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May 22, 2006
Hibernation weather.
At last, for the first winter since arriving in Hermanus, there appears to be some decent "Hibernation Weather" building up. Three cold fronts in ten days, lots of mist and bluster. Seas beginning to growl and smash against the rocks in fine style ? except that the waves are still subsiding tamely between the passing 'fronts'. . . .and the sun suddenly shines, the birds sing, and one is compelled to go outdoors and be active again.
One of the anticipated pleasures of retiring to the Cape, with its notorious wet winters, was to enjoy two or three months of hibernation. Sitting by the fire, reading good books. Never answering the doorbell or the phone. Curling up with a good wine ? or a Guinness, or best of all, an Urbok beer especially brewed to warm the cockles of one?s soul. At worst, one would merely fall into one's private bad habits ? such as the itch to sit down and scribble words like these.
Instead, the Cape winter turns out to be sister of the Siren worshipped in song and poetry in England where daffodils and bluebells dance in wood and meadow while larks herald the Spring. Here in Hermanus, the winter sunshine is glorious, urging one to do unwise things like run up the mountain; dive into a mountain pool, jog on the beach. Heaven forbid.
But hibernation has been totally denied us.
Funerals
Today we had almost cloud-burst weather. Lovely. Except we had to ride in 10-metre visibility to Cape Town to pay respects at the funeral of a friend, a gentleman of modesty and integrity. He was the exec chairman of Argus newspapers. My boss for 20 years - who, it transpires, envied me my job!.
Hal Miller used to say: "Never do anything in your life; never even think it; unless you are prepared to see it printed on the front page of a newspaper."
Great stuff funerals. I ask those old colleagues and friends who attend: "Why do we never see you anywhere else"?
Anyway, funerals create excellent reunions. That is why I can't stop myself remarking, ?"e should have more of these."
Why does the congregation always suggest its about time I took my turn?
Funerals are fine moments for taking sober stock of the value of immediately late friends; of life and perhaps even of the prospects of death. And this is the weather for them.
Dolphins
Yesterday I watched dolphins hunting in front of my door.
I do not have words to express my gratitude for this privilege.
In a mood created by the funeral a few hours ago, I ask myself: why are so few people granted an opportunity to experience this? But if it were a common experience, would people feel exalted by such a celebration of life, played out at their feet in the seas below the cliff?
It is a relevant question, because many peop;le are entering the sea in Walker Bay every night and are destroying life on the rock-reefs all along this coastline. People whose livelihood has always depended on the sea are threatening to turn the Bay into a desert. Poaching perlemoen (abalone) brings them instant and unheard of rewards - in cash or in consignments of drugs to sell to schoolchildren around here. The promise of wealth blinds them to what they are doing.
Their fishermen fathers must be spinning in Davey Jones's locker.
The kelp, once confined to a few small bays, is marching down a rocky coastline unprotected by abalone and other reef-creatures. The over-grown kelp, now floats free, clogging access before dying in the open sea then piling up in the inlets.. The dolphins, whom we used to see often, visit us less and less.
Those who came yesterday chased fish into our still uncluttered rocky inlet. I watched the dolphins swimming in tighter and tighter circles, rounding up their prey.
Gannets, flying in from far across the bay, hovered and dived into the shoal., missing the sea-hunters by apparent inches. Kelp gulls squatted on the swell, grabbinf for scraps and ignoring the risk of being knocked down by whirling dolphins.. Terns and smaller gulls wheeled and screamed. A patrol of cormorants came to inspect, and stayed to eat. Fortunately, for if they had fetched the hordes of their brethren a few kilometres away, the inlet would have been blackened with their wings.
These dolphins seemed different to our usual visitors. The angled wintry sun lit ip their darkish backs and made their light brown sides and white bellies glint in the waves. They seemed smaller than usual as they hunched down and swum in tight circles.. Perhaps they appeared different because of this method of hunting, I thought at first. But after half an hour ? as the school took off and swam out into the Bay at surprising speed ? I decided these were Common Dolphins, the kind who live on the East Coast, not the West. Yes, these were different to the Bottlenosed Dolphins who used to visit us regularly in their great streaming convoys.
Or is it the other way round? They certainly weren't Humpback Dolphins - were they? The literature is of little help in identification
July 6 2006
May's blustery weather came and went. Since then we have basked in still, crisp, sunny days; our village and mountains and beaches empty of tourists. Yesterday the bluster returned, completing another circle. I went to another funeral yesterday - a wake - for Alan Johnson, a journalist who made his name as a motoring editor.
At his wake, I learned for the first time that he was Irish; that he was a party-man who played piano and guitar and loved to be centre of attraction; that he was a great drinker. He died, suddenly, of a burst liver. On the verandah of the National Sea Rescue Institute we drank to his memory and to our health, waiting for the NSRI boat to carry his ashes into the Bay. It wa a long wait, for the launch disappeared down the coast on a rescue mission, and returned with the body of some-one who had drowned. Then we were able to drink an Irish Whiskey (Flannegans) to the boyo being laid to rest outside our house in Walker Bay.
Today the dolphins are back between 100 and 150 of them I think. The same pale ones, dancing on the waves. Saw others recently, a small pack of a dozen or so, assembling in a circle right under the cliff before wandering off slowly towards the open sea.
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