CAPE PENINSULA, South Africa, October 5, 2005 — It's nice to have an ordinary day. Going along on errands, reading, resting.

We visited a store called Fruit and Veg City. I watched while Mags stood in line at some city office getting plans submitted for some project, probably a charity building. We wandered a couple of stores looking for things for other people, too.

We visited one of Mags' friends to deliver some stuff as well. We had tea and coffee there. I offered some advice on a computer problem. (FFP has been having computer problems at home and

it has been very frustrating for me not being able to just see what's wrong and work on it and fix it.)

I took a walk to the beach after the errands. I walked on the catwalk keeping an eye out for sharks or whales. But I didn't see any.

It was a nice ordinary day. I read my WWII book. (Nancy Wake: The Story of a Very Brave Woman.) That book ought to be called the amazing, unbelievable story. This Aussie (actually I think she was living in Australia as a girl but was born in England) was supposedly transformed from an attractive and plunky girl to a hero of the maquis (French resistance). Not just a hero, er, heroine but a leader. [Ed. Note: Her story, though, is true, I find on returning home and surfing the Wake story (sorry), and, as a fan of the individual stories of WWII, I'm ashamed I never heard it. Well, now I own a book about her, published in 1956 in London. I paid about three dollars in South Africa. I have looked her up and find that she is apparently still alive and living in London, having sold her medals but still running out of money and having her care taken over by governments and fans. She would be 92. There are other books about her, but not available that I find. And I find a South African newspaper interview from 2002 that compares her exploits to the ones in the movie Charlotte Gray. Which I now decide to put in my Netflix queue. And so the fragile chain of our lives and how we spend our moments continues.]