I am running around like a chicken without it's head, as there was just so many chores and other things to do, and baby Emil, who was now crawling, was like bally speedy conzales, and it was just amazing the speed that he could ref up! I was quite exhausted by night time, but he was the most amazing baby when it came to sleeping. Never a tear, or a moan, or any playing up. He just lied down when I put him in the cot, grabs his bottle as if he never had a single drink the whole day, and he never stirred till the next morning at six. At least I got a good night's sleep in.
We have decided that Emil would kind of stay with me still, but that Jan would take him more and more during night time. It was difficult during the day, as he was doing a lot of phone consultations and trying to talk to bussiness people with a baby babbling in the background was just a bitty unproffesional.
I was busy cooking jams and chutneys, and also some canning, as the peaches were ripening so fast.
I got an oven from Jan, as my gas oven just did not bake well, and drying rusks was just impossible, as it burned, the gas just could not go low enough. In South Africa we do a lot of different rusks, as we have some in the morning with coffee, and usually when visiting friends or family, you get coffee in bed, accompanied by a rusk or two. It is the only food that South Africans dip in their coffee or tea!
 I here give a recipe for all-bran rusks, and it is really amazing to have with coffee or tea.
Ingredients: 500 gr butter, 2 cups sugar, 3 eggs, 500 ml buttermilk,500 gr self raising flower, 500 gr nutty wheat,3 tble s baking powder,2ts salt,{flat}5 cups allbran. Recipe can be halved, as this makes a lot of rusks, but it can be kept in tins for quite some time.
Method: Smelt butter and add sugar, mix well. Mix together egg, milk and then sift in flower and baking powder, then all the other ingredients, plus butter and sugar mixture.Put in bread pans and  bake for 63 min in moderate oven. Cut into slices of about 1 cm thick, and dry in cool oven on cooling rack for about 4 hrs, or until dried completely.
I have made myself also some boere beskuit (farmer's rusks}, which is made without sugar, but is lovely if you don't like sugar, or you can't use sugar, but the taste is given by anice seed. I just love the rusks Trienkie's mother in law makes, really super.
As the year ran on, it seemed that Jan had to go to Johannesburg a lot, and as I had to go into hospital again for tests, and told that all was not well still, I had to be more careful, so we decided to get a nanny to look after Emil. So we put the word out, and within a day's time a whole army of aspirant nannies started to arrive, most of them quite insuitable, as they reek strongly of drink.
Then Berty arrived, full of the fact that she used to be nanny to one of our popular singers and entertainers, and lived in capetown until the family moved to Brittain. Berty was also very modish, and her short pepper curl hair was dyed the most brilliant red on the market, maybe she got some from a batch of dye gone wrong, and she had a kind of brightly purple sweatband with a pink flower to finish the look!
But she was sober, and very well spoken, and all in all the best of the bunch, and in due course she arrived, and then I had so much time on my hands, I did not know what to do with it!