2013

As has become Tradition, my one and only blog entry for the year is the year's newsletter. It's been a fairly quiet and uneventful year, so don't expect anything too rivetting or momentous this year!

The year got off to a good start at the beginning of March with a ten-day trip to Cape Town. The main reasons were for a 30-year school reunion and to ride the Argus again. While I hadn't planned on riding the Argus again (at least not so soon after the first time in 2012 - see last year's newsletter), the school reunion was deliberately organised for the week before the Argus as another event that might add motivation for people to travel to Cape Town for the reunion.

For those who may not be aware of it, I went to Prince Edward School in Harare, Zimbabwe, but with the meltdown of society there, most of my old school friends have scattered across the world, and so Cape Town was as good a venue for a reunion as any (and the three guys arranging the reunion are all based there). The first (semi-official) event of the reunion was the Starlight Classics concert, produced by none other than the incomparable ian (Buzzard) von Memerty at the Vergelegen wine estate omn the night of Saturday2 March. While he was obviously fairly busy, Buzzard did manage to sneak out and spend a bit of time catching up with the rest of us.

On the Sunday I went to the church in Fish Hoek where John Broom, the pastor of the church that my family attended in Harare when I was at school, is now based. It was lovely to catch up with him and his wife, and with a friend of my sister's from the Isle of Man, Ann (who was the person who had let us know that the Brooms are now in Fish Hoek). Ann had also arranged for me to join her for lunch with Ian and Elizabeth Lamond, who had also been in the church in Harare (and Ian Lamond was a teacher at Prince Edward - by this stage, the coincicences/connections were all getting rather overwhelming!).

The reunion started officially on the Monday morning with a climb up Lion's Head (where the photo was taken). That was quite strenuous, but offered some amazing views over Cape Town and Table Bay. Lunch was sushi at the V&A waterfront in Cape Town itself, followed by dinner at a very nice restaurant in Clifton (on the Atlantic coastline, with a great view of the sunset). Tuesday followed a similar pattern with a hike up Table Mountain (which I skipped), lunch at Camps Bay, and dinner at The Grand, in Granger Bay (near the V&A waterfront). On Wedensday the final reunion event was lunch at the Brass Bell in Kalk Bay (on the False Bay side of the Cape Peninsula). It was really good to spend a few days catching up with old friends, most of whom I hadn't seen since leaving school 30 years earlier. Several guys had travelled long distances (from the U.K. and Australia, most notably) for the reunion.

The rest of the week was spent in Simonstown, in the guest flat of good friends. On the Thursday I went for a short training ride, following the southern part of the Argus course before heading into Cape Town to collect my race number, etc. for the Argus, and meet up with some old friends for coffee and dinner respectively. I spent the Saturday night in Cape Town with another friend, due to the early start of the Argus on the Sunday. While I wasn't as fit as I had been the previous year, the early start and good conditions (bar some headwinds on the way down towards Cape Point along the False Bay coast) made for a very good Argus ride, finishing about 15 minutes quicker than the previous year (and tantalisingly close to a "sub-four" at 4 hours and 12 minutes). The photo is of me on the climb up Chapman's Peak (wearing a blue and yellow shirt, just to the right of centre).

I left Cape Town on the Monday, stopping over in Knysna for the night on the way back to break the trip.

The next highlight of the year was on 15 June, when I went through to Port Elizabeth for the evening to see John Cleese, who was on a comedy tour of the country after the release of the second "Spud" movie. That was an excellent and hilarious evening, as he reminisced about his life and work.

The June/July university vacation was packed with fun. I spent most of it in Pretoria with my friends Theo and Brenda. The first highlight was seeing "Starlight Express" in Jo'burg with Brneda's family. It is one of the Westend productions that I haven't seen overseas and it was really good to see the local adaptation of it. During the vac, a large group of us went down to Ramsgate for a week, which is always a great spot to spend a winter holiday on the sunny, warm Indian Ocean beaches. The photo is of the sunrise from the patio of the house we were staying in. At the end of my time I joined Theo's church on a Mandela Day service visit to the St Joseph's Care Centre at the Dark City township near Bronkhorstspruit, where we painted the walls of the Centre and provided some new tables and chairs for the children served by the Centre.

In October, the University (well the Computer Science and Information Systems Departments) arranged the annual research conference for SAICSIT (the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists). That was held in East London, at the Blue Lagoon Hotel, which was a lovely venue. My duties had been around the programme, and so I had been rather busy dealing with the paper submissions and reviewing processes before the conference, but was largely able to relax and enjoy the event itself.

And that is pretty much the news of the year, or the highlights at any rate. The year ahead has some changes, challenges and some highlights. The first of these is that I am resuming duty as Head of the Department at the start of 2014, a little sooner than I had anticipated. After two years out of the role, I am feeling re-energised and ready to take it up again. In February, I am having my 0x32nd birthday, which people seem to think I should make something of, so there is a bit of a party planned and my sister is coming out from the Isle of Man for it. After that she and I have a road-trip to Cape Town planned, to do some sight-seeing there (she hasn't been in the Western Cape since she was a toddler) and then for me to ride the Argus again (the bug has now well and truly bitten!). In June I am hoping to get to the USA for a wedding and a bit of a holiday.

Anyway, my thanks to you for reading my news this far (hopefully without falling prey to extreme boredom!). I hope and pray that 2014 would be a blessed and prosperous (in all senses of the word) year for us all.

Sunset - 30 December 2013, Pretoria.