Well, that was suitably depressing.
Same time, same place next year, I guess.
Think I’m still in shock, so more may follow, probably involving swear words and general anger.
My god, that Mike Dean is a complete twat.
Ooh look! It’s started already!
Why I heart technology
So today is the big day when the red half of Sheffield and the claret and blue whole of Burnley descend on Wembley Stadium in London for the Championship play-off final – a match worth anything up to £60 million to the winners.
I did want to go, I did look at flights, I did not think I could afford it. So I’m watching on TV.
My dad and my brother are going though. Lucky bar-stewards – they’re almost through Nottinghamshire on the M1 already.
The plan was for them to park at Watford and catch the metropolitan line through to Wembley Park. Which would have been great, except for the Bank Holiday engineering work which means that line is closed.
Cue a mildly concerned sms from my Dad and cue me swinging into action.
First, check the reports of engineering work on the real-time interactive tfl tube map. They’re true. Moor Park is utterly buggered.
Then, use the regular tube map to choose an alternative route.
Use Skype to call Dad on his cellphone and suggest Hillingdon as an alternative. He asks for a postcode for the station, which I google and find, then sms him via Skype as we chat. He types it into the satnav and they have instant directions.
5 minutes from that first sms: sorted. All from 6,000 miles away. I heart technology.
Now, COME ON YOU RED AND WHITE WIZZZZZZZAAAAAAAAAAARDS!
Winter Fashion Tips
Well, we’ve been through just about everything else at one time or another on this blog, so I think it’s probably time we tackled the thorny issue of what the refined gentlemen of Cape Town should be wearing throughout our winter months (July and August).
I don’t want to try and be too avant garde with my advice: I do find some of the more outlandish designs that one sees on the catwalks of Milan, Paris, London and Boksburg trying to be “different”, can often appear just a little foolish or even distasteful.
In addition, functionality is key for the modern man about town. All too often, one can be caught short without an umbrella or urinal in sight. And when it’s raining or you are desperate to answer a call of nature, that can have potentially day-ruining effects on your hairstyle or your trousers. We’ve all been there, right?
Right?
Anyway, whatever: it’s without further ado that I give you the bucketat.
Part bucket, part hat. Bucketat. A stroke of genius, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Available in a range of colours from your local toy store, beach shop or builder’s merchants (for larger sizes).
Mr Men t-shirt and model not included.
Mud & Sunsets
It’s been a great afternoon. About half way through the Bulls versus Crusaders Super 14 semi-final, with the score a tantalising 27-23, Mrs 6k decided that it would be a good time for us to take the kids up to the local school field, let them run around and let me not watch the end of the rugby. Her plan was extremely successful on both counts.
But I’m glad we went. The kids enjoyed the mud on the churned up fields after the morning school rugby games and I booted a properly shaped ball around, chased Alex and took photos of the sky and the mountains.
I was even allowed to look up the Bulls score on the way home. Result. Literally.
I was working hard on the first Peroni of the weekend when I glanced outside to see a completely orange sky. Now, I’m very used to blue, quite used to black with tiny white dots in and sadly, becoming used to grey again, but orange is still a bit of a novelty.
Quickly grabbing the point-and-shoot camera – mainly because I wanted to take photos and it’s the only camera I own – I ran outside, climbed on top of the braai, pointed and shot. I should probably inform readers at this point that we have a built-in braai and it wasn’t a Weber or one of those rubbish disposable things. That would have taken a monumental amount of balance or made absolutely no difference to my overall height whatsoever. Or both.
No, our braai is pretty big.
Fortunately the sky is also pretty big and I was able to not miss on a number of occasions. This probably being my favourite hit.
Although I quite like this one too. You can see the whole lot of them on flickr and make your own decision.
And once again, I must remind you lovely people that taking good photographs in Cape Town isn’t difficult. Most of the work is done for you. So yes, despite the fact that I think some of these are “good”, once again, none of them are exceptional. And, once again, I’m left wondering if I can at least partially overcome the paucity of my talent by buying a better camera.
The alternative, of course, is to spend that camera money on beer, and then see if my creative abilities are augmented by imbibing (what I calculate to be) about 1,000 bottles of Amstel. Being a scientist, I am tempted by the idea of exploring both possibilities as fully as possible.
Tony Leon on Concubinegate
Former DA leader Tony Leon spoke out today on the Concubinegate affair (that’s my name for it, anyway), in which current DA leader and Emperor of the Western Cape, Helen Zille had a pop at Jacob Zuma’s habits of sleeping around. Whatever “sleeping around” actually means. Floyd?
It’s an excellent analysis of the situation, drawing on his years as leader of the opposition and utilising common sense and logic instead of the knee-jerk, personal tactics of his successor.
I think Bill Clinton got it right when, in appointing his first administration in 1992, he announced: “I want a cabinet that looks like America.” The fact that the Western Cape provincial government doesn’t look like SA, or on the face of it is overloaded with testosterone, doesn’t mean it won’t deliver or won’t be vigilant on feminist issues. But it handed a sword to the party’s opponents, who were delighted to plunge it in with vigour. And politics is often more about symbols than substance.
And while Leon is somewhat critical of Zille, he balances it out with the facts which we never really got to hear in her defence – that the ANCYL’s response was at worse, offensive and infantile (which we knew) and at best, somewhat hypocritical, given the make-up of some of their Provincial cabinets across the country.
When I led the opposition, I made a book- ful of mistakes when it came to an overheated response or an incautious one-liner. And I know how a single phrase in a letter or speech can be wrenched from context, or can obliterate the most thorough defence.
Zille’s reference to Zuma’s personal history was factually correct but tactically questionable. It struck a discordant note in the upwelling mood music which flowed from the president’s inauguration and the wave of optimism it generated.
It seems almost strange to be citing a voice of reason in this whole sorry affair, where mud-slinging, slanderous comments have been the order of the day. But it’s a lesson to us all that sometimes it’s worth stepping back from the heat of an argument and actually THINKING before speaking, rather than just throwing some stupid statement out into the public domain.
While I can understand the ANC’s glee at the gift of the all-male Western Cape cabinet – and their further delight at Zille’s foolish response to their jibes – the people I don’t understand are the angered DA voters in the Western Cape.
Zille’s defence has always been that she didn’t have enough experienced women to appoint to her Provincial cabinet, simply because not enough experienced women were on the DA Provincial lists (something which should surely never have been allowed to happen in the first place). But those lists were freely available to the public in the run up to the election, published in all the newspapers and on the internet. Anyone who had bothered to read the lists would have been aware that this situation was going to arise given the DA’s widely (and rather accurately) predicted ~50% performance in the Provincial elections.
Thus, if you voted DA in the Western Cape and now have a problem with the demographics of the Provincial cabinet – well, it’s actually your fault. Just because you didn’t do your homework in the days before April 22nd is no reason to cry foul now.
So please stop moaning and pretending you wished you’d voted ANC. You’d do well to take a leaf out of Tony’s book and THINK before you speak out (or maybe even before you vote in future).
Otherwise, you really do risk making a fool out of yourself. Or is it too late already?