No Strings Attached | De Waal Park

Summer in South Africa is coming to an end.

 The sun arrives later each morning, autumn boots and jackets find their way back into the closets and the air is chilly and whispers of mountains preparing for snow.

Everyone is trying to make to most of the last warm(ish) days including the visitors of De Waal Park in Cape Town.

While strolling around on Sunday morning amongst the happy-to-be-free dogs and birthday children catching fish templates from the fountain our paths crossed a moment of happy beauty.

These strings of hand-made fabric hearts were hanging in a tree near the central fountain blowing in the wind.

 

 

The notes attached to each string offered variants of the same message : that they were free and that you could take them home if they caught your eye.

 

Unexpected and beautiful and offered up freely to share their beauty with others.

The travelling goldfish is a plastic toy.

Probably made in China (we’re unsure as to its origins), bright lurid orange in colour with two eyes which are constantly in danger of rubbing off, leaving it blind.

It’s a goldfish (we’ve decided) and weighs approximately 15 grams (details are important when describing something), slightly more if soaked in water for prolonged periods.

It arrived, one day, unannounced but present (in all its orange glow) at our house. We had no idea how it arrived, when it had come from, who it belonged to and what, precisely , it thought it was doing there. 

We transferred it by hand around the house, into bags, boxes (as we moved) and eventually into a handbag. Where it stayed, waiting quietly, for us to realise its destiny.

The travelling fish is a plastic toy, but it’s so much more.

For us, the travelling fish is a way of touching base with the world.