The Caravan of Clowns - one of the little things

Life can be tough. We get grumpy and sad. We forget to notice the little things around us - moments of joy and beauty, the things that give us breath to keep going. This is my attempt to provide healing to myself by reminding myself to take the time to do the things I love, and hopefully to bring joy to others along the way.

This is my latest book and I've decided to release it for free because I want it to be one of those "little things" that make your day better. Not just the story, but the moment of pausing, sitting down with a cup of tea or coffee to read, maybe with a little one on your lap. 

It's a quirky story about a girl trapped between fate and her dreams. It's filled with whimsical circus life, some sad clowns, a birthday cake flop, finding funniness in the mundane, following dreams, getting lost and coming home. And it's full of wonderful illustrations!

You can sign up to download it HERE. I hope you enjoy!

Marginalia

The other day I picked up an old book of mine and found a whole range of notes I'd written in the margins. Thoughts wound up in little scribbles and scratches across the pages. Collections of penciled-in question marks and lines. Marginalia. The printed text the sturdy frame around which were wound tendrils of thoughts and reflections. 

My rediscovery of this marginalia got me thinking about recording my thoughts and reflections in life's margins, underlining the day's significant phrases, the key points that carry meaning. My writing has always happened in the margins of the day; the early mornings that belong to just me because the rest of the house is still sleeping or in between tasks where a gap opens up like the space between paragraphs. 

From this formed the idea of a newsletter; a kind of intersection between my own accountability to keep writing, a desire to grow and nurture a community and to (hopefully) provide a little spontaneous inspiration or joy to others in the same way that discovering marginalia in a library book might suddenly provide a new perspective or insight. 

So, please sign up if you would like to join my exploration of life's marginalia, writing, books and general updates (there are a few exciting things coming in the hopefully not too distant future). Let's see where this goes!

On not reading

I've felt strangely paralysed over the last couple of weeks - unable to pick up a book, sit down and just read. All over the world people have been (and continue to be) locked down in their homes, cut off and isolated from their normally busy lives. I kept reading about "the big pause", of finding stillness, of learning new skills, baking, meditating, following-through on projects and of course, reading that pile of books one doesn't usually get to. 

During pretty much every other crisis in my life, I've read. I've managed to find even just a few stolen moments to get lost in a book. So, I had to ask myself, what was wrong with me? Why was I not getting it together? I've tried to tell myself how privileged I am - I have a nice home to be stuck inside, I have an income, while many, many had it so much worse. 

And yet, still nothing. Still this paralysis on reading and creativity.

Going into lockdown I expected (rather unrealistically) to be able to make a big dent in my TBR pile. I guess the reality was a bit more jarring and unexpected. Firstly, just the practicalities of being thrown into multiple roles so suddenly - full-time mom to two young girls, homeschooler, housekeeper, carer for unwell parents (my mom's cancer returned and my dad needed a triple bypass in the middle of it all), while still working full time - eroded the hours of my day. 

I was (am) exhausted.

Secondly, I underestimated the psychological strain of lockdown and the impact that has on my mental space (and my ability to read as usual, or even write and create). Anxiety and worries (from the personal to the national to the global) sit like big rocks in my mind, displacing everything else. Coupled with compulsive scrolling through coronoavirus-related news feeds on my phone, this has all had a negative impact on my reading. Sadly, reluctantly, I have to admit failure as a reader (Coronavirus - 1; me - 0).

Of late I have been reading poetry, which has somewhat filled that need for words a little. I've particularly enjoyed William Sieghart's anthology, "The Poetry Pharmacy" and "The Poetry Pharmacy Returns", which Stephen Fry so aptly described as "a balm for the soul, fire for the belly, an arm around the lonely shoulder... matchless compound of hug, tonic and kiss." 

It has done that for me. While I don't have any answers and I can't say it's all going to be okay, here's to reading just a little bit of poetry.

Download for free

The world has changed so much in such a short space of time.

Lockdown has been tough - everything has paused, plans have dissipated, the everyday rhythms have been disrupted, and above it all hangs a sense of disaster - the toll this virus is taking on health and people and economies and basic survival.

I'm sure many of you are in the same position that I find myself in: balancing work with entertaining and schooling children. Libraries have closed, books are not considered essential items and therefore cannot be purchased during lockdown, resulting in a dwindling reading supply for story-hungry kids.

So, in light of that, I would like to make my first book, Witchfield (an adventure story with a magical twist aimed at 8-12 year-olds) available for free. I hope it brings a few carefree hours of being lost in a book.

You can download it in ebook format from Amazon for free from 27 April - 1 May. If you have a moment, a review on Amazon would be much appreciated! And if you'd like to know a little more about it, you can watch me read an excerpt here.

Stay safe, stay home, read!

"Tilly & Thandeka" is here

Sometimes it really feels like I'm just winging it, running on caffeine (and a glass or two of wine) trying to hold on to dreams and reality at the same time, desperately trying to not let anything else drop. It's been exhausting, it's been exhilarating, and yet finally, here it is: Tilly & Thandeka: The Crown of Ancient Ghana.

This is the first in a series of adventure stories about these two brave girls, set in South Africa and is aimed at 7-9 year-olds. There's a lot more I want to say about them, so I think I will reserve that for another post. At the moment it's only available in South Africa. You can buy it here.

The apparent simplicity of language: the text and its shadow

I am a reader.

An avid reader of children's books and an avid reader of books about children's books. This means I often get myself bogged down with particular details about writing that is aimed at children and what exactly makes it "literature for children" and not "literature for adults" or just "literature".

One of the things I like to do in order to find some answers, is explore the boundary around what we call "children's literature". At first this seems obvious (and a waste of time), but once one begins looking more carefully, varied and less-firm territory appears.(For example, if "children's literature" is a body of literature read by children, then what about Harry Potter, who has a large adult fan base too? Or Winnie The Pooh with its sophisticated double address that amuses children and elicits knowing smiles from adults?)

Perry Nodelman is a widely respected critic and academic in the field of children's literature and in his book The Hidden Adult: Defining Children's Literature he traces these boundaries. One of the points he discusses is children's books and their apparent simplicity of language. On the whole it is accepted that children's books should be written with a slightly less sophisticated reader in mind, a reader who does not yet possess the skills and the vocabulary to fight their way through long, complex, Proustian sentences. Let alone have the attention span. (This may be true, but it doesn't have to mean "talking down" to the reader.) Anyway, this rule is not set in stone (no one told Charles Dickens this when he was writing Oliver Twist) and sometimes is deliberately broken (think of Lemony Snicket's informative, context-specific asides to the reader about what difficult words mean in A Series of Unfortunate Events).

However, I would have to agree with Nodelman, that children's books imbue words with a kind of magic that makes them communicate far beyond their immediate meaning. This is what Nodelman refers to as the "shadow text". The writing is simple, yet the shadow text is not. Nodelman states, "The simple text implies an unspoken and much more complex repertoire that amounts to a second, hidden text." Here lies the magic of children's literature.

Of course one can argue that adult texts also have this shadow text, but the disjunction is clearer in children's books because we accept and expect their simplicity of language. The existence of this shadow therefore means that the simplicity of the story actually requires the reader to have more knowledge than the story actually contains. We, the reader (adult and child), must tap into our repertoire of past experiences, knowledge and understandings of the world in order to read the shadow text.

As a result, when we read David Walliams' first line from The Boy in the Dress: "Dennis was different", our repertoire of playground and classroom memories allows us to fully comprehend the story behind that experience. The prose is simple and straight-forward, but the story is not.

Similarly, Eva Ibbotson's first line from Journey to the River Sea, "It was a good school, one of the best in London" doesn't bog the reader down with long-winded and elaborate descriptions of the school and its standing. That introductory line tells us everything we need to know not because of the  text, but the shadow behind it: Maia's privilege and also her limitations.

Good children's books maintain the simplicity of language, but have carefully selected words that have the ability to throw magical shadows.

"Children are made readers in the laps of their parents"

I always like to begin my classes on children's literature by asking students to reflect on their own experiences of being read to as a child, to look back at the books that built them. 

But you know what? Every year I'm taken aback by how few have this experience, reminding me that it is not something to be taken for granted. And for those who did have the privilege of being read to, the experience pretty much ended sometime during Grade 1 or 2 when they had acquired the skill of reading. 

And every year that makes me kind of sad, because that early reading process is so incredibly important. And special. And magical.

Recently I was asked to contribute to a short article on encouraging young children to read and that got me thinking. Here are some of the things that came to mind and which, for me at least, make all the difference:

As writer Emilie Buchwald stated, “Children are made readers in the laps of their parents”. This sums up the incredibly powerful role parents play in establishing a love of reading in young children. Books represent quality time with mom or dad, be it with cuddles before bed or to calm down and bond after a tantrum, or to giggle and laugh about together during the day. It’s about so much more than just a book or a story at this stage, so it’s important to foster the relationship as well as a love of books.

Books should be everywhere in the home (not just neatly stacked on bookshelves) – on coffee tables, on beds, on the couch, on the kitchen counter, even on the floor. It may seem contradictory, but when children see books everywhere, they become part of their daily lives which is more likely to foster a love of books later on. Bored, in need of distraction or just curious – just grab your nearest book!

Young children, in particular, relate to books as objects first before they fully understand how they work or what they do. They are attracted to the bright, cheerful covers, they want to explore them in a tactile way – what do they feel like? Are they heavy or light? Perhaps even, what do they taste like? There is nothing wrong when toddlers treat books like objects to play with. Learning how to treat a book gently comes later, so for now, books are about fun, exploration and learning. This is where tactile books, books with holes, pop-up books or books with flaps become very popular and can provide endless entertainment for curious fingers and curious minds.

Reading to toddlers and young children should be about interaction, so mom or dad should get creative for story time! There’s no need to stick to the script – much amusement can be had when a familiar story is told with a new twist. The ensuing argument is a great opportunity for language development. Repetition, rhyme, word play and prediction are all part of the parental tool box when it comes to story-telling and language. The child can complete sentences, guess what will happen next, think up reasons why something happened, repeat words or phrases and, in a general sense, let story-time become more of a conversation than about making it from beginning to end.

Probably the most important, yet often forgotten, element of fostering a love of reading in children is for parents to show an interest in books themselves. Little eyes are always watching and they notice the objects that occupy the hands and minds of the adults around them – is it a cellphone or is it a book? What fascinates mom or dad is more likely to draw the attention of children too. Parents should remember, that buying lots of books doesn’t automatically encourage reading, becoming a reading role model does.

What is more generous than a window? Some rainy afternoon reflections

Sometimes it's the simplest things that matter the most:

• The aural pattern of rain against the paving, dripping through the leaves. 
• Two little girls keeping themselves busy, enveloped in imaginary worlds.
• The folded-up comfort of a cat snoozing.
• A drink, good company, conversation that digs up memories.
• A stack of books found in an odd second-hand store with someone special.
• Soup bubbling on the stove.
• A good book turned over on the table, paused, but just for a moment.
• The gleam of clean dishes on the sink, an ordinary task completed.
• The unbreakable beams of support offered by friends.
• The greeting of a pink hibiscus flower when I open my bedroom curtain in the morning.

These are the things that stand out against a busy world and which mean everything. I have a lot to be grateful for at the moment. Despite the difficult months. Despite everything.

And in celebration of that sentiment, a poem that has always spoken to me:

The Patience of Ordinary Things

Pat Schneider

It is a kind of love, is it not?

How the cup holds the tea,

How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,

How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes

Or toes. How soles of feet know

Where they’re supposed to be.

I’ve been thinking about the patience

Of ordinary things, how clothes

Wait respectfully in closets

And soap dries quietly in the dish,

And towels drink the wet

From the skin of the back.

And the lovely repetition of stairs.

And what is more generous than a window?

Witchfield

Katie Peridot quite likes being ordinary. Unfortunately, some very out-of-the-ordinary things have been happening. On top of that her best friend, Mayuri, isn’t her best friend anymore, a sinister sponsorship programme is taking over her school, her mother is acting more crazy than usual and the only person who really seems to understand her is a peculiar cleaning lady. Then she teams up with Themba, the cleverest (and most unpopular) boy at school, and together their investigation takes them deep into the town’s abandoned mine.

What they find there is more terrible than they could have imagined. Can they save Witchfield before it’s too late?

The title definitely formed first: a town that seemed ordinary and boring, but was not. Then the characters came, rushing, filling that space. A sensible girl who liked rationality and just wanted to fit in. A mother who stood out. The ups and downs of their relationship. The friends around the girl. A lonely boy with big glasses who had his sights set high above the limitations of the everyday. A mysterious mountain. Unwanted magic. A villain with a nefarious plot (of course). And a cat (there had to be a cat).

And so the ideas swirled around me, finally settling into a coherent plot that I could then work on. Which I did. A lot. Deleting and cutting and rewriting. And giving-up and starting again. And giving-up and... Let's just summarise and say it took a long time.

I've always been fascinated by unconventional parent-child relationships and Katie and her mother gave me the opportunity to play around with this idea through their delightful, frustrating, bohemian ways. What I also really longed for in the story were the familiar contours of the South African landscape; a setting that reaffirmed that South African children's lives existed in books too. Having said that though, this was not the point of the story. It was never created to fill a literary gap. I  wrote it because these characters arrived insistently in my mind and had to be brave and go on an adventure. That's what drove the writing process, and if South African children smile because they recognise a little bit of themselves and their lives in Katie and Themba and Mayuri,  I certainly will be delighted too.

I wrote a book

I wrote a book.

(I may or may not have also written a whole heap of other things regardless of the fact that nothing is ever published. In this regard, writing is like a bad, slightly embarrassing habit that I can't seem to stop. I write quietly, perhaps a little secretively, in the extreme margins of my days. There's not much space, not much time, but somehow, it's been enough.)

But this book.

I knew there was something special about it when I started writing it ten years ago. The name. The characters that rushed at me so eagerly that I felt swamped. I haven't actually been writing it for ten whole years; for much of that time it was pushed aside, abandoned, banished, forgotten, rejected, hidden. Life happened. But it wouldn't go away; eventually, I pulled it out and faced it again. And again. And again.

So, here it is.

My book in my hands. It's been a long, long journey and the feel of its pages beneath my fingers is a kind of homecoming for me.

That seems all I'm capable of for now. I shall write something more useful soon, like what it's about, how I did it, what happens next and what I plan to do with it.

xx

(And by the way, if anyone is wondering whose magic created this beautiful cover, I was very lucky to find the amazing, extraordinary Cristy Zinn. Find more of her work here.)

Can we talk about Enid Blyton?

A picnic with my two lovely girls at the Botanical Gardens got me thinking about Enid Blyton. We packed some snacks, a blanket and some books, one of them an Enid Blyton classic, The Secret Seven. The kid (who is now seven) has become enchanted by the Faraway Tree and The Secret Seven. If I read her a chapter, she will soldier on determinedly on her own, eating up the story word by word, a finger marking the steady progress. I never thought that watching a fledgling reader could make me feel so happy, but it does.

Which brings me to Enid Blyton.

The Wishing Chair, The Faraway Tree, The Famous Five, The Secret Seven and all those page-turning adventure stories made up my reading childhood. I discovered the heady addiction of stories, the desperate need to find out what happens next even after lights out, through these books. I was eight when I started to read in English, having just moved to South Africa with my parents. Enid Blyton books quickly became part of my reading diet and continued to be favourites for years. Reading them felt a bit like making friends in a new place. A lot of it didn't make sense to me or reflect my new life in South Africa. I still have no idea what sort of meal "tea" is. Green meadows and lanes, and the cold, misty, rainy weather all took on mythical qualities in my mind. The humidity and heat, the lush, out-of-control coastal vegetation with its troupes of vervet monkeys, the street vendors at the intersections, the rickshaw drivers at the beachfront, the intoxicating multiculturalism were all absent in the stories I picked up. But it didn't matter. I loved reading them anyway.

Much criticism has been leveled at Blyton for her culturally insensitive, gender-stereotypical stories, but for all that she did wrong, she certainly did something right. Children, pretty much everywhere, love her stories. And this raises a very important question, one I often engage with, namely, who determines what "good" children's literature is? Good according to whom? Who decides? Children or adults? Are adult critics even qualified to do this?

The lack of working mothers, touches of racism and xenophobia, the obvious classism are sometimes hard to overlook as an adult now rereading some of my childhood favourites, but then I watch my fledgling reader's growing hunger for them and suddenly I don't feel so qualified to tell her what she can and can't read.

I think Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Ted Talk The danger of the single story is particularly relevant to children's literature. Perhaps the solution to the Enid Blyton problem is not to eliminate her from children's reading diets, because she certainly has earned her place there, but rather to feed them a rich variety of stories from different places and backgrounds. In other words, offer them a balanced diet with a healthy sprinkling of magic.

So, what are your views on Enid Blyton?

Writing in snippets

So sometimes I get a bit sad because I never seem to have time to write my blog these days. Gaping ravines appear between posts that remind me of how quickly time seems to wash away. Before I know it, the next month is already here and there is a long list of things I haven't managed to get to. Between working and life and two little ones, I guess I must make peace with that.

But in the interim, the defiant part of me decided to set up an instagram account for this blog, sort of as a way of tiding me over in little snippets until I have time to write something more substantial here. So for now, this is where I can be found: here.

Hello new year

Well, here it is. 2017. 

I always become pensive in the space between the end of a year and the beginning of a new one. I feel the build-up of days and years more acutely then. I suppose in a way it's a natural place for a pause, to take a moment to wonder: have I done enough? What have I made with this length of time called a year? What will I make of the next?

I look at my two girls and at the growing that has taken place, the many things learned and done. The kid: beautiful, wispy and suddenly so big, but still fragile, standing bravely at the precipice of formal schooling, the preschool chapter closed and left behind in the last year. My baby, with her halo of curls, bursting into toddlerhood with a fierce determination and yet still so soft and small when her outstretched arms reach for me.

I look at these two girls and think about that year that trails away behind me, how my path has determined theirs, what the marks and prints are that I've left behind on them. How I shape them.

And sometimes it overwhelms me because a childhood is a very precious thing to hold in your hand.

Christmas in summer

It's noticing the sweaty discomfort of Father Christmas in his woolly suit suffering through the humidity, the fake snow spray-painted on windows and the foreign irrelevance of sleighs and reindeer and holly, that makes me think just how Christmas in South Africa is a season of contradictions and incongruity. The holiday doesn't seem to fit right, like some hand-me-down item of clothing. The cracks show easily: in the heat that makes all the cosy Christmas cheer a bit unpleasant to carry out in real life, in the pictures of snowmen hastily coloured-in before children have another splash in the pool, in the wild greenness of a Durban summer paling the evergreen of the Christmas tree.

But I also kind of love that no one cares about the details, that the incongruity doesn't matter. I love the enthusiasm in a Hindu colleague's talk about how she is so excited to celebrate Christmas with her new little son. I love the chaos and colour and contradiction of hybrid-Christmas narratives springing up around me. The point being that it doesn't have to make sense.

While I did spend most of my formative years enjoying a cold Christmas, where the hot food and candles and Glühwein and Christmas decor made sense, I've come to love what a subtropical holiday season feels like too, but it's largely underrepresented in all things Christmas. So in the interests of celebrating the holiday season in a local way, here's my list of things I like about this time of year:

• heat-soaked, lazy days after a busy year of work

• the merciful whir of air-conditioners

• the chaotic green everywhere and the carpet of Frangiapani blossoms on the patio

• mangoes and paw-paws and litchis 

• outside dinners when the day starts to cool down slightly

• the feel of cold water on hot skin

• being barefoot 

• the clink of ice-cubes in white wine shared with friends

• having an excuse to bake something delicious despite the heat and having a cold shower afterwards

• (literally) cool desserts 

• cutting off a bunch of bananas from my little cluster of banana trees in the garden

• the ingenuity of beaded wire Christmas decorations made by industrious street vendors

• finding local substitutes for ridiculously priced nuts and berries

• and like everywhere: time with my people ☺

Words

Sometimes words leave you. They disappear somewhere and remain obstinately out of reach. I've been feeling a bit like that recently. Sitting there, self-consciously, waiting for them to come home. Maybe it's the effects of a busy and well-worn year coming to an end. It's difficult to not feel completely depleted. 

At least I've been doing a lot of reading, absorbing a whole range of words, enjoying the pleasure of them and appreciating the effects of unusual arrangements. I found this list of strange and beautiful words (some English, some borrowed) via Buzzfeed . These are some of my favourites! 

For the Mercy of Water

Well, after the last post, I did finally find something to read. And it still hasn't let me go. Perhaps it’s the reality of recent water restrictions, of taps running dry in the middle of the day in some places that I still feel faintly haunted by For the Mercy of Water by Karen Jayes.

Set in a believable drought-ridden future, water has been privatised and is controlled by “the company” and its violent militias. Society is polarised into cities that are serviced by the company and the parched rural areas that have been largely abandoned. This novel occupies a strange position between the real and the allegorical. Although the country (and most of the characters) remain unnamed, I recognised in the scarred landscape a shadow of the current South Africa. As a critic stated, "A society that has lived through the Marikana massacre and the slaughter of Anene Booysen should recognise something in both Jayes's projection of rural districts subordinated to corporate imperatives, and in the repeated depictions of gender violence and rape, never lurid but clear eyed, or be ashamed."

The bleak yet startling quality of the writing reminded me of Andre Brink. It's the kind of writing that can flip from words that are spiky and cruel to starkly beautiful in a sentence.The right to water, gender and sexual violence, are themes that play out on the body and the landscape described through Jayes's visceral prose. The language of the body and the landscape are devastatingly, beautifully intertwined. Another critic points out, "For the Mercy of Water draws on enmeshed metaphorical relationships between the categories of female, the body and nature on the one hand, and the categories of male, the mind and culture on the other. In this sense, the war waged over water (nature) is also a war waged over the female body."

Finding something to read

Between the haze of end of term madness, a second birthday party to plan, an old dog put to sleep forever, relentless rain and unexpected cold finally breaking the dry season and months of storing bathwater in buckets, student protests and futures hanging tenuous and hesitant.  I feel adrift. Just randomly moving. No real sense of purpose.  No roots to my days. Too fragmented to pick up anything and read it.

Rebecca Solnit on books (found via brainpickings):

"The object we call a book is not the real book, but its potential, like a musical score or seed. It exists fully only in the act of being read; and its real home is inside the head of the reader, where the symphony resounds, the seed germinates. A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another. The child I once was read constantly and hardly spoke, because she was ambivalent about the merits of communication, about the risks of being mocked or punished or exposed. The idea of being understood and encouraged, of recognizing herself in another, of affirmation, had hardly occurred to her and neither had the idea that she had something to give others. So she read, taking in words in huge quantities, a children’s and then an adult’s novel a day for many years, seven books a week or so, gorging on books, fasting on speech, carrying piles of books home from the library."

Just one more word

The nightly bedtime story ritual at the moment goes something like this:

Me: "Okay, that's the end of the chapter. We'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out what happens."
The kid: "Ohhhh, don't, don't, no, no!"
Me: "No really, it's the end. You agreed just one chapter, remember?"
The kid: "Noooo! PLEASE just one more story. PLEASE!" (Looks hurt, as if I'm an abusive parent.)
Me: "No, we agreed we would finish at the end of the chapter." (Feels like an abusive parent)
The kid (distraught, on the verge of tears): "PLEASE Mama, just one more WORD!"
Me: "A word is very short. It won't help."
The kid: "Please!"
Me: "Okay." (reads one more word)
The kid (wailing): "Noooo!"
Me: "That was one word."
The kid (looks greatly hurt and disappointed): "Fine! I just won't give you any more goodnight kisses then!"

Time

It's so scarce. It slips away too easily. Before I know it, it has disappeared. I feel drained of it when all the chores are done, the needs met. I watch the day's dust settle, wondering what impressions remain that I can hold on to. Wondering if the only measurement is in well-worn routines that dig their trenches into our days. What routes has time left on me?

I wonder where it goes. What's happened to it. How we got to now, from then. How the little one suddenly turned into a running-about toddler, how the kid slipped into this wispy, wise girl with laughs and such earnest eyes. How I became a mother to them. And always, always how it is that I deserve their laughter, their outstretched arms and squeezes, their love. 

I know that years from now that taut rope of time will slacken again. I'll feel it ease up. I'll catch my breath. And I'll look back at this time of chaos, of exhaustion, of work, of never-ending demands and I'll smile because there, etched into me, will be the sounds of two giggling half-undressed girls running around the house avoiding bath-time, their joy and exuberance infectious despite my desperation to make bed-time happen. I'll still feel chubby little arms and legs wrapped tightly around me when there are tears and sobs or feel the kid's hand slipping quietly into mine as we go about errands. I'll see them when they're sleeping as I go and check on them before bed, all soft cheeks and gentle breath, their smallness and vulnerability so present in the glow of bedside lamps.

Scenes of everyday ordinariness

Weather that can't quite make up its mind. A chilly wind. Patches of sunlight. One kid crafting colourful paper garlands with buttons. A dusting of paper snippets and glitter under the table where she works. One basket of freshly-brought in laundry. One old dog lying on the mat, paws twitching. Some forgotten bits of stolen fruit left scattered on the back lawn after a visit from a troupe of vervet monkeys. A pot of soup prepared early, cooking on the stove. One little one asleep in her cot. Some half-forgotten games left scattered around the house. One laptop accusingly open and unattended. 

This is how the hours of the day are tallied up. 

How one more day slips by.