heritage & marbles (loss of)

The Ant, Mr 747 and I went on a Parktown Heritage Tour on Saturday. I always love these things, ambling through Herbert Baker gardens, with cute little old ladies dressed up in flowery hats who give you a running commentary on the history of each place.

This one was particularly hysterical, because the old dame completely lost the plot mid-tour.

She lost her marbles. Maybe she'd had too many gin and tonics at the cake sale beforehand, but I think she'd finally lost that last brie wedge that made up her cheese platter, so to speak.

But what a beaut. She was one of those old grannies that had seen it all, being from “Rhodesia” and all.

All her facts were mixed up, she carried around notes done on a typewriter from 1975, except they were the wrong notes. Possibly for another tour or something, but the woman didn't exactly talk a whole lot of sense:
“The person who built this house was born in 1985...then he died in 1955. Right...is this the Westcliff tour?”
(No, we're actually in Parktown, my dear.)

“Mr Anderson was from Salisbury, Rhodesia. Had flowing long hair and now, this house belongs to a Mr Jacob Zuma. Let's move on.” (You sure?)

The highlight of the tour was Graham Hart's garden. The old weather dude on SABC? A celebrity in weather circles? No?
Anyway, seems he's a bit of a clivia fanatic. A garden filled with about 5 000 frigging clivias (and quite gorgeous really), but since his wife is possibly the only member of the South African Clivia Society, seems the weatherman himself is a bit obsessed. One of the patios has been made into a greenhouse. They were everywhere.

Mr 747 went straight for the kill – because really, we had a celebrity in our midst didn't we now - “So Mr Hart, you have a problem with lightning strikes here because of the quartz in your rock?”
“Well no, son. Lightning strikes usually happen in high places.”

Ant and I were being very mature, pretending to take photos of each other, but making sure he was standing right in the background and within my LCD screen, although I chopped his head off in the photo. Bugger.

Saturday evening I caught up with one of my old digsmates from Crested Butte. A nice little boozy braai. It's always fun, mainly because Crested Butte was one of the best times of my life. We skiied every single day and partied up a storm every single night for four months. Then there was the time I chundered into our one and only cooking pot. I'm still unsure of the details even now, but I only presume I came home blotto, saw the pot and promptly puked in it. Classy.