Three Men and a Stone

Cape Town
Saturday 10 July, 2010

I woke up to the sound of rain, a perfect beginning to my one day of touring around Cape Town. It didn’t matter, though, as I was to be in the indubitable, redoubtable, and redubitable company of Philip de Vos and Niki Daly, who had generously offered to guide this poor sybaritic sinner through the Things and Thongs of Cape Town. Due to the weather, we visited a couple of used bookshops, where my nonsense hunter’s instinct didn’t quite lead me to anything South African. As I had read in the studies of children’s literature, many of the books were British and American, including Spike Jones, Thurber, and the ever-present, ever-blyted Enid Blyton. As my grandpappa used to say, one doesn’t always bring a kudu home from the veld. Grandpappa was, in fact, more likely to bring an impalatable ipecacish impala strapped to his strop.

We had a lovely lunch by the sea, where we gained one passenger on our trip, making us the carbon copy (or at least the molybdenum copy) of Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, although instead of a dog, we adopted a white stone.

Philip and I left Niki and went to Chapman’s Peak, a high point from where we could see the mountains all around...

These peaks are a part of the so-called Twelve Apostles. The ones pictures above are Paul, Peter, Timothy, Sidney, and Charo (with the cloud-clinging boa).

Below, the blue, blue water:

A sumptuous dinner in the company of the whole passel of Consistent Compotators topped off the day.  Such a lovely leaving of Cape Town, thanks to the kindness of nefarious newts. It was, in more ways than one, a white stone day.