It can make all the difference.
See you in February.
The Suiderstrand Fire
Around lunchtime on December the 22nd, a veldfire ignited near the parking lot in Suiderstrand. With the southeaster blowing hard, the fire quickly spread and within half an hour, one building was completely destroyed. If it weren’t for the quick reactions of the Working On Fire helicopter from Bredasdorp, it could have been a lot, lot worse.
We weren’t down here then, as we were spending Christmas with family in Cape Town, and it took a while before the panicky messages on the whatsapp groups – in Afrikaans, nogal – began to make sense and I finally worked out that our place was not in immediate danger. It was a horrible few minutes. The point of ignition was only 100m from our front door, and had the fire started 24 hours before, it would have been blown directly towards our place.
The wind has been pumping since we arrived down here, and it was only yesterday morning that I managed to get the drone up to survey the scene from above and see just how lucky some houses were to escape serious harm.
There are plenty of melted gutters and lots of damaged paintwork, but nothing that can’t be repaired after the festive break. Not so much for the burnt-out home though. It’s a sad and sobering sight.
If one is looking for positives – and at this time of year, one should always have a glass half full – it was that this was the only casualty, and that no-one was injured or killed in the fire.
The village reacted well, with plenty of people on hand to assist where possible and great communication. And we’ve all renewed our knowledge of evacuation procedures and emergency numbers, which is never a bad thing.
We just hope we never have to use them.
Low tide for tonight
It’s always safer when the tide is low for New Year’s on Struisbaai beach.
Several thousand drunk Afrikaners with several (or more) fireworks each get quite concentrated when the tide is up, but I’ve checked and the first tide of the New Year is a low one at about 00:33.
That means that there will be plenty of beach to have fun on for the duration of the festivities.
I suppose that this is a good thing, but it will make it a whole lot less exciting than last year.
End of the century
(The one from 1919-2019, anyway…)
It’s been an interesting year, but it’s nearly done now.
There were plenty of highs, several (or more) lows, and quite a lot of average kinda stuff, as you might expect. But all being well (as this post was written over a week ago), we’ve made it this far – 364/365ths or 99.73% of the way through. And 2020 beckons. A fresh start, a new opportunity, but still with the same old arseholes who helped make the last few years so miserable. (You can choose your own arseholes here.)
Happy days.
A watery autumnal sunset, punctuated by Swift Terns and anticrepuscular rays seems appropriate. Not one of my best 12, but it fits quite nicely here, and reminds me what I need to improve upon in 2020. Aiming the camera 10° further upwards would have helped here.
Passport pics
I like this. Passport photographs by photographer Max Siedentopf.
Those boring, officious, unsmiling pictures we all have to have. Full of rules, regulations and mundanity. Until Max got involved, that is:
Because the face in the little travel document doesn’t always have to tell you what’s going on out of frame.
A really novel idea and a properly creative extension of something we see everyday into a cool project.