Twins in Durban

Twins (d)Urban, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

Here we were a year ago, on the streets of Durban in South Africa, having experienced a 24 hour journey in the front of the top of a bus which had no air conditioning, sitting in front of a whole family with bronchial coughs. Maybe not the bestjourney we had in Africa but it had its rewarsd in the tremendous scenery we passed, notably as we skirted around the mountain kingdom of Lesotho.

Anyway, these two women seem to be very interested in the Sale going on, just like their counterparts in England it would seem. The news was reporting this mornig how people had ben camping outside certain (out-of-town) shopping centres in oredr to get various bargains on offer, with some shops opening their doors at 5 am. Apparently the so-called high street shopping (carried out all to often in out-of-town shopping centres) has seen a slump in sales, despoite the generally buoyant consumer economy this year, so they are hoping to catch up in teh sales. Well, maybe someone should point out to them that maybe people are fed up of continually buying more and more and maybe it is cheaper to buy one's books and other media from web-sites like play.com (with free delivery).

Today, we had a much more mundane journey, first being given a lift by Mum to Taunton to pick up a hire car. Interestingly enough, the news this morning was full of reports of Taunton being closed to traffic due to a fire and an explosion during the night. Typical, we thought, the first time in ten years that we want to go to Taunton and it is closed off! As it happened by the time we arrived there, the town had been re-opened and it was time to say goodbye to Mum, Fiona and Thomas, the latter two whom we will see later in the week at Diana's, all being well. A big thanks to Mum and Nick for giving us a nice Christmas, yet again. Looking forward to seeing you in Amsterdam some time in the New Year.

It was a drive up the M5 to get to Stroud where my friend Philip lives and with whom we will be spending the night. Philip is the Green Party member of Stroud District Council, having been elected earlier in the year. I would like to very much recommend the excellent blog he maintains being http://ruscombegreen.blogspot.com, which is concerned mostly local issues as well as some more general/wider ones.