Monday at the Met

Monday morning — after a quick coffee, fruit, and toast, we hop into our car and head across the highway to ‘our’ golf course, The Metropolitan. We haven’t been there for over a week. Mondays are ‘cheap golf’ days at the Met. We register and I rent a pull cart — my golf bag stand is broken. It’s only 70 Rand to rent a cart (about $6 CAD) but I ask ‘my friend’ the starter (Basil, as in the guy in Faulty Towers) if he happens to have any cheap used pull carts. “Okay, Mr Rudy, I’ll look after you.” And by the time we finished our the first 5 holes and we’re passing the clubhouse Basil has a deal for me: 200 Rand for a used pull cart. “And I’ll r-r-r-ite your name on it.” Deal.

We golfed with an elderly couple (he was 80) from the Netherlands. They are members at this course (and have been for many years), even though nowadays they come to Cape Town for only 5 weeks a year. Simon was a surgeon here for many years — he worked together with Dr Christiaan Barnard, the South African surgeon who performed the world’s first successful human-to-human heart transplant in 1967. And both Simon and his wife ‘Pellie’ were pretty good golfers.

This morning there was a cool mist and fog for much of our round — so foggy we often couldn’t see where our drives landed. But the temperature was much more bearable and we actually liked the change. I golfed better than I have for the last few rounds; Sue not as well. But we had fun.

We had lunch back at our apartment at around 1:30. Sue read, I worked on some files. Late afternoon I went to the liquor store at the corner and bought a bag of craft beers — and Sue and I did a little taste test when I got back. Max facetimed us — he’d just watched my video of the convertible top coming down on the car, and he wanted to tell us how much he enjoyed that.

We went to ‘Woolies’ (that’s what everyone here calls Woolworths, which is one of the more ‘upscale’ chains here) and picked up a couple of those ‘pastys’ (kind of like empanadas) I keep wanting to try. We took them back to the apartment, Sue made a salad, and we had supper on our patio. Perfect temperature, just sitting there outside, watching the world go by.

After supper we watched the last of my movie downloads, “The Danish Girl”, which is nominated for 4 Oscars. Well, actually Sue watched it. I missed all the exciting parts of the movie because I had to have a few ‘little rests’. At 11 pm Sue said she was going to bed and I should too. So we did.