Imagine waking up on a bunk bed every day for 4 months straight, with a teeny circular window (porthole) next to your head, a curtain sealing you into your bunk, and a sleeping cabin mate 1.2 meters underneath you. As a recovering people pleaser, I have learned the art of how to slide out of…
Category: My Grateful Plate
Impossible is nothing.
I have a tendency to exaggerate. It’s in my blood – my grandfather always said, “Never let truth get in the way of a good story.” But today, I have promised myself I will not exaggerate any of the occurrences below 🙂 Are you ready? You know that moment when you are hanging by your…
cowboys and italians.
My beautiful friend, Lizanne, came to visit me in Italy for a long weekend. When she arrived, my very well-travelled companion admitted she had NEVER been to Italy. I was flabbergasted and immediately our Prosecco catch-up turned into a planning session on how best to utilise her 4 days in Tuscany to maximize her experience….
Chief Stew diaries: GUEST ARRIVAL
“All crew, all crew…guests car has come through the port gates, eta, 2 minutes.” “Interior, copy” “Deck, copy.” 22 crew stand on the aft deck, in epaulets, at attention, ready to shake the hands of 8 new guests. 5 days of 13-hour work days (at least) to “turn the boat over” 2 days of non-stop…
Jumping Ship 2019.
It’s been the craziest thing getting to the age of 32 and “retiring” from my career. In some ways, there was no other option, given that whole female ticking body clock thing, but in other ways the time felt right anyway. I am a reflective person and so I guess, the last 7 weeks has…
Magic Man: Part 3
And from there, our romance unfolded in the most natural and uncomplicated way. Well, possibly complicated only by the fact that we lived in 2 different provinces. But we spent the time flying between each other’s cities. I met his family and he met mine. The most incredible and freeing part of the relationship was…
Kindness
I am sitting in Turkey, feeling incredibly humbled by the acts of kindness I have had come my way today. And as I sit here, journaling these acts of kindness – a reel of kindness and generosity I have experienced in my life comes flooding back. The generosity of spirit is beautiful. It is so…
My only island.
I’m at a strange juncture in my life, where I realise that a large portion of my life, has been lived outside of my own body. I have spent my life living to everybody else’s expectations and needs. Sometimes, in breaking this all down, I don’t even know where their needs end and my needs…
Taking on Bodrum. Off-road.
An off-road adventure through the outskirts of Bodrum. A first for me.
Magic Man: Part 2
And so the story continued as we sang our way along the grey and busy highway of Gauteng, heading toward the beautiful guesthouse that Magic Man had so kindly arranged for me. There was something so beautiful in this act of kindness, a notion of feeling seen and understood, taking all the physical pressure off…
my grateful plate 