One of the ways that one can mark just how busy a day is by how many changes of clothes take place over the course of the day. Most of the time, I content myself to a couple of changes of clothes, with one thing to wear (usually pjs) within my house and then something more suitable for public wear in front of others whenever it is time to go out. Yesterday though, as I write this, there were four different sets of clothes that I wore in public. Why that is the case is the story of what makes a day busy.

When I woke up yesterday, somewhat early, my mother and I had purposed in our hearts to go on the morning beach walk, and yesterday seemed to be the most convenient time to do so. (There were three additional beach walks, and the fourth one, this morning, we missed because we were sleeping, because we had to catch up on our rest after a busy day). During the beach walk, it was rather warm, all things considered, and I walked for about fifteen minutes along the beach with the lead group and then had to turn around to head back to have enough time to eat breakfast and then shower before heading to practice. It was interesting to see that besides the lead group there were others following along behind, including a group of about a half a dozen people who enjoyed a fine beach stand rather than a beach walk right at the base of the stairwell to the hotel. After getting there, somewhat tired by that time, I went to breakfast and then ate, before going upstairs to change for church.

I had to shower and change for church somewhat early yesterday because I had practice for my special music at 9AM and church was at 10AM. Practice itself went pretty quickly–I was comfortable with the song, the pianist did a great job, and we trusted to the sound crew to get the settings right. (In retrospect, this may have been a mistake, since a few people said that they were unable to hear the performance in the back of the hall even though I sang pretty strongly throughout.) At this feast site, there is a worthwhile practice in that those who are involved in messages, prayers, announcements, and special music pray together about fifteen minutes (if possible) before services and discuss what needs to be taken into consideration to keep everything in order and, in case of a stressful day (like today–more on that later), get one’s head back into the service. This practice would be worth bringing home.

After services were done, it was time for a quick change, as a group of us from outside South Africa, including some people from England, my Manx friend who lives in Sweden, along with his son, an Australian (who seems to have a connection from having lived in South Africa in the past), along with a couple from the Philippines, a family of five from the United States, my mother and myself, were off to a game park to enjoy a safari. I will have more about that to say in a future blog entry, as I do not have the space or time at present to do it justice, but because of the wet and windy conditions, even with a waterproof parka my clothes were soaked, so when I got back after the safari I needed to change clothes a fourth time.

It was this fourth change of clothes throughout the day, after a hot shower to warm up a bit from the chill of the safari, that I wore last night when I participated in the hymnalong and singalong that ended up being an enjoyable (if tiring) variety/talent show. The show began with people choosing various hymns to sing, which most of us did. This was followed by several acts where people played the piano along with various musical instruments or sang. I sang in a couple of numbers, doing “The Holy City” in a trio after “Bring Him Home” in a duet, and then we had an enjoyable time singing various tracks from karaoke. Some of the songs, like “Pata Pata” and another song about magical beer were trilingual songs with English, Zulu, and Xhosa (pronounced Closa) lyrics. One song was about the CSS Alabama, sung enthusiastically by brethren in Afrikaans, which one of the local elders explained to me was as song about the happiness of the Cape Malays for the arrival of the CSS Alabama at Cape Town, where they would profit from its shore leave. We also sang song songs I was more familiar with, like “This Land Is Your Land,” various children’s songs like Old McDonald and “If You’re Happy And You Know It,” and “Country Roads, Take Me Home.” After that, though, I was exhausted and it was time to sleep, which perhaps counts as another clothes change for bed.