Author: 6000

Slow down…

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Greetings from the bedroom at the cottage.
No. I’m not sharing any photos or a live video feed. This isn’t that sort of website.
I’m just sheltering from the midday sun and the heat (and the wind) as we approach midsummer’s day here in the Deep South. Outside is bright yellow sand, stunning turquoise ocean and sharp green fynbos. It’s almost too much to take in. Even the beagle has given up and fallen asleep on the beanbag in the living room.

Still, earlier, time was spent perusing the rockpools on the local beach. There are plans afoot to go and see the new Icon at the Southernmost point “soon”. Later, there will be a braai, some beer and some brandy.
And then sundowners and maybe (maybe) a timelapse as evening falls.
It’s well-deserved downtime after a hectic year.

And yet you still get a daily blog post. That’s service, hey?

Less shit candidate wins

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A nation breathed a collective sigh of relief today as it emerged that the less shit of two candidates for an important job had won the election for the position.

Many people had been concerned that the more shit candidate was going to win but thankfully, that turned out not to be the case.

Sadly for those celebrating, they were so delighted that the less shit candidate won, they carelessly overlooked the fact that he was actually also shit, albeit apparently slightly less shit than the second placed candidate.

Thus, it seems like the nation has gone from one frying pan to another, and will likely now burn slowly and painfully rather than crasing directly into the waiting fire.

Over the mountain

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I dropped the boy off at his first ever Scout camp this morning, just on the far side of the Huguenot Tunnel. The road through the Du Toitskloof valley is one of my favourites in SA, and (I think) massively underrated. Having left him and his scouting chums somewhere near Rawsonville, we headed back, but this time, took the R101 road over the mountain, rather than going straight through it.

It was rather windy, but I still managed to get the Mavic up for a few minutes and got a couple of shots, including a selfie featuring me and my daughter, sheltering from the wind behind the car.

The du Toitskloof pass isn’t the most spectacular or dramatic road I’ve ever driven, but it has its moments, and some of the views are superb. There are more photos, but despite being on holiday, I’m a little pressed for time today, so they’ll have to wait.

More driving tomorrow, as we test out other roads like the R316 and R319 to the South.

Pilot

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Big braai at our place today, so I’m writing this in advance. That’s not to say that I wasn’t going to share this amazing song anyway. As a follow up to We Were Beautiful it ticks every B&S box. The oboe box is particularly well ticked from the very first bar.

As a message of unfaltering, unconditional love it hits the mark completely. I see it as a parent’s reassurance and commitment to a child, but it could be any caring, nurturing relationship I guess.

This is the teaser for the second of three EPs that Belle and Sebastian are releasing over the next few months.
It’s worked. My interests are piqued.

How to save money on property

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Cape Town property prices are regularly described as being “like, fully out of control, bru”.
If you’ve already got your foot on a rung of the property ladder, that’s not something that will really bother you. Maybe you might even consider it good news. But if you’re yet to move into property ownership, then that first step can seem ridiculously far out of reach.

This is widely touted as a problem which is new to Millennials, but only by anyone who never tried buying anything decent in Sheffield (or anything at all in Oxford) on a microbiologist’s wage in the 1990s.

Just saying.

So, you want to find a way of getting more for less, and who can blame you? Everyone loves a bargain. Step forward then, some high school girls from the Sacred Heart College (SHC) in Geelong, Melbourne, Australia.

If you are looking for an affordable home in your preferred suburb, it may pay to find the street with the silliest name.
House prices on streets with silly names are significantly lower than houses on nearby streets, a study by Victorian school students has found.

(That’s students from a state in Australia, as mentioned above, not from the late 1800s.)

Working with staff from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the University of Sydney and a Melbourne real estate agent, the girls analysed house sales on the streets over the past 47 years.
They found that property prices in streets with silly names were about 20 per cent lower than properties in the normally-named roads.
As the report notes, that amounts to a $140,000 saving on a median-priced Melbourne house.

That’s R1.4m, which (after some rudimentary calculations) also tells us that a median-priced house in Melbourne costs R7m and kinda puts those wild claims about Cape Town back into some kind of perspective.

The students identified 27 streets in Victoria with silly names, including Butt Street, Wanke Road and Fanny Street.

STOP SNIGGERING AT THE BACK!

I’m rather busy at the moment, so I don’t have chance to follow up on this in too much depth right now, but there’s a De Cock Avenue in Deurdrift:

And a Dikkop Close in Pelikan Park:

And I even found a Fanny Avenue in Joburg:

The biggest issue with that last one being that not only do you live on Fanny Avenue, you also live in Joburg. (Also, “Lung Candy, Norwood”?!?)

I don’t know if the house prices in any of these roads are lower than their local peers, but if you are looking for a way to knock a bar off your first (or next) house, then this would seem to be the best way of going about it.

Thank me later.