Monthly Archive

At last the December holiday invaders have left us and it is High Summer. In other words, long lazy days, the plaintive trilling of the European starlings, the evening scent of the Milkwood tree. We’ve had unseasonal rain, even thunderstorms, and fierce fires sweeping around the nearby settlements of Betty’s and Pringle Bay. I never quite know what I’m supposed to be doing in January – scratching around the studio, flipping through an old journal, wilting in the heat. The best antidote to this lethargy is to get into the water in the nearby Kleinrivier estuary.

On a muggy afternoon, you wander into a low – colour monotone beachscape, with little to differentiate sky, water and sand. Against this very big abstract canvas, humans inject bright colour contrasts and darker tones. Our usual goal-driven behaviour is also somewhat nullified by the nautical scale of things – here we are, us innocuous Sapiens and our beloved canines, just being lateral for a change.

Next to the water, it is almost desolate one moment, the next all cameraderie and hail-fellow-well-met. Soon there was a robust young couple taking the waters with definite purpose. They plunged recklessly in, floating along on the ingoing current for a while before running back and repeating the cycle. For a moment it seemed as if the resolve of the male had faltered as he lurked behind.: Kom Poppie! cried the woman, in a tone that would not be defied.

A group of Eastern Europeans had gathered to watch the antics of Poppie and Popette, and it wasn’t long before they overcame their fears and were flinging themselves into the water with the same childlike abandon. It wasn’t cold, it wasn’t tepid, it was Just Right.

You know, there’s something about that oke there that rings a bell – ah, yes, is he not perhaps that man from Trinidad, as depicted by one Peter Doig in his enigmatic work called Pelican? Or am I just getting too lateral?