Lifestyle

The title of this blog entry was originally going to be “The flip side of freedom from fear”, but nobody would have read that. If I’d titled the companion piece to this piece “The main reason I’m glad I left South Africa” instead of “The noise in the night”, I’d be rivalling Traps at the […]

Or rather, why one couple wants to come home. My brother and sister-in-law had a baby last year and though they love their life in Holland, they’re in South Africa for three months at the moment, trying to see if moving back home is a feasible idea. Why? Let’s see … 1. Why do you […]

The other night, a loud noise jolted me out of my slumbers. Immediately, I went into panic mode: adrenaline surging, heart thumping, muscles rigid, hearing attuned to the slightest clue as to what the cause might be. I waited. Another thump. The pipes? Then the faint sound of water running. It was the woman who […]

So wrong, yet so right! I bet most of you have these moments, but not as much as I do these days. You know? You see something that is horrendously wrong, but it gives you so much pleasure even though you know your mother would’ve slapped you three times from Sunday had she been close […]

Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting our former ambassador to Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the Vatican, Her Excellency Konji Sebati, who was due to fly out later in the afternoon to assume her position as our new French ambassador. Her Excellency is a medical doctor who grew up in Soweto and worked for the Pfizer […]

In the mood for a little distraction to start off your week? Take a look at Stop Crime Say Hello — a local organisation built on the premise that if South Africans said hello to each other more and treated each other better at work and in life, the amount of violent crime would drop. […]

I’d been meaning to write this blog about my wife for quite a while, but a current piece by Sarah Britten on poisonous snakes prompted me to get on with the job. Ouch. That sounds terrible. I hasten to add that this is not because I think my wife, Marion, better known as chookie or […]

“Mid-summer is snake-bite season and Sydney vets are treating more pets than usual for brown and black snake bites,” reads the article in the latest issue of The Mosman Daily. “The snakes are biting in suburban areas too, not just in neighbourhoods near bushland. Dozens of cats and dogs are being treated each week but […]

The sight must have been amusing and alarming: a tall, young Chinese man doing a flying kung fu kick and bouncing off my back. He then dashed off and I was rather relieved. The Chinese government takes a dim view of public scuffles; we could well have both ended up in a police station. What […]

It was fascinating to watch Beauty and the Beast in Cape Town just three weeks after having watched a production of that other great Disney musical The Lion King in London. There were so many South Africans on that West End stage that I lost count thanks to that show’s former run in Johannesburg. So […]