Living 'Cape Town'

Did you see the size of my shell?

Over the past few days I spent time with some of my favourite people just 'being' and 'living' in Cape Town. On Thursday I went sea shell hunting in Muizenberg and watched my niece demonstrate her perfect chart-wheels and my nephew try to calculate the cost of our bill at a local coffee shop where we retreated for coffee and chocolate brownies after the very hard task of finding the perfect shells.

Muizenberg Beach

I'm having Coke Zero and a chocolate brownie, please!

Ok, so that's going to cost R64.00

A more historical focus on Saturday found me and M strolling the streets of the city in search of our historical roots as we visited the Slave Lodge and enjoyed the bright, vibrant and somewhat cliché works of the 'people's painter' - Tretchikoff.

The Slave Lodge, top of Adderley Street, Cape Town

Table Mountain from the National Gallery, Company Gardens - Cape Town

Who hasn't seen these or similar prints is someone's house on the Cape Flats in the 70s & 80s?

The historical sojourn didn't stop as we walked down Long Street, deeply etched in my own history - I told M my stories of Senator Park (before it became a drug den) and silently reminisced about my clubbing days at 169, Mama Afrika and half a dozen other clubs that once-upon-a time shared a little space in Cape Town's most vibrant and notorious street. I ended my day experiencing the duality of the city; first up the CD launch of a eco-tourist-educator on a ramshackled farm in Constantia and then onto a old-school 'jol' at a homely club that belted out all the Coloured anthems, in the back-streets of industrial Ottery.

It's been a sunny weekend and I've allowed the vibrancy, complexity, humanity, fluidity of Cape Town and it's people to wash over me.

reflecting on...awkward conversations and decisions

A year ago I was in Milton Keynes preparing for my Probationary Review mini-viva. The soccer world cup had just started in South Africa and I was pinning to be back in the country of my birthday. This year I'm contemplating having to move back to the UK after spending six glorious and productive months  in Cape Town. I've been reluctant to blog about my imminent return to the UK because I've been really busy trying to focus on the positive aspects of this necessary (?) activity scheduled to occur at the end of June. I'm simply trying to process the whole thing myself and while most practitioners of active and critical would probably highlight the benefits of using writing as a means to tap into the 'processing' I'm referring to here - this type of writing is just too hard for me at the moment, it's too personal, it's too raw, it's too messy, it's not ready for such a public platform. So I haven't been writing.

I had an awkward, but honest conversation with my supervisors last Monday, where I tried my best to explain the complexity of my feelings associated with having to return back to the UK to complete the final 15 months of my PhD scholarship. I did my best, but it's hard to explain, to an 'official' representative, my deep affectively motivated response to the prospect of having to uproot myself from a place where I feel complete (well almost!). I'm fully committed to completing the PhD, I'm just considering where I might be able to complete that PhD. It's a conversation that I've started, but one without a conclusion as yet - I suspect that any viable conclusion can only be mediated once I get back to the UK.

On second thought!

Yeah - on second thought I had to change my workplan schedule. I sent it off to my supervisors and their advice was not to start from the premise that I would submit my thesis after my funding ended. So I've come up with a Plan B or rather a Plan A. Strangely the process of reworking the plan to ensure an earlier finish restored a refreshing sense of calm over me. I actually felt calmer with this new goal in mind - now let see how the whole thing comes together over the next 15-16 months.