Swiss next?

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Loadshedding is very annoying, but we’re coming closer and closer to the realisation that we’re not the only ones who are chronically short of electricity.

As documented, the UK and Australia have come very close. And Shanghai and China were recently rolling their own blackouts. Now, there are warnings that Switzerland – yes, Switzerland with its neutrality, mountains, engineering brilliance, intricate timepieces, army knives and just general perfection – is likely to run out of power this winter.

When Switzerland is struggling, you know that there’s a real problem.

“Repeated, hours-long power cuts”. That sounds awfully familiar.

As I’ve mentioned before, some other country experiencing loadshedding doesn’t make the situation in SA any better. And our loadshedding is for a different reason to theirs (tl;dr – it’s massive, wholesale, unimpeded corruption), but it does remind us to maybe drop a bit of the exceptionalism.

The Alpine grass, despite what you’ve seen in The Sound of Music (that was Austria, I know) (although €707.23 per MWh there, too), is not always greener.

UPDATE: Loadshedding: now with added Finland.

Out of My Head

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Curry last night was the best: Bihari never disappoints. Medium hot chicken jal frezi, cheese and chili naan. Interstitial Black Labelage. Inevitable mention of Padel. A cooling don/dom/john pedro to cool it all down. Discussions on upper body fitness. Tonsillitis germs provided by a pop-in visitor.

And just what is going on with Bishops Rugby?

Right now though, a change of mood and pace: it’s the new one from First Aid Kit. This is Out Of My Mind from the upcoming album Palomino, out November 4th. It’s a more poppy version of their usual country style, and follows on from the hugely successful Angel.

I could have been a DJ, but things just didn’t work that way.
And now, just after 8am, it’s time for the news.

Bits and Pieces

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It’s Curry Club this evening, so I’ll likely be enjoying a Jal Frezi rather than blogging in front of the fire. In the meantime, please enjoy some (or more) of these snippets which don’t quite deserve a blog post of their own, but equally don’t deserve to be completely ignored, either.

The last phone boxes
5 million phone calls are made each year from the UK’s remaining 20,000 phone boxes. I think that both those numbers seem ridiculously high. This is a lovely long read about phone boxes and their place in an ever-changing society.

Hike
The Boy Wonder is hiking the Lion’s Head tonight, with the promise of hot chocolate on the summit. It’s actually getting ridiculous how many Bootlegger coffee shops there are in Cape Town now. (Substitute Costa in the UK or your local ubiquitous high street coffee outlet in to make this “joke” work for your country.)

Ironically, there is usually a Vida e Cafe truck parked at the gate to the Lion’s Head hiking trail.

UCL Draw
Once again, Sheffield United have missed out on a place in the group stages. I might still pop over to the UEFA Youtube page to watch the draw for the 2022/23 competition live this evening though. 5pm BST = 6pm CAT.

With no apologies to Elvis…
…John Cooper Clarke’s (You Ain’t Nothing But A) Hedgehog

“You ain’t nothing but a hedgehog
Foragin’ all the time
You ain’t nothing but a hedgehog
Foragin’ all the time
You ain’t never pricked a predator
You ain’t no Porcupine”

“Hedgehogs! Leave some hedge for everyone else!”

And…
August is nearly over. So, in a mall near you:

It’s a very seasonal thing:

And, as you can see from this graph of interest in that song on Google, the interest in that song is very much waning. This is great news, but it’s also worth noting that even if people aren’t quite as bothered as they used to be, history shows that we are likely to see the annual uptick beginning in the next few weeks.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Dave drowned

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Tired after a busy day and ahead of what promises to be a wild night in Cape Town as a gusty cold front rolls in to the peninsula.

So here’s my favourite Gary Delaney joke, which I heard again today:

Dave drowned, so at his funeral, we got him a wreath in the shape of a lifebelt.
Well…
…it’s what he would have wanted.

Lovely.

Amazing phone

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Annoying phone.

I was doing some work outside a couple of weeks ago and – long story short – a screwdriver bit flew from the screwdriver bit holder, somersaulted across the table I was working near, and bounced off my phone screen. My phone was out there because I was listening to the radio while I was working.

The screen protector on the phone did its job, although at great personal sacrifice. A small ding has appeared in the centre of the screen protector, about ¾ of the way down. It seems likely that without said screen protector, the screen would have broken.

There is an issue though. Since then, my phone has developed supernatural powers. It can do “things” without anyone touching it or even being near it, and I think it’s probably because of ghosts the damage to the screen protector. This morning it called the whole family at a very early hour (even earlier in the UK and IOM) while just being in my hand (screen off, no contact with screen). Yesterday, while sitting on my desk, it took a photo of the bottom of the shelf above my desk.

On both these occasions, the app used by the ghost was the last one that I had accessed on the phone – this morning to send this pic* of the sunrise on my walk…

…but it certainly wasn’t me that instigated these things. I’m hoping that it’s just some moisture or dirt in the teeny, tiny hole that is in the screen protector that’s causing this, and I will get it sorted out soon, but in the meantime, it is annoying.

Especially if you were in bed in the Northern hemisphere at 7:29am CAT.

* unedited, taken on iffy phone camera (see here)