Three Beautiful Things

1. Anne and Wayne are wandering round the hotel with a pile of incoherent postcards. Apparently ‘someone’ posted them under their door of their room at half past midnight. The cards are mostly along the lines of ‘We love you’, although there are some confessions from Rob (‘I’m American so I can do what I like’), a collection of Bond autographs, a picture of Bob’s leg ulcers and a note allegedly from George the truck. We had been sitting in a cafe next to a rack of free postcards, and you know how it is... We must have run out, because my arms are covered with scrawl, too. Anyway, what I meant to say in mine was: ‘Thank you so much for being the best leaders ever in the whole world -- lending Rosey bikini bottoms, taking me to the medical centre to get my face mended at 2am and bringing Rosey back to visit at 7am, contributing to Three Beautiful Things and occasionally being Beautiful Things yourselves, finding our leopard, taking us on our first game drive, untangling the mysteries of ...

1. Fynbos. This is the sixth and smallest floral kingdom. Plants grow on the Cape of Good Hope that don’t grow anywhere else. From a distance it looks like a bit of British moorland with springy, heatherish vegetation. But get close in and a whole lot more variety shows up. There are 2,250 species (this is more than in the whole of the British Isles). One day I am coming back on a special looking-at-plants holiday, and it's going to be in the spring when the peninsula flowers. 2. Standing on the Cape of Good Hope. This is the southernmost point of South Africa. It was strange looking across the thundering sea and thinking, next stop Antarctica. At school I learnt to mark it on the map, along with Cape Horn and the Equator and the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. At home we were told that you could put your elbows on the table once you had been to both capes -- now I’m halfway there. The cape is, I suppose, my journey’s end -- I have come as far as I can, and now I must really accep...

1.We toured Robben Island. This is the prison where they held Nelson Mandela. Our guide had spent seven years on the island for sabotage during the 1980s. He wasn’t exactly bitter about what had happened -- more puzzled, I think, that the authorities could think that black prisoners didn’t need underwear, and that they should be given a different diet to white prisoners. 2. Seeing Debbie. She is our designer at work. We e-mail nearly every day, but I’ve only met her once. It’s good to catch up and talk about how we work (very briefly) before going on to more serious matters like what we are going to eat and where we are going to watch the fireworks. 3. Darren liked ‘fireworks like shooting stars. They would die, and then bang, went off again over the water.’ Cape Town, South Africa

1. Seeing Table Mountain. It’s such an iconic image of the city. The other place I’ve seen it is in engravings illustrating books about early explorers. 2. Iris chasing a singer round the restaurant. Poor man. He thought he was on to a good thing. Get the big table going and the entire restaurant will follow, he must have thought. ‘Come on then, what will it take to get the big table dancing?’ he asked. So we released Iris. She chased him round the restaurant, in and out of the tables, cackling wildly. At first the other tables tried to pretend it wasn’t happening, but gradually, people got into it and soon everyone was dancing. 3. It’s time for goodbyes. I like the way people suddenly open up and tell you all sorts of things. I like all the promises to stay in touch that may or may not be kept. Cape Town, South Africa