Dread

I am only half looking forward to today! Sure my aunt is coming up for the day, but she is being brought up by my cousin - who kind of dominates the conversation.

What worries me is that she is emigratting soon. They live at present in Pinetown, but apparently all she can talk about at the moment is how great Britain is! All she can see is - like Michele - you can get almost anything in the shops like Harrods and cheap Rolls Royce cars, but watching Top Gear - filmed just outside of London - I know that you CAN buy a Rolls Royce for 12 000 pounds, but that is not the answer Have it serviced - twice a year - and the bill is regularly 2 000 pounds. Dont forget that one pound costs you R 12, and that makes these prices HUGE. Sure a new Vauxhall costs 35 000 pounds, but multiply that by 12 and it is not that much less than in SA!

Sure you can get seats at Wimbledon or on the West End, but you cannot easily buy a home! The faxt that you can buy 12 types of fresh bread in the shops, and get Bovril when you want to, I question if you can liver with only seeing these things!

A friend of mine works in London, and he bought a studio apartment in London, and it is TINY, and cost him 120 000 pounds! Even the bed folds up into the wardrobe to create space. So different to here where you can take a break in the Game Resrve and enjoy the space of Africa. I can just imagine that give her 2 months and she will be yearning to come back to SA! Sure you can drive from London to Paris, but who really does that regularly? I think she is kind of starstruck, and I will be hard pressed tot to immediately tell her that I for one am happy to live in SA - where th sun shines - and sumer lasts longer than 3 days! You cannot live on the fascxt that the West End is close by, if one ticket costs the equivalent of R 700 - each! Here top shows cost R 150 - 200 a ticket - AND you can park your car nearby when you arrive! You can get Caviar at Harrods in London, but you cannot get there easily because you cannot find parking - let alone pay for it! Secret is that you can get pretty well everything you could want here - Caviar or Bovril - but how is that better than being able to afford Biltong or Dry Wors!Here these are cheap, but in London, you can get it, but the price is prohibitive!

Secret is to be happy where you are, and she is just not a ray of sunshine - just like my ex - and the grass is always greener on the other side - not that in London you get grass on the 30th floor of Council Flats! Even if there is grass, you can only see it green for at most 6 months of the year! The rest of the year it is
C-O-L-D and wet, and there is no such thing as sunshine! I was there for the WHOLE of summer 1998 when thesun shone for a weekend. I arrived Friday morning, and by Saturday morning the neighbours were moaning about the heat wave and the drought! It last rained on Thursday! Here a drought is when it does not rain for literally years! Here in Africa, if it does not rain for a week, no problem, but in Britain it rains pretty well daily! I find rain can be kind of depressing!If Africa is so bad, why did the early pioneers stay when they crossed the world?

When I was in the UK it looked great, but that was a visit and I was happy to fly back to the spaces of Africa! When the African Bug bites, you get Africa in your blood and you cannot turn your back on it! She is happy now to go, but give her 3 months - in the cold in Britain - and she will be climbing the wall wanting to come back to Africa!