Autumn colour

The computer whizkid is really a surfer and admitted happily that computers are not his thing. He says only time will tell if his tinkering around yesterday  fixed anything. He is off to dice with high rollers on his waxed surfboard  in the bay. He blew kisses to my dogs (renamed Dweeb and Cruncher) as he left and said he is going to ace something or other as he barrels, tubes, drops and guns his way to victory. No pearl diving, no faceplants, no getting scabbed. I should have known that a computer expert who called me ‘Dude’ or ‘Bra’  and thought my puppies were ‘awesome hot dogs’ might not have had my best interests at heart. While I was out yesterday, he ate all the peanut butter, four toasted paninis, a jar of honey, two cans of peaches and a slab of dark Lindt chocolate. Everything was rad and bitching but he was so effing over himself as regards my computer that he just bookmarked some surfer sites for himself and ‘kind of gave up, no time for bummers, Dude’.

So my computer  may need a new technician who will have to come from Cape Town and  will reveal him- or herself as  a secret cross-country runner or a sex addict or a thwarted novelist. Rather like waiters who are undiscovered actors or film stars waiting in the wings.

The antibiotics have kicked in and I am feeling better. Yesterday I went out for lunch and had butternut soup and freshly squeezed orange juice sitting on the verandah of a converted farmhouse looking out at our magnicent Cape Fold mountains in the wintery sunshine and feeling wiped out. My friends had oxtail in small cast-iron cooking pots and springbok carpaccio and piripiri chicken livers. The bread was homemade and very nutty.

 There were wagtails on the lawn and a fountain playing in one corner. Pin oaks turning red and golden at the edge of the garden, poplars with thinning  leaves. Near the parking lot, there was an enclosed pen with eight or nine mountain tortoises, kept there to amuse foreign visitors. I wish  locals wouldn’t  do this — most wildlife does not thrive in captivity and these tortoises seemed to have breathing difficulties, possibly a compromised immune system.

This Cape autumn is so lovely and I cherish every walk and drive through the countryside. I suppose some of this enhanced appreciation has to do with the lost years when I would realise a drunken summer had slipped by without my noticing it, that I was a year older and no wiser, that the pattern of dreary repetition had not changed. So much wasted time, but I doubt I could have sobered up a day earlier. It takes as long as it takes, before we hit rock bottom and stop digging.

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