Most of this afternoon was spent at Kenilworth Racecourse, watching the racehorsing.
The last race was especially fun. I won rather a lot of money, which was quite unexpected, but ever so welcome.
Category: this is south africa
Welcome to Cape Town, Africa
No, we don’t have lions roaming the CBD or elephants in our back gardens (most of the time) like what they do up North, but Cape Town still likes to remind us from time to time that it is still officially in Africa.
Like when a caracal is killing penguins just down the road, for example.
Wouldn’t get that in the Kruger National Park, now would you?
A spate of penguin fatalities has occurred in Simon’s Town over the past two weeks. The City has identified the predator by installing trap cameras in the area. The images confirmed the presence of a large caracal.
Caracals are great. They look really cool and that is primarily because actually, they are really cool.
Sadly though, our African penguins are endangered (although the caracal probably isn’t aware of that fact), and so this penguin killing has got to stop.
In its efforts to protect the penguins, while at the same time managing the sensitive ecosystem as carefully as possible, the City will be closing off a portion of the Simon’s Town shoreline to members of the public from 13:00 today 8 July 2016 until further notice.
The area which will be closed off stretches from Windmill Beach to Froggy Pond in Simons Town. The area will be marked off with tape and City Law Enforcement will be monitoring the site to ensure that no member of the public accesses the area during this time.
‘We ask that members of the public exercise patience during this time. The City hopes to trap the caracal, collar the animal with a radio tracking device and to move it away from the penguin colony, but still within its current home range. Cordoning off the area will also help us to deploy other passive mitigation measures to discourage the return of the caracal to the Burghers Walk to Froggy Pond area,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Energy, Environmental and Spatial Planning, Councillor Johan van der Merwe.
Epic. Can you imagine Johan getting home this evening?
“Oh, hello Johan dear, how was work today?”
“Actually pretty good, thanks. I closed off a section of local shoreline to prevent a large predatory wildcat from eating any more loveable and endangered seabirds. You?”
“We… well, we had a 2 hour meeting about July’s sales targets. And there were some quite nice biscuits on the trolley.”
Johan wins again. Despite only having lemon creams with his coffee.
More local caracal news as and when we get it.
On The Road
Not me. VW. A couple of families travelling right across South Africa (Johannesbeagle to Buffelsbaai to be exact) in Volkswagen vehicles have a fairly implausible number of coincidental encounters whilst ‘On The Road’ before arriving at their respective holiday destinations, only to discover that they will be spending their respective holidays staying just across the road from one another.
What are the chances, hey?
Here’s all 95 seconds of the commercial in question:
Regular readers already know where this is going, and they’re right, because, while the ad is nice and all that, the music is what won it for me.
Thus, step forward Aisha Badru with Waiting Around:
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/171788658″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
Limited googlage tells us about this New York singer songwriter with one independently released 4-track EP. Where do Ogilvy SA find these tracks? Amazing.
Apparently, according to her Facebook, she has a new record coming out soon. And, also according to her Facebook, she has a lot of new SA fans.
I’m not surprised.
Smile through the tears
Hard(er) times are coming for SA. The effects of high inflation and the weak Rand are beginning to show more and more, with new stories of job losses, struggling families and desperation becoming an almost daily occurrence. It’s heartbreaking and it’s worrying.
Even those of us who are lucky enough not to be directly affected are seeing a difference. The shopping bill is suddenly through the roof, the requests to help support more members of people’s families and friends are up, and the soaring crime rate is back on the agenda at every braai and dinner party (not that it ever really went away). Such is the lack of confidence in our beleaguered police force that petty criminals can act with complete impunity knowing that their victims won’t even bother to register a case, as all parties concerned are well aware that nothing will come of it.
Opportunistic thieves were caught on a dashcam by Cape Town businessman Marc Nussey last Thursday just after 11am, casually opening the canopy of a bakkie that stopped at a traffic light before making off with a box of toothpaste and other goods.
Nussey posted pictures and a video of the incident on Facebook to warn people and identify the culprits.
He said when he caught up with the driver and told him what had happened, the man did not seem interested in laying charges.
And in the same report:
The Facebook post attracted a number of responses, including from one man who said he watched the same men snatching a box of frozen food from a similar bakkie.
“I jumped out and chased them into Lavender Hill, but could not catch them. I then drove directly to Kirstenhof (police station) to report the crime. They practically yawned in my face,” he wrote.
Still, there’s always hope. And the hope comes in the spirit of one of the other comments on the thread:
Last month, a motorist warned people to stay alert when he saw some guys forcing open a delivery vehicle and running away with a large tin of tomatoes “all in view of a metro police vehicle standing two car lengths ahead”.
“The delivery guy gave chase picking up a brick and unleashed from 10m range, hitting the skollie between the (shoulder) blades who returned fire with the tin of tomatoes like a world-class shot putt athlete.”
The problems are real, but I feel that while we’ve still got a sense of proportion (and humour) about them, for the most part, they’re manageable. The situation is bringing out an almost altruistic “Blitz” spirit in people and that’s good to see.
Just how far that can carry us is up for debate though.
Unscheduled
Heading down to my favourite place for a quick winter weekend visit, we made a wholly unplanned and wholly unpleasant stop just north of Napier.
Parents will understand.
The silver lining to this vomitty visit was this photo, the perfectly still water of a farm dam a tranquil juxtaposition to the harrowing events continuing behind me as I pressed the shutter.
She’s fine now. She was fine almost immediately anyway. Better out then in, hey?