Author: 6000

Done with Wrexham

Posted on

Well done Wrexham on promotion to League Two from the National League.

Promotion is great. I know.

What’s less good is the weird wall-to-wall media coverage of your promotion. Because, let’s face it, while it’s big for you – you can only beat who is put in front of you – I’m no way belittling it when I say that it’s not actually that big a deal for the rest of the world.

Stockport County and Sutton United didn’t have the national broadcaster sharing live images of their promotion parades when they achieved similar feats in recent years. But then they didn’t have a genial, Hollywood film star as their co-owner, did they? And that’s the difficult bit for Wrexham fans to accept: it’s really not about their rather mediocre team. No-one actually cares about the football. It’s all about Ryan Reynolds.

And I’m sure he’s a lovely guy, and the work he’s done at money he’s put into the club is amazing. But they’ve won the National League, not the Champions League. One wonders how far down the fawning media would be prepared to go, had he taken over an even lower league club. Would we still have cameras there for each and every game if he’d plumped for Walton and Hersham in the Isthmian League Division One South Central, for example?

Sadly, probably.

I thought that I was alone in feeling this way about Wrexham. I thought that maybe I was seeing more about them because we have recent history when we knocked them out of the FA Cup earlier this year in those rather bad tempered fourth round games. Maybe Google looked at all the Wrexham references on the Sheffield United pages that I was reading and thought I needed to see more. (I really didn’t.)

But apparently, not:

And it seems that they feel the same way that I do about all this:

There are some quotes on the link above from people who feel differently, but they’re from Wrexham fans, (one of whom even uses the word “bandwagon”), and who wouldn’t want to enjoy seeing pictures all over the press of their team celebrating?

I don’t think that English football (yes, I know they’re Welsh, but…) needs that sort of celebrity nonsense. Save it for the MLS and the Saudi Leagues. And make our football leagues all about the football rather than the non-footballing personalities in the backroom.

I do understand that this isn’t going away any time soon, although I obviously wish it would.
But if you – like me – thought that you were the only person feeling this way about the inordinate number of undeserved column inches and TV news pixels being devoted to Wrexham Ryan, well, you’re really not.

Seeing the light

Posted on

We’ve been waiting for this day for a long while. And now it’s come very suddenly. At 2pm today, I got a call telling me that the solar installers are coming around tomorrow.

And they’re going to install some solar.

As regular readers of this blog will know, loadshedding is arguably the most dominant force in South Africa right now. It affects everything, and while we have no control over the things outside our home, we can at least do something about what’s going on in our house.

Not that we should have to. We already pay the government money to supply us with electricity. But then we also pay them for stuff like security and healthcare, and we still have to privately top those up to get any decent, viable service.

This system won’t take us completely off the grid. That would be desirable, but also outlandishly expensive (not that this is in any way cheap). But it will cut our bill by at least 80%. And it will mean that we’re able to live our lives with some degree of normality, and a bit more on our terms. Work will be easier. Food won’t spoil as quickly. No more last minute dashes for the kettle or the microwave. Expensive devices won’t break due to constant power cuts and surges. There will be sport on the big screen. The beagle will have a nightlight.

We’re still very lucky to be able to do this. And it’s weird that access to such a basic human right is a luxury.

I’m not going to be a solar wanker, claiming that my altruism is lessening the load on the rest of the country, nor am I ever, ever going to utter the phrase:

Yeah, we don’t even know when loadshedding is happening anymore.

But I am looking forward to our first session of loadshedding once our batteries are charged up, and there simply being… life as normal.

Whatever that means.

Guess who’s back?

Posted on

It’s me. That’s who. I’m back.

A whistle-stop trip down to Agulhas to get a few jobs done, including that shed. 22 hours arrival to departure, and 12 of them were without power. It gets cold and dark down there with no electricity (and when you haven’t been arsed to light the braai) and the internet falls over after about an hour of each four hour session. Thankfully, there was a bed and a duvet, of which I made immediate use.

And yet there was still time for a quick walk down to the beach just before sunset yesterday…

…and a pre-sunrise run through the National Park this morning. A lovely experience with the exception of the bit where I tripped in the dunes and got sand right up my charging port.

I’ll have to clean my phone out as well.

Sorry.

I was back in Cape Town in time to pick the boy up from school at 2:30 this afternoon.

I could have done with another day out there, not because there was anything more to do, just because I would have liked to have spent a little more time in the peace and quiet.

But, back now and already back to the grind, sorting out all the stuff here that I didn’t do yesterday.

Tomorrow looks like an equally busy day with three separate evening commitments, of which I can only fulfill a maximum of two. Juggling time.
But loadshedding may – and probably will – force my hand, anyway.

There will still be time for a blog post. Obviously.

The return of the flatpack king

Posted on

A quick placeholder post which I will update or add to later this evening if I can.

4 hours of loadshedding at the Southern Tip tonight might have other ideas.

I don’t want to count chickens, but I’ve singlehandedly almost knocked up a 112kg flatpack shed which even the most conservative of instruction booklets suggested required at least two people to build.

Just the doors to do. And it’s only been 3½ hours.

Related: I’m not going to be able to walk tomorrow.

More later. Maybe.

Smile

Posted on

A lovely day out in the Winelands, with some excellent food and wonderful company at The Terrace at Haute Cabrière in Franschhoek. It has left me with a number of tasks to get sorted this evening though, so here’s a quick QP of what greeted me in bed this morning:

Aww. Cute dog, crazy goofy smile, REALLY MUDDY PAWS!

Anyway, one of the tasks to get sorted this evening is remaking the bed with the freshly washed sheets and covers.

And putting in a dog gate somewhere on the stairs.