Glued to their blooming PlayStations

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Look, there’s a serious point in all of this, namely that the “nanny-state”, a lack of decent funding and the constant threat of petty litigation have forced local councils to prevent Britain’s children from… well… “being children” anymore.

But fewer, smaller, safer, more expensive playgrounds mean more obese kids and a sorry decline in “those fascinating crusty objects” – scabs – as Boris Johnson laments, brilliantly describing the consequences of growing up in a scabophobic society.

First the outer edges would harden, leaving a raw red patch still faintly weeping in the middle. Then the whole thing dries into a miraculous integument, as firm and knobbly as the edges of a bit of cheese on toast.

You could tap it. You could stealthily probe its edges, with the connoisseurship of the man from Del Monte, to see if it was ready. Then one day it would all be gone, and we saw the skin underneath, pink and new and whole.

The scab experience was a brilliant lesson in biology, and it is in some ways sad that our children these days seem so scab-free. Please don’t get me wrong. I am not calling for more of them to have accidents.

I am not positively advocating that we encourage our children to fall out of trees or get whanged off roundabouts moving at 200 rpm. But the scabophobic measures we have taken to protect our children have had consequences we could not have intended.

While Boris is trying to score political points (and why not? – after all, that is his job) he’s certainly correct that we (we being parents, society) mollycoddle our children far too much these days – and the fact that that behaviour is having disastrous effects on them and therefore, by inference, on us.

I’m right behind him on this one.

And while political upheaval is upheaving all around me here in South Africa, it’s so refreshing to read his very entertaining (yet actually quite serious) analysis which somehow accurately ties the lack of damaged kneecaps in young children with the decline in basic common sense and the decay in the moral fibre of society my homeland.

New dawn for SA?

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As the morning mist cleared over the city of Cape Town this morning, slowly giving way to the African heat, I was driving into work, listening to soundbites of Jacob Zuma’s inaugural address as ANC President yesterday and thinking that the whole mist thing would make a really cheesy start to this “new dawn” post.

Suddenly, it seems that now the public have heard JZ speak about his thoughts and plans for the ANC party (and therefore theoretically for the country), rather than the media’s somewhat one-sided interpretations of the man, they actually quite like him. Certainly, that was the impression of many (mainly white) callers who got in touch with the radio station this morning, expressing their shock that he had some good ideas, some supportable policies and wasn’t intending to kill off all the white people by 2010*.

There were some on the BBC website (as there always are), however, that continued with my favourite “We’re going to be another Zimbabwe theme”. Specifically logicman from Stevenage:

It all depends on what the people of South Africa want? If Jacob Zuma gets into power the country will go the same way that Zimbabwe has. Do they want that? If he takes control then he will probably jail, or murder, all those who oppose him.

Yes. Jail or murder. Probably.

Of course, Stevenage isn’t in South Africa, so logicman fortunately doesn’t get a say in things. He’s still wondering where the World Cup 2010 is going to be, since he knows that the whities won’t allow “that dark sport” into their beloved South Africa.

There is of course, one spanner in the works. The corruption charges against JZ which seem set to lead to a court case sometime in 2008. While all the evidence (as helpfully provided by that balanced media I mentioned earlier) points to his absolute guilt, JZ still protests his innocence and welcomes the opportunity to have his day in court to prove it.

All in all, despite the doom and gloom merchants continuing to be doomy and gloomy – mostly from lands far, far away from here – there are others who this week have seen a new side to Zuma and are cautiously optimistic about moving on from an Mbeki-led ANC to a ruling party run by a charismatic, “people’s person” with radically different ideas on big issues like crime and HIV.

Only time will tell of course, but is this a new dawn for SA? Well, the mood seems generally positive. The booming economy and those who run it are happy that JZ seems to have adopted a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach; the whities are very glad that he used the words “crime” and “zero tolerance” in the same breath, while those at the other end of the scale are encouraged with his plans for land redistribution, poverty alleviation and aggressive approach towards the HIV/AIDS problem.

So – new dawn out of the way and I think it’s time for breakfast. Thabo on toast, anyone?

* Well, he didn’t say he would, anyway…

Sticky: Let me explain.

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I’ve eluded to the fact that last month I had issues with my hosting company and that, with a great deal of help and support from The Guru*, I moved 6000 miles over onto WordPress for “a while”. Well, I’ve decided to stay.

Writing my own pages in straightforward html was fun. I enjoyed the challenge and I enjoyed having a site design that no-one else had, or could ever have. I don’t know how many readers know (or knew), but the ballacorkish.net/6000 site was coded entirely by me and each post was coded and written using MS Notepad. Sometimes it showed, but mostly, I’m proud to say, it didn’t. 

Moving to WP will allow me to concentrate more on what I’m writing and less on getting it published. A new dawn for 6000 miles. The challenge of coding and tweaking will still be there – just with php, not html – and not as desperately as before.

Please bear with me. It’ll almost certainly be worth it**.

* I already owe him several beers.
** Terms and conditions apply.

Wellington. 6050 miles from civilisation…

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Believe me. That 50 miles makes a hell of a difference. We popped out to Wellington – more specifically to Diemersfontein – for a wedding this weekend. What an interesting experience.

Maybe it didn’t help that it was raining, but Wellington is nowhere near as pretty as some of the other towns in the Winelands. It also doesn’t seem anywhere near as geared up for visitors. Aside from the KFC and Wimpy (God help us!), we managed to find just one restaurant (D’Olive, if you feel the need) open for that most unusual of mealtimes… er… Sunday lunch. (It was bloody good though.)

In addition, maybe it didn’t help that we had booked into the bewilderingly named La Rochelle B&B, run by a lady who spoke only a smattering of English – Afrikaans being die taal of choice in the Winelands. The name wasn’t the end of the French connection, however; the olde worlde charm of the place included an olde worlde mattress with a depression so great in the middle of it that the Frenchies would have build a damn great viaduct from one side to the other and raised goats in the valley below.  Still, several beers and a bottle or more of the wonderful Pinotage at the reception probably assisted with my getting a decent night’s sleep – and also probably explains the utterly bizarre dreams about treading grapes with gold-shoed Croatian ladies.  

In a final cruel twist of the La Rochelle knife, the “B&B” turned out to be just “B”. 9am, mildly hungover and pretty much exhausted from freeclimbing my way up the side of my mattress to get out of bed really wasn’t the best time to find this out.

“The price you pay are not including the breakfast. There is a good place in town to eat, but I think that they is not open for breakfast.”

Looking back, the wedding was wonderful, I would heartily recommend the Diemersfontein Pinotage – “I’m getting chocolate, I’m getting coffee, I’m getting quite drunk” – and Wellington is another town to cross off my SA list. Whether it will be one I revisit remains to be seen…