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Month: May 2017

Let’s talk about food

I love food. I always have and I dare say I always will.

I’m by no means an adventurous eater – I was the fussiest child ever – but food brings me a huge amount of joy. I can (and usually do) get excited about dinner at breakfast time, and there are few things better than a cup of tea and a piece of chocolate for lifting my mood.

Lately, though, I’ve been feeling a little guilty about food…

How I learnt to be a Mom

I’ve never been a particularly maternal person. I like kids and babies when they belong to people I love, but I won’t walk up to a stranger to coo at their children, and I’ve never felt that motherhood would be my defining role in life. Still, that was before I met Arthur and Ella (who are, without doubt, the most remarkable children the world has ever seen – of course!) and at the moment life is all about mothering, all the time. I think this is probably true of anyone with a baby and a toddler, but I’ve been thinking, lately, of how I learnt to be a Mom… And the answer, of course, is from my mom.

Living in Hout Bay

When we moved to Hout Bay from the Cape Town City Bowl, I kept waiting to miss our old ‘hood. I had loved living in town so much – the vibe, the constant stream of things to do, the feeling of being in the heart of Cape Town with a lovely view of Table Mountain. But then we moved to Hout Bay, and nine years later, I’m still waiting for the day I wake up and wish we lived in town again. I originally wrote this article in 2017, after we’d only lived here a year and a half. It’s now 2024, and I love Hout Bay even more.

The beautiful ordinary

When I was younger, I was all for extremes.

I remember one of my favourite quotes in my late teens and early twenties was from Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’:

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”

Now? Oh my goodness that sounds exhausting. Doesn’t it? I’m all for the beautiful ordinary.

A sense of style

I had the most amazing morning last weekend: I went clothes shopping. For myself! This might not sound like that much of a treat but I’m not exaggerating when I say I haven’t bought myself new clothes in over a year and a half. I was planning on getting pregnant, so there was no point. And then I was pregnant, so there was no point. And then I was overweight, so there was no points. And then breastfeeding. But now, although I am still not quite back to normal and although I am still breastfeeding, I am sick to death of looking frumpy. So I went on a shopping spree!