22 – 24 January 2023

It is Sunday 22 January 2023. It is late afternoon. Things are starting to cool off slightly after a blistering week in Joburg. I am sitting on the west wing, as we call our west facing stoep overlooking the gravel garden. Cold glass of chenin in hand, both cuckoos are doing their thing: the piet-my-vrou is in voice a few gardens away, the Dideric’s is calling above, feeding on the wing. A couple of herons glide past – on their way from Delta Park to Zoo Lake. God this is nice.

I should be packing. But I’m not. We are mainly packed. Sort of. I am supposed to be doing the spices and cupboard staples from home. Deb has packed her clothes and everything. Not me. I’m sitting here sipping my wine and contemplating what tomorrow brings. Tomorrow we leave on our Big Adventure. 23 Jan. It’s a Monday. Bin day, so after they’ve collected that.

This trip, or the idea of this trip, or the idea of a trip like this, has been in me since I can remember. As the years go by it has grown in voice and slowly but surely, casual reading turns to more serious planning. How to make this work?

One’s head says own business, late 50’s, make hay whilst it lasts. Heart thinks of friends and family gone too soon. Own health – will I have the appetite for this in 10 years time? Heart says carpe diem! Sell the house! Pack it all up! We start looking at that, but the enormity of doing that scares us. So we find another way….delicate negotiations with clients and suppliers alike. Which clients to keep? Which projects to keep? Which could be road worthy? Make the call. Watch the income fall. Do the time money trade off.

We had a bunch of friends and family round last night. Prego’s on the braai. It was so gesellig. All so supportive of our plans, although the range of sentiment is vast, from seething with FOMO, to bemused, to perplexed, to not over my dead body.

So tomorrow we are off and we leave you with this from  Rebecca Solnit’s brilliant book “Orwells Roses” :

This unfamiliar Orwell also brings to mind a famous Buddhist  parable about a person chased by a tiger who, in flight, stumbles over a cliff and grabs a small plant to prevent falling to her death. It’s a strawberry plant that is gradually becoming uprooted  and will soon give way, and it has one beautifully ripe strawberry dangling from it. What, asks the parable, is the right thing to do at that moment, and the answer is to savour the berry’