If the secret to happiness in life is taking things slow and easy, you might as well live it in Karoo tranquillity and have all the time in the world to cook your lamb dinner. Or at least eight hours.
I hear every day that this or that person is back working in the company’s offices two or three times a week. The word “weaning” often accompanies this news; some companies seem keen to get everyone back in the fold, into the morning traffic, to give them back the stress they’d learnt to bury while working from home. To replace the slow life they’d come to take for granted with the old rat race that used to be the norm.
All of this went through my head one night last week when I was seeing a friend off at the front gate. We said goodnight, he drove off, and when he’d driven around the corner and his headlights were no longer visible, I looked up, gasped, and instantly turned off the solar lamp I’d been carrying to light our way. The heavens were ablaze with stars, the Milky Way floating above my head so brilliantly it felt like you could almost reach out and touch it.
But we all coped, didn’t we? We made plans, we adapted, we learnt to distance, and we learnt to cook in new ways. The old ways, in recipes at least, trickled back into our lives somewhat.Over time we’ve moved, those of us lucky to have survived, far from the temporary norm that required masks and sanitising at every turn. Not everyone still makes soda bread. You don’t hear the phrase starter dough nearly as often any more.
Which is why I turned back from that glorious Karoo night sky and felt a delicious wave of relief crash through my psyche when I remembered that, as with the pandemic, at least we’re in a quiet place, a gentler space than the city we left. And, luckily, we’ve learnt to cope with cooking when the power’s off. By gas and by fire. Like the ancestors used to do. We found that it comes easily, that it’s instinctive. We light candles for night light and it’s gentle and kind.
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