– life – bokdrols of wisdom –
Sundry garden fauna and flora! Not having pets helps – especially with the mongoose, I’m sure.
~~~oo0oo~~~
Neighbours bordering the Palmiet Nature reserve (we have a road between us and the reserve) have also seen seeing some amazing sightings during lockdown:
~~~oo0oo~~~
So I’m at home in self isolation. It’s like I’m underwater in a diving suit, ‘cept this suit is full of holes. The holes being my kids and their friends and their gregarious, roving ways.
Yes, Dad, they say earnestly after getting my full explanation of what gives, having gazed deep into my eyes, nodding every five seconds.
Hey, where you going?
Out to see the girls!
*** sigh ***
Who’s in the kitchen?!
Me and my mate José.
Have you fellas washed your hands?
Um . . er . ja, we’re washing them now . . of course . . !
Slowly I’ll hope to improve the actual isolation effectiveness . . I’ll probably need to apply a lot of alcohol . .
Meantime, I’m luvin’ it!!
~~~oo0oo~~~
Recording and reminiscing; with occasional bokdrols of wisdom, one hopes.
Random, un-chronological events and memories after meeting Trish, marriage, children and sundry other catastrophes.
NO PERMISSION GIVEN to Artificial ‘Intelligence’ wannabes or LLMs to steal content. Don’t steal other people’s stuff, didn’t your mother teach you that!? Shame on you!
My pre-marriage blog is vrystaatconfessions.com. Bachelorhood! Beer! River trips! Beer!
bokdrols – like pearls, but more organic. Handle with care
~~oo0oo~~
Note: I go back to my posts to add / amend as I remember things and as people mention things, so the posts evolve. I know (and respect) that some bloggers don’t change once they’ve posted, or add a clear note when they do. That’s good, but as this is a personal blog with the aim of one day editing them all into a hazy memoir, this way works for me.
We were talking bathrooms and cupboards and renovation projects. My friends are carpenters, like that Galilean ou, so they were vying for the gold medal.
There was Steve jesus in Brisbane:
and Brauer jesus in Tshwane:
If I was to enter the fray, I needed to lay down some groundrules to stand a chance in this fiercely competitive minefield that looked vrot with danger.
So:
I tip-toed in:
Subject: Architectural and Conceptual brilliance – The Solution
When critiquing my design, please be fair and take time and motion and cost implications into account. And remember low environmental impact and low resource-consumption should be heavily weighted. I will admit to one advantage over you poor souls: blissful bachelorhood.
I give you: My Bathroom Cupboard:
True, it’s actually in my bedroom, but wait! This neat innovation leaves the mountain bike undisturbed, and the bathroom cupboard ‘nook’ still with endless potential:
Great interest was shown by the judges . .
Terry Brauer:
mmm . . – perhaps you . . (a) need to go shopping – a little sparse on the blue shirt thing; (b) there may be a light problem here unless you are saving on blinds to keep out the glare; (c) Yip, no potential female species will fall for this design I fear !
~~oo0oo~~
I had to defend myself . .
Me: I don’t understand! I have a blue shirt for Monday, a blue shirt for Tuesday, blue shirts for Wed, Thurs and Fri; and a darker blue shirt for Saturdays. What “shopping”?
~~oo0oo~~
Brauer: Amazing how one misses the wood for the trees, but I was in awe of your metrosexual side that had put up new blue curtains for the retro dressing room (although I was suspicious that it was a ploy to dodge having to do some manly woodwork) . .
~~oo0oo~~
Steve Reed: I think for modesty sake you could consider hanging the shirts at a lower level to cover your nether regions and minimise offending the neighbours and the kids’ friends but otherwise … brilliant.
~~oo0oo~~
Terry B: Very insightful Steve (she obviously means the part where he said ‘brilliant’ . . )
~~oo0oo~~
Brauer: Insightful or unsightly?? (a biased judge obviously ignoring that ‘brilliant’ comment)
~~oo0oo~~
Me: Insightful. Even Mrs Suboohi Choudry next door would agree.
She can’t see into my bedroom at all, even though her driveway is only 2m from it. I mean it’s a JUNGLE out there. Her driveway is also 2m lower. She would need a machete and a stepladder, and she doesn’t have a ladder, she borrowed mine to paint their house.
~~oo0oo~~
I think all this intense interest and back-and-forth means I won the Design Contest, handily trouncing the Galilean carpenters.
~~oo0oo~~
UPDATE: many months later
Announcement: Leaps and bounds.
The home decor front is proceeding apace.
I hope you two carpenters can keep up.
My window is once more filled with trogons and pittas and louries. Quite shirtless.
Built-in cupboards have sprung up in the bathroom. Assembled with me own lily-whites. The mountain bike has been moved to the TV room.
The ooh-ing and aah-ing queue forms from the left . .
~~oo0oo~~
vrot – not fraught; rotten
“How long have you two been carpenters?” – “We’ve only just begun.”
(thanks, MOnOtOneOfBill on Mastodon)
It’s drizzling and the driveway looks sparkling and green-ish – needs weeding one day – on the brick from my kitchen window, so I took a picture which doesn’t look as good as it does. The camera – or the cameraman – hasn’t captured the mood . .
Yesterday the meadow popped some tiny little flowers when the sun popped out:
Your pinky nail would cover them.
In the drizzle the squeakers (Arthroleptis wahlbergi) are squeaking and the robin is prrrp prupp (Red-capped Robin-chat).
~~~oo0oo~~~
(Note: This was 2019, we have since done more renovation)
A new tenant just moved in, so some more renovations have been done. I thought now that we’re taking photos and tidying up I better prepare for when I’ll be letting the flat myself, without a letting agent. Here’s my sales pitch:
Lovely old-time building featured on the Durban Art Deco Society’s website.
Well-maintained by an active and involved body corporate; Corner apartment; Big rooms; High ceilings; Gleaming wooden floors; Fitted kitchen.
Two big bedrooms, one air-conditioned; both with ceiling fans; Bathroom with big wheelchair-accessible shower; Separate toilet; Huge built-in cupboards; Large lounge with open-adjacent enclosed porch looking onto a private garden with two beautiful big old tree aloes;
Tenants have all been long term and have loved staying here.
Automated gate access to off-street secure parking bay; Automated gated main entrance for pedestrians too; On-street lockup garage; Lockup storeroom in courtyard; Secluded garden big enough for a picnic or braai under two beautiful old tree aloes.
~~oo0oo~~
One wall in the new kitchen in River Drive ca.1999 had to be cobalt blue. I dunno why; mine is not to reason why. Aitch said it must be cobalt blue and so of course it was. Some of the other colours she and Nanich painted the house were also to dye for. See below. Lucky I’m a mild-mannered diplomat.
So when the post-Aitch renovations happened ca.2012 in Elston Place, there had to be some blue. I made the scullery and laundry doors blue. I looked for cobalt blue, but this was the closest I found.
~~~~oo0oo~~~~
~~~oo0oo~~~
Mom Mary has constipation. Don’t tell everyone, but its just a fact and its not funny. I even put a bomb up and nothing happened. You know, Granny Bland used to get constipation and now here I am getting it. A mere seventy years later you can be struck with a family ailment out of the blue.
Rose is the matron at the home and she loves Mary. I told Rose I had constipation. This morning she came to me and said “Have you been to the toilet yet?” I said no, and she said “You know, Mary, you’re full of shit.”
Stefanus wrote about a new thing. I paraphrased his rant:
What a bloody stupid idea. The ‘Key Fob’ or ‘Keyless Start’ or ‘Keyless Go’ or ‘Proximity Key’. I have always thought it was a stupid idea but I wasn’t sure why. Tonight I found out why.
Our friend John gets home with his wife after several stops, including our place for a while. Cannot find his ‘fob’; realises the car might have started because his wife had the other fob in her handbag. Panics.
After much driving around and searching in various places, including our place, it ‘turns up’ under his drivers seat where he insists he had searched several times. But ‘it had gone into a crevice.’
Steve expostulates: It’s a lousy idea! You could leave your key fob behind and drive 300 km without knowing you don’t have it, because the car opens and starts with the proximity of the duplicate ‘fob’ in your wife’s handbag. Frikkin stupid, really. Although in hindsight he could have narrowed the search by checking to see if the car would start without his wife’s keys being nearby . . .
Once again showing that technology just does what it’s programmed to do, while yoomins! They’re variable.
~~oo0oo~~
I wrote:
Aha! A technophobe!
I’m going to ask them to implant mine in a crevice so I can never lose it.
And I won’t let them fob me off.
~~~~~ooo000ooo~~~~~
Steve:
Technophobe – yes. Ask my older brother.
Ja, but how will you avoid forgetting the rest of your keys – the ones that are attached to the – er – transponder? Having your own practice I am pretty sure you have a bunch of keys like a prison guard anyway.
~~~~~ooo000ooo~~~~~
Me:
Me? Keys? Nope.
I am lucky enough to have an “Open Sesame” lifestyle. The practice is always open when I get there at a leisurely hour, and my home is always open. Overrun with bloody kids who all know the 1299# that opens the gate from outside. Me and security are strangers.
Thank goodness for Raksha and the keys at work and Cecelia and the no keys at home.
Sadly, I do have to carry the one single key for the 2007 Ford 4X2 3litre diesel double cab bakkie. White. I lost the canopy key so now it doesn’t lock. Help yourself to my toolbox back there. At times I do spend some time looking for the damn thing on the odd occasions when I put it in a clever place instead of the usual on the kitchen counter. For some reason my Ford key says ‘Mazda.’
~~~~~ooo000ooo~~~~~
Steve:
I should have realised I was speaking to the wrong person. We tend to lock stuff by and large. Someone came and had an overnight scratch around Wendy’s unlocked car a while ago. Front door gets locked at night or if we are not around. We regularly get wide-eyed warnings from the neighbours about dodgy people seen snooping around the street.
Office keys: I am the first to arrive by a half an hour (OCD) so key needed.
~~~~~ooo000ooo~~~~~
Me:
I am weird that way. Partly slackness, partly – slackness. Been very lucky and fully aware that could change.
1984 – Marriott road flat – nothing. No incidents.
1989 – 7 River Drive Westville – pre-kids. Zanele said she saw an umfaan in our room and she said ‘Hey! Wenzani?’ and he scuttled off through the burglar bars, which were big enough for him to get through.
Years later Aitch found her Zeiss binocs were missing. ‘Stolen!’ she announced. I thought no, ‘Misplaced.’ She thought ‘Poephol, stolen!’ Two years later we found them in the socks drawer.
Then post-kids I got hijacked and taken off in a friend’s car. That wasn’t good.
2003 – 10 Windsor Avenue Westville – Break and enter while we were out and Aitch’s binocs WERE taken. Also her wedding ring. She replaced only the binocs with a shiny newer model – insurance. I still have the new ones.
2005 – 10 Elston Place Westville – nothing.
The reason I have a keypad at the gate where friends just enter the last four digits of their cell number and Open Sesame is I hate closed gates. I once – ca1982 – waited on the pavement in Argyle road outside the palatial home of one of Barks’ friends, ringing the doorbell in vain. Party inside, so they couldn’t hear. Pre-cellphone days. Eventually went home and resolved never to live in a fuckin prison. Still don’t.
Weird? OK.
Confession: I do insist the kids practice common sense security and keep doors locked if they’re alone at home and when they leave the home unattended!
~~~~~ooo000ooo~~~~~
umfaan – youngster
Hey! Wenzani? – Oy! Whatchadoin’?
Poephol – husband
~~~~~ooo000ooo~~~~~
Talking of phobias, isn’t this a lovely one?
The Fear Of Giants: fee-fi-phobia
I think my favourite Aitch Art piece hanging on our walls was the Pear Tree ceramic. I broke it.
Oh well, we’re going to buy . .
One box of wine
Two packs of beer
Three sticks of glue
Seven . . . . dancing . . . . girls
and hold a –
Party-y in a Pear Tree
And we’ll fix it – yep. Louis is going to be the GluMeister, I’ll keep it lubricated, and Petrea will bring a semblance of order.
~~oo0oo~~
Update: A preliminary Cocktails and Curry evening has been held in which a Mak Martini was drank; also a cream vodka with mint sprig; and a medicinal flu jab consisting of one part gin one part vodka one part vermouth and freshly squoze lemon and orange, garnished with a slice of lemon and topped up with Little Miss Muffet’s whey orange juice from Tropika. Oh yes, and some practice glueing was done by the Glumeister.
Who also made the curry, fresh from New Delhi, the gurugram district. It was delicious, spicy, tasty, filling, warming on a chilly evening. Jess supplied dessert: Baked cheesecake, dark chocolate, double-thick cream; All washed down with strong filter coffee in zebra hide cups.
Update: Eventually I took it to the HIllcrest mushroom farm where a kind lady put humpty together again and charged me way too little for her time.
Jess picked the flowers, Tom did the braai. We had chops, ribs and wors with garlic bread, plus some fried beans and mushrooms. I had beer and vino. We raised a glass to Mom!
Woken this morning by the ringing call of an African Fish Eagle in the Palmiet Valley. Well, a Palmiet Right Bank Undershrub Minnow Eagle really, giving a beautiful rendition of the fish eagle cry from under a bush just outside my window. Five forty four ay emm.
To claim ownership of the talented mimicry, this was followed by the Natal Robin’s signature descending preep-proop preep-proop, immediately followed by a medley of crowned eagle-fish eagle repeated three times, both calls done really well, just like the originals, but quiet and close. So you might say more a ‘Ground Eagle-Minnow Eagle’ piano diminuendo medley.
Here’s a robin recorded by Mick Jackson at Bazley doing the crowned eagle and more:
This was rudely interrupted by a squadron of nasal flautists – Westville Pterodactyls launching themselves off my roof and receding down into the valley. No piano here; this was forte crescendo. All except one with a fear of heights who was rooted to the roof apex going Ma! WHY!!?
A herd of gumbooted elephants then thumped onto the roof right above my head, leaping off the strelitzias and the Aussie camelfoots and gallumphing across as only vervets do, causing the pterodactyl straggler to lose its fear of heights and baleka.
Now all that was left was a different, ascending proop-preep proop-preep. The softer chirp of a bladder cricket or katydid in the shrubbery.
——-ooo000ooo——-
Natal Robin – Red-capped Robin-Chat
piano diminuendo – soft and getting softer
forte crescendo – loud and getting louder
Westville Pterodactyls – Hadeda Ibis
baleka – bugger off; fly away; fluck, as in ‘where’s that bird?’ ‘It flucked’
bladder cricket – bladder grasshopper really, but maybe a katydid?
The recording is from Xeno-Canto – sharing bird sounds from around the world.
Another twelve-year-old has gone west. Flaky the snaky that TomTom got when he was five has shuffled off this mortal coil. Expired. She was fine and ate her last supper – the usual whole rare mouse – with hungry focus a few days before. Then I saw her uncharacteristically out of her shelter and exposed. A day later I opened up, no movement, prodded her and thought damn! She’s gone!
Before he could get her five-year-old Tom had to do his homework, learn about care and feeding and commit to checking her daily and cleaning out her cage weekly. He did for years, but then interest faded, new interests blossomed and Dad took over the feeding and watering chores. Not cleaning, though. Cleaning remained TomTom’s job:
‘Flaky’ was a beautiful and gentle American Corn Snake, glowing orange and black above and checkerboard black and white below. As she grew from about 250mm to over 1.1m long we added an extension to her metal-and-glass terrarium – a home-made wood-and-mesh upstairs to treble the size.
I got my only snake bite ever when I inexplicably held my left hand closer to her than the mouse I was offering her in tongs in my right hand. I’d never done that before – for good reason! She got me on my left forefinger knuckle with her tiny sharp teeth and drew pinpricks of blood. I was too big for her to get a good grip on and constrict me and swallow me, so she immediately withdrew.
Twelve-year-old Sambucca the Labrador went this year, now twelve-year-old Flaky the Corn Snake. Is it coincidence that my twelve-year-old Ford Ranger is currently in bakkie hospital with something about the valves and the head and the gearbox needing transplant surgery!? Hope it’s not terminal!
~~~~~ooo000ooo~~~~~
postscript: R25k later the Ford is born again: reborn; rebored? Only the engine, the gearbox and the propshaft needed fixing and off she goes again. 278 000km now.
When we got to River Drive in 1989 we were warned it was a fertile zone and if you weren’t careful babies would start popping out all over. This was from the Lellos who had produced three offspring there; the Greenbergs, two; The Hockeys, a few, Donna was the only one around then; the Howard-and-Dofs, three boys; And there were others. We were blissfully child-free and at least half of us were determined to remain that way.
Then the Naudes arrived and produced two boys but we had stood firm, determinedly child-free ’til 1999. When we left that river in 2003 we only had two children, having managed to sell three others after fattening them up and putting a smile on their faces.
In Elston Place there was a swarm of children; The pool was always overflowing. They all soon learned the gate code and the place was like a railway station. And nothing has changed in the thirteen years we’ve been here. Here’s the latest crop with Jess – who turned eight the month we arrived here. She goes down the road to visit most evenings:
Three of these are kids of the older kids who used to swim in the pool when we first arrived!
Here are some of the early-days kids with a young Jessie leaning back:
Egg, bacon, toast, tomato, black coffee and binoculars. Thanks, Cecelia!
The flying ants were trying to pair up and scurry off and mate after shrugging off their wings. It’s a short life, they’ve been underground, this is their one shot at a shag! But everyone else also loves a flying ant, so their life is vrot with danger.
So the ants were nabbing them. The ants, in turn were being robbed by the birds and a skink. They’d grab the juicy termite, flick hard, separating the ant, then peck up and gobble down the termite. Termites taste like butter, ants taste like acid. That’s where antacid comes from.
Indoors there was also some wildlife to be seen:
Made me late for work!
More this week:
~~oo0oo~~
vrot – fraught; or rotten
Westville Kookaburra – Brown-hooded Kingfisher
Westville Pterodactyl – Hadeda Ibis; or Mike Lello’s ‘tenor clarinet – he who never pays attention to the conductor and plays with great volume and gusto’
When you’re trying with little success to rid your place of stuff and when the stuff fills a double garage and at least one room, with other rooms a bit crowded, you should not accumulate any more stuff, but I can explain.
There was a damsel in distress. I was on my horse. She asked ‘would you?’ What was a gallant knight errant to say? Or to do? There’s only one thing a knight can do in such circumstances:
Actually quite chuffed with my ill-gotten gains. Check those armrests as drinks platforms. These are practical, serviceable, lekker chairs. Comfy. Thanks Petrea!
I do suppose Louis knew Petrea was divesting them of assets while he was far away in Gurugram . . .
~~~oo0oo~~~
This acquisition is made worse as just the day before I was rolling my eyes at my Dad (96) who in one breath was stating his absolute determination – ‘this time’ – to get rid of stuff; and in the next breath was mulling over buying two new armchairs for the room he wants to add on to his house ‘for her (that’s Mom Mary) to sit in the sun as the room will have big windows.’
Right. Alone in a three bedroom house with Mom now in a home, he thinks what he needs is an extra room and two new chairs.
~~~oo0oo~~~
knight errant – a medieval knight who traveled around sponging and sometimes doing brave or dodgy things and helping people who were in trouble if they were of his class or ‘above’ – Cambridge, improved
knight – a man given a rank of honour by a British king or queen because of his special achievements, usually for said queen’s benefit. Entitled to be called “Sir / Meneer”
medieval – related to the Middle Ages (the period in European history from about 600 CE to 1500 CE)
special achievements – usually helping said king or queen purloin or keep ill-gotten gains
hie’ kom ek – here I come! Stand back!
~~~~
Footnote: Don’ wurry. When the last days of Elston arrived and when stoot came to shove, Louis whipped in and rescued ‘his’ furniture, including Louw’s huge recliner, and some other stuff besides.
stoot – shove
