Category: this is south africa

Unsolicited advice

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Having parked up at the mall, I opened the boot of my car to get the shopping bags out…

What? You still use plastic bags? Sies, man. 
Won’t someone please think of the turtles?
(It’s you. You must do that.) 

This was the big weekly shop, so I needed all the bags. Sadly, the bags had been used individually for other things over the weekend and had then just been flung into the back of the car.

Bag foldage was required. I did some rudimentary calculations and estimated that it would probably take about 30 seconds.
I began the process.

I was two bags in when I heard a car pull up behind me and voice commented:

“You could have done that at home, you know?”

I turned around with a grin to admit my slight lack of organisation to whichever of my friends had spotted me, but it wasn’t one of them.

It was a 60-something year old Constantia bloke in a silver Merc, and as I turned around, he closed his window and drove on.

I have no idea who this gentleman was or why he felt the need to pull over, wind down his window and tell me that I could have folded some fabric bags Chez Moi rather than upon my arrival at the mall, but he did.

The thing is – technically – while I certainly didn’t ask for his advice – technically – he was absolutely correct. I could have done that at home. It would have made absolutely no difference to anyone else, or in fact even to me, but I could have done it at home.

Having now considered all my options for future bag folding exploits, I’m happy to report that I will be folding my shopping bags wherever I feckin’ feel like it.

 

Something to blog about

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The South African news has been full of one thing today, and it’s not a nice thing. It’s not something I want to blog about either, and so I was about to wander elsewhere on the internet, disappointed that our local rags had provided naught on the blog fodder front when suddenly  – and brace yourselves here – this:

Not even the horrific kerning on the News24 website could take the shine off a headline like that.
(Although it clearly tried.)

Now, before we go any further, let’s just run through those fourteen words one more time, shall we?

A poet – not just any poet, but specifically a Christian poet… harassed by Whatsapp groups – not just any WhatsApp groups, but specifically porn WhatsApp groups… by a rabbit farmer – not just any rabbit farmer, but specifically a ‘mentally challenged’ rabbit farmer.

Incredible.

Let’s start off by saying that harassment in any form is unjust and uncalled for. In investigating this story, I’m certainly not meaning to trivialise or tacitly justify harassment. Especially not by porn WhatsApp groups – long renowned as one of the worst forms of harassment.

Alleged victim of this alleged harassment comes in the form of Martie Wessels, a published Christian poet who sums up her book thus:

“Maar gaan dit alles tog werklik uitwerk? Niemand van ons kan dit regtigwaar weet nie, want ons is almal maar net grassade in die wind en ons sweef maar net waarheen die wind ons neem.”

“But will everything really work out? None of us can rightly know, because we are just grass seeds in the wind, and we float wherever the wind takes us.”

Powerful.

Anyway, the harassment came about by her being (presumably accidentally?) added to a pornographic Whatsapp group. Now, I am the member of many Whatapp groups, but there’s none of that kind of stuff going on on there. The most racy it gets is perhaps a joke about [redacted] having a small penis. It’s tiny, apparently. But I digress. There’s certainly nothing that would make me go on a witch hunt and publish the names of the other participants in the conversation on Facebook, even if Martie’s assertion is partly true for the Molton Brown boys:

“Everyone involved is surely possessed by some or other devil, because the pictures exposing your bodies indicate to me that you are sick in your brains.”

I’d also never go that far if I knew – as Martie apparently does – that the instigator of the groups was:

“a woman described as ‘mentally challenged’, who is a rabbit farmer and who lives in a caravan in the Pretoria area.”

That’s the sort of person you want to stay on the right side of. Not someone you want to piss off. One night, there’s a knock at your door and the next thing, they’re finding your ribcage – stripped of all flesh, and covered in gnaw marks – in a hutch in Gauteng.

Also, just how easy must this woman be to identify? We’ve got her location, her abode, her employment and her mental state. Oh, and her photo, because:

On Wessels’ Facebook page, a composite picture of this woman, surrounded by several rabbits, can be seen.

I did go and look (well of course I did), but Martie has upped her privacy settings to the max, probably due to being by harassed by porn WhatsApp groups run by a ‘mentally challenged’ rabbit farmer (who lives in a caravan in the Pretoria area).

Very disappointing.

Wessels said she was told by one person that the purpose of the groups was to “raise funds” for the rabbit farmer.
“But to raise funds in this way is ridiculous,” she said.

Look, we all know that rabbit farming isn’t easy. And the uncertainty about expropriation without compensation is a spectre lurking behind every agricultural business at the moment.

But why did they pick Martie to add to their depraved online messaging community? Look, I’ve kept this bit of information to myself until now, but Martie lives in the Northern Cape. In a town called:

Warrenton

It’s clear that when Cyril and Julius come knocking for her land, our erstwhile porn Whatapp group-leading, mentally challenged rabbit farmer will need somewhere new to park her caravan and somewhere new for her leporine charges to live. And if you have rabbits to home, you surely need somewhere with a ton of warrens for them to live in.

How do you think Marties hometown got its name?

Exactly. Checkmate, doubters.

I mean, just do the maths.
It’s pretty straightforward stuff, Sherlock.

But still, I’m with Martie here: exactly how do you raise funds for a mentally challenged rabbit farmer by sending naughty photos to a WhatsApp group? I’ve sold images (no, not those kind of images) on Adobe Stock, and let me tell you, what I’ve earned would barely buy a bag of carrots from PicknPay.

Maybe I’ve been doing it wrong.

So what happens now? Well, since Martie has gone public with this amazing tale, the threats have thankfully evaporated. But that wouldn’t be a fitting end to this sort of bizarre story.

No, what you need to have to finish things off is just a hint of continuing weirdness. Cue the last line from the News24 article:

Wessels made a statement at the Warrenton police station, which was confirmed by a Captain Moleko, who would not provide his first name to News24.

Did they need to know his first name? Why was he unwilling to provide it? Why did we need to know that he was unwilling to provide it? Is it of any significance that the first four letters of his surname make up another burrowing mammal? Haas the world gone completely mad?

I am sure that you are looking forward to the follow-up article on News24 as much as I am.

Does every country have a London?

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Not an actual London, of course. I mean – maybe they do… There’s a Little London on the Isle of Man, there’s East London in South Africa, there’s a London Island in…. Chile? I think…?
I’ll have to look that one up.

[later: looked it up, yes – close to the Western end of the Beagle Channel.]

But I’m not referring to lazy colonial nomenclature. I mean the essence of London. For many people, that means excitement, bright lights, a cosmopolitan lifestyle and world-famous landmarks.

After all:

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.

I love London. But in small doses.
Could I live there? No.

Oxford seemed a good compromise. All that London razzmatazz was just an hour away, but equally also a world away. Much like someone else’s cute but irritating toddler, it was nice to be able to play politely for a while, then hand it back over, make one’s excuses, and leave.

[Gets out broad brush]
London is a deeply impersonal, insular place. Gone are the days of the friendly cockney market traders. They’ve been replaced by soulless automatons, looking out only for number one. Maybe I shouldn’t blame them – maybe it’s the city that has shaped the people who have then shaped the city. A vicious Circle Line.

Alan Partridge gets it:

Go to London! I guarantee you’ll either be mugged or not appreciated.
Catch the train to London, stopping at Rejection, Disappointment, Backstabbing Central and Shattered Dreams Parkway.

Of course, it might just be me. Square peg, round hole and all that.

But no. London is often not a nice place to be. Unless you belong.

All of which leads me back to the question in the title of the post. And ‘m pretty sure that everyone in SA will agree that out local London is right here under Table Mountain.

Cape Town isn’t exactly London… squeezed between the mountain and the ocean, the geography and its Apartheid history dictate its society.

But can it compare? Sure it can.

Because yes. Cape Town is often not a nice place to be. Unless you belong.

In saying this, I’m not suggesting that I don’t belong here. At least, I feel that I belong here as much as anywhere else I’ve ever lived.
I’m also not trying to criticise the city for being the way it is. Cities evolve, and as individual residents we have very little control over what direction that evolution takes. But I do find it interesting that if you were asked to single out a city in either of the countries in which I have lived that fitted this description, you wouldn’t hesitate to name London and Cape Town.

Not Birmingham or Johannesburg. Or Manchester and Durban. Or Leicester and Bloemfont-look I think you get my point.

So – is there a London (or a Cape Town) in your country? Or, if you’re in the UK or SA, do you agree with what I wrote above?

Costly

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Bad news, good news.

I was diagnosed with costochondritis this weekend. No, not the Greek ex-Bolton Wanderers midfielder, an inflammation of the cartilage in my rib cage. It’s uncomfortable and generally not very pleasant, but when you are “middle-aged” and less fit than perhaps you should be, a diagnosis of costochondritis when you have chest pains and shortness of breath is actually fantastic news.

My heart will – as the bloody awful song goes – go on. In fact, my ECG was described as “perfect” by the doc. Boom! (bang a bang).

Anyway, some anti-inflammatories and an absence of foolish behaviour, and I should be fine real soon now.

If you google costochondritis, you get a lot of other suggestions just four letters in. I thought I might share some of them.

Cost of living – too damn high. Pick n Pay tried to charge me R115 for 850g of cheddar today. Ridiculous.

Costa Coffee – ubiquitous chain of coffee stores across the UK and the rest of the world (not South Africa) (yet).

Costocervical trunk – blood vessel behind the artery that is underneath your collar bone. Nothing to do with trees.

Costa, Diego – feisty, divisive footballer plying his trade up front for Spanish team Club Atlético de Madrid, SAD. You either really love him or really hate him. Or somewhere in between.

Costa del Sol – bit of Spanish Mediterranean coastline in Andalusia famed as being a hideout for British underworld figures from the 1960s onwards.

Costatu – an incorrectly spelled version of Cosatu – the Congress of South African Trade Unions. An increasingly irrelevant pseudopolitical entity claiming to represent the workers of South Africa – as long as they aren’t in one of the other Union bodies, in which case, not interested.

French unlucky to lose rugby game

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News in from our rugby correspondent, who was at a wet and windy Moses Mabhida Stadium over the weekend to watch the Sharks play a friendly against a visiting French side from Bordeaux:

The Durban side edged a tight game 19-17 leaving the French coach, Entraîneur de Chiens, disappointed at the result of a game he thought they could have won if only his side had listened to him and followed basic instructions.

Instead, his fifteen players scattered across the pitch, chasing each other and the boerewors rolls sellers in the stands. One was seen having a really good scratch in the tunnel, while two others were found snoozing in the dug out.

It’s been the same since we went with this stupid name change

de Chiens complained.

We used to be a tight, organised, disciplined squad. Now I can’t get them to even sit, stay or listen to me. The only time they feign any interest in what I have to say is when I’m holding some food. It’s been a disaster and we need to think of calling ourselves something far more obedient.

he said, before shouting at the left winger, who was in the changing room, chewing a sock.