South African Author, Ann de Ruig's Official Website
Welcome to Ann de Ruig's official website. Ann de Ruig is a South African author who knows how to captivate her readers.
'I've Grown Accustomed to His Butt' is Ann's first release that tells the story of her own life when she and her husband cycled across the country on a custom-made tandem called Dandelion.
She was born in Durban in 1931 of gentle Scottish parents. She spent her school years in Johannesburg and married Colin in 1950. When her fifth child entered kindergarten, while they were living in Windhoek, she studied through UNISA, obtaining her BA and then H.Dipl Lib in 1975, and became Children's Librarian in Pinetown, Natal. (Confusing, but all part of the travels necessitated by Colin's career.)
Over the years she has worked as a shorthand/typist, bookkeeper, personnel officer, store manager, speech teacher, English adviser to a Rabbi, and the final career was as a kennel maid. In fact, she did anything that would bring in a bit of extra cash to cope with the demands of growing children. She is now retired and living on a mountain outside Tzaneen in Limpopo, with her husband, youngest son, Dion, three dogs and a cat.
They have lived fairly adventurous lives, but the whim that got her jogging at age 58 soon developed into grander plans. After winning her Veteran's Colours for running the 5,000m in 1997, she bought a tandem bicycle for Colin in order to include him in her training expeditions. One thing led to another and she was soon throwing herself into the organization of their first charity tandem ride. She is probably the oldest woman to do this.
Those cycle rides were journeys of discovery, not only to find out more about this wonderful country, and hopefully do some good for the less privileged, but also to create herself anew and avoid stagnation after retirement.
She insists that despite the sweat and tears during the whole process, the warmth, friendliness and co-operation of strangers made it all worth while. And the Guinness World Record at the end of it was the cherry on the cake.
Her motto: "You are never too old to try something new."
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