Hi Rosa, Loved the article. My visit to Bethesda and the Owl House has stayed with me. Rob and I arrived to what seemed like a ghost village. Empty dusty streets, dogs barking and some horses in a field. No-one at the B and B just a key. We started whispering …… it was really strange. Only met up with some people the next day when we went looking for breakfast. Found an interesting place with a whole lot of farmers having a meeting on the verandah. Small restaurant inside with shelves of books and an owner who told us all the scandal of Athol Fugard (that no-one else knows – she whispered) and on the shelves some of his plays that had been translated into Afrikaans. The Owl House, where we spent a few hours, was “other worldly”. Rob kept whispering “this is so weird”. Of course I loved the reflected colours in the glass and all the tins on the shelves. Her bedroom with some clothes on the bed had me spooked. The scarves hanging over the door had Rob in stitches – because I have scarves hanging over my bedroom door. However the Camel Yard with its hard hard concrete and sharp sharp glass was something else entirely. I just stood there imagining how it must have been to make all that. Her presence was somehow very real then. I even had a dream about the place sometime later. Fugard’s play about her is just as disturbing. Enough said – on leaving the village, further along the road, there was a tiny tortoise on the road. We stopped and I carried it over into the dryness on the other side of the road – and all was right again in the world. I still have the photograph I took of it. Very proud of all you do and write. Love, Ida
Goodness Rose what a poignant, sad and beautiful article. You havenât spared the truth â once again.
Please keep sending.
Strength for the last push
Lots of love
XXXXX B
Hi Rosa, Loved the article. My visit to Bethesda and the Owl House has stayed with me. Rob and I arrived to what seemed like a ghost village. Empty dusty streets, dogs barking and some horses in a field. No-one at the B and B just a key. We started whispering …… it was really strange. Only met up with some people the next day when we went looking for breakfast. Found an interesting place with a whole lot of farmers having a meeting on the verandah. Small restaurant inside with shelves of books and an owner who told us all the scandal of Athol Fugard (that no-one else knows – she whispered) and on the shelves some of his plays that had been translated into Afrikaans. The Owl House, where we spent a few hours, was “other worldly”. Rob kept whispering “this is so weird”. Of course I loved the reflected colours in the glass and all the tins on the shelves. Her bedroom with some clothes on the bed had me spooked. The scarves hanging over the door had Rob in stitches – because I have scarves hanging over my bedroom door. However the Camel Yard with its hard hard concrete and sharp sharp glass was something else entirely. I just stood there imagining how it must have been to make all that. Her presence was somehow very real then. I even had a dream about the place sometime later. Fugard’s play about her is just as disturbing. Enough said – on leaving the village, further along the road, there was a tiny tortoise on the road. We stopped and I carried it over into the dryness on the other side of the road – and all was right again in the world. I still have the photograph I took of it. Very proud of all you do and write. Love, Ida