Where is my husband when I wake up in the morning? It’s only 5:30am, the light has only just started to seep in through the windows. The scuffle of the bedclothes on his side shows an early rising with purpose.
“Peter?”
No answer.
Sigh. Up and barefoot to the kitchen windows to look out the back onto the studio and it is as I suspect. Through the window I see my husband is with his new wife in the form of a styrafoam mountain pierced by tunnels and tracks and an array of rolling stock with which to tickle her sides and insides.
Over many years, on countless seaside holidays I have got used to these abandonments at dawn for the companionship of a stick and the hope of fish, but at home? For this? To turn knobs and send trains around a board? To fiddle with wires under a table?
The story of this new venture of Peter’s started with an advertisement on Gumtree under Miscellaneous and resulted in a trip to Betty’s Bay “only to look”. A story greeted us on the other end, a story that one day I’ll tell.
Of course, we returned to Cape Town with the purchase under the belt.
The result is below.
( I am OC landscape – in progress – and Peter, chief engineer.)
