Sunday, March 25, 2007

Wow, a date!


Last night Nick and I went on a date. We dropped the boys off at Elza and Sarel’s house at 7 pm for babysitting, and put them to bed straight away, and then stayed to chat awhile. We had such a nice time chatting, on the topic of marriage and relationships, that we only got away at about 7.45. Since we didn’t have a booking, there was no rush to leave. We had decided to try the fairly new eatery, Café St Helena. We weren’t too impressed with it, although the food was quite good. We shared a plate of ‘Tapiss’ – chicken strips with four different dips. Very nice, but hardly a meal. We considered that the starter, as we also shared a pizza, which was delicious, with a crispy base. We chose to have bacon, sausage and pineapple on it. We stayed at the Café only long enough to eat, and then paid and left by about 9 pm. Went home, got changed and made a flask of tea, and then drove up to the top of Jacob’s Ladder. We were warmly dressed, and had the picnic blanket with us as well, so were very comfortable sitting a few steps down with our tea. It was reminiscent of being on Northcliff Hill at night, although the view is a lot smaller! It was really lovely being up there at night. It’s a lot noisier at night than in the day…lots of music playing. Pity we didn’t have the camera with us, as it would have been nice to try a time-exposure shot of town at night. Will have to try again some time. We were in bed at our usual time of just after 10, despite having all the wonderful freedom of being boy-less! At 5 am there was a heavy shower of rain, so it was the usual pandemonium of anticipating a leaking roof. Nick went off to sleep in the guest room, while I found a dustbin to put on the bed. As it happened, the roof didn’t leak through, but we both didn’t really get back to sleep properly. Pity. But without the boys waking us up early, I only got out of bed at 7.30 am! We had breakfast together, and then Nick had to rush off to get ready for prayer meeting. I went up to the Bloems just before 9 am for the boys, and stayed for a cup of tea. When I arrived, I found the boys in the garden giving Elza a lesson on pollinating flowers. Sarel was out when I got there, as there was a tourist ship in this morning and he was called out to the ship to see if some of their sick passengers and crew should be allowed on the island, which they were not. There is strict control with bringing infectious diseases onto our land! So he wasn’t very popular on the ship. Had to drag myself away, and literally had a minute to spare after getting home before Good News Club…cutting it a bit fine!

After Good News Club, Nick got busy straight away with the bell; he’s working with Teddy, Steve, Nick W and another church man called Trevor. They had to dismantle the supports for the bell, leaving the bell in the tower on wooden supports. After about 100 years of ringing, the pendulum had actually been worn away on both sides. The cast iron supports are so corroded, it’s only by God’s hand that the bell didn’t fall down. As I said two weeks ago, it was providential that the rope broke while Teddy was ringing it for Sunday service, bringing about the examination of the bell and its structures.

Caleb and I had an appointment with Scilla, the optometrist, in the late afternoon. She did Caleb first, and was very thorough and very good. The outcome is that Caleb is short-sighted and will be getting glasses. He seems to have my eyes…so it may well be a downhill slide from here until we can one day send him for laser surgery! He chose his own pair of frames, a light coppery colour, which he will probably get at the end of April. Then she looked at my eyes, as I have some halo effects at night particularly, and although there is a very slight regression in my right eye, I don’t need glasses. Apparently in the “olden days” when they did laser, they did it in such a way that when the pupil is dilated, the image falls on a part of the eye that wasn’t treated or something like that. Nowadays when they do laser they treat a bigger area. So mine is nothing serious.

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