Category Archives: Life

Head-butting and Healing

Tom and I butted heads today. I decided to take time out and disappear for a quiet hour in a nature reserve. Just as I was about to leave Tom snuck into the back seat and lay down. On the way and the whole time there he slept.

I wandered around, staying near the bakkie, birding and snapping pics.

~~~oo0oo~~~

– roosfontein nature reserve in westville –

When we got home two hours later, he woke up and gave me a huge hug.

“Sorry Dad”.

“OK, thanks, m’boy. Sorry Tom”.

All is well with the world.

~~~oo0oo~~~

top pic from Amblers hiking club – thanks!

Things are actually fairly easy . . .

. . . if you pull your finger out of your arse. But anal-digital extraction is not really a prominent forte of mine, me being more a procrastinator, thinker, cogitater, planner and delayer sort of person. Circumspect. Not that I’m saying that’s a bad thing, I’m sure it has saved me money at times; I just can’t think of any specific instance when it did.

So the white Ford Ranger pickup clocks 150 000km and is due for a service – full diesel and turbo service and check the nipples or whatever these okes do that know what they’re doing. At 152 000 and 154 000 I’m still serene and only at 156 000km do I start thinking Shit, you’re actually a slack SumBitch, y’know!?

At 158 000 I start making plans and at 160 000 I actually phone Mario and tell him I will be bringing the Ford Ranger bakkie in as soon as I can organise a lift. “Any time” he says in his Italian accent. And then he says “Those Ford Rangers are wonderful vehicles, they’re bullet-proof”, not realising he has just given me a subconscious reason to take my foot off the Urgency, Jeez you’re Slack pedal again. He is a qualified mechanic who apprenticed and specialised on Alfa Romeos back in the day so he knows about cars giving grief and he can diagnose from fifty paces. He knows you have to LURV your car and LISTEN to your car and FEEEL for your car. Right.

Invariably, after a service, he gives me a long and earnest lecture about neglect and how to treat a car. He has serviced my Ford Cortinas and VW Kombis for at least 25yrs and knows I am not what you would call Italian for “meticulous”. As they say: Devi prestare un’attenzione meticolosa alle istruzioni perché le dirò una volta sola. Prestava un’attenzione meticolosa al suo lavoro assicurandosi che fosse sempre perfetto.

So at 163 000km I gear up for REALLY doing something about this and then luckily lil sister Sheila phones: Would I like to join them, they’re going to Ngoye forest in Zululand with a bunch of birders all older than us this weekend and can we take my bakkie?

So I phone Mario and my dilemma about how do I get to work once I’ve dropped off the Ford is solved: Sheila takes me to work then fetches me at 1pm and takes me and Jessie to the dentist. We walk the 3km home.

Now I have to fetch the Ford. Jon is in Jo’burg or Barcelona; Bruce’s Mom just died, he’s organising funeral homes; I don’t want to ask Sheila for a third lift.

WAIT! Jessie’s scooter! There’s a plan. I’m unlicenced and don’t have a helmet but I don my cycling helmet and a jacket and I’m off. Wheee!

Yamaha scooter.jpg
Heather & Bruce on that scooter

Yussis I enjoyed it! It started to rain and those wheels are small but I zoomed off, 150cc’s whining. I diced – and beat – every car at all the lights. Twenty kilometres later I was there and asked Mario to help me load the Yamaha in the back of the Ranger. We huffed and puffed and we had to call his son Andreas to help, but we squeezed it in lying on its side with the handle bars hanging over the tailgate. I was about to clip Sambucca’s dog leash on the brakes to stop it from falling out when Mario said “The petrol is leaking out.” So we dragged it back out and abandoned it in his garage.

I have my bakkie back. The noise wasn’t a hole in the exhaust, the fan belts were shot; the seat belt light was just a loose wire to an airbag; the brake light was low brake fluid; I’d imagined the discs paper-thin, so I had stopped braking for the last few weeks; Two minutes after I got there Mario poured brake fluid into a reservoir and the light went off!

Nothing was as bad as I’d imagined. So he fixed everything and did the 150 000km service 13 000km late all for R2200. Things are actually fairly easy if you pull your finger out of your arse.

~~oo0oo~~

If you check the Italian words “attenzione meticolosa; volta sola; and perfetto” – you will find this translation: Wot I’m Not.

Spiders, Meadows and Dog Poo

While out on dog poo patrol in the early morning, I came across this spider web in my beautiful meadow (*click on the pic* to see how beautiful!).
 
10 Elston Meadow (1)
 
The meadow is coming on very nicely since the head executive gardener Tobias Gumede went on leave. A wonderful chap, he struggles with the concept of wu wei – or “Masterful Inactivity” . He feels he ought to be DOING something and I often have to sit him down and ‘splain how I want, very often, to just ‘let it be’.
 
He does understand (its been over ten years now, after all) but he likes to make sure. He got back this week and we set out a new, even more laid-back protocol for 2015.
 
Tobias just shakes his head.
 
10 Elston Meadow (4)
 
Here’s the admonition: If you’re tending your garden closely, and mowing your lawn edge-to-edge, if you only have one type of plant in your lawn (monoculture!) and if you (you don’t!?) use any pesticide, you are not – by any stretch of the imagination – planet-friendly.
 
Go on: Find an area of your garden you seldom visit (or create such a space) and let it run wild. Save time, save money AND the lil creatures will love ya. Wu Wei!!
 

~~~oo0oo~~~

Rita wrote: Maybe Tobias is actually back but you can’t find him!

Pierre wrote: Nothing wrong.You have to rest and rotate your pastures.

Me: Exactly. And when you do mow, mow around those tall little grass islands where missed dog poo has caused fertile growth. Masterful inactivity rules!

~~~oo0oo~~~

Four Birthdays

It’s the fourth time we have celebrated your birthday without you. And it’s not the same. It was chaos, of course. After two weeks of hum n haw, the kids decided we needed to go to Butcher Boys in town for big steaks. Then they decided on John Dorys nearby for fish n chips. Then Jess decided not to go.

In the end TomTom, Lungelo & I went to the nearby centre. They each had a R99 mixed platter, I had steak and we brought two calamari n chips home to Jess & her friend Tarryn.

When they’d finished the boys walked home and I finished a second glass of wine and paid. Just before I left a lady at a nearby table came over. She knew Tom from aftercare and was all complimentary. I thanked her for helping to get the lil bugger to pass!

We missed you.

Aitch & Judo Kids (1)

Bliss

I heard a cry on high as I parked on the roof at work. Glancing up I saw two crows cartwheeling, freewheeling, locking claws and spiralling like a propellor high above me. What a magnificent display of flying excellence!
Buzzing around above and below them was a drongo, divebombing and harrassing them, cheeky little blighter. They ignored him and carried on exuberantly showing off. Wow!
Isn’t that amazing!? I said to my 74yr old carguard Bridget as she shuffled up asking “And now?“.
I pointed out the birds.
“Yes,” she says off-handedly, “Those two parents are teaching the young one to fly”.

It’s bliss, it is.
She has taught me about marine mammals too, young Bridget, my Scottish carguard: https://bewilderbeast.org/2018/10/15/bottleneck-bliss/.

The evening sky from my rooftop parking spot

Tongue Piercing Avoided . . Wallet Pierced Instead.

So D-Day dawned today and I was trapped. She’s done all her homework, researched it, found a slash-for-cash artist, priced it, drawn her money and extracted a promise from me that I’d take her TODAY. How to get out of this? Jess, does your school even allow piercing? I ask.

Of course yes, Dad. Well, clever question that was.

Sudden inspiration! BRIBERY!

Jess, which would you rather have: A pierced tongue, or a notebook computer?

Ooh, that got her thinking.

A proper tablet, not a cheapie? Well, . . yes.

Hm. She lets me sweat. And can I still have my tongue pierced later? Well, yes, after school you’re on your own, kid.

A real tablet computer TODAY? Sure.

OK Dad, I’ll take the tablet, I won’t have my tongue pierced. I’ve decided and I’m sure about it.

Phew! I’m very relieved my girl, I really was worried and unhappy.

Then she drops her bombshell: I was having second thoughts myself, Dad!

Jess Tongue Tongue safe – for now

A Brief Wobble

Two days after Tommy’s “outbreak of ebola” had been curtailed, I rolled out of bed at 6am on my Thursday day-off work and plopped to the ground like a sack of potatoes. I lay there thinking, ‘I’m going to vomit,’ and started trying to crawl to the toilet, now thinking, ‘I’ve caught Tom’s virus.’ Then I thought ‘Hang on, why can’t I move?’

It dawned on me that something was seriously wrong. My ear was on the ground and my arms and legs wouldn’t move. Holy sheeyit! Was I having a stroke?

I knew this was not like being drunk, a condition I remembered vaguely from my student Doories Daze many moons ago when I was young, handsome and irresponsible. OK, and a few times since. Drunk, I would still be agile, witty and erudite. Why, once when I was drunk a guy spoke to me in isiZulu and I understood him perfectly.

I abandoned thoughts of reaching the toilet and reversed towards my bed to reach my cellphone. Crawling backwards was slightly better, but I still felt like a beached bluebottle. I got hold of my phone. And couldn’t dial! I tried five or six times and got the wrong list of numbers. My vision was crazy! Eventually I dialed my good mate Jonathan. “Leave a message,” he said heartlessly. So I dialed his far more reliable, more intelligent and much better-looking better-half Dizzi and got hold of her.

‘I think I’m having a stroke. I’m lying on the floor like an amoeba, unable to move. Can you come over?’ How’s that for an invitation to a saucy redhead?

Then I dialed the doctor. The wrong doctor. Also a message: Phone the doc on duty. Luckily that was my GP and canoeing mate Steve. I got through to him at home.

“NO YOU’RE NOT,” came his confident assertion after I’d said ‘Dammit Steve I’m sorry to phone you at home, but I think I’m having a stroke.” “You’ve got vertigo,” he announced after asking a few pertinent questions. “Lie dead still, don’t move your head left or right or up or down. Just lie still. I’ll come and see you later. People who have strokes don’t phone their doctors, their family phone the doctor. Soon you’ll be feeling like a fraud,” he says.

He was absolutely right, my canoeing doc Steve. So when Jon & Dizzi arrived they could laugh at me and repeat the doc’s admonitions of, “Sit! Stay!” and go home again, to think up ways to mock me. Later Steve (and sister Sheila) arrived, ran me over, handed me some medicine and repeated his, “Lie dead still for 48hrs,” message.

So I lay dead still for 12hrs then fell asleep and woke to find myself on my side a few times. Friday I lay mostly dead still but got very bored so I did a few Semont manoeuvres to get the otoliths out of the semicircular canals and vestibule into the urticle and that seemed to help a lot. Wikipedia. Which also explained the poor vision when trying to dial: Nystagmus.

Today Saturday, I’m as right as rain. Upstanding, level-headed and well-balanced. I can pirouette like Nijinsky.

~~oo0oo~~

supportive mate Brauer wrote:

Believed it all until the Nijinsky bit. Is there a differential diagnosis between vertigo, dementia and walter mitty?

~~oo0oo~~

Doctor Tommy Fever

I had a sick boy last night. Jess was away and it was just the two boys. I knew Tommy was sick when he only ate half his fried chicken.

“I’m shivering, Dad”, he said as he piled on a second duvet lying curled up in the armchair in front of the TV.

Let me feel you: You’re boiling, my man! Off with those duvets and all your clothes!

“But I’m cold Dad!”

Yes, you feel cold, but you’re hot as hades. I have to cool you down. I wet a cloth and sponged him down and gave him a dose of ponstan anti-fever muti. I had already given him an imodium after two runny tummy trips to the loo. Took him off to my bedroom and made him lie clad only in his underpants on the sheet and switched on the aircon.

“Dad,“ he says urgently, “I think I’ve got ebola, “ he says.

Uh huh? I ask. Why’s that?

“Well I read if you have a high temperature and a runny tummy and vomiting you’ve got ebola. Can ebola kill you Dad?”

Well, yes it can, but I don’t think you have ebola my boy.

“But I touched the mouse that Flaky (the snaky) threw up after I fed it to her,” he protests.

OK, we’ll monitor you fella, but remember bangbroek, you actually picked up the mouse with a plastic bag, so that shouldn’t be a problem.

“Will you take me to the doctor?”

Yes, if you’re still sick in the morning, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to cure this particular ebola.

“Mom would have taken my temperature, “ he says slyly, teasing me now that he’s feeling better.

You’re right, she would have. Silently, I wonder where her thermometer is.

“And she would have made me juice,” he grins, when I make him drink cold water.

Yeah, right! don’t push it! You might have tummy bugs and I’m not feeding them any sugar. I set the alarm for 1am to check if he needed more ponstan but when it rang I felt him and he was as cool as a cucumber.

“I’m fine Daddy. Thank you,” he mumbled and resumed his snoring.

Maybe he was practising for this outbreak four years ago, when he wore this apparently ebola-proof gear to a school dress-up day?

tom-surgeon

bangbroek – cautious fella

Hair Today

At last I get Jessie (kickin n screamin) to the hairdresser.
Her hair looks like she combed it with a firecracker (I should have taken a picture). She’s been washing it daily and tying it up in a bun. She’s not combing it all out daily.

I drop her off with Tom and buzz to work. They’ll walk back home via the shops.
“Just get a trim, don’t have it ‘straightened’ as you’ll be swimming all week – it’s not worth it” are my instructions.

So I get a whatsapp pic:

Jess Hair
And then a hurried phone call:
“Don’t worry Dad, I paid for Jess to have her hair straightened with my own pocket money” says her loving younger brother! Talking fast, pre-empting a bollocksing. “My own pocket money” means “an advance which I have yet to ask you for”.
Knows how to arse-creep, that one.

I had also given them the grocery money (Cecelia is away), which is now diminished thanks to the extra hair spend.

“Dad, I bought you a rump steak and choc mint Ola ice cream”. Both his favourites.
No veggies.

Mahogany and Peachy

Shortly: There are about 3 important genes coding for skin color and we get one of each of those three genes from each of our parents. Lets call the genes A, B, and C.

So every human has two A genes, two B genes and two C genes to make pigmentation in your skin.

So in their cells they will have AA, BB and CC.

Now, if one gene mutates and become less active, you can’t make as much pigment for your skin, and it will get lighter. Maybe it’s one of the A genes which is mutated and becomes an a.
Then your cells will have AaBBCC and you can give both an A and an a to your offspring.

Imagine this happens to the two other genes for skin color.

Suddenly we have 6 possible genes for skin color: A, a, B, b, C, and c. The higher case are good at making color while the lower case are not as good.

Now let humans interbreed and mix and match for generations. The genes for color can be inherited in all kinds of ways. and we’ll end up with these possible combinations:

Skin Colour Genes

You still inherit one of each gene from each parent, but depending on the combination of strong and weak color genes, your skin will have very different coloration.

Now, if you live in sunny places it’s more beneficial to have darker skin, as that protects you from the sun. If you live in dark places it’s beneficial to have lighter skin, as you can make more vitamin D.

So some in some areas one skin color becomes the norm, as people of that color are better adapted to the area.

But it’s still the same three genes and they have not moved or been lost or changed the species more than the amount of color placed in the skin cells.

Skin colour

————————-

Thanks, Pippi Maria Groving, M.Scient in Biomedicine on quora.com: I used your lovely article for this.

The Concept of Society

“Everyone is isolated from everyone else. The concept of society is like a cushion to protect us from the knowledge of that isolation. A fiction that serves as an anaesthetic.”
― Paul Bowles

Irks me to see what price is sometimes paid for ‘belonging’ to such a ‘society’.

Hours, days and weekends away from small girl children, money she can ill-afford for travel to ‘meetings’ and ‘services’ far away, clothes to prove you really are a true believer . . .

Day Off

I made a fat sarmie like they make you on a Wilderness Walk in Mfolosi: White bread, tomato and onion, all thick-sliced and buttered, lots of salt and black pepper. Took the binocs to the stoep and munched, washing it down with tea (ignoring the notion that Greenpeace has just tested a bunch of teas and found many have traces of pesticides).

– female black cuckoo shrike – internet pic –

There was movement at the birdbath (there always is). Great! A female Black Cuckooshrike! She’s beautiful!

Also a Redcapped Robin-Chat, a Dusky Flycatcher, two sunbirds, hadedas, toppies & white-eyes as always – and these Purple-crested Touracos.

Made me completely forget I was dodging my day-off chores.

~~~oo0oo~~~