A tumultuous week for sure

Good afternoon folks I trust today finds you well and ready to tackle the new week. I for one am looking forward to a hopefully calm and peaceful week, after all the chaos and ugliness from last week I am sure every resident is feeling the same way. The protest Action that I mentioned in my last Blog continued in Kleinmond escalating into full blown riots, literally shutting down the little town completely. All businesses, doctors and schools etc were closed, as were the roads leading into and out of town. Residents were asked to stay in their homes in order to maintain some semblance of order where possible. It looked like scenes from a war movie as piles of vehicle tyres and rubbish were set alight and burned all along the streets, at one point a fire was started on the mountain (in a very strong wind), happily it was brought under control fairly quickly. What really saddens me is how situations like this bring out either the best in people or, usually the very worst and I think it would be safe to say that a lot of ugliness reared up which did absolutely nothing to help the situation or ease any of the stress. The roads were closed at Gordons Bay and on the Hermanus intersection which caused no end of problems for residents of the neighboring villages, we decided to take a chance and took Jelly Bean through to work which meant we were stopped at the road block and allowed through, coming home we had to clarify where we live and were cautioned to go slowly. Yaaaay the joys of life.

As you can probably guess there was no exploring or getting out and about, pretty much a home based week for us. Hubby managed to find a gap and deliver the last of the bookshelves to delighted clients, a friend and I braved the weather and the wind on Thursday and took a lovely walk along Silversands Beach which was like a good dose of medicine. On Friday night we had some friends over for an evening of lighthearted fun and a good meal. It was freezing cold which means we needed no excuse to make a roaring fire, I made a big pot of Punjabi Dal Makhani (lentil curry) with Roti's together with a specially paired red wine and we were set. About ten minutes into our meal the power went off and stayed off, oh joy, candles and led torches were found and our dinner went without further incident, after which we hauled out the playing cards and taught our guests how to play Nurch. This card game has the tendency to get quite loud and uncontrollable haha Friday night was no exception, we played until about 12.30 am which is when the torches started fading hahaha. All in all a fantastic evening and definitely one to be repeated. On Sunday morning parts of Bettys Bay were awoken at about 4.30 am to a fire right on their doorstep, at this point there is no news as to what started the fire and again huge kudos go out to the authorities who act so quickly and efficiently in our area, it took a couple of hours but this fire too was extinguished with no damage to homes or residents, it did however leave the entire area without electricity as the power lines were compromised. We had been discussing selling our generator because. the power supply here in the Western Cape is so steady and reliable, I think we will be keeping our generator BUT in future it will be filled and ready to use haha, this weekend it was empty and the petrol station was closed due to the power outage #facepalm. The moral of the story for us is, make sure the candles, torches and generator are all easily available and charged ready to go. It intrigues me how people are so unappreciative of good service delivery and complain loudly and aggressively about everything. We moved here from a different province where if there was a fire it would be at least a half an hour to an hour before the Fire Dept would be on the scene, if there was a power outage it could take a week and more to fix, during protest action refuse removal and services would come to a complete halt etc. Down here in the Western Cape within 10 - 20 minutes the Fire Dept is on the scene, the power outage which was due to a transformer going down took 6 hours, a specialist team were brought into Kleinmond in order to complete refuse and sewage removal. What a pleasure it is to live in a Province which is being correctly governed and communities are still serviced, well done Cape Town.

In amongst the turmoil our Princess had a big athletics meeting on Friday and, after having been at home for most of the week with flu she insisted on taking part. WELL ......... This little star had quite a day. She won gold for Sprint, Hurdles, Shot Put and broke the TUKS record for High Jump in her age group by jumping 1.47m, she also won silver for Relay. CONGRATULATIONS Princess there are no words to describe how proud your Mommy and the rest of us are, you are incredible.

Folks that was what this particular stretch of my winding road travelled through this past week, I thank God that there was no loss of life, peace and calm have been restored and hopefully we can now all move on with our lives here in Paradise. I wish you and yours all a beautiful week and please, wherever you go stay aware and safe.

A Pincushion Protea bush looking exquisite.