Ann, Mike and I go into town early – Mike to meet up with the refrigeration guy and Ann and I to go shopping. We do our bits and pieces in the mall and then go to Fruit and Veg to order more meat and buy some of the vegetables and stuff for Christmas dinner. On our way round I pop into the jewellers and see if my things are ready. They aren’t but Volente assures me that they will be ready late today or tomorrow.
It’s a lovely day. The sun is shining and there’s hardly a cloud in the sky. Immediately we get back and put the shopping away, Ann goes out to sunbathe but I phone Mike who sounds really fed up as once again the refrigeration guy has failed to turn up although Roger is there in his diving gear scrubbing away at the hull to remove the green growth. Poor Mike sounds so dejected that I put together a picnic of sandwiches and beer and go down to join him.
While I am there he makes two more phonecalls to the refrigeration guy and we are assured that he is on his way but mid afternoon we get a call saying he won’t make it until tomorrow but he will definitely come then. By this time, not only is Mike well and truly sick of it but I am as well – our moods have fed to each other. I lie on the bed, alternately fuming then being near to tears. I can’t provision until the fridge and freezer are working and time in Knysna is running out. Of course we can provision in Cape Town but we have a car here, know where all the shops are and access to the marina from the car park for loading is easy here.
Mike calls it a day and we go back to the house where he sits and tries to work out some plans for Brazil - Johanne and Steve are hoping to come out for a visit - and I sit in the late afternoon sun for a while. Ann brings me a glass of wine to cheer me up but it doesn’t help. The icing on today’s cake is that Mike’s extremely expensive pillow, which I put in the washing machine then the tumble drier for hours, obviously needed even more hours to dry, and even though we put it in the sun, spray it with smelly stuff and leave it to air, we get a very nasty, sickly smell from it every time we walk past it. The smell that comes from damp washing is more disgusting than B.O. – the dammed thing will have to be done again, this time at a laundrette. I take it down to our room before dinner but it stinks the room out so much that I have to leave it outside the door.
In the evening, just as we are cooking dinner, I realise that it is probably just warm enough to sit outside to eat for the first time since we have been here. Ann and I hurriedly set the table but typically by the time we sit down to eat, the wind has picked up a little and it is somewhat chilly again. Still, the sunset is pretty.
Photo: Sunset at Knysna
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