Category: this is south africa

Not a good day

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Another bad day at the office for United. Except it isn’t an office and we’re growing tired of bad days and running out of time to have good ones.

Highlight of the day then was probably a visit to the Investec Cape Town Art Fair. And that was mainly for the people watching. Much of the art was suitably inexplicable and unnecessarily pretentious – especially in their titles:

although some of the actual artwork was really quite interesting:

And there were some eye-wateringly big numbers in numbers on the price tags.

I think this one was a neon Mother Theresa. (jks, obvs)

Yeah, so if those were the highlights, then you can see why I’m looking forward to my bed this evening.

We go again tomorrow.

At life, I mean. I’ll save my money on a return to the Art Fair.

Great timing

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Thursday was the day that Climate Scientists announced that the world had made it a whole year with an average global temperature >1.5oC above pre-industrial levels. And if you click through on that link, you’ll be able to read about many of the other records that have recently been broken as mankind does its best to trash what’s left of the planet.

It probably wasn’t the best day that the UK Labour party could have chosen to announce that they were dropping their £28bn a year “Green Prosperity” plan, halving the funding due to “the economic climate”. The actual climate isn’t the only climate that is struggling, then.

When you are an opposition party, it’s easy to make grand statements about how much you are going to spend, and all the plans you are going to carry out once you’re in government. No-one can hold you to them, because you can’t do them anyway, because you’re not in power. But suddenly, with Labour surely almost certain to win the upcoming election in the UK, they’re having to backtrack on their promises.

But with the world experts crying out for more funding for environmental and ecological issues, more buy-in and more commitment from governments, the perfect timing of this climbdown was a disaster.

Talking of disasters…

During his 2024 State Of The Nation address on Thursday evening, President Ramaphosa talked up the progress that the government had made in tackling loadshedding, which was running at Stage 2 throughout his speech:

“Since SA’s renewable energy programme was revived five years ago, more than 2,500MW of solar and wind power had been added to the grid, with much more in the pipeline. More than 120 new private energy projects were in development after regulatory reforms enabled private investment.
These are phenomenal developments that are driving the restructuring of our electricity sector in line with what many other economies have done to increase competitiveness and bring down prices. 

Through all of these actions, we are confident that the worst is behind us and the end of load shedding is finally within reach.”

About an hour after he made that statement, loadshedding was raised to Stage 3.
And three hours after that, it was raised to Stage 4.

And now we’re on Stage 6. No electricity for 12 hours each day.

Again, absolutely wonderful timing.

“…we are confident that the worst is behind us and the end of load shedding is finally within reach”

Utter nonsense. Any light at the end of the tunnel has clearly got nothing to power it.

He’s Crashed It! He’s Crashed It!

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There used to be a police based TV series in the UK whose credits finished with the words of that title over the police radio. That was presumably with reference to some scrote stealing and joyriding some high powered vehicle or other – I believe it’s called a TWOC these days – before meeting an untimely end.

Not in my garden though. The crashing in this case was a dragonfly which had gone down like a Messerschmitt after meeting a Spitfire, face first into the patio.

Or maybe it was doing gymnastics?
Or perhaps it was praying? I don’t know.

The front end might have been a bit battered, but s/he was still very much alive and kicking (if not flying), and I gave him/her a helpful lift to the relative safety of a flower bed before the starlings got a cheap meal.

My best guess – so far – is that this is a Red-Veined Dropwing (Trithemis arteriosa), but I stand (not on my head) to be corrected.

It’s going to rain

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At least that’s what the weather forecast says. And that’s why after my run this morning, I bought plenty of topsoil and fertiliser and put it all over the garden.

The only issue with this was that I chose to do it today, based solely on my weather app telling me about the rain. However, the same weather app also told me that it was foggy and cool this lunchtime:

It wasn’t. And while it would inaccurate to suggest that there wasn’t a cloud in the sky…

… it would certainly be (and absolutely was) much inaccurater to say that it was in any way “foggy”.

So that forecast certainly “mist” the mark, didn’t it?

I’m so sorry.

But since we’re having a bit of a pop, I also have to take issue with the assertion that it was 22oC. It was much closer to 32oC. And that was in the shade.

Hence, not only am I already up to 20,000 steps for the day, I’m almost certainly down at least a couple of kilos as well.

It’s probably no bad thing.