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.