Lingering in Langebaan

As I type the grey skies are billowing closer to the window all the time and trees are increasing in their sway. I see 20 white sails buzzing about in the distance and the bendy parachute of a kite surfer wheeling above the moulded roofs. Club Mykonos is a Greek themed resort, complete with replica windmills, narrow and winding lanes, whitewashed walls, moulded cement roofs and a thousand stray cats.

Our Greek window on the world

TV and mobile phone mast cunningly disguised as a replica Mykonos windmill

The entire community is gated behind barriers and security posts and the main entrance guarded by 5 huge concrete cats, or dogs, or leopards - their sleek white shape is a little indistinct - sat on a blockading entry wall which has arches cut into it like city gates.

No doubt these also replicate some famous Mykonos landmark but I'm afraid both the cultural reference and species are lost on me

I have to admire the planning, even is it not really my type of place. Every bend and twist is full of garden and hidden enclaves with a braai pit, garden tables or even paddling pools and every wooden shutter, staircase and balcony painted in colour blocks, making me feel I have been allocated to the Green Club in nursery school.

It is intended to be a place no one need leave, with a spa, sail training school, jet skis and kayaks for hire, beach volleyball net, cafe, restaurants and mini-supermarket, even a casino which is duly tacky, a larger than life plastic Egyptian goddess at its entrance and a hundred slot machines around a bar. At dusk the weaver birds which have hung their nests like huge ripe pears from only certain trees, the way humans congregate and build at river crossings and natural harbours, start to sing with manic excitement. On Saturday night the boom, boom boom of a baseline kicks out from a makeshift party tent on the beach. But is it all out of season and rather empty in this African winter so I hear the radios playing from the phones of the groundstaff all day long as contrast to the echoing fake alleyways of this little Greece.

The tree full of weaver bird nests

Same breakfast special every day I've been here

Marina in the mist

At least something is enjoying the pool

Testimony to the out of season air of abandonment is the onsite mini-supermarket which is barely stocked and still selling milk with a sell by date of 10 June, today, on 20 June. In the 12 days or so I've been here we've had virtually ever weather. Today, again, is cool and squally after strong winds through the night that made us put the heating on. Yesterday was hot and I sat outside writing, picking up a tan as the sun bounced off all the white walls. I went for a walk to break up the day and of course, was the only one besides children in shorts. It is winter here, so fashion time for jeans and padded eskimo boots and woolly sweaters, regardless that it is still 23C or so. I imagine it would be far too hot for me in summer. We had a couple nights of spectacular thunderstorms which blanked out the satellite signal for the TV. Just now the moon is huge, nearly the full open eye of the dark wolf of night, but earlier, when the wolf was still blinking, I reacquainted myself with the Southern Cross, just to be sure I had indeed crossed the equator while incarcerated in that huge flying bird for 12 hours.

On-site church, Agioa Nikolaos - Patron Saint of Seafarers (unfortunately positioned next door to the sail training school)

There are of course maids who clean the apartments every day, but I still hate to think of them coming in to find a mess, so I already do the dishes and make the bed and hang up the towels and all that. They still remake the bed each time, folding it into those military corners that makes you feel like you've been vacuum packed when you slide into bed. Every night I undo their efforts and pull the top sheet completely clear again. I'd like to tell them not to bother coming, or maybe just come once a week, but that is not really the point.

John leaves at 6am and gets back often after 7 or later, with a laptop of work still to do. It is the end of the project period so I have plenty of time to kill and I have to be patient. I have been writing a lot. Catching up on old ideas that have sat in the back of my mind. I'm afraid the tiny mall, about 1km walk away has very limited appeal and there is only so much coffee one can drink alone and while the cost of a massage is very cheap compared to home, again, it is hardly something I need every day. I did try to walk out of the resort along the coast but very quickly hit private property, so I am somewhat marooned here without the sunshine making the area swing, as is often the case when I visit John. Croatia was a very happy exception to that where I had the whole island to walk over and warm seas to swim in and I spent long days finding new routes between the olive and fig trees. In Italy too, lovely Christmas Ravenna and its many beautiful mosaics, but it was expensive there so I spent many hours just looking. So while being here is hardly a holiday, no sunset strolls, or cocktails, or books by the pool, or time to visit the local wildlife parks, it is breathing space. I actually prefer the rainy days because then I can sit at the lap top all day without feeling a guilt that comes from living in a sunshine deprived country. I never got used to the constant sunshine in Uganda, even though I knew it would be there the next day and the next day, there was always that pull to be outside and not waste the chance of sun on skin we get so rarely at home.

Collection of bad hair days

Still plenty birds, despite all the cats

Alaska, Alberta, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and now South Africa, with of course a long hop in Scotland, so I hope I never become ungrateful, even if I do find myself lingering in Langebaan for a couple of weeks. It is a chance to eat fresh guava and papaya and snoek again and see a very old friend, now pregnant and about to get married, and hear the Afrikaans accent and walk barefoot on a beach while surfers enjoy the turquoise swell and watch the crazy weather pass over and catch up with old ideas. What is that saying, only the boring get bored? Well, I'm only human but I do my best with wherever I've got to.

After writing and posting this, I went for another walk and finally found some sanity - a route around the private lands and onto the untamed dunes of Paradise Beach. I was rewarded for my 3 hour trek in the sand dunes and fynbos with endless flowers, and myriad birds, springbok and a new buddy.

Route to sanity

Morning dew

The dawn chatter

My new buddy