Fair Weather Mother: Surviving the South African cold snap

As I chase Jasper round the sofa for the seven hundredth time, trying to get a foot into a sock or an arm into a jumper, the thermostat dances around the 8 degrees celsius mark and it occurs to me that I must have been better suited to cold weather in my youth. South Africa—or more specifically the Western Cape region where Jasper and I are enjoying a two week holiday from Mumbai’s monsoon—may be experiencing its coldest, most warning-worthy weather in a long time but these cold fronts, this rain and this icy wind is nothing new to someone who grew up in Jersey.

I know that young me survived my fair share of winter storms and I am quite sure I didn’t spend their entire duration hiding away indoors. I too must have been running in and out of the house letting the warm air out and trudging muddy grass in, in the same way Jasper is now. And yet, fast forward several years and fill in the gaps with a lot of time spent in far warmer parts of the world, and I am weakened. 

I look at Jasper’s bare feet, his poorly protected head and his waterfall of a nose and I shiver inside my goose down jacket imagining how cold he must feel. Perhaps I am projecting my own coldness onto him, however, because most of the time, he does not seem to be bothered by it in the slightest. He’s not used to wearing layers and in India he often spends entire days in little more than his undies and this clothing refusal has followed him here. As he evades capture time after time, he assures me that he’s fine and when I do finally catch hold of and squeeze one of his clammy little hands, I have to admit he does seem to be doing alright—today, at least. 

A few days ago, he learned the hard way that in matters of dressing for the weather, I am occasionally worth listening to. We were off to the beach for a walk and a play before a hot chocolate at the cafe. I managed to coax Jasper out of his pyjamas and into some long trousers and a t-shirt but there his enthusiasm for dressing waned and his bullheadedness took over. No, he wouldn’t wear the windbreaker trousers. No, he didn’t want the hoodie. No, he didn’t need the beanie even if it was matchy-matchy with Mummy’s. No, he didn’t want to borrow a fleece and no, he did not need the very jazzy Gruffalo jacket. No, no, NO, he did NOT. WANT. A. SNOW. SUIT. 

We bundled ourselves out of the door and into some welly boots. In the car, Jasper’s two friends were cocooned in their coats and hats, assessing Jasper’s clothing choices with some bemusement. At five minute intervals I would check in on Jasper’s thermal comfort, holding out items from the winter woolly buffet, and at five minute intervals he would bark at me that he was fine, as he batted the offerings from my hands with whichever limb still had feeling in it. 

It was only our second full day in South Africa so he may have been partially deceived by the lively sunrise which had burst out from behind the mountains, exhaling its peachy glow into the wispy clouds dancing across the crisp, winter sky. The landscape around where we are staying is unbelievably vibrant. From the moment the sun hits the grass it is transformed into a lush, juicy carpet of green so verdant it’s almost yellow, and the sky is a blue that’s somehow both bright turquoise and a chalky pastel at the same time. The leaves on the trees sparkle while the branches, damp from the recent rain, take on a rich, chocolatey brown colour. A patchwork of agricultural land dotted with farms, guest houses and wineries stretches for miles around our friends’ cheese farm (yes, you read that right), broken only by mountain ranges, the occasional road and in one direction, the sea. It’s the kind of landscape where if the cold air doesn’t take your breath away, its expansive beauty certainly will. 

The sun was as bright as might be expected at 9am, but bright did not mean warm and its gentle coverage was no match for the wind chill. At the beach, the soft beige of the sand melted into the shivering grey of the sea which darkened into the crease of the horizon. We stepped out of the car at the beach and the wind cut through to my bones. Quickly and quietly I added a hoodie to Jasper’s outfit, but he still resolutely refused the outer trousers and jacket and resisted my attempts to switch his baseball cap for a beanie. Instead, he tucked himself up in the ‘croozer’ (a three-wheeled child wagon) and tried his best to look not-cold. 

He succeeded for around 10 minutes but, as we parked the wagon up in a forest clearing and suggested a short meander through the milk woods, I could see that he has inherited my inability to function when cold. Up went the arms and out came the whinge of ‘carry’. He hugged me close as I lugged his increasingly heavy weight under and over tree branches, warming myself as I went, but it wasn’t long before my arms were no longer enjoying the exercise and I knew Jasper wasn’t getting much out of it either. Setting him down, I took in his purple nose and blue lips and forced on his remaining layers. As I zipped up his jacket, he looked me straight in the eye and said ‘Mama, why is my body shaking?’ My heart melted and I bundled him in closer as I reassured him that he was, in fact, just shivering. 

Properly layered and having tucked into his picnic box, he slowly warmed up enough to enjoy the beach. First playing with beach toys and then learning to scramble over rocks which was admittedly harder for him in all his arctic-grade, fleeced body armour and wellies than it was for his friends with their shoeless feet and seasoned climbing legs. As a first-time rambler, I thought he did exceptionally well to keep up with his friends who are almost certainly part mountain goat. Yes, he took a tumble, and yes that knocked both his confidence and enthusiasm, but the hot chocolate at the end of the ordeal helped to soothe both physical and emotional wounds. 

You might be distracted by that casual mention of the cheese farm and are wondering what brought us here. That story actually starts back in Yangon, where we met our generous hosts and the owners of Klein River Cheese: Ray and Hannah. We met on the same very emotionally lucrative hockey pitch where, as some of you will know, I also met Dylan. After a little under two years of shared Yangon experiences, they unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on how you look at it—left to come home to run the cheese farm.

Dylan and I first visited Klein River Cheese back in January 2020, at the end of our honeymoon and the very start of the rumblings around a ‘chinese virus’. We stayed only a few days, ate the on-site crowd-pleaser known as Gruberg, drank the regional wine and came away fully seduced by the cheese farm lifestyle (although fully aware of the hard work required to really make it a viable lifestyle). Four years later, I took up the invitation for Jasper and me to break up his interminable between-school summer holiday in Mumbai by inserting ourselves into family life here for two weeks. By inserting, I mean that Jasper slots in age-wise very nicely (and sometimes not so nicely) between Ray and Hannah’s two boys, forming a tripod of tyranny and tomfoolery. 

Sadly, we had to leave Dylan in Mumbai due to his work commitments and his work commitments—not to mention his work commitments. Still, Dylan or no Dylan, Jasper and I are making the most of our adventure in the Western Cape regardless of how inclement the weather has been since we’ve arrived. It was supposed to be a break from Mumbai’s monsoon, but it rather seems as though we brought the dampness with us, chilled to a more geographically appropriate frigidness. Cold weather hasn’t stopped us yet, however. 

I should have known that Jasper would take South Africa in his stride because he seems to be the kind of child whose approach is to be (to quote him quoting one of his favourite TV shows) 'mighty and small, I'll give it my all'. Of course, I worried about how he might integrate with two tight-knit brothers but he has settled in wonderfully with the boys here and the three of them oscillate between playing beautifully and raging wildly. In particularly heated exchanges, usually over who is holding the largest stick, the boys fight like badgers in a bag—claws sharp and squawks of ‘no, you’re a naughty boy’ echoing across the garden before someone breaks down and calls for reinforcements. Two minutes later, they are sharing snacks and planning their next adventure. 

I also wondered how he might adapt to the sounds and scents of the countryside. He has only commented on smell once, and that was when he was feeding off-cheese to the pigs, so I think his nose is fine. It is so quiet here that I can hear him talking without holding him to my ear and I now wonder if he will comment on the volume of the city when we return. Finally, I had some concerns as to how his digestive system might take to the sudden influx of red meat—concerns which were well-placed for someone who has to share a bed with him and his tooty booty at night.

Jasper has, naturally, missed Dylan stating ‘I like South Africa but I think another day we should go to India because my Papa is there’, and has endearingly pointed out some key differences between India and South Africa: ‘South Africa has so much grass - we don’t have so much grass in India’ and ‘in India we don’t live on the ground floor, we live SO high up, don’t we?’ but for the most part, he has embraced South Africa wholeheartedly. 

His subscription to 'Playgrounds with a View' remains fully active here and on numerous occasions, in a last ditch effort to avoid a full-feral indoor badger battle, we have used outdoor jungle gyms as our energy diffuser: swinging on plenty of scenic swings and climbing plenty of treehouses. The one element of a playground which he continues to struggle with is the fireman’s pole but, in his defence, in Indian playgrounds they tend to block off this particular aspect completely with railings—a decision taken, I assume, on the basis that it’s too high risk for small kids accompanied by nannies-on-their-phones. We have one more week here to build his confidence and hand strength to descend a fireman’s pole without help, but I think I can confidently say his bravado will, at some point, outpace his ability and he will drop down it, survive, and head straight back up to do it again. Where he may have learned his limits was on a trapeze-style swing, off which he face-planted into the ground, in an attempt to imitate his new younger friend Nelson who is almost certainly heading for a glittering gymnastics career—either that or he was a cat in a previous life. 

Besides playgrounds, our weather-agnostic adventures have taken us to hot springs, a penguin sanctuary, several very cold beaches and a supermarket so well stocked with spreadable butter, good bread and every cut of every meat I almost cried. We have watched the river burst its banks, the power go out for a day and a bridge get washed away. We have eaten our body weight in rusks (dunked in hot coffee/tea/ chocolate), barbecued chicken and toasted marshmallows on an open fire and, in Jasper’s case, broken records with his droewors consumption (it’s a dry, sometimes spiced, snack sausage). Jasper has fed the pigs, collected fresh chicken eggs (although he misunderstood his task and initially lobbed the eggs at the chickens for sport), chased a lamb round a restaurant and played fetch with the dogs. I have visited a botanical art gallery, done a morning’s work at the cheese factory and been on two runs around the farm. The second run was twice as fast as the first due to a hostile encounter with a cow and Ray’s self-appointment as motivational coach—not, as it turned out, cow whisperer extraordinaire. 

In less celebrated pursuits we have also been thrown out of a local pub where we were watching the rugby (for disruptive behaviour although, in fact, our three were more guilty of being largest in combined number than of being the loudest, biggest or fastest) and in the same evening suspected of burglary (when Jasper pushed the alarm button and triggered not only the sound but also the full visit protocol). Fortunately, neither occurrence will leave a permanent record although Jasper now has a lot of questions about alarm systems and the reasons for needing them. He actually mistakenly calls the pub the ‘tub’ and even had to ask what a pub was before we arrived there, so I am not worried about that eviction becoming a habit just yet. 

This trip has been everything we hoped it would be and more. We hoped for an escape from the heat; we got a record breaking cold snap. We hoped for fresh air; we got wild winds. We hoped for country smells; we got the scent of fresh rain on the fynbos and garden leaves and wors cooking on the indoor braai. We hoped for a chance to play outdoors in the mud; we got puddles the size of swamps. We hoped for some rough and tumble with new friends; we got the chance for Jasper to resolve his own disagreements without a nanny jumping in to diffuse. We hoped for a break in our Mumbai routine; we’ve had no two days the same. We hoped to interact with some local wildlife; I put my foot into my welly boot one day and found my toes cushioned against an unsuspecting frog and Jasper has seen his first zebras.

What I hadn’t anticipated was the sharp nostalgia it’s possible to bring on with the pinch of an ice-cold toilet seat—taking me right back to school and university days. Nor the energy required (and wasted) to dress a small but energetic octopus appropriately for the cold weather. I have come to the conclusion that I am a fair weather mother and that, should I suddenly find myself returning to Jersey, I would launch a fine line in artisanal toilet seat covers.