The Palmiet shadow puppet show

Early in our relationship, Ally and I went camping at Palmiet. We were young, smitten, and—after a few days in the fresh air—feeling particularly adventurous. Late one night, while the rest of the campsite was still gathered around the dying embers of the communal fire, we retreated to our tent for some "private" time.

We were being incredibly careful. We spoke in hushed whispers, moved with what we thought was ninja-like stealth, and made sure our "naughty action" didn't make a sound that would alert the neighbors.

The next morning, my best friend Russell greeted me with a look of suppressed, agonizing amusement.

"What is it?" I asked, sensing I was the butt of a joke I hadn't heard yet.

"Oh, no," he chuckled, shaking his head. "I can’t say. It’s far too embarrassing."

"Oh, come on," I pressed. "No secrets between friends. Out with it."

He leaned in, his eyes dancing. "Alright, let me give you a little tip for the future, Graeme. If you and Ally are planning to get 'jiggy' in a tent, for the love of God, switch the internal lights off first."

My heart sank as the basic laws of physics—specifically backlighting—hit me.

"Otherwise," he grinned, "you’re not just having a private moment; you’re broadcasting a highly detailed shadow-puppet show to everyone at the campfire. It was a five-star performance, Graeme, but I think the audience is expecting an encore."

I went into that tent a master of discretion; I emerged the accidental star, director, and lead cinematographer of the Palmiet Adult Film Festival.

Memorable moments: The projectile presentation

In 1992, for my final year of Marketing at the University of Cape Town, my friend Rory and I were assigned a presentation on the dark arts of merchandising. We wanted to be legends. We planned to reveal the "tricks of the trade"—how grocery stores put the bakery at the back to force you through the aisles, and how cereal boxes feature characters whose eyes are mathematically angled to lock onto a passing child’s gaze.

Since Google Images didn't exist, I spent days as a guerrilla photographer, snapping high-quality evidence of impulse-buy racks and strategically placed chocolates. We centered our entire grade on these visuals.

The day arrived. We set up my dad’s analog slide projector—a beast of a machine that required manual loading. We were so rushed we skipped a full technical rehearsal, but I was confident. I stood at the front, took a deep breath, and clicked the remote for the first slide.

CLACK-WHIZZZ!

Instead of appearing on the screen, the first slide popped up like a piece of overactive toast and went flying through the air, soaring over the heads of the third row.

Stunned, I pressed the button again. CLACK-WHIZZZ! The second slide followed suit, embarking on its own solo flight across the lecture hall. Rory scrambled to the back, frantically wrestling with the machine, but it had transformed from a projector into a high-velocity catapult.

Doing a visual-heavy presentation without a single image is a special kind of hell. I stuttered through descriptions of "imaginary" cereal boxes while my hard-earned research lay scattered on the floor among the feet of my peers.

Being a student with very high standards, I was devastated. But as we walked out, Rory just shrugged and chuckled and said, "Shit happens, Graeme. No one died."

Rory was right of course. Decades later, the grade is forgotten, but the image of my hard-earned research whizzing through the air like a plastic bird never fails to bring a chuckle. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but in my experience, it often just makes you funnier. Even if it takes a few years to fully appreciate the joke.

Memorable moments: The Rajasthani quicksand

In 1997, I was on a grueling overnight bus journey through the desert of Rajasthan. In the middle of the night, the bus groaned to a halt for a toilet break. Being rural India, there were no facilities; the passengers simply vanished into the darkness to find their own "private" spots.

I decided to walk about fifty metres away from the road to ensure total solitude. I found a promising-looking patch of ground, stepped off the verge, and promptly sank thigh-deep into a thick, sucking sludge.

As I struggled to extricate my leg, an unimaginably foul stench hit me. I realized with a jolt of pure horror that this wasn't mud—this was the desert, after all. I had just stepped into a communal, open-air cesspit. I was thigh-deep in human excrement.

Desperate and gagging, I spotted a large open barrel of water nearby. I spent ten frantic minutes scrubbing the filth off my skin, only to be joined by a local gentleman who walked up and calmly began washing his backside in the same water. It was then I realized I was performing my emergency surgery in the local "bottom-washing" station.

With my pride in tatters and my trousers and shoes beyond saving, I threw them into the desert night. My own luggage was buried at the back of the bus, but Ally’s bag was within reach.

I spent the remainder of that long, dusty journey barefoot, smelling faintly of the "communal barrel," and wearing a pair of Ally’s very skimpy, very tight shorts. The bus driver didn't ask any questions about my new wardrobe, presumably because the smell was enough of an explanation.

Memorable moments: The apple juice grenade

I met Dani on a Tinder date at a pub. She was stunning—fun, charming, and possessed a smile that made me completely forget my surroundings. I was so smitten, in fact, that when I went to the bar to get our ciders, I walked straight back to the table without paying. The bartender had to chase me down, but eventually, I settled the tab and settled into what felt like the start of something special.

I managed to secure a second date at a lovely restaurant in the city. On a rainy evening, I picked her up in my trusty Toyota Corolla. We were driving along, chatting and laughing, when the interior of the car suddenly experienced a violent, liquid explosion.

A deafening BANG echoed from under the passenger seat, followed by a mist of what smelled suspiciously like high-potency cider drenching the entire cabin—and specifically, drenching Dani.

"What the hell was that!?" I shouted, pulling over in a panic.

As it turns out, I had gone grocery shopping over a month prior. A one-litre carton of apple juice had escaped the bag and rolled under the passenger seat, where it had spent four weeks quietly fermenting in the dark. It hadn't just turned into cider; it had turned into a pressurized biological bomb. The rainy-day humidity was apparently the final trigger it needed to detonate.

Dani sat there, dripping with fermented sediment, the car smelling like a brewery's floor. I braced myself for the end of the relationship before it had even begun. Instead, she looked at her soaked rain jacket, looked at my horrified face, and started to laugh. She laughed until she couldn't breathe.

We dated for over a year after that. I learned two very important things from that night: always check under the seats after a grocery run, and hang onto a woman who can find the humor in being hit by a fruit-juice grenade.

Memorable moments: The kick of a mule

In 2023, while working for Volvo in Cambridge, I spent my nights in Duxford and my weekends in London. One particular evening, I was invited to my boss's house for a dinner party with my colleagues—a wonderful, mostly Swedish group.

In an effort to be helpful, I volunteered for kitchen duty. My task seemed simple enough: make the tzatziki by mixing five "cloves" of garlic into the yogurt. Being a culinary novice (and, let’s be honest, a bit of an idiot from time to time), I operated under the assumption that a "clove" was the entire, multi-segmented bulb.

I proceeded to mince five entire heads of garlic into a single bowl of yogurt.

The resulting dip didn't just have a "kick"—it had the concussive force of a mule. Surprisingly, the Swedes—who are famously reserved until the schnapps starts flowing—didn't seem to mind. In fact, as the evening devolved into a raucous affair of toasts and table-dancing to ABBA, I felt compelled to enter the spirit of things. I ate a heroic amount of my own toxic creation.

By the time I stumbled onto the train for the ten-minute ride back to my B&B in Duxford, I was well and truly "tiddly." I closed my eyes for a second and woke up ninety minutes later at Liverpool Street Station in London.

Resigned to my fate, I took the tube to our apartment in Hammersmith and crept into bed, trying not to wake Ally. She didn't stir at first, but as the cloud of five fermented garlic bulbs finally reached her side of the mattress, she recoiled in her sleep.

"Oh my God," she gagged, rolling as far away as the bedframe would allow. "You stink!"

I spent the next three days reeking like a medieval plague ward. I set out to impress my Swedish colleagues with my kitchen skills; I ended up proving that while ABBA is timeless, the scent of fifty garlic cloves is practically eternal.

Memorable moments: The CEO of Christmas

My friend Sean Peche had a father who was a true force of nature. He didn’t just participate in life; he commanded it. He ran a highly successful business, chaired the South African pigeon racing society, and headed the board of parents at our school, St George’s. At every school fete, he was the MC, and at every sports day, his voice boomed across the field with a resonance that made the official PA system look amateur.

In our world, Mr. Peche was the ultimate authority.

One day in high school, Sean made a startling confession about his early childhood. Like all kids, he’d eventually been sat down for "the talk" about the man in the red suit. But because of his father’s relentless energy and CV of leadership roles, Sean had a very unique misunderstanding.

When he was told the classic line, "Santa Claus is your dad," Sean didn't realize it was a metaphor for parents buying presents.

He took it literally. He spent a significant amount of time in a state of deep, existential confusion—unsure whether to be disappointed that the North Pole was a myth, or immensely impressed that his father managed to find time between the pigeon racing and the school board to fly a sleigh around the world in a single night.

Most kids lose their faith in magic; Sean just gained a whole new level of respect for his father’s time-management skills.

Memorable moments: The Franschhoek flush

On a road trip through the Cape with my friend Chrisel, we stopped to visit her aunt, Tannie Tia. She lived in Franschhoek and was the personification of "Old World" Afrikaans elegance—posh, sweet, and surrounded by silver tea services and smartly dressed help.

The atmosphere in the drawing room was hushed and refined, which was a problem, because my stomach was currently staging a violent protest. Chrisel and I had indulged in a massive Indian feast the night before, and the spices were now demanding an immediate exit.

I excused myself and retreated down the hall to the bathroom, where I proceeded to deposit what felt like a biological weapon. I flushed.

Nothing happened.

I waited, heart hammering, and flushed again. Then again. The water rose, the contents swirled, but the exit remained stubbornly closed. Panic, cold and sharp, set in. I looked around the pristine room for a solution. I spotted a small bin, emptied its contents into the sink, and realized the bathtub was my only hope. I filled the bin with water from the bath and began a desperate, manual "power-flush," praying to every deity I could name.

After several frantic buckets and a near-flooding of the floor, the evidence finally vanished. I was sweating, my trousers were suspiciously damp from the splashing, and I’d been gone for what felt like forty-five minutes.

I walked back into the drawing room, trying to look "refined" while frantically rubbing my trousers with my hands to hide the water marks. Tannie Tia looked up with genuine concern.

"Graeme, are you all right? You were gone so long."

"Yes, Tannie," I squeaked. "All good. Just... admiring the tile work."

"Oh, thank goodness!" she sighed with relief. "I was worried you’d gone into the other bathroom. That one is giving us terrible trouble!"

I sat back down, took a sip of my tea, and realized that in the world of high-society etiquette, the difference between a "triumph" and "social exile" is exactly three buckets of bathwater.

A love of smoothies runs in the family !

And what colour coordination between blouse and smoothie !

Photographing planes at Sydney Airport and surrounds

A really fun morning photographing planes coming and going at Sydney Airport with my Photography Meetup group. Something completely different!

The shooters at the ready ...

The planes

Is it a plane, is it a bird ....  ?

The scenery