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Friday, February 27, 2009
Kgalagadi-bound
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Labels:
Namibia,
Road Trip,
South Africa
Things change
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The domestic primate
I am really, really trying not to read the newspaper. I don't need it. I usually don't like it. Then there's a gem like this.
"Once, when Bob was leading him from an outdoor enclosure back to his cage in the house, Higgins exploded and the two got into a battle so ferocious that despite the steel mesh glove Bob was wearing, he screamed for Carlie to get his .22 rifle and put a bullet in Higgins’s head. She got Higgins a slice of raisin bread instead, quickly defusing the fight."
I, too, stop for raisin bread.
Story here.
"Once, when Bob was leading him from an outdoor enclosure back to his cage in the house, Higgins exploded and the two got into a battle so ferocious that despite the steel mesh glove Bob was wearing, he screamed for Carlie to get his .22 rifle and put a bullet in Higgins’s head. She got Higgins a slice of raisin bread instead, quickly defusing the fight."
I, too, stop for raisin bread.
Story here.
Labels:
Esoterica
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Return to Klein Aus Vista
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And when we arived back at our favourite campsite just outside Aus, we noticed that their few grapes, too, were bagged.
The sociable weavers welcomed us back and we put crumbs in our hands. Shy at first they got the hang of it in no time.
And the little striped mice that inhabit each bush shared with weavers.
I couldn't help it. It was such fun being being so close to them...
We went for a walk on the Sunset Trail, starting from the camp and listed as an hour-and-a-half long. We were hoping to see the wild horses that make the area famous...but the trail didn't take us over the hills as we thought it might, to look over the plains beneath (another one does, if you have four hours for it).
Instead we made a wide loop, seeing, frozen on the rocks, two klipspringers, the sweet little gazelles that leap vertically up rock faces. Vince spotted them in the rocks and we snuck up a little closer. They stared. They choose to stand in the most rocky place, all four feet on one pebble, even if there is a flat piece of ground nearby.
I saw quite a few of these wine-red, succulenty shrubs. In spring, I imagine, they do something very spectacular...
Like this...
And this shrub looked as though it might be at home in an English garden. NO idea what this is...
Any ideas?
Time to slice open the foreign fruit.
It looked very fetching with our tropical collection.
Huh. I licked. Cucumber. I nibbled. Cucumber. I decided not to swallow the seeds. Just in case.
Now, back at home again, I started reading Don't Die in the Bundu, by Col. D.H. Grainger, O.B.E., E.D. [Howard Timmins, Cape Town and no indication to date, though it is the 8th edition and the price is R2.50 printed on the flyleaf. It was given by my father to my eldest brother Anton in 1976 wih the inscription ,"In the sincere hope that we won't."].
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When we got back we had gins and tonics in our trusty mugs. It really does taste better out of glass. But the glass was in the Namib. Yes, we did clean it up...
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It was written by a Rhodesian soldier, so there's all that baggage, but it is very interesting in a quaint and boys' own kind of way. It is basically a pocket survival guide where the final advice for most medical emergencies is Get Medical Help. There is a drawing in it of what looks like this fruit. "Cucumis metuliferus - jelly melon, muTete... eaten raw orcooked but the bitter strains are poisonous."
Or "Cucumis anguria:...smells like cut cucumber and is a valuable source of water. However there are bitter-fruited varieties which are poisonous..."
Or "Cucumis anguria:...smells like cut cucumber and is a valuable source of water. However there are bitter-fruited varieties which are poisonous..."
I got no Othello ticket
Othello at the Duke is Sold Out.
ARGH!
Ratsratsratsrats.
I'll trade?
Boeuf bourgignon, the best? My last red currant jam? The recipe for a Missouri Mule? Garden consultation? Fresh herbs every month? Play the flute?
....
ARGH!
Ratsratsratsrats.
I'll trade?
Boeuf bourgignon, the best? My last red currant jam? The recipe for a Missouri Mule? Garden consultation? Fresh herbs every month? Play the flute?
....
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Phillida's Country Bread
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The bread above, a flat top sort of bread, is the home version that I grew up with. The sticky mix rises in the bread tin and is baked as soon as it has about doubled in bulk. Cut fresh and then frozen, I toast it for my breakfast. Here I ate it hot from the oven for supper with shameless amounts of butter, and Fynbos honey, brought from Cape Town.
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Who is Phillida? All I know is that Phillida used to - and may still - bake the bread at the Matjiesfontein hotel in the Little Karoo.
We stayed there a couple of New Year's eves in a row to escape the dread and depression of Forced Mirth and of Not Having a Party in Cape Town. Matjiesfontein is a train station, the hotel, a shop, and that's about it. The stars are wonderful, the silence profound, even if there is a ringing to it, and the service and accommodation rooted in another time. At midnight my dad would fire a Swiss-made rocket from an empty champagne bottle in the only street.
Phillida's bread was served with chicken liver pate at night and butter and jam in the morning. My mom first published her recipe for the bread in House and Leisure, when she was its food editor.
[12 October 2010: Thanks to Lily for this clipping from House and Leisure]
An aside: at the booksale (books are VERY expensive in SA) at Exclusive Books in Constantia in January, I was about to purchase Richard E. Grant's journal about the making of his movie Wah Wah. A good film. But as I leafed through the book an entry jumped out. It was rather whiney, true (in the vein of "lamb lamb and lamb on the menu, with three starches." But that's why you go there. Boerekos Timewarp), so that's off-putting , but it described how he was staying at the hotel at "Meitjiesfontein". Oh, common! I put the book down and turned my back on it.
Over-reaction to a typo? Maybe, since I make many myself. But it's the trajectory of a typo that fascinates me. WHO is checking? It's a place name for goodness' sake. And ironic that the memoir of a film about the end of colonialism in an African monarchy makes a very colonial error about a super-colonial ex-British outpost!
Meitjiesfontein. What was the former South African thinking?
Here's another trivial tidbit about inaccuracies in the film.
Historical fact quibbling aside, it's still well made and very worth the watching.
Labels:
Food,
Meals for me,
South Africa
One trip, two stories
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More desert tales later today.
In the meantime you can catch up with the Frenchie's Namibian pictures and story here.
Labels:
Main Man,
Meals for me,
Namibia
Brooklyn Botanical Garden in February
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Labels:
Brooklyn,
Flora,
New York Winter,
Public Parks and Gardens
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