Tag: south africa

OMD in Cape Town – a great night out

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Did I miss the Zeitgeist on this one? It’s Sunday lunchtime, and the concert was Thursday night.
But I’ve been busy and tired and chilled, so this is late.
I get it.
Sorry, not sorry.

But still a concert and an evening absolutely worth documenting. Starting with a decent free parking spot a whole 100m from the gig: I’m really not sure where else you can do this. And sure, we were there only about an hour after the doors opened, but why not make use of the VIP bar, seated area, sunshine and early entertainment from SA’s own Werner Bekker?

Burger and chips and a visit to the merch store sorted, we grabbed some space on the grass and waited for éVoid, infamous for their 1984 hits Taximan and Shadows. And they played, and the crowd – seemingly exclusively 50 and 60-something year olds from Parow and Edgemead, and encouraged by a Bok Radio DJ – lapped it up. It was such a feelgood moment watching people transported back 40 years, back to whatever club in which they were dancing to that SA New Wave “Ethnotronica”. And they really were back there. Acting like they were teenagers, for as long as their knees would let them.

But wait… there’s more… OMD.
Andy McCluskey not looking any older than 12 years ago. Paul Humphries with only a passing resemblance to Jerry St. Clair from Phoenix Nights. They were just happy to be there, you could feel it from the first moment.

What followed was just under two hours of nostalgia, energy, audience engagement, incredible stage presence and just really good vibes. Starting with some new stuff, as expected, before Messages and Souvenir dragged us back to our youth.

A brave Kraftwerk-esque performance of Veruschka was a particular highlight for me, after which McCluskey thanked the audience for indulging them with “a slow, new one”.

The interplay between the crowd and McCluskey was just perfect: each feeding on the other’s energy and enthusiasm and just pure enjoyment of the moment.

A powerful, loud, brash – but still tight – version of Enola Gay rounded off the set before a stonking encore of Look At You Now, Pandora’s Box and Electricity sent everybody home happy, although I do suspect that everyone involved could happily have gone on for at least another hour.

All in all, just such a great evening. Band and audience both recognising their roles and duties on the night, and then performing them perfectly. One I will remember for a long time.

Videos courtesy of my daughter, who also had a great evening

Tired of…

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Tired of a few things at the moment.

The impending World War is a bit tiresome. I do hope that it’s not going to affect our football team weekend away towards the end of the month. That would really be adding insult to injury. Imagine society crashing down around us and you didn’t even get the chance to share a few beers with your mates at what looks like a really decent place in the Klein Karoo before it all kicked off.

Tired of the politics in this country. The iffy polices and the usual pre-election promises and lies. Yes, yes, I know that they’re the same thing. Tired of the polarised viewpoints and the unjustified ad hominem attacks on social media. Weary at the people who think that what’s happening on twitter bears any relation to the situation in the real world.

And, related: HOW HAVE WE SUDDENLY GOT SO MUCH ELECTRICITY? Sure, no loadshedding is great and all, but at what cost is this pre-election “normality” coming? Something unsustainable is happening.
More on that in a future post.
Maybe.

Tired of – and a bit bewildered at – this sort of stunt from local news site (the) Daily Maverick:

I recognise the need for journalism, and I recognise the need for a strong and independent media, but 1) Is that really what they are?, and 2) Is this action a bit OTT and a bit drama llama-y?

Mmm.

Tired of being just being tired. I went to bed ridiculously early yesterday evening, and I slept really well. I just could have done with another few hours. I’m sure you recognise the feeling.

Still did much better than this guy though:

Oh why have all the moonbats come back out of the woodwork recently? Was it the eclipse?
So damn exhausting. They’re suddenly everywhere again, including literally shedloads of Americans who think that Cape Town has been washed away by some massive weird tsunami thing that none of us actually in Cape Town, noticed.

And like that guy above whose name was blanked out on this screenshot, but who has clearly risen like Lazarus, if he’s repeatedly had no pulse for 5 minutes at a time.
If resurrection is a side effect of the covid vaccine, then I think we need to know.

There would be many, many implications.

I think I need to sleep on it…

Over South Africa

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You join me traversing South Africa. Bottom left to top right. I’m on a teeny tiny plane, and there’s “lots of weather all over South Africa”, according to the captain.

That’s not good, because we’re also very much all over South Africa.

It has been unpleasantly bouncy so far.

The inflight magazine contains the usual plethora of advertorials: guest houses and safari lodges dominate, but there was a beautiful juxtaposition of an industrial rock crushing equipment supplier across the page from a laser tooth whitening service.

To avoid disappointment (and possibly a lot of pain), please make sure you ring the correct number.

In the same magazine, there’s the usual puff piece about the airline you’re on, and how they’re better than the other airlines. They advertise some of those differences as being “more smiles”, which I’m fairly sure aren’t objectively quantifiable SI units, and the opportunity to “say goodbye to rigid itineraries”.

Really?

Is it just me that quite likes the idea of a rigid itinerary when booking travel tickets? I can’t imagine that it is. It’s literally one of the most important things that I’m after.

For example, I’m hopeful that my accommodation for this evening is fairly rigidly booked. It really wouldn’t be helpful for them to be flexible enough to be “just a day out”.

Could you maybe pop back tomorrow please, Sir?

We seem to have finally hit some clean air, over what I’m guessing is the southern Free State. This means that I can stop thinking about flight safety statistics and engineering tolerances as mind-over-matter means of combatting the mentally challenging effects of the turbulence.

Aaand it’s back already. That didn’t last long. Quite bad. Tumble drier on a rollercoaster stuff, if you remember that post about the Christchurch earthquake that I can’t link to right now because I’m 37,000 feet up in the air. (Updated once safely on the ground.)

Really bad now. Not nice. Gasps and exclamations from passengers. I’m being stoic. Who would be listening anyway?

We’re turning. The pilots have had enough. Not back to Cape Town, but presumably looking for a bit of a clearer way around the bumpy stuff. Thank you.

Ok. About an hour to go. Agricultural landscape giving way to mining and industry beneath me.

Time to relax with some chilled electronica (it’s M83 in case you were wondering), stop thinking about that other stuff. and plan those first few shots again.

Looks like if you’re reading this, we made it.

Or at least my phone did.

There goes the election…

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Many people had thought that the ANC might sink to below 50% of the vote in the upcoming national elections. And to be honest, given their performance over the last n years, that seemed like a very reasonable suggestion.

But that was before the ANC asked… er… the ANC to pray for… er… the ANC “to renew itself”.

I can’t comment on all of the other political parties in South Africa (because there really are an awful lot of them), but I certainly haven’t heard of any of the others asking themselves to pray for themselves.

Oops. Missed opportunity right there.

God isn’t going to be looking favourably at any party – no matter how honest they are or how good their policies might be – if their members haven’t been in touch with Him and prayed for self-renewal, now is He?

That’s just not how He works.

So I guess we might as well just hand the election – and what’s left of the country – to the ANC for another 5 years. After all, we’re not just fighting the last of the pre-1994 generation, but also the Lord Almighty too now.

Oh, and the “renewed” ANC, apparently.

Yeah right.

And so I find myself…

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…overlooking some local vineyards while waiting for my daughter and her friends to enjoy a last-day-of-the-school-holidays lunch. I’ve done a couple of jobs and a bit of shopping, and now I’m back where I dropped them off and I’m enjoying a sandwich while I wait and don’t cramp anyone’s style.

As regular readers will know, I’m well used to waiting in car parks while my kids do stuff, and this one really isn’t much of a chore, given the weather and the view.

At times like this, I’m reminded of a recent conversation about emigration. As a topic, it’s always lurking awkwardly somewhere in the background at parties and braais, ready to pop into the chat in any quiet moment. Honestly, I’d rather talk about other things. Probably with other people. People who want to talk about emigration are usually the ones who want to talk about other stuff I don’t.
I came for the beer and the meat and the happy times. An opportunity for some time off from real life.
Not to wallow in politics and economics and crime stats. (And remember: I’m not just talking about SA here.)

But there was no escape in this case. And this was the “we’re staying” version of the emigration chat.
And the line that has remained with me from the mountain walk that morning is:

If we were in the UK right now, what would the highlight of our weekend be? Probably visiting a garden centre.

I sometimes think that in justifying (or trying to justify?) these sorts of decisions, it’s easy to be biased towards whichever side you’ve chosen, sometimes by over exaggerating the positives of your choice, sometimes by denigrating the other option.

And I do definitely think that this is a bit of the latter.

But as I’ve said before (and fully recognising how lucky I am to be able to say this), for us, the lifestyle here far outweighs the problems of the place.

And without wanting to do the UK down, I can’t help but think that if I were there, I’d more likely be waiting in a shopping centre multi-storey car park and not overlooking the Constantia Valley and False Bay. (Well, obviously. But you know what I mean.) And it’s not like I don’t have the choice of a shopping centre multi-storey car park if that were my (or my daughter’s) scene.

But on a sunny, breezy Monday lunchtime under the oaks in Constantia, the biggest concerns are baboons and tourists. And why they didn’t bring a straw with her milkshake.

And this car park is really good.