Hopeless

It’s been a weekend filled with local violence, the occasional threat against Cape Town schoolchildren, more of the usual disinformation and misinformation and more of the usual hyperbole and histrionics.

Unsurprisingly, social media has been a particularly unpleasant place to be, with a complete lack of tolerance throughout, and no willingness or effort to listen to anything that anyone on “the other side” has to say.
Ebola has nothing on the replies and threads that follow just about any article of comment on the situation in Israel and Gaza.

If there were such a thing as Biohazard Level 5, this would be it.

Reasonably, I wanted away from real life for a few minutes. I thought that I would find solace in the Daily Challenge on Geoguessr. And indeed, I seemed to have found it when I was unceremoniously – but happily – dumped in some semi-rural backwater in Pennsylvania. Peace. Tranquility. Half a world away from all those problems.

And then I turned myself around and found a glorious metaphor for the world at the moment:

Could it have been put any better? Sadly not.

Anyway, once we were done with that, I was popped into a forest in South East Latvia, which was much less telling about the general worldwide state of things.

And thus, much nicer.

I need to get going

A mildly sniffly nose, a slight cough and the occasional headache are all that remain of my recent Covid infection. And if that doesn’t sound too bad, it’s because it’s really not.

But…

Sadly, exercise is still a bit of a bridge too far, and because of the otherwise very mild symptoms, that’s really annoying. A gentle 2km stroll along the prom in Sea Point yesterday exhausted me, which really shouldn’t be the case. I was in bed by 8:30pm. Again.

Look, I’m already far further on than back in 2021, but it’s so frustrating that I’m breathless after walking up a flight of stairs, and heavy-legged after a short walk. I should be out on the mountain today, doing an easy hike with friends, but given yesterday’s experience, it was always going to be a non-starter.

I’m mindful that each week I miss is going to take several (or more) weeks to recover, and that that ratio is only going to increase the longer I leave it, but the thought of even getting on a bike or going for a run is just beyond me at the moment. Legs don’t work.

The fightback needs to begin soon.

Just not today.

This place looks nice…

I live in Cape Town in South Africa. I’ve lived here for almost 20 years. It has it all. I love the food, the culture and the nature.

And I don’t know how much Facebook ads cost, but I feel that this repetitive effort by Dutch airline KLM is a somewhat unnecessary expense on their part.

Book my ticket to Cape Town? On your airline, that’s going to have to be via Amsterdam.

No chance. You might be ok with wasting loads of money, but I’m not.

Mouldmaster

Spotted this on Facebook earlier, and never have I identified with anything quite so much.

Memories of Mr Dalton and Mr “Mental” Mantle came flooding back straight away.

Ankle deep in claggy mud on the top field. The slap as the ball hit your cold, wet thigh, and the peach and purple pattern it immediately left behind.

Legally assaulting an opponent by belting the ball directly at them was a completely acceptable – and oft used – tactic. And when faced with the other side weaponising the Mouldmaster, it was imperative that you didn’t back down or “nesh” the challenge. Taking the hit and then carrying on sent a very powerful message. Even if you were weeping internally.

Which you were.

30-something years on, and just the sight of that ball has got my inner thigh tingling.

And not in a good way.

Trains – now on Uber

I love a bit of clever advertising. And this is clever advertising. Simple stuff, taking a brand that we all know about and informing us that the range of services it offers is expanding, but keeping it all very familiar as it does so.

You can now book train tickets on Uber in the UK, and Ad Wizards Mother have given us some lovely work to tell us about it:

More on that link above, but I think it’s just very clever the way they have extended the messages we’re used to reading about drivers and cars and simply extended them into trains. It seems both completely normal and a bit alien. And because of that, it feels both comfortable and amusing.

And it’s definitely made a splash, which is surely what they were after.