Two years since my last post – and what a time it’s been! I look back on 2012 as one of the most difficult years of my life, certainly workwise, and as often happens, other things also went pear-shaped. Like my scooter being injured and then attacked by thieves who tried to dismantle it and took bits of it (battery, indicators, contents of top box) over the wall of the laundry yard where it was parked. If I recall correctly, it took three tubes, a new tyre, three batteries and various other bits & pieces – over a period of weeks as I had to figure out complex logistics each time – to get it going again. The (very) short-term contracts at Groote Schuur continued, sometimes being extended only on the second-last day of the month. I stayed in the staff residence when possible because it was cheap and convenient – but my staying there was dependent on my having a paid post in the hospital, so month-ends were doubly stressful. I moved out in May to stay in Newlands until August, then moved back in until December. By October I knew that there would be no more renewals of the contracts, as the post had to be returned to the department from which it had been “borrowed”, so stress levels increased again as Christmas drew near. I had applied and been interviewed for a post of radiation scientist in the national Department of Health, but no news appeared as the months went on. That was based in the northern suburbs (Bellville), so I figured I might as well find accommodation out that way in case I got it. Even if I did go back to editing, I’d have to live somewhere, and the north seemed to be more reasonably priced than the more familiar south. So I found a rather pleasant, sunny flat in Sonstraalhoogte, near Cape Gate, 13 km beyond Bellville (which turned out not to be the cleverest idea considering the traffic direction at rush hours).
On the morning of Christmas Eve I had a migraine (unsurprisingly) so was in bed at the res when I received a phone call to say I’d got the radiation scientist post. I was extremely grateful (to put it mildly. I hadn’t quite dared to consider what might happen if I didn’t get a post: there was absolutely no way I could pay back the massive loan without a regular and reasonable salary coming in.) I moved to the Sonstraalhoogte flat four days later and started work four days after that, with Christmas and New Year happening somewhere under a flurry of packing and unpacking.
When that lease expired a year later, I moved to a cheaper flat (really a former hotel room with en-suite on the 12th floor of what had once been the Holiday Inn in central Bellville) a stone’s throw from my work. I had meanwhile bought a car and sold my scooter to upgrade slightly to a Bajaj bike, but now I need neither to get to work, as it’s an easy walk from my new home. At the time of writing I am in the process of selling the bike to a colleague – and am less than a week away from the final payment on the loan, including the added cost of the car. So this is a great time to reflect over the past two years with immense gratitude for the change in circumstances.
It certainly hasn’t been easy, but it was possible thanks firstly to the people who took massive chance lent me the money, and secondly to the post that became available – not in Medical Physics, as I’d expected, but in a related field where I needed to learn only a small part of what I’d have had to learn to become a competent medical physicist again. And frankly, I realised that I’d have hated the unrelenting stress of medical physics, even if I had managed to master the work. So I’m grateful that my vision didn’t materialise quite the way I pictured it – it’s much better this way! So last year (2013) was a lot less stressful work-wise, but was a very painful year in terms of friends who died. I won’t go into that here except to say that one of those losses ripped my life apart for a time in a way that was far more shattering than I could ever have expected. I learnt a lot about myself through that experience and also gained more insight into the effects of deep grief and the preciousness of special friendships.
This year I treated myself to two road trips: one through the Northern Cape to Augrabies and Kuruman, then Johannesburg for the Anglicans Ablaze conference, and another, for my birthday week, to Plettenberg Bay on the southern Cape coast, where I had one last week of timeshare (having finally dumped the points I “invested” in about 30 years ago). That was one of my best holidays ever, and gave me a chance to consider where I might locate my dream of “a permaculture smallholding somewhere along the Garden Route, living sustainably off-grid and offering accommodation to pilgrims on the Indlela yoBuntu pilgrim route from Grahamstown to Cape Town”. And then there’s the Green Building College dream too, but all that is recorded elsewhere.
With my move into the middle of Bellville, I gave myself permission to head to the southern suburbs at weekends (in addition to regular Wednesday meetings), both to nurture friend and family relationships there and to provide “soul space” and revive my energies by walking on my favourite beach or in the mountains. It’s quite a long drive (50 km round trip to Fish Hoek), but feels like a mini-holiday and is very much worthwhile. Enough for now.
If anyone’s reading this and waiting for me to get to the point, sorry! 🙂
As the flagon dries ... 