Back in Bathurst Street

I can’t remember the last time I was in Grahamstown but I went back last week – just for a day – a very cold and windy day..!

But I got a photo of the same view of Bathurst Street that I sketched as an art student years ago.

It was so familiar but of course it’s changed. The building on the corner had been damaged in a fire and had to be restored, and (looking back at my sketch) I noticed the lamp post is gone. And I don’t think that red letterbox was there before – I didn’t include it in my sketch anyway.


But Birch's, the outfitters I'd sat outside sketching, was still there, selling menswear, school uniforms and university robes (for the last 148 years!).

And it was great to see that row of buildings on Bathurst Street still looking clean and bright, and in pretty good condition. And to go back...

Bathurst Street

Birch's

You can see my sketch here: http://daydreamdraggingfeet.blogspot.com/2012/05/down-bathurst-street.html

Down Bathurst Street

Catching up with another old friend last night got me thinking of places I haven’t been back to in years...

I made this sketch at the top of High Street, looking down Bathurst Street. I was sitting outside an awfully old-fashioned outfitters that used to be there – and perhaps still is – when an elderly lady stopped on her way in to scold me, very politely but quite insistently, for sitting out there in the cold. I assured her that although it was chilly I was warm enough and went back to my sketch but a short while later she was back – with an armful of flattened cardboard boxes that she’d requested from the outfitters. I could only smile and obligingly sat down on them to keep from catching my death of a cold.

If my sketch itself looks a little worse for wear it’s because I stopped to lie in the sun on the grass near the Drostdy Arch on my way home, only to have to leap for my drawing board as the sprinklers were turned on..!

Gardens

As the rain pelted down today and the wind gusted up, I stood at the window with my mug of coffee and thought I’d finally have to accept that winter was on its way. But when the rain and wind died down, the birds piped up and the squirrels dashed between the puddles under the trees.

And the garden was dripping and fresh.

Last summer I went a few times to one of my favourite places in Cape Town: the Company’s Garden. The garden was established in 1652 by Dutch settlers to provide fresh produce for the Dutch spice-trading ships en route to South Asia. It originally comprised a number of rectangular fields and open irrigation furrows but grew into a well-known botanical garden.

There are many landmarks around the Company’s Garden, including the Houses of Parliament and Tuynhuys (‘Garden House’ in Dutch and the president’s Cape Town office), the Slave Lodge, St George’s Cathedral and the South African National Gallery (SANG).

It’s lovely just to wander through the garden and along the central walkway, the Avenue. It always seems to be green and shady. There’s much to see, including a rose garden, an aviary and a fish pond. The Garden Tea Room has become a favourite with tour groups but, on a summery day, there are still plenty of locals on every bench and lawn, and great people-watching. And there are always lots of birds and very inquisitive – and cheeky! – squirrels...

Egyptian Geese near the SANG

Mark O’Donovan’s interactive mixed media sculpture ‘Man Running from Lion’ (1997/2005?) 

outside the SANG (You turn a wheel near the base to make the figures move)

The South African National Gallery (SANG)

More about the SANG: http://www.iziko.org.za/museums/south-african-national-gallery

And about the Slave Lodge: http://www.iziko.org.za/museums/slave-lodge

Through another lens

These photographs were taken at the Institut du Monde Arabe (Arab World Institute) in Paris. It was designed by French architect Jean Nouvel and completed in 1987 – which makes this year its 25^th anniversary.

Established by the French government in collaboration with eighteen countries in the Arab League, it showcases the culture and heritage of the Arab world, as well as promotes research and co-operation, especially in science and technology, with France. It includes a museum, library and auditorium.

Its south facade is a metallic screen of geometric motifs. These motifs consist of thousands of apertures or light-sensitive mechanical devices which open and close, regulating the amount of light entering the building. They act as a brise soleil (or sun shading device) by controlling the amount of light entering the building and create an effect reminiscent of the mashrabiyya (latticework, usually carved out of wood, which encloses balconies or covers windows) of traditional Islamic architecture. (A pity that this system seems to no longer actually be working – but it’s still very beautiful.)

The institute is now focusing on both Islamic and pre-Islamic heritage to highlight diversity in the region.

This year I’m embarking on some research into Islamic education so perhaps it was serendipitous that I came across these old photos because I’m hoping that my reading and research will be like another lens through which I can view my own world as well as others.

Inside the Institut du Monde Arabe

Paris through one of the apertures

If your French is better than mine, you can read more at: http://www.imarabe.org/ (Or on Wikipedia.)

Un point c’est tout

It was my first summer in London and I couldn’t wait to go travelling in Europe. But – where would I go? How would I get there? And... who would come with me?

With eight of us sharing a small three-bedroom flat in West London, there always seemed to be a copy of The Evening Standard scattered around the lounge room, with someone searching through the classifieds for a new job, another perhaps for a new flat, another for what was on in London and yet another for the latest travel deals. And the offer that caught my eye was the coach over to Paris... and because he also wanted to go travelling, and because sharing a room would be cheaper, one of my flatmates decided he’d come too.

‘Sorted!’ I thought.

But it was disastrous. Before we’d even arrived in Paris, we’d run out of things to talk about. We arrived with completely different itineraries in mind: his was more of a checklist that included the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Elysees; mine (I guess because I’d been to Paris before) was much more haphazard, and included visiting some of the museums I hadn’t been to and much wandering through the narrow hilly streets of Montmartre where our hotel was. By our second day there, we were going our separate ways during the day – only stuck with each other in the evenings when I would sit on our tiny balcony, writing letters and postcards, and he would lie inside watching cartoons, complaining that they were in French. He wasn’t enjoying Paris and neither of us was enjoying the other’s company.

On the evening of our last day in Paris, we joined the long queue at the coach station and I made a decision. I turned to him and said, ‘I’m not going back with you – I’m staying.’

Un point, c’est tout.

I just couldn’t bear another seven or eight – or more – hours of his surly silence on the coach. And, more importantly, I didn’t have to be back at work for another few days, so... why not? I hadn’t booked a room for that night but I knew my way back to our hotel, had my guidebook, my phone and enough money to stay another night or two. What could go wrong?

Well, the hotel we’d stayed in was fully booked. But the concierge suggested a few other hotels in Montmartre I could try and, a little later that evening, I found a youth hostel nearby where I could share a dorm room. It was pretty full so I met quite a few more travellers, saw a bit more of the city (although the rain set in so I didn’t stay on as long as I thought I might) and discovered I could quite easily, and dreamily, find my way around Paris and back to London again on my own.

The Eiffel Tower at the turn of the millennium

The view from my balcony (You can see the raindrops on the railing...)

Mama and me in India

Around this time, three years ago, my mom and I travelled to India together. It was a first for both of us – and it was also the first time my mom had travelled anywhere on her own.

I had friends from Kerala: a couple who were also teachers and living in South Africa, and some of the teachers I was working with at the time.

As I was living and working in the UAE, I met my mom in Dubai and we travelled on together from there. She did well to get to Dubai, despite a very last-minute hiccough with her visa that had been her travel agent’s mistake, and arrived looking just a little proud of herself and quite ready for our adventure.

And what an adventure it was... Before we’d even arrived, I had got sick so arrived very early in the morning, eyes and nose streaming, to find our guesthouse in Kochi (Cochin) not at all how it had been described – there was of course no mention of the smell, the noise or the mosquitoes on its website! Well, things could only get better... and they did – so much better!

We moved to a small hotel in Ernakulam and took the ferry across to explore Fort Cochin where we wandered through the narrow streets, stopping along the way at the markets and some of the historic buildings, and to watch the fishermen at the huge and striking Chinese fishing nets along the northern shore.

We hired a car and a driver (which was more expensive than taking the bus but still within our budget and a lot more comfortable and convenient) to take us up to the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary in the Western Ghats. It’s a green and hilly region filled with cardamom, tea and rubber-tree plantations. We stayed in Kumily and from there visited a spice garden where we climbed up to a viewpoint in the trees, rode an elephant through the forests at Elephant Junction (another first for us both and very brave of my mom!), spotted elephants in the wild around Periyar Lake and went on a short but quite strenuous walk through the forests around the lake, rafting across at one point – and hiding in the bushes when we heard something come crashing through the trees up ahead (– I’m still not too sure what that was..!).

We also took a day tour of the backwaters south of Kochi and some of the villages around. This was perhaps the best day of our holiday as it was such a leisurely trip and such a serene and beautiful part of Kerala.

And we met many friendly and helpful people, found much to laugh about (including, albeit affectionately, some of our more hippy fellow travellers) and so much to see and do. At the end of the holiday, we joked that we would go back one day in a far more hippy wardrobe ourselves. Maybe we will...

My mom’s motto for the trip: ‘Have daughter, will travel.’

At Jumeirah Beach, Dubai

At the fish market in Kochi (Cochin)

Stepping off the ferry at the Customs Jetty (Fort Cochin)

The higgledy-piggledy architecture of Ambadi in Kumily (http://www.hotelambadi.com)

A baby elephant at Elephant Junction near Kumily (http://www.elephantjunction.com)

At a spice garden near Kumily

On the backwaters south of Kochi

Mama and me..?

Summer in Hokkaido

At the end of my two years’ teaching in Japan I decided to travel up to Hokkaido before I flew home. None of my friends could make it so I went on my own. The cheapest ticket up there was a Seishun 18 Kippu but that meant that all my travel had to be on local or rapid trains (no express or bullet trains!). But I had a few books, my iPod, phone, camera, snacks... I caught the earliest train from Niigata at about five in the morning and finally got to Hakodate more than 24 hours later..! It’s still the longest journey I’ve ever made – made longer however by having to catch a bus for a stretch because the tracks had been damaged by heavy rain.

By the time I got to Aomori that evening I was dead tired, bored with my own company and music – and out of snacks! But I got talking to a sweet, intelligent and thoughtful boy – he was in senior high, had just come back from an exchange at a school in the UK and had been backpacking around Japan in his summer break, even sleeping rough in a park with some of the homeless in Tokyo along the way. He said he’d been a problem kid but he was good company and I guess, with my own backpack and cheap ticket, I seemed more like a student than a teacher myself. His mom was coming to pick him up to drive him the last stretch back home to Hakodate and he insisted that I go with them, and I gratefully accepted the offer.

I met some really nice people in Hokkaido – some a little overly protective when they found out I was travelling on my own – but all so friendly, generous and helpful. And Hokkaido was just beautiful – the most unspoiled bit of Japan I visited...

I’d love to go back – and next time I’ll take my sketchbook...

One of Hakodate's western-style buildings

Hakodate: famous for ika (squid)

At the Botanic Garden, Sapporo

Cycling near Furano

On my bike

At the Nibutani Ainu Culture Museum (the ainu are an indigenous group in Hokkaido)

If you'd like to find out more about the Seishun 18 Kippu: http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2362.html