I read a very informative article about Cape Leopards (Panthera pardus pardus) (which are actually genetically the same as other leopards, but they live in the Cape) on the Africa Geographic magazine website.
There are a few bits that scream out [citation required], but as an entry level, popsci post about our local groot kat, it’s pretty interesting. I could copy and paste, but I’d much rather you go there and read it for yourselves.
Come back for (possibly) less leopardy news here tomorrow.
Apparently it rained a lot in Cape Town while we were away.
Well, ok. If you say so. We’ve been back for five days now and we haven’t seen any continuation of that alleged precipitation. And, looking at the forecast for the next five days, there’s only a small chance of a little bit of drizzle on Monday evening as far as I can see.
That said, some local websites are full of good news about our local big reservoir “doubling in capacity”.
For the record, this hasn’t happened. There may be a case for suggesting that the volume of water in Theewaterskloof has doubled from the worryingly low levels earlier in the year, but I have to tell you that the capacity has stayed exactly the same.
Semantics. I know. Sorry.
Pop me in Pendant’s Corner.
Meanwhile, another blog helpfully tells us how this whole sorry situation came about (it didn’t rain):
And how the reservoir “fought back from the brink” (it rained):
It’s fascinating, incisive stuff. But I do appreciate that it’s all a bit technical, so don’t worry if you’re struggling to keep up.
That’s why we have experts for this sort of thing. And that’s why they get paid the big bucks.
Don’t get me wrong though. No matter how shitty the reporting, it is great that we’ve moved forward from what we saw when we went out there in February.
But drought isn’t a purely Capetonian thing. Take a look at Sheffield’s local reservoir, which also supplies Derby, Nottingham and Leicester:
It’s looking scarily similar to scenes we’ve seen here recently. In the distance, you can see one of the towers of the Derwent Dam, which should look like this:
There’s a lot more dam wall on show in that top image than there should be.
Sheffield isn’t quite at the point of water restrictions yet, although other places in the UK are about to be (and Northern Ireland was, but isn’t any more).
As for Cape Town, our Level 6b water restrictions are still in place. We’re out of the woods, but we still can’t afford to be complacent. And the city council are going to ensure we remember that by charging us a ridiculous amount for the water that we use.
But I can understand their caution in not cutting the restrictions just yet. When they do, water use is inevitably going to spike and it would be seen as a huge own goal to have to reinstate the restrictions once they had relaxed them.
Perhaps what they should do is to double the capacity of all our dams.
That would make a huge difference.
As long as it rained.
Did a bit of work last night and I’ve now got some pics onto Flickr.
Here they are. Please do go and have a look.
This is just the first batch, documenting only the first few days of the holiday as well. I do seem to have taken a lot of photos.
Looking back through them now, I couldn’t even remember taking some of them.
The one above though: well, I decided that I couldn’t sleep, jumped off the boat (fortunately on the dry side) went wandering around a deserted village in my nightwear looking for shots.
There’s still another week of France to come before we head over to the UK and the Isle of Man.
And there are still all the images from my phone and my Mavic.
I’m still going to be busy for a while, then.
…and other Sky News stories.
For many people, that headline would be enough. Not for me.
I want to delve deeper. I want to know more.
Fortunately, Sky News has obliged with further bizarre details.
Lizzie Purbrick, who competed as a showjumper in the 1980 Games, said she had used a key to get into the south London home of former lover David Prior.
The two, both separated from their married partners, had been in a relationship for several years that she had thought “had longevity”, according to her lawyer Simon Nicholls.
Look, I’m not that sort of guy, but I do understand that some relationships do break down, people find other people, people move on.
To a point, anyway.
But when the 63-year-old saw Lord Prior in the arms of another woman… she sought revenge, Camberwell Magistrates’ Court heard.
Uh-oh.
On 9 May, she used a key to get into the home and used a garden sprayer and several litres of pig’s blood to cover the walls with phrases, including “whore”, “lady s***” and “big d*** lord”.
Right. Several (or more) questions are raised here. Practicality is foremost amongst them. A garden sprayer has a very fine nozzle and pig’s blood is not the most watery of liquids. There is viscosity there. Even more so when one considers the coagulation of any mammalian blood when exposed to air. To be able to spray pig’s blood all around Lord Prior’s South London home with a garden sprayer would surely have demanded some quality organisational skills. Some sort of anticoagulant, or just a pig readily available on site to ensure an extremely fresh supply of porcine claret, regularly topped up.
Am I alone in thinking that the pig might not be wholly onside with this?
And then, as for writing in it… Wow, that must take some skill.
Have you ever tried writing with a garden sprayer? Even allowing for a huge font (the size traditionally favoured by jilted lovers to scrawl insults across walls), you’re looking at needing a Volume Median Diameter for the blood droplets of perhaps 400 microns. Otherwise you’re going to get drift – even indoors. Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to ensure that their weird slogans were legible.
And then, what of those slogans? “Whore” is straightforward, but is that second one “slag”, “slut” or “shit”? Or something far less inflammatory, like “spud, “sofa” or “sigh”?
We’re all left wondering.
And then “big d*** lord”? Presumably, she is channeling Darth Vader here, because I can’t think of any other Dark Lords off the top of my head.
He has failed her for the last time.
The court heard that she had chosen pig’s blood because Lord Prior “liked pigs”.
Oh. Right. Yes. Obviously.
Purbrick, of King’s Lynn in Norfolk, also drew a penis on the floor and left a cheque for £1000 before leaving.
And therein lies the most confusing aspect of this whole sorry situation. Why the £1000, and moreover, where the hell did she get a cheque from? Do people still have chequebooks? Lizzie Purbrick clearly does. How very historic. Quaint, even.
Her handiwork was discovered when a neighbour noticed blood seeping through from underneath the door.
To be fair, when you see blood seeping under a door, a madwoman spraying filthy graffiti around her ex-lover’s apartment with basic horticultural equipment is probably the best outcome you could wish for.
When she appeared at court on Tuesday, she admitted one charge of criminal damage.
Mr Nicholls said his client had described the incident as “cathartic” and had since “moved on”.
I wonder what the pig is thinking?
District judge Susan Green sentenced Purbrick to 120 hours community service and imposed a restraining order, describing the slogans in the home as “highly abusive” and “quite appalling”.
Yes. I can see that being sanguigraphically accused of being a Sith Lord would be troubling for anyone. And that Lady Spud thing suggests that his new lover might be a bit… lumpy.
But still… a chequebook?
Really?
I’ve finally got started on editing some holiday photos.
Well, I say that. What I’ve actually done is to upload some of them (the first 8GB) to my laptop.
It’s something.
So I have randomly selected this one – taken in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris – to illustrate the fact that I’m all over this photo stuff like a particularly aggressive moss.
Looking at the first lot of pictures, there are an awful lot of of images taken inside churches. But then, there were an awful lot of amazing churches. And you don’t have to be religious to appreciate the architecture and beauty of these places of worship.
Because of its location and size, Notre Dame is obviously well known and much visited, but we found equally breathtaking churches (if not quite to the same scale) in much smaller places like Auxerre, Clamecy and Châtel-Censoir. More of those later, but it’s worth noting that in many places, they would be huge tourist draws in their own right, yet they sit quietly and humbly with no signage, no pre-recorded audio guides, no nothing.
And I found that the experience of visiting them was better for that.