The truth behind silly conversations – Journal entry 3

He held a little pink bucket in his hand. I only noticed it because it contrasted with his bright blue football shirt, which was soaking wet. He also had a gold chain hanging from his neck, which again contrasted with the pink bucket. There were a few specks of grey in his hair, but I couldn’t be certain it was grey, or just the sun reflecting off some droplets of water.

I watched him chase his daughter, running after her out the sea trying to splash some water out of the pink bucket onto her new pink costume. I’m not entirely sure that it was new, but it sure was bright, and she seemed scared of getting it wet. He did eventually soak her, not with the pink bucket, but by grabbing her into his soaking shirt.

I was eating my sandwich and watching this man play with his child, wondering when last they had been children together, and how a vegetable panini could be so oily. It dawned on me that we have to humble ourselves to really connect, and roasted peppers are the problem. All bright and fleshy, but full of oil.

Gary apparently has an excess of belly-button lint, and no-one knows where it comes from. We tried to figure it out for a while, but even Chelsea had no idea, and she knows lots of things, about life and her husband. It may seem like a silly conversation, but silly conversations are always indicative of people at peace, sitting on a beach eating paninis and watching children play. That kind of peace doesn’t just happen though: behind the silly conversations are always lots of serious ones. Sometimes peace has to be fought for, and only then do you have the freedom to talk about belly button lint, and where to get ice-cream.

The beach was stuck between rocks and dunes, which is not the kind of beach where ice-cream sellers walk around, so we had to drive around to find some. After some misleading advertising and 6-point turns in the rental car I settled on Fanta Orange, not because it’s the same as ice-cream, but because all the turning had unsettled my stomach. The Fanta helped though, and it reminded me how my mom used to give us flat Coke and Marie Biscuits to cure an unsettled stomach.

She would have loved the Tea Garden at Belvidere manor, with it’s view of the lagoon, green grass, white wrought-iron chairs in the shade of the bluegum trees. It was splendid: the tea, the scones, the ice-cream and chocolate sauce, all splendid. Our waiter had a booming voice and laugh, not like the one you put on for customers to get extra tips. He was splendid too, all dressed in white. He said ‘splendid’ a lot too, but it was fitting, because as I have said, it was a quite splendid there, in the shade by the lagoon.

I finished the day sitting on the whale-tail looking out on the Plettenberg bay Peninsula. Actually Andrew had stolen the whale-tail bench, and I had to sit on the normal wooden one. It was ok though, because I could keep an eye on him, which you need to do with someone who wears a pink sweatband, but he looked peaceful, probably having silly conversations in his head.

I was having a silly conversation in my head too, something about how to make a better cup of coffee by inverting the cylinder before extracting the coffee. But eventually the ocean and seagulls and setting sun and fishermen on the rocks got to me, and I stopped thinking about coffee, and thought about a man who humbled himself to connect with me, and fought to bring me eternal peace. He didn’t have a pink bucket or gold chain, but he is someone I can ask about belly-button lint. That sure is a mystery.