DELORIS | Going deep under the layers to survive the icy blast

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Winter! You’re up, you’re down, you’re ...

Seems the only time we can find equilibrium is when one is under five layers in your bed. Include two below and thermal underwear and now we are talking!

As you read this on Tuesday, you might be down, like really down in a gale, heavy rain and serious snow.

I feel for you, but don’t call because, well I am hibernating under eight layers and might be wearing slippers in bed. And there is a hottie involved, the 1l model, that I dropped and burned myself with in the dark other night.

Damn, it’s getting cold out here on the Gonubie promontory! 

The times too are bipolar, well more of a battle between the overheated equator and some amplified bursts of icy polar air and rage from the south.

There are those who live in an oddly self-imposed cocoon of denialism: the weather is hot, the wind is strong, and “have a nice day DJT” — a sign-off roast from Elon, our most cringeworthy ex-South African, which I found more meaningful than the “bomb” Musk dropped in telling everyone, Trump is definitely in the Epstein files. Well duh mehn!

I profoundly enjoyed the famous line, “have a nice day”, which is such a core part of American retail life, and spans the breadth of, really, “have a good day”, to “I hope you go out and fall into a Seffrican pothole ...". It really did make my day.

In another act of brilliant two-word political simplicity, Don Jr, Trump’s son, was heckled as he entered court to defend his father in a R4.6bn fraud trial. People yelled: “Crime family! Crime family!”

This is short and punchy. Back in the day we struggled with our big slogan, and I don’t think we got it right: “End conscription, end conscription!” Nah that did not do it.

But a poster of a troepie bent over and dejected, his beret on the pavement and the slogan: “Botha, ek’s gatvol”, now that was lakka.

I have no problem showing you the poster which I clipped from the SA History Archive (Saha), because, ta da, I actually took the photograph.

Yup, in 1987, at midnight with a Pentax K1000 film, at fifteenth of a second with the film set to a speed of 800 ASA — oh, ask your parents what that all means but I pushed the tech to the limit and then still had to hold my breath, exhale and hit the shutter like butter. (In those days I did not have to pull my tummy in...) This was a hard-body bakkie type of camera back then.

Nobody seems to know about the originator of the pic since the SA Heritage Resources Agency (Sahra) simply says it was produced in 1987 by the Johannesburg End Conscription Campaign, digitised by Specialised Archival Solutions, and reproduced in the Saha/Raven Press’ “Defiance: SA resistance posters in the ’80s” and in other books and an exhibition.

Sorry about the 38-year diversion back in time, but I wonder if I needed to get that off my chest. Must be winter.

Please keep your distance from the ocean if you go down to witness what is forecast to be one of the biggest swell days in 2025.

Windguru.com has it at 7.2m, which no EL surfer will understand, but tell them 23-feet and now they will know. It’s either going to be massive, or it will be a non-event. Roll the dice dear demented climate!

In the opposite corner of our wacky winter, we have the benevolent dictator, the high pressure cell which has settled a large, feathery bottom on SA, delivering windless, silvery blue seas, spectacular displays of sardines being smashed by 100,000 diving gannets and others, plus sharks, and dolphins.

Sorry, a bit violent, but the point is that on Saturday morning the sun rose on Gonubie Point from a glassy, shimmering ocean.

This was the day I had promised I would walk from my garage door, a few metres to the slipway, enter the ocean and swim.

The days when I would go out solo at Reef or Eastern Beach must be long gone, for this time I surrounded myself with oceanator friends, and being a creative deviant, even managed to turn it into a fundraiser for the Gonubie Estuary and Marine (Gem) environmental group! People would actually pay to see me do my poeperige thing, crazy ne?

We had a little poster, and there was a flurry of organisation, with the angel of the East chipping in good bucks for treats, another making zarms, others brought samosas, croissants.

I cleaned my flat and then ... I finally got around to sweeping, mopping and reorganising my garage! It was a chaotic, dust bowl slum... I am surprised I did not have an asthma attack and die right there. 

But when the masses arrived, the roll-up was opened clean and fresh with two sweet little tables laden with fresh coffee, and chairs set out in a circle on the grassy verge.

Hetty and Deloris held pride of place close to the street, like two of Auguste Rodin The Thinker sculptures, though I preferred to think that I really rode ’em! Actually they were also serving as traffic bollards reserving our little impromptu, informal tea garden!

In they came, Gems people from the wittily named “Litterati” — the litter pickers, who went off to do community service as the sun rose, this time a warm orange.

We swimmers stripped into nylon, blew up our buoys, and sauntered to the slipway and strapped on shark repellent devices.

Most were electronic but there were one or two rare Earth hippy magnet shark bands.

I have, of late, been big on vulnerability being an essential component in the character of the most successful competent people, maybe because I am essentially quite a wuss and have really had to get myself over the line to tackle, face a cricket ball, climb a hard grade on a crag, paddle into a bigger wave, burn the chicken strips on my rear tyre, or these days, take stairs with confidence that I won’t take a whipper.

But I seem to demand it to make people real — do you think Clint Eastwood never shed a tear, even if only in front of the horses?

I might be being unreasonable, but it made my heart full to see one of my swim community, whom I know to be one of the bravest in the pack, show apprehension about crossing a slippery, sharp-edged stretch of rock where she previously got badly cut up. For me, it was like her personality opened up and went to heaven. 

I don’t say we should all go around tearing the sack clothe, for we are Saffers, bruisers born to endure, to wait, to fetch that futile leaf, to give birth, witness death, and through all of this, we have been forced to listen to 30 years of droning, mind-crushing, corrupt, political spinning.

So we swam into an ocean of perfection watching local icons go past: Shelley’s, Gonubie Hotel, the stunning tidal pool, the longest beach walkway in the city built years ago and still standing strong and proud.

We swam into the river, turned and went back.

Some went in on the slipway rock, others decided to exit on the beach. We skipped (metaphorically, I don’t skip no more) home along Deary Drive in cozzies and funny caps.

I was stoked beyond it, and so were the oceanator crew as we settled into plastic chairs around my garage door and joined the rest of SA picnicking in the street, our very own Christmas in Winter, with a billion dollar view of the ocean down my road with its pothole and street sign rusted right off.

Then Div de Villiers arrived with the famous little dog Tix, and suddenly there we were, mic in hand, belting out Redemption Song, about colonial human traffickers assaulting Africa, the resistance of a “hand made strong by the Almighty”, a song of freedom, it was all we ever had, emancipating ourselves from mental slavery, having no fear of nuclear weapons in the hands of madmen who kill our prophets, you know, the lyrics that just live on because they touch a basic human truth.

The swimmers loved it, the lost-now-found dog looked appalled, and wished for the torment to end. But we had a blast, and we even enjoyed a thin but warm sun.

And here was the lesson I learnt from this workshop. Looking around at my neat garage I felt a burden lift from my shoulders. This was something I could never get to in this busy life of adulting.

Yet, it looked lovely, and there was an even R600 in the bowl to help Gem do its marvellous community work. Everyone got something out of it.

Is it possible that doing something for the community also does something amazing for oneself?

Imagine all the procrastination, remonstration and frustration at never getting into that garage, but now, hey presto! All done and everyone feels good at the start of the weekend.

This, I realised, is what Foz Frommoldt, the Hillcrest Trail builder, was talking about when he said don’t do something for the community out of ego or rank commercial gain. Do it because it makes you feel good.

And I felt so go-o-o-o-od!

But now I have pulled the covers over my head and am hoping the roof stays on.

It’s only until Wednesday, when the cut-off low becomes reconnected to the jet stream and moves off and the sun shines, and we shall have a wondrous, windless weekend ahead!