Rowan Spazzoli

I’ve never ridden a motorbike or scooter before. Despite a small desire at 16 for independence, I’ve never really wanted to.

But over the past few days I’ve been driving a little 50cc scooter around the Portuguese Algarve. I’ve explored little streets, small towns and coastal areas.

I’ve also been able to gently drive past a massive backlog of cars and go down some rural roads. It’s been phenomenal.

I think I’ve understood the allure of being on a bike.

It gets you to the same place. But with so much more freedom.

P.s. Mom when you read this know that I’ve been like, super safe and that I won’t be buying myself one anytime soon 🙂

Image was taken at a little promenade I found outside Tavira

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Song of the day: Don’t go breaking my heart – Elton John and Kiki Dee

I’m staying in Portugal with my family who live in Norway. Some were born in Zimbabwe, some were born in England. The guests that are here are Swedish but one was born in the USA. My aunt who lives in Ireland just left. And my dad is Italian, we’re born in Zim but live in South Africa.

And today we sat around the TV and cheered on Japan while they played Belgium.

Facebook recently showed me that I have 1000 friends from outside South Africa, and 700 from South Africa.

So my friend base us international and my heritage is too.

National pride makes us feel like we belong. Like we’re part of a big tribe.

But in an ever globalised world, these boarders and groupings count for a lot less.

It’s fun to support a national football team. But as the boarders begin to blur, we’ll begin realising that we’re all pretty much the same anyway

Image was taken at a bar in Lagos where we upped the tally for Zimbabwe from 3 to 5 🙂

Song of the day: If I could change your mind – HAIM

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Family holidays used to consist of doing as much as possible in the time we had available. Because we were in a new city or country we needed to see and do everything we could.

This sense of urgency has lingered with me into adulthood. I’ve explored Portugal over the last week but this weekend I’ve started to take it easy and relax in one place. It’s what I need

Yet I still feel this guilt… like I should be doing something seeing as I’m here.

I think the important thing that I’m learning is to distinguish and understand what you’re needing at the time.

Sometimes, forcing yourself to get up and see a city is important.

But sometimes, you need to switch off the alarm and let yourself sleep in.

Image is of some orange trees I drove past on my scooter ride today 🙂

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Song of the day: It’s my life – Bon Jovi

Much of what we do is measured by how it will appear to others.

“What will people think if I only marry in my 40s?”

“Will people judge me for my shitty car ?”

“What will people see me as if I don’t have a stable job?”

Some people may judge you. Or talk about you behind your back. Some might even bring it up with you directly.

But he majority of our social measures are in our own head.

It’s us judging ourselves by how we think other people will judge us.

And in reality most people are too worried about themselves anyway to deeply care about what others are doing.

The best way to beat the social measure is not to outperform it, but by realising that it’s only a construct that we build for ourselves

Image is of the local bus station where we dropped Jared off this morning 🙂

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Song of the day: My Immortal – Evanescence

This evening my mom and aunt Jacs spoke about their childhood while we were all sitting around the braai. They told us of memories from when they were 6 years old, some of which were incredibly dark.

Here we are, almost 50 years later and these memories still linger. And they still affect us.

Psychotherapy and psychoanalysis looks deeply into our childhoods as a source of much of our worries and behaviours. We’re shaped by them, by forces that were very much outside our control.

And sometimes they make us stronger. But sometimes we might spend a lifetime healing from them.

Image is of a phone chair from the backpackers we stayed in last night 🙂 I remember having one in Zim, where the phone and phonebook were placed on the table so you could sit and chat on the phone 🙂

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Song of the day: Haim – Ready for you

NB: I know I’m a post behind… we’ve been venturing up the Portuguese coast and have had little time to write. Will write a double post tomorrow 🙂

Over the last two days we’ve been exploring the south coast of Portugal, known as the Algarve. We’ve visited two cities, Lagos and Albufiera, both of which have been spectacular.

We’ve done something quite different in terms of how we explore. Instead of using phones or guides, we gently walk the streets and see what comes up.

Sometimes we end up on a dead end.

But mostly we’ve ended up with incredible spaces and places.

Just by letting ourselves explore

Image was taken at the beach in Lagos this evening 🙂

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Song of the day: Santana – Maria Maria

My great grandmother, Dorothy Stebbing, left a short memoir about growing up in Rhodesia. In it is one of the coolest stories I’ve ever heard, about the way her parents met.

Here’s an extract of her writing, about her parents, Edith Bluett and Harry Le Paige Heaume:

My father came [to Rhodesia] from the Channel Islands in 1908, to join the Postal Department of the infant Civil Service. He had some fascinating tales to tell of those very early days, when, for instance, there were only the two hotels in Salisbury, the Queens at the Kopje end of the town, where a newer version of the same hotel still stands today, and the Avenue Hotel on the site of our present Legislative Assembly overlooking Cecil Square – now a pleasant small park, the site of the raising of the Pioneer Standard on the first Occupation Day, September 12^th, 1890.

Dad met my mother when working in the Postal Service in England, over the telegraph. She was a telegraphist in Bristol Post Office, and when these men and girls had a slack period, they would cast about in the atmosphere for someone with whom to practise their telegraphy speed. This led, in due course, to an arrangement to meet, and to a rather unusual courtship carried on mainly in dots and dashes!

How incredible is that? My great great grandparents met each other over the telegraph, using Morse code.

What’s even more fascinating to me is that if they hadn’t found each other in this way, I wouldn’t exist today. Such a ridiculous cosmic encounter.

My mother came out to Salisbury with high ideals of Empire-building and all the rest of it, but it must be admitted that her heart sank when she stepped out of the train into the ankle-deep red dust of a Salisbury which then consisted of little more than scattered wood-and-iron shacks. On the first afternoon on which she went “calling”, with her new silver case of visiting cards, she wore the ankle-length white skirt in which she had been married, and, within a very short time of plodding along the dusty roads (albeit with ram-rod straight back and head held high under the large hat festooned with ostrich feathers).

I’ll post more about Dorothy Stebbing tomorrow 🙂 just found this story incredibly interesting. Thank you to my mom and uncle Dave for sharing it.

Image by National Archives of Rhodesia. The beginning of the city of Salisbury. Pioneer Street, Salisbury – 1891

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Song of the day: Henri Purnell & Anthony Keyrouz – Tired ft. Romy Wave

The story below is about my great grandad, Geoffrey Langdale Stebbing. He’s my mothers, mothers dad 🙂 the story below is an extract from a hook but unfortunately we don’t know the source:

In 1916 Francis Stebbing moved to Stannington as Vicar, and there he remained for 47 years, retiring in 1963 to Royston, where he died in 1970. Stannington was then a village a little way beyond Malin Bridge, where Sheffield ends. It is on top of a hill and beyond it are the beautiful but windy Darbyshire Moors. Even now Stannington is a cold place when the wind blows. The rambling vicarage where Francis reared his large family must have been icy in winter. There Lily contracted tuberculosis and died leaving Francis with one young son, Geoffrey Langdale. He married again when Geoffrey was about 12 and had six more children — Audrey, Eric, Douglas, Celia, Margaret and Peter — but Geoffrey did not get on well with his step mother. His children were told how badly she treated him. In fact her own children and grandchildren loved her dearly and one wonders if Geoffrey was simply difficult in the face of a new mother. At any rate he did not do well at school (King Edward’s in Sheffield) and when he found it difficult to get a job.

An uncle, who does hot seem to appear in the family tree was out in Bechuanaland (now Botswana) and promised to find Geoffrey a job learning to farm in Rhodesia. Thus in 1927 the young 19 year old Yorkshire boy found himself stepping off a train in the night at a siding in Bechuanaland to be met by this uncle, then sent on to Rhodesia, where he worked first on the farm of Godfrey Huggins (later Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia and architect of the Federation) at Arcturus.

Huggins was a good doctor but not much of a farmer, so after—six months Geoffrey left Arcturus and moved to a paw paw farm near Hartley where he stayed, rather unhappily for another 18 months. He did what so many did then and found a job first in the Bank, then in the Civil Service. It was while working in the Mines and Works Department that he met Dorothy.

Tomorrow I’ll continue with the story of Dorothy Stebbing 🙂

Image is from Jeffery and Dorothy’s wedding 🙂Blog: 228/365Song of the day: Nothing’s Wrong – Muse