Tuesday, July 1

THE ECC SINGERS

I POST this because Miriam and Chippy are in France, and I'm not. And because it's one of my favourite pics of the two of them. Here they are with Judy, reliving their End Conscription Campaign cultural performances from long ago.

VOEL VRY MET VOËLVRY

BLAST from the past, indeed. Lloyd sent me this pic of a Voëlvry moment in Windhoek in 1989, I think. There's me on the left, Grace Catao, Jannie Hanepoot van Tonder, Piet Pers (aka Gary Herselman), Helge Schütz, Steve "The Veg" Howells, Johannes Kerkorrel (aka Ralph Rabie) and Mark "Boesak" Bennett. Hell.

AT VANESSA AND ALBIE'S

ALBIE and Vanessa are returning to SA on 5 July, after spending six months here while Albie was scholar-in-residence at the Ford Foundation. Their apartment, on East 94th Street, is on the 28th floor, and has a frightening balcony: it has perspex (or something like that) walls, and makes one feel as if there is nothing to keep you from tumbling off it. But the view from it is magnificent.


Tony and Hillary Hamburger visited Albie and Vanessa a week or two ago, and we had brunch with them

Jonny and Vanessa ...

... and Albie

Sunday, June 29

VISITORS

LOVELY Steven van Hemert came in April. Here he is in Central Park, in spring.

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MARK Gevisser also visited. He was especially admiring of my new-found skill of putting together Ikea furniture. Clive Cope, who has done a lot of this in France, will vouch for the huge talent it requires to progress from flat Ikea box to a functional piece of furniture. And if he's not willing to, he's lying...

* * *
THEN came Bea and our friend, Hedwig (known as "Piering") Schoonakker (née Van Coller). Bea and Jonny and I drove from New York to Boston, where we collected Piering from Logan airport, and drove to Exeter. Bea wasted absolutely no time hitting the bars to socialise with her school friends from Phillips Exeter Academy, who were all there for their 25th reunion (sorry, fifth reunion). After Exeter, we drove to Conway, in the White Mountains, to stay with Bea's American family, Dick and Connie Brown.

Bea in front of a brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where we live

Bea and her friend Laura, who lives in New York. We went to the opening of an art exhibit with Laura

Bea and Piering shopping for I LOVE NEW YORK shirts near the Empire State Building

Organ pipes, don't you think? Sarah, Bea, Piering and Jonny in front of Inn by the Bandstand, where we stayed in Exeter

Near the library on Exeter Academy's campus

Piering and Bea in the school library, which was designed by Louis Kahn

We went walking with Dick Brown

Bea with her family: Dick, Connie and Liz