Last day

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The last day of an absolutely terrible football season (for Sheffield United, at least). We’ve broken all the wrong records, and it’s been pretty depressing to watch since before day one.

Mismanagement from the board, tactical naivety, a plethora of individual errors, a fragile mentality, a million injuries, a decent slice of bad luck, disappointing loanees, NOT ENOUGH MONEY, and some iffy refereeing decisions… it’s just all added up.

But we are in the Premier League. The best league in the world. And that’s worth remembering.

Because at the end of it all, I have to remind myself that we’re playing teams who can spend a billion pounds or more on the best players in the world. And while that certainly isn’t an excuse for a lot of what we’ve been put through this season, it certainly is a reason for some of it.

A lot of fans are saying that they’re looking forward to being in the Championship again, without the prima donnas and the piles of cash that rules the roost. Bigger fish in smaller pond and all that.
Without VAR too, but I’m always interested to understand how people have forgotten about the pre-VAR days when we complained about the referees and not the technology. Just watching the League Two play off final right now, and the ref made a howler with a penalty decision which would have changed the direction of the match (and likely the winner), and VAR saved the day. We’ll have to accept that sort of thing again, and we’ll be happy about it, right? Right.

More personally, the return to the Championship is also going to mean that I have to spend shedloads of GBPs on a streaming package so I can watch the games. And that’s not going to be pretty in ZARs, especially after the 29th.

Anyway. Last day. Last game. Last chance for a bit of pride. Not much else to play for, nothing matters, so the pressure is off, right?

My stress levels with still be in the high nineties at 5pm. It always matters…

Emergency department

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A pseudoscientist carrying a cake walked out straight in front of my car today.

No, this isn’t the opening line to a joke. This actually happened about an hour ago.
Aimlessly stepping off the pavement, looking grey and devoid of life and energy.

No-one got hurt.

But it was while I was wondering about what might have happened had outcome of the scenario been different, that I was reminded of this place, which is surely where he would have wanted to go, right?

Come for the hilarious chuckaway lines in the Emergency Department, stay for the savage takedowns in the pub scene afterwards.

Wonderful stuff.

Enjoy your cake, Tim.

No more explosion

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Spotted in the camping and outdoor aisle of a local supermarket: butane gas canisters.

I’m not sure if this is a thing you can buy in supermarkets overseas, I know that there are a lot of places with a lot more rules and regulations than South Africa. But just along the shelf from this extremely flammable gas, I could also buy a BIG KNIFE. I know that’s not allowed in the UK. I guess knives are less of a thing here: thinking of using a knife as an offensive weapon is SA would really be like bringing a knife along to a gunfight.

Literally.

But the butane gas canisters:

Now, I have a bit of an issue with the big orange and white bit. Because stating

NO MORE EXPLOSION

in big letters and bright colours on your product does seem to suggest that a) it’s your main selling point, and b) that there have previously been explosion. And indeed, the somewhat basic diagram just below that does indeed indicate that Other brand (this is funny because ‘brand’ is Afrikaans for ‘fire’) does explosion.

But apparently you’re safe with BUSH BABY butane.
Their C4H10 is obviously just less likely to explosion than that Other brand.

And that’s good news.

I’m not into camping or the outdoors stuff much. I’d rather find a local cafe to do a bacon sandwich than risk explosion while cooking my own. (And if I was going to cook my own, I’d braai it anyway.) But is explosioning gas canisters (of any brand) really a thing? Surely we would have heard about this? There would be injuries and deaths, and tales from that campsite in the Cedarberg that everyone goes to, of those injuries and deaths.

Or is everyone already using Bush Baby butane? And precisely for that reason.

Please enlighten me. But not with a naked flame.

UPDATE: Many thanks to Andrew Fraser who found a CRV on the Bush Baby Butane. If anything is going to mean No More Explosion, that’s probably it.

Two quick things…

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…because I don’t have much time today.

1. Because we were (I was) talking about rain:

Do submarines have windows?

And 2. This song by Ann Erhard. Botanical Garden:

(I’ll put the official video in here when it’s available.)

Featuring the lyrics:

He rates two out of five stars
For the botanical garden
because the plants were dry
There was no space for parking

The peacocks looked depressed and
He thought they’d be more majestic
And also not enough koi carps
And that’s why he rates two out of five stars

Shameless pop. Droll words. Amusing.