quite at its sharpest, and you start preparing your normal breakfast on autopilot, one of the things you probably least expect – or want – to see in your kitchen sink is a creature with a bulbous body and eight long, slightly furry legs.

I had just put the water jug in said sink with one hand, and was absent-mindedly reaching for the tap with the other, when I glimpsed a movement, alarmingly close to my hand.

Once I’d peeled myself off the ceiling and my heart had stopped racing, I peered over the edge of the sink.

It looked disturbingly like Bertha, the spider whom we evicted from our house in August last year.

Since then, we’ve evicted a few more of these specimen from our home, and I admit that it has become easier. Marginally easier. For hubby, not for me. I am still incapable of putting a box over them and capturing them in this manner (honestly, I think I’d faint) – but that is one of the reasons why one has a man in the house, after all!

When I notified hubby of The Presence Of A Large Spider With Long Furry Legs in the kitchen sink, he ambled over calmly to check things out himself. I handed him a round tupperware dish, and left him to it, while I went on to prepare breakfast.

Nerves of steel, I tell you. Nerves of steel.

After a bit of effort, and some moments of mild panic, hubby persuaded It to move out of the corner towards the middle of the sink, so that he could place the bowl neatly ontop of it without hurting it.

“Right, let’s have breakfast,” he announced cheerfully.

??!!

A veritable picture of serenity.

So, amazingly, we had breakfast.

And then we found ourselves a piece of cardboard, which he slid carefully underneath the bowl, thus trapping the creature in the dish. Unfortunately, it was only then that I had sufficiently composed myself to take a photo.

And realised that it is not possible to take sharply focused photos through a milky plastic dish.

Which is why all I can now show you are the following blurry images of Mr Spider.

Mr Spider has been trapped

Sorry about that.

Zooming in a bit - scary, huh?

But if you want to know what it looked like, have a look at this post.

What followed was a long walk down the road and around the corner, until we found a large palm tree that would certainly be a better home for Mr Spider than our kitchen sink.

I do love nature, but I prefer it to remain outside.

Veggie humour

Bepuzzlement

I have just returned from the local Post Office.

And I am puzzled.

My mission: To send copies of my book to family, friends and fellow-bloggers around the world.

The friendly chap behind the counter told me that the local postage was R5.65 per book, which struck me as quite reasonable.

He asked me *twice*, though, whether I wanted to send it by airmail, which I thought was exceedingly odd, as the one address was in Bothasig and the other in Woodstock – both of them suburbs of Cape Town.

I had an amusing vision of our local postie flying over said suburbs in a little microlight aircraft, peering down to identify the correct house, before affixing a mini-parachute to the padded envelope, and sending it floating down onto the front lawn, hopefully of the correct house!

I replied calmly that surface mail would be just dandy.

Then he told me, with an apologetic smile, that the overseas postage (USA, England and Germany) was R30.65 per envelope. He looked at me questioningly, as though waiting for me to say, “WHAT? Good grief! How much is it by donkey cart or sailing boat?”

My jaw dropped.

Not because of the high cost. Having sent out a fair number of my books earlier in the year, I knew what to anticipate – and I had my credit card to hand!

But because yesterday, my beloved had generously stood in line at the post office to mail a large batch of books for me, because he knew I was trying to cope with all the other urgent stuff.

And HE had been charged a jaw-dropping R46.60 per envelope!

Mind you, I had had a similar experience earlier in the year. After it had happened twice, I realised that it depended on who served me at the counter! If I got that one particular woman, the one with the generally grumpy face, I had to hand over R46.60 every time.

If I got any of the others, it was R30.65.

The second time it happened, I of course challenged her, pointing out that her colleagues had charged me far less the previous day. She had glared at me furiously, and retorted that they had made a mistake, that the letters might/would not be delivered because they had insufficient stamps on them, and that I could/would/should be charged for the excess!

Ooooo-kay then.

I now suspect that the vagaries of the queue had brought my honey-bun to the counter of grumpy-face.*

Now if our post office actually had a good track record of offering a reliable, trustworthy and speedy service, I might be inclined to accommodate discrepancies of as much as R16 (!) on the same size and weight envelope. But given that there is still widespread corruption, theft and pilfering of countless letters, parcels and presents sent to and received from overseas, I am feeling just a tad aggrieved right now.

Those letters had better make it to their destinations before the end of the year, or I am going to cause a major STINK!!

—–

* Honey-bun has just confirmed that this was indeed the case. It’s enough to make one’s hackles rise, it is indeed. Well, at least I now know whom to avoid!!

A sad goodbye to the CEP

A week or two ago, I received a letter from Ann Strybis, one of the organisers of the Continuing Education Programme that has been running at the nearby Pinelands High School for 22 years! Isn’t that extraordinary?

For the first three terms of every year, they offered a large variety of courses; some were once-off presentations on a particular topic, while others were a series of lessons. Topics included languages (I recall seeing French, Italian and Xhosa), cooking, exercise (social dancing, yoga and Nia), gardening, house and home related topics, digital photography, and various arts and crafts.

Every term offered at least a handful of courses that sounded intriguing enough to sign up! And you would be sure to meet and soon befriend a couple of locals who shared the same interests as you. An easy camaraderie developed among the participants, particularly in the classes that ran for a couple of sessions.

It was wonderful to get out a bit in the evenings, particularly when you had a rough day at work, to meet like-minded people, to learn something new or to acquire a new skill.  The longer sessions usually had a tea break, during which everyone would rush off to fill their cups at the urn, chattering away among each other like a bunch of excited school children. I loved it!

I/we attended a couple of the classes, some of which I blogged about:

• A talk about spiders
• A class on making a butterfly mosaic
• An introductory Nia class
• A hands-on class on West African drumming
• A digital photography course, at the end of which all the participants met up for a photo shoot at Oude Molen Eco Village
• A beginners’ painting course – (first part) and (second part).

There were others, but I didn’t have time to blog about all of them.

Earlier this year, my friend Kim signed up with me for another digital photography course. We had a fantastic time and learnt sooo much about our cameras and about what makes good photos. We were really looking forward to a follow-up course in the next year. Richard participated in an introductory Yoga class at the beginning of the year, and promptly decided to continue with the Yoga lessons because he enjoyed them so much.

Consequently, we were saddened to hear that the organisers had decided to end the programme. Hopefully someone, somehow, sometime, will re-start it again.

In retrospect, I wish we had attended A LOT MORE of the classes they offered, but we took it for granted that they would always be offered again in the future.

I guess this is a timely reminder not to postpone the things you really want to do.

So, who’s this inquisitive feline?

This afternoon, I heard a rustling in the carpet of dry leaves under the trees in the front garden, so I got up to investigate.

And look what I saw, balancing cautiously on the narrow fibrecrete wall to the neighbours’ garden!

An unfamiliar kitty-cat on the wall

Very surreptitiously, and as quietly as I could, I slid the blinds out of the way and ducked the camera behind the lace curtain, so I could get a better shot of her. She was peering nervously into the neighbours’ garden, which is the territory of another cat, a big ginger one.

Peering into the neighbours' garden

All clear. Tomsy must have been off napping somewhere else.

Or not, perhaps?

"I wonder, is it safe?"

After pausing and surveying her surroundings apprehensively – maybe she had heard the sound of the camera? – she continued on and climbed onto the little ledge marking the start of the higher wall in the back garden.

A three-quarter cat?!

She made it onto the top of the pillar against which the gate is mounted, and peered curiously into our back garden. She must have smelt that this was Our Tuffy’s Domain. Her nose crinkled, her whiskers twitched, and her ears went straight up. The fur on her neck was bristling.

Peering into my garden

Unlike her, though, I knew that Tuffy was at that moment sleeping, curled up tightly in her basket, and that there would be no cat fight today. Not that our fluff-ball would engage in such unladylike behaviour anyway!

A very alert cat

I clicked my tongue very softly, hoping to catch her attention – without frightening her to death – because I wanted to get a good photo of her face.

It took her a moment to determine the source of the clicking.

Our eyes locked

She posed beautifully.

Is she trying to hypnotise me?

Isn’t she gorgeous? What a cute face!

We stared at each other for a loooong minute, while I clicked the shutter again and again, trying to focus the camera through the slightly dirty and rain spattered glass. (Note to self: The windows need cleaning again!)

Finally, though, she had enough of my paparazzi behaviour. She hopped back onto the fibrecrete wall and gave me a defiant glare, before leaping down into the flowerbeds and stalking off amidst a rustle of dry leaves.

A final defiant glare

She is such a pretty kitty, I would love to make friends with her. But I also don’t want to encourage her to visit our garden more frequently, because that would upset Tomsy and Tuffy-Cat, who are, after all, the permanent and elderly residents.

Hmmm, what a quandary…..

I wonder where she lives? Maybe I could visit her there?!

Graph humour

If our maths teacher had shown us graphs like these, we might have paid a teensy bit more attention in class. I can definitely relate to some of these – particularly the last one!

Some much-needed humour: Installing Husband 1.0

This week, like the last few weeks in fact, is proving to be one of those where I wish that I could slow down time, or preferably turn it back a day or two.

Alternatively, I wonder how advanced cloning technology is?

I really need more of me’s (yes, I know that’s grammatically incorrect but you get the gist):

1. To finish the various jobs before their respective deadlines,
2. To deal with all the general home and garden chores,
3. To tackle all the Christmas preparations, such as making and sending out Christmas cards, buying, designing and making suitable presies, baking Vanillekipferl, Lebkuchen, Spekulatiusgebaeck and Stollen, using Oma’s recipes, putting up the Christmas tree, etc etc etc.

Is anyone else struggling to get everything done before the end of the year?

————-

Meanwhile, a sweet friend of mine sent me a chuckle, so I’d like to share it with you too:

INSTALLING HUSBAND‏ 1.0

A woman writes to the IT Technical support Guy:

Dear Tech Support,

Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and I noticed a distinct slowdown in the overall system performance, particularly in the Flower and Jewellery applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0.

In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5, and then installed undesirable programs such as News 5.0, Money 3.0 and Cricket 4.1.

Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and House cleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. I have tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail.

What can I do?

Signed,
Desperate.

———————

The reply:

Dear Madam,

First, keep in mind that Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an Operating System.

Please enter command:  ithoughtyoulovedme.html and try to download Tears 6.2 and do not forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewellery 2.0 and Flowers 3.5.

However, remember that overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Silence 2.5 or Beer 6.1.  Please note that Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will download the Snoring Loudly Beta.

Whatever you do, DO NOT under any circumstances install Mother-In-Law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources.)

In addition, please do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0 program. This is an unsupported application and will crash Husband 1.0.

In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly.  You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend: Cooking 3.0 and Hot Looks 7.7.

Good Luck Madam!
IT Support Desk