The coming week is very fully planned. It begins on Monday with tickets to the opera, Mozart’s Magic Flute, with the local company in co-operation with the Cape Town opera company. It’s to be sung in Swedish!

Tuesday and Wednesday will see us join the local tango group where we have made some good friends and acquaintances for the usual class and milonga. There is a tango festival, with classes by visiting professionals from Holland and Belgium on the weekend. G travels northwest on Thursday with a group from work to deliver what would be called ‘continuing education’ to staff at some of the primary health centres (read general practitioners, community nurses, and other health professionals who team up and work together) of the region. On Friday, there are presentations at the University from all of the people (about 11) who will receive honorary doctorates on Saturday. Among them are a few who will address the audience in English, including one professor from Canterbury Uni (Tourism in a post carbon world) and another from Stellenbosch Uni (Public life and moral fabric in SA), both of which could be very interesting. H and G have been invited officially to the conferring ceremony on Saturday evening, followed by THE dinner and ball of the year. For this we require what they call ‘tuxedo’ dress for G (tails, white tie, gold and diamond buttons and cufflinks) and a ball gown (blue velvet off the shoulder) for H, both of which we have had fun borrowing from various friends or acquaintances here. RP has unfortunately not been officially invited, so will peep at the proceedings from a safe distance in the handbag instead in order to be able to report later on proceedings and to try out a local taxi cab to and from the venue instead of the usual cycle transport.

H has booked to visit a Klipp Salongen Frisör on Friday for a haircut, which will set us back in the region of $100 or so. It had better be a good cut! No wonder H’s office mate’s wife does duty with the scissors in their household.

And just to end off with something for readers with sharp eyes; they call the dots on some of the letters the ‘pricks’. Nice use of that word hey?