Well hello everybody! Tomorrow is Youth Day in South Africa and I’ve done what many people have done – taken Friday off and made a long weekend of it.

We’ve holed ourselves in the hills close to the Magaliesberg, in a stone cottage apply called – Stone Cottage.

The plan is to lounge in the wintry sun, read real books, savouring the smell of the paper as the pages are turned. There’s no wifi and the only internet connection I have is on my phone. The good thing about this is that it will curtail my time online. Nothing wrong with this. I spend way too much time there, mainly getting lost on Twitter.

There are monkeys, porcupines, bunnies and jakkals around. I haven’t heard any yet. Perhaps later.

I have my camera, tripod, and Che has his binoculars. The nights are pitch black. The silence natural.

Every once in a while the lights dim momentarily and twice they’ve suddenly gone out for an interminable couple of seconds. We were warned so there’s no alarm about this. The borehole water is heated with gas and when the shower is turned on it places additional load on the pressure pump causing this to happen.

Che and I are warmly ensconced here until Sunday. We have coffee, tea, hot cross buns and some wine. And chocolate.

I think we’ll be ok 😉

Until tomorrow then…