Well that was an experience...

Hi again,
I know I haven't blogged for ages. :(

I was in South Africa for two weeks, (jealous?) followed by three weeks of GCSE trial exams, with a few modules as well (laughing yet?). They were evil as was expected.

South Africa, or Cape Town to be specific was awesome! I was staying at the Vineyard Hotel and Spa just outside the city centre, for the first week, my last few days I spent in an one bedroom chalet on the L'Olivier estate, with all the other people who I was with. My view from my room at the Vineyard was amazing; the balcony looked straight up onto Table Mountain.

Table Mountain from Kirstenbosch
National Gardens

Here are some words of warning though; DO NOT, unless you like me are stupid and don't think things through, go up Table Mountain in the summer at 12 noon when it is 40C+. There is no shade at the top and I could actually feel my legs being caramelized as I walked around the top. There is no wind whatsoever. I got out of the rotating cable car, to find that I had sandal lines after a few hours. In England it takes me nearly three months to get my legs to be slightly less white, the Cape Townian sun is pretty powerful.

It was certainly a change to go out from wearing trackies, hoodies, and sheepskin boots, with snow on the ground, to a minimum of 26C and sandals, shorts and tees. Not that I missed the bulky fleeces. I was lucky enough to know someone who was willing to pay for my Mum and me to fly out and stay there, as I would under no circumstances be able to afford to do that at such short notice.

I visited beautiful places  such as Kirstenbosch National Gardens, went down to Cape Point and Cape of Good Hope. They had these cute little praline coloured mammals which I found out later were called Dassies or Rock Hyraxes which were most closely related to elephants.

A Dassie basking in the sun

The one thing that got to me though, was that everyone who lived in a house and not in the townships, had high fences, razor-wire and security systems. No-one, and I mean no-one walks around from a to b. People do walk around in the town centre but that’s it, apart from that everyone drives around with the windows tightly shut and air-con blazing. At every traffic light people would come up and tap on your windows trying to get you to buy things that they had made, and it would take five people to fill up your car at a petrol station. Speaking of petrol, it was so cheap out there in comparison with the UK. It cost 8.2 rand which is around 82p. That’s over 50p cheaper, and I wondered if it would be cheaper to buy petrol in South Africa and import it into the UK. It probably would be cheaper as well!

I added the link as I got from looking at Andrew Garfield looking good in Spider-man garb through to a Perez Hilton post commenting on how Bella was acted in New Moon, it included this clip; but due to a faulty internet I had to fish the video out of YouTube. I completely cracked up when I saw this.  But you can make up your own mind about it.

Okay, mini rant now over. :)

In other news Top Gear is back on BBC 2 on Sunday at 8pm, yay! Also I am inching closer to finishing my book, slowly and surely, I'm on about 178k now and counting. I'm just deciding on an extract to post here.

Referring back to my title again…
Oh yes for well over a decade I have been living on my own, with just my mum. I was happy with my life, I wouldn't have made any major life altering changes. So what does my mum do?

She gets engaged to a guy who is over 15 years her senior. They have been going out for a few months, and they want to get married, put both houses on the market, find a new house that they like, and buy it. They want to do this all before I go back to school in September. So they have roughly eight months. The one thing that got to me? It hadn't, in all of their five months in which they had been supposedly dating, crossed my mind that they would even think of getting married. I thought that they were just good friends like the other men that occasionally show up at my mums house.  I know I have made my mum sound completely like a demonic she-wolf, but its just a big change to grasp.

When I told my friends I think that they were firstly amazed, and secondly sad that I would have to leave my current house which I love. I have a pond and a small rowing boat at my current house an i know my friends will miss that when I move.

My favourite poster for the film

So exited about going to see Never Let Me Go in the cinema next week.  I read the book which is by Kazuo Ishiguro when during my christmas break.  It was amazing.  The quality of the writing was phenomenal.  I have fallen in love with Tommy, he is so adorable.  And I am counting down the days until I can see it on the silver screen.  Carey Mulligan [=)], Keira Knightley and Andrew Garfield [=D] are starring, and judging from the trailer they are going to make for a damn good film.  Will comment again once I have seen it.

That’s all I have to say for now, I hope no more crazy things happen by the next time I have blogged. I'm going be more reliable about blogging from now on.

Belle

<3 x