Daily Archives: June 20, 2010

Match Day – Friday 18th June published Sunday 20th June (Kirsty’s blog)

So match day has arrived, excitement is in the air but there’s definitely an undercurrent of nervousness.

We head down to the Waterfront to meet the Evas, Dave and Jimmy. Simon has texted to say that they’re having Lunch at a sushi restaurant around the coast a bit, that sounds lovely to me but ‘im indoors says we can’t go out to lunch on match day…eating’s cheating! (In retrospect this turns out to be a suspect decision as Simon and Chris enjoyed lunch alongside three breaching whales and I’ve been hoping to spot whales the whole time I’ve been here, they didn’t rub it in though…much). Pilks is on his way from Joburg for his eighth game in eight days, mainly by car, amazing!

We find the boys in fine fettle in the Ferrymans Tavern and the banter begins. They’ve been on the blog and Eva Major is disgruntled that he’s been discussed in derogatory terms and that his snoring and abluting habits have been broadcast to all and sundry, though I pointed out that I’m only reporting what I’ve been told. Loads of pictures were taken and as I posted them on facebook, the question of everyone’s World Cup 2010 nicknames arose as I needed a caption for the pics. So we have Swiss Jimmy on account of him being neutral in arguments and not taking sides, Sweeney Todd Dave due to his cut throat bloodfest shaving antics, Grisly Adams Al (he’s hasn’t shaved at all yet!), Ewok Eva because of a picture with his hair everywhere, Santa Payne as the pictures revealed a grey beard that was invisible to the human eye and ‘bird in the wilderness’ (I’ve booked a getaway in the Wilderness region for Andy and I and refuse to tell the boys where it is in case they follow us) or ‘waste of a ticket’ – the old favourite’.

Though you’ll be pleased to hear that I’ve got my own back secretly and they won’t realise until they read this but I’ve managed to convince them that they’re staying in the heart of the gay and lesbian district where the annual gay pride festival takes place (Cape Town has a fantastic thriving gay scene) and that their accomodation is listed as ‘pink friendly’ in the gay hotel guides, as all four of them are staying in the same room, the other guests won’t be able to figure out who’s with who! It could be Ewok with Swiss or Sweeny with Grisly, though the lack of shaving means that at least two of them could be ‘bears’ ;o)

Anyway, after a lot of drinking and a lot of laughing we head to the stadium and the atmosphere is fantastic, you might not have heard it over the vuvuzelas on the TV but the England fans are singing loud and proud…until kick off.

All I can say is that the dissapointment at England’s performance was all around the stadium, by the end of the game the players were booed off (something that Rooney took exception to apparently), though the game was poor and England were poor, we’ll have to pull something completely different out of the bag to even get past the group games. In my humble opinion, we didn’t look like we even wanted to win, there was no heart, soul or passion and I know the Algerians are big and physical but they easily got us off the ball and all of our players looked like they didn’t want to get stuck in and risk getting injured. We seem to have an abundance of ‘career footballers’ who want to earn the money and protect their career, the old days of a sense of pride in playing for your country might be gone. Compare our performance to USA and Slovenia, we saw heart and spirit in that game. Though I’ll go along with Andy and remain positive, England always play better when under pressure, so let’s see some passion in Port Elizabeth, get behind the team and hopefully we’ll be rewarded for our support.

Our last day in Cape Town tomorrow, we’ll certainly make the most of it.

Thursday 16th June (published Sunday 20th June – Kirsty’s blog)

Apparently Andy’s Mum and Dad have now spotted us on Look East TV too, the newsdesk have now asked us to try and send them some video footage as well as more stills, I’m guessing Mrs Miggins has found her missing cat and they have to fill the empty news space.

We had another early start and arose in the dark in order to tackle Table Mountain – well tackle the cable car queue, as apparently if you don’t get there first thing then the average queue is about 2 hours.

Simon arrived in a cab at about ten past eight, though despite military precision planning I had forgotten my handbag so had to go back upstairs for it (it’s obviously always essential that you take a handbag on a mountain trekking expedition).

The cab dropped us at the cable car and we went straight on with no queues, we were extraordinarily lucky with the weather too as we had planned this expedition in advance but every other morning the mountain had been shrowded in cloud and mist, though this morning it was bathed in glorious sunshine and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, perfect conditions for a spot of gentle trekking.

The view from the top is absolutely amazing, we’re so high that the new stadium and even Robben Island are dwarfed from up here. We don’t really start out with a particular planned route, our philosophy was to walk towards the sun as it was perishingly cold in the shade.

We had the most wonderful walk with stunning scenery for an hour or so without actually being worried about where we were geographically or whether we were lost or not, but after about three hours it started to cross my mind that none of us had any idea of where we were on the mountain. I idly started to ponder on the tricky question that if we were lost/stranded for any length of time, who I would eat first. I made the mistake of voicing my concerns about our whereabouts and also sharing my quandry about where my next meal was coming from, in answer to this, both Simon and Andy pointed out that it would make sense to eat the person with the most superfluous flesh…mmm, that would be me then! I quickened my pace, picking up considerable speed, began consulting the iphone compass app and took our current location far more seriously than I had previously.

As we trekked on, we reached the far end of the long flat summit (hence the moniker Table Mountain) and after a couple of photo opps at the highest point, Simon and Andy decide to take a steep looking route that required a bit of a tricky descent and some scrambling and clambering, I on the other hand decided to go back the same way, as I didn’t like the look of their route. Unfortunately I’d forgotten that on our ascent the climb was just as steep and scrambly. After a couple of attempts to get down with my handbag strapped to me and completly getting in the way, I had to give up and shout for help. Andy duly returned for me and we successfully negotiated what seems like a ten foot rock face with nothing to hold on to (in reality it was just a bit steep), just about got down without having to set up an intricate rope and pulley system.

Now I don’t think I have a particular problem with heights, I’ve never suffered from vertigo and have enjoyed sky diving in the past, however the sheer drops of thousands of feet off the edge of Table Moutain are scary as hell! As we turn back along the opposite ridge the paths get narrower and narrower and I’m starting to feel more uneasy. A young American boy fell and died here last week and a couple of weeks before that a young Brit also fell to her death in bad weather conditions, this was going through my mind when we found ourselves on the tiniest ledges with the most enormous drops…it was horrible! In fact I can’t describe how horrible it was, I was leaning as far away from the edge as possible but I was still more than aware without even looking, at how high we were. This wasn’t helped by Andy and Simon keep exclaiming how high we were and what a huge drop it was, while standing right on the very edge and looking down and at one point leaping from one ledge to another with about a two thousand foot drop gorge between!

I’d never experienced it before but I felt sick, dizzy, sweaty, shaky and my stomach was churning worse than any roller coaster…I think I might have mentioned it one or twice but it was horrible!

As I’m now writing this, you can surmise that I survived and so did the boys, though they enjoyed the scary bits far more than me but they probably enjoyed winding me up even more by standing right on the vertiginous edge!

We checked out the Rock Dassies, cute little guinee pig type things that seem to sleep dangling precariously from the south face of the mountain and then made our way back down to sea level.

Given that we’d trekked for four hours, we decided to treat ourselves to a slap up lunch of sushi, prawns, squid, ostrich and fine wines! Followed by a trip to the aquarium (probably a little insensitive given what we’d had for lunch but hey ho) where we spent a brilliant afternoon.

A perfect day and nobody died on the mountain…hurrah!