Things I have learned while lying down
A back injury forced me to lie down for weeks at a time. This is what I learned…
Category: Opinions My thoughts about the world
When #mtg cards meet a mom
Cape Town – Every week, I have to come up with an idea for a column. Sometimes the idea is right there in front of me. Sometimes there are lots of ideas I just don’t want to touch. And sometimes there is nothing at all. This was one of those weeks. What, I said to my husband and son, am I going to write about? Jack, 13, had an instant response: write about Magic The…
When beauty is in the detail
Cape Town – I spent a couple of hours in paradise this week. Well. maybe not paradise exactly, but it is a gorgeous piece of Cape Town. I was invited to spend some time with Groot Constantia’s winemaker Boela Gerber, and so a gorgeous late summer Wednesday was spent on the country’s oldest wine estate rather than eating lunch at my desk. I’m on a steep learning curve in the world of wine and the…
The simple joys of camping
How much is too much for a good school?
Cape Town – Every week I am supposed to write a column. And this week, it appeared that my ideas folder had run dry. That’s partly because I am much pre-occupied with the dreadful, all consuming task that besets the parents of Grade 7 pupils: the finding of a suitable high school. We did some research and went to some school open days last year (on the sensible advice of a friend, who said that…
Can you do vitiligo, Joseph Fiennes?
In the summer my son Jack turned four, he started to develop strange white patches on the skin of his neck. Over the course of several weeks, the patches spread to his chest and right arm. The paediatrician was a little flummoxed and put in a call to a dermatologist. It was, she said, vitiligo. And so began our journey with a rare condition that most people know nothing about.
Who is the real idiot behind the wheel?
This week I was waiting on a pavement in the Cape Town CBD, waiting for a lift. A car moseyed up one-way Long Street, slowed, stopped. Reversed ten or twenty metres, made a right turn and proceeded on its way. Luckily there were no cars right behind it, and all was well. I smiled, thinking: “Only in South Africa…” And it is amusing, in its way. But really it is indicative of all that is…
My thoughts about the world
When #mtg cards meet a mom
Cape Town – Every week, I have to come up with an idea for a column. Sometimes the idea is right there in front of me. Sometimes there are lots of ideas I just don’t want to touch. And sometimes there is nothing at all. This was one of those weeks. What, I said to my husband and son, am I going to write about? Jack, 13, had an instant response: write about Magic The…
When beauty is in the detail
Cape Town – I spent a couple of hours in paradise this week. Well. maybe not paradise exactly, but it is a gorgeous piece of Cape Town. I was invited to spend some time with Groot Constantia’s winemaker Boela Gerber, and so a gorgeous late summer Wednesday was spent on the country’s oldest wine estate rather than eating lunch at my desk. I’m on a steep learning curve in the world of wine and the…
The simple joys of camping
How much is too much for a good school?
Cape Town – Every week I am supposed to write a column. And this week, it appeared that my ideas folder had run dry. That’s partly because I am much pre-occupied with the dreadful, all consuming task that besets the parents of Grade 7 pupils: the finding of a suitable high school. We did some research and went to some school open days last year (on the sensible advice of a friend, who said that…
Can you do vitiligo, Joseph Fiennes?
In the summer my son Jack turned four, he started to develop strange white patches on the skin of his neck. Over the course of several weeks, the patches spread to his chest and right arm. The paediatrician was a little flummoxed and put in a call to a dermatologist. It was, she said, vitiligo. And so began our journey with a rare condition that most people know nothing about.
Who is the real idiot behind the wheel?
This week I was waiting on a pavement in the Cape Town CBD, waiting for a lift. A car moseyed up one-way Long Street, slowed, stopped. Reversed ten or twenty metres, made a right turn and proceeded on its way. Luckily there were no cars right behind it, and all was well. I smiled, thinking: “Only in South Africa…” And it is amusing, in its way. But really it is indicative of all that is…