Summer – January 2016
There is a general sense that things are going from bad to worse, but sometimes they don’t – like the time my mother moved from Durban to a small Swartland village called Koringberg, about 118km from Cape Town. The town suited her as an artist, and recently divorced. Koringberg has nothing, so the living costs are low, the air is fresh, and the horizon is open.
Her new patch of earth wasn’t much. There was a small house in a bad shade of maroon and a deeply neglected garden. But my mother is an artist.
“Look!” she said, about to show me the photos, “the garage space is for a studio!” Previously, her
