On The Move Again

It looks as though I will be making a trip over to England in September to spend a couple of weeks with Mum and Dad. With neither Claire nor Peter and their respective families living there, it will be a strange visit. Walks with Molly the Labrador will seem very tame by comparison to taking the little ones to the park, screaming in delicious terror as we hurtle down the tunnel funnel at waterworld or clambering all over the climbing frame at the play centre. I shall miss sharing tea parties with Basil Bear and going on space missions or building railway lines but I have high hopes of getting to Australia in November to catch up with them all. In the meantime, I plan to enjoy some early autumnal weather and see a few old friends in UK while I am there. We enjoyed an excellent party on Saturday night with a few of our South African pals here in Miami. We might all live in twenty five storey condos now but the boerwors and the memories are never far away and everyone has a few Swazi spears, springbok carpets and Tinus De Jong paintings on the wall. There is a huge South African contingent living in South Florida and it is even possible to buy Nando's sauces and Mrs Balls Chutney if you know where to look! Miami has come through the wettest June on record for many years and we all feel as though we have webbed feet. However, the real Hurricane season still lies ahead of us and will last until the end of October. Let's hope we don't get the pummelling that we had last year with no fewer than four major hits on the Florida mainland. There is a high price to pay for living in paradise!

Mum and Dad at Ker Maria Nursing Home 

James and Nerissa at Hester's wedding 

Write What You Know!

When I was sixteen, I was challenged to write an essay following a school trip on the recently completed Inter City train line up to the newly opened Coventry Cathedral,. I stunned everyone including my English teacher and myself, by winning the competition and since then I have found it easy to write about places and people that I have experienced. On my arrival in Mohales Hoek Lesotho, I found that the local newspaper entitled "The Foothill Times" had fallen by the wayside, so appointing myself editor in chief, typist, roneo operator, stapler and distributing manager, I proceeded to put together several issues. However, despite the enthusiasm of some readers which resulted in them purchasing a life time subscription, the paper didn't stay the course. Poems recording various births, marriages, anniversaries and extraordinary occurrences in the little town were all written and I understand that some people still hold copies. I came across the minute books of the Social Club and from that rich source of material, I began to write a book entitled "On Which The Sun Has Set". The book covered the twenty three years that I spent in the tiny European community which on a good day could number between twenty and thirty people. During the 1970's in the absence of TV, tar roads and telephones, we made our own entertainment, and on the whole we had a fairly hilarious time of it. There were days when we dodged bullets from the latest political upheavals or disappeared over the nearest mountain on either horseback, motor bike or aeroplane in some madcap race. We flew from trading station to trading station landing the tiny Tripacer aircraft on strips of land that defied all the known rules of aeronautics occasionally accompanied by a pig, two dogs, two children and cases of frozen chickens. We spent our weekends trout fishing in the mountain rivers, playing crazy games of Beery Golf, challenging each others sporting abilities in the Annual Pentathlon and generally keeping ourselves active and occupied. Once my two children had grown up and left school, I left Lesotho and settled on a derelict farm across the border in South Africa. It was here that my next book was written . "Lambs Love and Laughter" told the story of how my second husband and I had wrested the farm back from its declining overgrown state, how we turned the farmhouse that had been used as a sheep shed, back into a home, and how we learned the hard way about coping with veldt fires, drought, cattle sickness and the strange animals that came into our lives. This book was serialised by the Country Life Magazine in South Africa before going on to be re-written and enlarged. On leaving Africa, we finally found our way to America where I began to write a series entitled "From Midhurst to Miami". Readers of an English newspaper seemed to enjoy finding out about life in America through the eyes of two recent arrivals and the articles can be seen on my website www.fagalde.co.uk. I write for pleasure ( who these days apart from JK Rowling writes for gain?) and am working on two more books.

Max and Katie 

Braving the birthdays 

INTRODUCTION

When I was young, people often asked me "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Having lived in five different countries, I still seem to be making it up as I go along. At the age of nineteen, I packed my bags and left my home in England and headed for South Africa. A strange twist of fate then took me from the comforts of Durban to the mountains of Lesotho where I expected to stay for a period of three months. My departure was somewhat delayed however, and twenty three years later, I repacked my bags and moved across the border to a derelict farm in South Africa where I and my second husband worked to create a home and raise a herd of beef cattle. Eight years on, and with both security and financial situations equally precarious, we sadly sold up and moved back to England. We had begun to grudgingly settle in to a rather dull existence when the offer of a relocation to Miami came to us, and without a second thought, we packed our suitcases once more and headed for Florida. Is this the end of the road for us - who knows! With children and grandchildren now living in Australia and France, I have my doubts. I have discovered that the trick is to travel light, keep our options open and make the most of whatever life offers.