Zero sleep last night. Bit under the weather today (no, not that). And a busy evening.
So please accept a quota Cape Canary from the summer as today’s post.
It’s been a thoroughly miserable day in Cape Town today. Grey, damp and drizzly.
So, lazy though this is, it’s still nice to have a bit of colour on an otherwise dour day.
More tomorrow.
Yesterday’s climax to several of Europe’s top football leagues was every bit as exciting as any neutral could ever have hoped for. Of course, no-one is completely neutral in these matters: I can’t recall any game where I actually didn’t care at all about who was going to win. After all, we all have our little foibles and favourites and many reasons whey we hate the dirty, scab bastards from Nottingham.
And you can spin it any way you want, but Bill Shankly was right: winning is everything. And thus I know readers who will be happy and readers who won’t be happy this morning.
For me, looking across England, Spain and Italy last night (the leagues I watch) and the bits that I was mildly invested in, I got two out of three at the top (one having been decided long ago), and one of out three at the bottom (from yesterday).
Not great, but still better than the one that I was really invested in, which didn’t happen at all.
So now we are about to enter a period of quiet evenings in front of the family instead of the football. Of having to learn and talk about cricket (wut?!?) to distract ourselves, or face up to the crushing reality of South Africa’s economic predicament (I’ll take the cricket, please). Of betting on the likes of FCs Honka and Petrzalka, instead of the Blades and Real Madrid. Of blissfully early nights and lower stress levels.
I’m not sure what I’m going to do with myself. Bring on the 30th July.
We did Corona and Monkeypox and Salmonella and Polio the other day, but I bet that no-one had “imported case of Lassa Fever” on their microbiological bingo card, did they?
And yet…
Synopsis: Man falls ill in Nigeria, gets treatment, remains ill so flies to South Africa to get better treatment(!), ends up in hospital in KZN, sadly throws a seven.
Now 50 contacts are being traced and monitored, just in case. Nothing yet, so right now, it looks like we may have dodged a very nasty bullet.
Since Covid, it seems that the media and the public have been much more aware of viruses, microbiology and outbreaks and such – for better and for worse (everyone on social media is an expert) – Monkeypox is a good example. But this one has been in the NICD media releases for a while, and it doesn’t look like it was given much attention by anyone. That’s odd in the current climate, but it’s also quite welcome.
I took my daughter along to a birthday party this afternoon. This was a karting party: a “Karty” then, if you will. And a great time was had by all. I took plenty of action shots of various kids going round the track, but given the other sporting things happening this evening, those will have to wait.
For the moment then, this photo of my daughter testing one of the tyre walls at the venue at reasonably high speed.
This image would have been better, but I was actually lining up a shot with the premise that she would be some distance more over to the left of the track as we’re looking, so I wasn’t quite ready for this.
And, by the look of it, neither was she.
Today was a very busy day, so perhaps last night wasn’t the best time to drink copious amounts of very nice red wine. But then, is there actually ever a bad time to do that? Yesterday evening’s choice was a 2015 Proprietor’s Blend from Ormond in Darling. It was very, very good.
My head this morning was less good though, and I had to get the Boy Wonder up to Milnerton to play a SportsBall. This I did, but rather than sensibly dozing off in the car park for three hours, I decided to brave the traffic out to the west coast and wander along Bloubergstrand for a few kilometers. You might not know Bloubergstrand if you’re not from around these parts, but it’s the one with this view:
…of Cape Town and Table Mountain, the latter of which was – as you can see – covered by a fluffy cloud and the former of which was blanketed in some nice, thick pollution.
The photos I took also reminded me that I need to clean my lenses and camera.
Filthy splodges everywhere. Eww.
Back home for a super quick lunch, (the “super” describing the speed, rather than any sort of culinary or gastronomic quality) and then off to the local Scout Hall to help clear out gutters and cut down branches before the winter storms hit.
I walked hard and then worked hard today. I am now officially knackered.
Let’s sit back and see what’s in the red wine cupboard for this evening…