June 13

The fire is still going slightly so we build it up and make breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast.  The toast gets rather overdone.  

All I want to do is read, but it seems the rest of the family has other plans.  First of all, we climb the very high kopje behind the cottages - well, I don't go right up as I stay with my dad who would find it a bit too difficult to go right the way up.

Then we pack a picnic basket, go on a bit of a game drive and stop at the campsite for lunch.  There are other people there, unfortunately.  I don't like other people being around!  

The book I have brought with me is Catcher in the Rye.  I have wanted to read it for years.  I have this weird thing though.  I like to read a book which is set in the place I am in - unless I am at home.  At home, I can read anything set anywhere. But if I was in France, I'd like to read a book set there (but not in French!) and if I went to Mauritius, I'd like to read a book set there.  I don't know many books set in the Matopos though; yet it doesn't seem right to read a book set in New York while lying out in the sun here.

We try to find an iron-age smelter that is marked on the map, but as we have no idea what we are looking for, we have no idea whether we found it or not.  We decide that a crater in one of the boulders must be it and so we can tick that off the list!

Supper is sausages on the braai.  Unfortunately, the girls left the bathroom window in their cottage open and a monkey came in and helped himself to the potato salad we had brought with us. I had taken it out of the fridge as it was too cold and everything was being frozen.  The lettuce, unfortunately, did get frozen and turned to water.  When we thought we had forgotten the tomatoes as well, it looked likely that supper was going to be a very small snack.

In the evening we play Scrabble.  Ellie wins by about a hundred points.  Ellie is very good at scrabble because she looks up words in the Scrabble dictionary which seems to allow the most bizarre of words, like zo (a Tibetan cow) and lu (Scottish form of loo).

I can't believe it is only 8.15 when we go to bed.  I feel like it is at least midnight.