On a Thorn

Below is an extract from my diary, which I decided to also read for you. Enjoy! It is just before midday. The grass here is patchy and the sun has baked the grey sand to a burn. The veld has become like an oven. The time has come to seek some shade to cool down and have a drink. The only shade is from a few black thorn shrub-trees. At midday their shade is drawn in close and I have to crawl carefully through a tangle of thorny saplings to get to decent cover. I have wiggled myself into...

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Of a Secretary Bird

After my late brunch I moved my chair to a solid patch of shade and browsed through the few snaps I had taken on the morning walk. One was of a calcareous flat, or pan, some five kilometres south of my camp. I had circled round to keep on the right side of the wind, and approached it from the West. The pan was ringed by higher ground – not hills, more like ancient dunes that rose lazily above the even sweep of the Kalahari. As I caught my first glimpses of the pan, I made out some springbuck,...

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