Rain, rain, go away...

It is raining cat and dogs. It is also raining lions, tigers and baby elephants....must be, otherwise how to account for the roaring and booming outside?

It is Christmas Eve Day in Cape Town, the land of summer sun and winter rain...it is high summer...and the skies have opened up and simply drenched us! The doggies are inside, huddled in their bed, quaking with each boom of thunder, certain that doom is upon us. And in the middle of the downpour comes a phone call from our holiday tenant, a young man who has rented our cottage for his Christmas holiday, that he has arrived and can we come let him in.

"Did you bring the rain with you?" my husband quipped, knowing our tenant had driven down from Gauteng, the home of summer rain. The man shook his head ruefully and gratefully accepted the proferred umbrella.

We showed him through the property, gave him the keys, and inquired if there was anything we could do for him. "Where's the beach?" he asked hopefully. Hubby gave him directions and he smiled his thanks. A Gautenger in Cape Town is like a Nebraskan in San Francisco...just show him to the big water!

Naturally, as soon as I was no longer struggling with locks and gates and an unwieldy umbrella, the rain stopped. Our Gauteng friend was probably frolicking in the icy Atlantic before my hair was dry, the rain having stopped about the time we handed over the keys.

Oddly enough, we were expecting the rain despite forecasts and barometer readings to the contrary. Two nights ago...when the weather was bright and uncommonly hot, my hip started to ache. I had to take a pain pill to sleep, because it was like a toothache, deep in the bones. Last night it was the other hip aching. We checked the barometer and the Oregon Scientific weather station: one was predicting sun, the other predicting clouds. My hip, it seems, is the only accurate one among the three!

Hubby's Mum and Grandmum have been here for a week and we've enjoyed entertaining them. Grandmother, who turned 80 this year, is not especially impressed with the big malls and their shiny stores...it wasn't until we took a drive to the open-air market in Gatesville on Saturday that she perked up. Several hours (a quite a few rand) later we made our way back home and gratefully retreated to the cooler confines of the house, the sun having been brutal. Hubby decamped to the air conditioned comfort of the bedroom while we women sat around in the dining room unpacking and admiring our purchases. Over the course of the week we managed to decimate a mall full of factory shops and suck down half a tank of petrol finding the factory shops that weren't conveniently clustered together.

Tomorrow is Christmas and they are flying back to Durban in the evening, so tomorrow morning I'll be up early stuffing the turkey and putting together a fat Christmas dinner. We'll be having Christmas pudding and vanilla custard for dessert if I can figure out the proper way to serve them....