Jun
13
It’s the middle of June; it’s almost the middle of the year. Do you remember just the other day when you were opening Christmas presents and celebrating New Year? Well we are now half-way to the next one already. If you think you just packed away the Christmas decorations, let me tell you, it won’t be long and you will be dusting them off, and getting them out again. In 1 weeks time the sun starts to move away from us again and our beautiful long days will start to get shorter. It is incredible how the clear definitions and boundaries of time over here make the year fly by so fast. In South Africa (well, in East London at least) where there is not a strong contrast in the seasons, they all seem to mush together and become one long year…. but divide that year up into 4 distinct time frames and all of a sudden you see time passing by your eyes at lightning speed.
The highlight of this week (well the one that I didn’t miss, at least) was without a doubt, the Bon Jovi concert at the 02 arena in London. I have been an avid Bon Jovi junkie for years now and I have always said that I would give anything to attend one of his live concerts. We arranged the tickets months ago and this date has been looming on my calendar for ages now. Jon Bon Jovi is not just a magnificent songwriter, guitar player and musician, he has the most incredible philosophies on life and humanity and he is not afraid to express them in the media and on stage. The concert was absolutely unbelievable and I wish I could put into words just how spectacular I thought it was. It was powerful and exciting, loud and alive; in general, it was just a masterpiece of music.
This week also saw Jen start at her new school. Private schooling in the UK is very expensive and they private schools are the equivalent of our former model-C schools in SA. Jenna is very happy. She is already far more organised than she was at the previous school, she gets up in the morning much happier and ready to face her day. The school day is very long, starting at 08:25 and ending at 16:00. The nice thing though is that they play sport. Jenna has already played her first rounders match against another school and I was surprised to see just how well she can whack that ball. I guess she must have some of her grampa’s Border baseball skills.
My car is finally fixed! Seems like I did more damage to it than we had thought. The new exhaust manifold arrived in the mail this week and I finally got my car back on Saturday. What did we ever do before online shopping? Imagine this? You can go onto the internet, put in the details of the make and model of your car, then sit back and wait as the sms messages start arriving with price comparisons from various dealers. You pick the one you want, order the part and wait for the postman to deliver it.
Mitchell is going to be part of his guitar-clubs concert in the next few weeks. At the moment he is working on the chords for “House of fun”. He and I started running this evening. We have decided that we need to get fitter and lose some of this winter covering that we have gained. He is so funny to run with and I don’t know how he can run and talk so much when I can barely breathe.
The world cup soccer started this week and who could miss the deafening howl of the vuvuzelas? You see them on TV, at the matches, in the streets, and now we have them in the supermarkets in the UK. It certainly is a distinctly African World Cup and I think that so far South Africa has a lot to be proud of. For me, it is just wonderful to see the reminders on TV of just how beautiful SA is, how extraordinarily vibrant the people are, and how much potential the country has. For those of us living outside of the borders of SA, whether you like football (soccer) or not, I think perhaps we are missing out on something quite spectacular.
June 14th, 2010 at 11:33 am
Hi Kerry I couldn’t agree with you more about feeling displaced over this time – South Africa have really come together over the world cup and it is a beautiful and uplifting thing to see.
xxx
A
P.S. So glad the Bon Jovi concert was everything you hoped it would be, I saw them live in Durban years ago and only wish I had a babysitter close by so that we could have gone again.