LBJs for breakfast

Thank you.  

There are few moments more rewarding than a simple thank you from the young people who share your life and who, by virtue of genetics, call you Dad. I'm lucky that way.

My three children, Amber (17), Michelle (15) and Sean (14), assisted by Alisha (?), consider it prudent to spoil me mushy-brown more often than I care to count and who am I to deny them the joy..? Sebastian Ethan Kirk, unashamedly late & due later this winter's season will undoubtedly add to the festivities as I grow older. I'm clearly a shameless glutton!

I recently found myself on the receiving end of a busload of chocolates & a few relaxing nights in the Ivory Tree section of Pilanesberg NP.

A brownish grey dash of lime

For those of you who haven't been to the Pilanesberg volcano it's about time you did, not for its rugged aesthetic appeal - there are prettier spots everywhere or for its game viewing - that too is surpassed elsewhere but because it exists as a living monument and proof sufficient that with some foresight & fortitude we can polish the pristine from the degraded wrongs of a commercial past and I, for one, love it for it's resilient character as a result.

At first glance Pilanesberg is clearly money-shopped. Look carefully and in certain spots trees find asymmetrical lines but, like the rabble in the back, also provides reams of unwritten canvas for a better future. Potential rather than output usually gets me warm & fuzzy. I won't dwell on the accommodation. We had more fun trying to recreate the Audi ad-campaign using moonlight, a candle and our old bush-banger than we did at the 5-star table & that's fine with me. It's the simple joys in life that abide longest even if we failed, somewhat spectacularly, at replicating Ogilvy & Mather's ad-campaign.

Launching Kirk, Kirk & Kirk's - Banger's & mash campaign

A familiar friend

Pilanesberg is, whichever way you cut it, a smudged sketch of the girl next door and like most pigtails, not exactly the prom-queen and yet interesting in an understated way.

The avian protagonists are equally understated and yet.. interesting; little-brown-jobs mostly & if the colour-collective is descriptive, then a tongue-in-cheek-like bag of song. It's free too if you know just where to scratch.

Chat to fellow-enthusiasts familiar with the Pilanesberg lark & most will say Pretoriae steals the show. Why? I cannot say unless perhaps in premature anticipation of a potential split from its geriatric-like, white-headed conspecific more readily found further west.

These winter-chilled LBJ-songsters are as vocally exuberant as the Spanish exit-queue at the Aeroporto Internacional de São Paulo. They're just not fun to talk to.

Finding these enthusiasts in a sea of brown, therefore, is more back-foot now than it is at summer's kick-off. Even so, armed with chilly sympathy & a tolerance for dust, spawned by the in-flight antics of the Big 5 brigade headed for the siting's board, LBJs are readily found.

Ramos - a chilly glare!

The sedentary SA's Botha - not a happy winter lark

These little browns are, in the word's of SoD's Forsythe himself - 'my favourites!' Song or scowl they're ultra-cool in the early sun & a gift. Unwrapping lark from chat is all the rage. Beats an old-boy's tie at lunchtime, any day!

Just a step to your right...