Quick one from me today as I have to go and lie in a moist field while being aurally assaulted this evening. This on top of having a miserable cold and sore throat. That’ll help, then. Those of you familiar with the Cape Town calendar and my musical tastes will have already worked out where I’m going for tonight’s entertainment. The weather appears to have it in for me though, with absolutely no rain forecast to wet his piano.
I’m reading the FAQs for tonight’s event. Apparently:
Activities such as ‘stage diving’, ‘moshing’, ‘climbing’ and ‘crowd surfing’ are strictly prohibited for your own safety.
No moshing? For real? How the hell am I supposed to get down to Crocodile Rock without moshing? Although there are also some helpful hints for those planning a quick escape:
Persons deemed to be behaving in a manner that is dangerous or unacceptable to management will be refused admission and/or removed from the venue
That sounds doable… But then Mrs 6000 would never speak to me again. Sigh. I will just have to drown my sorrows with Milk Stout and sneak my iPod in.
Kicking off on 22nd November with South African legend, Johnny Clegg, the concerts run through to the end of March (and, I guess, the end of summer) with Watershed signing off for the season on the 28th.
The full line up:
2009
22 November – Johnny Clegg
06 December – Jesse Clegg
13 December – Jonny Cooper Orchestra
27 December – Ashtray Electric and Pretty Blue Guns
2010
03 January – A Fist Full of Diamonds with Josie Fields, Faryll Purkiss and Dan Patlansky 10 January – Freshlyground 17 January – Zebra & Giraffe 24 January – Fokofpolisiekar
07 February – aKING 21 February – Just Jinjer 28 February – Prime Circle
07 March – Goldfish 14 March – The Dirty Skirts 21 March – The Cape Philharmonic Orchestra 28 March – Watershed
Tickets for the first concert cost R95 for adults (yep – that’s what I thought too!) and are available from Kirstenbosch ticket office (021) 761 2866 or via http://www.webtickets.co.za/.
As usual, Kirstenbosch will be the place to be to rock out those Sunday afternoons (with the exception of 21st March, perhaps).
EDIT: While cross-checking details for the above piece (we’re damn thorough here at 6000 Towers), I saw this on the sanbi.org website:
A snappy quota snap for today – my Saturday promises to be hectic and rushed – although there’s always a slim chance of something later if you’re lucky. Warmer days at Kirstenbosch in February. With my favourite lump of rock in the background. You’d think that the best gardens in the Southern Hemisphere would be able to grow a straight tree. But no.
I haven’t been on teh interwebs much today, but I would imagine that absolutely no-one in the blogosphere has mentioned the fact that it’s Valentines Day at all. And so once again, the responsibility of informing the world about these things falls on my shoulders. But it’s fine. I can manage. Honest.
I had almost forgotten that the big day was coming up, but was fortuitously forewarned by a sudden and otherwise bewildering increase in the price of cut flowers. So I popped out and adopted a couple of penguins on a buy one get one free offer at SANCCOB (offer valid until end of February 2009), cos penguins is romantic: especially when kept at a suitable distance. They tend to get a bit smelly otherwise, mainly due to their ichthyophagous habits. So it’s handy to stay a whole credit card transaction away from the actual birds, cute, clumsy and cuddlable though they may appear.
During the afternoon, we packed the kids, the pram, a picnic and the camera into the back of the car and popped just around the corner to Kirstenbosch. It may appear to the more attentive reader that we go to Kirstenbosch most weekends. And indeed, that does seem to be the case just lately. But there can be few more romantic places than Cape Town’s beautiful and almost completely penguin-free Botanical Gardens. Although initially, it seemed that we had the place to ourselves, walking on deeper into the somewhat repetitive fynbos after we had eaten, we found a myriad of courting couples. Fortunately, Kirstenbosch is pretty open plan, so there was no danger of coming across any naughtiness, but we sent the boy, happily and loudly singing about microwaves, ahead anyway, just to kill the mood should the mood be there. Safety first, dear reader.
A Valentine’s Day Selection…
And that was it – almost. Heart-shaped chocolate brownies and tea in front of Coupling on DVD and then a quick upload onto Flickr (actually, this is via the South African telecommunications system and someone needs to get the ADSL hamster to run faster in his little wheel up in Bloemfontein or wherever he’s kept so I’ll have to finish the Flickr stuff off tomorrow, ok?) and then I’ll wend my weary way up to bed, hoping and praying that the little one doesn’t start moaning about her erupting incisors again tonight.
As promised (although I’m not sure by whom, to whom), we headed out into the blisteringly hot February sunshine to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens to see the ever-popular and completely sold-out Parlotones.
I was disappointed. They weren’t up to their usual standard and they were much, much smaller than I remember them. This could have been because we were sat so far back with a million* people and a small forest between us and them. Or it could have been because they had shrunk and weren’t as good as before. Thanks to several beers and a mild case of heatstroke, the jury is still out on that one.
Thankfully, as ever, it was less about the music and more about the idle chatter, the free-flowing alcohol and the people watching. And so we chatted, drank and people watched, including Faceless pandas, Camps Bay queens, Posing dudes and Schalk Burger and Andries Bekker. And I couldn’t resist one more quick shot for my Sunsets and Skyscapes set.
