Bare feet in the sand: Cape Town beach style

When you've come through a long northern winter and find yourself waking to a perfect late summer's day in Cape Town, the desire to feel warm sand under your bare toes becomes overwhelming ...

At Clifton beach, on the Atlantic ocean side of the peninsula, the sea is pretty freezing and the currents strong (hence not many people in the water, above). You need to go to the warm Indian ocean side for swimming and surfing beaches. But the combination of mountains, sea and beach bungalows to die for is unbeatable right here ...

With no crowds at this time of year, there's plenty of space to stake out your umbrella and get busy doing this kind of thing ...

At lunchtime we discovered a place where you can eat in style with your bare feet in the sand ...

(perfectly tender grilled calamari)

... while watching the yachts bob in the bay.

The Grand Café & Beach is the result of the kind of creativity and imagination you find everywhere in this city. A derelict corrugated iron warehouse on an unpromising bit of shore-line near Cape Town harbour was transformed into a simple venue for eating and drinking, the beach was cleared and cafe tables and chairs laid out on the sand under umbrellas.

We loved it so much we went back in the evening. Can you think of a more perfect spot than this four-poster bed with velvet cushions to get comfortable and watch the sun set over the sea ...?

What I love about this place is the informality combined with touches of luxury - kelims, chandeliers and overstuffed armchairs sit comfortably on beach sand ...

a collection of bizarre new and found objects strewn on the beach holds the attention of children free to play and explore ...

or watch the passing parade of boats, from battered old dhows floating dreamily by ... 

to sleek ocean liners steaming out of the port ...

This is Cape Town beach style and I'm mad for it ...

North to South

A circuitous route from London to Cape Town turned out to involve a kaleidoscope of landscapes ...

Travelling via Amsterdam with an overnight stop, Citizen M at Schiphol was as unlike a functional, boring airport hotel as you could imagine. Bright, primary colours, quirky slogans, a welcoming, user-friendly interior .. 

and the most interestingly (though simply) designed hotel rooms I've seen ...

A daytime north-south flight of nearly 12 hours, all in the same time zone, is a pretty pleasant way to travel, and allows some amazing views as the continents go by, far beneath one.

We had breakfast over the snow-covered Alps ...

A movie later (I was watching Jane Eyre and immersed in bleak Yorkshire landscapes) I looked up to find we were traversing the Sahara desert ...

... for hours and hours, seemingly - there's an awful lot of sand ...

The Congo at lunchtime was invisible, covered in dense cloud, but half a book later (I was reading William Boyd's Waiting for Sunrise, now engrossed in turn of the century Vienna) ... these lakes and a wide river emerged below the clouds over central Angola ...

(I liked Younger Daughter's reflection on this river landscape) ...

and over a glass of wine around 7 pm, having crossed two continents, we watched an African sunset over the coast of Namibia ...

Let's not dwell on the suitcase that was temporarily lost at some transitional point in the north ... Waking up the next morning to the sunshine in a lush garden at the tip of Africa felt very good indeed ...

... as did re-visiting familiar corners of my mother's indigenous cottage garden in its end of summer colours ...

... as always, a warm African welcome.

High School Dance

Half the fun is surely in the anticipation. 

Looking gorgeous, with the perfect dress, pretty hair ...

and a special guy.

At the pre-party ... young men (and one older) scrubbed up, handsome and happy with anticipation ...

Pretty girls who are young women but still like to throw a ball ...

and swing in a hammock ...

The details tell their own story ...

There are private conversations between classmates and good friends ...

and happy posing for group shots 

I suspect the real fun happened at the after-party, but there are some things a parent will never know ...

The Thames Walk that wasn't and an English pub lunch

Doing the Thames Walk is high on my bucket list, but takes time and organization ... and decent weather. The Thames starts life at its source near Cirencester in the Cotswolds and follows a meandering path for 294 kilometres, passing through Hampton Court Palace, then the heart of London, before rushing into the sea at the Thames Barrier in Greenwich.

You can walk it in a single stretch by overnighting at various points along the route or, as most people do, in stages over successive weekends, following the trail along footpaths alongside the river, through the villages and countryside of  Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire ...

A plan to walk one stretch, from Marlow to Maidenhead, a couple of weekends ago was scuppered at the last minute when fine weather turned to rain. Walking while soggy and wet is not my idea of fun, but that didn't mean we had to abandon the pub lunch that is an essential part of Thames walking ...

The Bounty pub, right on the bank of the Thames between Cookham and Bourne End, is only accessible by foot and boat (all their deliveries are made by boat) ... Just ring the bell on the jetty on the opposite bank and a ferry will collect you ... 

The Bounty is well used to Thames walkers and welcomes dogs and muddy-booted people

Don't expect haute cuisine, but hearty pub fare (a St Patrick's Day stew above, with a pint of Guinness).


After lunch, eight people and one large wet dog piled into the Bounty's little rowing boat ...

Having deposited us safely on the other side of the river, our gallant boatman sped away, fag in one hand, tiller in the other ...

From the Wolseley to Picasso

In the midst of a few weeks of doing little else but buckling down to work (no dallying in blogland), an outing to the Wolseley was a perfect treat. I met Paris Breakfasts blogger Carol there ... for breakfast, what else?

In a swish location on Piccadilly, across from the Ritz, the Wolseley was originally a car showroom (for Wolseley Motors) and later a bank - hence the cavernous interior, marble floors and walls, brass railings and vaulted windows and arches ...

It's a place to spot famous faces if you're inclined, though Carol and I were too busy yakking over coffee and hot chocolate to take much notice. 

After breakfast we took a walk down to the river, past Big Ben ...

and a grumpy-looking Churchill scowling at the world ...

(few signs of spring yet on these trees in front of the Houses of Parliament)

to the Tate Britain, to take in their exhibition of Picasso and Modern British Art

Picasso spent only one short period of his life in Britain, in the summer of 1919 when he came to London with Diaghilev to design sets and costumes for the Russian Ballet. He bought a suit and bowler hat in Savile Row, but seems otherwise to have been not particularly taken with Britain or British artists. On the other hand, he was a huge influence on many British twentieth century artists, which is what this exhibition sets out to explore ...

Seated woman in a chemise, 1923. Own photograph.


For the Picassos alone, it was a treat. 

Reading at a table, 1934. Own photograph.

Nude woman in a red armchair, 1932. Own photograph.


There were paintings from the full range of his different periods, seemingly to show not only his prolific output ...

Head of a woman, 1924. Own photograph.

... but also making the point that by the time his imitators had caught on to a particular style or new idea of his, he had already moved on to the next.

Woman dressing her hair, 1940. Own photograph.

And this is the trouble, because the exhibition becomes a bit of a cruel contrast for the British artists concerned, who, when you see their work juxtaposed with selections of Picasso's, begin to look like massively unoriginal copycats.

Picasso: La Source, 1921. Image source: www.theartsdesk.com


So Henry Moore's Reclining Figure (below) is seen as a straight copy in a different medium of Picasso's La source (above) ...

Henry Moore: Reclining Figure, 1936. Image source: www.guardian.co.uk


... and Francis Bacon's grossly distorted mouths and figures ...

Francis Bacon's Head 1, 1948 (left) and one of Three studies for figures at the base of a crucifixion, 1944 (right). Own photographs.

... are so obviously derived from Guernica, below. And so on and on. 


(Guernica is shown only in reproduction at the exhibition, but see this interesting story here about the only time the original Guernica was brought to Britain under quite amazing circumstances) ...

Picasso: Guernica, 1937. Image source: www.pablopicasso.org

In the words of one critic, the exhibition is "a huge own goal for 20th century British art, allowing everyone to see just exactly how dull and minor Moore, Graham Sutherland and others actually look beside Picasso." Ouch!  

David Hockney: Harlequin, 1980. Own photograph.

The British artist who seems to suffer least by comparison is David Hockney. Interestingly, he is the one who acknowledges most openly the huge debt he owes to Picasso, as shown in these etchings/homages ...

David Hockney's The Student: Homage to Picasso, 1973, and Artist and Model, 1973. Own photographs.

... yet seems to have gone on to do so much more in a unique style. Next up in my diary is a trip to the Hockney show at the Royal Academy.