Johannesburg after dark

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Hobhouse, Free State

I can't resist turning off the already less than main road, and into places like Hobhouse. I'm lured down their roads, some of them tarred, then I park my car and listen to the peace and quiet, also the birdsong, while drawing in deep the dry, dusty air. This is how other people live. I'm drawn to the remoteness and quiet. Also to the doves in the distant trees.

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Fouriesburg, Free State province

It's rest, and a road trip for me. I suppose it's bookends too. Last September, through a glorious tunnel of cherry blossoms, I took this same road to the Highway Africa Conference in Grahamstown. It was there - because I was both inspired by the conference and saw its potential - that I decided to throw up my freelancing to take the newspaper on full time; I had bought it on the first of August on my credit card. This year, allowing myself much more time to get there, I'm on my way to Grahamstown again. And I'm looking very forward, except that I want at least a day and night on the Eastern Cape coast.

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African sunset

Ivory Coast 3 - North Korea 0

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Buddhist Temple

Bronkhorstspruit, Gauteng: Sunday winter's afternoon and I've hit some serious personal turbulence. With two days to go to the longest night, everything is khaki and bleached of colour. I went from blissful natural isolation on a farm to the intense weekend bustle of what was once the largest shopping centres in the southern hemisphere. A modern day flesh pot I suppose, built on turbulence and a shrine to middle class suburbia. On the long stretch of road back home, we took a quick left, then right, to another shrine, this one significantly quieter but just as other worldly. An oasis in the dry veld, the vast Buddhist Temple complex
outside Bronkhorstspruit further exacerbated my emotions as I took off my shoes before the inner sanctum (lorded over by a sandaled Buddhist dragging his feet and gawking through coca cola glass lenses) before - heeled again - I walked the complex perimeter wall in silent meditation.
I'm restless, un-centred and able to tell the wood from the trees.

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Cullinan village

Edwardian quaint, Oak Lane is Cullinan's Jacaranda-lined main avenue that leads directly into the sun-baked famous diamond mine that produced the world's largest diamond ever (now whiling away under low gray skies in the Tower of London as part of the crown jewels), and more recently some extraordinarily rare blue diamonds.

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Last night

Last night I stayed alone on the farm. I relished making a fire on the verandah at dusk, just after a walk around the magnificent garden harvesting clippings of plants and herbs that intrigued me.
Then I popped open a bottle of Krone champagne and was in bed with my notebook by 20h30.

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African Farm Road

It's wide, typically African-style road that takes one past Rayton and Cullinan to Gretha's farm hideaway where I'm spending the weekend. I've not been able to relax and unwind like this in a while. It's 'pure' bosveld...

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African dusk

I'm toasting a glass of rose to another glorious African dusk on a magnificently ramshackle farm about 20km down a sand road... outside the quaint Edwardian diamond village of Cullinan.
Sitting on the verandah I'm watching the last of the light slip away over the western edge as dinosauric hadedas shriek at the very furtherest boundary of my psychology.
Happy Friday evening my God.


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Word of the Day

You know that pile of books you have to have near you before you can go to sleep? I've re-found the word describing them - I KNEW there was one.

 

BALLYCUMBER (n.)
One of the six half-read books lying somewhere next to your bed (Douglas Adams)

Breakfast at Tiffany's.. I mean the gym

A cool but sunny winter's morning. I'm just done working out, trying to get back into a regimen that I've neglected for at least 6 months.
By now soccer's coming out of my ears and I want to go home to peace and quite.

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Waterval Boven - early morning

This is one of my favourite photos of my town. It was taken by Gustav Janse van Rensburg of Roc 'n Rope fame.

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Sandton soccer gridlock

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Sandton Station.. at last

The entrance to the wonderful abyss. Sandton Station for the high speed  mass rapid transit railway that opened on Tuesday.

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Sandton Gautrain Station

This station is not yet complete, it's still reeking of raw, new concrete. Yet its functioning, and people - from all over the world - are pouring in and out. I'm walking around with the broadest of smiles.

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Eskom - neither trust nor credibility

This is the year that SA screwed up and chose to borrow and then begin spending 30 billion rand on coal fired power stations. This as opposed to harnessing the southern tip of Africa's boundless renewable energy resources.. the sun and wind.
The sun has set on any thinking person's estimation of Eskom and its immeasurable blunders. No trust.
(I had a good laugh - the predictive text on my Blackberry converted "Eskom" to "Eskimo". Talk about the long term effects of global warming...!)

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Johannesburg's Braamfontein and Berea

Jozi Moon: This is a view from the northern suburbs that I grew up with. It's a stretched photo, by Joburg-born fine artist and photographer Caddelle, that I walked past in a northern suburbs mall and spontaneously bought.
It's headed for my studio wall in Waterval Boven.
www.caddelle.com

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The brains behind the game

Soccer is taking centre stage on Sandton Square's Mandela Square.
Just behind the massive Sony Centre that dwarfs the cocktail bars and restaurants on thew square's fringe is the inconspicuous Sandton Library.
It remains a refuge from the soccer tornado. I wonder why.

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Centre of the flag

That's the sun setting in my car's side mirror, the heart of a flag. Every second - probably even more than that though - side mirror is wrapped in national flags of the countries playing in the soccer world cup.
I'm no sports fan, even so I'm being swept away by the soccer tornado that is wreaking good natured havoc across Johannesburg where I am visiting for business.
Just past are many years of doom sayers speaking out against SA successfully hosting the world cup, also - locally - the construction of the first stages of Gauteng province's high speed mass transit train...basically Africa's first underground.
Both are here, in all their glory.

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