Advice

Posted on

Life is full of people giving you advice. Whether you choose to take that advice comes down to a few factors: Do you want to listen? How does it correlate with your own judgement? And where is the advice coming from?

I can’t really control the first two, but my advice to you today comes from a good place.
It’s genuine, it’s honest, and I wouldn’t be sharing it if I didn’t think it might benefit you. It’s not at all complicated. Quickly and easily dispensed.
It’s just a little thing that I feel will make a positive change in your life, should you choose to follow it.

And the advice is this:

Don’t smash the bridge of your nose on the corner of a large chunk of 70mm square powder-coated steel bar when you’re next at the gym.

See? Nothing too amazing in that, but I can assure you that after a certain event this morning at the gym (involving piece number 17 in case you were wondering), this is advice that I would earnestly give to anyone and everyone that I care about.

And this means you, dear reader.

So. Sore nose, much blood, achy face and TMJs and neck, and potentially the final icing on the coffin which breaks the camel’s back of my burgeoning modelling career. And that weird foggy feeling that descends upon you when you bang your head (I checked and the nose is very much part of the head).

I’ve had better mornings.

Take my advice: don’t do that thing with your face and the steel bar. Really.

Still away (mentally)

Posted on

It’s amazing how a good break can keep you going way beyond your actual return to normality and real life. And that longevity is being assisted by my (slowly) getting through the photos I took while we were away, and writing Tripadvisor reviews for the places we went and the things we did.

Talk about the sea on your doorstep…

It shows both the power of that site and the (well-placed) confidence of the places we went to, that they were all very anxious for us to share our thoughts on our visit. The cynic in me does wonder if we’d left any given establishment under a dark cloud after a stinker of a stay, whether they would have been quite so keen for us to review them but as that didn’t happen, I guess we’ll never know.

And I have to say that I relied on reviews on Google and Tripadvisor before choosing where we were going to stay. It’s useful to hear the honest opinions of visitors like yourself when you are spending quite a lot of money and – more importantly – valuable family time staying in a place you’ve never been to before. And you can get some useful tips as well: like going to the Mossel Bay Zipline in the morning before the wind gets up and they have to close for safety reasons.

Sometimes, one top tip isn’t enough and you have to help out with a whole itinerary. But that wasn’t the case with this holiday.

But now the resoundingly positive reviews are written – a sign of a really good, well-planned week away – and I’m left with a billion photos to edit.

Soon, I promise. (I know you’re desperately waiting.)

On the way to footy

Posted on

Indeed, and slightly early, due to a drop off along the way, and a weird lack of inbound traffic. So I pulled over here, and took a (phone) photo:

Beautiful.

There can’t be too many football pitches with this just across the road.

Still, there’s something to be said for an Arnold Laver timber yard right next door to the main car park, too.

Buy a ticket, help the Green Mambas get to Cairo

Posted on

SA’s “Green Mamba” Dodgeball teams – yes, including our son – are heading for the World Cup in Cairo in December. December might not be a long way off, but Egypt is, and with aircraft fuel prices being what they are at the moment, everyone involved is trying their hardest to raise the huge amount of money required to get the squads there.

You can help!

Buy your tickets here: https://bit.ly/mambasraffle

One of the fundraising ideas is a raffle, with tickets at just R25 each (£1.23, $1.38), and an array of wonderful prizes available for the winners. What’s more, with ticket sales capped at 3000, and 100 prizes promised, your chances of winning are almost better than Jacob Zuma’s opponents in his next court case.

Almost.

You can sponsor individual players (like ALEX) (that’s ALEX), with the money being split 70:30 to help with getting the coaching staff etc over as well. Or you can choose your donation to be spread evenly across the the whole squad. Every little bit helps.

Buy your tickets here: https://bit.ly/mambasraffle

Please buy tickets. Please spread this post. Please spread the word.
Let’s get the Green Mambas to Cairo!!!

Identifying bad drivers

Posted on

I’ve covered something like this before. Where is it now? Ah yes: here.

And I stand by each of those eight identifiers. They are a quick, easy and helpful guide to recognising that someone is more likely to be a bad driver, so that you can take preemptive evasive action before they drive badly and do some damage to you and your vehicle.

But after driving the N2 a bit on Friday, I’d now like to add another: personalised number plates

Now, if you are going to spend money on a personalised number plate, I think we can already see that you’re likely to be a Type A Personality. And what does that mean? This:

Ooh. Look at all that aggression, competitiveness, hostility and lack of patience. You sound lovely, and exactly the sort of person that I want near me doing a high speed on a major road. Fortunately, as I pointed out above, you can spot them a mile off because of that preoccupation with status, manifesting as big flashy cars and their (average-sized) flashy personalised number plates.

A timely reminder that this isn’t me.

In the Western Cape, personalised number plates cost up to an extra R10,000, and take the form of a string of up to 7 letters and/or numbers, followed by “-WP”, a hangover from the pre-94 name “Western Province”.
Because (quite reasonably) no-one would pay for a number plate ending “-WC”, would they? Bog off.

Now, we spotted a lot of bad driving on the 400km trip back in towards Cape Town on Friday – this is South Africa, after all – and sure, not all of it was from cars with personalised number plates. But a disproportionate amount of it certainly was.

Cars with plates like “TRIPLE R – WP”, presumably because he dRRRives like a wankeRRR; or the pisspoor plate “BIZNIS – WP”, presumably because he’s in the “biznis” of… driving like a wanker.

I’m not saying that all drivers of cars with personalised number plates are aggressive, dangerous tosspots, but let’s face it, some stereotypes exist for a very good reason, and this is very much one of them.