Monday 19th Jan. Early morning.

It has been an incredible start to the journey. Two days in but many more days’ experiences seem to have been jammed in to the last 48 hours which have been wonderfully busy.

I”m sitting in the courtyard of a beautiful Cape Town home with Table Mountain forming the picturesque backdrop standing as stunning, silent, sentinel. It seems to peer imperiously over my shoulder as I type and whispers to me “don’t write such poncey nonsense.”

But what a jaw-dropping backdrop. I wonder how long you would live here before you start to take such a view for granted. How soon we can all too easily do that in our own lives.

Cape Town is blessed with many things not least of which is the natural beauty of its immediate surrounds. We have driven around and over the mountain several times already and each new angle changes how you see the whole. I don’t think I can pay the city a bigger compliment than to say that in less than a few hours it had already managed to compensate for the 12 hours of misery and discomfort that constitutes long haul flying in cattle class.

We arrived just shy of 8 a.m. and were met by Peter: our minder and tour guide for the next two days.

Peter is nothing short of a phenomenon. He is also nothing short. I’d guess at 6 foot 4 or 5 – a big bear of a man with just the most explosively enthusiastic energy. For the past four years following the passing of his beautiful wife, Bridget, Peter has been both mum and dad to his nine children who range in age from 9 on up. The household, which you might think would have to run with military precision seems, rather, to run on collective caring mixed with a little necessary and wonderful mayhem. They pool resources, look out for one another; the house had a wonderful spirit flowing through it.

Some people are glass half empty. Some people are glass half full. Some people are “Wow, I’ve got a glass! Awesome! And not only that, it comes with liquid already in it. Who can I share it with? This is great – I can not only help someone else to get a drink but I have one more glass than I did yesterday. Does anyone need a glass?” Peter is that person.

We had breakfast straight from the airport at a place just above the Cecil Rhodes memorial which is fronted by a large bronze figure of a naked man looking angsty on horseback which possibly wasn’t the exact manner in which Cecil used to get about. We then dropped bags at the house and embarked on a whistle-stop two day tour. We went down to Cape Point, where the Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean meet. There wasn’t a line separating the two to show where they met exactly which would have been nice. We toured Cape Town, we drove over and around the mountain, went to Boulders Beach and chatted to the penguins there: went to Kalk Bay and bought fresh caught Yellowtail to brie – brie rhymes with cry and it’s what they call barbecues round here – and enjoyed a wonderful Sunday afternoon in the garden of Wilfred and Debbie’s beautiful vicarage overlooking the beach. Wilfred is a black Anglican vicar whose church congregation are 60% old-school white Rhodesian. The congregation want ten minute sermons and services to be done and dusted in 40. I’m saying nothing. : ). He tells a great story and bries a mean brie. Though he is currently on holiday there were 5 interruptions to the afternoon with people coming to the front door asking to see the Father. He graciously dealt with each of them, even the one who just wanted to have some of the food having seen that the vicar was having a family brie in the garden. Some were invited through to the garden, some were asked to return later – ah, the trans-national minister’s dilemma how do you handle the balance between public availability and the right to private time?

(I have, since this was posted, been informed via Facebook, the blog, phone, people stopping me in the street, sky-writing bi-planes and angelic visitations about my appalling English spilling of what is, of course, correctly a braai – similar to a British barbecue but without the rain.) Apologies for denigrating an awesome African institution – and for likening it to French cheese.