I got up really early on Saturday morning to take my turn as Run Director at our Parys parkrun. Poor Celliers gets roped into helping so he was up early too. We opened a gate, put out the turn-around signs and headed for the start. Celliers left me here to set up the start/finish while he went to open another gate.
Two smiling, familiar faces rock up. Iselle and Peter (aka 'The Red Fairy'). Yay! Jo'burg Forest Run friends to enjoy our local parkrun. We get many visitors to Parys parkrun. Some weekenders and others drop in just to run - parkrun tourists. It is always nice to have friends visiting.
The runners set off and the next hour is busy with runners returning and the usual finishline stuff.
Celliers stands chatting to Iselle and Peter. And then Fred rocks up. Yay! Another friend visiting. Fred meant to arrive in time for parkrun, but he took a scenic route.
Celliers tells me that we're all meeting for breakfast.
"Cool," I reply. "I'm just going to quickly process the results and then I'll find you about 20 mins later."
"No," he says. "Results can wait. You're coming to breakfast."
I'm hopping between legs.
"OK."
After packing up, Celliers and I go off to lock a gate and I ask him something about whether he knew they were coming through. He said he knew. I thought he was pulling my leg so I didn't really believe him.
With everything parkrun wrapped, me, Celliers and Fred head up the road to find Peter and Iselle at a table.
My eyes settle on this awesome table decoration. It looks like a tall, round cake with a sparkly purple-green-blue icing and with lavendar stalks and flowery-looking puffs.
"Ooooohhh, This is neat!" I exclaim as I'm about to poke a finger into it to see what it is made of.
"It's REAL," says Iselle.
My finger halts millimetres from the 'table decoration'.
"It's your cake," she adds.
"Your birthday cake!"
And so the penny dropped.
This was a surprise for my 40th re-birthday (I was away in Chile on my birthday day this year - 18 June).
What an absolute surprise!
And even more of a surprise was that Celliers had been in cahoots with Iselle and he knew all about this surprise. My mom knew too, but with friends and relations visiting for her birthday (this past Sunday), she didn't join us for breakfast. Other Jo'burg friends were also part of the scheme but were unable to make it. Fred and Iselle did pass on their warm wishes.
We started breakfast with cake and tea. An absolutely delicious and colourful four-layer cake! Amazing texture and taste and icing.
Eggies followed, accompanied by fabulous company.
Even more wonderful was their kind donation of five massive bags of maizemeal and an envelope of money for the little school in my Forest Run area, Mponeng Primary Farm School. I dropped these off at the school this morning together with the crocheted creatures (a dragon and a cow) that I made. They'll find a good home in the little children's class.
As we hardly made a dent in this impressive cake, I had loads to share with my neighbours.
Iselle, Peter, Fred and Celliers - thank you for my very surprise re-birthday. This was a very special surprise that I'll treasure for a very, very long time. xxx
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