Category: this is south africa

Conspansion is continuing…

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I’m going to try and get through this post without using the adjectives “upmarket” or “leafy”.
Wish me luck.

We all want to live in an upmarket, leafy [bugger] suburb, and so there’s always a bit of suburb creep, probably begun by crafty estate agents, but then happily perpetuated and propagated by residents and businesses who are trying to add a bit more class to their address by placing it somewhere nicer than it is – at least in nomenclature.

Apparently, Constantia is one of the nicest places to live in Cape Town. Well, that is when Bulgarian gangsters aren’t being murdered there. But that aside, it is generally very pleasant. But not everywhere is in Constantia – and that’s a problem. Thankfully it’s one easily solved by just lobbing the word “Constantia” onto the beginning or end of your business name.

I wrote about this back in 2012, were I termed this expansion of Constantia into a handy and easy to use portmanteau:

CONSPANSION.

You might have thought that it ended there. Because it probably should have done. But no.

Builders Warehouse in Retreat got in on the act, calling itself “Constantiaberg” after the mountain on the far side of Constantia from Builders Warehouse (but yes, in the background of the picture on their Google profile).

Constantia Online listed Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens under “Fun Things To Do In Constantia”.

One of our friends who absolutely lives and works in Tokai has her business listed as being in Constantia.
Awkward.

Reddam House school in which used to be in Tokai or Westlake or Steenberg is now in Constantia. The school itself hasn’t moved an inch: incredibly, Constantia came to meet it. And Constantia came to meet it simply because Tokai or Westlake or Steenberg weren’t posh enough and so Reddam pretended that their school was in Constantia.

And it’s that entitled, privileged, posh-end kind of business, ignoring the rules of society like they do so very often, that has pushed Constantia way north of where Constantia actually is, as well.
Recently, Claremont BMW – in… er… Claremont, very much at least a Wynberg and a Kenilworth Upper (as well as quite a lot of a Claremont) away from Constantia – rebranded as… You guessed it:

Just for the record: this, while delightfully suiting the aims and narrative of this blog post, really is a massive stretch.

I do recall using a map on that last post about this phenomenon, but I can’t use that again, because this example doesn’t even come close to fitting on it. So here’s a new map.

Incredibly, that’s 11.23km from top to bottom. Or from bottom to top. It doesn’t matter which way you go. Ignore all the other suburbs you are clearly passing through. You’re in Constantia, all the way.

This northerly movement of Constantia – this Conspansion – now means that ironically, Bishopscourt – arguably a posher, upmarketer, leafier suburb than even Constantia – is also now in Constantia.
Which must be a bit of a downer for the residents there.

We also now live in Constantia, and eventually, so will you. Everything will eventually be in Constantia.

Conspansion is continuing, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Caught short

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It’s the shortest day of the year in Cape Town (and elsewhere in the global south too, obvs).

That means sunrise at 0751, sunset at 1744 and just 9 hours, 53 minutes and 31 seconds of daylight today. That’s 1 second shorter than yesterday, and 0.65 seconds shorter than tomorrow. It might not seem like much, because it’s not, but these things do get measured and those are the numbers.

Make plans now. Don’t waste your 0.65 extra seconds of daylight tomorrow.

Of course, that means that it’s also the longest day in the Northern hemisphere, and from tomorrow, the nights will be closing in as they head inexorably towards winter.

This year, this fact is actually rather annoying, given that we’re heading up to the top half of the world very shortly. But still, because we’re staying (generally) to the west side of their time zone, and because we’re staying (exclusively) a lot further north than Cape Town is south, we’re still going to have some lovely late evenings.

In fact, sunset on our second night in Ireland will only be at 9:58pm. Sunset has never been anywhere near that late in Cape Town.

It’s been a long, hard winter so far, and we’re not out of the woods just yet.
But hey, South Africa: summer is just around the corner.

A weird 0

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Wandering downstairs in the semi-darkness this morning, I took a quick look at the rain gauge.

It’s broken.

There’s this odd “0” shape being displayed on the screen where there are usually the numbers of millimetres of rain. I’m going to have to have a look at the manual, because I can’t remember it doing this before.

More seriously, it is nice to have a day with no rain forecast to just try and make a start on drying everything (and I mean everything) out. We’ve had over 460mm of rain so far this month, versus the long term average of 175mm for the whole of June. It’s no wonder the rain gauge needs a break.

On the plus side, the dams are now sitting at 91.7% full (yesterday morning, before yesterday’s rain and before all the run-off form all the other rain).

That rather erect worm means that we’re looking good for a water restriction-free summer, although the best time to save water is when you have water, and with this on the way, maybe caution is the sensible option.

But for now, go and enjoy the sunshine ahead of the (showers tomorrow and the) next cold front early next week.

Same same, but different

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Want to make an achievement sound better than it actually is?

It’s easy: to show bigger numbers, simply use smaller units.

Like this:

130 million millilitres sounds an awful lot. But it’s “only” 130,000 litres. Which is, ok, still quite a lot, but sounds nowhere near as impressive as “130 million” of anything in a soundbite.

I’m not quite sure why Gauteng Police Commissioner Lieutenant colonel Elias Mawela (for it is he) didn’t take it a step further and go for the 130 billion microlitres option.

130 BILLION?!?

That sounds like a huge success! Well done, Commissioner!

Both wrong

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Imagine my delight – noting that this was merely a fender bender with clearly limited possibilities for injury – when I spotted a crash on the road in Wynberg earlier.

Why?

Because this was at the junction of Wolfe and Waterloo.

The vehicle turning into Wolfe from Waterloo was a taxi, turning into Wolfe despite the clear “No Minibus Taxis” sign under which the bump took place.

The vehicle turning right from Wolfe into Waterloo was a car, and would have avoided the taxi completely had it have noted the “No Right Turn” sign at the top of Wolfe, next to which the collision occurred.

Oh dear. What a pity.

But will they have learnt anything? I doubt it.

Note that the above images were taken on a much nicer day than today.
Also note that the minibus on the left of the image above belongs to a school, isn’t a taxi, and may or may not be turning right.