Well, my wife and I are just over half way through our “grand tour” of Europe and Great Britain. Not much time to actually elaborate on what we’ve been up to, but here are some photographs from France. All that I’ve done is scale them down for now; later on, I might upload ‘tweaked’ versions.
(Click the thumbnails for a larger image.)
How sweetly doth the crocodile
enrobe his cunning nose
with cummerbunds of pearly white
and ribands made of rose!
He carefully adorns it
at the breaking of each day;
and bitterly doth mourn it
when a riband goes astray.
And O! the subtle reptile,
whilst at rest and whilst at play,
ensures his nose is toasty warm,
and beautiful, and gay.
And though tenderly ensuring
that his cummerbund is fix’d
with pins and twine and sealing wax,
his reception, it is mixed:
For though his nose is twisted ’round
with cummerbunds and stuff,
the fishes in the fishpond say
“His teeth are sharp enough!”
As promised — the photographs! Click on a thumbnail for a larger view.
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As I write this, I’m sitting on the aeroplane somewhere east of Madagascar, on my way back to Australia. My voyage to South Africa is complete – all that now remains is the (lengthy) flight home.
We spent the second half of the holiday based around Tulbagh, a small country town near Ceres, north of Cape Town; my grandfather lives just outside the town. Tulbagh is a very small, and quite pleasant little town, with only one (albeit sizeable) apparent problem: hayfever.
I have never had hayfever quite so bad as that I experienced in Tulbagh. I ended up using both pills, nasal sprays, and even a surgical mask to attempt to alleviate the symptoms. And I’m not alone – not only did both of my parents also succumb to it, but a sizeable proportion of the local population also suffer from it.
Apart from the hayfever, however, I really enjoyed it. I got the chance to essentially meet my grandfather and his wife for the first time. He has quite severe cancer, and the chemotherapy has rather unpleasant side-effects, for all its efficacy. Surprisingly, however, he was in much better shape than I had anticipated – he spends his days doing quite hard manual labour on his small-holding, growing lots of fresh produce and tending to seven dogs.
My grandfather’s wife, Esti, is a fantastic cook, and, fortunately for us, insisted that we take most of our meals with her. It was great. 
Tulbagh, and the various country towns around Tulbagh, are very quiet, sleepy places – a far cry from the cosmopolitan Stellenbosch, where, incidentally, I discovered the only café that I think worthy of that appelation in South Africa. In Australia, where there is a strong Mediterranean influence, the coffee culture is quite vibrant, and there are a multitude of cafés that actually only concern themselves with coffee. By contrast, the “cafés” in South Africa were essentially miniature restaurants, nearly all with pretty terrible coffee. As I say, I could only find one café that actually was about coffee: Vida e Café (or something similar) in Stellenbosch. Check it out if you get a chance.
Ariel and I also went to drop a few things off for a friend at their parents’ house, and, wonder of wonders, they had an espresso machine. With decent beans. I had two cups – I really had been starved of good coffee, and their house was like a desert oasis. It actually made the three hour round trip to Piketberg to deliver chocolate biscuits, shampoo, and lollies worthwhile. (But seriously – chocolate biscuits, shampoo, and lollies. Sigh.)
I’m going to start culling and processing the photos we took on the trip when I get back to my desktop computer at home, and then I’ll put them up here. I might even put one or two up on Facebook for the very lazy, who I can safely insult, as they will never read this. It should all be up in a day or two.
And hey, if you’re lucky, I might even include more of my rambling ruminations with the photos.
[Posted a day after writing]