My day off becomes an off day...

Having worked like titans this past week we get the programme to bed early and give ourselves a long weekend.

I am happy for the opportunity to pay a bit more attention to my blog and my Scrabble games ...

I switch on the radio and hear the news ... Frederick van Zyl-Slabbert has died. Now this guy was one of my heroes.

His role in breaking the political stalemate in the '80s and averting full-scale civil war in South Africa is much underestimated. He could always be counted upon to bring a measure of sanity to the most explosive situations.

He was one of those South Africans and Afrikaners who made me proud to be one ... a South African and an Afrikaner.

With this bit of sad news to get me going I find myself stuck in the starting blocks ... I turn to Scrabble for solace and to get my mind working ... a strategy that worked well when I was unemployed.

I play all my games and even get two 7-letter words but I get no ideas.

After pottering about in my cottage for a while I decide to come to Nuno's ... have a beer and read the newspapers for inspiration.

No luck.

As per usual they only serve to depress me ... "The face of the Rolex gang terror", says The Star

This gang apparently follow people who buy expensive watches and jewelery home and rob them. This one guy was caught on CCTV .... and he looks the part of a bad-ass gangster. I hope that now that his face is known he would be caught.

The Afrikaans daily Beeld tries to milk the last bit of emotional sop out of the Airbus crash in Libya ... "My dad's plane crashed" is their headline.

The rest is mostly crime, corruption and Julius Malema stories.

All depressing.

The ANC had the opportunity to get rid of that young Hitler in the making, Malema, and instead chose just to give him a slap on the wrist and demand that he apologises for his insanity.

Very depressing indeed.

No wonder newspaper sales are plummeting ... their regular readers must be committing suicide in droves.

That was how my day off became an off day. As you can see I still have nothing to say.