Christmas 1992

I thought it was a good time to reflect on Christmas, twenty years ago. Mom and Dad spent every Christmas with us in Cape Town from around 1986 to 2000. For many years, we would spend Christmas Eve at the Strandloper Restaurant in Langebaan, about 120 km north-north-west of Cape Town. The west coast of the Cape has very cold water, but some brave souls do swim without a wetsuit. In these photos, Lee is four years old and Luke almost, almost seven.

The Strandloper (translated from Afrikaans: Beachwalker) is an open-air seafood restaurant with a set menu, all cooked over an open fire. I remember we started with mussels and fresh fish, then worked our way up to kreef (lobsters). Dessert was mosbrood (home-baked bread with a yeast made from the must of grapes) and grape jam, and coffee boiled on the fire.

On Christmas Day, Smuts's parents would join us for an early morning church service in the 300-year-old church where the boys were baptised, followed by a day in our garden next to our river. We'd start off with Christmas cake and mince pies and coffee, and open our presents. Then we'd move on to a leg of lamb from Karien's farm in the Karoo, cooked on the Weber over coals -- accompanied by plenty of good wine!