Sunday, October 6
The roof of Room with a View, 8:20
I learned yesterday that the birds that wake me up every morning are called hardedar. They have long beaks and big wingspans and sound like a roomful of babies being tortured. They woke me again today at just after 6:00, and since I had gone to bed early, having had nothing to eat or drink since midday, I was too wide awake too soon to go back to sleep. Instead I got up and had a long, leisurely bath.
At 7:30 I went down to breakfast and Steve joined me a few minutes later. For the first time in days I had the full breakfast.
Now I am back on the roof bringing this up to date and uploading all the photographs I took yesterday. Jani has sent me a digital copy of the new brief and I will go through that again in detail. The sun is bright and the sky is so clear it is almost reflective. I pause every five minutes to walk around the roof and look at the panorama. It is difficult to photograph because the visual effect is a cumulative one, and I can find no single detail that conveys the whole. The horizon changes as you move your eyes round it, and yet everywhere it is a startling mixture of bright browns and greens interspersed with a jumbled mix of buildings.
The temperature is thirty degrees. At 9:45 I will walk out onto the roof from the little roof-house where I have shade, electricity and wifi, and see the biggest cat I have ever seen on the balcony of a house over the road. It dwarfs Sunshine. I will also hear the sound of live reggae music being played by a band somewhere nearby.
At 11:00 Jutta, Rudolf, Steve and I will walk to AFDA to meet the students and hear the results of their weekend think-in. We will help them process these into a set of categorised bullet points that represent their understanding of the new brief. I will post these to Jani.
We will met Gina and Jani at The Ant, and then walk to meet Jurgen from Wits at his house in Second Street, after which we will return to The Ant to eat. I will have Republick salad, complete with biltung.