This is going to be a rather bitty blog post. Last week Durban had a few days of very welcome heavy rain. The weather fronts move up from the Cape, bringing rain, and the temperature falls. This last front was extreme. The main roads from KwaZulu-Natal to Gauteng were closed due to heavy snow. It must have been desperate for the many people who had to spend the night in their vehicles, and there were several deaths from hypothermia. We are just not geared up for this type of weather.

We are, however, moving into spring. My clearest indicator is the jacaranda tree outside my window which is in bloom, covered with purple flowers. Obviously, as I walk round the neighbourhood, I see many of the other trees starting to blossom, but I see the jacaranda from my desk. The local monkey troop enjoy sitting in the tree. If I forget to close doors and windows then the fruit bowl gets raided, as happened last week. This was very interesting because Patricia, the lady who comes once a week to do ironing and a little light cleaning, was in the flat and not aware of the visit.

After walking to raise money for Waterford in June and July, I have tried to cover at least 10 kilometres per day. Having a Fitbit really works for me! The rain meant that there were three days I did not manage the miles! Normally I walk round the suburbs, but on Sundays I try to go down to the beach and walk along the promenade. I park at the northern end of the hotel developments, opposite the Blue Waters Hotel for people who know the area, and walk to the harbour mouth, the Point. The walk is just under nine kilometres and takes me slightly over two hours.

The area is well kept and there are clean and functioning public toilets. This is important for me when I have had coffee. The large numbers of people who enjoy the walk are of all shapes and sizes, and occasionally I see someone I know. There is also a visible police presence. On the most recent walk (Sunday 22nd September) the weather meant there were much fewer people about, including, surprisingly, surfers. Of course, the bathing ban on a couple of beaches is also a disincentive. This is because the water is sampled by the city and the E. coli count published. When these reach a certain level, as it has done at these beaches, people are told not to go in the water.

On this trip to Durban, I have not been out for as many meals as usual. This is partly because several of my favourite restaurants in Glenwood have closed. The first to go was Olive and Oil, although there are branches in other parts of the city; it was followed by Julios at the Stella Running Club. I do have a regular Tuesday ‘date’ at a local pub, Jackie Horner, just down the road. The food is simple and good. Why Tuesdays you may ask? Because there is a special discount on main meals. There are deals almost every day of the week to be honest.

My routine is to walk to the Glenwood Bakery. This is an ‘artisanal’ bakery that is, according to their website, ‘part of the bread revolution … a time when every village had their own local bakery and baker’. The café serves good coffee and great food and sells delicatessen type products, from hummus to sauerkraut. I aim to get there by 7:45 am and usually meet up with people who follow the same routine. It means my day begins with, at least, an eight-kilometre, or two-hour, walk (there and back). It is an invigorating start to the day.

I am working on my ‘memoir’. I started about a year ago and have managed to get over 80,000 words down on paper. Last month I sat down and read what I had written, marking up the text as I went. As I suspected it needs a great deal more work, but at least I have a sense of the way forward. The span of the draft is family history and my life up to the age of 24 when I finished my MA and went to work in the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning in Gaborone, Botswana. I have chosen to tell the story chronologically for this, but I want to write a second volume to cover the period up to retirement which will have chapters on themes: work; sport; travel and so on. It will be challenging because some things are sensitive and I signed Official Secrets Acts, so…

Back in the UK it is party conference season. The Labour Party met in Liverpool in the last week of September. They won the recent election so convincingly that the conference issues are, in my opinion, manufactured. A key topic causing controversy was various Labour leaders, including Prime Minister Starmer, accepting gifts, including clothing and accommodation from wealthy benefactors. This should be a non-story as they complied with the reporting procedures, and pales in comparison to the actions of the Conservatives, from Boris Johnson to Rishi Sunak! However, it was absolutely tin-eared and insensitive, especially given the cost-of-living crisis. I do hope they get their act together, so we have, at least, a two-term government.

I stay informed about UK politics through various podcasts that I download and listen to as I walk. The other big story is the government has decided that some pensioners, Ailsa and I among them, will no longer get the government’s winter fuel allowance. The headlines say that the winter fuel payments will be limited to people over state pension age receiving pension credit or other named benefits. This seems entirely reasonable to me. I do not think it should be a universal benefit. I also have a great deal of sympathy for the Chancellor Rachel Reeves who has inherited a dreadful economic mess, as well as a hole in the budget. This is not as big as she would like the public to believe though. Some of it is of her own making with pay settlements to various groups which, while expensive, are long overdue.

A big challenge of retirement is losing contact with people who were colleagues or whom I knew through work. Over the years I got to know some very interesting people well, and now there is not the connection. And this is happening at a time when being in contact is so very easy: Skype, WhatsApp, Facebook and many more platforms. One discussion at coffee was about how younger people find it so hard to connect by phone and face to face. We agreed it is troubling and does not bode well. I believe screens, combined with the effect of the Covid pandemic, are to blame, but there may be deeper things going on.

I can join seminars in Waterloo. The first of the new academic year was on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The speaker asked ‘is there a path out of the current tragedy in the Gaza Strip?’ I am afraid the takeaway message was no. It was extraordinarily depressing to hear and the actions of the Israeli Defense Force in southern Lebanon adds fuel to the fire that is the Middle East.

The next posting will be from the UK. I have been in South Africa for four months and am not sure that I have much to show! I made only one trip to Cape Town. It has been a time of reflection and contemplation but sadly no eureka moments or realisations. To quote John Lennon, ‘life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans’.

The other significant development is that I was finally able to get one of the weight loss drugs that has been taking the world by storm. After three weeks of these, coupled with my walks, my weight has decreased, and it is not dependent on where I position the scale or how I stand on it!