This morning I overslept, and got into work 1:45 minutes late. I opened my Gmail in time to see a friend’s status saying ‘Happy Birthday Madiba’. Since then I have done little work, instead watching footage of the 46664 concert, birthday wishes for Madiba, the Asimbonanga video in Frankfurt, and trying not to cry at my desk (and failing).

Today, I want to be at home, with other people for whom today has the same meaning that it has for me. For all that I am happy, I wish I was driving along the N1 with the dusty South African winter passing my window.

Instead, as a form of catharsis, I will write about my memories of Mandela- few and small as they are compared to the memories and knowledge of some.

I was 7 when Mandela was freed from jail. I remember sitting on the floor, watching TV with my mom and my sister. Do I remember him thrusting his hand skywards, or do I just think I do because of the images of the day that abound? I remember the texture of the carpet, and the anticipation.

I had been watching a video at school, and I rushed out to the car to greet my mom, that day in 1992. She was a bit late, because she had been voting in the referendum. I remember her using that word. My mom was in educational book publishing and didn’t believe in talking down to children. “What is a referendum mom?” “It’s a yes/ no vote.” “ What about?” “To ask white people if they want the changes in South Africa to keep happening.”

We stayed up late to watch the Olympic opening ceremony. The parade of nations got pretty boring after a while- I think countries beginning with a ‘A’ get the best deal. Grandad was selected for the Olympics, for weight lifting. That was the year we got banned, so Grandad always tells us. Suddenly it gets to the ‘S’s…I am so excited. “South Africa.” The crowd roars…the tempo lifts palpably, noticeable even to a little girl thousands of kilometres away. The world applauds us and welcomes us back.

We went to the voting station with my mom, because she wanted us with her, and because she didn’t want us to stay at home. The line went for about 5 blocks. Two enterprising teenage boys from one of the houses that the queue was slowly snaking past had bought take away pizza and were selling it off at the ridiculous price of R5 per slice to a captive audience. Everyone was in a really good mood, in spite of the heat, in spite of the hours on our feet. Black and white people lined up next to each other to vote. Is it possible to convey how significant that was? Better people than I have tried. Angie and I ran down to the corner shop to buy Coke and chips. We shared them with mom and the lady standing behind us in the line.

We watched the inauguration on tv. The union buildings, where we often went when we went to visit Granny and Grandpa (and would sometimes get bought a quick-melting ice cream!) was packed with people, rows upon rows of people, all cheering, all in the sun, and the heat, waiting to see the new nation begin.

I love our new flag- it is so cool.

I had watched a few rugby games as World Cup Fever gripped SA. Claire-Marie and I watched the final in her lounge. I ate naartjies, convinced they were helping us to win. Claire’s family were sad- her sister was supposed to be one of the dancers in the opening, but she had been too ill. Claire and I were un-affected, with the unselfconsciousness of our 12 year old’s grasp of propriety. Our eyes were glued on Joost, not wanting him to get hurt. Willing James to tackle Jomo and keep him down. Nail biting. Naartjie after naartjie- what if I stopped eating them and we lost? We won! Mandela presented Francois with the trophy. Claire and I went out into her front garden to do cartwheels. The streets were at a standstill with hooting cars- later the same would happen with the African Cup of Nations, but this time vuvuzelas would mingle to create the music of an elated people.

Natasha, Tanja and I are at Natasha’s aunt and uncle’s house. “Did you send an sms for Mandela’s birthday?” Tush asks me. “Yes- but I kept it very simple. Just ‘Happy Birthday Madiba. God bless and have many more. Love Jenny”.
“ Not me,” Natasha says “I got quite emotional, saying ‘Thank you for sending our country on its way to democracy…”

Today- grey skies. I slept past my alarm clock. I got to work late. My eyes are teary. I wish I had baked a cake. I wish I could share with someone how much today means. I listen to Asimbonanga, Impi, Scatterlings of Africa and others on Youtube. I watch the video of Madiba on stage in Frankfurt. I want to cry for our country, and our people, for being so far away but for always having Africa in my heart.

Mandela is an icon, but the key thing about him is it feels like each one of us carries a piece of him- a quote, a special memory, the image of Madiba shirts hanging in OR Thambo- in our hearts. Not only does he remind the world that we count, that we mean something, but in some small way, his birthday has the power to bring me home.

Happy birthday Madiba. God bless you.

I will list them in order from most exciting to least exciting:

-I became an Aunt. Aunt Jen(bug). My sister Angie and Halfhaggis oversaw (and participated in) the birth of Jethro Guy yesterday. I have not seen a picture of him yet, but I am full of glee in welcoming him into this big, crazy world. It is, to use a completely over-used word, 'hectic' that I am now part of the second generation, that as of yesterday my sister and her husband will be parents for the rest of their lives, and that there is a tiny baby out there who shares at least some of my DNA. So, big ups to the whole new family. I will be praying for you guys. Good luck!

- I was retrenched and then un-retrenched. Both didn't happen simultaneously, obviously, but happened in close enough proximity that it was highly amusing. Hopefully I don't get re-retrenched, because losing the same job twice in one month can really get a girl down.

- I began to count down my time til I go back to SA for a whirlwind trip. Not really un-exciting, and clearly related to the first bit, but still deserving of its own little paragraph.

-I bleached the walls in the shower in preparation for the Big Move on Monday. Bleaching was in aid of the 'Please, we really need our deposit back' panic that besets all renters eventually.

-I got angry with Standard Bank. Trying to sort out Kylebug's visa has driven me inexorably into their awkward embrace, because they have documents that I need. However, unfortunately, they are not able to give me these documents, even though a 14 email long exchange ends by them guaranteeing that the documents were on their way. They weren't.

It is hard to think of something less exciting than dealing with Standard Bank, so I might have to end there.

Anyways, the main point of this post: wishing the best to Ang, Neil and Jethro!

Music has a magical ability to take us back in an instant. It is a gift that is not paralleled by any medium except smell. One whiff of jasmine and I’m five again, playing with my cousins next to my grandparent’s fence, the smell of fresh braai meat wafting past.

This week, since I am doing a very repetitive job (opening and closing documents and collating the info contained therein) I have indulged in a little nostalgia- listening to the most random songs I can think of. If it pops into my head I’ll listen to it- Indecent Obsession, Bon Jovi, Phil Collins- it instantly takes me back. The Daniel Bedingfield playing in my headphones at the moment makes me almost able to taste the dodgy R7 vodka lime and sprite from the Union.

I’m no psychotherapist, but the desire to indulge in a bit of nostalgia is probably a result of a series of changes and upheavals. To whit: new car, new house (next month), new housemates (next month), and new family role as my sister counts down the last 30 days til the birth of Jethro. Although these are all exciting developments, sometimes there can be a sense of needing to stop, take a deep breath, and remember where I came from before moving forward. Today is one of those days.

It’s May Day, and that means out with the old and in with the new. The end of winter and the beginning of summer. The time of re-birth- it’s all blissfully symbolic.

Last night we went to the epic battle between summer and winter known as Beltane, on Calton Hill. Beltane is a fire festival that celebrates the coming of summer, and is the Celtic/Gaelic (too lazy to look it up) word for ‘May’. Each year the Beltane Fire Society (mostly made up of Edinburgh University students) creates a massive production up on the hill- massive bonfires and effigies, loads of drumming, naked pagans dressed only in body paint- basically, all the ingredients needed for a good party. It was quite a spectical, and hopefully we will have some blurry pics up on Ducklight soon. As an aside- although Rhodes had some very active societies, they didn’t ever have one that burned effigies while frolicking in the cold in only body paint and chaps. I think they should take a long hard look at themselves with a view to rectifyng this as soon as possible.

You may have also noticed the glorious blue and white of our Costa Blanca photos. We journied to Spain two weeks ago for some much needed R&R, and it was splendid. We took advantage of a misloaded offer on the Travel Republic website, so that a room in a four star hotel with full board was cheaper than the bed and breakfast option. It was spectacular. Obviously the scenery was great too, but the food! For breakfast there was bacon, eggs, omelette's, mushrooms, tomato, cold meats, fruit, about 10 different kinds of pastry and a selection of fish (Spaniards…). For lunch there was a glut of chicken, meat and fish dishes, cold meats and salads, fruit, and an entire dessert table. Supper was the pinnacle with everything from garlic and chilli prawns to lamb shank, roast rabbit and crème brulee. Then you get the blue skies, the gentle sea breezes, the iridescent blue of the Med and the endless whiteness of the pebble beaches and you have a simply magnificent place. Of course, the 2 euro beers didn’t hurt either. I would go back in a heartbeat. Spain is absolutely beautiful.

Looking forward Heather climbs on a plane this afternoon and will arrive tomorrow afternoon in bonny Scotland…just in time to say hello to the rain. Don’t tell her though, cause the weather has been brilliant up til now. Next weekend we head off to Milan, Venice and Verona for a whirlwind trip. It should be brilliant.

You may or may not have noticed that the brand new Ducklight Travels is up. Kyle has been slaving away at it, and now for the first time we can exclusively answer all the questions you may have like ‘Does the haka summon the loch ness monster?’ and ‘Do Highland Coos get itchy?’.

And they say you can’t learn anything from moving pictures. Enjoy!

Sometimes, the sundries, the necessities and the luxuries all combine to cost more than you would ever have thought possible. My refrain this month has been ‘Money, money money- it’s a rich man’s world!’ Or woman’s world. However bothered you are by equal gender representation in your blog, the point is that the last month and a bit have been pretty pressing on the budget. Things that are taking up money are as follows:

1. Djurgarden. We love- and curse- him in equal measure. He has brought so much happiness to us. He has seen us through the winter. He has made carrying groceries in the rain much more pleasurable. He has also had a service that cost 2/3 of his book value, followed by a blown head gasket, currently priced to cost 4/3 of his book value. Yes- the estimated cost of fixing the broken part is indeed a quarter more than the car costs. Djurgarden has ended up being an extremely expensive lesson in the law of diminishing returns, and I am not convinced that the lesson is over yet. We are currently looking at new cars to replace him with.
2. Travel. Travelling is one of the main reasons we have come overseas, and it is very enthralling to have the opportunity to travel so extensively.However, as Kyle so clearly explained in a graph last year, when you plan holidays, we are generally paying for them several months ahead of time. Being more savvy than last year, we are generally paying for our holidays many, many months ahead of time to get cheaper rates. This means that February and March have been extremely lean months as we have absorbed the costs for Stockholm, Birmingham, Alicante, Venice, Milan, Verona, a trip home for me, Prage and a trip to Croatia in August. That is a lot of flights, and a lot of accommodation. However, as I mentioned before I am also extremely lucky to be in the position of being able to travel to all these wonderful places, so I’ll understand if the sympathy is a bit thin on the ground.
3. General. You know how it is- some food, some clothing, internet and central heating bills and the next thing you know money is tighter than is generally agreeable.

However, money or no money, life is continuing as it is wont to do. Last weekend we headed down to Leamington Spa to chillax with Louise and Rob, which was fantastic. We all honed our card skills, maximised on the human potential to eat lasagne and even rode bikes. It was great. I arrived back to a hectic week of re-launching my site, so check it out if you care. The manic-ness seems to have subsided, and we seem to be getting back into the flow of things. This weekend’s upcoming highlights are, in no particular order:
· Ice cream
· Dexter
· Tracksuit pants.

What can I say? Sometimes you have to live wild.

Ps: For no particular reason, I have re-discovered Meatloaf and Roxette. I mean, no particular reason other than that they are *awesome*. I've been listening to 'Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through' all morning. If you haven't done this in a while, you should.

Ok, so there has been some silence on our part. I got an email a few days ago as to what, exactly, had happened to the Bugs…

Well, we didn’t fall off the earth, but we did: finish work, have Christmas at Heathrow, see families, have South African adventures, be happy, be unhappy, be happy again, get back on planes, get back off planes and get back to the grindstone.

South Africa- beautiful and lovely. Warm and sunny. Fun and stressful. South Africa was brilliant to come back to, and hard to come back to. It is hard to try and re-integrate yourself after a year away. Even if you feel the same, people will take your homecoming as an opportunity to tell you you’ve changed. Which can be a positive or a negative. People will also think that this is the perfect time to ask all encompassing questions of you, which can be hard to answer. But small negatives aside, I had a great time bonding with families and friends, living off the rand (things are not as cheap as I was hoping!) and trying desperately to cram everyone’s lives into a few hours of interaction. Open apology: If you live on planet earth, in the land of South Africa, I can guarantee that I didn’t see you as much or spend as much quality time with you as I had hoped.

So…South Africa was just too much and too amazing to fit into this post. But it is still amazing, still the country of my heart, Joburg is much prettier than I remember, and Primi Piatti is just as good.

Getting back to Edinburgh was cool…literally. Still icy and chill, although today is a balmy 9 degrees, leading all the Scots to chirp ‘Beautiful day, isn’t it’. Um…yes, yes it is.

Back to work, many decisions, many stats, many changes. Back on the net- trips to be booked, money to be earned, relationships to be maintained. More people on the couch. More Facebook profiles to be updated. Life is carrying on quickly, as it is wont to do.

Upcoming excitements:
1. Anyone we can persuade to visit us in Scotland.
2. The song says ‘Don’t come back to Stockholm’, but we are defying it and returning soon.
3. Alicante- rocking out on the coast of Spain.
4. Jen’s pilgrimage home to see the Sisterly Spawn (June-time).
5. Decisions, decisions- New York, Croatia and other pending trips.
6. Decisions, decisions- the need to find new and exciting housemates from May, as the old exciting ones embark on a 5 month road trip through Europe.
7. The exciting year in which Kyle and I transition from being people in our early twenties to being in our mid twenties.

Be sure to stay tuned!

At 8:20 am it is still dark outside the window. I guess it might be fully light (i.e. dark and overcast) by about 9:30. We will start losing visibility again at about 3:30 (that’s being generous). But arriving and leaving work in darkness has some perks- it is a totally new experience, you get to practice night driving all day every day so that you will be really good at it for the Joburg highways, and the Christmas lights. The Christmas lights are up all around the city, and the Christmas market is in full bloom. I haven’t managed to get a cup of Gluwein yet, but think this weekend when I take Simon to see the castle; it might be prudent to get a mug of Gluwein on the way up.

We made Sunday night our big family putting-the Christmas-tree-up night. We went round to B&Q and stood outside in the cold debating real vs. fake and then, once we had decided on real, nors fir vs. some other funky trees. We eventually picked a cute, fluffy little tree, about 5 foot high, packed it up and got it home. We put a roast chicken and veggies in the oven and began the Christmas decorating madness. But instead of Christmas carols we had Kylie’s Greatest Hits (that’s Minogue, not Whittington). We ferreted some high-class decorations out of our landlord’s Christmas kist, and decorated the house with gay abandon. Once the lights were twinkling and we had totally outdone the Christmas tree across the road; and our bellies were full of chicken, we went to bed. Christmas bliss.

Monday: Alarm, shower, breakfast, work, work, phone call. Whoops. The estate agent rang- the owner was in town and wanted to see the house. The owner who would be surprised to see girl things, since on the lease the tenants are two fine young gentlemen. The owner whose worldly Christmas goods, stored in a wooden box that we had no business opening, now adorned our house. Panic!

I zoomed home and cleared up all jewellery, anything pink or girly. I made sure that there were lots of sweaty man-things on the floors of the rooms, and lots of electronics in the lounge. I hid all toners and moisturisers (some of them might have belonged to Jack, but better safe than sorry). Kyle arrived. We debated un-decorating the Christmas tree. We decided to rather brazen it out. Landlord arrived. I hid in the stairwell while the meeting was conducted, reading my analytics textbook. Landlord leaves. He compliments us on the decorations.

Whew.

Luckily, every day isn’t that crazy.

This weekend we are hosting the first ever (for us) Down South Up North Christmas party. If you are saying to yourself that it is a tad early for a Christmas party, then I suggest that you stop being a grinch. Now that the new Aussie prime minister is ratifying Kyoto and Jack and Isje are allowed to use the central heating again, we are going to entice guests with promises of a warm house and Kyle’s special punch, and hopefully see a few people rock out in bikinis and board shorts.

Wish us luck!

Once again, the images on this blog have out paced the descriptions. This is because it is easier to take photos than write words. Since a picture is also allegedly worth a thousand words,I guess sometimes Kyle and I think it is superfluous to write words when we have so many pictures. Anyways...we have had some trips since we last wrote. I will recount these for all our loyal readers, and then they can match this newly gained knowledge with the photos they have already seen.

Ok, enough drivel.

Pitlochry- Kate and Jono have been in Edinburgh for almost a year and a half. They are going home very very soon, which is sad, because they are our braai and biltong people. The ones who understand that it isn't just salted meat, it is a form of goodness that transcends time and space. So we decided to do a mini road trip to the charming town of Pitlochry- allegedly one of the (many, many, according to visitscotland.com's website)gateways to the highlands. It was a crispy autumn day and the leaves were supposed to be beautiful up there in Big Tree Country (they really call it that), so off we went. Because it was nearly sort of a bit like Halloween, we wore hats. If you see any photos of a witch, a Cuban and a Russian Czarina in fluffy boots, that's us at Pitlochry. It was really, really breathtaking. The leaves were a brilliant red and yellow against the evergreen hills, and the countryside was a riot of colour. We went for a walk in the forest near Birnam Wood (Of Macbeth fame) to a place called the Hermitage, a tiny building looking over a beautiful waterfall. There is also a delightful stone bridge crossing over a gully. It just begs for tiny hobbits on a voyage. We were not what it begged for, but we were charmed nonetheless.

Autumn in a the woods of Scotland is absolutely spectacular, and it is definitely something that I am looking forward to experiencing again next year. It is impossible to explain a world where the only thing that breaks the rich russet of the leaves is clear water and black rocks- and occasionally, a witches hat.

We left the Hermitage reluctantly, and went on to braai in Pitlochry. Now, when I mentioned to the Scots at work that we wanted to braai (or rather, barbeque) outside in November, they laughed. We laughed at their laughter, knowing that they had no idea of the all-round goodness of the braai. After three hours outside with no gloves on, we realised why the Scots tend not to have a rich outdoor culture in Autumn. It has some adverse affects, like the loss of feelings in one's limbs. The meat was good though. The drive home, although good, did not have the fragile beauty that the drive to Pitlochry had had. this is probably because it got suddenly, assertively dark, and at a certain point once country road (or road in one country) begins to look very like another.

Week Trip to London- I went to London on training. It was very hard and fun and rewarding and mostly hard. If you live in London and are reading this and did not get a call while I was in London- don't feel bad. Absolutely no one in the whole of London got a call while I was there. This was deliberate for a few reasons:
1. I was there for a very expensive course that I needed to concentrate on, as there were exams involved.
2. Said course involved doing insane things like getting up at 5am to study for exams, so I had 0 energy left to socialise.
3. I was staying in Kensington, which is not Wimbledon, which is thus fairly far removed and a bit of a trek to ask people to undertake to come and visit me.
4. I didn't know how much time I would have, and I didn't end up actually having very much at the end of the day, so was glad to not have made plans.
Anyways, I went to London, did a hard course, was a big girl and officially had my first business trip. It was a milestone.

Geneva and Annecy- I arrived back from the business trip at 11:30 on Wednesday night, and at 6:00 on Thursday morning we woke up to head off to Geneva for our monthly Seeing Somewhere trip. We rented a car (there will be a whole other post on that, energy permitting, in future, since the renting of the car was our undoing a little bit)and drove to Geneva. Geneva is a picturesque city right on the lake. It is beautiful, with lots of well proportioned multi-level buildings and it just has a definite air of wealth about it. It makes you feel wealthy just being there- until you order something off a menu and calculate how much it is costing you, and then you feel poor again. We had a very good lasagne in an italian restaurant near the river. Just outside was a magical square. The floor of the square was covered with tiny blue lit squares interspersed in between the bricks, each with a particular message in a different language. It was really lovely. We walked alongside the river and admired the beautiful lights and the racing water (seriously, I have seldom seen a river not in flood move as quickly as that one did). We then ducked into a pub for a pint of blond beer. It tasted funny but ok. The pub smelled like cheese though, so we headed back to the hostel, which was, incidentally, really really good.

We awoke the next morning and prepared to cross the Swiss border into France, then drive to Annecy. We wouldn't have prepared so hard if we had known what was coming. The Swiss border is in two parts. The first part is two signs pointing opposite directions. The one says 'France' and the other one says 'Geneva'. After you have made this difficult choice, you are faced with a menacing row of *traffic cones*. If you keep your nerve about you and manage to drive past the cones, you are in France. The Swiss, being practical people, seem to have asked themselves the following question:' Why have border control when everyone knows that immigrants hate traffic cones? We'll just let the traffic cones do the work for us!' And so they did.

Once through the harrowing crossing, we dropped down into the picture postcard town of Anncey, again alongside a beautiful lake, with towering alps all above it. Our hotel was cheap, clean and nice and my French, though appalling, seemed to be understood. Annecy was winning.

In and around Annecy, we did several delightful things: eat surprisingly good pizza in a tiny restaurant in the Old City, visit the museum on the hill that overlooks the whole city, ate crepes and hot chocolate, watched TV dubbed into French, watched CNN when we could no longer stand it (and then switched back to the dubbed stuff when we could no longer stand CNN), saw llamas, went to Kyle's all time favourite place (Intermarche- the French supermarket chain. Go Figure) and went snow hunting.

For those of you who are beginners, snow hunting is easy to do. What you need: fluffy boots; puffy hat; person unafriad to drive in snow; person afraid to be driven in snow; one car, some Alps. It helps if your Alps go really high, like ours did. After only half an hour of driving, we had found snow deep enough to frolic in, and so this we did. It was cold and crispy and wind swept and fabulous, complete with wide mountain vistas and windy little wrong side of the mountain French roads, just like Bagnere (where we went at the beginning of the year). It felt great to be back.

Annecy marked our last international trip this year, barring the return journey to South Africa. It was absolutely lovely, and once again, it will be added to the list of places we want to go back to.

This past week saw us celebrating Kyle's 'One year older, one year better looking' day (known to us mortals as a 'Birthday'). On Saturday night, we had a hat party. It was good, and we had a house filled with animators and Aussies, all wearing hats. There was frolicking to Girls Aloud's Top 100 pop songs of all time by the Aussies. *cough*. There was some drawing by the animators (yes really). We finally swept the last of them out of the house at 3am.

It's going to be a long week.

I spent 5 minutes scraping ice off Djurgarden's window. It is October 24. I am going to have to start stealing the spatula in the mornings...