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It’s all lies – the myth of the unripe nectarines

Posted on November 17, 2009November 17, 2009

Never believe a thing they tell you.

It all began when the buyer, new to the job, went out to the nectarine farms. His inexperience was quickly detected by the evil nectarine farmers who had barns filled with dud fruit.
They’re not ripe, they’ll never be ripe.
But the buyer didn’t know that. He’ll take the lot, please.
Here’s the fat cheque – put them on the back of the lorries.

Once back at the warehouse, the managers were aghast: money down the drain – we can’t sell unripe nectarines. In this terrible financial climate as well. We’re for the chop once Mr Woolworth hears of this. If only there was some way out. But there isn’t.

Unless…

It’s brilliant. And we’ll put “KEEP REFRIGERATED” on them right underneath the bit where we say “will ripen in 2-3 days at room temperature”. Confusion will reign.
And before anyone knows what’s going on, we’ll have sold the whole lot and the customers will only have themselves to blame for believing us and keeping them in the fridge.
Or not keeping them in the fridge. Whatever.
It’s a win-win situation. Unless they want to eat the nectarines.
Which they won’t, because they’ll never get ripe.

Ker-ching.

More blogging for me

Posted on November 16, 2009August 1, 2017

Because my most important reader is me, I’m blogging this. It’s old news in SA now, but not all my readers are South African and I’m pretty sure it’s something that I will always enjoy coming back to, like Nhlanhla Nene falling off his chair, mid-interview.
I know a lot of people are going to click that link and relive that 23 second clip again. Quality impromptu slapstick comedy by the head of the Finance Portfolio Committee.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ras Dumisani and his rendition of the South African national anthem before the France v SA rugby match in Toulouse last Friday:

(* note inverted SA flag at 0:42. That’s because SA expats don’t know much about the SA flag.)

But tuneful, it ain’t. The jokes have been doing the rounds about the amount of weed Dumisani had smoked before he sang etc etc. But there’s a serious side to it all. Ex-bok Supersport rugby guru Naas Botha blamed the poor Bok performance (they lost 20-13) on the poor Dumisani performance.

“It was sad that we lost the game,” said Botha. “But after that absolute disaster of a national anthem, everything went wrong. It was shocking and definitely didn’t assist in creating a calm atmosphere for the team, as it should have. Someone has to be taken to task for this disaster. The government should assist in getting to the bottom of this.”

Yes. Bring the Government in. That will help. Jacob Zuma can hop into his time machine and go back to urge Ras Dumisani to practice a bit more. Or at all. Whatever. Or maybe he could pop a wig on and take Dumisani’s place.
Jacob has got a bald head, but he’s got a lovely singing voice. We’ve all heard him doing Umshini Wami. It’s inspiring stuff.
And Botha is probably right about it being the sole cause of the Bok defeat, as well. I know that when I’ve been listening to Sicky Dion, I get all my line-out calls wrong, forget how to tackle and commit far too few players to the breakdown. So that’s probably what happened.

It was bad though. So bad, in fact, that Julius Malema hasn’t even blamed the fuss on racism.

Yet.

To St James by train

Posted on November 15, 2009November 15, 2009

One Sunday each November, the children of Alex’s playschool, together with their associated parents, grandparents, various hangers-on and their teacher Jayne, head off to Kenilworth Station to board the 08:54 train southbound to St James. St James is charming little place which has a road, a railway line and a row of colourful beach huts on the shore and not much else – but that’s fine, because the station is all of 50 metres from the beach.
Much like last year, the party of around 40 individuals – many of them small and loud – descended upon the Southern Suburbs line, much to the horror of the more regular users of the service.
I’ll never forget last year, when passengers getting on at Retreat stopped and stared, open-mouthed, as the doors opened and they were greeted by a carriageful of somewhat out-of-place, (almost) middle-aged whities and their kids. It was awesome. South Africa has a interesting relationship with the concept of race (for obvious reasons). It warms my heart when people go out of their comfort zone and try something they usually wouldn’t. Even more so when all involved can find some wry humour in the situation: as was the case last year.

It will come as no huge surprise to regular readers to learn that I took my camera along and managed to knock off well over 100 shots, which I have whittled down to 50 for the purposes of uploading to Flickr. Even that 170-odd MB took most of the afternoon to sort out. Gotta love SA internet and the ASDL hamsters enjoying a Sunday afternoon nap in their wheels in Bloemfontein.

The weather was much warmer than the forecast 19°C, much calmer than the 45kph SouthEaster we were promised (although that has since arrived with a vengeance) and (I believe) a good time was had by all.

Alex moves on from his two year residence at this school next year, but we have already secured our place on next year’s outing by popping out little K-pu. It should, however, be noted that although this is a great day out, we have ABSOLUTELY NO PLANS for any other back door invitations once our daughter has completed her time with Jayne. Believe it, because it’s true.

Saturday Evening 101

Posted on November 14, 2009November 14, 2009

I’ve spent so long drinking red wine and watching VH1’s Final Countdown: One Hit Wonders that it seems that I have left no time at all for a blog post. Bugger.

The top three (as chosen by VH1) were:

3. Tasmin Archer’s 1992 hit Sleeping Satellite – she blames you for the moonlit sky. And the dream that died. Steady on, love.
2. Deep Blue Something with Breakfast At Tiffany’s – in which a ginger bloke tries to convince a chick that because they both like a film from the early 1960’s, he’s a good bet to go on a second date with, despite his hair. Ja right.
1. Never Met A Girl Like You Before by Edwyn Collins. I hate this song.

What were they thinking?

I also uploaded my 2,500th item onto my flickr photostream – some surprisingly remarkable trolleys at Canal Walk – a big shopping mall in Cape Town:

Surprisingly remarkable not just because of their number and structural conformity, but because they are all still where they should be and aren’t being pushed along the N1 with some bergie’s life in them.

And now I have to go and prepare for tomorrow morning’s school outing to the beach by train.
More on that little adventure tomorrow. Possibly.