The views and wildlife up there were amazing. But next time, knowing a bit more what to expect, we’ll certainly be better prepared.
One other good bit of news is that even though I’m not supposed to be running for another fortnight, my calf seems to have not been horribly torn again by my exertions. Happy days.
I’ll sort the photos out tomorrow.

As you can see – some butterflies are apparently big enough to require additional strength from an extra arm.

Mixed feelings about this one, as those of you who will read my recent guest post on RattleandMum will understand:

It’s a brilliant ad (Mrs 6000 is still sobbing), with brilliant music: ‘Divenire’ by Ludovico Einaudi (the reason I found it, by the way), and yes, maybe being a Mum is the hardest job in the world, but wow, way to leave out any sort of recognition of paternal influence in the development of successful Olympic athletes.

Stick this the other way around and put Dads in there instead of Mums and you’d have feminazis boycotting your products (Pampers, Duracell, Tide & Gillette by the way) and protesting outside your HQ. Daily.

But obviously, as I’ve pointed out before, Dads play absolutely no role in bringing up the kids, now do they?

(But I still love the ad.)
(Hate myself for it, though.)

No actual fish yet, but we’ll get them once the water has sorted itself out. It’s currently full of chlorine and devoid of helpful microorganisms. Hopefully by the day of his actual birthday, we’ll be able to add the bubble-eyes he’s after.
His birthday party today was a riot.
Almost literally. Photos tomorrow.

That’s Scoop at the front in her SA fleece (not looking too happy about the while thing) and somewhere halfway up the line is Alex in his dad’s (i.e. my) Chengdu Blades shirt.

The school really pushed for 100% participation in this and I can’t wait to see the finished product.

We spent the afternoon at a wedding overlooking Simonstown, a few miles down the coast from Kalk Bay where we partied until late last night.
False Bay is beautiful, but I don’t want to go back there until I’ve properly recovered.

It was while we were doing the kiddies stuff today that Alex noticed a giant tap attached to a tower and I used his curiosity to get him up and onto the Stargazer: A “supertubes” ride that you do in a tiny inflatable boat. We went down at high speed, Dad got a very wet bum and Alex couldn’t wait to have another go.

From that point, there was no turning back. Suddenly, the Monkey Falls log flume, complete with its sheer 19m drop, was Alex’s target. And where Alex (almost 6) went, his 3 year old sister was sure to follow. There was a slight moment of concern as we were at the front of the queue, as the attendant had to get her clipboard out to measure Scoop against the minimum height mark (107cm), but with a teensie hint of tippie toes and some ever so subtle stretching, she made it. My daughter is 107.1cm tall. I know adults who are only a ruler and a half taller than that. Scoop will be there by age 7.

What followed was a revelation to myself and my wife. Our kids, usually pretty backward in going forward and trying new things, couldn’t wait to have go after go after go on the log flume, Alex describing each time the “funny feeling” he got when we went down the big slope. We finished the day soaking wet, very tired and very happy. I managed to tick the Cobra:

a suspended looping coaster which catapults riders from a height of 32m along 779m of track at up to four times the force of gravity and speeds of close to 100km/h. Adding to the thrill of the ride is the suspension of riders beneath the track, feet flying free. This ride is not for the faint hearted.

off my bucket list, having driven past it many times, although not quite at that speed.

We had such a great family day today that I’m sticking this one in the elusive 6000 recommends category. Ratanga Junction isn’t cheap (adults R152, kids R75), nor will it compare favourably with that famous theme park you visited in America, but it still offers great value for money if you do it right. And that means picking your day carefully, arriving early, and – it seems – having kids above 3 years of age, and above 1.07m, but below 1.30m in height. This last one means that they’ll be able to enjoy just about all the rides on offer.

Queuing times were minimal. 10 minutes tops for the Cobra, Stargazer and Monkey Falls, walk straight on to the kids’ stuff. I can imagine that you could have a nightmare time when the queues are an hour for each ride, but that’s why you must choose your day carefully. Parents will want to take a couple of spare sets of clothes for the kids (and maybe for yourselves) as you know that once kids get wet, they may start to get cold and once they get cold, they start to lose interest. We didn’t quite hit that point, but then again, we did take some spare clothes.

Photos, such as they are, (the gravitational pull of the Cobra and the hydrological aspects of the Monkey Falls not being conducive to active photography) can be found here.

The day my boy learned to ride a bike. He’s been close for a while, today he got it and I am a very proud dad.

Here he is having cycled all the way from the far corner of Wynberg Boys’ School field.

However, today’s subject is no less edgy [really? - Ed.], catchily-entitled Slaying The Stereotype Of The One-Parent, Two-Parent Family, and wherein I comprehensively fail to change anyone’s mind about how little paternal effort and thought typically goes into bringing up children.

That failure aside though, please do go and support my efforts anyway, but keep the insults to yourselves this time.

Thanks.

Religion forces science teacher to quit

A science teacher at an upmarket Cape Town school has found herself at odds with senior staff over her desire to teach evolution in science lessons. She said that the teachers in the school’s science department were mainly Christian and that she was reprimanded over teaching the scientific concept.

“We’re talking about the head of biology, we’re talking about the longest standing member [of staff] who’s been there for more than 25 years and we’re talking about the most recent member who was trained in a Biology area.”
“What he actively does in class is he poo poos the idea [of evolution], he makes kids laugh at the idea of the age of the Earth as proposed by scientists currently. He poo poos the fossil record, he gives what he believes is counter evidence to carbon dating,” she said.

For starters, I’ve noted that there’s an awful lot of poo pooing going on at this school. And that should immediately raise some red flags.
But, that aside, I have no issue with people choosing to send their kids to a school which teaches along the lines of certain beliefs. That, as the expression goes, is their indaba. You want your kids to learn nonsense, send them to a school that teaches nonsense. Give them what you consider to be a good start in life and then let’s all sit back and see how they get on with their tertiary education and future career in the real world.
But this situation is slightly different, as this school has a Science Department. And if you have a Science Department in your school, surely it should really follow that they teach… er… “scientific concepts” like evolution and carbon dating.

No?

Religion is all well and good (well, actually not in my opinion, but there are apparently some people who like it), but then this ex-teacher continues to tell us about the Muslim Biology teacher who refused to teach evolution. And the most laughable of all:

I met a Christian Geography teacher who refused to teach plate tectonics.

If you choose to believe that plate tectonics is not real or if you choose to believe that Creationism is where we all came from, then – simply – don’t take a job like a Geography teacher or Science teacher, that involves you having to fight those concepts each and every day. Want to tell the kids about Adam and Eve or how God creates earthquakes and tsunamis? Well then, rather express your views by teaching Religious Education and leave the Science and the Geography to those who understand Science and Geography.

Equally, it seems to me that the teacher who quit should maybe choose her place of employment more carefully, as she seems to have crashed and indeed burned, again:

“I’m constantly on the defensive. In fact, my life has got even more interesting now because I’ve joined a school that’s a cult. They believe that their leader has insight and he believes that the entire solar system was created for human beings, and that animals and plants are the rejected parts of what would’ve been the human body that don’t belong, and the last thing to be rejected was bacteria.
And don’t bother that the fossil record goes the other way round because he had these insights through his spiritual and meditative journeys. So now I find myself out of the frying pan into the fire.”

Good plan. Well done.

Anyway, this should also serve as a wake up call to those of us who have kids at schools with a religious foundation. Do you know what your child is being taught in their “Science” lessons?

UPDATE: As per Jacques’ comment below, it looks like Emperor of the Western Cape, Helen Zille is onto this after being alerted by a very rude man on twitter.