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August
30 - MONTHLY WEATHER REPORT
After
below average rainfall figures were recorded for most months this
year (very little in July, nothing measurable in our time before
that) this month turned out to be the wettest August in 12 years.
Some 94mm was measured in my gauge (and at the Magnetic Observatory
in Westcliff), which is 13.8mm more than the average for August over
the last 50 years.
The
previous highest August total was 143mm in 1987.
In
1998 during the month we were renovating this house, 47,3mm fell,
some of it while we were visiting and staying at Whale Beach, or
whatever that Westcliff time-share resort is called.
Thursday,
September 15
I'd
better remind myself instantly that 65mm of rain have fallen so far
this month. We have bought a marvellous old barometre, circa 1820,
fashioned in fine wood and inlay by Mr Mills of Shipton, Yorkshire.
We have discovered that barometres move only a few degrees between
about 29.8 and 30.2 (I'll
check on that through the year) 'But
if it drops to 29 - then run for the hills for the greatest tornado
of all time must be coming.'
'What
about that full 'clock-face'
with Stormy/windy/fair/dry written so boldly and beautifully all over
the other 330 or so degrees of the circle?'
'All
decoration'.
What
an old fashioned seventeenth or sixteenth century confidence trick.
It
dropped below 30 the other day, just before I took our John for a
driving lesson in his new (well, I mean smart secondhand, somewhat
aged) van which I am financing. A windstorm blew-up to beat the band
- dust clouds, cyclists falling over, and John clinging to his
steering wheel for dear life. When the wind abated, it rained,
contributing to the 65mm by mid-month.
But
this is glorious September, and most days are fine, warm and
exhilarating. There have been dramatic announcements about snow
covering the Cape mountains. We even saw a peak only about 15kms
from our doorstep - back behind Hemel-en-Aarde valley - capped with
snow. ('Babylon Tower'
is its name, in Afrikaans). But temperatures beside the sea never
seem to go anywhere near the cold of a normal highveld night. 8deg.C
is as cold as we have felt it so far, even with that nearby snow.
Our
cliffside is becoming impossible to describe. . . More and more
flowers keep popping out of the bushes. The arum lilies stand in
massed white ranks right to the water's
edge at Kwaaiwater beach. Today I noticed that the biggest of the
vygies - the fat fingers - were flowering. Their
purple-petalled blossoms look the mirror image of the plum-size
sea-anenomes in Serenity pool - a quite startling resemblance. Sea
and land are so comfortable together here. The dassie sits sometimes
where I saw that baby seal last Christmas. The flowers among the
rocks in our cove get doused by waves at springtide. Cormorants and
seagulls sometimes sit next to the benches.
One
of the most spectacular sights in all Nature, I imagine, has been
occurring outside this window in the past few days. It catches your
breath, no matter how many times you witness it- a huge Right whale
leaping clear out of the sea, like a fat Boeing with stubby wings.
You see half its body rising like a tower from the water;
callosities glistening on its black back; its great eye watching you
from below that huge, down-turned mouth. The the rest of the whale
comes out of the sea like a rocket, and its whole giant frame
crashes on the surface, creating a splash which can be seen for
miles. The white water remains frothing, seemingly for minutes;
sometimes until the whale's
next jump. It is a grand sight from every angle - going away from
you like a huge submarine about to dive, its two fins thrust
sideways in the air, forming wings, or rather stabilisers. The view
from the side I have already described. But best of all is to
watch a whale twisting as it dives, its surf-white belly dazzling in
the sun as it falls back into the waves, turning a patch of sea as
white as its own body.
Only
for the last few days have big whales been jumping nearby like
dolphins. Before that they were content to wallow, and stand on
their heads, leaving their tails waving in the air at the height of
a house. Who knows that the behaviour patterns are? I suspect
no-one is sure, and I was delighted to hear a scientist and academic
expert say so on Mike Wills radio the other day.
The
Hermanus Whale Festival is coming. I really must record some of it
in this diary, for it seems to be turning into a sort of Grahamstown
arts festival - but with less art and perhaps more wine and more
song.
Friday
September 17
Shortly
after completing the last entry I noticed that the barometre had
dropped suddenly to 29.5. First came the north-wester, and then the
rain (about 20mm). This moring we woke up to huge seas crashing
over the Barricades outside our window and shooting columns of white
foam higher than we have seen them at this rock before. Even at low
tide this afternoon, combers were
creaming
over Kraal Rock, on our right, running up to the beacon and pouring
over the sides.
The
sight was spectacular on Die Gang (Another unimaginative name given
because, about 60 years ago some-one tried to build a hanging
causeway across a chasm there. Of course the seas quickly
destroyed it, so that only two squat cement pillars remain). Today
waves were bursting upwards and landing on the platform at the top
of Die Gang where fishermen usually sit several storeys above the
sea.waves. I watched one explosion of white water soar up as a
solid white pillar twice as high as that, reaching the same
level as the top of the tallest 60-foot Norfolk pine standing about
100 metres inland.
A
baby whale beached beyond Voelklip during the night. It was
probably dead before it reached the shore. I took the dogs for a
six-kilometre (or more) walk in the blustery weather to witness the
sight. An expert said that the whale was probably prematurely born
and was only about two days old. Some of us who know nothing (which
isn't much less than the
experts' knowledge) said
that the whale must be older than that for it was already carrying
hundreds of sea-lice (orange-tinged scorpion-like crabs about the
size of a 10c piece). We thought that the baby - whatever its age -
must have been caught by the huge seas roaring onto that beach.
The whales and their calves come very close to the cliffs, where
they are safe, but less so where the land shelves gradually for a
couple of hundred metres and the waves break far out.
Perhaps
the experts are right (!) because even a healthy baby whale must be
a pretty powerful swimmer. ('Baby
Dick', buried some years
ago when washed ashore at Kwaaiwater was nearly 10 metres long).
This one I estimated to be about six metres long, small - but bigger
than an elephant. It's
tail was about 2 metres wide, its mouth about a metre wide. They had
to saw it in half and viscerate (wots the word I'm
looking for?) it before they could move it. Six men, using
10-foot steel poles, couldn't
even roll it over, let alone drag it.
Whatever
its cause of death there must be a most distressed momma whale out
there today. Several whales are outside my window right now - far
from the death scene. They're
waving their tails in the wave crests, or wallowing in the white
water. I'm becoming so
used to the scene that I am in danger of forgetting how special it
is.
How
many dogs have actually sniffed a whale, and licked the hairs under
its chin? Candy and Susie did so, but didn't
seem particularly impressed with the experience. They reacted much
more when spray from a giant wave landed on them on the top cliff
path.
September
28
It's
"Whale Festival" time in Hermanus, and the rock bands are
stompin; the stomp bands are rocking. There's chamber music in the
school hall, and "Gamour Girls" singing Gershwin,
Sondheim, Lloyd by candlight in the Wine Village Restaurant. (The
Glamour Girls were so bad some of the audience had to walk away to
stop the giggles when we were there. Fortunately we had a table
half-hidden from the stage. I apologised to our guests, but Arlene
said she had the best laugh in years). This is a schizophrenic
community. Some of it is highly sophisticated; some of it humble and
kind; some of it pure straw; and some of it is new gangland -
poachers and gunmen smuggling crayfish and abalone to sell to the
East at huge prices. The sophisticates, or rather the rich elderly -
which doesn't include us of course - have left town for the duration
of the festival to get away from "the bad crowd that descends
on our village".
Bad
crowd?
"Drugs
and drink. Mobs and noise."
We
didn't notice because, after six months of sun and calm, winter
arrived in spring and we've just ended five days of rain and
blizzard which kept some of the visiting hordes at bay.
We
didn't notice because we were glued to the box from noon to 1 am
each night (well, Arlene watched for about an hour in the evening)
as the Ryder Cup unfolded. Great stuff. The English/Scots/Irish
commentators, agreed that it was more
like a football match ,
and that golf would never be the same again. They might have said
that about themselves, but failed to notice it. Patriotism raised
its ugly head. Team competitiveness. Passion.
"We
try to be unbiassed," said the English voice.
"Impossible,"
said the Scot, "we're backing Europe."
And
so they did in highly untraditional fashion. They were miffed, of
course, at the pre-match comments that Europe was so weak it would
be an exhibition of golf, not a contest; and that the US had the 12
best golfers in the world playing for them and Europe had nothing.
They were more than indignant at the suggestion that the Presidents
Cup - US vs the World - should replace the Ryder Cup. So everyone
got very excited on the European TV channels about the performance
of their team. . . until the last day. Then they grew very excited
about crowd behaviour "nothing like this has been seen in golf
ever before. Where are the marshalls? It's only a few hooligans
among the crowd, of course. Ben Crenshaw will hate this. Now the US
team itself has run onto the green before our man has putted! Bad
show. They should know better. It's the excitement of course..."
And so it was. Great stuff. Great golf.
Now
I have to give up all my quality time for a month. The Rugby World
Cup starts on 1st October. The hype is higher than Everest
Marvellous
how these little things move towards centre stage when you are not
working. The worlds of politics and money become increasingly
irrelevant, and one doesnt
mind being out of touch. Time magazine contains no real
news. The local papers are obsessed with their navel in Cape Town.
The Weekly Telegraph is mildly interesting for its
backgrounders, as is the SA Sunday Independent of course.
Im gearing myself up to
pay huge fees to import The Spectator and The Week from the UK. But perhaps I shall find more relevant reads, more
passionate politics, more wisdom, when I learn to browse the world
media through the internet. Fat chance - of learning the skill and
the PATIENCE.. . and also of finding wisdom through the computer
box, no doubt.
(A
whale has just created a monster splash out there. . . but more of
that later.)
Yesterday
was my 71st birthday, and I was unnecessarily reminded of it by
Arlene and her children, by my children, singing grandchildren and
kind friends - but their calls and messages turned it into the
warmest, happiest birthday I can remember since childhood.
The
anniversary was in fact marked in advance on dark,wet Sunday when
Barry met Arlene and I at the Birkenhead brewery, where scheduled
golf, volleyball and other games for the Festival were washed out,
but where the band played on in the marquee and we discovered the
very best beer of the southern hemisphere, if not the world!. A
marzen (March) beer appropriately brewed for the Oktoberfes...
appropriate because of the opposite seasonsof the two global
hemispheres. The recipe for marzen is a 200-year-old brew from
Munchen out. Birkenhead produced it as the first draught beer I
have tasted that beats bottled beer (other than a freshly brewed
Amstel once in Holland) several pints and a fun-lunch were enjoyed
by all.
Earlier
we had visited the Hermanus Botanical Societys
annual flower show - a marvellous amateur exhibition that attracted
even professional botanists from America. The locals had placed
proteas and decorative mountain vegetation in arrangements that
reached from floor to roof. They created brillaint butterflies, a
metre or more in diametre, made of proteas and fynbos flowers.
Flowers and fynbos were also shaped into life-size herons, and wild
ducks, resting on a mirror pool beneath clumps of tall restos . But
the highlight for Arlene and I was the display of newly picked
fynbos blossoms, taken from Fernkloof and the surrounding hills.
There were about 280 different species (not specimens!) each
labelled with its correct latin and common names. I cant
remember a single one of the labels, but some of the flowers are
pictures in my head.
The
weather remains winterish, as we visit the old Marine Hotel for the
first time since we settled in our house - I should say the new
multimillion-rand refurbished Marine. It has style. But the suite
which we used a year ago while building - costing us R650 for bed
and breakfast, now cost a few thousand for the nights
head on pillow. I mention this only because it was the venue of
modest little festival show called Travellin
Light. Two itinerant
guitar players - but half the show was a monolgue on Einstein and
relativity. It was good being reminded that light travels at 300
000 kms a second; a torch-beams light could travel round the Earth a
number of times in a second; that the sun sets eight minutes before
we see its last light, and all the old info wrapped in whimsy and
ragtime and blues.
September
30
After
the north-west bluster came the snow and rain. Then the drizzle.
Then the cold sunshine with south-easter. Today is calm and balmy -
as it was in most of winter. The temperature is rising from the 10s
towards the mid-20s, the sun is hot on your back. Spring has finally
sprung.
Every
plant knows it. You can feel it. The lawn signals that it wants to
grow today. Our grapevine, which nearly died mysteriously last
summer, produced a few tentative leaves under the eaves some weeks
back - but today it swells with the promise of buds which should
appear before the weekend.
Outside
our front door, the sea, flecked with white foam, mirrors a blue
sky. The clifftops are covered in urgent green bush and
multicoloured carpets of flowers.
On
a walk with the dogs this morning I counted no less than six
varieties of yellow blooms - on daisies, rhus bushes, clovers and
other plants. White flowers included the stars still dappling the
mountain-minty agathosma shrubs (Coleonema album Barry tells
me. The book says the
aromatic leaves are used in the salt-laden air by fishermen to
remove the odour of red bait [aas] from their hands, hence the
common name Aasbossie.
But it is also known as Cape May). Other white flowers include arum
lilies still flourishing along the streams on our clifftop and down
to the beaches; daisies with different coloured centres, and other
varieties including - Snowdrops! Then there are the great patches
of blue, mauve and purple painted by groups of fynbos and vygies. These succulents range from flowers as large as a cricket ball
supported by fingers as fat as your thumb to delicate little blooms
bursting from miniature jellybaby bushes. Where flowers and fynbos
are not dominating the senses, new grass is springing up on the
edges of the paths. Not kikuyu or buffalo or kweek thank goodness,
but delicate grass with graceful, knee-high stems from which
fruitful ears of seed droop.
The
sun is warm and the dassies on the cliff want all of it. They
sunbathe on the rocks not three paces from the path and wont
move unless a dog charges them. Candy and Susie, in harness, stood
on their backlegs and barked in frustration. The dassies just
wiggled their noses. Further along, a mongoose came face to face
with us on a section of path walled by thick bush. He turned and
disappeared into a tunnel of grass. Our two little fluffballs wanted
to give chase - even when I told them the mongoose, though smaller
than they, would eat both for breakfast.
The
tide was low and I was able to walk onto the outer rocks at
Kwaaiwater, just beyond Serenity
Pool. The place was
serene for the first time in ages, with waves booming against the
cliff, but not rising to the platform where they could spill over
into the still waters. The dogs managed superbly among the rocks and
starfish and sea anenomies. They even helped me find a piece of
coral-red sea-bush in a pool - something I havent
picked up on the shore since I was a child.
The
main attraction at this point beyond Serenity
was the whales. About six of them seemed to be playing; turning
circles and holding up their flippers. One mother escorting a young
whale stood on her head, tail in the sky as they often stand - but
this time in such shallow water that she must have had her head on
the sand. I watched the sand rise up and stain a circle of sea the
size of a tennis court. What do they do down there?
The
whales were snorting every few minutes - much more than usual-
blowing their twin fountains of spray and making noises like the
release of giant diesel-truck vacuum brakes. One came so close to
the rocks its spray drifted onto the wave ledge.
Right
now a baby whale is jumping clean out of the sea beyond my balcony.
It caused a splash on one jump which sent waves higher than a boat
and longer than a cricket pitch.
Thats
why I cannot get any work done here.
Biological
note culled from the local press:
Who
has the biggest balls in the world?
The
biggest testicles on earth belong to southern right whales - at
500kg apiece - Hermanus
Times.
Which
means that a pair weigh much more than the entire packet of rugby
springboks, plus the scurmhalf and flyhalf.
A
baby whale is bigger than a full grown elephant. . . I wonder if
any of this is grist to the novel Im
failing to write.
Note
on September 2000. Returning from two months overseas,
we found the coastline greyed with mist, but as glorious as any
sight in the world. There is no wind, yet the seas are running high
(not wild). One wave smashed against Die
Gang and the surf rose
higher than I have ever seen it. It cascaded upwards in a pillar
and dropped from about 20feet directly onto the fishermens
platform on top of the rock.
September
28, a blue, sparkling day; the air filled with ozone and
crystals. A baby whale, the smallest I have seen, is playing
outside our windows. It thinks it is a dolphin, jumping from the
sea, arching and diving back with hardly a ripple. It travels 500
metres, popping into or over the swells, its mother wallowing along
far behind.
October
1. Theres a large,
teenage
whale out there, towards Gearings
Point, making splashes. It leaps up and belly-flops causing a great
fountain of white in a calm blue sea. Over and over again. [I saw it
reaping this game for several mornings. Sometimes, when it failed
to belly-flop after its leap and slid back into the sea, it would
smack the water with its tail as it submerged, causing almost as big
a splash as the belly flop].
October
2. There are four adult whales milling around outside. What
caught my attention was long, exposed back of the biggest whale I
think I have ever seen. It joined three others who swam in a tight
circle, or churned up the water as they swam together with much
activity. Sometimes one would break away. Sometimes they would
emerge as two pairs, fairly far apart. One of them swum on its
back, its great white belly exposed to the sun as the others kept
close.
Was
I watching a mating ritual? From all I have read it seemed so.
Apparently the males arrive in this season and rush down the coast,
each fertilising every female it can. The females accept most of
them. So it is written. While I suspect most of the human knowledge
that has been propounded on the subject, the behaviour today of the
four whales (one female?) seems to tally with the theory. Yet how
does one tell the gender of a whale while glimpsing only sections of
it from the shore?
October
4. From the balcony I watched a baby whale - the same that
imitated a dolphin? - standing on its head and waving its tail in the
sea not 25 paces from the cliff at Die
Gang {I must give that
great buttress a better name. . . and what better than Buttress?)
The baby was playing so close to the rock Arelene thought it would
injure itself. But the mother whale floated right beside the little
one, usually even closer to the cliff. Then a truly large whale came
gliding by our house and teamed up with the mother and calf. We
watched them swim out into the bay, close together, the baby
squeezed between the long, huge shapes. They were still together,
out past Kraal Rock,. For the next two days. A family? Two
females and a calf? Who can tell?
The
cliff path is crowded in with white daisies and lilies; wild yellow
bush blossoms and the great purple blooms of the wildfig. Al kinds
of delicate flowers mingle in between. The robins, the Karoo Prinias
and the sunbirds are active. Saw two Soutyhern Boubous out in the
open, courting.
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