Welcome to South Africa

Occasionally, I use a service called UCOOK. they deliver recipes and ingredients, or they deliver ready made meals for you to reheat. It’s not cheap, but in the first instance above, it’s quite fun to make something different, and in the second, it can be very convenient.

I will be more likely to use UCOOK when they have a special offer on. Usually it’s some wine with your meal, but today’s offer was for some Stella Artois and some Stella Artois chalices.
Yes. Chalices. That’s what they’re called.

I was expecting delivery before 5pm, but then I got this SMS, which I could only ever have got in South Africa:

“Apologies for the inconvenience”? Never mind that, tell me if the damn driver is ok. I’m not even particularly bothered about my glasses chalices. I can’t believe that a UCOOK truck filled only with frozen craft pizzas and a few cans of Stella got hijacked.

I mean, it’s not exactly a high risk shipment, is it? It’s not cold, hard cash or expensive jewellery or illicit drugs. It’s pizza and beer. And not even a lot of pizza and beer. You could hijack a pizza van and a beer van and get loads more (albeit for twice the effort). And you’ve still got to cook the pizza and cool the beer – no mean feat given the fact that there’s zero electricity around at the moment.

It’s just a bizarre – and uniquely South African – thing to happen.

On a more serious note, I have emailed UCOOK to enquire as to the well-being of their driver, and to pass on our support and sympathy. I’ll drop some feedback here when I get it.