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Monsoon

It bucketed down Sunday from about 5am to 9. Then it carried on raining. The gutters overflowed in a curtain of waterfalls all around the house; The pool overflowed and the lawn turned into a lake. The sound on the patio roof and the scullery roof reminded me of rain on the tin roofs of my childhood. Lovely sound. We bunkered down and sat inside cosy and dry.

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Breakfast in Bed

I woke up this April Fool’s Day to a strange sight – Two baleful yellow eyes staring at me over a bright orange beard. I thought it was a hungover Irish leprechaun and tried to think where I’d been last night.

Turned out it was two fried eggs and a big helping of warm baked beans on a plate brought to me in bed by my ever-loving daughter Jessie for a birthday treat!

I’m sitting up drinking my tea plotting how to smuggle Sambucca the black Labrador in to polish off what’s left on the plate.

 

Scrambled Eggs

Me n Jess had a chill once Tom had left for school this morning. He left full of good cheer, a loud  “LOVE YOU DAD!” as he strolled off across the lawn.

Fellow Lift-Mom Katie was coming to fetch Jess – we share a lift, I do one week in three. As the gate bell rang I looked at Jess’ shirt. It’s Civvies Day and she’s wearing a tank top vest. It looks like she and Sambucca the labrador have eaten three breakfasts on it and she’s done an art project in it.

Please change your top my love.

No Dad, I have to wear white.

Well that’s hardly white, my love. CHANGE please.

Grumble mumble.

Otherwise they’ll think I’m a bad Dad. Why the f#! do I care about that? I don’t. That’s not why I’m getting her to change. Well, then it’s because I don’t want to give them the chance to think I’m not managing. Why the f#! do I care about that? I don’t. I don’t want them to criticise her or embarrass her. Is that it?

All of that was in my scrambled egg brain. When I looked again she had already changed into a purple top and was on her way down the driveway.

BYE DAD! LOVE YOU!!

Birdfest

Since the new year rains the garden in Westville, KZN has been bursting with noise and activity.
Overhead the fish eagle and crowned eagle, the goshawk and the YB kite; In the trees the trumpeter and crowned hornbills; In the garden toppies (black-capped bulbul), yellow-bellied bulbul, GT and cardinal woodpeckers, brown-hooded kingfisher and FT drongos dipping into the pool for a bath and after drowning insects. black and dusky flycatchers, the first paradise flycatcher, golden-rumped tinker, scaly-throated honeyguide, black-collared barbet, white-eared barbet, black-headed oriole, white-eyes, camaropteras, TF prinia, bar-throated & yellow-breasted apalis, black-bellied, redwinged and glossy starlings; Hadedas probe the lawn, hamerkops inspect the pool; Pied crows and gippo geese sit on the high office building above us. Black, Klaas’, Diederiks’ and piet-my-vrou cuckoos.
In the shrubbery the natal robin (red-capped robin-chat) calls and mimics and a trilling noise tells me there are firefinches or (hopefully) twinspots around – haven’t been able to spot them yet. Boubous and puffbacks lurk. Red-eyed doves, mousebirds, Indian ringneck parakeets screech as they whizz past overhead.
Amethyst, collared, white-bellied and olive sunbirds. Bronze and black-and-white (redbacked) mannikins and YF canaries love the seeds in the long grass, swaying on the thin stalks; Loud louries arrive and chase each other around before stopping for a drink; The woodhoopoes are also loud; Spectacled and spotted-backed weavers compete with the sunbirds (and the vervet monkeys!) for the nectar in the strelitzia flowers; Forest (dark-winged) weaver sings his lovely high-pitched squeaky song; The streaky-headed canary also sits and sings happily; At night (late, 3am) the wood owl calls pondo, pondo no-shilling and earlier the nightjar says good lord deliverr us as the francolin settle down noisily.

Gotta have jungle and scrub and hideaways for birds. And a dripping tap.

I Hate it when a Plan . .

. . comes together

So here we go: It’s January. A new year and a new school for Tom. High school.

High School (2); Tommy Swanepoel

He sure looks swish in his new tie and blazer and sleeveless jersey. He is so looking forward to this new school even though he hates the grade eight compulsory short pants! Long pants are from grade nine.

I bid him farewell and he sets off up the road. Years of doing the carpool lift to school have come to an end.

Eleven Years after Aitch decided we had to move out of River Drive, Tom walks to school.

Just as Aitch had planned. *
WBHS satellite (2)

300m as the crow flies, 500m on foot including a detour through the shopping centre!

~~~oo0oo~~~

* In 2003 Aitch said to me on the driveway at 7 River Drive, “We must sell up here and move.” I said, What? No, I’m going to die here. Right here in River Drive, on the left bank of the Mkombaan river.

“No you’re not,” she said, “We have to move.”

Why? I asked, already feeling myself conceding defeat to the resident estate agent. I knew she’d have a good reason.

“We’re out of the school catchment zone,” she said. Which school catchment zone? I asked, puzzled. “Westville Boys High,” she said. What’s that got to do with us? I asked, faintly. “I want Tom to go to WBHS,” said she who knows things.

But he’s only TWO! I said, sensing victory.

“I know,” she said, delivering the coup de grace. We moved.

~~~oo0oo~~~

An Electric Shock

Another bill shock when my July bill comes through at R80 000 instead of the usual R4 000. After much back-and-forth on email and on the phone with deaf and tone-deaf males I have to go in to Florence Mkhize building in old Smith Street now Anton Lembede Street. A car guard finds me a spot and takes charge of my bakkie.

At last someone who would listen. Reluctantly (“Can’t you just pay?”) but she listened as I told her the tale of when my bill had been inflated by R140 000 a couple years ago and it was their mistake; and how now that it had been bumped up to R80 000 from its usual R4 000 I needed to know where that came from; She showed me. eThekwini municipality had billed me for electricity for my flat but not for my home since June 2011. Then I said I need all penalties and interest reversed as ’twas not my fault; She did so. Then I said I don’t want to pay for anything older than 36 months old – statute of limitations; Hey, she didn’t know about that! But after disappearing for a while she came back to say Agreed! Lovely lady with a wicked sense of humour! Ms Pride Gumbi.

Off we go to sign the agreement. Ms Gumbi sticks her finger on the biometric door opener and hey sesame! “Hey, it knows you!” I said and she cackled out loud. It hadn’t known me when I tried my finger on arrival as there was no-one to open up – it said Unidentified. Try Again. Down the elevator and into the foyer and out into the street; all the way she’s greeting everyone by name and hugely friendly. She’s well-known and well-liked it seems.

Downstairs another fingerprint and out to the ground floor next door and I’m asked/instructed to Sit. Stay while she goes through another fingerprint door. This one doesn’t sesame, so she waddles back to the counters shouting Knock Knock! She greets a lady teller in her usual friendly familiar way and gets told “Just push. Its broken” and in she goes.

Eventually I sign for R71 000 in arrears, payable over 36 months. It’ll add R2025 to the monthly bill. I think of challenging the figures again, it looks a bit high but hey, I’m weary. Let’s just go home. I buy my car guard a Russian roll from a take-away to go with his tip. And I scarf one meself.

 

Oh Dear, What Can The Matter Be?

Two Teenagers Got Locked In The Lavatory

They Were There From Monday to Saturdee (well, Monday 8pm to 9pm anyway).

Jess and Jordie went to the bathroom together (don’t ask – teenagers) and that was it. With Aitch-like burglar guards the window was out of the question. I tried all sorts of levering and hammering and twisting and shoving and what-have-you but no go:

Had to phone the locksmith. Who came in and smashed out the innards of the lock by brute force and levered it open with a curly-shaped hook. Took him three minutes.

Everybody Knew They Were There (they hollered!).

~~~oo0oo~~~

Rain and Meals on Wings

At last some good rain. And the flying ants are out in force! Wings and scurrying bodies everywhere, clustered around our lights.

“We’ll have fat geckos and I hope the owls and nightjars have a feast, Tom! Even the monkeys will love it if they’re still around tomorrow”

Grumble grumble I don’t like them he mutters. Then Why don’t the monkeys come out at night? Are they too scared of leopards? he asks.

“I think so”, I say. “I think its bred into them that night-time is dangerous and it’s not their time to eat.”

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wings and bougainvilla ‘petals’ – this guy is lovin’ it

Bayete Mkhulu!

Tobias is a grandfather. Sphamandla has a little boy, healthy and ‘very big’.

I told him he’s a kehla now. “You can call me mkhulu” he said in the same unbelieving way I said “Now I’m a pensioner” this last birthday.

Eish! Where’s the emergency brake?

.

‘course my coming-of-age party was ruined in that I’ve been offered pensioners discount for the past twenty years already by sumbitches who obviously need spectacles.

– actually, mkhulu Tobias still looks much like this, taken some years ago –

~~~oo0oo~~~

Home Invasion

It’s holidays!! yay. They’re short. YAY!!

So I get this: “Dad – May 7 people pls sleep over?”

Home Invasion

So I put my foot down and Negotiated Tough. We settled on six total.

Then one arrived by bicycle and one’s Mom dropped him off. So I ended up only catering for eight meat-eating 13-and 14-yr-old noisy, farty, rugger bugger boys. Just as Tom had asked for in the beginning (no doubt having told them Yeah, No Problem! right from the start!).

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Poor Jess!

(Sunday I got rid of three of them and then I had five referees playing rugby in the pool. Loud shouts of “Played On!” “Offsides!” “Release!” “High Tackle!” “Use it!”)

~~~oo0oo~~~

Tobias’ Veggie Patch

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Tomatoes screened against vervet monkey raids. These powder-blues have been sending in the troops this winter as the drought bit hard. I put food out for them early mornings before they wake on the boundary so they discover it “by chance”.

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The hydroponic spinach under shade cloth – makes the most wonderful mfino for my phutu.

Out in the open – Share and share alike, I tell Tobias Gumede. He grins and shakes his head.