Out of The Hat column, Stanford River Talk, May 2013.
I can see it now.
Queen Victoria Street, Saturday morning… people milling about at the morning market, Brydon’s lemon tart in one hand, Elsa’s mozzarella in the other, and complaining in a genteel and socially decorous manner about what happened to Tracy’s trees and the fact that the Municipality sat fatly by and did diddly-very-squat about it.
Then a hush falls over the small gathering. A lemon tart makes a ka-plop as it falls, lemony side-down of course, on cold, hard concrete. A Yorkshire Terrier squeaks as the weight of a Stanford Info leaflet drifts gently past its ear.
Many faces all turn sharply in one direction and reflect absolute horror. Well, OK, not horror… more a face-mash of wonder and consternation, lightly garnished with escalating anxiety.
Stanford’s children, practically all of them and from every corner of the village, are coming down Queen Victoria Street. And not just strolling, as they usually do in that somewhat directionless we’re-not-quite-sure-where-we’re-going-but-we-are sure-we’re going-to-have-fun way that Stanford’s children appear to have perfected. No. Not at all. Not today.
It was my day off – released from the pixel-searing underbelly of The Argus building – so I hopped on a spray-paint-clad carriage for Kalk Bay.
One of those gloriously still and sunny days occasionally gifted Cape Town by the whimsical windstreams and K Bay showed its most flirtatious face.
I lunched in the heart-warm bosom of the Olympia – and within perfume range of the delightful Dame Janet Suzman – before unleashing my camera on myriad shadows, reflections and warmly-lit walls.
It was then that it dawned on me that we might have wriggled free of winter’s grasp… and, when I saw this young boy playing on the wall of the tidal pool next to the seemingly ancient Brass Bell, I mused that summer had indeed kicked off.
Pic: Hatman Photography
Shot. But so, too, did summer’s wicked wink shoot by and grey drizzle returned the following day. No matter. I had captured in my mind’s eye the golden glow of a majestic and memorable day and that will sustain me until my return to Stanford. And the promise of diving naked off the Jetty of Love into the Klein River by the light of the moon.
