For Her. For Me.

I wish you could have seen the jacarandas in the summer.

I don't know if you have them over there, or maybe just call them something different, but every year at the end of spring they just seem to explode: tall sky-kissing trees just glowing with a brilliant violet light. The blue-pinky flowers just fill your eyes, and they float down, carpeting the world in a soft, gentle covering of sky. It's like somebody tips over heaven, and you get to walk on the top of the world.

Sounds wanky huh? I can't help it. There's just something about this place that makes me want to taste colours, touch sounds, soak up every breath that spring and summer brings.

But you would have seen it for yourself.

You would have felt it, too. For you, it would have been a journey across half the world to see a place so different to where you come from - an unforgettable place. For me, it would have been a chance to take someone that touched my heart, and show them my backyard. The places we would have gone, things we’d have seen… Your Big Africa Adventure and my chance to once more see even more of home. Call me biased, but I'm so blessed to be able to live in this part of the world, and would have been even more blessed to share it with you.

Even if only for such a short time.

Youd have seen the lights of Mandela Bridge shining down onto Newtown. Blood was spilt there, and lives were taken, but now it's washed clean and blossoming. Almost like the scrub grass of the Highveld after a bushfire - the rain washes away the ashes, and from the blackness shoots up a fierce green that fills your heart with a kind of hope. I suppose it was hope that got us where we were, then.

The Knysna Heads, breaking out over the Atlantic. W would have sat down at a small tapas bar called Cranzgots; if we were lucky you'd have watched the sun splash down to the sound of the forest elephants as they break through the plantations on the hills. Either that, or just get giggle-drunk on caiparhina. Probably both.

The Cape winelands.. Lush, hot and tasty - I couldn’t wait to see the sparkle as you sipped on a Welgevonden, Haute Cabriere or Fat Bastard chardonnay, while icy-squirmy Mosselbaai oysters parked off in the shade of the Franschoek French Quarter Hills. And yes, there is a wine farm called Fat Bastard. Their Sav Blanc is killer.

I couldn’t wait to have that first kiss, all over again...


But now I know you’re just bat-shit insane. Get out my inbox, you crazy biatch.