Eve Eve

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If we are going to have a few days off – no, don’t panic, not off blogging – then we have to get a few things sorted before we can relax. And after a whirlwind day of tasks and jobs being ticked off the list, I’m happy to say that we’re very nearly there.

Not quite, but very nearly. And if things go well tomorrow, then I think we’ll be done by lunchtime and then we can switch off a bit and begin the festive holiday thing. I t will likely involve some wine.

The two big bits of news today were signing an OTP on a car for the Boy Wonder, which is very exciting, and finally getting this delivered, which was a huge weight off my mind. 3 separate entities involved and I had to chase up each of them to manage to get things done. Amazon in SA has a long, long way to go.

But today, and the 17,500 steps it brought with it, has left me exhausted.

So happy Christmas Eve Eve, and look out for more fun and games tomorrow.

2 at once

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It’s the video we’ve all been waiting for. Two recorders at once. In the nose. Two blowholes (I think that the technical name is nostrii – 1 nostril, 2 nostrii), so two recorders. A descant and a treble.

It’s beautifully done. And I love the t-shirt.

Little known fact about me: I’m actually pretty good on the recorder. I know we all did it for a year at school when we were 6 or 7, but I kept going for many years afterwards, playing for the leading youth recorder group in Sheffield. We toured widely, as far as Manchester, Holmfirth and London (amongst other places), winning several (or more) competitions, and I still have my recorders to this day.

Could I do this, though?

Well, almost. The whole nostril thing wouldn’t be an issue at all: in fact, I do a great rendition of Jingle Bells like this.

But… the balancing the descant on the half loaf or white bread? No.

I only eat brown, seeded stuff now* – doctor’s orders, see? – and that’s simply not spongy enough to allow for adequate movement. In fact, trying to do this with a loaf of this heavier stuff might even result in some sort of bizarre injury. Hopefully only to your nose, but you never really know, do you?

So I’ll leave this sort of thing to the expert in our video above.

Safety first.

* Apparently, there’s some in the freezer.

Alfred & Marc: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

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We were at the Baxter last night to see the Alfred & Marc comedy show:

Popular SA comedians Alfred Adriaan and Marc Lottering join forces to bring you their best material as performed over the last few years. Both comics have been packing out theatres locally and abroad, and their respective fans can expect to be treated to two hours of sheer hilarity.

And it was very good fun. So you should know that they were very happy to announce to us that they have extended the run until the 11th January next year.

As ever, I’m all about complete honesty in my reviews of things and stuff, so I’ve compiled the best bits, the ok bits and the could-do-better bits of the evening into a quick three-way guide, inspired by a Western movie from the mid-1960s.

The Good

The Show. It was really funny. Sure, I know that I wasn’t absolutely the target demographic, but I still enjoyed it. And the house was PACKED with a lot of people (who mainly were the target demographic) having a great time, which, with all the crap going on in the world (including while we were in there), was just really heartwarming.

We’d seen some of Marc Lottering’s act before at his show in Camps Bay back in October (we’d been warned that this was a repeat of past material see the blurb above), but there was plenty of fresh stuff and plenty of comment on current affairs as well.
Alfred Adriaan was new to me, but his refreshing honesty and clever observational comedy on SA and relationships was very funny and very… well… relatable, despite our rather different backgrounds (the similarity between all of us actually being one of the points he made throughout his act).

It was all hugely energetic and really enjoyable.

Add to that the very nice food in the foyer – thank you, Prashad Cafe – the availability of Castle Milk Stout at the bar (YES BOYS!), and the early 90s dance soundtrack on the way in, and I was already in a good mood before I even saw anyone on stage.

The Bad

“Bad”? This seems harsh, in the same way that not describing “The Good” as “Great” seems harsh, but then I didn’t name the cowboy movie, did I?

So ok: not “Bad”, but just… “not Great”.

It was a bit long.

(That’s what she said) (sorry)

Maybe a bit of a personal thing, because my Afrikaans isn’t all that it could be (number of Afrikaans lessons I’ve ever been in = zero), but it was hard work trying to pick up all the very fast, very regular Afrikaans asides and punchlines. Remembering that they well delivered in full Coloured dialect as well.

That said, I reckon that I got nearly all of Lottering’s stuff, and probably about 80% of Adriaan’s. But man, into the second half I was tired, and I was losing concentration and – yikes – maybe a bit of enjoyment with it. 2 hours (plus a 20 minute interval) was really more than enough. Absolutely no disrespect to the comedians, because they kept going and going full pelt, but I was struggling to keep up by the end.

And honestly, I don’t think most of the rest of the audience had the same issue.

The Ugly

If “The Good” should have been “Great” and “The Bad” was better described as just “Not Great”, then this is still “Really Ugly”.

The seats in the Baxter Concert Hall. Who decided on them?

SO DAMN UNCOMFORTABLE.

Cramped front to back and side to side. Once you’d been in there for a hour, you were broken.
And then you had to go back and do another hour.

Thank goodness for the naughty humour – which hasn’t rubbed off on me (careful now) – at all.

Nowhere to put your legs, your knees around the ears of the guy in front of you (stop it), and just really distracting and off-putting. I woke up so stiff this morning (no) because of it. How bad was it? Well, when looking at future performances, I’d seriously consider not going for a long one (oi) if I found out that it was in that auditorium.

Very disappointing.

BUT… that was really the only downside of a really good evening, and so if these guys are your thing (and it’s not like their style will be unknown to you, is it?), then you should go along and have a good laugh.

Just maybe book a yoga class for the next morning, so you can really stretch it out (ooer!).

Geoguessr help: Poland Edition

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Almost as demarcated as those maps I shared of Germany a while back (here and here), how’s this map of the ending of town names in Poland?

This is a bit more North West/South East than anything else, but as ever, it’s because of history and you can see it in the political landscape too:

KO absolutely KO’ing PiS in the North West, PiS peeing all over KO in the South East.

These are examples of Poland A & B, the division between the ex-Prussian area and the Austro-Russian areas in the Partition of Poland in the late 18th Century. And while that might seem reasonable for the town names which were around then and would have persisted, it’s amazing that the divide is still evident in elections held this year:

Still, really helpful when you land in a field in the middle of nowhere. Is that nearby village an -owo or an -ów?

Got to be good for a few extra points.

Giles on Santa

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I had plans for a long post this evening, but then on the way back from horse-riding (not me), I got stuck behind two Vaalies going down Rhodes Drive at 30kph and I lost the will to live time I needed to write anything deep and meaningful.

So apologies for that, and here instead is Giles Brandreth destroying – depending on your point of view – the magic of Father Christmas or perhaps just the image of Father Christmas as a decent, respectful gentleman:

Oh dear, but surely a (very) late entry onto the Naughty List must have been in the offing?

More tomorrow, when I am planning to get a post done before braving the traffic around the mountain.