A brief glimpse of summer, now and then.

Being in lockdown with the sun shining has been no hardship. We have a garden: it makes all the difference. My heart goes out to those in apartments who can’t get out. There is something healing about being in the open air.

While the weather was so warm I enjoyed the luxury of sitting in the garden reading: nothing to do and nowhere to go.  We live in suburbia so there isn’t too much noise most of the time but it did strike me that the birds were incredibly loud and very loquacious.  

View from the grass….

The sky was also bluer than usual and there was another absence of sound.  There were few aeroplanes going overhead – perhaps one an hour?  We are not under the flight path but it is very common to see and hear the noise and to see the vapour trails. 

It reminded me of growing up in Johannesburg in the 1950s.  I would lie on the grass, hoping the vicious red ants wouldn’t get me, and look up at the sky.  It was as blue then as it is now.  The occasional (propeller) plane would fly over – it was not a very common sight so something to look at. 

I also remember going with my grandparents to my uncle’s engagement party in Salisbury, Rhodesia.  My parents took us to the airport and then waited to see the plane leave – as one did.  It was one of the newer jets and they were stunned that we were in Salisbury at the same time that they arrived home.

When we went on holiday we usually drove and sometimes took the train – I wonder if we are headed back in that direction again?  Of course it wasn’t just a “train” it was the famous Blue Train, which went from Johannesburg to Cape Town, taking about 26 hours.  The modern Blue Train has been featured in many documentaries but in those days it was still bunk beds, no showers etc.  But the meals were “silver service” and for part of the trip the views were spectacular.  

Muizenberg was a very fashionable resort near Cape Town from the nineteenth century on. Sir Herbert Baker, a British architect who designed the Union Buildings in Pretoria and Government buildings in Delhi, designed a number of the grand homes. It was a very popular resort with the Jewish community who would go there in the summer, as did we. There were three apartments, across the road from the beach, and the same three families rented the same ones every year. Our cooks and nannies went ahead with all the linen to open up the apartments before we all got there. 

There are many stories I could tell about all of that, but for today I remember fiercely resenting the fact that all the children had to go back at lunchtime to rest for two hours.  This was in the days of polio epidemics and that was the only precaution one could take. The anti vaccine brigade have no idea how awful it was. 

Roll on a COVID-19 vaccine.