And so the saddest part of leaving home finally came: saying goodbye to my dearest friends. My first goodbye began with Isa and Shihaam. I already miss you both, and I know you'll appreciate that I'm going to reproduce just two photographs here (the others I'll email to you soonest, promise).






















Here's Isa, looking lovely as she poses for her "academic" pose. Calm, cool and collected.






















... and here's Isa, doing the "bedroom eyes" as inspired by the other various departmental photographs that are currently being uploaded to the English Department Website! This was hilarious and we ended up rolling around in hysterical fits of laughter. I think we were all very relieved that it was lunch-time at the doors were very firmly bolted shut.






















Here's the view from Isa's window, overlooking the Maths building on UCT campus. It looks rather lovely, doesn't it? Although that's just a teeny tiny bit of the never-ending stair-case that stretches from Jameson Hall to Athlone, just about.






















Here's Shihaam looking happy and radiant after a whole year of missing me (I hope!). I was very envious of her dress which was a sort of rust-and-gold peacock design on brown fabric; awfully becoming.






















More bedroom eyes! I wish oh wish that these could be uploaded to the departmental website instead of the traditional boring ones that we typically have to submit! I love this pose, Shihaam!

Dearest Operation Chamomile! Ah. Before leaving, we had to schedule one last visit to High Tea, the delightful tea shop in Constantia, Cape Town.

















They have a new bicycle, used for nearby deliveries of emergency chocolate cakes and coffee.



The location is still as beautiful as ever. This is rather a beautiful picture in the original, I am half tempted to re-upload the original version just so that you, oh Londoners, can feast your eyes and day-dream about sunny South Africa instead of the reality of ice-cold winds, grey clouds and sneezing tube-goers who are affronting our senses as of late.

















Glennnnnn and Rebecca, looking lovely as ever. I really enjoy that they have matching sunglasses in different colours :)






















... and beautiful Bekah, enjoying the morning sun.

















This is the Savoury Muffin that we travelled a million miles for: spinach, tomatoes and cheese served with tomato-chilli jam, butter and cheese. Yum.






















I rather liked that one of the garden workers lovingly folded up his clothes and stored them neatly on top of the statue's head. It half makes you feel insanely guilty that your clothes are lying on the floor (as indeed they are, where I haven't bothered to unpack them properly from my bags that we emptied in a rush to clear space) and half makes you smirk at the snub to (or oblivion of?) the classes that insist of decorative stone sculptures in their gardens for purely aesthetic purposes when the raw materials may have been used for something far more functional elsewhere.

Edit to add: I re-uploaded the original High Tea image :)

And so we're back in the land of the grey cloud, the persistent drizzle and the dry humour. Oh England, have you missed us?

Just before we left SA I had a measles scare - we were at the Waterfront and suddenly I turned spotty (with purple spots, no less!). G and Marc were both very polite and sat through lunch with me looking like spotty mcspot, and then we hurriedly went to the chemist who advise immediate citirisine. Long story short, I had all the symptoms of German Measles, but they went away fairly quickly and effortlessly on the day we had to fly. Ho-hum.

We had a very teary day at the airport and I wasn't much in the mood for taking photographs. Thank you all who came to see us (and the 'planes) off. For once, G slept for a good six hours, and I didn't get a wink in before breakfast. I did watch two very silly movies - Ramona and Beezus and Get Smart. I managed to vent my tear ducts all through the first film, after a dinner of roasted chicken breast and stir-fried vegetables, then somewhere again before breakfast of chicken sausage and scrambled eggs. We landed at 6ish am, had some coffee at Costa, and then began our Great Trek home which took us almost three hours because most of the lines were down (thanks TFL!).

On the upside, stress and general disdain always sends me into a baking frenzy so I googled a fancy-pants recipe and decided on Salted Macadamia Millionaire Shortbread. I've included the link to the recipe on the Waitrose website, but just in case it doesn't work or something happens to the site, I'll reproduce it in full below.

Let me just say, I'm very pleased that I stumbled upon these. They are life-changing and delicious and fool-proof and whaddya doing still reading this and not baking?

Salted Macadamia Millionaire Shortbread - yum!

I haven't driven down Blouberg Beach front in a very long time, so you can imagine my surprise when we happened upon a brand new development exploding with new restaurants, bars and night-life.

Also, there is a bizarre, abandoned and rusted ship just off the beach front:

















It just sits there, waiting to be salvaged, or to become a relic in the pages of Cape Town history.

















Here's Table Mountain just before the sun sets. Isn't it lovely? How does that Counting Crows song go?
"Don't it always seem to go/ that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone."


G took full advantage of the beach setting in his shorts (which have got extremely good use this holiday!) and his polarising filter for the camera. Pictures to follow.

















Sunset! That's Robben Island in the distance.






















Can you guess what this is? Lauriane was suggesting that we ought to say it is a person's leg after being attacked by some incurable leprosy variation while stuck in deepest, darkest Africa. It's actually just the side of a rusted lamp-post. Everything on the beach rusts.

















After much ambling we went to Moyo where we were due to meet up with Richard, Aaron and Villi.

Moyo has a branch in Spier, out Stellenbosch way. This branch is beach-themed:


















This is the bar area (a photo I took earlier, it's not magically midday again inside Moyo). In case you can't see it clearly, those are surfboard chairs and surfboard tables, and, when  you sit on the surfboard, you are obliged to dip your toes into Moyo's moat and sip your cocktails.






















Everything is super rustic and Kenyan-inspired. This is the front cover of the heavy steel-bound menu. Naaaaice.






















While I was admiring the very pretty table decor, a group of four talented men arrived at our table and said, "We're not here to sing to you; we're here to thank you for not cooking." And then they sang the most incredible variation of the Lion King song (the Circle of Life) but in acoustic version. Imaginationalise that! They were all playing the various parts of the acoustic orchestra, complete with percussions, those knobbly African instruments where you draw a wooden dowel across a frog's bumpy wooden back, and bird noises. Oh yes.






















Aaaaaaand then they came around and painted our faces. I'm not even joking: it was such an African Theme Park! Here's Lauriane getting very pretty flowers across her nose.

















Me, highly amused that I got floral detailing.






















... Richard's tribal detailing...






















... G was up next. The lady painting our faces was very, very nice and I think she was having a good time doing it as well :)






















Here's G's tribal detailing. It suits him, methinks.

















The "table bread" they served was a cumin, coriander and onion flat bread with lemon and olive oil. It was exceptionally tasty.






















The daquiris were good too!

















This was my steak; I'll happily hand it the "Best Steak in Cape Town" Award, hands down. Even better than Squire's! It's a flamed fillet, medium rare, with a cream and green peppercorn sauce. It's stuffed with spinach, peppadews, onion and something else I can't remember right now. Mushrooms, yes, mushrooms.

















This is Lauriane's food. It's lamb and apricot kebabs with steamed (I think) vegetables and chips.

















G's mussels.
















Did I mention that they give you blankets too? Just in case you get cold. Aaron was hiding underneath a blanket, and, just as I clicked the button on the camera that sets the flash off, he popped out from under his blanket-hood and surprised us all. I really like this picture.






















After dinner we ate dessert which was yucky (I had the orange blossom and pistachio baklava), bleh, and decided to make it all better by sitting on the beach for a while. You can't see, but in that photograph above, there's a whole lot of Blouberg beach and sea behind us.

















Here's Villi and G.






















... I thought it would be a good idea for us to all be in a photo together. Ho hum.

















We were finally photographed together (most of us, anyway) - it was freeeeeeeezing cold and windy and we all couldn't wait to get back to the cars!

We might have stumbled upon the perfect wedding venue.

Of course, to actually have the perfect wedding venue, we have to readjust our budget, realign our entire idea of the perfect wedding, and just throw all traditional wedding phooey out the window.

Ho-hum.

It's called Fynbos Estate, and it's in Malmesbury. But if you love us, if you reaaaaally love us, you'll drive that far.

Here is some eye-candy for you:


It's a beautiful wine farm estate at the end of a windy, dusty road.






















... nestled underneath a mountain.

















The view is rather pretty: there's a blue swimming pool, some pretty green mountains over yonder, and the whole thing is in a valley, so the grape vines and mountains and greenery unfolds from underneath this hidden retreat. In the picture above, the luncheon will take place inside the tent-y thing; the sides will be rolled up.






















Next to the tent is the main house - we can use this for getting ready, setting up, or whatever else we feel like using it for. We're going to have a lunch-time wedding; if you have an evening wedding, you have the option to stay over for the night at an additional accommodation charge per person.






















There's a lovely garden in front of the house, and this little nook (above) is where the actual ceremony takes place (if you don't prefer to have it in the chapel, which we don't). Apparently they are able to fit 100 people in there.






















You will have to use your imaginative powers here and visualise white-covered banqueting tables, fully raised tent sides, pillars wrapped in flowers, fairy lights and white linen, etc.






















This is the slightly raised area directly to the right of where I took the previous photograph (imagine me swivelling in place to capture this). This is where the wedding party is, and the buffet. I like that: we'll eat first, presumably. The only downside is that this is also where the toilet is. Perhaps we will rearrange it all.

You can see here for more ideas on how they do the venue 'up' for weddings and whatnots.

... and so?

Ah, and before I forget, it looks like we might be having a Tea Party Wedding after all. Huzzah!