– my Kids and their Addictions –

“To be concerned is so much more constructive than to be worried.”

“Every time we make a real decision,
we find out who we really are, because we make use of our own priorities and values.”

“The problem is not that there are problems.
The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.”

“Kindness is more important than wisdom,
and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.”

“Anxiety and depression are tolerable if we don’t get anxious and depressed about being anxious and depressed.”

“Sometimes we must make a serious effort to be frivolous.”

“To understand children, we must have some memory of how we felt as children.”

These quotes by Theodore Isaac Rubin psychiatrist and author

~~oo0oo~~

Jessie is smoking tik and woonga. That was a shock. I’m sticking with her and supporting her, trying not to lose contact with her. Reading up a lot. I decided to talk, not keep quiet. The first five people I told, four came up with immediate solutions and advice. The fifth listened, empathised, offered an ear and said, “Good Luck, It’s A Long Haul.” He’s a medical specialist doc living with a drug addict child. His and his son’s addiction journey started around forty years ago.

I remind myself: Jess is addicted to tik, woonga AND very addicted to her boyfriend – completely under his sway; Jess takes herself to him – he does not drag her there – although she sometimes says he keeps her there, sometimes when she SAYS she wants to come home; sometimes, though, she admits she decided not to come home despite telling me she was coming; Nothing is clear, though. The truth is a serious casualty of addiction – there is a lot of lying, a lot of blaming, a lot of confusion and uncertainty; and there’s wishful thinking and hallucinations! And there’s love. Lots of love too.

Both Jess and her bf, and others who live with them, suffer from paranoia and hallucinations visual and aural, so when they see and hear things it’s not at all clear if they saw it in real life or in hallucination – most of what each of them say they’ve heard is aimed ‘against them,’ so paranoia would explain that; Jess is aware that nasty things said against her are possibly real, possibly imagined. And again, the lying . . .

Then I also remind myself that Jess has a wonderful time with him and his family when all is well; Mom, Aunt, Uncle, brothers, a loving sister. They sing and dance and laugh and get drunk and get high and have a wonderful time and she loves them and is loved by them; Especially the ladies there – Sihle’s sister, Mother and Aunt – treat her very well; So the lows are horrible, but the highs beat the boredom she feels at home.

And I remind myself of that socially acceptable substance right on top of this list. The acceptable one. The one I grew up with.

And I remind myself of the criminal disgrace of the failed, yet ongoing “War on Drugs.” And of how the only places who have reduced drug use and drug crimes are countries that have ended the lie of a “war on drugs” and significantly decriminalised drug use, instead helping drug users with their lives. Who see drug use as a disease, to be treated by healthcare workers, not as a ‘bad choice’ to be stamped out by policemen who are not trained in anything other than arrests and throwing users in jail. They are not equipped to do the very difficult task of talking to users who are high. They’re incentivised to make arrests, so they ‘raid’ and arrest. In the process, all thoughts of a police service go out the window. Instead of assisting their citizens, as they swore to do when they qualified as police officers, the system – and the industry that fuels the system – sets them against them.

An example of unintended consequences and misguided laws: Codeine is freely available in South Africa, you can buy it almost anywhere. We have a fairly low annual prevalence rate of opiate use at 0.3%. In the United States where all opiates are strictly regulated, the prevalence rate is almost double, at 0.57%.

Tolerate drug use!? Legalise all drugs!? What MANIACS would do that!? Well, let’s pretend we’re lawmakers. And let’s be honest with ourselves and decide which of the drugs we would make illegal if we were making the decisions. Of course, we’re honest people and we want what’s best for our people, right?

To make it easy, let’s say you can only make ONE drug illegal. Which one on the HARMS CAUSED BY DRUGS list below would you choose? Start at the top and count down and choose the one you would ban (even though banning never works). You’d ban the top one, right? The one that causes most harm?

Food for thought, right? Remember how the strict prohibition of alcohol went? It hugely strengthened the mafia. Now they’ve lost their alcohol income. But they’ve replaced it with illegal drugs.

So let’s decriminalize drugs, regulate their use and safety and put healthcare workers in charge. Read up on Portugal’s experience when they decided the ‘War on Drugs’ was not only a failure, it made things worse!

Is Portugal’s Drug Decriminalization a Failure or Success? The Answer Isn’t So Simple

https://substanceabusepolicy.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13011-021-00394-7

https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2024/0712/portugal-drug-decriminalization-harm-reduction

~~oo0oo~~

Thoughts:

“God save us from the people who want to do what’s best for us.”

“There’s a certain class of people who will do you in and then remain completely mystified by the depth of your pain.”

~~oo0oo~~

As for addicts – they have their own challenges – and thoughts:

“You can’t save us from ourselves because those who make a perpetual muddle of our lives don’t appreciate your interfering with the drama we’ve created.
We often want your poor-sweet-baby sympathy, but we don’t necessarily want to change. Or anyway not right now.”

“Sometimes I wonder what the difference is between being cautious and being dead.”

“Insecure people have a special sensitivity for anything that finally confirms their own low opinion of themselves.”

These quotes paraphrased from private investigator Kinsey Millhone, female protagonist in author Sue Grafton‘s novels.

~~oo0oo~~

We’ll get there, guys.

~~~oo0oo~~~

another depiction / comparison

~~~oo0oo~~~

I strive for kindness AND wisdom, so on 6 July I passed my course on Addiction and Recovery, so now I’m an expert! Can a complete cure be far off!? Stanford University’s Psychiatric Dept had a six week online course and I just got my results. Learnt a lot and very gratified that expert opinion and the evidence points AWAY from the destructive ‘War On Drugs’ and harsh law enforcement.

TREATING the disease of addiction is the way forward, working with the addicts – each one an individual.

My course lecturer from Stanford

~~oo0oo~~

Update Nov 2024: Jess has been rehabilitating herself since May 2023. Her longest spell on her medical treatment is the last 14 months, in which she has been with me throughout. Well done Jessie Pops!

What’s In A Name?

Jessica arrived as Jessica Gambushe, her name give to her by her Tummy Mummy Tembi Gambushe. Tommy arrived as Tommy Ngobese, his name given to him by the local magistrate.

When their adoption papers came through – wonderful papers with “legally they are asof uit u gebore” written on them in black and white! – we started to arrange new birth certificates, passports, etc at home affairs. We loved their names, and kept them, naturally; We also decided to keep their surnames as middle names, so Jess became Jessica Gambushe Swanepoel and Tommy became Tommy Ngobese Swanepoel. But Tommy’s had a twist. Much as we loved his first name, Aitch suggested we name him Thomas and then he could decide to be Thomas, Tom or Tommy in time to come. He has loved that. He was Thomas at school and formal occasions, he prefers Tommy at home.

They were both too young to argue, so although we consulted them formally, they just looked at us with a Can I Have Some More Cooldrink? look on their faces.

Years later, a different story. They had now been subjected to pale schools and their middle names had undergone scrutiny by pale people. Why is my middle name Gambushe / Ngobese? Change it if you don’t like it, I’d say, I still say. Go to home affairs, fill in a form and get it changed, don’t moan.

Back when Aitch was around I’d have to ignore a slight eyebrow arching in the background as madam overheard this. She had heard that story for many years when she would moan about her name Patricia! I’m Trish, NOT Patricia! she would insist. And I would say . . you guessed it: Go to home affairs, fill in a form and get it changed, don’t moan. Lead balloons have soared higher.

~~~oo0oo~~~

asof uit u gebore – as though born of you

Me, Tommy & Bella

Half a century earlier another name question had arisen

COVID Hits Home

Last year on the 18th March, one week before Cyril could tell us to Go Home, Stay Home, I dived under my duvet and stayed there. I’ve been here ever since.

On 1st June Raksha said Let’s open up again, and I said ‘No! Keep your head down!’ On 8th June she opened up, can’t wait on a wimp. I said ‘No-one will come. Who’ll be foolish enough to roam the streets, never mind go have their eyes tested!?’ We’ll see, she said. Let’s go!

Prenisha was with her. Let’s go! said Prenisha. They hired locum optometrists and got going. We won’t make breakeven turnover, thought the hidden wimp, all panicky. They did – every single month! They paid the rent, paid their own salaries, paid our locums’ salaries, paid expenses. And – bless them – they even paid me a part-salary! Me, the undeserving fugitive. – – Wait! Were they paying me to stay away?

And so it has gone. Thirteen months later, joined now by Yandiswa (also saying Let’s go!), they’re still doing a wonderful job, I’m still under my duvet. But now one of them has tested positive and we have closed, as everyone takes time to isolate and recover for the one, and avoid contagion for the others.

One day at a time. We’ll test and monitor and open again when we can.

What STARS!!

~~~oo0oo~~~

And then: Two days after we closed for COVID isolation our centre got ransacked in the looting inspired by the greed brigade who got used to robbing us blind under Zuma and used his eventual deserved jailing as an excuse to incite the poor to loot. A shameful attempt at an insurrection, people way past their sell-by dates hoping to topple our government so they could get back to looting the budgets of each govt department.

So our practice closed again. Eleven weeks later, having re-built it and re-equipped it and re-stocked it, we begin again on 11 October 2021. We’re in a wrecked-looking centre, with many shops still boarded up (many will never re-open).

My ever-optimistic ladies Raksha, Prenisha and Yandiswa – now vaccinated – are back too, saying Let’s go!

Fingers crossed we can rise from the ashes again.

~~~oo0oo~~~

Today Fifty Years Ago

Sheila kept a diary in high school. It’s amazing reading such detailed notes of long-forgotten happenings. Last time it was a trip up Mt aux Sources. This time it’s a winter trip to the warm sub-tropical south coast of KwaZuluNatal by a family of Vrystaters.

Pennington, Monday 5 July: – Walked to the beach alone. Stayed for a while. Walked home (± 1 mile – the distance from our beach cottage to the beach). Left for Hibberdene with the whole family. Elsie & Richard Scott were there. Barbara went with them. Went on to Port Shepstone. Went to see Upsie Sorenson, a friend of Dad’s. Walked around a bit in town. Spoke to Lilly du Plessis. Went to Margate. Spoke to Philly and the whole Mikkers family. Swam in the sea with Philly. Went to Port Shepstone to the Sorensons. Chatted to Upsie and his daughter Ingrid. Had tea. Stopped at Park Rynie went to Scottburgh. Bought stuff. Came back to Umdoni Park/Pennington. Went to the café. Went to Uncle Joe Geyser’s sister’s house near our cottage. Met Danie & Pearly (Geyser) du Toit and Pieter Geyser. Went home, had supper with Mom, Dad and Koos. Bathed. Went for a drive. Came back. Barbara & Richard were here. He left. Chatted to Barbara.

Tuesday 6 July: – Had breakfast with the family. Walked to the beach with Mom & Barbara. Swam in the rock pool. Went to the café. Walked to the Caravan Park. Spoke to the Macgregors. Met Glenda & Joan Brand. Went to the beach with them. Spoke to Denise Brand, Glynis and Brian Fisher. Went for a walk alone. Sat on the beach alone. Walked to the café. There were six guys there on three motorbikes. They had met Barbara. They said they are having coffee at our place. They gave me a lift home on the buzz bike. Had lunch with the family. Then the guys, Mike, George, Charles, Terry, Dogs and Kevin arrived. Sat and chatted. Went down to the beach with them. Nine of us on three bikes. I was with Terry & George. Went to the café. They brought us home. Stood and chatted outside. Went to the Happy Wanderers Caravan Park at Kelso with the family. Sat at the boys tent. Had supper in the café. Chatted to them all in the café. Went to Park Rynie with Terry on the buzz bike, Barbara went with Mike. They brought us home. Chatted for a long time. They left. Mike brought Koos back.

Pic of us three taken in Harrismith around about then:

  • – all looking delighted to pose for the camera –

~~~oo0oo~~~

oops, posted this a bit late, but what’s a couple days after fifty years!?

vrystaters – citizens of the province of song and laughter – the Free State

A Decade – Ten Years Today

It has been a decathlon. It would have been useful to have you around. Still would be. Ten years without you, but very few days where we don’t think of you.

We had a good system going, you multitasking and me doing as I was told; After? Let’s just say a couple things did fall through the cracks. A couple more than would have.

~~oo0oo~~

Nailed at Last

What’s that at the birdbath? Luckily the camera is on the tripod nearby and I manage to get a few shots. Ah! An Ashy Flycatcher, the old Blue-Grey Flycatcher, Muscipapa caerulescens. Often seen before, but never in my garden.

As he leaves he calls, and I have my mystery bird that I’ve been hearing, ‘knew that I knew,’ but couldn’t identify. Nailed that call down.

That was yesterday. Today he flew round and round my garden to the tops of all the trees, calling continuously. A piercing call for such a little fella.

~~~oo0oo~~~

thanks xeno-canto.org for the call recording

Homemade Leather

I was telling you how to go about it if you wanted to go on an expedition here, (and also, sort-of, in a modern sense, here), but I may have forgotten to tell you how to make leather. Just in case I did forget, here’s the recipe.

First, slaughter your animal. I know, squeamish, are you? A lot of things you need to do when going on an expedition where there aren’t any shopping malls involve slaughtering an animal: Washing your clothes? slaughter an animal and get the gall bladder; Making soap? keep the fat from all the animals you slaughter; Need a boat? kill two buffalo bulls.

So now you must skin your animal, lay the skin flat and cover the fleshy side in salt or sand, to dry it out and delay decomposi­tion. In a few days the hide will become hard and tough. Now soak the hide in water: this cleans off dirt and softens it up again. Scour it to remove any remaining flesh, then soak it in urine to loosen the hair, which can then be scraped off. Mix poo and water into a slurry, and soak your skin in that: enzymes in the poop will cause it to ferment, softening it and making it more flexible. You can help this process by standing in your poop slurry and kneading the skin with your feet — sorta like crushing grapes.

You now have rawhide: hard when dry, supple when wet. Useful for binding: to attach a blade to a stick and make an ax, just wrap a strip of wet rawhide securely around both and let it dry. It contracts and fits very tightly indeed.

But we were making leather, so now you need to collect the bark or wood from trees high in tannin. Look for red- or brown-colored hardwoods. To extract tannins, shred your wood or bark and boil it in water for several hours. Stretch the animal skin out and immerse it in your tannic solutions of gradually increasing concentrations for a few weeks. During this process, the stretched-out skins trade their moisture for tannins, altering the hide’s protein structure to make it more flexible, more resistant to rotting, and water resistant.

And that’s it: In just a few short weeks, you have produced leather! Now you can make yourself some shoes, harnesses, boats, water bottles, whips, and protective armor.

And they’ll last! Have a look at this leather shoe from Armenia. Made in 3500 BCE – that’s 5521 years ago and still looking swish.

~~oo0oo~~

from How to Invent Everything by Ryan North – Riverhead Books 2018

Birdbath Flurry

The birdbaths have been quiet. Maybe the winter rain we’ve had? Yesterday was different, we had a little flurry. I heard the tirrilink of firefinches and there they were, at the dripping tap birdbath. They usually hide from me.

– African Firefinch and Spectacled Weaver –

A Dark-capped Bulbul, A Dusky Fycatcher and Cape White-Eyes joined them.

~~~oo0oo~~~

Special Little Ducks

On honeymoon in America in 1988 we saw lots of ducks! America has so much water; In the Everglades, Yosemite, the Puget Sound, Wyoming and Cape Cod we went looking for water – rivers, creeks, lakes and ponds, islands and sea inlets – and saw plenty of waterbirds, including thirty species of swans, geese and ducks. Being from Africa, the specials I was really looking out for were the swans – we saw Trumpeter and Mute – and the eider ducks – we saw the Common Eider.

But there was another special duck we really wanted to see! As huge fans of the Pygmy Goose in Africa, we noticed it had a rival: The Harlequin Duck. What fabulous little birds:

– African Pygmy Goose Nettapus auritus & Harlequin Duck Histrionicus histrionicus –

I was reminded of this by a great post on DailyKos, where I learnt (a lot) more about the Harlequin Duck:

“I remain in awe of this plucky little duck and its amazing life history. I think of Harlequins as “feathered salmon” — making these epic lateral migrations from the ocean to inland freshwater streams to breed, similar to the upstream migration of salmon to freshwater spawning habitats. After pair-bonding at the coast, the male Harlequin follows the female inland to her natal stream, just as adult salmon home to the stream of their birth. Along whitewater streams within old-growth forests, the female selects a well-concealed nest site in a tree cavity, on a stump, or on a small cliff. Once she lays her clutch of 5-6 eggs, the male departs for molting grounds on the coast, leaving the female to incubate and raise the brood alone. In late summer, the female and her brood migrate together to the coast to ride out the storms of winter. What a life!”

We saw our Harlequin Ducks off beautiful Orcas Island while lurking naked in a hot tub overlooking an inlet to the Puget Sound.

~~~oo0oo~~~

Pygmy Goose pics by By Derek Keats on wikipedia and Harlequin Duck pics by giddy thing on DailyKos and By Peter Massas on wikipedia – Thank You!

We Will Conserve Only . . .

“In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught” – Baba Dioum

Of course, that’s only if we don’t Kill What We Love. We’re very good at that, too.

The places I always think of that we killed cos we loved them are on the KZN north coast. Farmers would go to the beach with their tents for their fishing holidays, camping under the trees in the dense coastal forest. Then they built cottages, then their friends built cottages; then they built roads then the roads got tarred (about then we visited in 1963); then came flats, then high-rise flats and concrete paving and the rock pools had to be enlarged and deepened with concrete walls. Next thing you have a city right on the beach. There’s water, then a strip of sand and then concrete. No more dunes, no more forest.

Wonderful blogger The Bushsnob got me thinking of this when telling of his trips to the Masai Mara in the 1980’s. Lots of people love the Mara, so much so that he reckons we now have 118 lodges and camps and lodgings around the game reserve! That means MANY vehicles on the roads!

Soon we’ll need a parking lot.

‘You don’t know what you’ve got till its gone . . . ‘

Here’s what Joni Mitchell means by a ‘tree museum’ – we concrete the world, then leave tiny, ever-smaller islands of (sort-of) what used to be. This is a botanic garden she knew in Hawaii:

~~~oo0oo~~~~

Baba Dioum – Senegalese forestry engineer, joint winner of the Africa Food Prize.

Wanton Slaughter

Tobias Gumede got a call from his kids at his umuze out on the Makathini Flats north of Jozini: Three of his prize cattle have been slaughtered. Chopped with a bush knife, he says.

His wife Thulisiwe will be devastated. She runs the home very carefully based on her herd, always reluctant to sell an animal for cash, doing so only when really necessary.

He estimates the loss at over R10 000 per animal, as they were large ones. Thulisiwe will probably try and mitigate the loss by selling some of the meat and freezing some. Thank goodness for electricity and a fridge.

~~~oo0oo~~~

Blood on the Floor

The ole man has another tale to tell in the dramatic saga that is LIFE when approaching your centenary:

‘I looked down in the shower and my red facecloth was lying there. I thought Who The Heck put it there? Its usually in the bath, not the shower.’

‘Then I looked again and it was bigger than my facecloth and growing in size. It was blood. The shower floor was covered in blood. I immediately knew what it was.’ (He always immediately knows what things are, what caused them, and if you wait half a breath he’ll tell you the cure for it as well).

‘It was my diverticulitis again. You bleed out your bum from little pouches in your colon rupturing. I had an op, you know, years ago, but now it was back.‘

‘I called the office and two ladies came to help. I told them the cause and they lay me down and inspected my exhaust pipe. While the one was gazing intently up there, the other one said Hey, Look! There’s a big cut on his ankle!’

‘Turns out there was a sharp splinter on the corroded part of the shower aluminium door at ankle height and I had cut my ankle without even noticing it.‘

‘They bandaged me up and all’s well. AND as a bonus, I now know my bum’s fine.‘

Poor ladies need a medal, dark glasses and probly therapy.

~~~oo0oo~~~

Sweet

The Old Goat’s usual crap when he phones: ‘What’s for supper?’ Sweet potato, I say. Blah blah, something about the price, always the price. The price here, the price in America, the price.

Ouma used to bake them in the oven with lotsa sugar and some butter, he recalls. I can remember the taste as if it was yesterday.

Wasn’t yesterday. That was a helluva long time ago.

ca.1927

~~~oo0oo~~~

Magistrates Court

Welcome to the real world! Walking towards the entrance of the Durban Magistrates Courts, the first convo I overhear is, "Ons sukkel om n prokureur te kry vir Pa, hulle se almal, 'domestic violence?' en dan weier hulle." !!
Once inside I wander around, lost. A tall masked man all dressed in black sees me and asks Need Help? I say 'First Timer.' He says, Well, see if you can get legal aid, otherwise, here's my number. My fees are low for first appearances. Lovely friendly guy, name of Neville. Sounds very English! I tease. Neville Ngcobo, he says in a private school accent. I say my friend inside is N Ngcobo too! Ms N Ngcobo. I'll have to give you an even better deal! he now teases. 

A scrawny lil guy with an older guy is nearing the end of his tether. 'If he say-s that one more time I'm going to swear him!' he threatens in that unmistakable Durban-Delhi accent. Older guy with him tells him Calm Down.
'Go and wait outside, security will call you in by the name of the person on the list,' says the man at the info desk on the first floor. I go out onto the lawn. Lovely day. Sunny with a nice breeze, which I keep so its always blowing away from me. As the sun strengthens I seek shade for my bald head.

At 10.42 I go in and ask security wassup. 'No, we're still waiting for the list,' says the man  

At 11.24am there's a stirring. Everyone crowds towards the door. Names are called and people move in, going to support their people. Quite a few names are called with no reaction. No-one to help those poor blighters. Then Ziggy's name is called. I go in. 'YOU for Nonsikilelo Ngcobo!?' the lady with the list asks pointedly. I nod, walk in.
Now I'm in court D, waiting. The court official ladies are talking: 
We got a 'theft.' Hey, we got a 'driving under the influence.' Eish, when last!? We seldom get those. All we get is DRUGS.
Some poor young fella is up before the beak. He's entirely on his own. No one to support him. He is asked what language he prefers. English, he says. Magistrate looks up and peers at him over his specs: Own lawyer, represent yourself, or legal aid? asks the robe. I'd like legal aid please, says the young man. The magistrate intones, 'No bail is granted. You are remanded in custody till your next court date on 21st June.'  He tries to be brave but his shoulders slump slightly. 
I ask the policewoman in court if I just need to wait and get a bit of attitude, but at least she confirms Ziggy is here. Tells me, 'Wait outside, I'll call you.' Damn, I wanted to watch and listen!
At last there's Ziggy! She sees me with huge relief, so tears roll down onto her mask. She's been in police custody for three nights, barefoot and no cellphone. I signal relax relax and bump my heart "Don't worry girl, stay strong!" When no-one can see she whips her mask down and mouths "I'm so so sorry!" with more tears!
A legal gentleman (legal aid defendant?) asks, Who's here for Ms Ngcobo? I say I am, sir, and he comes over very polite and asks who am I? How'm I related?  Family friend? Where's her Mom? I give my details and her Mom's and he asks, after checking if I can confirm her Mom's address is real: How's R500 for bail? I say that's fine thank you. 

He tells the judge: First offender, no record, no job, no child, has a place to go to, has someone who'll pay. Will his lordship accept R500 bail? Prosecutor agrees. Magistrate says his ritual and agrees.  Tells her to show up on 24 June early am, tells her what happens if she doesn't: warrant for her arrest and forfeit bail. Then he grants bail. Relief. Zig tries to disguise her tears.
They keep her while I am taken downstairs to go and pay bail. Then back up two flights. There's Zig still. Hand over receipt and clerk says wait, you need to keep this to get it refunded.
And we're outa there. Ziggy barefoot since Friday. Hungry. I give her the packet with all the goodies n toiletries, toothpaste, tissues etc I'd packed for her Friday, Saturday, Sunday and today. Finally I can give it to her (no parcels allowed, no visitors allowed, nothing, both police stations said, even though the 'your rights' pamphlet they gave Ziggy clearly says she had the right to have certain visitors). 
She uses a kilometer of toilet tissue first, then cooldrink. Thank you SO much, Geezer!

We have a long barefoot walk to my car. She asks do you have a spare mask, Geezer? Oh thank you so much! Mine is full of prison! She's been wearing it for 72hrs straight, slept with it on in the crowded holding cells.
Then home. She has three weeks to ponder.

~~~oo0oo~~~

The day before, Sunday, my lawyer had torn himself away from visiting friends in Ballito and joined me at Durban Central police station. They wouldn’t let him see Ziggy as he didn’t have his special Lawyer ID card, but they did take a note to her asking if she had a family lawyer, so at least she knew for the first time someone outside was aware she was inside.

Monday after the hearing I sms’d him: Got R500 bail, case set for 24 June. Thanks for your help! Tuesday I wrote his ladies, Your Boss was a star on a white horse on a SUNDAY, please send a bill. They wrote back a formal lawyer’s letter on a pdf, ‘Thank your for the gesture, we will not charge you for the work done on Sunday.’ So I sms’d him, ‘Does that motley crew you hang out with* know that you’re actually a gentleman?’ His reply: ‘Probably not. I don’t want that to get out and ruin my reputation.’

~~~oo0oo~~~

Ons sukkel om n prokureur te kry vir Pa, hulle se almal, ‘domestic violence?’ en dan weier hulle – Battling to get a lawyer for Dad; When they hear ‘domestic violence’ they don’t want to get involved.

* He hangs out with a bunch of geezers who swim from pier to pier in the early mornings. With the sharks and – IN SPEEDOS! At their age!

~~~oo0oo~~~

Took me sixty six years to learn what to do in a magistrate’s court. I spose some okes can do it with one hand tied behind their back. Maybe even both hands . . .

Gated Community

When we bought this home over fifteen years ago I reluctantly said to my estate agent wife Aitch, OK, we’ll do it, but then we live in it as is, no spending anything on it for five years, OK? I was making like I was in charge, knew what I was doing and, as the Head of the Household I was Laying Down The Law.

Right.

‘Of course, Koosie,’ said Aitch, patting me on the top of my bald head soothingly. ‘After we’ve sorted out the security we won’t spend anything on our home for five years.’ One of the things I liked about the place was it was unfenced and there were no burglar guards on any windows or doors. It looked great. Wide open spaces overlooking the 100ha Palmiet nature reserve. So after Aitch had a new high fence installed with two automated gates, an automated garage door, trellidoors on all the doors and guards on all the windows she said, ‘There you go. No more expenditure.’

And she was as good as her word. As the five year deadline dawned she made plans to ‘sort out’ the rest. Big plans. Dammit then she died on the very day the builders arrived to start the huge changes. Right now she’s wagging her finger at me from up high on her cloud for the lovely open-plan kitchen she never got to use (which, BTW Aitch, is WAY bigger and more-er than I need!). The best-laid plans . . .

Due to no supervision the new wide sliding doors have no trellidoors – cos I think trellidoors are ugly; and due to normal neglect and lack of maintenance the gates and the garage door stopped working in time. I know – or I’ve heard – some people are organised enough to put moth balls in their gate motors every month or so, to keep the ants out, but not everyone has that technical skill set. So we reverted to manual operation and to often leaving the gate or gates open for convenience. The garage door too, reverted to manual up and down. It’s a bit like Eskom: What did we do before candles were invented? We had electricity.

Now we’re automated again, and even have cameras nogal! New gate motors, a new garage door motor and new security gates on doors. An insurance assessment laid out what I needed to do to not be paying for insurance only to have a claim refused. Oh, well, it was fun while it lasted. By turning over a new leaf tree forest I’m sure I will be so much better on routine maintenance from now on. Already my neighbours who charge their cellphones here and draw water at our tap have asked, ‘And now, Pete?’

They do approve, though. They’ve ‘always said, Pete you should . . . ‘ – You know how it goes.

~~~oo0oo~~~

Screw Hymn

Mom Mary Methodist tells me she played all the hymns she can remember on the piano in the dining room before breakfast this morning. It’s Sunday, see. She plays ‘for the oldies’ (she’s ninety two, some of the oldies are in their seventies already). ‘They liked them so much I played them all again.’

And she tells me one of the ladies found a screw about an inch and a half long yesterday, and walked round asking everyone, ‘Who’s got a screw loose?’ ‘She’s quite a wag,’ says Ma. ‘When she got to me I murmured to her, ‘Just about all of us, I think.’

Some of the inmates crowd around the piano when she plays. ‘Shame,’ she says, ‘When the meal arrives and I stop playing, some of them have to be shown where their tables are. They’re quite lost.’

~~~oo0oo~~~