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A DIARY. DAY ONE
January 1, 1999. By the sea. A new life.
As a symbolic act of Change at 3 a.m. on New Year's Day - a change in lifestyle, in residence, in attitude towards the forces of the universe - I threw away my empty toothpaste tube and brought out a new one.
Well, a half-used one, which happened to be lying among the still-unpacked junk in the bathroom.
It wasn't an auspicious start to what I hope will be one more active, final, decade of this brief life. New Year's Eve was the first in fifty years I have spent without the usual revelry, laughter and bursting bubbles among the moist kisses. Five minutes after midnight I was alone, and did not even open the final, meagre half-size bottle of Moet e Chandon I'd put on ice for a toast in solitude to the lonely sea and the sky at our door.
Forgoing that final glass was in itself was a very serious symbol of change.
Arlene and I had decided that we were too exhausted to celebrate, after a frantic year of winding up our careers (while in between I was researching, writing/editing, printing, publishing and launching two books). We felt we were foggy, febrile and often feculent from nine months of commuting to the Cape and bashing down walls, floors and ceilings to rebuild our new home-on-the-cliffs. We were furious and fearful of the soaring cost; fractious and feverish from the unending queue of crises which this created. Eight weeks of moving from the highveld to the south Atlantic finally finished us. . . and I haven't even reached the F word in describing the frenzied ferment.
It has been suggested several times that I should write a book on moving and rebuilding a house, but I have read such accounts before and our own experience is too incredible to be taken seriously, or even lightly. Would you believe owning a toilet that flushed steaming hot water? Or steam in the gutters on a cold day? (Geyser incorrectly connected again, and sending hot water flowing into the downpipes). Or:
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placing beautiful old teak windows into the garage/courtyard wall, then tearing them out again because they're "not right".
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replacing them with expensive, specially designed, custom-made windows - then tearing them out again because they are the wrong size.
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Putting in cheap, mass--produced, out-house windows because these, I am told, are aesthetically correct and satisfying.
If we had concentrated on being aesthetic in the first place, we would have paid R300 instead of R7 000. Many of our renovations had to be done more than once.
Re-building the house was hell., but the place, we soon discovered was close to Paradise.
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Each morning I step out of my front-gate onto the winding path in the fynbos that clings to the cliff, and each walk is a new adventure. The intention is always to stride briskly between sea and mountains for about six kilometres, breathing in the wind and the salt spray. But the wild flowers wave and cry out for attention. As I am hoping to introduce the prettiest and shyest of them to our own sea garden adjoining the fynbos, I stop to study this life-form. It is a revelation. Time stands still in astonishment at my ignorance and my wonder. Flowers have never got in the way of a good walk before, but now the six-kilometres are reduced to a few hundred paces, yet take twice as long.
To make up for it, I plan next morning to jog part of a brisk eight kilometres along the bay.. Instead, I spy a patch of sand wedged between the cliffs and the sea rocks - and lying in the sun, unabashedly exposed and as beautiful as nature intended, is Tranquillity. That's the name that immediately suggests itself, but I am soon to discover how false it is. I scramble down a size-seven-shoe-wide path to the isolated little beach, deliberately postponing a meeting by giving my attention to a pair of Whitefronted Plovers which are scurrying along the sand.
Tranquillity beckons. But I glimpse another presence in this private place. It is an oystercatcher, poised for flight from the point of a rock ridge where its startling red beak and red-ringed eye create an exclamation mark. The main rock runs directly from the beach to sea, but stops a few metres short of the sea to form a wave ledge which then drops straight down into the ocean. Tranquillity, long legs apart, long fingers reaching into the sand, basks in the sun on the other side of the rock ridge, head close to the edge but undisturbed by the Atlantic rollers that are completing a thousand-mile march to fling themselves in frustration against the ledge
.From behind the ridge, I reach within two metres of the bird I am stalking. Never have I been so close to an Oystercatcher. Except in paradisiacal places like this, the African Oystercatcher, dressed elegantly in black with a dazzling red beak is seldom found and is everywhere endangered. This is partly because of its habit of living on the seashore, but never venturing to sea.
It's coral-red ringed eye stares at me in disbelief from close quarters before it indignantly takes wing, calling on its mate to follow. As I stand up to watch its flight, I am acutely aware of "Tranquillity" - and the advance guard of new, bigger combers rising to attack us.
The hiss of retreating white water, tumbling down the wave-ledge is interrupted by the big-gun thump of surf thudding against the ledge . This wave, too, falls back into the next advancing line. Only now do I realise that the big battalions have suddenly arrived. I stare in horror as the newcomers, already towering above my head, rise higher into the sky to overcome their retreating forerunners, and prepare to crash down on the flat rock,. As I scramble desperately backwards the air reverberates with the canon-thump of an Atlantic roller hitting the side of the ledge. The surf rockets into the sky, threatening oblivion. . . then falls harmlesslessly back on itself. "
Tranquillity" has disappeared. The great pool between the rocks has been transformed from a cool, languid serenity into a foaming cataract, the sea boiling over its arms and legs and spilling into smaller runnels that form fingers running into the beach.. Where blue and gold water lay on warm white shelves a moment ago, there is a blanket of foam, hissing whitely.
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When I get to know the place better, I realise that this serene, rock-encased gem of sea-water can never be named "Tranquillity". During every period of high seas - when even the little beach beyond is under water, the pool on the wave ledge is assaulted and brutally smothered by the restless giants of the South Atlantic ending their journey in the trap of Walker Bay. The place, in fact, was long ago named by local fisherman Kwaaiwater, and is officially marked so on the map The 'tranquil' pool lies on a turbulent point at the very edge of "Angry Waters".
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