Peaceful weekend

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It’s been a peaceful weekend.
This morning, we headed out to the conveniently local Arderne Gardens in the beautiful autumn sunshine to throw some bread at the ducks; this afternoon, we mainly played with a broken Hoover Aquavac 2200. As you do.

I didn’t bother taking any pictures of the vacuum cleaner (and who can blame me?), but I did get a few of the ducks. My particular favourite is this one:

bandwa
Bigger here

…which, on closer examination, doesn’t actually feature any ducks at all.

Anyway, even if you don’t like that, then you still might want to try clicking here to see the rest of the set, which is generally less “arty” and more “colourful” and does feature several varieties of “duck”. I promise.

Goodbye 2008

I know – belated at best. But read on.

Whizzing around the internet, as I am wont to do on occasion, I came across the photography of Cape Town local Joy-Anne Goodenough. I skipped through a few people shots (lovely, I’m sure, but I’m not into people shots) but had to pause at some of the beachy, landscapey, sunsetty ones. Wow.


Biggness top and bottom

That these two pics were taken at last light on December 31st last year somehow makes them even more special. Even though, when one leaves romance and spirituality to one side for a moment, it’s “just another sunset”, albeit a beautiful one.

I’ve said before that taking good photos in Cape Town really isn’t difficult. And I mentioned then that the standards are therefore raised. That to be exceptional, your pictures have to be… well… exceptional. Stuffs like these inspires me to stop feeding the kids for a while and saving the money up towards a DSLR. I could give up beer, but that would mean a degree of personal suffering and there’s only so far I’m willing to go for the sake of my art.

Also of interest is a comparison between Joy-Anne’s favourite shots and mine. Striking similarities abound. Vineyards, Chapman’s Peak, arty beach stuff. She also does sunrises. I try to avoid those whenever possible.

What a difference a day made…

Twenty-four little hours.
Brought the smoke and the fires.
Where there used to be green.


Before and after – The Devils Peak Fire

Houses in High Cape and Vredehoek (where I used to live) were evacuated at 1 o’clock this morning as high winds threatened drive the fire into residential areas. Spectacular iol pictures.

Today, it’s just a matter of damping down what’s left of the vegetation and  putting out the fires in the kloofs on the Groote Schuur Estate. Just for an idea of scale, those three “little” fires you can see up at the top of the mountain have flames up to five storeys high according to the Cape Town Fire Department spokesman on the radio. S’big, then.

Simonstown, March 2007

I’m so full of snot today that I feel it may be a case of home-bathkids-dinner-bed. Thus, noting that blogging is not included in that plan, just before I instigate part one, a quota photo.

It was two years ago to the day that we packed the car and the 10½ month old boy and headed down to Simonstown for the weekend, staying in a house with an implausibly steep driveway and a seemingly infinite number of steps up to the front door.

The weekend was spent (as I remember), poking penguins and playing football on the beach. And drinking:


Yes, it was empty*

The rest of the flickr set is here.

I have just noticed that my plan for the evening also fails to mention any red wine. It would surely be foolish to miss out on the immune-boosting benefits of vitamin C that come as a helpful by-product of fermented grapes. Especially the rather decent (and rather local) Steenberg Merlot.

I shall be sorting that out with dinner, never fear.

* once he’d finished with it, it was, anyway.

Thinned Quota Sunsets

No time, no time. And off to play football, so a quick pair of South African sunsets: one from the parkade at Cape Town International Airport and the other from the veld in the Madikwe Game Reserve in the North West Province, both thinned down for your delectation (and so my sidebar doesn’t go AWOL).

Same sun, same country; but a world apart, I’m sure you’ll agree.

tss1
South West [bigger]

tss2
North West [bigger]

Ideally, I would have lined them up so that the suns were directly in line. But I didn’t. And now I don’t have time. Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. As long as you haven’t been looking directly at the sun.