Cars, funny people, blackouts and RATS

Thurs 31st

Wow, what an awful start to the day! The dogs barked on and off all night and as there had been a recent email sent around warning us of a gang raiding garages, cutting fences etc it meant I was up and down to let them in and out !

Woken up by the alarm and the clock said 5.30 – lots of time! So we pottered around until I glanced at the kitchen clock 6.25 – the alarm clock battery had decided to fade and so the clock was not reliable! We flew into the car and raced off – and I mean raced off. We passed a car going in the opposite direction with its lights flashing, “hmm, must be police around the corner” got to where we pick up Chad – no car to be seen so off I went zooming around the corner – until Sam said – Chads in the car behind us and they are flashing their lights! Stopped – and woe and behold, smoke came out of the bonnet….oh NO! We peered under the bonnet – nothing was hot and the temperature guage seemed normal but there was a horrible burning smelll… I wanted to CRY! Anyway, couldn’t waste time looking at the engine so we all piled back in and off we went – thankfully no more smoke! Chad said – you must have been going 200 kms per hour – we were going at 170 and couldn’t catch you! (I only went 140, honest!)
I was determined to go to buy a new clock radio but with our current power situation maybe the battery system is best.

Subaru came to collect and then checked it out (cleaned it again… maybe I should make this a weekly occurrence) so all fine on the car front - for the moment! More bad news at work, 3 people off sick and work flooding in… never mind, these days happen. But worst was to come.

At the beginning of the year we had decided to automate our press clipping function – easier said than done. We had over 400 clients and over 1500 subjects. Now we know what we mean when we say we want articles on the SA economy but you have to explain it to a computer – requires a thesaurus and lots of structuring. Then we had the problem that the server they were using was not big enough as they had underestimated the volume of usage – so that needed to be swapped. That then meant that the emails to the clients all bounced as the email administrators had not opened the system to that server… and now I find out that approximately 100 emails are still bouncing due to the addresses being wrong…. Phew. On top of that, one of the people who actually does receive what they are meant to complained about the format…. Coronary getting closer!

And so the day went on. The best thing was that I went to have tea in Sandton City to see my friend Jenny from the UK who was here for a couple of days. She looked great and it was wonderful to see her again. We spoke far too much about me rather than her and she kept reminding me of stories… i.e. the belly dancing outfit debacle, taking Michael around Russia and I can’t remember what else but they will all feature in this blog at sometime or another!


Isn’t it funny how some people crop up again and again? Today in the newspaper in the “Your SMS feedback” column I had a giggle. It read “Mrs X comments are pathetic and she should not hold the position of MP because she’s incapable”. Now Mrs X did a course at the WBS when I worked there – dressed always in a khaki skirt and pith helmet. She was dreadful – one of those people we always had to hunt down. But she got very clever. She would come in, go behind the journal shelves, replace the journal and then come to the desk to complain that of course she had
returned whatever it was and then march to the shelves to produce it – very indignantly at being so badly treated by us incompetents! Then there was a book that we never got back. When I heard that she was campaigning in Houghton I actually thought of marching up and down outside the voters hall with a placard “Don’t vote for Mrs X – she steals books”!

So…now she is an MP and obviously just as immoral and useless as most of the others.

Friday night – a lightening storm followed by a blackout so an typing by torchlight. Not sure if this blackout is due to the storm or ESKOM load shedding. We were well prepared as I bought ba paraffin lamp every time I went to our local shop (advantage of living in a rural area our shops have very basic stuff!) However, the hardware shop has sold out of wicks and bits of material cut up don’t quite do the trick (makes me feel very self sufficient to be tearing up my own wicks! = very “boer maak a plan’ish”) So decided to come and write about it while Johan and M have gone to get takeaways (theres a bright side to every blackout = no cooking!) but where oh where is my laptop – the minute I leave it it is whicked away by the blasted teenager who wants to either watch dvds in his room or use up all my internet time downloading stupid Mangas – at least Sam limits herself to mixit on her cell phone – M is an internet menace in the amount id downkoads, so console myself with a very little whisky and type with a little torch on either side of the keyboard – now I wish I’d learnt to touch type instead of peeping underneath the apron covering the keyboards of the Remington typewriters at school. The other night, the power went before it was dar so we had no lights on and spent hours with candles etc …
Until Sam switched on a light – goodness knows how long the power had been back on! Frogs in full song so going to sit on the stoep, just thinking, isn’t it weird how even though you know you are in a blackout your arm automatically reaches out to switch on the light = which means that you find yourself in a blaze of light as soon as the power does come back on.

The first night we moved into this house there was a power failure. The furniture truck had been and gone and the place was full of packing cases and boxes. Johan drove back to our old house in Lyndhurst to check everything and the kids and I were sorting things out. Then, pow, no electricity. Not a candle, match or torch anywhere that we knew of. The house was in quite bad shape then – holes in the ceilings, rats in the roof and cupboards, so we stood in the dark and then we heard it….. gnaw, gnaw, ganw, scamper, scamper scamper – RATS and close by! I was petrified, I hate rats… phoned Johan and screamed get back here quick – with candles! What a welcome! At least now (with 4 cats and some very good ratting dogs) its only the stables that have the odd intruder!