In Our Back Garden

Unicorns frolic in a flowery bower


Horses prance and toss their manes


Leopards pace and the lion lies down with the lamb


A hippo wallows in a watering hole


A girl waits patiently to go fishing


Cows graze peacefully in the evening sunshine.


A few mishaps mar the idyll...

Indian Jones tried one stunt too many


And the Italian Job did too good a job money laundering and jackknifed their lorry.


But overall tis a peaceful scene


Just a shame that the camel didn’t live to see it.

Vignettes photographed in my herb garden after Youngest had spent the afternoon out there.

Nubivagant Words

A nubivagant post off in lala land, wandering among clouds… I’ve adopted a word and have to use it to keep it alive and protect its dictionary listing. Nubivagant (means: moving through and around the clouds) is one of the three I chose from a great site that I was pointed to by Robyn of The Egypt Experience.

The site is called Save the Words and is huge fun – click on any weird word and find out its meaning. With some of them you can quite understand why they are in danger of losing their place in the dictionary, but there are some great ones which will extend your vocabulary, besides giving you an erudite air if you ever find yourself in scholarly company.

My other two chosen words were quibbleism (the act of beating around the bush) and frutescent (having the habit or appearance of a shrub) lots of garden references there – it must have been on my mind last night.

Both of us spent almost an hour surfing and choosing words to adopt yesterday evening. My husband found five he couldn’t resist, so we now have a family of eight words that we have pledged to use whenever possible.

I got a certificate of adoption too. I have a feeling that several others have adopted these words , as I came across a few poems using nubivagant in conjuction with daffodils when I googled it.

Save the Words is as much fun for word-lovers as FreeRice, though you don’t get the kick of feeding the five thousand with your word prowess that you do with FreeRice. I spent several evenings there when I first discovered it and still go back and visit sometimes whenever I need a wordy diversion. But maybe Save the Words has a more short term appeal. After all there are only so many words you should adopt, in order to devote enough attention to each one, and of course remember its meaning.

Have a look and let me know if you adopt any words yourself – they could have a play date with mine – abstruse poetry anybody?!

Paying by Numbers

My numerology for March said that money would be flowing out fast…. I wasn’t too surprised, as it does that most months. The first week was true to form: bill for son’s OT treatment after breaking a finger playing football (he saved a goal but it cost over R1000 in all, and it wasn’t even a major league match); filling at the dentist for Youngest (where she was hugely stoical and put up with it without a murmur); fairies purchased as a reward for the above (and middle daughter was owed one too for dental treatment previously unrewarded – I reckon this is the one area where bribes are essential!).

What I hadn’t been bargaining for, and what the numerology was obviously talking about was our car: our beautiful car, new to us last year and only a mere spring chicken at 2 years old, still under warranty. It took my husband into Cape Town last week and promptly overheated, dumping him at the side of the road. Annoying, we thought, a pain as it had to be towed to a busy Cape Town garage instead of our friendly local one, to be fixed under the warranty. Irritating, when two days later they hadn’t even looked at it. Infuriating, when yesterday they called us with the diagnosis and said that it probably won’t be covered under the warranty, and by the way it will cost R15,000 to fix. Foot-stompingly rage-making, when they tell us that a bit of mud had covered the heat sensor so the fan hadn’t worked, hence breaking that fan, this pipe and the other something else and perhaps it has a design fault.

Mud is a part of our lives here in winter. The 3km dirt road that leads to our smallholding is un-tarred and any amount of rain is enough to turn it to a clay ploughed field. So if the mud from one summer rainstorm is enough to wipe out the car, then it is never going to survive a winter here. It’s a design fault, they tell us and perhaps you’ll just have to clean the fan every time you go out in the car. Well that is three times a day in the school week. We realize that even if we get it fixed we will most likely have to trade it in and get something else less mud-sensitive or the winter will be a nightmare.

So here we are stomping our feet and trying to make our case with the dealer and then the manufacturing company. Eventually they say they will send an inspector …next Thursday, in ten days time and it has already been at the garage for a week …(hair tearing and steam boiling from ears at this point)

So we don’t know what will happen next week – I’m keeping fingers crossed that they will cover the repair costs. But if they don’t, I’m going to tell everyone not to buy an Opel Zafira, unless they are city creatures who never go near a speck of mud in their lives, because the Zafira doesn’t like mud and is very expensive to fix. Anyone have Jeremy Clarkson’s contact details here? I’d like to register it as a crap car, even though it has a nifty way with extra folding seats in the back.

Luckily the numbers said that money would flow in nicely from May onwards!

Mamma Mia

Have you seen it yet? The perfect outlet for my inner rock-chick-Abba-washing-up-80s-retro self combined with soppy fun plot, great cinematography and Meryl Strreep letting her hair down in a big way and incidentally singing incredibly well.

We went to see it, just us two, last week on a movie date and immediately wished we’d taken the children, while they’re still young enough to think Abba is cool. So we went back with friends on Sunday: 4 adults and 5 children all singing along and dancing around in their seats … all except me that is …after the woman next but one to me leaned over her teenage daughter to ask me to stop singing :(

It was during the chorus of SOS with Pierce Brosnan managing to look sad and serious while leaning in the doorway, and I wasn’t belting it out, my voice pretty much drowned out by the high volume sound track or so I thought, but I guess if you’re a teenager it is embarrassing to sit next to a forty something woman with only moderate singing ability – I don’t blame her … much! But it’s obviously festering so I thought I’d better let it out in a mini rant and have done with it:

Mamma Mia is meant to be fun, how can anyone sit through it motionless, without a glimmer of a smile or chuckle, let alone the odd chorus line escaping their lips. If you’re going to watch Meryl Streep and appreciate her fine acting, you can still let the music infect you with a certain lightness of spirit – I mean how can anyone not want to sing along to Abba, unless they really hate it.

I promise I didn’t sing along to any of the solos – I did have that much respect for the poignant moment. All the rest of our group sang along sotto voce to their heart’s content, as I was the buffer zone fielding the occasional pointed look every now and then. Perhaps they should divide the cinema into zones - singing and non-singing zones with a sound proof barrier for those who prefer not to join in.

Anyway for anyone who enjoys Abba or likes a rollicking musical, I highly recommend Mamma Mia – the children were asking when we could get the DVD before the movie had even finished, so I can see many private viewings in the future, with the floor cleared for singing, dancing and such-like embarrassing behaviour – now all we need to do is get hold of some incredibly high platform boots and glittery jumpsuits, a touch of dry ice and a Greek island!

Passport Paddy

Passports! Who needs them? The whole family except me. Twice over, once for each nationality. Because we're visiting England en famille for the first time since we moved here six years ago and we have to have a passport for each country or else suffer the dire consequences of committing an offence endangering our dual nationality. And these free countries that we live in have such draconian regulations regarding passport applications, that you have to bend over backwards and go through hoops without the tiniest hint of a smile on your face, just in case you're a terrorist trying to disguise your true features by grinning…even when you're seven.

No I'm not bitter and twisted. I have however spent a whole morning queuing in our local Home Affairs for the children's South African passports, with the children getting more and more grumpy. I felt pleased at my perseverance, confident that I'd been efficient and organised. Once I got to the head of the queue it was a simple process and didn't take too long, we didn't even need to show the children's birth certificates, as they are all on the system, ID numbers and all.

Only to receive this evening a photocopied letter from the British Commission in Jo'berg informing me that three out of four of our British passport applications required new photos due to 'teeth showing', 'face not at a straight angle' etc - and, horror of horrors, they need an unabridged birth certificate for Youngest, which since she was born here, means I'll have to go straight back to queue in Home Affairs and I've been told that those take 12 weeks to be issued…..we are due to leave in just under 12 weeks ….aaaaaagh!! It's like playing Monopoly and playing your get out of jail free card, only to throw doubles and land straight back on the Go to Jail square.

So either Youngest will have to enter the UK on a South African passport with a visa (how long will that take to come through, I wonder?) or there'll be a lovely person on the end of the telephone tomorrow morning, who'll tell me that actually the documents I sent will do fine after all, or Home Affairs will process the birth certificate in record time, or … I can't think of a fourth option that's legal…!

So why do the British authorities make it so hard to submit an acceptable photo to them. My sister-in-law also had her application returned because of her photo - she was smiling. Surely the customs people could just ask us to smile when we come through passport control when they want to compare our face with the photo. Wouldn't that make the whole process more welcoming and friendly and pleasanter for them too?

Wishes for 2008

It's time for New Year's resolutions again. I can't remember if I made any last year, but I do remember that we always used to make ones that were doomed to failure within a week and thus were discarded as a bad job for the rest of the year.

So this year I had another idea of what we could do to mark the change of years without over-facing ourselves. We're making paper streamers. On one side we write a thank you for all the good things that last year brought and on the other a wish for all the things we hope for in 2008. Then we'll pin them to a stick in our circle and leave them to flutter there, fading in the sunshine, dissolving into the rain.

This way they aren't resolutions that we feel bad about if we fail, they are wishes and we can keep on trying at them until we get close, or they can evolve through the year - there'll be no stark lines of writing to remind us of our shortcomings, as they'll have long ago weathered away, but our hearts will bear an imprint that is kind enough in its interpretation to allow us a whole lot of leeway and multiple tries.

At least that is the idea!

The children have already done theirs - their thank yous are simply for the happiness of last year and wishes for more happiness in the year to come, Middle Daughter's phrased as 'I wish for more happiness to come to earth', which touched me in a melting, gooey mother kind of way! Mine is filled with reams of detailed personal thanks and wishes - far less universal and altruistic than hers …

For all my blog friends I wish you a 2008 filled with love, joy and abundance, with plenty of new opportunities for creativity, work and play!

Story of a Doll's House

Once upon a time there was a family of dolls. They dressed in their brightest, best clothes and lay in a box and waited. They knew that sooner or later they would reach the top of the housing list and their real life would begin. In the meantime they just dozed and wondered where that would be.

A rustling of tissue paper woke them; bright light made them blink. One by one they were lifted out of their box and caught a first glimpse of their new home: dazzlingly white with a smell of new paint and five spacious rooms, all empty.

They stood bemused looking around them at all the space.

"Where are we going to sleep?" asked the son, already missing the cosy box that had been his life so far.

"There'll be furniture soon" reassured his mother "They wouldn't give us a house unfurnished, not when they know we're new from the box and haven't had a chance to get our own."

Sure enough, huge hands began bringing in bunk beds and cupboards.

"Ooh there's a rocking horse" screeched the daughter in excitement, "Can I go on it Mum?"

"You have to wait until you're put on it by our Child," Grandmother said, "she's the one who decides everything around here."

"But how will she know to put me on? ..and she's so big..I'm scared!"

"Don't worry" said Dad, "I can see she'll be gentle with us and look after us well. She doesn't look the type to leave us outside in the rain. You'll have to learn to 'think' your wishes to her, so she catches them and puts you where you want to be. Of course at night when she's asleep we can do whatever we like, but in the daytime she's in charge"

Soon the house was all sorted, with a lovely children's bedroom and kitchen. The children were excited to find that they now had a pet cat and a new baby brother.

However the white walls were getting their parents down. "We really must see about a more exciting colour scheme. Can't we get our Child to do some interior decorating, maybe have her watch Changing Rooms or something?"

No sooner had they thought their wish, than they found themselves hustled off on a camping trip, babies and all.

"I do hope it won't rain" said Grandmother, anxiously looking at the grey sky.

"Did you wish for some nice tasteful colours?" asked Grandpa, "you know what they do to houses on TV programmes these days, need sunglasses to live in some of them!"

"I thought a bit of colour would make a nice change from being inside our box" responded Mum, a tad defensively," Anyway I've always liked bright colours and your yellow shirt isn't exactly subtle is it?"

Dad came back slightly apprehensive from supervising the decorators. "I think they're new to the job." he whispered to Mum.

"Well I shouldn't worry, they always seem to pull it together at the last minute on the telly, I'm sure it'll be fine." she replied as calmly as she could. Her precious first house meant a lot to her and she did so want them all to be happy in it.

The weather held fine for their camping trip, but finally it was time to make the journey back to their new house. As it came into view they gasped.

It was bright indeed and it had been moved. There was now a house next door, neighbours who also favoured a bright décor. Mum heaved a sigh of relief , she did like a bit of colour - it was just what she had dreamed of when lying asleep in her box - her own house, her family around her and friends next door for her children to play with. She was sure they would be friends - after all anyone who liked bright pink and red walls was bound to be a soul mate.

Photos of Youngest's doll's house that her Dad made for her birthday and of the doll family that flew all the way from the UK to live in it.

Muggles Beware

I try to keep my blog a cheerful place filled with flowers and flavours, so it goes against the grain to keep reporting when the really newsworthy gories happen. I have to confess now that my posts about our wedding anniversary, though genuine, cover up a deeper, darker subsequent week of doctor's visits. But how to report it?

Dragon Attacks!?!

It has come to our notice, that below the seemingly untroubled waters of Suikerbossie Farm, disturbing events have been concealed. Popular lore states that lightning never strikes twice in the same place, but then why has this family been detected twice this week at the doctor's surgery needing emergency treatment?

"It wasn't lightning, it was hot coffee" insists harassed mother of three, who had to be taught how to dress her daughter's scalded arm last Monday.

In the light of subsequent events, we wonder if dangerous and restricted magical creatures are being reared at this 'farm', where the inhabitants refuse to comment.

That same mother drove herself to the surgery needing stitches for wounds, allegedly caused by her own border collie, but which might just as well be dragon attacks.

'He lashed out out me, when the vet was taking out his stitches' she asserts, denying any connection with illegal magical creatures.

Could the seven-year-old girl have been burnt by too close contact with a dragon? Further investigation will uncover the truth.

We are all recovering well, though the doctor did offer to reserve a suite for us at his surgery, and are keeping our fingers crossed that the third accident was the flat tyre that stopped my husband in his tracks on the way to a meeting on Monday.

Hell freezing over?

I read this on Ryze.com when I was dutifully networking this morning. It gave our muscles such a great workout, with the gasping and spluttering with laughter that I thought I should share it with you:

The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington Chemistry mid-term.

The answer by one student was so "profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well :

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell.

Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, "It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you," and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct......leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting "Oh my God."

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY "A"

Retrograde Inaction

It's useful to have a scapegoat and I can confidently say that it is all Mercury's fault that I haven't posted for a week. Mercury is retrograde at the moment,which I only discovered yesterday, but which explains the series of mixed up phone calls and miscommunications that have been flourishing recently. Mercury is the planet of communication and when it is travelling backwards through the heavens it sends all our communnications awry. That explains the confusing phone call last night when my cell phone rang and a friend started talking about a whole series of arrangements that I knew nothing about. I finally interrupted and said it was me, and it took a little while longer to work out that she'd thought she was answering her phone (to someone else), though I knew it was mine that had been ringing. And another call which my husband answered in a feeble, suffering from a bad cold, grunt to be met with a long, drawn-out groan. He, leaping to worst possible scenario, thought it was his sister in a dire emergency, only to find it was a friend teasing him about his wan voice...he wasn't very amused, even when his heart beat returned to normal! All these tricks that Mercury plays, when it is reversing through our charts..and it is retrograde until the 10th, though the fact that I'm posting again may mean that its influence is becoming less severe!

If you want to read more about its effects from the experts here is an explanation and here are the dates to watch out for.

When I was 25

This was started as a writing prompt and is a powerful memory stirrer. I read Charlotte's post, which set me off reminiscing, finding some similarities and many differences in our experiences. Then even though I've already posted once today, I had to follow through, write and post before the memories faded and my 25 year old self disappeared back into the mists of time.

When I was 25, I turned my back on the full-time office job, with the travel company I was working for, and returned to the itinerant nature of tour managing, travelling with the clients on their walking holidays in Italy. I'd done one season and then accepted the office job at the end of it, which I'd coped with reasonably well over the winter months. When spring came and the other Tour Staff flew off to sunnier climes and Italian food, I chafed under the demands of office life and decided that I wasn't cut out for it after all. The decision was a huge relief and as I turned 25 I headed back to Italy to breathe the aromas of Tuscan cooking once more.

When I was 25, I had the confidence to meet a group of unknown clients at the airport and drive them off in to the countryside, with the enjoyment of their holiday entrusted into my hands. I always had pre-trip nerves, like stage fright, especially being a shy person, but I did it over and over again. I'm glad I was that person then as it gives me a memory of that ability to cope and trust in myself, to refer to now if ever I doubt my abilities.

When I was 25, I thought nothing of driving from Pisa to Oxford in 24 hours on my own in a Landrover, driving through the night on the French autoroute, sustained by Pocket Coffees (chocolates with a whole espresso concentrated into its liquid centre) with a cargo of Italian cheeses and a whole ham, unsure whether this was a legitimate import or not but driving through the Nothing to Declare at Dover anyway.

When I was 25, I had my first (and only, fingers crossed) car crash, when a new driver swerved across the road into me, writing off my beautiful butter-coloured Peugeot 205, breaking a bone in my foot and my nose and wrecking beyond redemption a beautiful soft scarf in the autumn colours of the Tuscan hills, that I'd bought in Italy. It left me with my foot in plaster for a month, back home revisiting the comfort of child-like dependance, with my mother in attendance, and appreciating the convenience of fully comp. insurance.

When I was 25, I thought I'd better catch up with my friends on the property ladder and bought a flat with a friend in London. That is where I'd been off to at the time of the car crash. Due to being immobilised for the whole month of February, I left all the house-hunting to my friend and, as time was running out before the season would be sending me off to Italy again, I found myself, without much thought on my part, a North Londoner in Willesden Green, when by inclination I subsequently discovered myself to be a South Londoner - and there is a cultural difference that goes with the divide of the Thames! I indulged myself by buying my first ever bed, double of course, even though there was no-one to put in the other side, with a wonderful pocket-sprung mattress, which has survived to this day, but is now our spare bed. The flat ended up being merely a base to return to after my stints in Italy, a winter perching place, and I got to know all the routes to South London very well!

25 was a time of being young, free and single, when my earnings could be spent on myself, and although they weren't huge, I could afford to trawl the London markets and sales for frivolous items of furniture, ridiculous clothes and bric a brac. In between intense periods of work I had cavernous spaces of free time to spend at the Everyman Cinema watching old Italian movies, explore London and read.

When I was 25, I was still five years from getting married and three years away from finding the right man, so there was an empty space, or rather, a sense of circling looking for the direction I was supposed to be heading in, I was marking time, knowing that I wanted to marry and have children one day, but not knowing what to do in the meantime, apart from experience life as it presented itself. Maybe I could have relaxed and enjoyed it more if I could have looked forward five years, but that tension of uncertainity is all part of life's rich tapestry!

Belly Dancing

A couple of months ago, the grapevine brought to my ears rumours of a belly-dancing class being held nearby. Now belly-dancing had never been one of my ambitions, had never even entered my consciousness as a possible activity, but out here classes of any sort are few and far between. We had a yoga class going a couple of years ago, but then the teacher moved and as I am terribly un-self-motivated and need a class environmnent to keep up with any form of exercise, I relapsed back into the 'I get enough exercise running around after the kids' mode.

My informant swore that belly dancing was fun and that she came away from it feeling several inches taller. It was close by, just a few women and my son's school teacher was teaching it. So I went along and it was indeed fun. Abdominal muscles I'd forgotten ever existed came back from hibernation and I did feel taller. I was several weeks behind the others, but managed to get the hang of some of the moves. The main thing is to keep your head still while moving hips or chest muscles. It's not just about doing alarming rolls of belly muscles luckily. My favourite move is one called maya that is a hip figure-of-eight on its side, side to side.

I missed a session one week and came back to find that we were all set to give our first performance - horrors! - I was only just getting the hang of combining arm and body movements. One of the girls was leaving though and had proposed a strictly family party, combining with the drum and marimba group. They were to play for us and we would listen to them.(A marimba is a type of xylophone with wooden keys)

So yesterday, Midwinter, was the day. I'd got out a sequinned skirt, sewn a length of jingly coins onto a black top, borrowed a jingly belt (belly dancing just isn't the same without the jingles, you're making music with your hip circles), put on some eye make-up, which I'd also borrowed as it is so long since I last used mine they've practically dried up,, and driven to another farm where we were to dance on the lawn.

We had a beautiful still night with stars, after a day of the berg wind, a warm wind from the mountains that inevitably brings rain a couple of days later, but in the mean time makes it unnaturally warm for midwinter. Performance nerves were helped by the semi darkness and the minmal audience. All but two of those present were either dancing or playing drums or marimba - I'd left my family behind having their supper, as an audience of small children giggling at their teachers and mother wiggling their hips, seemed to be surplus to requirements..

We performed our set dance that we mostly remembered and kept together, except for occasional instances of landing on sprinklers, then relaxed and listened to the musicians perform. In no time our jingly hips were twitching in time to the music and we started some impromptu dancing to provide a jingly percussion for the drummers. I haven't danced so much in years. I now need to find my own jingly belt, so that I can practise at home!

Tigers on Safari

When the Tiger family came to Africa they wanted to see the Big Five.

Tiger Dad was thrilled to see that here the big cats have spots and it's their prey that is striped.

Tiger Mum wasn't so impressed:

'Better keep Junior tied to our apron strings in this place then.'

'Nice safari hats though'

This tiger family has many adventures and nearly ended up on an all night game trek in the gazanias. Luckily the evening ranger patrol noticed they were stranded without fuel and towed them back to the game lodge.

Cross-Dressing Ben

Barbie is finding that riding off into the sunset after her wedding is not quite what she expected of the happyeverafter.

Oh Ben that is just soooo last season!

Addicted to Numbers

Substance abuse, apart from chocolate, has never been attractive to me, maybe luck, maybe genetic, but I made it through my teens and twenties with only the barest of whiffs of other people’s joints in passive smoking passing. No so with meaningless number games.

My son was given a Sudoku board game for Christmas. We must be truly in a backwater because this was the first time I’d come across it, though apparently it is all the rage the world over. The challenge of arranging little squares of card numbered 1 to 9 into coherent and unrepeated sequences has grabbed me, tied me up and rendered me impervious to general conversation, behindhand with cooking supper, neglectful of bedtimes....must be an addiction.

The last time this fatal tendency had me by the short and curlies it was Minesweeper on the computer that was my undoing. Through my first pregnancy I spent disproportionate amounts of time clearing minefields by rapid fire assessmemnt of the numbers, constantly trying to improve my speed, without getting blown up by the slip of a mouse click. Who knows what the attraction is, but even now when my eight year old is beginning to explore the treacherous ground of computer games, I have to be careful not to get too involved with demonstrating the ways of Minesweeper...he probably absorbed all he needed to know in the womb anyway!

Luckily there are only 100 possible puzzles in the Sudoku box to work through, so there is a finite amount of time I can dispose of honing my numbers skills. The Minesweeper section of my computer I leave to my son now, the fatal buzz of clear space exploding out to a rim of numbers all his. I’m trying to put my numbers to use, harnessing them to learn numerology, which is a demanding combination of number ability and intuition, but for relaxation and down time, organising numbers into patterns for no reason whatsoever has got me hooked.

Skirt Dilemma

I love wearing skirts and dresses in summer, I do, but what about pockets? I am the proud possessor of two new cotton floaty summer skirts, comfortable, cool and pretty. But as I changed into one, out of my trousers after an incident with the sprinkler, I wondered where on earth I was going to put all the essential detritus from my pockets. Several coins, a tissue, two crystals, one of which is supposed to protect against the ravages of cellphone waves, a purple plastic ring and the car keys were all now homeless.

Now a floaty cotton skirt doesn’t want to be bothered with pockets and loaded down with all that rubbish, it is above such mundane issues. The vest T-shirt that goes with it has no space for junk either and wearing a bum-bag with such an ensemble just ruins the effect. My sister-in-law is famous among the children for carrying her lip balm tucked into her bra, but having the kids fishing down my front for something essential doesn’t appeal to me either.

So the question is to everyone out there, what do you do with all the trouser pocket contents, when you're wearing a skirt? Are you organised enough to carry your handbag everywhere you go and never weigh yourself down with all that in the first place? Or do you go round all summer, like me, without a tissue on hand?

Nine Men Morris

This is a game that my son brought home from school. I'd never heard of it before. It is simple enough for a child of 6 or 7 to grasp the rules, but it has the potential for enough fiendish cunning ansd strategy to keep an adult interested. I haven't mastered the finer points of it yet.

Each of two players has nine pieces. White starts and places a piece at any of the intersections or corners of the grid. Black places a piece and you take turns until all the pieces are on the board.

The aim is to get three of your pieces in a row. When you manage that you can choose any piece belonging to your opponent to remove from the game (you cannot take one that is already in a row of three). So you are also trying to stop your opponent gettingthree in a row. Once all the pieces are on the board you take turns moving your pieces one space at a time, still aiming to get three in a row. Usually one person's pieces get decimated fairly quickly, but there is a fall back position. Once you are down to just three pieces you can hop one of your pieces wherever you like on your turn. This can turn your game around. The game ends when one person is down to two pieces and can no longer form a row.

The beauty of this game is that you can play it anywhere. At the beach you could draw the grid in the sand - (three concentric rectangles connected by the four vertical lines) - and use pebbles versus shells as pieces. At home you can draw the grid on paper and use beans or bottletops.

My six year old has mastered the rules and has even on occasion caught me unawares, when I've been trying unobtrusively not to win too easily or to allow her to get ahead, she's suddenly knocked me right out of the game with no mercy. My son of course goes all out to win on all occasions and makes unashamed use of the strategy of moving a counter in and out of a row of three picking off my counters turn after turn. Once I've worked out the secrets of success maybe I'll share them with you...or then again maybe I'll keep them to myself in a devious ploy to win all tournaments when it gets played on the internet!

Numbers

Today I went to an intensive one day Numerology course. I fully expected my brain to be fried by the end and it was. We started off gamely adding lists of numbers in our heads but by the end it was a struggle to add two and two. I'll write about it one day when it has all had time to sink in and be absorbed and synthesised. For now I've had all the cerebral activity I can take today, so even this writing is in danger of blowing a fuse or two. I need to re-acquaint myself with the sofa and some nice, undemanding library book for the evening. The scintillating prose will have to wait yet another day!

Fashion Free

Fashion. Long neglected by me in that style-free zone of mother to young children living on a farm. Echoes of it still reach me though. Occasional forays into shopping malls to replace worn out trousers and T-shirts, nudged me into unavoidable exposure of my cushiony tummy and eventual acceptance of low waistlines, discovering the joys of letting it all hang out! Shouts of horror and outrage have reached me recently over the Net as more connected blog friends react to the latest designer dictates of high-waisted skinny jeans and leggings re-entering the fashion arena – sighs, groans as we recall how terrible we looked in them the first time round when we were still young and taut bodied. One good thing this season is that T-shirts are longer, now covering up that draughty gap that used to reveal pale stomach. I’ll be chucking out all my old skimpy tops with no regrets and racing to be at the forefront of style on that count!

My eight year-old son has now brought home a fashion, that we first saw long ago in our London photographic studio, when hip photographers would be wearing their jeans at half mast, with acceptably labelled boxers just about covering their extremities. Now my son has a complicated ensemble to put together each morning: briefs first, then fancy boxers with Spiderman on in sateen material that a friend gave him for his birthday and he loves, followed at last by jeans. Happily for me he hasn’t quite mastered the art of wearing the jeans halfway down his legs, so he achieves the requisite look by hoisting the boxers up above the waistband of the jeans and is satisfied with that.

Back in the eighties when straight men wore kohl eyeliner and we all had floppy fringes, fashion was fun. It was all about dressing up, as a pirate, clown or eighteenth century beau. It was colourful and outrageous. I embraced two tone tights (do you remember those – one leg black, the other hot pink or white! I took note of Charlotte’s fashion note and agree with her, but then the eighties never were a matter of good taste!), baggy trousers, ra-ra skirts, later I rifled charity shops for mens pyjamas and petticoats as day wear. Now it seems to me that fashion has lost its zest, become a matter of style dictates and taste rules, an awful lot of them laid down by self-appointed authorities Trinny and Susannah. I agree we mostly looked pretty terrible then but we enjoyed it and there was room for creative expression and individuality in our dress! Now it feels more like a uniform we must don, femininity denoted by a sparkly belt, individuality limited to one tasteful bauble around our necks. So if leggings and miniskirts do have to come back in, let the teenagers enjoy them, preferably in clashing gaudy colours.. I might just get out those clown trousers with rainbow braces, that I never did throw out and embarrass the kids by wearing them again!

St Francis' Day

Corey's post today told me it was St Francis' Day. She posted one of his beautiful prayers, which reminded me of part of another one that we used for our Spring Festival. It perfectly expresses what our festivals are all about - a reverence for the Earth and all its elements, inextricably linked with the Divine.

St Francis' Prayer

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,
And fair and stormy, all the weather's moods,
By which you cherish all that you have made.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Water,
so useful, lowly, precious, and pure.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
Through whom you brighten up the night.
How beautiful he is, how joyful! Full of power and strength.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Earth,
Who feeds us in her sovereignty and produces
Various fruits and colored flowers and herbs.


I also wanted to share with you the Spring Blessing, that we all contributed to that day. Almost everyone wrote a couple of lines from the heart, some in Afrikaans and some in German too. Not intended as great poetry, not always rhyming or even scanning but it expressed something precious to each of us.


Our Spring Blessing


We give thanks for the winter rain
And all the blessings it brings

Blessings on the coming of Spring

For daisies brightly beaming
For berries ripely gleaming

Blessings on the coming of Spring

For thermals upward swirling
And wind chimes gently twirling

Blessings on the coming of Spring

We give thanks for the growing
And all the delicious rewards of our sowing

Blessings on the coming of Spring

Giving thanks for light and new earth life
Assurance of the universe`s constant love

Blessings on the coming of Spring

Sagte lente son en ligte briesie
Bring lewe, groei en nuwe visie

Blessings on the coming of Spring

For children smiling
Knowledge, experience with love entwining

Blessings on the coming of Spring

For the beauty of the night and the comfort of the day
The care of the spirits who guide us on our way

Blessings on the coming of Spring

For Suikerbossie Farm: for its beauty and its grace
The gift that lets us minister to our sacred space

Blessings on the coming of Spring

For the gift of new life
And the ending of strife

Blessings on the coming of Spring

Fuer die Blumen die bluehn in den Wieswn so gruen
Fuer all die Freunde die sich um uns bemuehn

Blessings on the coming of Spring

For moments to be still…

Blessings on the coming of Spring

Fuer Frieden in allem,Gesundheit und Glueck
Fuer ein Leben in Freiheit fuer jeden ein Stueck

Blessings on the coming of Spring

We ask for blessings on this new season,
May new beginnings and new projects be fruitful
New homes and new faces welcoming
May new paths lead us ever on to grow

Blessings on the coming of Spring

Blessings on all of us here
And all those our hearts hold dear.