Alex Smith's Blog, page 3
April 16, 2014
Secret Gardens of Cape Town #10: Mount Nelson Sculpture Garden
For one stretching second upon a time, in the early hours of a Tuesday morning, when the moon had turned to blood, three apocalyptic dogs, a piano playing vulture, a group of people holding up a baobab tree and Chinese water goddess, rose up from out of their cast bronze gowns and commenced a dance of cartwheels and pirouettes upon the perfect undulating lawns of an historic pink palatial hotel. Save the hotel cat, who had been eviscerating a field mouse, nobody saw this remarkable event. Nobody was meant to. And we would not have any inkling of what was coming, had we, when we visited the sculpture garden the Friday before, not overheard the whisper of an upside down horse positioned near a lavish English flowerbed of Salvias, Dahlias, Roses and other belles. It was Granny Jay, who loves to eavesdrop, who heard the clandestine discussion between the creatures of the menagerie at the Mount Nelson Hotel. We pondered the forthcoming festivities of the Blood Moon Ball over our tea and scones, but since none of us is rich enough to book into the said establishment, and anyway, some of us have bedtime at 7.30pm, we knew there was no chance we’d be able to gatecrash the auspicious pre-dawn event. However, I can highly recommend a wander through those gardens and their curious bounty of artworks by some of the country’s most esteemed sculptors. And considering the address, the cream tea is very competitive, actually less dear than Kirstenbosch. Elias handled the fine bone china with great aplomb for a boy not yet two. And then he enjoyed kissing the bronze vulture, climbing on the bronze cow, plucking the hearts out of hibiscuses and pinching petunias from the fountain display.
Devilskein&Dearlove is due to be published by Random House Umuzi in SA and Arachne press in the UK in July 2014. It is a ‘Secret Garden’ for the 21st century, set in Long Street Cape Town. Perfect for precocious readers from the age of 12 and up!
April 9, 2014
Secret Gardens of Cape Town #9: The Vineyard Hotel River Walk
I know of two writers who cannot abide anyone seeing, let alone touching, their feet, but I have no issue with it. Friends gave me a gift voucher to the spa that has been voted the best in Africa: the Angsana at the Vineyard. I chose a colour the Pantone people call Black Red. And after the luxury of a foot massage, with my toes twinkling and nails painted to perfection, there was ginger tea with a view of the almost primordial gardens of the Vineyard Hotel.
Way back in the mists of time, I had heard there was a river at the Vineyard Hotel, but I never went there. So decades have passed and only because of my toes have I discovered this treasure of a garden. It’s beyond the boring grass (don’t get me wrong, I like grass, but it’s not usually exciting). You go down a cobbled pathway and stairs and then, abracadabra, appears the ‘River Walk’. Why haven’t I been here before? Why didn’t people tell me how sublime this place is? It’s magic. There are cycads, Stinkwoods, Kapok trees, bush willows. And it has certainly been a secret from me.
Maybe you need to have a coffee at the restaurant to justify sauntering about the garden, but don’t spend too much time under the pergola looking out at the manicured grass; layers of terrace and the river wilderness (complete with a hundred year old tortoise) await you. And the air there is cool and mossy-sweet and dragonflies flit between the water lilies. Its most recent author, or the gardening equivalent thereof, is Anne Sutton, who was named an Icon of Landscape Architecture and who passed away in 2011. What a beautiful legacy of leaves and bush willows she has left.
Devilskein&Dearlove is due to be published by Random House Umuzi in SA and Arachne press in the UK in July 2014. It is a ‘Secret Garden’ for the 21st century, set in Long Street Cape Town. Perfect for precocious readers from the age of 12 and up!
April 7, 2014
20 Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious picture books for toddlers
On the brink of his 2nd birthday, Elias is an addict. And he’s demanding. Doesn’t matter if you’re trying to get in a few last winks before 6.30am he’ll thrust a book in your face and demand ‘Read!’ He knows the names of all his favourite characters: Harold, Allan, Billy, Felix, Mungo, Mildred, Oliver, Norman, Mimi, Lulu…and so on. We go to the wonderful Rondebsoch Library and the awesome Central Library to feed his habit – he loves the library and the librarians are so friendly and helpful. It works out at about 10 new books every two to three weeks – even favourites dwindle in popularity after their intense first reading. In all he wants about 6 books a day, some of them have to be read over and over, so over a three week period a good book will be read about 40-60 times! (That’s 2- 3 times a day, fortunately Andrew and I take turns) What has been amazing to see is that books that have earned a status as classic, are that for a reason. As a writer and former bookseller, I have a painfully acute understanding of just how fleeting most books shelf lives really are (and people who don’t know about the book trade often find it hard to believe that the majority of fiction works vanish after 3 months at the bookshop ball). But classics can last for decades. Take Harold and the Purple Crayon, written about 50 years ago. I got that for him when he was 19 months old. To be frank, I didn’t think that in this multicoloured multi-media existence a two-colour (black and purple) picture book would be of much interest, but I’d read it was good, so we got it from the Rondebosch Library. Before reading to Elias, I glanced through it and thought there was no way he who couldn’t draw or write yet, would get this tale about a boy who draws a pathway and then trees, dragons, boat, beach, picnic of pies, city, windows and so on. But boy was I wrong. The word ‘love’ does not adequately describe the effect Harold had on Elias. Harold is a star. Still today when we see windows in tall buildings or come across purple crayons, Elias excitedly proclaims ‘Harold!’
As with all things, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There have been a couple of books I’ve liked that Andrew has disliked. And every time we go to the library, out of the 7 books we take home, Elias will instantly love 3 or 4, and the others will either be totally ignored or reluctant second choices (when his readers tire of repeating the new favourites). This is another astonishing thing to observe and it’s not a brash, flash, bling, colour, foil and TV-tie-ins: some images, some characters and some stories just have an unknowable magic that makes them stars to Elias, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious books.
I don’t think picture books need blurbs, so I’m not going to describe the stories, but here are 20 books Elias has absolutely loved. This isn’t in order, but he did tell me his favourite book is Pumpkin Soup. Also included are links to background stories, articles, webpages about the authors and illustrators – some are just extraordinary people (Judith Kerr, William Steig…oh, what am I talking about ‘some’ actually these authors and illustrators are all amazing people).
3.The Hungry Otter by Mark Ezra
4.Felix by Pamela Allen
5.Comic and Curious Cats by Martin Leeman and Angela Carter
6.Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion and Margaret Bloy Graham
7.The Plant Sitter by Gene Zion and Margaret Bloy Graham
8. Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina
10. The Julia Donaldson/ Axel Scheffler books like Room on the Broom, Tiddler, The Snail and the Whale, The Monkey Puzzle
11. Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
12.The Happy Day by Ruth Krauss and Mark Simont
13.Maisy by Lucy Cousins– various titles (and he calls her Mimi, because the first one we got for him was in French and in France Maisy is called Mimi).
14. The Tiger Who Came for Tea by Judith Kerr
15.Owl Babies by Martin Waddell
16.
The Elephant and the Bad Baby by Elfrida Vipont and Raymond Briggs
17.Flotsam by David Wiesner(wow! What beautiful images. No words, you tell the story).
18.
18.We’re going on a Bear Hunt by Helen Oxenbury and Michael Rosen
19. The Waterhole by Graeme Base
20. Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems
