Richard Stupart

OK, so it will be more of a wild and brief  road trip than a proper voyage of exploration – but my camera and I and a good friend will be off to see Swaziland this weekend. It’s one of the perks of living in South Africa that we have the two vassal states of Lesotho and Swaziland which, although accepted internationally as real, bona-fide nations, are relatively nearby nuggets of land embedded in the superstructure of South Africa. This makes it possible to visit them in a weekend and make it back while still having time to do more than watch the world blur past a bug-encrusted windscreen.

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I’ve always been reluctant to spill the beans  on new projects or ideas that I am working on, as it creates an intense concern that I may not end up following through on the thing, thereby making my failure public before I realise that what I am trying will not work. In this case, however, I am going to make a rare exception – for the simple reason that declaring what I am attempting to do will create the will (or is it fear) to get the thing done.

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OK, so I have been a bit quiet of late – but for reasons that will be revealed soon enough, and which should explain my literary tardiness sufficiently for me to avoid the wrath of the reading public. Except Nichola – whose pesky wrath has hauled me out of writing laziness and back to these pages.  Wrath sent all the way from Japan for that matter. Wrath being the theme of the moment then, I will jump tenuously from that topic to an account of  irksome irritation with the Facebook generation recording their lives more than actually living them.

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Seriously now. Hot on the heels of Professors Mamba and Wakho, Sheik Kasim came flying into my hands from an enthusiastic pamphlet distributor down the road from my house. Since I have assembled something of a collection of such interesting advertisements to date, it would be remiss of me not to add this to the set, for the viewing pleasure of the general internet community.

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“The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes, in seeing the universe with the eyes of another, of hundreds of others, in seeing the hundreds of universes that each of them sees.”
- Marcel Proust

So i’ve been a bit quiet of late.  Well, almost a week at any rate – the irony of which is compounded, given that it should come on the back of a recent spree of reckless posting, culminating in my centenary post. Followed by blogger’s sprain and a lengthy six day recovery.

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This blog began with a post of cringeworthy literary value in August 2007 and now, a little over a year later, this will mark the 100th post I have managed to write. As a minor piece of nostalgia, and inspired partly by Lisa at Left Coast Cowboys, below is a list of some of the more read highlights since this blog began. I hope it makes interesting reading, and here’s to the next hundred posts!

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I learned something new today. Those who know me, know that I have a mild proclivity to court stupid situations and possible danger, often for little reward beyond being able to say “yes, I did that stupid thing – that was me (proud grin)”. Ethiopia, as anyone who follows the basics of world events will know, is right next door to Somalia. And Somalia, as anyone who follows the basics of world events will know, is an irredeemably screwed up mess of fighting, death, piracy and a life expectancy for tourists which can be measured with a budget egg timer. In short, it would be awesome to say I had seen that part of the world.

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