2025: Friendships, loss  & growing older

2025 Year in Review

The key events table is a record of activities as they occurred in the course of the year -  a reminder of what we did when. This narrative fleshes out some of those events.  Why?  Good question!   

So much just flashes past in a blur of fleeting WhatsApp messages, never to be seen again. I'm also incentivized by Sally's beautiful photo albums, which she curates so meticulously.  I can't compete, but the ability to add video and links gives an added dimension so we complement each other. 

Five key events dominated the year:

• Planning and leading the 10-day 2025 Probus Adventure to the Kogelberg.  This strengthened the deep friendships which had been developing in Probus.  It is a very special organisation to us. 

• Writing and presenting a paper on the impact of disability on society, drawing on Ralph's life to illustrate key concepts. 

• Selling Fairhurst (my house in Constantia) after 25 years

• Severe deterioration in my back which led to being almost incapacitated by continual pain

• The death of three close friends and walking companions, two of them the same age as me: John Newmarch in May, Frank van der Velde in July and JP van Niekerk in December.

2025 Probus Adventure:  JP had led the renowned Probus Adventures for 4 years but asked me to take it over in 2025.  This was quite a responsibility as JP was a hard act to follow.  I enlisted Sally's help as co-leader, and we first did a 10 day recce in February, visiting all the accommodation, trying out all the restaurants and exploring the walks. The Adventure is fully catered in advance with all meals pre-ordered so a lot of planning and responsibility choosing 3 meals a day for everyone for 10 days. (Incredibly in this day and age, among 24 on a tour, there are no vegans or even vegetarians.  Everyone just eats whats chosen.) But by all accounts, everyone enjoyed the trip. 

A feature of the Adventures is that each evening one of the participants gives a talk. I choose the theme of 'Ancestors' in recognition of the Origins of Humankind that is documented along this coast and at de Hoop. My talk was about the life of my grandmother, entitled:  'From Cannibals to AI - 200 years of change'  Giving this talk illustrated the usefulness of this family website. I could simply 'go back' 150 years and pick out the material i needed! 

Another very successful Probus activity was a 5 day mini-adventure to Cedarpeak in the Cederberg.  (Not a spelling error! Both spellings are in use.)

Disability paper: JP had published some interesting papers on a variety of pressing social issues. Following a discussion with him, and direct editing assistance, I wrote a a paper on the cost to society of Intellectual Disability, drawing on my experience with Ralph. In the course of preparing this I revisited and updated the pages I had started writing about Ralph's life. I presented the paper to a couple of hundred people at a U3A meeting in June and am scheduled to give talk to Probus in 2026. It's a topic I have become very passionate about. JP's sent the paper to his son, Jo, in the USA who does a lot of work with AI.  He used Google's NotebookLM to convert the paper into a podcast. It's quite extraordinary, and moved me greatly listening to it. 

Megan's 21st In August we had a pleasant interlude attending Megan's 21st in Gauteng.  This took some careful coordination as Sally had been in Mauritius for 2 weeks, visiting her daughter.  She flew in at 11h30, I landed at 12h00 nad Chris and Stella (Megan's other grandparents) arrived from Langebaan at 11h45, so Doug met us all and picked us all up at the same time!  It was a lovely few days with the family meeting many of Megan's friends.

She has finished the first 3 years of her Sociology degree and is into the 4th year which is starting on professional training. Sarah finsihed matric this year and is taking a gap year in 2026 working with her mountain bike coach as an assistant coach and various other activities such as training to be a dive master.  She has remarkable affinity for working with people, of all ages. 

The Probus website  was the most challenging website I have done to date. Not only did it need to capture 20 years of Club history (including 250 talks and 100 papers) but it had to be designed so that it was easy to update every month by assistant editors with minimal or no web experience. Took all my creative energies to craft this. 

This, as with many other websites I have done, drew on my magnum opus Mountain-Meanders.com.  It's now 18 years since this was started and has over 200 pages. It is getting 1000-2000 hits a month so it is a tangible contribution to the climbing fraternity. Also pleasing that new routes are still being added -  unfortunately not be me! I just do the climbs vicariously when I edit the website. 

AI Course: After presenting a talk on AI, U3A prevailed on me to give an online AI 'course'.  130 signed up, which was rather intimidating because I was learning fast myself. Participants varied widely in computer background, so it was a difficult course to run, but I learned a lot, and am now using AI regularly for a variety of tasks. 

Selling Fairhurst. After 25 years, I decided it was time to move on and sell Fairhurst, . This required a major clear out and clean up including the 1908 Erard piano that belonged to Sue's great, great grandfather. (It was impossible to ship it to her in the USA.)  I eventually donated everything to the Kronendal Music Academy here in Hout Bay. 

I used AI extensively to analyse the property market and updated the property website with about 100 photos, aerial views, video walkthroughs, etc. Worked well.  Had 52 enquiries, 4 offers and sold in 10 days at my asking price. Sad, but glad to be shot of of it.  It was becoming a burden - especially with my back...

Back problems: The last part of the year was dominated by the deterioration in my back which left me in constant pain. This was from the spine fusion in January 2024 which was not a success. By October I had to give up any walking, which was rather depressing. I tried returning to the Fx Back Clinic who had helped before, but they terminated the programme after 6 sessions saying they were unable to assist.  Then turned to the Pain Collective and an intensive biokinetics programme.  This has been making a difference, and am now managing to walk 4-5 km.  Humbling - how the mighty have fallen!