Wheatlands News

This past weekend was the Swartland Agricultural Show. It's lots of fun to visit, especially if you like farm animals (which I do) These are some of the prize winning cattle, lined up according to their breeds. I loved the handlers in their red overalls and white boots. Our friend Christina came to visit because she'd never been to the skou, and it turned out to be a day that was all about transport. she went for a ride with Greg on the Harley she got to sit in some really big harvesters and I mean BIG! but some were more her size. Some of the vehicles were more old fashioned. Eight horse power seems much more exciting than the 1800 in our bakkie (pick up truck) Some were very elegant And some reminded us that we are all inordinately proud of hosting the world cup soccer next year. But, when all is said and done, it is always the cute girl that steals the show!

My eldest son, Simon, came to lunch on Saturday with his girlfriend Larissa, and spent some time helping to take out the last of the lapa poles. See how the pole has rotted away in the concrete? We are really so lucky that the whole thing didn't fall down on our heads. So now that the lapa is down, we are full of plans and ideas about what do do with the space. (Yes, I know I used that pic in my last post. Yes I know it's my garden and I could go outside and take another (different) one. But I don't want to.) We're back to square one, but as Seth Godin says, square one is an under rated place. So we need to make sure we enjoy being there. Do we just cover the space in shadecloth so that we can escape the summer heat more cost effectively? Do we build a big room onto the house? With an extra bathroom and a fireplace and windows all around? The area we are looking at covering is 12m long and 5m wide. The lapa had the same surface area (but a different shape) but somehow ...

We live in a place where the summers are blisteringly hot and dry. A place where, if you are lucky enough to have a swimming pool, you think twice before dashing outside to cool down. So we built a lapa... a wonderful thatch construction, built with sturdy bluegum poles and a thick thatch roof. It was close to 60 square metres in size, and winter or summer it became the place where we lived. It was a place to do projects. It was a place to share food and laughter. It was a vital part of our home. Until, sadly, we realised that it hadn't been built properly and it was beginning to shift away from the house. The first construction company had vanished into the wild blue yonder, so we got another company... a family business with three generations of thatchers... to come and fix the lapa. Sadly, they were not any better than the first company, and earlier this year when a third roof pole suddenly snapped, we realised something had to be done. So we did the logical thing, and contacted...

Brian Keenan was an Irishman working in Beirut when he was kidnapped by Islamic Jihad. He was released four years later, on August 24, 1990. I will never forget his words when he was released. He described being a hostage as like "a man hanging by his fingernails over the edge of chaos, feeling his fingers slowly straightening". I wonder if he spent time in prison, planning his release soundbite? I'm sure I would have. That's not intended to sound cynical, especially as I read An evil cradling , the book he wrote about his experiences, and was moved by his raw honesty and brutally truthful descriptions of his life as a hostage. I remember when he said those words as he arrived back in Ireland. It was a crafting of words that felt like a sword, stabbing sharp into my mind. And as a journalist it made me remember all the times I'd asked the inane questions that journalists do, interviewing people who have gone to hell and back: "So, how do you feel, are you hap...

Julie at Moments of Perfect Clarity calls them "blog crushes" and I've had a crush on her blog for a while. It's even developed into a connection. I wanted to say friendship, but although we've sent emails and even gifts, I feel a bit like its still very much a surface friendship... kind of like the connections you make in your first week at a new school (yes, I can remember that far back). Another of my blog connections is Meri at Meri's Musings . She often comments on my posts, and I on hers and I think our lives have taken some similar paths. Some of the blogs I read are people whose lives are totally, enviously different to mine, like Chinua with his stunning photography and incredibly beautiful children. (My children are incredibly beautiful too...) Others are going through different life stages to me and I feel connected to them and their experiences. Helen is like that. Others, like Jack, I have "met" on other forums and in other places (al...

Twenty years after I was born a Brooks, I became a Wilson in one of those happy-ever-after fantasies that didn't quite work out the way I had planned. But Wilson was a nice name, and eminently preferable to Brooks (which in Afrikaans means underpants or knickers and led to horrible teasing at school) and I quite enjoyed it. It was one of those anonymous names that everyone could spell and I liked the fact that it was totally normal at first look, but had a secret history. The great grandfather of the Mr Wilson I married had emigrated from somewhere near Moscow to the US and like so many others with unpronouncable or "difficult" names (I think it was Tobinofsky) he was given another one. One of the legends is that Wilson was chosen from the phone book, another is that he particularly admired a Wilson (couldn't have been Harold). So, for the next 25 years or so, I built my name and reputation as the journalist Lynne Wilson ... until I met and married my new happy-ever-a...

trees in the Kruger Park provide sancturies of relaxation surprising beauty examples of tenacity are attacked by termites and somehow survive make us feel small continue to surprise us by their beauty, even in death and are destroyed by elephants!