Deserts & dates

Remember that panicked late-night drive down the Nossob ? (The Man) Here, in the shade of a shaggy old camelthorn tree: one of the things that made us late.

I know, it was going to be Rule #3 - but I'm just not in the mood. I've been re-reading Freya Stark's travel writings - you know 1920s-30s, traipsing all over the Middle-East & dining with the Bedouin. We'll pass over the sheep's bits & the camel's unmentionables - but she writes about desert dates, and the figs & pomegranates in the suqs. Just imagine.

So, what with the Kalahari springbok & Dame Freya's dates... well, my mind is full of sun & faraway places.

Kyloe's two young date palms are nowhere near ready to bear - but they're getting there. Such a business as it was to get them too, years ago. Ornamental palms, of course - no problem. But the real dactylifera - well, I hope that's what we've got...

Is there someone else who remembers those beautiful little wooden boxes that used to arrive, once a year, from somewhere in the northern Cape ? Fresh sticky syrupy dates. A treasure from a desert place. Like Dame Freya's desert fruits. A fond & rather melancholy memory.

Seems I have unfinished business with the deserts... Hence, I suppose, the Kalahari-Augrabies thing - no matter how tough the training. And that is how I discovered the cruelest words in the English language: "Repeat whole sequence 3 times."