To St James by train

One Sunday each November, the children of Alex’s playschool, together with their associated parents, grandparents, various hangers-on and their teacher Jayne, head off to Kenilworth Station to board the 08:54 train southbound to St James. St James is charming little place which has a road, a railway line and a row of colourful beach huts on the shore and not much else – but that’s fine, because the station is all of 50 metres from the beach.
Much like last year, the party of around 40 individuals – many of them small and loud – descended upon the Southern Suburbs line, much to the horror of the more regular users of the service.
I’ll never forget last year, when passengers getting on at Retreat stopped and stared, open-mouthed, as the doors opened and they were greeted by a carriageful of somewhat out-of-place, (almost) middle-aged whities and their kids. It was awesome. South Africa has a interesting relationship with the concept of race (for obvious reasons). It warms my heart when people go out of their comfort zone and try something they usually wouldn’t. Even more so when all involved can find some wry humour in the situation: as was the case last year.

    

It will come as no huge surprise to regular readers to learn that I took my camera along and managed to knock off well over 100 shots, which I have whittled down to 50 for the purposes of uploading to Flickr. Even that 170-odd MB took most of the afternoon to sort out. Gotta love SA internet and the ASDL hamsters enjoying a Sunday afternoon nap in their wheels in Bloemfontein.

The weather was much warmer than the forecast 19°C, much calmer than the 45kph SouthEaster we were promised (although that has since arrived with a vengeance) and (I believe) a good time was had by all.

Alex moves on from his two year residence at this school next year, but we have already secured our place on next year’s outing by popping out little K-pu. It should, however, be noted that although this is a great day out, we have ABSOLUTELY NO PLANS for any other back door invitations once our daughter has completed her time with Jayne. Believe it, because it’s true.

Saturday Evening 101

I’ve spent so long drinking red wine and watching VH1’s Final Countdown: One Hit Wonders that it seems that I have left no time at all for a blog post. Bugger.

The top three (as chosen by VH1) were:

3. Tasmin Archer’s 1992 hit Sleeping Satellite – she blames you for the moonlit sky. And the dream that died. Steady on, love.
2. Deep Blue Something with Breakfast At Tiffany’s – in which a ginger bloke tries to convince a chick that because they both like a film from the early 1960’s, he’s a good bet to go on a second date with, despite his hair. Ja right.
1. Never Met A Girl Like You Before by Edwyn Collins. I hate this song.

What were they thinking?

I also uploaded my 2,500th item onto my flickr photostream – some surprisingly remarkable trolleys at Canal Walk – a big shopping mall in Cape Town:

Surprisingly remarkable not just because of their number and structural conformity, but because they are all still where they should be and aren’t being pushed along the N1 with some bergie’s life in them.

And now I have to go and prepare for tomorrow morning’s school outing to the beach by train.
More on that little adventure tomorrow. Possibly.

Photo fuss

A couple of my photos from the “Wet Weekend” set seem to have caused a bit of a stir, which is nice.

I’m referring to Patio Splashes:

and his singular brother, Patio Splash.

They were the result of some playing around with various settings (Exposure 0.001sec (1/1300), Aperture f/5.0, Focal length 26.7mm), while lying on my stomach in wet sand. In the rain.
I’m not claiming that they’re brilliant, but they certainly mark a step forward for me, if not a huge leap for my t-shirt.

I’m really enjoying my “new” camera, even if I am still only able to use about 10% of its functions. However, since my dad has now also bought himself one (on my recommendation), there is added impetus to learn. Because obviously, there will be no competition to see who can get the better photographs. Obviously.

Snails, Cheese and Wine. And Rain. And Footy.

It’s been a wet weekend. Very wet.
Latest figures from Kirstenbosch suggest that they weren’t really expecting rain at this time of year and forgot to put the rainfall gauge out. But if they had have done, it would have been full. And that’s a lot of water.
I would look it up on the SA Weather Service site, but since it got “upgraded” it’s worse than useless.

Aside from a trip to the supermarket, we stayed in. As you would have done as well.
Mrs 6000 and her chums were due to take some horses out through the vineyards in the spring sunshine, but after the spring sunshine failed to pierce the thick grey clouds above and all around us, apparently even the horses were moaning about it being cold and wet (98% relative humidity 13.8°C at 3pm), and thus a semi-impromptu cheese and wine party took the places of the ruiterkuns. Which was nice.
Especially since we didn’t invite the horses.

The wet weekend flickr set.

Snails, cheese, wine and bathing the kids gave me limited opportunity to watch Chelsea and Man U, but I did get to see the goal and yes, it was a foul; no, Drogba wasn’t offside and no, he wasn’t interfering with play anyway. And yes, actually I am a qualified referee, so **** you.
I’m sure Fergie and the Man U fans won’t be happy, but to be perfectly honest, who really gives a toss about what they think? Deep down inside they’ll be happy to have something to moan about, anyway.  

And so it’s onward and upward (the stairs, to bed), with a week full of grey, wet weather to look forward to. Happy days.

Every day…

Every day, I am blown away by the beauty of the mountain.
(When it’s visible and not hidden behind shedloads of dark grey cloud, obviously.)

This was from my drive home tonight.

Full size with option of spankingly large desktop background size here.

Pedants (you know who you are):
This doesn’t count as a quota photo because I’ve already posted today.