Winter Holiday

Winter in London is a long drawn out affair of short dull days and chill, damp weather enlivened by mild, muggy weather with the occasional crisp, frosty day. Snow always a rarity in a city warmed several degrees by the exhaust fumes and central heating systems of its seething masses! The twinkling festivities of Christmas lights give way to the endurance of January and February before brave spring flowers raise hopes of warmer days and sunshine. It is about survival, SAD and battening down the hatches.

Here in the Western Cape of South Africa winter is a more light-hearted affair. The days never get as short as they do in Europe. In between the periods of winter rainfall, (which we welcome as a blessing and insurance against summer drought) we get days of bright sunshine - cold nights and foggy mornings, but then the sun breaks through to tease off our layers of warm clothing, until the children return from school in T-shirts, laden with armfuls of shed clothes.

The Breede River

For some reason we seem more likely to go on holiday in the winter holidays than in the summer. We go to the Breede River with friends and just chill for a few days, pooling the children and the cooking duties, so that everyone gets plenty of time to lie around reading books, fish, eat rock buns and braai. The chill is actually a night time thing, when we huddle in the rather hard beds of a rental house, while the day's warmth exits through the minimally insulated roof until our breath mists. In the morning we stay in bed, with tea, rock bun and book, until the sun penetrates the mist and its warming rays thaw us until we are mellow again.

Fishing rods, rock buns and coffee

The children kept each other busy for hours. The first project they set themselves was to build a house in the reeds, working hard to clear out some dead brush that filled a natural hollow in the reed bed, then forming a cooperative chain gang to cut and stack reeds with which to build extra walls and roof. Our son was in his element, having recently saved up enough money to buy himself a Swiss Army penknife, here was the perfect use for it. Youngest took on the important job of receiving the cut reeds and stacking them neatly, while the others formed the middle of the chain ferrying them from cutter to stacker.


Elaborate 'experiments' with river mud, employed most of the plastic cups in the house.

Fishing with river prawns as bait from the boat and the jetty brought in large quantities of river weed. Luckily the cooks weren't relying on the catch to provide supper.

The river was still and smooth on a winter afternoon, ours the only boat to ruffle its surface. In summer we would have been on a major boat highway, with motorboats and waterskiiers hurtling past and a summer afternoon wind competing for attention. Today it was us disturbing the water birds and the peace of the still winter afternoon.

The background narrative to our four days at the river was Catweazle. I took it along and our friend nobly took it upon himself to read aloud to the children at any time that they needed a little quiet time... or we did. Gales of giggles ripped around the house at Catweazle's confused grappling with the 20th century and a few chuckles emerged from bedrooms where the other adults were pretending to be still asleep. Probably Catweazle was the reason that we didn't catch any fish - a chapter in the boat caused enough uproar to send them fleeing down to the river mouth!

This is the colour of winter at the Breede River - bright aloes set the stony, dry hillsides on fire.