Me: Please don’t let the Swartland weather be too hot while we’re there this week.
The Swartland weather while we’re there this week:
Right.
Might pack some shorts then.
Forlorn hope
Category: this is south africa
About today
I ducked out of football tonight after a weekend with an iffy viral thing. Nothing too bad – I just slept a lot. And while I’m feeling much better now, I tried a run this morning, and there’s not an awful lot of energy in the tank. Almost 30 seconds per km slower than usual, and the hills left me broken. So better to prudently withdraw, rather than try to push things too hard and give myself even more from which to recover.
I did get the opportunity to try out my new running jacket, though: this time in proper rain. Because it actually rained quite hard today. And it handled it perfectly. That Water Column Rating of 10 000 mm (I don’t know what this means) really worked well, and the Breathability: well, I know it says 10000 g/m²/24h (again, no idea how this works), but it genuinely felt so much more.
In other news, things are starting to end for the year. Exams are done (finally), piano lessons finished yesterday, art school today. The last singing lesson is on Thursday, and there are only 6 more days of school: mainly for exam paper handbacks, prizegivings, and general end of year celebrations.
We’re away for a few days at the end of next week: a place somewhere in the Swartland with a pool and a hottub and very little else, and I can’t wait. I’ll be working doubly hard in the run up to that little trip so that I can get some blog posts pre-written and ready to go, leaving my time free for relaxing and braai’ing. Some exercise wouldn’t go amiss, perhaps a spot of photography, and there might just be some olives and a wine farm or two on the cards as well, given the region’s outstanding reputation for Shiraz.
It would be rude not to.
But more on that nearer the time.
This evening: United at home to Oxford – one of my old stomping grounds. It’s going to be another late one, but I hope it’s another good one too.
Admyt hits Canal Walk – save LOADS!
It’s still one of the finds of recent times for me. It saved my son half an hour of queuing to pay for parking after the football last week. It means I don’t have to worry about whether a place takes cards for parking payments or if I have change or where I put my parking ticket or anything.
It’s live across SA at loads of locations, with more being added on a regular basis. Just like the behemoth mall that is Canal Walk. And because it’s launching there in Black Friday week, they’ve got a double deal on just for you. And you. OK, you as well.
Firstly, save R20 off your first (paid) parking by using my referral code when you sign up:
TRE162273
And then, once Admyt launches at Canal Walk on Thursday 28th, you can have free parking…
…for THREE DAYS there on Friday, Saturday and Sunday with the promo codes below:
- Free parking on Fri, 29 November | Promo code: CWBF29
- Free parking on Sat, 30 November | Promo code: CWBF30
- Free parking on Sun, 1 December | Promo code: CWBF01
So that’s no ticket to lose, no change to have to find to pay, no queues to brave on the way out when you’re exhausted and just want to go home, and that swanky VIP feeling as you drive to the barrier and it opens to wave you straight through.
The first three are really handy; the last one is still just very cool.
Sign up on the interwebs here (not forgetting that referral code: TRE162273), and then get the app on Apple here, or Google here.
Quocust
Quocust = Quota Locust.
Obviously.
I’ve been going through some images from earlier in the year: mainly just to check that they’d all been backed up successfully onto the family server and the external hard drive (they had). And I found myself tinkering in Lightroom with the odd one here or there. This was one of them, taken on our footy club’s weekend away in April. These guys (the insect here, not the footy club) are fairly common visitors to our back garden in Cape Town, although this one was a little further inland.
This is a Garden Locust (Acanthacris ruficornis). Fairly innocuous on his own, but you wouldn’t want too many of them around, nibbling your plants and eating your crops. There’s no scale here, but he’s probably about 7cm long.
I don’t really remember taking this photo, but I actually quite like the way that I’ve thrown caution to the wind as far as considering any sort of balance to the image.
It still works. (For me, at least.)
On That Whale
A dead humpback whale was brought ashore onto Hout Bay beach this weekend. This is very unfortunate, but is also just one of those things that happens. You don’t need to blame climate change or toxic oceans here: animals sometimes die, and animals sometimes die in the sea close to a shoreline. And if they are a 14m, 35 tonne humpback whale, you’re possibly more likely to notice them than if they were a small crab. Sadly, they can also be a bit of a hazard. Aside from the smell and the health risks, whale carcasses on the shoreline can also attract sharks, and so removal of the carcass is something that needs to happen timeously.
Usually, the whales which are washed up around the Cape Town coastline are taken – by truck – to the landfill site at Vissershoek. This is a fairly unusual thing, but we’re probably looking at a few every year, so it’s hardly unheard of.
This one seems to have caused a bit of stir though. Maybe because it was moved on a weekend and a nice day when people were out and about.
And just look who commented! With that emoji.
It’s always sad when a family member passes on. Sorry for your loss.
But it was the Reddit post referenced in the link above that really got me laughing.
The original question here:
Was answered in typical Reddit form by a super helpful local user:
“Probably dead”? Amazing.
You think?
Not just popping out of the water and onto a low loader for a Township Tour of Imizamo Yethu and a drink or two in the Constantia Valley before being dropped back into the Atlantic, then?
Dead, you say?
Yes, I think you might be right.
Probably.