alpine village ….not

 We didn’t book any of our hotels. I have to say that because last night we stayed at a place that I called our Christian camp. It is in a place called Thames that is famous for a short lived gold rush in the 1860’s. It is on the coast at the base of the Coromandel Peninsula. It has a long Main Street with buildings that look like an old western town with aprons declaring their current incarnation as an Indian restaurant or a four square super market. The town climbs up  a hill and the little houses climb up and up on curving roads and way at the top is a cemetery. My guess is that it was for sailors. Because from up there the view of the Bay would calm any tired sea faring soul. 

But back to the hotel. The motel. The camp.The whatever.

Called “ Coastal Lodge.” It was a series of Alpine A Frames. Perhaps a piece of whimsy. Perhaps like Portmeirion. But on second thoughts, whimsy suggests magical. Nothing whimsical here. The inside was more plastic and poor taste than one room can hold. There were metal sculptures of flowers on the wall. There was a dining table with matching chairs with a salmon patterned fabric that has not been seen since the mid 80’s for good reason. There was a bible on the bedside table . There was a wallpaper with a matching frieze in brush strokes of grey. And there was a lot of linoleum, the flooring of luxury.

The bathroom was , what shall I say, ….curious?  Cynthia, my traveling companion needs accessibility..she has got it down to grab bars. As long as there are grab bars. She never thought to specify where those grab bars should be.  The grab bars in this accessible bathroom are of no use to anyone needing them for help with a shower or the loo. We decided that they were for amateur gymnasts. Doing side bends, or something. 

The Bible went to live with the tea bags. 

We went to bed early like good Christians.

So we could get up early and put the linoleum and the attempted whimsy behind us.

But the Bay was there before the Alpine village . And it will be there long after.

My Brother , the Champion.

  I spent my first few years as a child living in Ireland. There was always this story that made my mother laugh to melting point about how one summer we went down south to Skibereen, close to Cork. Where they held the annual Long Boat race of Skibereen, She would tell, often unable to finish for the laughter that overcame her, of everyone from the village and beyond gathering on the beach and the men climbing into their long boats with hand slapping and shoulder punching, and these boats being pushed out to sea and the oars going in and out of the waves and everyone waving until they were specks and then everyone shambled off to the pub or wherever, and no one bothering to wait for their return. Assuming , presumably, that they would row back and be bought a pint. It was a lesson in the event being bigger than the prize. 

Today I watched my brother for the first time compete in his newly adopted sport of Wakaama. Originally from Hawaii and Samoa, it is a canoe with an outrigger and two, four or six people sit down with a paddle and go for their lives into the waves.

It was a bit like Skibereen. I watched them clamber in, I watched them paddle away, I saw them become specks and I was hopeful I would see them again.

setting out from the shore

There is a whole community around Waka. It is a native force that has been shared with others. But today the Māori presence was strong. They paddled because it was in their blood. My brother and others paddle because it is sport that challenges them.

it is the Nationals. This year they are taking place in Waitangi. In the Northlands of the North Island of New Zealand. It is where the Māori were recognized as the rightful people of the land and it was given the name of Aoteara. It is where the Peace Treaty was signed. And for the last few days it has been where Māori and their guests have paddled their way through the waves to try and win honors.

Stephen . Number 5. 

The races can take hours. if we were in Ireland, all the spectators would be well into their second pint. For me I did a little dance as they paddled away, I went up to the Treaty house and had a guided tour and a Māori cultural show and then came back down to the cliff overlooking the sea where below me these long boats were going from small specs to just specs in the water below me…except that my brother, position 5 in the boat, was wearing a bright turquoise hat. “ isn’t that him?“ my friend Cynthia said. I looked without the help of binoculars and number 5 in this tiny boat that was cutting though the water certainly had a brighter head then the rest of them. 

watching from the treaty grounds

Two and and a half hours of punching a paddle into the water and they were still going. I went down to the dock in time to see them pull in. Their legs so cramped they had trouble standing, their faces covered in dried salt water, their clothes drenched.

The easy headline is my brother is a champion. He got a bronze medal in the 2022 Wakaama nationals in his class. He and his five paddling friends kept it up for two hours and fifty-five minutes. Three of them were women. Most of them were over 60.

This year Waitangi. maybe next year, Skibereen.

I have to tell you I am so proud. I would be standing on that beach waiting for him to paddle back in till the sun went down and the beer went flat

Traveling anywhere.

 It’s not that I’m complaining.

 I have a pretty blue suitcase that was a wrap gift from the TV show,        “ Orville.” I am very good with little zip up bags with specific needs. The glass and pens packet. The cables packet. The immediate toiletries packet. The “ should I bring mascara ?” packet. I roll clothing. I have shoes in zip up red bags. I have my two passports just in case one of my countries does something dubious and I need to swivel allegiance. I have scarves to save tired hair. I have lipstick to brighten my tired skin.

I had the unexpected and, let’s face it, fantastic chance to upgrade, courtesy of my traveling companion Cynthia, who has more miles on Hawaiian air than there are lava lamps in the world.

But nobody….nobody should fly anywhere for 25 hours.

Your body feels like a random selection of metal rods that have lost the connecting instructions. Your mouth will not come back from fuzzy. The bottles of water you drink send you tottering to the lavatory where you try to balance over the loo with feet carefully placed to miss other peoples misses. The vegetarian meal you ordered comes out with vegan margarine, and a tomato spaghetti that would embarrass an Italian child. You don’t want it, but you eat it, because there is something so endearing about those little square boxes of food on the tray and the salt and pepper that is dressed up as a Hawaiian shirt.

In the pursuit of good looking nightwear that I try to disguise as traveling clothes, I wear clothing free of zips and buttons. I want to look together and current. Words I have seen in advertisements. I want to report that I am never anywhere near current and as for together.. by the end of a long flight the elastic that was meant to be my friend has given up the fight and has left me more shapeless than the mashed potato you wished you could have had instead of the vegetarian spaghetti.

But here I am, 25 hours later. 4 hours behind. 1 day ahead. In New Zealand.I am hoping for a more stylish future. 

I will let you know how that works out. 

I don’t hold out much hope.

 It is Midsummers eve. The evening before the longest day in the northern hemisphere.  

The night of Titania and Oberon. And the naughty Robin Goodfellow, known to his friends as Puck. who squeezed fairy dust into lovers eyes which caused them to fall in love with the first thing they saw on awakening.

I was a big fan of Thomas Hardy growing up. I was very fearful for his heroines. In "Far from the madding Crowd" I wanted Bathsheba to settle down with Gabriel Oak the minute I smelled the whiff of a red uniform. In "The Woodlanders", all the unmarried women in the village run down to the local pond on Midsummer's Eve and look into the water. Behind their shoulder, they would see the face of the man they would marry. 

I like those astronomical tilts in our planetary system. Equinoxes, when all things are equal. Solstices, when things tumble forward or backwards.  

If you believe in fairies, or warm winds of promise, or shooting stars bringing answers; midsummer's eve is the night.

So this evening I went down to the edge of the ocean. There were people going in to swim or packing up after a day on the sand. I must have looked like a painter without an easel. I was wearing baggy pink and white striped shorts. I had a straw hat that tumbled around my face. I had paper and a pencil. 

I didn't write big questions.  But I wrote a few smaller ones.

I wrote a lot of names. People who I want to remember before I go to sleep at night. People I want to make sure I see because they don't live near me. People, who live near me, whom I want to make sure I remember to see. 

And a few things that only Titania would understand.

To finish what I start. To learn new things. To be ready to move in a moment. To find love wherever I am.

Then I took my paper and I slid it into the water Away it went. The words disappearing with every squirl of the waves. 

Over to you, Robin Goodfellow. 

South African swimming

 I’ve flicked through those travel magazines. I’ve seen those pools attached to the edge of amazing resorts in the Seychelles or the Maldives or Bora Bora.

The water is blue. The sea beyond is blue. The sky is blue. The woman leans back against the side. Her arms outstretched. Her hair sculpted back with water. Her skin turning from white to bronze with waterproof SPF 50. 

I may swim in an infinity pool one day, but it will not be in a resort. Me and resorts don’t wear the same knickers.

I want to talk about the SeaPoint pool. In a place called Sea Point. Which is a pointy part of the city of Capetown. 

It is a public pool.

There are lots of people doing very little, but they have a uniform . This is quite common in Capetown. There are people with an official vest who are the wardens for six parking spots. Somebody else in the same vest guards the next six down the road.

When you get to the pool there is a lot of metal fencing to make sure you go in the right way. There is a sign. “The entrance.” 

There is a man to spray your hands. There is someone else with a clipboard to take the names of some people but he never took mine. 

There is a man to direct you to the ticket window.

My first time, I follow instructions and go to get my  ticket. 

The lady looked at me and said “You go in.” 

I said, “I don’t have a ticket.” 

She said, “you don’t need one. You pensioner. “ 

I looked a little surprised.  

She said, “why pay? You old.”

After that I just walk through and wave as if my mask makes me invisible.

There are four pools.  All filled with sea water.

One 50 metres long that is shoulder depth. 

One 25 metres long that is waist depth. 

One 20 metres long where you are up to your knees . 

and the 25 metre diving pool that you cannot see the bottom. 

There is a tuck shop. 

There are patches of grass to set up your weekend home from home. There are no changing rooms. Or none that are available to swimmers. There are many life guards in red and yellow. There are signs telling you what you can and can’t do in English, Afrikaans and something else.

 But it is on the lines of don’t run, don’t climb on anyone, don’t sit on anyone’s shoulders, and no tents or canopies by the poolside.

During the week, when I go at 8.30 in the morning, it is white people swimming up and down in the big pool. For the most part behaving very well.

But at the weekend, it is a massive party, a circus of tents and blankets and coolers and bags of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

 By 9 o’clock, the big and small pools are filled with kids daring each other to jump. Running around the poolside, racing each other to see how many strokes they can do without sinking.  Teenagers in brightly colored bikinis and braids wound around their heads into a top knot walking around and around the pool to make sure they are seen before their hair unravels. Women carrying their babies, giving them a first try, dunking them gently.  Boys and girls, skirting around each other in the water as the flirting begins. And this is where the rules come into play.  The lifeguards, and their whistles come out and the hand gestures are always two arms moving apart.  I sorted it out eventually. It is basically no foreplay.. The sign that says “no Piggy-backs” “no climbing on each other”, means unhook yourself from each other.. And the lifeguards are the monitors to prevent fun with consequences.

Last Saturday I was the only white person left going up and down. It requires me to check that I am not running into groups of young kids, which is easy enough to do. As I came to the far end, I saw the lifeguard admonish two young girls “to watch out for Auntie. To give Auntie space.” That was me. I had been “mama” to the security guard at the Cape Quarter when he wanted to know if I could leave my lap top with him because it was so hard to fill out job applications on his phone. Now I was Auntie.

“can we swim with you Auntie” they said. Amira 12 and Azziz 11.

“Do you live in a big house?” Do you see the ocean from your house?”

 “Have you ever met anyone famous?” Is he your husband?”

“Are you very old?”

“Can you take me to America?”

“My mother says there are some strange things going on in America.”

“I Love white people.”

“I  have met some.”

“Can you teach me how to swim like auntie does?”

I have become very adept at slipping off my costume under a towel. I walk out and someone in a uniform shows me the way to the exit, which is marked exit. and then I have to walk behind some fencing to the sign that says “exit here”

It’s good to be told I think.

And I am glad they are lots of jobs at the Seapoint Pool. Even for the lifeguard who called me Auntie.

 

Paternoster. or from the Latin.. Our Father....

 Paternoster is this little fishing village on the east coast some 160 kilometres north of Capetown.

They still like to call it a fishing village. And it is. The small kernel at the centre of it. It is what they have been doing for hundreds of years. because this is one of the places in the world where Crayfish make their home on the floor of the ocean. 

There is just the one shop. Known as " the shop" that sells everything from firewood to stamps, bread to toothpaste. 

There are a few shops selling preserves and things made with shells. There is the one church. One school.

One township, where the people who work in the hotels, the guest houses, the rental houses live.

Around this village has grown another village. A whitewashed rural village where many houses have been built. For tourists to come and stay for a few days. Luxurious low-key hotels. Restaurants serving these visitors with excellent complicated or excellent simple or excellent foraged dishes in covered terraces overlooking the beaches. 

  But in the centre of the village, that is where the fishermen still live.

This is how it goes. The boats are parked in front of their houses.

                        

 when it is time, the fishermen and their friends pile into the boats and a truck comes by and hauls the boat on it's trailer down to the beach. The truck reverses back into the water and everyone pushes the boat into the water. The fishermen, dressed in their bright oilskins, get out the oars and pull through the waves until they reach a depth where they pull the cord on their outboard motors and off they roar to drop their baskets.

 Everyone, except for the children, go back somewhere. The children finished with school for the day, play in the water. And oh, is it cold.  Great for crayfish, bracing for everyone else. 

Eventually there is a sound of one, two boats heading back and the beach is now filled with people and an old diesel fuelled jeep. the boats come piling back in. 

They wade out to the boats and throw ropes to the fishermen. The jeeps pull the boats in and onto their waiting trailers. The fishermen hop out and carry their baskets of snapping crayfish up to a metal shack which weighs their catch and it is transferred to small trucks driving them to points south and north where they will be delivered to restaurants. The trucks then take the boats on their trailers filled with people back to their homes on the hill.

 Tomorrow it will start all over again.

It is the most charming place.  Quaint, quiet, welcoming, clean. But it could also become strangely artificial as these little white houses pop up everywhere they can, and new hotels are planned where old abalone factories once stood.  It is the fishermen, who go about their business day after oilskinned day, who give it a pulse. Even though Paternoster now houses one of the 10 best rated restaurants in the world, he is the son of a local family and he just knew how to turn local things he found and foraged into gourmet food. It is the fishermen, who have been finding mussels on the rocks and lobsters and crayfish in the seas since 1863, hopefully they will always own this place.

The Joy of Flying

My passport has been released from jail.

 It has been trapped in my filing cabinet on potential retirement for over two years now.  It dusted itself for the Qatar Airways flight to Doha, where the passengers on their way to their final destinations in India and Armenia, decided to pack up most of Target and cram it in six matching suitcases which they then wrapped with clingfilm. An hour later me, my passport and my slimline blue case were told that it was a full flight and there was no hope for the next fifteen hours.

I have wiped these hours from my memory; of being inside what feels like a cardboard tube trying to unsuccessfully find a different way to place your legs and shoulders that would bring comfort. Of climbing over crumpled row mates as you see the red light turn to green on the toilet down the back.

Doha airport. A layover of four hours. A country preparing for the World Cup.  Curiously overstaffed by young people in uniforms and ID badges. Security with  their walkie talkies. Cleaners with big blue brooms. Shop assistants, selling fast cars and Penhaligon's perfumes. Obviously happy to have a job with suit and polished shoes. An odd oversized bear. Women top to toe in black. Young girls wrapped in bright colours and patterns with racy shoes popping out below. Harrods Tea room, with waiters in green waistcoats offering pots of tea in silver teapots and scones, crumpets and poached eggs on toast.

The Qatar flight from Doha to Capetown was seemingly for me and 49 of my new friends. Just 50 of us on this huge plane. even the crew seemed surprised. " sit wherever you like madam" they said. so I did. all four seats in row 33. stretched out like I was sunbathing. watching George Lazenby and Diana Rigg in " On her Majesty's Secret Service" ( It wasn't his fault, the script wasn't witty and there was too much snow)

I am here now. On solid ground. The discomfort of not knowing whether the time on my orange watch reflects where I started, where I was ending, or just passing through. 

Traveling on long flights is an art that begins with having that small case open on your bed and making good choices with white T shirts and just the one sweater. It is all about the small bottles of rose water, the tiny pots of thick night cream, the comb and large hankie to tie round your hair when there is no curl or curve left in it. Not bringing that cut up pear, which, even with lemon juice, ends up brown, squashed and pointless. Borrowing your friends Bose headphones. Changing out of anything restrictive in the underwear line after you have gently requested a better seat at the gate, and getting on the plane. No one should attempt anything in an airplane loo apart from keeping your feet away from patches of unidentified wet on the floor. and, if possible, having done a course in becoming a pretzel. airplane seats, down the affordable end, are not meant for humans with bones. I rest my case. The small blue one. That I had to kneel on to close. I am sure the orange cardigan will come in handy. I am sure.