My pick of small-town South Africa
Big-city buzz is fabulous – in little doses. Small towns stole my heart a long time ago. Road trips through South Africa over many years have taken me and #him to some of the loveliest small towns. Here are some
Upholding the right to breastfeed
Hospital keeps exclusively breastfed baby away from her mother Hospital bans exclusively breastfed baby from her mother Wouldn’t those be shock-horror news headlines? Well, it’s true. The parents gave me permission to share this story and use their names because
Navigating jet lag
The price we pay for crossing time zones Around the start of the 20th century, my great-grandfather, Henry Grey Granger, boarded a ship in Southampton, England, and went to South Africa. He was 18 years old. Henry spent the rest
The abiding sting of racism
It’s been almost 30 years since the end of apartheid – and racism is alive and kicking (it kicks and it hurts). V and I were kicked at an otherwise happy event – the wedding of friends – last week.
Let’s talk about Chat
The world changed while I was not looking. In a flash, artificial intelligence (AI) was melded to real life. Of course, there was warning, but I was among the majority that did not read the signs. AI is rewriting how
Proudly 60
No, we won’t go quietly One morning a couple of weeks ago, I woke up and I was 60. Just like that. As I do on any other normal day, I took an early-morning walk. But something was not the
All roads lead to De Rust
… and other true stories The Karoo dorpie of De Rust was a blip on my radar – a stopover town en route to Cape Town, a place to pause to visit the Meiringspoort waterfall, and not much more. That
Eight things I love about Rhodes Village
The road has led me to Rhodes Village in the Eastern Cape Highlands and I’m slowly getting to savour the gems in this Southern Drakensberg hamlet. It’s so lovely that I decided to share a list of my favourites with
The green jewel of the east coast
Kwelera National Botanical Garden takes shape We’re standing in the middle of a wetland deep in the cultivated portion of the Kwelera National Botanical Garden. But there is no water, just a thick covering of invasive solanum, ready to
My top tips for chasing flowers
The flowers are fading, pulling on their seedy caps to sleep for another year. After a prolonged drought, it has been a magnificent year for flowers in Namaqualand and the West Coast. We were lucky enough to see some of