Valentine’s Date at the Fireplace Roadhouse
Second in my Roadhouses of Gauteng series. Browse all of my roadhouse posts or view a map of the roadhouses I’ve visited. In my first roadhouse post, I mentioned I'd been meaning to do a roadhouse series for years but never got around to it. One of the reasons it...
My Favorite Jozi Coffee Shops: Toasted in Parkwood
Tenth in an occasional series about my favorite coffee shops in Joburg. Remember the good old days, when I used to meet people for coffee in interesting places and then blog about it? I'm ready to bring those days back. Last week the Johannesburg in Your Pocket Guide...
The 2Summers 2021 Support Group: Post #2 (Purplish)
Welcome to my second 2Summers 2021 Support Group Post. Here are some updates, both good and bad, since my first support group post: 1) Good: January 2021 is over. 2) Bad: It's still raining in Joburg, for the 13th (feels like 130th) straight day. 3) Good: I started...
Roadhouses of Gauteng Province
First in my Roadhouses of Gauteng series. Browse all of my roadhouse posts or view a map of the roadhouses I’ve visited. I've been planning to blog about South African roadhouses -- the equivalent of American fast-food drive-ins -- since 2015, when I ate lunch at the...
The 2Summers 2021 Support Group: Post #1 (Green)
I've been trying to publish this post for the past two days. I painstakingly crank out a paragraph, stare at it, read it back a few times, doze off in my chair, scroll Facebook for 20 minutes, read the paragraph again, delete it in disgust. I've done this over and...
St. James Presbyterian Church: A Tribute to South Africa’s Covid-19 Dead
In the middle of 2020, I started seeing social media posts about the fence outside St. James Presbyterian Church in Bedford Gardens. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the staff at St. James were tying one white ribbon to the church's palisade fence for every person...
Belated Goodbye to Smokey, The Melville Cat
Smokey, a.k.a. The Melville Cat, died more than three months ago on October 7th. Smokey himself delivered the news of his passing in a blog post the next day, and I intended to write my own tribute to him soon afterward. But for some reason I kept putting it off. One...
Blogging Through the Second Wave
It's Monday, January 11th, 2021. It's dark and rainy in Joburg and the holidays are officially over. South Africa is suffering through a second wave of covid-19 -- worse than the first wave, as many experts predicted, and likely to worsen further as millions of South...
Sunrise Over 2021
NOTE: I originally wrote this post before January 6th, when pro-Trump insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol and mounted the biggest threat to American democracy since the Civil War. I'm having a hard time feeling quite so positive today, on January 7th, but this...
Wonderboom, 2.0!
Happy Boxing Day, everyone. It's the height of summer in South Africa and Christmas trees (at least real ones) aren't really a thing here. But in recognition of the holiday spirit I am writing a post about a different kind of tree, which is festive in its own way: The...
Visiting the Voortrekker Monument on the Day of Reconciliation
Two days ago, on December 16th, I went with Thorsten of Dagwood sandwich fame to visit the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria. The Voortrekker Monument. I've been thinking hard over the past 48 hours about how to frame this post. The Voortrekker Monument is...
Quickie Restaurant Review: Anong Thai in Cyrildene
I've hardly blogged about restaurants this year. I don't eat out much these days, and when I do I usually go to places that feel safe and familiar. But a couple of weeks ago I went for lunch at Anong Thai in Cyrildene with my friends Yoko and Ang. I had never been to...
A December Quarantine Story
This week -- the second week of December -- is the busiest week of the year on the South African social calendar. It's normally the week when people in Joburg wrap up everything at work or school, celebrate at year-end parties and braais (barbecues), then pack their...
A Green and Blue Wonderland at Walkersons
After many months in isolation, I've noticed my five senses have heightened significantly. The world is louder and brighter than it was before the pandemic. Flowers smell sweeter and food tastes better, especially when I'm out of the city (or even just out of my own...
Heather Mason
I’m an American writer/blogger/photographer living a quirky life in Johannesburg. Follow along as I explore Johannesburg, South Africa, and the rest of the world.
