Tag: blogging

Blog postponed

Posted on

I’ve messed up. Again.

I didn’t blog earlier and suddenly there’s a whole UEFA Europa Cup Final to watch and so I obviously can’t blog now.

Massively unprofessional, I know, but these things happen when there’s French revision (avec une cravate en soie japonaise, nogal) and piano practice to do.
Time simply slipped away and I really can’t miss my football fix.

I am already aware of another impending final (of even greater proportion) approaching (tautology?) on Saturday and will endeavour to take all reasonable precautions to ensure that a blog post is completed suitably early in the day to avoid another embarrassing faux pas like this.

Please accept my humble apologies and enjoy the game.

Let me explain…

Posted on

They say that there are always two sides to every story. Here are my two sides to this one.

Yes, there’s a post which I said I would do, and I will. I haven’t yet, agreed, but I will.
The fact is that some posts deserve more attention and effort than others. They need to be done right. That’s not to say that I will always get them right, but I will do my best. The post in question – I feel – is one of those ones. And I refuse to put it on the blog until I’m happy with it. Or in this case, until I’ve at least started it.

I don’t want to build it up so much that it’s a massive anti-climax when it arrives, but really, it’s coming. Really.

Today wasn’t the day for that, though. Today was the day for weird weather; for getting up at 5:30, taking one child somewhere, coming home, taking the other child somewhere else, taking some really crap photos of Table Mountain, coming home, buying antibiotics, coming home and then watching the Monaco Grand Prix with several (or more) bottles of Castle Milk Stout and then braai’ing some steaks to perfection.

And I’m completely unashamed to have taken that route. Although, to be honest, I’d have liked to have taken it a little bit later.

A well-deserved early night is just around the corner, and I can hardly wait.

More tomorrow.

Blog posts I almost forgot to write..

Posted on

This one.

I was tired. I stayed up for the girls to get back from Shed Eeran last night, and consequently got to bed ever so late.

But then we had a great family day, visiting the Spice Route (nice, but I don’t get the hype) and Fairview (goats, wine, cheese), before a quick trip to the Taal Monument (big, imposing) next door. But the copious amounts of ice cream, chocolate, grappa, and concrete – together with some horrible traffic on the way home – left me sleepy and my knee decidedly grumpy.

A quick walk around the block would sort that before blogging, but even then I was distracted by two old men fighting over a golf club on the school field. It was all a bit weird.

And so I almost forgot to write this.

Fortunately, as we all now know, that didn’t happen, and this blog post did happen.

Exciting day ahead tomorrow. But more about that… tomorrow.

Time travel

Posted on

There was a time when we first came down here to the Southern Tip, that there was no MTN signal and only GPRS internet on Vodacom. Things have moved on since those positively medieval times though, and now there is 3G internet and Vodacom (and still not MTN signal). One can, should one be sufficiently bothered, stream football matches in (almost) HD quality.

But not this week.

I’m no expert on how cellphone transmitters work, but I’d imagine that some have more capacity than others. And it stands to reason that if this is the case, then the ones with smaller capacities will be cheaper than the ones with the larger capacities. So why put in an expensive mast to serve the  sleepy villages of L’Agulhas (population: 548) and Suiderstrand (population: er… 44)? Rather save your cash and make your shareholders a little happier.

The trouble is that for a couple of weeks every year, the population of these places is temporarily swelled by several thousand Vaalies who also can like to use the cellphone network and wash their double cab bakkies with the precious local water twice a day.

Our little transmitter wasn’t built for this sort of thing.

And thus, while the MTN consumers in the village are wholly unaffected, because half zero is still zero, I’m completely unable to connect to the internet with any reasonable consistency or speed because everyone else wants to do it too. I started uploading this post three months ago.
Even trying to keep up with Sheffield United’s demolition of Blackburn Rovers yesterday was extremely difficult.

Blogging will continue though. No matter what it takes*.

 

* terms and conditions apply.

 

Suspirium

Posted on

I’ve loved listening to this wonderfully fragile, simple offering from Thom Yorke for the past few weeks, now. (Yes, it’s on this Spotify playlist.) So I was obviously delighted to find this live performance for 6Music on Youtube.

I know not all my readers enjoy my musical posts (although, reasonably, how could you not love this piece?), but I do have clear evidence that there are others who do enjoy a break from the endless words on here (including me), and thus they are here to stay.

Tomorrow’s post is about music, but isn’t actually music, which will probably suitably alienate both parties.