The Restory Retreat Centre

  Inside and Outside History of Tafelkop The advantages of being on the heal from the flu: One moves slower.  It’s been a week since that first scratchy feeling that signaled something’s up. Since, we’ve both had bad days and better days and then bad days again. Today is one of the better ones. It seems the flu viruses these days are not easily conquered. What seems even stranger is that a symptom seems to be a feeling of hopelessness, downright bone deep depression. So, this morning I decided to counter that by taking a slow walk to the old farmstead that we are starting to renovate. Skhumbozo and Zakhele are currently stripping walls of their numerous previous coats of paint. Everything is so beautiful right now. We’ve had some Spring rain and the new life budding from trees are almost too much for my watery eyes! The crabapple has shed the last of her blossom petals and has become a lush abundance of green with the most deliciously cool shade underneath. “It needs...

Photograph by George Angus The men were eager to get started and engage in the work.                                                                                               Exodus 36:2 (The Message) Last week I finished the Versailles planter (some call it a Versailles tub as well) I made for a prospective client through the inspiration of our friend Sonja . I used Saligna for its durability and stability. The design is a fine example of complicated simplicity. The end result exhibits these elegant clean l...

Glory be to God for dappled things— For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough; And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.                                                               Gerard Manley Hopkins: Pied beauty Before going to sleep at night, while lying in bed, I love to read. There is usually a Manhattan skyline of books stacked high on the little table close at hand. I am not very particular in my bedtime reading – anything black on white will do. However, a tool catalogue is an absolute treat. And if it is an antique tool catalogue, I’m in heaven. To be honest, I love looking at the pictures. For some reason or the other, the picture...

It was at the end of the 1990’s that I started setting up my woodworking workshop. At that stage I bought second hand machines and overhauled them over time while I was busy farming and working with my dad in the engineering workshop. My idea was to start with the basics and gradually build it up from there. It was interesting, reading up on articles from a variety of woodworking magazines, what was regarded as “the basics”. Some said a table saw and a planer-thicknesser. Others thought you could not be without a band saw or a router. To a novice like me it was confusing and in some ways debilitating. Quite often during that period I said to myself that I could only start thinking of any project once I had the right machines and the ideal workshop. Which meant that it took a long time for me to actually put my hands on a piece of wood and make something, because for a long time I was under the impression that I didn’t have any of the two. Then one day, on a journey into town, I h...

How does one tell about Prague? Three weeks of Prague? You try but know you’re not doing it justice. Also one doesn’t show too many photo’s. Someone else’s travel pics are hardly ever gripping stuff. So, you tell about the historical background, the art, the music that’s everywhere: on market squares, street corners, bridges. In churches and chapels. You tell about the dark periods of war and communism that left  scars throughout the city. About the river, the legends, the funeral of Vaclav Havel. You marvel at the many many sculptures everywhere: on bridges, against walls, inside walls, on rooftops. Sculptures as pillars for roof structures, sculptures that grace the corners of buildings, or crown them. Sculptures kneeling, praying, dancing, suffering. You tell about a strange sculpture of a dead horse hanging upside down from it’s legs with the knighted St. Wenscelas sitting on it’s stomach. It hangs from the ceiling of an Art deco palace where a movie theatre shows po...