Category: this is south africa

Run

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Early morning Dodgeball training today ahead of the Nationals and the International v Saudi Arabia for the Boy Wonder, so I braved the rain and popped in a nice 5.5km around the sports complex.

Well, I say “nice”, but it wasn’t. I don’t mind the rain, the wind and the cold. I’ve never minded them, as long as I know that they’re coming, and I was well-prepared this morning with fresh clothes, a towel and some coffee.

But the smell…

Not me, I hasten to add. I’m all good.

But this whole area STINKS. Is it the nearby oil refinery, or the local sewage works? I don’t know, but the sickening, nauseating stench of what seemed to be human faeces lingered across the whole area for the duration of my run.

And beyond.

The good news is that I’m now in my car, in my car park, and I feel pretty much protected from it. But what was it, why did I have to breathe it in, and how on earth do people live here*?!? I have worked with poo in laboratories for many years (how else do you diagnose someone with Salmonella spp.?), so I figure that I’m fairly immune to the smell. But at least when you put the cap back on the the specimen jar in the laboratory, the whiff goes away.

This is constant. Pervasive. Offensive.

I am very much looking forward to a long, hot shower to remove any and all traces of… whatever it is… from myself ahead of an afternoon of football in front of the fire.

* a reasonable question about Milnerton at any time.

One last day

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…of this springlike weather before the next cold front comes through and spoils things for the weekend.

This was from this morning, and although it’s yet to make landfall, things are definitely changing already.

Still a chance to head out to horseriding (not me), so we’ll do that before the rain comes in.

Also always a chance of sharing a Kruger pic.

Hard to believe that this was just 10 days ago.

We were reliving some of the (many) great moments last night over a post-match celebratory beer, and there was talk (or at least testing-the-water talk) of another trip.

The water seemed very welcoming.

Away again

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You join me aboard an Airlink flight this morning. I’m on a photo and video mission along the South coast today, which meant a 4am start.

Not great.

Looking out over the Western Cape at dawn is always a pleasure though, and it’s so good to see all the farmland dams in the Overberg glinting in the morning sunlight.

On a bigger scale, that’s Theewaterskloof dam in the middle of the shot through the mucky plane window. It’s very full.

Lovely.

The flight was rather delayed because of a baggage mislabelling issue (their excuse, not mine), so we’re already playing a bit of catch-up, and it’s going to be a long, busy day, but it’s all looking good – especially the weather for the outside shots.

Excellent.

Of course, this post won’t publish until we’re safely back down on solid ground again, so if you’re reading this, you can assume that my Embraer flight has gone rather better than Mr Prigozhin’s did last week. But then I didn’t unsuccessfully try to overthrow a despot a couple of months ago.

Safety first.

Not yet, please

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The weather has turned in Cape Town, and after a long, wet, cold winter, it would seem that spring is on its way. This oak tree in Constantia certainly thought so yesterday:

The trouble is – and hear me out on this one – we don’t really want it to be spring just yet.

[Capetonian people arrive en masse Chez 6000 with pitchforks and flaming torches]

No. Actually, we want spring to come at the normal time, which is probably about a month from now. Because while the dams might be nice and full (99.6% this week, down from 100.4% last week, to be exact), we need them to be like that in the middle of September too, when spring should start.
And if there’s going to be no more decent rain, that isn’t going to happen.

Also, it’s no secret that when it doesn’t rain, Capetonians use more water, so there will be a compound reduction of the amount of stored water we have going into what we’re told will be a long, hot dry summer.

Of course, this is just what climatologists and meteorologists are telling us, using their years and years of collective training and education, their cutting-edge computing models, and their interactions and collaboration with experts around the world.

You might well hear something different from your mate Keith, who has read something on Facebook. And we must thank Keith for taking some time out to share his thoughts on this, busy as he is also being an expert on Eurasian geopolitics, the New World Order paedophile network, cryptocurrency, and the reasons why Elon Musk is a “great guy”.

But I digress… often.

All I’m saying is that while it’d lovely to have a bit of nice weather right now, starting spring this early will have unpleasant knock-on effects in March and April. And I know that might seem a long way off at the moment, but we’ll look back on this post once we get there’re in the midst of heatwaves and water restrictions, just so I can say I told you so*.

* I won’t do that**

** OK, I might do that