Paintball Africa

Paintball Africa is the name of the place where 17 of the staff from CVC South Africa went last Saturday. It was really good fun, despite some fear and trepidation from yours truly at the outset, which transformed into courage and near recklessness during the course of an afternoon!


It must have been the hidden stress of trying to keep the event secret from Andy, or maybe some latent aggression I wasn't aware of, which needed an adrenaline boost to kick it off. I was also having a little trouble with my camera on that day, so the following photos have some strange lines across them.

However, this was the whole group before we started:

Andy and me in some none-flattering protective clothing:

Andy after one of the games:

Stocking up on paintballs, ready for the final, 'last man standing', game, which Brad the man in the middle, won:

As we went into this last game I went round giving out paintballs, to various people who had run out - talk about arming your enemy with amunition!!

Back in Cape Town

We are now back in Cape Town, after spending Christmas and New Year in the UK. Our night flight was delayed at Heathrow for two hours, making an already long flight even longer.

As the plane was coming into Cape Town I took this photo of Robben Island, much closer and from a different angle to the one on the outward journey. The view across to Table Mountain was not so clear as that day before Christmas:

Cape Town is a very windy place, especially in the summer. The South Easterlies are very strong and therefore windsurfing and kitesurfing are both very popular sports. The best place for these wind driven sports is Table Bay, which is also a popular spot to watch the sunset.

However, the last few times we have visited Table Bay at the end of the day, it has been almost too windy to get out of the car. We venture across the wooden walk ways only to have our legs stung by the sand, as it is blown along the beach. The expedition lasts about two minutes before we cannot stand the battering, hurrying back to the car for shelter.

So this photo was taken from the car, but shows seven kitesurfers taking advantage of the winds with the wind rushing over Table Mountain in the background:

World Jigsaw

While we are abroad, our dog Lady is being cared for by my niece, Naomi, and her husband, Matt. They are also house-sitting for us, so when we return home we stay with Andy's mum, only three miles away.


However, Naomi and Matt were going away for a few days, so we stayed in our house from New Year's Day until today. We had invited some friends from Burnley to stay too, so we enjoyed some long walks with Lady, played some games and did a 3-D jigsaw of the World. Here is the completed puzzle, which sits on a cardboard ring for stability:

The puzzle builds up from the South Pole, with the North Pole being the final, very tricky piece to insert. It has a trapdoor, to help it to be put in place:

Happy New Year - 2008

I hope that 2nd January is not too late to wish everyone a "Happy New Year". The new year came in quite uneventfully for us. Just Andy and I and his mum waited up to see the New Year in. We tried to send text messages to Adam and Peter, and then regretted doing that as we had a message at 2.30am announcing the delivery of one of them! Since the 2000 celebrations there seem to be many more fireworks locally, so for about 15-20 minutes there are bangs, so we usually wait until these have died down before going to bed, but by 2.30am we were sound asleep.

We watched the countdown from London on TV this year, and saw one million pounds go up in smoke at a spectacular fireworks display, along the Thames River, with the London Eye as its centre piece. I can't help feeling that it was a huge waste of money, but I will probably be considered a kill-joy. Fireworks are incredible displays of colour, but surely they only need to last a few minutes - not 20 minutes!