We need your help....

OK, south Africa is great and everything but we're running into some problems, I think its officaly called ExPatCravingThingsFromHomeSyndome, but broadly speaking that means that both me and Nicky (in some cases) would enter a hysteria zone and possible kill to smell if not taste any of the following very British delicacies:


Picture Caption: This is what I see when I close my eyes!!

1. Pot Noodle - King Pot, Beef & Tomato.


2. Cadbury Chocolate Animals - Not sure why, think it's something to do with childhood somehow.


3. Dr Stuarts Ecinacia Tea Bags


4. Crest Toothpaste flavour TBC - ask anyone with the surname Rogers about this one!

Thankfully, we've had Bisto Gravey Granuals (Beef, 500g) specially flown in.

Please send all charitable donations to

The Dave and Nicky Britishness Foundation
901 Piazza on Church Square
Parliament Street
Cape Town
8001
South Africa

Some More Photographs

The mist rolling in from Table Mountain


Us, Table Mountain (hair styling courtesy of the strong winds!)

Dassie-tastic

We saw some great wildlife this weekend including penguins, sea urchins, baboons (which nearly got run over), hummingbirds and starfish, but my personal favourites are the dassies. These are creatures like large guinea pigs who are lie around on rocks in the sun and are too stupid to be scared of humans. On the rocks near our hotel in Hermanus was a whole colony, with baby dassies skipping around, and big daddy dassies who were rather moth eaten and not moving off the rocks for anybody. Dave took some great shots...

Is it a fad?

Our road trip holiday that we've just come back from got me thinking, it set a spark of interest in me... Wait for it.... about riding a motor bike...... I know, you've all just stopped reading at that point and are reaching for the phone or the mouse to tell me that that's the worst idea i've ever had. I know, i've even told some of you to lock me up if ever mention wanting to ride a bike that can go faster than i can pedal it.

But wait for a moment, here's the thinking - remember this might just be a fad and it'll evaporate as quickly as my surfing aspirations did once I read about Mr and Mrs Shark.

1. I've seen lots of people riding the big BMW's like Ewan McGreggor and Charlie Boorman did in the Long Way Round and it looks pretty great thing to do. (I did actually think about bikes when I read their book, but i think it was some time in January and the thought of riding a bike on a cold winters night to Tesco and back isn't really the Easy Rider vision... But it's hot and dry here so the idea's stuck a bit more.)


2. I really want to try something new that would be are really long lived hobby, this is another on the list which contains learning to windsurf, building a Westfield Kit car and becoming an Airline Pilot - ok, Airline Pilot is a bit far fetched and to reassure those reading this who don't know me, i'm not 48 and having a mid life crisis...i don't think!!


3. I've never really wanted to ride a bike in London, because that's a recipe for an accident being knocked off by a cab or bus or sales rep, but being away from london gives you different more atainable ideas


4. I certainly wouldn't want to commute on a bike


5. I'm not interested in going that fast - the ideas about cruising the roads and tracks exporing places rather than breaking speed records.


6. I've been eyeing up bikes, namely the BMW 650 GS, which is touring/enduro bike, which seems the kind of thing that would suit me.

So there it is... Who knows if it'll materialise - i certainly think it's a better idea than surfing with the sharks...

My phone number for complaints/advice/direct orders/ultimatums is 020 7193 8442

Skateboarding

Skateboarding is prooving quite a task down here at the moment. This seems to be combintation of a few things. Street skating is pretty sketchy, primarily because all those places that are considered the skate spots on the uk, carparks, industrial estates, shopping centers are all security lock down zones with either armed guards or razor wire fences... Then there's the skateparks, or complete lack of them, to be more precise - there's lot's of talk on the web about parks, but then no real detail as to where they are. Ask the locals and they say the parks are shut down. It's been quite a bit of investagtive work to try and eek out places and the more I look the more glimmers of detail emerge about the skate scene, but it's a pretty low level scene.

So here's a couple of mini's i sniffed out.

Number 1.
5 foot with a 6 foot tombstone with the craziest welded steel surface, complete with speed bump across the flat bottom. This place was Somerset West and had to be the windiest dustiest place i've ever been. Not a great ramp.



Number 2
6/7 foot wooded ramp, 3 tracks wide.
I think the skaters in the audince spot the problem with this ramp - yep 3 tracks, whats that about? Fun to ride though, even though there was a half inch gap between the coping and 1 foot wide deck.. This rampo was in Hermanus






I'll be posting Google Earth links to all these spots soon. - Hmmm note to self: Google Earth / Skate Sports Mash-Up.... Gotta look into this.

Rubbish blogging

So it's been over a week since the last post - oops.

There's going to be more soon.