My beautiful South Africa...

I mentioned a while ago that I’ve been having a bit of writer’s block and that hasn’t really changed, but with 2 trips now passed and another 2 right around the corner, I need to update on the travel side of things.

This year’s South Africa trip was engineered to coincide with my dad’s 70th birthday and my sister’s 40th birthday.  In the past 3 years, our trips have coincided with special family birthdays and these were the last of them for a little while.  My dad's present was actually a few years in the making and I'm so chuffed that we finally got what we wanted... he was so surprised and incredibly chuffed and for the rest of my trip (and possibly still to this day), whenever a car drove towards him, he said 'Oi!  Watch out!  The Shark is coming!'

A few months before we were due to fly out, a few of my old primary school friends were bantering around on Facebook and it made me think of the good old days when we had so much fun with a load of people who we are still in touch with to this day. That is a really rare thing I’ve found and I love knowing that some of the girls at my wedding were also at my 10th birthday party. So I suggested having a primary school reunion – selfishly suggesting a date on which I’d be in Durban (well, why not?!). It was such a great night – the teachers even got involved and one of my old friends worked really hard to sort through old photos and create collages (thanks Sam!).

It was so lovely seeing everyone again after so long and it was a relief to find that although we’re all older, that doesn’t mean we’re necessarily more mature and we laughed the evening away with lots of story-telling and reminiscing.  One of my funniest primary school stories revolves around our Std 5 tour in 1992, when the 'cool' thing was to be constantly accompanied by a tube of condensed milk (NO idea why!).  I had forgotten to ask my parents to buy this for me for the tour and so I quickly asked my dad to rush out to the shop the night before we were due to leave to buy me some.  The next morning, we all congregated at the school, ready to go - condensed milk tubes in hand - when my dad presented me with my very own TIN of condensed milk.  Oh dear lord.  I spent the whole rest of the tour slurping my condensed milk through a tiny hole punched in the top of the tin!  Oh, how cool I was!

The rest of my weekend in Durban was spent with my fabulous family and my lovely friends who were really helpful in playing taxi to me, which was made necessary by the fact that I’d left my drivers’ licence in the UK and therefore was not able to pick up my hire car! What a dork.

This trip revolved entirely around family, which is the way we’d engineered it. For the past few years, we’ve taken friends and family out to South Africa with us, which has been absolutely fantastic. This time I just wanted quality time with my family and so that’s exactly what I did. And it was 3 and a half weeks of bliss! I’m always really sad to leave and I don’t think there will ever come a day when I don’t cry at the airport... I’m such a softie. But I felt ready to come back to England this time, which is a rarity for me.

The family gathering in Cape Town for my dad & sister's birthdays was a hit with lots of great catching up and hats off to Charly's Bakery for creating this beauty!

In terms of things we did, the list begins with overpriced (but delicious) dinner taster menus at fancy restaurants in Sea Point to wine tastings in my favourite areas of the Cape, Franschhoek, Stellenbosch and Noordhoek...

... to sunset photography...

Watching my brother-in-law diving with Sharks at Two Oceans Aquarium and 2 smiling sting rays...

.... to the gorgeous Cape beaches and a sneaky golden retriever...

From the District Six Museum, which made me angry just standing in there, but is such an important part of South Africa's turbulent past, to the beautifully colourful and vibrant Bo Kaap and Green Market Square...

And it ended with (but was not limited to) great catch-ups with friends, a trip to Butterfly World with psychotic birds and the most delicious seafood in Hout Bay and Fish Hoek, accompanied by waving seals.  Not to mention an albino squirrel named Frank (who was very camera shy!) and my discovery of Wakaberry.

I could write an entire internet full of stuff about my trips to South Africa – I love my home and that never fades, so I just enjoy every second of my time there every time we go. And Dave genuinely looks forward to our trips too, which makes me feel better about dragging him out there every year!


We said this time that we’d include a trip to Mozambique, Namibia or Botswana, but didn’t get the time nor have the money to do it, so we are planning now for our Christmas trip next year and will definitely be broadening our horizons a bit on our next trip. One of my fondest memories from when I was growing up is a family trip to Kariba in Zimbabwe where we all stayed on a houseboat – 9 of us all crammed onto one houseboat with a cook and a dog! Yip, we had a cook! There have been murmurings about us all doing that again, which would be absolutely amazing! I’d love it if we were able to get all 16 of us together on a trip like that again. We’d need a much bigger boat though.

So an all-round brilliant trip, as always... it never disappoints.  Until next time my gorgeous mountain!

For the full photo album, click here.

George Bernard Shaw was a wise dude!

A silent anniversary passed a few months ago – it’s one that I don’t necessarily want to take note of, but it’s one of those irritating ones that will forever be lodged in my brain – *click* another year has passed. Not just one year older (and hopefully wiser!), but one more year that we don’t have a little addition to the Ring household.

Being well into our 3rd year now since we started this, it is hard to imagine that it will ever happen for us and I flit between believing it will, being indifferent and being absolutely certain that we will remain just the 2 of us. And most days that’s fine, but as most women can probably understand, some days it’s not. And those days are genuinely very few and far between – I don’t allow myself to get down about it too often, but I do allow myself the occasional ‘woe is me’ allotted timeslot of 5 minutes. And it strikes me at the weirdest times. I’ve had a few of those in the past 2 weeks, so I’m just about out of my allowance for the next few months!

Everybody gets it right? At whatever point you are in your life, there is always something that seems unachievable. As a teenager when all your friends have finally been noticed by their secret crushes, you wonder when it’ll ever be your turn. When you’re out of work or in a job that doesn’t really fulfil you, you wonder if it’ll ever turn around for you. If you haven’t met someone you want to spend your life with by the time you’re 30, you wonder if it’ll ever happen for you. If you have a terrible break-up, you wonder if you’ll ever be able to find love again. And it goes on and on and on. All these things my friends and countless others are struggling with, I don’t happen to be struggling with right now, but it just goes to show that we all have our own battles and it’s up to us to determine whether we’re going to wallow or whether we’re going to come out the other side of it with all guns blazing, knowing that we’ve got the mindset to make it happen – or at least know that we’ve tried our absolute best!  After all, the 'want to' creates the 'how to'.

This is the point we’re heading to. We have done the doctor’s appointments, the fertility drugs and all the unromantic stuff. And that’s all we can do. We’ve just been living our lives for the most part of this year so far, totally uncommitted to ovulation tests and calendars. Since the, frankly apathetic, fertility specialist uttered the words ‘the only option for you now is assisted conception’ in February, I really haven’t bothered about it all. And it’s been liberating! It took a couple of months to let go of all the structure that comes with battling infertility, but one day I just suddenly couldn’t remember when last I worried about all of it. And I’m in a genuinely happy place now, knowing that the stress of all of it is behind me. The future stress is figuring out where to next. The most asked question I get whenever I chat to anybody about this is ‘have you considered IVF or adoption?’. Absolutely no offence to anybody who has ever asked me this, because I absolutely understand that it is an obvious one to ask, but just know that it is an equally obvious one to consider when you’re going through this, so the answer is always ‘yes’. Yes, we have considered it. We have talked in length about it and the reality is that for reasons that I will not put down here, adoption is not an option for us. And yes, we’ve considered IVF, but the answer to that one is much more simple. We can’t afford it. I have only 4 months of the year next year when I will be eligible for free IVF on the NHS, however there is a BIG ‘but’. Because I have PCOS, it is incredibly difficult for me to lose weight. And before you ask, yes, I’ve tried everything. Low Carb diet, exercise, Metformin, completely changed diet and attitude to food, the works. Still nothing. And without losing more than ¼ of my body weight, the NHS won’t even give me the time of day. And why 4 months, you ask? Because... get this... I’ll be too old as of the 16th November next year – my 35th birthday. Yes, you read that right.  But I don't define myself by my weight, I take absolute responsibility for it.

We are so incredibly lucky in other ways and it is not lost on me that we have the lifestyle that we have because we don’t have children and I am very grateful for the fact that we are able to see the world. It is something I’ve wanted to do since I first came to the UK all on my own in 2000, however I didn’t truly start exploring and seeing the world until I met Dave. So yeah, I’ve just had to learn to take some and lose some. And believe me, we take FAR more than we lose, which is a pretty good place to be in.

George Bernard Shaw said "There are 2 tragedies in life – one is to lose your heart’s desire and the other is to gain it".

Money, success, possessions. These are the things that we leave something behind in order to find, whether it be home or dreams or even our health. But in doing that, we leave behind family, friendship and love – the things we already had. I always actively try to concentrate on the things I have, not on the things I thought that I possibly might have one day. One day might come and it might not, but if or when it does, I’ll know that I’ve worked hard to appreciate everything up until that point. Although life is the longest thing you ever do, it’s still too short to live with regrets. 

So this post doesn’t really have any point other than to get these thoughts out of my head and my heart and onto paper (or screen?). And that makes me feel better! Onwards and upwards towards all those silver linings out there just waiting to be discovered! Oh, and the unicorn too.