A Cape Town summer's day

How magnificent is this day? Not hot and not cold. No wind. No clouds. Sunlight glittering off the crests of wavelets stretching as far as the horizon, the surface of the sea in between a glossy, glassy, glistening stretch of reflected cerulean.

In the garden, birds idly stretch their wings, catching any air movement to keep cool, or swooping swiftly among the drops of water fountaining from the hosepipe I am holding skywards. A few showers overnight have dampened the earth, allowing man-made rain to seep quickly below the surface to be sucked up thirstily at grassroot level, denying the sun an opportunity to reclaim the moisture and turn it into fluffy white clouds.

I look up and see a cottonwool cloud appear from thin air, and within minutes it has swirled into a new shape and then disappeared, while in the background two new clouds appear to show that, while we are delighting in a wind-free day down here, the atmosphere is in a constant state of turbulence, allowing us to experience different weather patterns, rather than eternal winter or endless summer.