Goodbye 2021

 It has been a woeful year from my side... an emptiness in isolation... I am however full of optimism and enthusiasm for the next.  Love and best wishes from all of us.

Evan and Aiden - alongside passport photos

 It's that great joy again, getting new passports for the boys, with an added side of covid pandemonium to slow things down a bit more (6 to 9 months we are told).  So that requires passport photos, those scowling delights - which gives me a chance to take a quick portrait pic each.  So here are the boys, smiling at the Springboks vs Lions outcome.

The Pickle and his cat

 I like this picture because I have a series of them... here and again... here

Outside the summer rages on, like unchecked isolation, subtly weird.

And then the Monsoon...

The crazy green and bruises monsoon has arrived.  Water everywhere, and the depths and range of greens and purples turn Hong Kong into eye paradise for those who are out there looking.

Astonishing beauty if you look into this photo, with some cool lines too

In a bright moment between the downpours

And a junk trip on Friday, a private hire, but only work people invited; in the end 14 of us, everyone a bit burned out and keen to kick back in the beauty.

The long, hot, spring

This is not necessarily a chronologically accurate account of moments of weekends, in between a relentless tide of work, and a disconcerting time professionally.

For the longest time, a parade of days like this, hot, clear, manageable humidity

With a long patch of morning riding, day after day (stitches, no swimming for nearly a month)

Dinner together every night which has been divine, but for the rest, one day weekends for a while.  Here out for lunch one Saturday in TKO.

And an evening or two over the other weekend days, Ange in her Hepburn dress.

And it's a time of leaving it seems, Covid circumstance and other weirdness driving people home... in this case Roy and Debbie's farewell, more retirement and change for them.  

JBC, restaurant by boat only, the pic above this the Pak A Pier.

Wild heat, clear water.

By evening, fluid colours and sweat.

One of those party photos - but cool - Yau Lei in the background, red and white clothes.

And in the midst of it all, a proper cricket match on the Kowloon Cricket Club field.
It was meant to be a father and son thing, but both the boys had school commitments (it being a Friday)

And it was a proper match in preparation, included three 7am net sessions.  That was an excellent idea by Pieter who was the primary organiser; if you are me, and it is nearly 20 years since, it all happens a bit faster than you remember.  Our speed machine Steve walking back.

Michael and Steve, our opening batsmen.

In the end it was actually pretty exciting, 25 over game, won by the Southern Hemisphere by one run!

Wazza had a rough day in the field; catch opportunity that aced his finger.

 

For the record (batsmen had to retire when they reached 35, with any extras for a boundary getting there).  The Big Dog was on fire :-)

A kak year, medically speaking

 I remember one of Simon's hyper-well heeled connections saying, at the age of 80, in the end, the only thing that matters is your health.  It's one of those sentences that you might feel, yes, well, likely a truth... and then you have some very mild taste of tiny inconvenience, and whew.  So the first six months of the year have dished up an emergency appedix op, some stitches in the shin (which took an age to heal, almost a month of not swimming, which meant 30 days in a row on the bike, in this hot, dry spring, loads of shit and grit in the eyes, and then, a double delightful thing called a chalazion, cut and mauled out.  The eye thing was by far the most uncomfortable.  Any way - I'm hoping for a change of fortune...

 

Twenty years today

It's as if twenty years passed since I last posted something - so sorry - a covid slump of sameness.  I feel terrible even saying it, but the reality is that I am so used to riding the same roads on my bike at the moment that I now have patterns: round the corner, stand in the big ring to the fourth street light pole, swap to small ring... etc.

We came to Hong Kong twenty years ago.  As it is today, it was raining then. How has it been?  Wonderful. Disruptive. Life changing. Alienating.  Gained so much.  Lost so much.  I think best put as you can only live one life, or everything that moving away from a sense of home to somewhere excitingly foreign might mean.  

Memory is so imperfect.  So here is what was happening at a headline level in South Africa in June and beyond, in 2001.  Wikipedia has the following listed as the big events:  Conservation.  A reasonable government visiting abroad.  A world conference against racism.  More conservation.  A census, an interest in who we are as a people.  More conservation.  Some murder - no-one is exempt, and thankfully Kortbroek signs himself off into irrelevance.

The deaths list was stunning.  Guy Butler.  A reference to Pandemic, and an ongoing one, HIV/AIDS.  Nkosi Johnson was the longest surviving child born with HIV at that point, tragically dying at 12, silently highlighting how many had died so much sooner.  Donald Woods, serious newspaper man and friend of Steve Biko - murdered by the security police in 1977; Govan Mbeki, ANC royalty, back when it meant something: Rivonia triallist, friend of Madiba, father of Thabo; 24 years on Robben Island.  Chris Barnard - first ever heart transplant at Groote Schuur - medical marvel.  Joe Modise, Minister of Defense during the Arms Scandal, that really was the start of the rot, and which Jacob Zuma is only now on trial for.  And then the murdered Marika again, grim.

I thought to try contrast this to the front pages - in so far as a digital newspaper has them - today:

So what do we have here?  Clearly another pandemic, but fascinatingly, also reference to the previous or is is ongoing one, if you clicked on the cartoon with the running guy, you would find the HIV pandemic compared to Covid - and as Nkosi Johnson 20 years earlier so tellingly pointed out - they are orders of magnitude different in terms of lives and impact.  And that is not to take the current pandemic lightly.  Infrastructure is a problem - water, power, the environmental crisis takes the place of conservation triumph, Denel is about to fall apart (a silent homage to Joe Modise?) and the police are the biggest gangsters in the country (not in itself a new thing).  On the very positive side, LGBTQ rights have taken huge strides (with many more needed and hopefully to come).  How short is a life?  How much changes yet stays the same.  Spending so much time apart from you has been an incalculable loss and horror - that is a heavy marker over 20 years of absence.

The beauty of the ordinary

Our dining room and stairs, with the light metered for Holly asleep in her secret corner.

Ange in our galley-like kitchen, malva pudding for some friends coming to dinner.

Angela and Liony - industrious morning

The strange beauty of the slightly stuffed wall, the arch, Simon
and Melissa's finger-lady holding the keys - a wedding gift

So why these photos?  I took a mid-day trip on "David Goldblatt Rail"  yesterday, my prolonged absence from SA leaving a longing - so I went through some of his photos that I so love, and which somehow anchor me - the little dry towns passed through over the years, on the journey from here to there.  Graaf-Reinet for example.  The way the Goldblatt Rail trip works is you look at the picture, and then you use Google Maps to go and look at the place as it is now - but of course you are constrained by whatever 360 degree photo that has been uploaded by some kind soul.  It was pretty cool, and did a pretty good job of temporarily quenching my thirst. It also made me giggle.  For example, here is a picture of his of Graaf-Reinet of a young family.  To me, a town passed through on the way to the Eastern Cape - a dry and dusty oasis of sorts in the desolation around.

If you look it up on Google Maps, the 360 degree photo tagged there is really of the town in the distance, taken from a vantage point looking down over the appropriately named Valley of Desolation.  Here's a triptych of screen shots from my phone.  From the left, if you look carefully you can see the town in the distance.  In the middle one, the Valley of Desolation, for what it is.  Both must be taken from some sort of a viewing point (reached by some dusty track no doubt) - and this is the real gem - because it has a sign, shown in the third pic which reads, delightfully: "Don't even think about throwing rocks into the valley below" in both English and Afrikaans.  Reading that really felt like being home:-)

Anyway, I digress, one of the many things I love about Goldblatt are his photos of the details of the incredible beauty of the ordinary all around us, which is what prompted the photos above.  This is his photo of "the voorkamer of a widow in Hillbrow":

23 years, bling shoes and baldness

 Yesterday Ange and I have been married for 23 years.  That's a surprise, the fast flowing river of time.  It called for a celebration, and so we broke out the glad rags (including the damn fine black and whites, freshly polished) and went to a wonderful restaurant - a rare thing in the past so many covid months.

I was trying to work out where it was that I got psychologically hooked on this type of shoe.  I think it was in Marabastad (does that even exist any more) with a Pretoria News photographer, Walter Pitso, in about 1986.  It took me years to find a pair that fitted.  I can remember getting Roy, Ange's brother, to take me to downtown Durban once to look for a pair. Eventually I found these in New York around 6 years ago.  They are Doc Martens - doubly cool, with an air sole :-)

  

All this passage of time stuff. The cool part of where it is that one eventually goes bald is that you have to make an effort to see there.  Mobile phone cameras are a disaster.  Bloody hell.

Metaphors of people

Sixteen months in Clearwater Bay - I am so getting into the details and their humour.  Every day, without fail, I ride or walk hills and swim.  Until a while ago I ran too - but am having some sort of hamstring grief that makes that hard for the time being.  The trip to Beach 1 takes me past this bus-stop, where chairs thrown out have been collected off the nearby tip by the local cleaners and lined up under the shelter for wary bus passengers to use.  Such a kindness.

I'm so struck how people-like our discards are.  Lined up, waiting, different shapes and sizes, with different features and talents.  The regular folk, some squeezing in, some claiming their space; the siblings that look so alike, one more punctual than the other; the business-person standing tall, five (not four) legs and wheels - rotating (you know, better, should be in charge actually); the robust twins; the slightly moth-eaten grandfather, old fashioned clothes and with a wonky arm, but properly dressed (and once a business man).  I just love it.

Further down, the slopes leading to the beach - overcast day - the phone camera couldn't handle the intensity of the greens and blues, so had to average things out with a dose of yellow (I fixed it with photoshop).  Tsk tsk.

 And in the parking-lot, a hammered over-nighter, with this delightfully out of context badge.  Made me smile, because I've crossed a piece of that road on a bicycle - just in that world the sign was blue.

Dinner at Hebe with Ange and the Pickle

Couldn't resist this, because without intending it I took a pic of Ange and Ev heading into Hebe which will give you some perspective on how the fourteen year old has grown.  Seems apt, and Aiden turns 17 tomorrow, which is somewhat alarming.

Just love the Hebe deck- happy place - some semblance of normal returning (an illusion).

The day after Easter

Delightfully, is also a holiday in Hong Kong - though I felt guilty about not working.  Aaaargh.  Certainly there is plenty to do, but that is tomorrow's problem.  There's been a lot of banter in No89GF of late about the actual tennis rankings.  Aiden seems to have accepted that the Pickle's prowess on the court has overshadowed his, Ange who played league here for years hasn't played since 2019 (and in fairness is probably still number 1 with her nagging consistency and hyper-competitive will to chase everything down), I haven't played for probably a year longer.  So Ev threw down the gauntlet, and we hit the courts in Po Lam at 6.45am this morning, a delightful start to the day.  I can barely walk now :-/

Yesterday we wen't to lunch at Liz and Pete's place, it was really divine - delightfully cool and grey sky and sea-wise, but then delightfully coloured flowers, and a uniquely decorated hat for everyone.  It was so lovely and so pretty - along with Liz's kaleidoscope of flotsam along the wall of the pool.  In the morning Aiden and I made a massive pot of butternut soup - so nice to cook something with him.

My hat was perfect for me I thought: firstly, on the top it has two sunflowers (which I so strongly associate with South Africa - I remember they used to pop up outside my bedroom window as a child from time to time, thanks to me throwing old hamster food out there :-) and one of those dangerous looking red and white mushrooms from Newland's forest; on the side a Namaqualand daisy with a couple of ladybugs which marvelously match the mushroom, and then from next to the front door of 121 Perseus, a row of  hydrangeas, topped with a bunch of roses which look like these ones (I just love this portrait of Rose):

 

Happy Easter

The boys, stuffing around

Holly, hard at work.

Aiden post run and swim and hosepipe rinse off - automatic good mood

Howzit from all of us to all of you - hope you're having a lovely Easter weekend