Postcards from Paradise

Mauritian sunset

I know. They are very long overdue. By about a month and a half. What can I say? One, I've been beavering away, finishing the manuscript and two, it takes a bloody long time to sort through about 5000 photographs and get them down to a very small number to post here. But, that said, here they are. All I can say now is - I could really do with some of that tropical heat! (And you'll just have to bear with me on the number of tropical sunsets...)

Just one of a gazillion tropical sunsets...

Hotel beach - Mauritius west coast

Beach Vendors

I heart you with an anthurium...

Tea picker at Bois Cherie tea plantation

The coloured earths at Chamarel

The Hindu God, Ganesh, at Grand Bassin, the sacred lake

Port Louis' fresh produce market

Spice shop in Port Louis

Sea art after a spring high tide

Still more tropical sunsets...

Fishermen at dawn

Oh look, sunsets, again...

Paradise perfected

For other photo posts of Mauritius see here, here (2007) and here (2007), over here on Flickr...

Island blues? I think not!

Lest you think I've been skiving off and being a bad blogger - again - I hasten to assure you that I've only been skiving off.

See, the thing is, it's been holiday time and we've been away celebrating our second anniversary and D's birthday.

So we've been lazing here...



Sipping a bit of this...


Watching lots of these...


And spending a lot of time hanging around under this...



More photos and regular posting and service will commence again soon. We apologise for the temporary interruption!

Happy Holidays!

For those of you celebrating Christmas, I wish you love and laughter, peace and harmony, good fun and good feasting. If you're north, travel safely and stay snug, if you're south, travel safely and keep your cool! And mind the mince pie intake...

Have a wonderful and happy time!

To everyone else - have a lovely and happy holiday season!

I'm back - well jinxed!

So, I’m back from my trip. And well jinxed it was. So much so that I’ve been home for two weeks – most of it spent lying in bed.

I suppose I should have suspected it might all go pear-shaped when the “friend” in Switzerland announced she wouldn’t be home despite our arrangements to visit and stay with her. As you may recall, things became still more stressful when our friend in Spain with whom we were due to stay failed – until the last moment – to produce the required letter of invitation D need to get his visa.

I had, however, thought after all that, we were home free. Ah me, the best laid plans of mice and Vanillas – especially when Mercury is in retrograde through Taurus. Oh yes, that really puts sod’s law to work.

We arrived in London at 6am after an 11 hour flight. We couldn’t, we discovered, check into our hotel until lunchtime and so wandered the streets of Mayfair and W1 and communed with the ducks on the Serpentine in Hyde Park.

Wandering the streets of Mayfair and W1

Communing in Hyde Park

Finally we returned to the hotel to discover they’d bungled our reservation and we’d been put in the wrong room – a matter which couldn’t be rectified until the following day as the hotel was fully booked. A few sharp words later and having got hopelessly lost navigating the multiple staircases in the hotel we collapsed in a soggy sort of heap.

The following day, having left the toxic soup that is the London Underground I felt a niggle in the back of my throat… By the next morning I was as sick as the proverbial dog, or should I say pig… Aching, feverish, sore throat, cough, snotty nose. Yep, I had it flu, and most likely, we think, swine flu.

I blame the tube...

I spent two days dosed to the gills on Day Nurse so I could meet up with my wonderful children’s writer friends (many of whom you'll find in my sidebar) and fellow blogger, Fire Byrd. I don’t remember too much of it but I do know that they were all the most special and friendly people and courtesy of several colas and coffees, I had a wonderful time.

Meeting up with children's writer friends at the Royal Festival Hall

Then I spent two days lying in bed sweating and shivering and feeling like all hell. Then I spent a day overdoing it – determined to meet my bloggy pals, Sue Guiney, Debi Alper and Lettuce.

Authors Sue Guiney and Debi Alper

And then I knew I really should go home as I could feel my system heading for a state of total collapse.

But of course, the rational – i.e. irrational – mind likes to think it knows better than the body’s wisdom so fate felt the need to intervene. The day before we were due to fly to Spain, I received a call to say our friend there had had a heart attack and was intensive care. He wasn’t in any danger, I was told, and he had said we could stay in his new apartment but we wouldn’t be able to see him.

It didn’t take rocket science to realise that going to Spain was off the cards, and when we calculated the cost of staying on in London for an extra five days and my old gut woes started to grumble, there seemed only one sensible thing left to do. Heed the signs and Go Home!

It must have been “meant to be” because we got a flight out the following night and by the time I saw my doctor, she took one look at me and said, “Bed, for a week, or you’ll have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome!”

So there you have it and such is the way of life. You go with the flow, ride the punches, learn a few important lessons on the way – like… we will never, ever arrange to stay with friends ever again!

And now it’s back to the manuscript, plotting and further research!

At least I got to take a flight on the London Eye!

Some photos, oh and some more photos

Remember - to switch your lights off on the 28th March at 20h30 for an hour!!!



I had all good intentions of rushing home and doing a blog post. Only after a week away and nine hours on the road because of road works, I instead came back to various piles of pooh. And since I didn’t want to do a blog post which was full of whinging, I thought I’d just lay off posting completely.

In a nutshell, the holiday was lovely – see pictures below, and the pooh involves:

• painters who didn’t return to finish a job which they had botched in several places and despite multiple assurances they would return to fix things. We now have to find someone else to do so which will mean shelling out more money;

• debt collecting attorneys who are sending me threatening letters for monies owing on an account which I don’t even have. This has meant spending half a day in the store where I supposedly hold the account filling in dispute forms and getting legal advice - and it's still not over;

• and then there was the whole Dalai Lama thing which I’m sure you all know about by now – when, scoring a stunning own goal, the South African government, under pressure from the Chinese, refused the Dalai Lama a visa to the country in order to attend a peace conference hosted by, amongst others, Nobel Laureates Desmond Tutu and former presidents FW de Klerk and Nelson Mandela. But that’s a topic for another blog post. By which stage it will be old news.

So, back to being on holiday – which now seems an awfully long time ago... I think I’ll just let the pictures do the talking for themselves! And erm, there may be a lot of photos for the next while. It seems, armed with a digital camera I will take a gazillion shots in order to get “the one perfect shot” and I have an eye that sees “shots” everywhere!

So, there were beachscapes at Noetzie...

Sunsets at Plettenberg Bay...

There were tides of oyster catchers running on the beach...

There were country roads that disappeared into deep valleys...

There miles and miles of vistas of the Outeniqua Mountains...

There were piles of driftwood, some with small birds paying a visit...

There were oceanscapes in moody weather...

There were days spent lounging on the edge of the sea, right down there...

There were walks on beaches...

Crashing waves...

There were toadstools and funghi in the forests...

There was lunch amidst the vines at the Bramon Wine Estate...

And of course there were oysters in Knysna at the Knysna Oyster Company...

And then, oh well, there was just a lot more of this...

I know, I know, it's a tough life, but like I keep saying, someone's got to do it. And I promise, I did think of you on many occasions, and I toasted to your good health far too many times! So you see, you did get to go with me - in spirit...


POSTSCRIPT: For more pics go here or click on the Flickr link in the side bar - and prowl through the first five pages - I did say I was snap-happy, didn't I...?!