Yellow, Red, Orange
Click to enlarge
Another Shot from Bo-Kaap. This is again untweaked – these are the colours straight from the camera. I broke my usual rule on not photographing people on mobile phones with this shot – because the colours worked, and the phone is not visible, indeed it could just be his finely turned calves that the gentleman is admiring.
Cape Town is in an interesting state at the moment. The day invariably features ‘load shedding’, a classic SA euphemism for complete failure of the national power grid (along with other euphemistic gems like “retrenchment” for wholesale firings, being “braced” for general inaction, and “now-now” for probably never). There is a published table of the times we are to expect our power cuts. However, these times are different for each day, and also different for each level of power disaster. You have no warning of whether there actually will be a power cut, and if so at what level. In practice, the usual blackout time here is 8-10:30 pm. This coincides with dinner and the broadcast of the news from London, so much gnashing of teeth ensues when the radio and lighting conk out simultaneously.
The DLW and I each now have head torches, to ease the process of eating in the dark, reminding me of sitting in some damp tent with M*rk freezing our n*ts off at 5k metres and spooning out some thin lentil dhal into a plastic bowl. The similarity extends because in both cases we have listened to improving reruns of Leonard Lopate podcasts from WNYC in lieu of the live BBC news. Aaah happy days!
