I was going to call this “Gorgeous Green Point”, “Marvelous Mouille Point”, “Thrilling Three Anchor Bay” or “Spectacular Sea Point”.
But that’s just because the boundary lines between those suburbs have always seemed a little vague and disputable to me. As it was, these were taken from the Mouille Point lighthouse (in Green Point) on what was a stunningly beautiful, but dangerously windy Sunday afternoon. I had to hold onto Scoop to stop her being blown into the South Atlantic.
Again.
The swell wasn’t huge, but the wind was whipping the tops off the waves in the bright sunshine. I haven’t seen wind this strong since the last time the wind was this strong and I can’t remember when that was.
We went quizzing last night at the Fireman’s Arms in town.
It’s been a while since we were there and it’s become a slick operation in our absence: questions on flatscreens, entry fees added to your tab etc etc. Nice work QuizNiteCT.
One thing that did irritate us though was the amount of blatant cheating going on. It has obviously become so endemic that teams don’t even bother to conceal it anymore. When the prize is a bottle of Klipdrift between six and a cap each, is it really worth it?
Evidently, yes, it is. As quiz legend Dale Collins states on all his picture round handouts:
Mobile phone users are killing quizzes
Quite how you stop the cheating is another matter: tough one. It’s sad, because you shouldn’t have to – it’s all a matter of respect.
Which nicely segues me into this track which caused us no end of discussion last night:
Wow. What a great video.
How unlucky is that guy? What a series of inconceivable and unfortunate events, hey?
And he’s got a band in his shoe. In his shoe, people!! LOL!
Last night’s tribulations were around whether it was Weezer or whether it was Wheatus?
Who did Buddy Holly, who did Teenage Dirtbag?
It’s actually quite hard to remember after a few Black Labels…
(but we didn’t look it up on our cellphones.)
Forgive me for this. I recognise that different people have different passions – I’ve even heard it said that some individuals don’t support Sheffield United, although I’m sure this can’t actually be true. But it’s wrong to expect others to be interested in your passion – even to understand it, no matter how great your enthusiasm or how flowery your language.
Food is one of those things that people can wax lyrical about food forever and a day. Even, it appears, if it’s just bread. Check this feature on The Larder in Napier, taken from the Discover Cape Agulhas group on Facebook.
THE LARDER IN NAPIER
At the Larder in Napier we do not only bake bread but rather experience bread everyday. It is a living element that we partake of from early in the morning when the previous day’s dough is shaped, proved and baked. To see the mounds of white suddenly explode in the oven into beautiful crisp brown breads is a revelation every day. Afterwards we will mix the batch of dough for the following day and leave it quietly for 5 hours to develop. By mid afternoon we will prepare the dough for the overnight rising, working with it for 1 ½ hours to stretch the gluten and to benefit the maximum from our starter. Thereafter it is left overnight to let nature run its course. This process gives us a robust bread with lots of flavour, a crisp crust and soft on the inside. Eating our bread is an experience and not for the fainthearted.
Thus is our daily ritual every day, four days a week.
“A living element”? (Yeah, sure, until you stick it into the oven and KILL IT!)
“Mounds of white” suddenly exploding?
“Not for the fainthearted”?
Do we really knead this overly and overtly descriptive prose? You make it sound like a horror movie, when at the end of the day (and actually, reading again, throughout it) you are just baking.
It’s just bread.
Also, I couldn’t help but notice that while you claim to “experience bread everyday”, you actually only make it on 57.1% of the days of the week. Even allowing for the following day’s baking, this hardly constitutes “everyday” and I will be speaking to the DTI’s Consumer Affairs Board about this.
I was just reading through some of the wonderful work on the Literary India website when I happened across this fantastic poem by Anjali Ranu, entitled “The Sky Isn’t Always Blue“.
It’s a deeply soul-searching piece in which Ranu demonstrates her understanding of the nature of life and the fragility of the human spirit; indicating that the river of life will not always flow smoothly and that the effects the travails of our existence may have upon our busy daily routines may prove to be too much for us, as mere individuals, to handle:
The sky isn’t always blue
The sun doesn’t always shine
Equally, however, she permits that understanding to filter down to us, her readers, enabling us to share her knowledge and empower ourselves, recognising that in the face of the difficulties which test our spirit, on occasion, a temporary retreat is not something to be feared:
It’s alright to fall apart, sometimes
A sentiment which she cements thus:
The heart isn’t always true
And I am not always fine
We all have an angry heart, sometimes
It’s powerful stuff, bringing with it the message that no-one is impermeable to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and the disclaimer that there should be no shame in submitting to these onslaughts every now and again.
Ranu ends on the positive thought that support from another entity may carry us forward through these difficulties; that there is a light at the end of the tunnel when we work together, and that the sum of the parts may be greater than the whole, that unity is the solution:
Look how far we have come
One and one still is one
One moon, one star
I love the one we are
A sentiment which brings with it echoes of Robert Miles & Maria Nayler back in 1996:
Much of the rest of Ranu’s work can be found in the motivational statements of various Indian spiritual gurus (compare this with this) and better known poets (this versus this), but “Sky” is the only work I can find which has been… er… “inspired” by an Italian DJ and record producer.
Seaside Slideshow
I was going to call this “Gorgeous Green Point”, “Marvelous Mouille Point”, “Thrilling Three Anchor Bay” or “Spectacular Sea Point”.
But that’s just because the boundary lines between those suburbs have always seemed a little vague and disputable to me. As it was, these were taken from the Mouille Point lighthouse (in Green Point) on what was a stunningly beautiful, but dangerously windy Sunday afternoon. I had to hold onto Scoop to stop her being blown into the South Atlantic.
Again.
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The swell wasn’t huge, but the wind was whipping the tops off the waves in the bright sunshine. I haven’t seen wind this strong since the last time the wind was this strong and I can’t remember when that was.