The End of the Year

I love the end of the year, I really do.

It’s bursting with promises.

It unties the twisty knots that built up through the year.

It’s beach time. Families hanging out. Talking about 2011. And 2012. Stories and pipedreams.

It’s being silly with brothers and sisters.

Ching chong cha.

Road trippin’.

It’s ice cream and presents and listening to all the music on your iPod you’ve been neglecting. It’s finding new favourites.

It’s many cappuccinos and remembering how to be a tourist in your own country.

It’s moaning about the weather that’s never compatible with your plans.

Sunblock. 

It’s saying goodbye to sweet Grahamstown and its criss-cross networks of friends and people buzzing in and out from my home to the peripheries of this bubble.

It’s me getting the chance to go to Hermanus and private chef and play, play, play

with all the ingredients that I love. To write and photograph and immerse myself in food and eating and that lovely town.

It’s cookie batter and dark chocolate, mixing and whisking and flavouring. It’s a bang of colour of texture and taste that I manage with my hands and my senses.

It’s seasons greetings and kitsch Christmas lights. We whinge about the commercialisation of Christmas. But really, we all love a bit of tinsel.

It’s tinsel. That’s it.

The end of the year is tinsel.

It’s sparkly and vivacious and totally gratifying in its frivolity.