This will probably be the last message I send before Christmas, so I'll give you a round up of what I have done since the last time I sat down to do this. It's a bit reflective, so excuse if I should sound a bit pretentious.
Last Christmas (no.. stop singing Wham) Celia and I were in Ko Lanta, Thailand with the Dirty Germans and Team Sweden having just completed our advanced diving qualification and busy having the time of our lives. Well we went on from there to visit many more countries, drive thousands of miles through the most spectacular jaw dropping landscape anyone could ever wish to see. We met fascinating people with stories similar, and phenomenally better than ours, gained many new friends and with that, places to stay on future visits. We had a short stay back in London to shake a few familiar hands and raise a glass or two with great friends who we hope to see again.
Once we had planted our feet back in South Africa a lot of adjustments had to be made, and if I'm completely honest, I still really miss my London lifestyle, my flat on the common, my shitty little Astra and clearly my mates there. I suppose it's a grass is always greener mentality. To rid myself of further distractions Celia and I bought an amazing house smack in the middle of Sandringham, just a stones throw from the kosher bakery, kosher butchery and the Pick n Pay with kosher wine. I feel right at home. I even refuse to do any work on a Saturday now as I cannot work on the sabbath.
The next additions were the puppies Charles E. Lehmann (bulldog), and Turk R. Lehmann(boxer) who are now almost 9 weeks old and as cute as ever. Charlie has grown 3 times the size in 3 weeks and is an absolute ball of energy. His absolute favourite is running to Turk at full puppy pace and crashing straight into him in a manner that Schalk Burger would be lauded for.
So you can see we currently have our hands full with the new house, the dogs, and Christmas eve celebrations scheduled to kick off at the (young) Lehmann's house shortly after sunset tonight. On the menu we have a variety of dishes from around the world (Portugal and Germany). The Portuguese dishes being dominated by Cod and the German ones with potatoes and pork - Tell me that's not a stereotype. I have arranged a few special bottles of red to be brought in from Allesverloren (not kosher) which we shall be enjoying with our hearty (many course) meal over the duration of the evening.
The base of our Christmas tree is currently a bit bare, but this is not due to lack of presents, but due to the necessity of keeping them away from our over zealous puppies who find that shiny sparkly paper too hard to resist. I have already been burned with the tinsel on the tree which was within paw / jaw reach. Our tree which proudly stands a full 8ft tall is currently carrying a few lemons - yes we have a lemon tree as a Christmas tree - should come in handy when I'm pouring those festive Mojitos towards the end of the evening.
Sure, it doesn’t exactly smell like pine. But a few ornaments and some LED lights and we got ourselves some holiday spirit.
It was awesome keeping up with all of you this year and equally so if we were lucky enough to see each other, i'm sure next year will be no different, with hopefully more effort on my behalf too. You can still visit my travel blog on
www.thelehmanns.org which I am proud to say now ranks number one on google when you search for "The Lehmann's". I had nothing to do with this.
Frohes Fest to you all
I trust Christmas brings to you its traditional mix of good food and violent stomach cramp.
