Dullstroom Time

Dazzling light. The wind is the icy rapier in the scabbard of the sun’s warmth. The trout dams are buttons of blue shellac in the brown and yellow fur of dry, crisp grasses and stony hills. A railway line snakes down the hill, between a stand of trees, and in the early morning we hear the clatter and hooting from the dark warmth of the fluffed-up duvet, as the train rattles by.

Lazy Sunday morning, sitting by the window on a farm in Dullstroom, the sun falling across the breakfast table and the sky outside rimmed with cold white cloud. Time slowed, for a moment, before the clock restarts.

Joe’s Place

Tomorrow morning, Rob and I will be loading up the Landy and heading off into the countryside, to Dullstroom, heart of South Africa’s ‘Trout Triangle’. Rob has gotten herself off work for the day, I have the freedom and flexibility of a consultant (and I have been working pretty damn hard, actually – so has she) so we shall head off through the morning traffic, somewhere around 9 or so, and arrive comfortably in time for lunch in our abode for the weekend – Joe’s Place (see here). I am hoping to take a few photographs; we will catch a few trout, in the trout store of course, chuck a few logs on the fire and generally wind down and chill.

We have little time left, before we embark for the (moderately) Far North, and far chillier climes: we plan on stretching the time, where we can, with a few pleasant excursions.

Perhaps there might be a landscape or two, to post, when we return.

From 16 degrees to 22

The difference between 16 and 22, when it’s degrees Centigrade we’re talking about, is the angle of planetary tilt from mid-winter to the first signs of spring; the psychological distance between icy withdrawal and exuberant optimism. Officially, Spring Day is more than a month away – but today, as it were, after weeks of bright but chilly weather, it is sending out messengers, and shoots of green.

On the other side, soon, the world will begin sliding towards ice and snow and hours of darkness, in preparation for Rob’s and my December arrival. We may live in a modern world, of TV and internet and jet transportation, but it is the seasons that tell me, we are entering upon a great transition.

Hope and terror

Behind the bright, cold calm of these highveld summer days, behind the apparent clarity and solidity of the familiar world, carved and detailed by the sharp winter sunlight, is a strange uncertainty. For one thing, death has reached out, too close by, too recently and too often, for one not to be reminded of one’s own mortality. I find myself contemplating the years that have piled up behind me, acutely aware I am well past the half-way mark; for some reason, the next big birthday milestone, coming up in 2013, seems to assume a significance I have not associated with birthdays in years.

Looking back, I am reminded also, and much more positively, of the few big moments, out of all the many changes, transitions, events and developments, that somehow marked a quite fundamental turn in my life. This does not mean I recognised them at the time; it is only in the rearview mirror, looking back as you sweep past on the relentless drive to somewhere else, that you see what it is that you have passed – that you recognise the turn, the change of direction.

One of these transitions, was teaching in the Transkei. Becoming a high school principal, in an African school in the Umtata township, in the early 1980s, in my twenties, was in many senses my real education, an awakening to my country, my location in time and place and history, and my dislocation from my class and race and family background. Many things happened after that – having children, of course, was probably the most profound, but that is not a single mark in the journey of your life, it is a constant, integral, indissoluble strand in your very make-up and identity – but they were more in the nature of events and developments, than key transitions.

The second significant transition, I would say, came from joining the NBI, as a director, in 1997. Here was an organisation with influence and credibility, an organisation which gave me a platform, the opportunity and the encouragement and support, to imagine and to do things I could never have contemplated before. Here were the finest, the most talented, passionate, smart, dynamic people and colleagues I had ever worked with. It was a time, too, of huge optimism and hope, about change and democracy in our country, awakening with new national pride and joy from the long nightmare of apartheid, and the NBI was in the thick of it. Nothing in my life, after this, could be the same.

And now, a third transition beckons; and if it is fraught with uncertainty, as it was when I left my familiar world for the Transkei, when I left the worlds of teaching and research for the NBI, then too, like those earlier moments of redefinition, this change is full of potentiality and hope, as well as some anxiety and uncertainty. The new year, barely five months away, marks the start-line from which I shall have to discover how to make a living, and establish a life and roots, in another country. I will have to figure out how to make a life in two countries, actually – for my mother and two of my children remain here, in South Africa, and my soul is compounded, in a very real sense, of this dust and this air and these South African landscapes. I have a novel to complete and another to bring to life; more than a couple of books, I have a lifelong dream, and a lifelong promise to myself, to put to the test. I have a wife to love and create a new home with; new friends to meet and get to know; a new world to understand and discover.

I am mildly, ironically, hilariously terrified. But I will say this: I am going on, I am not dead yet.

The smallest package of energy

Unforgettable Valana! The smallest package of energy, you would whizz through the offices of the NBI like a meteor, in a shower of sparks, sharp-tongued, quick-witted, fleet of foot, fizzing with laughter and jokes and passionate intensity. Perhaps it was always in your nature that you would go like this, felled by a stroke in the prime of life, like a fuse that has been overloaded.

Loyal to a fault, you told me when you were my PA that you would always be there for me, watching my back – you were my wing-man, flying into battle. And, to the end, I treasured your love and your devotion. Irreplaceable Valana!

It has been a sad, sad week. And a time, I have to say, of too much grieving – Gail Elliot, dead just over a month ago; my dear friend and colleague Marianne’s brother killed in a car crash, just over a week ago, as he was driving to work in the morning. We need no more reminders, surely, of how life and love and all we hold dear hangs by the slenderest of threads – and no stronger argument, I would imagine, for consciously choosing to live our lives well.

Braaing in Toronto

Lunch last Sunday, as you know, was at Roots, and pretty fabulous, too. However, not all good Sunday lunches require a day in the country, and a hole in the bank balance. This Sunday, for instance, we had a pretty mean Sunday lunch, too: on this occasion, deeply roasted crispy vegetables – beetroot and endives, new potatoes, red and yellow onion and shallotts – artfully arranged on square black platters with slices of just-pink barbecued kudu, coated in a crunchy paste of garlic, rosemary, olive oil, cracked black pepper and sea-salt, and accompanied with a quince and chili jam that I bought at a country deli when I was down in Durban recently. In short, this time we did it ourselves. After lunch we transferred the coals to the firepit and built up the fire and sat warming ourselves in the late afternoon sunlight – we need to do these kinds of things, you see, while we can.

For this morning, we went online and booked my ticket for Toronto – departing 13 December via Zurich, arriving on the 14th. Rob has just to change her own ticket, to coincide with mine – and suddenly, we have a date, and a deadline.

Like I say, we need to visit Kruger, and spend a winter weekend in Dullstroom, and plan a West Coast vacation as we drive back to Johannesburg after my mom’s 80th birthday in Cape Town, on 3 December – we need to do all of these South African things, while we can.

I figure it will be a little difficult, in Toronto, to pick up a fine piece of kudu rump for our Sunday braai – and you wouldn’t want to be sitting outdoors, anyway, in December.