one city block: muizenberg

During December the girls and I watched this amazing piece going up. A couple of times we stopped to watch the artists at work and it's still a regular request.
Friday: 'Mum, can we stop to look at the octopus?'
Followed always by Sunday: 'And the 'normous toes?'

On the side of Stoked Backpackers, piece by Mak1one and The One Love Studio. More pics of it here.

We stopped again last week and I quickly snapped another few pics, each one of something lovely.

Across the road, this beautiful Grande Dame.

At our backs, the Muizenberg Station building, with wooden clock tower.

Or amusing.

Sign in the parking lot. 

Around the corner.

And across the street.

Just one small block of beautiful Muizenberg, just up the drag from our new home, just another small snippet of the beauty of Cape Town.

AND, if you'd like to see more of this part of the world, visit my friend Wendy at Make.Believe. She just spent a morning in Kalk Bay and took some magnificent photos!

one city block: east city

I had half an hour to kill in Cape Town's fabulous East City district during the week. This is the part of Cape Town instrumental in winning us the 2014 Design Capital bid over a year ago, and with good reason.

In one short block, 30 minutes and 50+ photos I came across more creativity then I could properly absorb. Here are some of the highlights ...

World famous Charly's Bakery.

Someone at Charly's was clearly having a less-than-awesome day ...

I couldn't see a tag on this, anyone know whose it is?

Funny little car.

Magnificent Woodheads.

Funny big car.

One of Faith 47's masterpieces. She is genius.

Home of the magnificent Design Team. How lovely is this building?

And just as lovely on the inside.

So much beauty in just one tiny corner of this lovely city. Cape Town, you inspire me endlessly...

we P'd on the beach

This year was the first time I got Friday involved in a Madiba Day activity.

We chatted about Nelson Mandela and why people were 'giving back' etc. I keep this kind of thing light with her, she has a particularly sensitive radar to 'Mum's trying to teach me something' and starts tuning out if she thinks I'm being too instructive.
Her ears totally perked up when I explained that we'd be spending our 67 minutes on the beach however, especially as 18 July was a rare and magnificent warm winter's day.

I'd picked up on the event via a friend on Twitter, and it sounded like a great way to do good - the goal was to win the R10 000 prize posted by a local radio station to invest in a shelter for previously trafficked women and children - get involved in our future community, the project and the shelter are based in Muizenberg, near our new home - possibly meet some potential friends from that community and, ahem, did I mention hang out on the beach?
Yes please.

So off we went, and spent a fun hour or so standing around on the Muizenberg dunes spelling out 'We (heart) Goodhope FM' in silhouette with our bodies. Friday and I were the 'P', me holding her with her legs wrapped around my waist and her back arched out - what's not to love about a dedicated chunk of time cuddling with my big girl?

Photo by Craig Wilson, www.surfers-corner.co.za

And we won! How satisfying.

I could P myself with delight!

naming (and unrelated shaming)

Do you remember that stage in your life when everyone was turning 21 and you seemed to have a 21st birthday party every other weekend? Each one of them a good excuse to dress up, over-indulge, throw name, snog the birthday person's younger sibling, throw up, total someone's dad's car and declare it the 'best night ever'. Until a couple of weeks later when you did it all again.

Do you remember when everyone was getting married and you seemed to have a wedding every couple of months? Each one a good excuse to dress up (in my case this round involved less 2nd hand hippy crap and more seconds store 'designer' labels), over-indulge, REALLY throw name (often in front of aged aunties), snog any number of people, throw up, total your own car and declare it the 'best wedding ever'. Until the next one ...

Well now I'm in a stage of life where everyone is having babies, which doesn't really provide opportunity for some of the wildness described above (except for a couple of the more adventurous baby showers), but does give me an excuse to indulge in a bit of scientific analysis (cough).

Actually I just like making lists really.

Here's the names of all the babies I personally know who were born in 2011:

Iona

Alex

Cameron

Zuka

Sashin

Katie

Leo

Isaac

Juno

Harrison

Leah (two Leah’s actually!)

Adam

Christopher

Stavros

Sam

Aune

Wian

Liam

18 babies! That's not counting the one's I know of from the blogosphere or friend's of friends. And only 6 girls ... 2011 was definitely the year of the boy in my circles.

So on to the science.
Okay, it's not really science, I just picked up on the 100 Top Baby Name lists floating around and compared them to the list above. I used the Baby CentER (USA) and Baby CentRE (UK) lists and deduced the following:
Only 1 name on the above list appears on the American list, in comparison to 8 names from the UK list.
Ergo, people I know are not that concerned with popular trends when it comes to baby names, but where there are overlaps, they (mainly South Africans) still lean more towards British trends than American.
Lank interesting no?

No? Sigh.

Can't wait 'til everyone starts turning 50.

5 Dec

You know when you visit a place for the first time and within a couple of hours of being there you're already excited about going back?

Like that.

#blacktuesday

I had another post scheduled for Wednesday (now that I'm doing more regular non-blog writing I'll only be posting here 3 times a week for a while), but I couldn't let today go by unmarked.

Was I the only person who spent this historic day at home with a sick and very cranky toddler, my all black protest garb steadily getting covered in snail-trail stains of snot and tears?
It really felt like it.
Thank goodness for social media. By 12:40 it was clear I wasn't going to make it to Parliament but I got Sunday to sleep just in time to watch the disturbing outcome of the vote on the Protection of State Information Bill 'live' on Twitter.

I know I wasn't the only person who put my kids to bed this evening with a distracted and heavy heart, a bit too much snappiness and impatience, and a real concern for their future.

I spent some time yesterday evening writing an email to a friend who has been really struggling with the 'should we stay or should we go' dilemma lately. I wasn't trying to influence her decision, but I have (as all of us have I imagine) been in that space myself at times so I shared with her some of thoughts I keep in the 'dossier' in my head filed under Open When Despondent About the Future of SA.
This afternoon I almost wanted to mail her again to say 'I take it all back! Flee! Flee!'

But I didn't. Because I don't yet believe that's the only option. Times are bleak but this is our home.

Here's something from my dossier:
My parents brought my brothers and I up as one of few liberal families in a small and very conservative community. My mother tells of having moments of thinking they were insane to be raising kids in the uncertainty and (albeit invisible to our small white village) horror of 1970's South Africa. My father, an intellectual and extremely optimistic man, really didn't think he'd see a peaceful end to apartheid in his life time.
40 bizarre and miraculous years later we're doing more than okay.

There's something else I take from this today - we grew up feeling happy and secure. Whatever my parents doubts and fears, we didn't know about them until we were old enough to understand and process them.
I won't, as I fear I may have done this evening, let my girls suffer from my stress about this again.

Call me naive, no really do - because I'm choosing to be. At the end of Black Tuesday I'm choosing to be naively optimistic, with a healthy sprinkling of bitch-fight angry.
At the end of a day where I was too concerned about the future to be truly present in the now, I'm pledging to try and not make that mistake again.

I'm doing it for my girls.