The calming summer scene of cricketers in their whites. A sport like no other - as if concocted by Oscar Wylde on a hashish binge. Apologists for the brutal British Empire like to pretend they bestowed all kinds of gifts on the colonies they looted (funny how Japan has all those things anyway despite never being colonised). But the only thing that probably wouldn’t be here had they not been that’s worth a damn is the game of cricket.
Off Lower Main Road Obz yesterday. Not much is holding out against gentrification now. The city is content for the few who weren’t already pushed off to distant wastelands by Apartheid to be pushed off to distant wastelands by rising rents and redevelopment. At top right is a mosque that I didn’t know existed. The daily call to prayer is emblematic for me of our diverse city and the history of that diversity in building it. Islam in SA began with Indonesian and Malaysian slaves being sent here by their Dutch colonists. Political prisoners too. The first book ever written in Afrikaans was the Qran, translated by a political prisoner from ‘Dutch Batavia’, Tuan Guru. ...
Observatory. It’s the mixture of Victorian cake-like prettiness with a layer of middle-income country grime.