As you can see, it’s been incredibly hard work.

60% of world cocoa production, 20% of global gold production and shedloads of shale gas.
What’s not to like?
(apart perhaps for that 3% of global GDP figure…)

They are monuments made of unworked stones that are used by the Inuit people for communication and survival. The traditional meaning of the Inukshuk is “Someone was here” or “You are on the right path.”

An Inukshuk is a welcome sight to a traveller on a featureless and forbidding landscape.

But the towers made by Alex and me on the beach have a far more fundamental message. They tell the South Atlantic Ocean who’s boss.

Briefly, anyway.

Remember King Cnut (“The Great”)? Allegedly, he:

…set his throne by the sea shore and commanded the tide to halt and not wet his feet and robes. Yet “continuing to rise as usual [the tide] dashed over his feet and legs without respect to his royal person. Then the king leapt backwards, saying: “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.” He then hung his gold crown on a crucifix, and never wore it again “to the honour of God the almighty King”. This incident is usually misrepresented by popular commentators and politicians as an example of Cnut’s arrogance.

Cnut’s parents were called Sweyn Forkbeard and Sigrid the Haughty. No wonder he had issues.

Of course, nowadays, we know that the tides are influenced not by some mythical sky goblin, but by the magnetic pull of the sun and the moon and the rotation of the earth. They’re no less powerful than they were back in the 11th Century though and our stone towers’ arrogance is usually hastily dismissed, to Alex’s repeated disappointment.

Next time, I’m going to even up the odds a little by taking some cement along…

Wow – I said that like it was a good thing. Meh – it was fun evening: good food, good company, crap music.

After yesterday’s near miss when it came to getting up the West Coast, today’s return journey was rather unexciting, tinged with heat, more heat, a lack of sleep, some heat and a mild hangover.

Passing Koeberg

Mrs 6k drove and I looked out of the window at the scenery passing by at *cough* 120kph. This grey one sums up how I’m feeling this evening – distinctly lacking colour.

The bread is made, the uniforms are ironed and it’s back to school for our two tomorrow. Back to some sort of normality here too – but right now, I need my bed.

When in Agulhas, do sundowners at the shipwreck. Got it?

The Meisho Maru 38 ran aground between Suiderstrand and Cape Agulhas on 16 November 1982.

Since then, it’s been slowly breaking up, and the bow now sits proudly on the shoreline near the Southernmost point, acting as a magnet for cormorants and photographers alike.

Once the kids were safely tucked in, I took a large glass of red wine and headed out for a brief session of long exposure (the camera, not me). It was brief because I quickly ran out of red wine.

Pics to follow once we’re back just 6000 miles from civilisation…

In other news, I learnt, via Serendipity, how to resize images while posting from my phone.

Game on! (assuming it works)

I’ve got a (much) better one of these, but it was taken on the camera, so it will have to wait until I have “decent” connectivity to upload.

In the meantime, please admire my shiny knob and bright keyhole.

UPDATE: As promised, here is the better (camera)version

Standing in the kitchen of the cottage, beer in hand, and looking out at the ocean and this sunset, it’s not hard to imagine that life could be worse…

Yes, we’re away for a few days before Christmas, so the blogging may be a little scarce. I do have some wireless interwebs here this time though, so I’ll see what I can do…

“Claremont Visible Policing”

“Claremont Invisible Policing”

Hahahahahahaha! (sorry)

Who said, “How time’s flown” and “Haven’t you grown?”

The end of a very busy, very hot weekend, including a 37°C visit to the Cape Town Stadium to see Ajax (finally) get 3 points against Bloem Celtic and their awesome fans.

I’m completely knackered. Completely.

I got a few great pics of sunsets while we were away this last weekend. Here’s one of them optimised for quota photo usage:

The original is here and there are more sunsets and other stuff in my November 2011 flickr set.
It was a ridiculously busy month.