It was a pastel end to a pastel day, and close to the very end of a pastel year; my heart was pastel too.
That's how I ended my Christmas day: calmly staring across to Cape Town from Bloubergstrand as the light faded from fire-to-black while longing for the champagne left in the bulbous bottom of the third bottle of champagne (Sterhuis 2010), appropriately named Starhouse.
Their wines come from the vineyards hugging the lofty slopes of Stellenbosch's Bottelary Hills, vineyards caressed by crisp ocean breezes from both the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Vineyards seeped in moonlight.
In the murky darkness I made my way back to a friend's home to finish the bottle, while sitting quietly in her garden breathing in the night smells and listening to the frogs in the distant vlei, also to my soft-beating heart.
Alone and content. And contemplative of the abyss.
