Goodbye

When I was in my early teens, I watched my father walk off the edge of the world. One second he was there, with all of us, and then he was gone. We would have thought he had disappeared, gone from us forever, had it not been for the earth shattering cry of “Jesus H. Christ!” that accompanied his departure.

It is a testament to who the man was that, while we all found this unnerving, none of us found it even slightly surprising. My father marched to the beat of a different drummer.

Ribbit.

I can’t remember if there was ever a single moment when I realised that my family was not quite the same as other peoples’. I suspect it was rather a series of moments, and one of these had to do with a visit to the botanical garden in Pretoria.

The garden is huge, set into the side of a low hill. There are small patches of forest, beds of flowers, pockets of wetland, and large, rolling lawns. On the day of our visit, the garden was filled with people. There were young couples, wrapped up in each other and blind to the rest of the world; there were the plant-lovers, meandering slowly around the network of paths, stopping to examine the rarities in the garden’s collection; there were the birdwatchers, weighed down by cameras and binoculars, peering up into the trees.

But mostly there were families. Some had come to enjoy a picnic, others just a day in the sun. Everyone seemed to have brought something along: cooler-boxes full of snacks and drinks, bats and balls, Frisbees, even a kite or two. Not us. We brought along an umbrella and a handful of clear plastic packets. Obviously.

My first Photoblog! A walk in the park.

Since starting this whole blogging thing a couple of months ago, a whole new world has opened up to me. I’m not a technophobe, but the whole idea of social networking is horrifying to me. The only reason I ever signed up for Facebook was that you had to in order to get onto WordPress, and my wife was having too much fun with her blog for me not to give it a try. It’s fun. But I’ve been missing out.

I used to think a blog was just a place where you could ramble on and pretend that someone was listening. It turns out that you can also put pictures up and pretend that someone is looking. Photo blogs! I have to give this a whirl.

Ways of seeing.

I used to think that I had an interesting sort of mind. One that saw the world in a different light to the unwashed masses. A unique perspective that set me apart. I used to think that this made me a special little star.

Then I arrived home from work to find my driveway full of opened umbrellas. Lots of them. Just lying there unattended, like an unanswered question.

England. Every day.

Serpents in the Garden of Eden

I am going to have to start this post off with an apology. If you followed this blog in the hope of watching the slow but inevitable collapse of civilization at the hands of my family, you will have to wait until the next post. I’m trying to write a book. As part of my research, I am plagiarising an entire ecosystem (yes, I’m afraid it’s sci-fi. It’s going to be about a planet of mutes, because I can’t write dialogue). The ecosystem I am stealing is that of the Lowveld. For those of you who are not from South Africa, that’s where we keep all the proper animals.

Anyone from South Africa who has spent any time outdoors while growing up will have some experience of snakes. For those of you not from here, whose idea of Africa comes from wildlife documentaries with names like “Africa’s Twelve Most Murderous Death-Beasts”, it’s not like that at all. Put anything you have learned about Africa from the Discovery Channel out of your mind (after calling the producers and telling them to stop being such dicks.)