Category: this is south africa

Tree

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The stormy weather that prevented our trip out to Robben Island (top tip: always believe the Harbour Master) also brought down a tree in the neighbourhood. A big one, too. Maybe 20m of oak, now lying right across one of the roads. There was much oohing and ahhing on the local WhatsApp group, and a couple of lines thanking the Deity of the day for not letting the big tree fall on anyone foolish enough to be out and about during the horrible overnight weather, and for it missing any houses or parked cars.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the tree has not gone anywhere and is still blocking that road some 15 hours later though, and I’m left wondering if the allegedly omnipotent being responsible for the tree coming down safely, ended His/Their involvement at that helpful “not maiming or killing anyone” point, and therefore stopped some way short of preventing any ongoing inconvenience caused by the tree falling as it did.

But we’re told that these big guys upstairs – whichever one(s) you choose to believe in – work in ways in which our puny human brains cannot comprehend. So maybe the ongoing, annoying detour to get out of our local area is there for a good reason (I mean above and beyond the several tonnes of wood blocking the quicker way).

Or maybe there’s some other reason, unrelated to sky fairies.

One thing worth noting is that the oak trees in the neighbourhood were assessed as healthy by the City’s experts back in February. So either the wind was completely off the scale last night (it was pretty breezy), or this oak somehow fooled the tree doctor earlier in the year.

Anyway, there’s plenty of firewood readily available if you’re willing to put in a little bit of hard graft befoe the City turn up, whenever that might be.

Postponed and cancelled

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More things postponed and cancelled thanks to this seemingly never-ending winter.

Our Robben Island trip is off. 5.6m swells on Friday afternoon mean that there will be no boats going to or from the Island that day or over the weekend.

We’ll try again in October.

Both family (not me and not me) riding lessons were cancelled this weekend because of the stormy conditions.

Sticking with the equine theme, tomorrow’s race meeting at Durbanville – which we had plans to attend – has been called off. 32mm of rain in 48 hours is their reasoning, but that doesn’t seem like a lot really. We had more than double that in the back garden, and I haven’t cancelled any horse racing.

There are still some things which have gone ahead:

Dodgeball training. It’s indoors, see? That’s why I’m in my car park right now.

Mrs 6000’s Flower Walk in the West Coast National Park:

A great success, it seems, despite the flowers “not being as good as last year”. Why would you tell this year’s attendees that, though?

Little Miss 6000’s tour along the Garden Route:

If anything, the stunning snow on the mountains, captured here by their teacher, surely enhanced the trip out East.

Anyway, it looks like I’m at home for the rest of the week now, so the bar should be finished by the weekend. Silver linings and all that.

Slow progress

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The infernal painting mission continues. Ugh.

It’s taking up all my time and the progress is very slow. Such a frustrating task.

The results (such as they are so far – I’m only about halfway done) do look good, but my worry is that I’ll be so sick of the sight of the room by the time it’s finished, that I won’t actually enjoy being in there.
It certainly feels that way at the moment.

I just, obviously. I’m sure once we are finally finished – whenever that might be – all will be well, and it’ll quite possibly my favourite room in the house. Right now, that honour goes to the one with the bed in it.

Knackered.

No let up this weekend either: dodgeball, riding, catering, shopping for trips away: an overnight West Coast trip (not me), a week-long school tour to the Garden Route (not me), and that trip to Robben Island (me). And probably some more bloody painting (definitely me).

Busy times.

Balance

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After a lovely morning wander on the Mountain…

…the gas fire in the new bar was officially fitted, and then it was lots of jobs for me which had been on a bit of a hold pending that work. Mainly horribly fiddly painting, which isn’t anywhere near finished, but is at least now started. And with the 6Music soundtrack, a blast from the past from Mary-Ann Hobbs, which will have to be shared:

With loadshedding having done for tonight’s football (thank you, ANC), I’m at another Dodgeball training session. Sigur Ros is on the noise-cancelling Marshall earbuds, wiping out the overtly loud Amapiano mix here.

Tomorrow will bring more painting (oh joy!), but I’m hoping there will be a tangible, noticeable difference by this time tomorrow evening, which will – obviously – make it all worthwhile.

Meanwhile, in South Africa…

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Here’s today’s news:

> Stage 5 loadshedding: meaning an average of 10 hours without electricity each day.

Here’s our local supermarket’s tongue-in-cheek repsonse:

Yes, those are candles. A huge array of many different types of candle.
And yes, that light top right was being powered by a generator.

> There’s a massive fuel price increase this week because the government has f*****d the Rand:

“Motorists are in for a shocking fuel price increase from Wednesday. The price of petrol will go up by R1.71 per litre, diesel by R2.84 and paraffin by R2.78.”

> The President is attending the inauguration of Zimbabwe’s President, even though the entire world knows that the election was more rigged than a particularly complex 19th Century tea clipper:

…the elections were marred by controversy – including issues with the voters’ roll, the banning of opposition rallies, reports of biased state media coverage and voter intimidation.

> Cyril will then be heading home to “address the nation”, and tell us that the enquiry by the SA government into whether the SA government supplied arms to Russia has found out that the SA government didn’t supply arms to Russia, but the SA government can’t show us the SA government report exonerating the SA government, because that would “jeopardise the work of the SA armed forces”.

> And all this is being rubbed like salt into an open wound as the ANC shitterati dance with each other while the country falls apart:

“The mood [fire emoji] [fire emoji]”?
Is it,? That’s weird, because the mood is very different across everyone else in the country. But then I guess that it’s easy to be happy and dancey when your continual mismanagement, gross incompetence and widespread corruption only negatively affect other people.

Ugh. Trash.