Blue Monday and Oros PART 3 .... Conclusion

On Tuesday it would seem that my blue Monday is over. We are all cheerfully awaiting Bafana's match against France, hoping against hope and reason that they can pull off a 3-0 victory that would see them through to the next round.

I'm scheduled to go and watch at Jan's place if work allows. Since we have the imperative of the match driving us, work allows and at 3:30 I call a taxi from Paddy's Sportsbar where the good citizens of Randburg are already out in their numbers. For a moment I regret that I'm going tto watch at a private house and miss out on the 'gees'.

But only until a drunk guy called Mike insists on blowing his vuvuzela loudly in my ear ... at regular intervals. I move to another table an watch the spectacle. Randburg dressed up in the yellow Bafana kit for the occassion and is in high spirits and ordering more of the same continuously....

At kick-off time I'm still waiting for my taxi but I consider to be a good thing. This way I can catch a bit of the 'gees' which is now very spirited indeed. I am also interested to see what Randburg will do during the singing of the national anthem. Although all the colours of the rainbow nation are represented, it is by far a 'white' congregation present in Paddy's.

Will they stand for the anthem?

Yes they will. They rise like one and what surprises me even more is that many of them even seem to know the seSotho part of our tri-lingual anthem and do not fake singing it like many whiteys, including myself, do. Nevertheless, looking around I can see that most of us are faking singing the seSotho part and when the Afrikaans part comes along I see many darkies faking that ... before we all find our common voice in the English conclusion.

All united and proudly South African thanks to the World Cup and I'm happy to be there and part of it.

Then my taxi arrives and I'm off to Jan's place listening to the game on the radio in some darkie language while the driver Johannes keeps me abreast of developments. When we score our first goal he nearly overturns the car, but when he regains control it is high-fives and elaborate handshakes in celebration.

After the game we are all in high spirits at Jan's, congratulating ourselves on Bafana's victory and agreeing that all turned out well with all things considered. We spend a pleasant evening with wine and a splendid spaghetti bolognaise that Jan made ... well done Jan ... before we all decamp at about 10pm, citing the fact that the work not done by leaving early on Tuesday, must be crammed into Wednesday.

On departure I steal a bottle of wine from Jan, but have the good manners to alert him to this fact and after he inspected the bottle to ascertain that it was not one of his 'special' ones he bids me good drinking and goodbye.

At home I open the bottle, pour myself a glass and sits down to write you a witty blog about the day ... when my niece's cat Schmiegel jumps through the window and knocks over the bottle. It shatters on my already dirty white tile floor. The floor is dirty because Zita has disappeared. I clean up and go to bed thinking that my blue Monday may in fact not be over.

Predictably Wednesday and Thursday go by in a blur of work but we finish the programme in good time on Thursday afternoon and I even get a bit of praise and is certain that my blue Monday is finally over and at last I have time to write.

All of this, but especially the broken bottle of wine, lead me to the reflect once again that shit happens by itself and that you have to work real hard for the good things in life. Also that if you don't deal with the shit in your life, it multiplies and in the same way, if you don't deal with the good stuff in your life it diminishes.

This is a common mistake that a lot of people make. They become so busy dealing with shit that they forget to deal with the good stuff in their lives, which means the good stuff diminishes and since nature does not tolerate a vacuum, the space created by the departing good stuff ... fills up with shit.

It is always good to remind oneself of this: Life is never how it should be or ought to be. You can count on that. But you can also count on the fact that life is always exactly how it is at any given point and if you just deal with how it is ... you'll be okay. Not as okay as you may feel that you deserve, but exactly as okay as you would be.

So remember to fight the shit and fight for the good stuff because they are on the same continuum.

My next blog will be about the damn cat Schmiegel ...

Blue Monday and Oros PART 2

I arrive at work with the welcoming sight of closed doors with signs that read: "ENERGY SAVING TIP: IF THE HEATER IS ON CLOSE YOUR OFFICE DOOR" And in smaller print: "Thanks for caring for the environment".

We are working for a environmental programme after all and being by now a kind of heat-seeking missile after a hell-ride in a real skoroskoro, complete with holes in the floor through which you could see the cold tar passing and what is worse the cold air coming in at high speed, I'm all for preserving heat in whatever form.

I politely knock on one door and find nobody home. But it is warm so I stand there for a while, while cunningly thinking about my next move ... which is to go and politely knock on the second door ... same story.

At Charles Moore's office I found them all huddled around what they called a 'production meeting' and I join in with the repeated assurance of how happy I am to be there. They are really huddled in a production meeting not just around the heater and have scant regard for my travails.

So having attended the production meeting I am eagerly at work in my office where the erudite Mister Zee has turned the aircon up to the maximum ... to my great delight.

In the meeting it was made clear to me that I should prioritise an interview that needed transcription ... so I open my inbox and see 'interview', open it and start beavering away ... for about three hours ... before I gently inquire about the spelling of a name mentioned in the interview ... I am told that I was not supposed to work on THAT interview because it has to be shot again.

I work on something else and catch a lift home with Charles who complains bitterly that the public broadcaster which is commissioning the show, the SABC, is still cash-strapped but they did find it in their budget to buy R3 million to spend on tickets for the World Cup.

Corruption is rife in that organisation and every new broom they bring in seems more keen than the previous to sweep ever larger amounts of taxpayer's money into their own pockets. The carpets are already too worn to sweep anything under.

I tell Charles to stop depressing me further and we part ways in silence as I get off at Nuno's and he heads home ... equally depressed.

There I meet Jan who is in possession of my spare credit card which I badly need since I lost my main card in the Lollipop Lounge last Thursday after a night of ... well let's put it politely ... excess.

(The Calvinistic part of me, that can suddenly make a forceful comeback after such an event, would have me believe all my other troubles stemmed from that night... I decline the invitation of believe.)

So happily re-united with some form of cashflow I drink a dram or two with Jan and friends only to walk home into further darkness in my area. I turn on my heel and head for Charles's house to watch our Monday night edition of the show ... only to see if some glaring error did not slip through.

I've been working on the show now for three months and have not seen much of it. I only watch the sub-titles.

Anyway Charles invites me to sleep there due to the energy crisis at my humble abode and I gladly accept. Another cold night and fighting with polar bears would have been too much for my frail frame of mind.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Winter solstice, blue Monday, Oros and beyond... PART 1

So it is winter solstice.

It is also Monday in Johannesburg so it is going to be blue ... the sky I mean and my lips and my fingers due to the unfortunate heating arrangements in my humble abode. So far so bad ... then it gets ... well worse ...

I stumble out of bed and rush to my R149 heater. The one that have reversed climate change when it was called upon to do so, but having done so, found that it was no match for the real deal: An old-school Joburg winter.

You must remember that my humble abode is at the bottom of some kind of valley and the well-known (at least to me) inversion effect is in full force here. The cold settles at the bottom of the valley and that point seems to be right below and around my bed with the lesser effects felt in the rest of said abode.

That is why I bravely rush to my heater in the morning, often having to fight off an amorous polar bear or two in the process. They always tell me the poles have heated up too much for their liking and find my said abode more suited to their suits.

But that is besides the point. When I get to my heater it refuses to give heat. This one may expect from a reluctant woman but not from a R149 heater. I am upset especially since it so admirably did my bidding when climate change needed to be reversed.

I curse it and the R149 I spent on it and turn to make myself a cup of tea but my much more effective and expensive kettle would not budge either. I am beginning to see the dawning of a bad blue day ... and once again I'm not mistaken.

There is indeed no electricity.

Now, I may or may not, have mentioned in my previous dispatches that I cannot really be considered fully operational before I had my first cup of tea. This is the proof.

I am freezing my arse off while morosely sipping on a glass of Oros ... a sort of synthetic drink that poor people use to keep kids happy at under-8 parties ... but it is not working for me. It only serves to remind me that my situation is poor.

No electricity means no escape from the Alcatraz in which we live ...I can't get out of my electric-gated yard.

It is only on my second glass of Oros that my brain, out of desperation no doubt, sends me an urgent message which I decode as follows: "Your damn sister has a gas stove!"

For me it is the work of a moment to realise: "TEA!"

Now things are coming together ... it would seem.

Armed with a cup of warm tea, I immediately search out a sunny spot from where I can eye the forbidding fort gate while smoking a cigarette and think. Yes the sun is shining outside.

Then I realise that this being South Africa where 'load-shedding', the euphemism for
'black-outs' (I suppose the latter could have a racist connotation) are not uncommon, it would be stupid to have an electric gate that you can't open manually.

Working from that premise I further surmise that if the manual option at my humble rented abode is padlocked there must probably be some battery-assisted emergency escape. And so there is.

Soon I'm walking gaily in the sunshine to catch a taxi.

On nearing the spot where I always catch them I am briefly heartened by the number of them passing and when one stops within hailing distance I forego it as a skoroskoro. A little mistake...

Although it is already 11am every single taxi that comes by after that is packed. So I stand at the roadside forlornly pointing my finger in the direction of Randburg ... for 20 minutes ... before I get a real skoroskoro ... what else I think and I take it.

TO BE CONTINUED...

It's too damn cold to blog...

Joburg can get very cold. This week saw temperatures plummet to -10 degrees celsius. If I was a romantic I would have linked that to Bafana's shattering defeat by Uruguay which briefly silenced the vuvuzelas.

Just for the record, the shocking decision by the referee to send off our goalkeeper only served to unite the nation .... everyone was in full, if somewhat morose, agreement that it was ... well ... a shocking decision.

But it is really to cold to blog so I'm heading back to my bed with the forlorn hope that it will warm up a bit later and the even more forlorn hope that Bafana will beat France 3-0 which they apparently have to do to stay in the competition.

It's the World Cup and I am getting adventurous....

Yes, the World Cup spirit has taken a firm hold on me and when Mark Morrison suggests that we go and have lunch in Newtown near the fan park I do not hesitate ... I'm in... but disappointment awaits...

Mark wants to take photographs for the Newtown project and I just want to soak in the 'gees' in a different area from Melville. But we are clearly too early. There's no game on ... no fans to photograph and no gees. So we sit down for lunch at a deserted Nikki's Oasis. I have a splendid burger and a beer.

We have a very able and friendly waitress whose name eludes me now, but I'm surprised that she does not know the darkie word for the Black Label beer brand namely 'zamalek'. Apparently this means 'something that does not give you a babelas' but I beg to differ.

I scold the waitress gently about her youthful ignorance and we stop about five passing darkies to do a survey in order for me to convince her of the veracity of my information and I am not disappointed ... they all agree that a Black Label is indeed a zamalek.

Mark is there on business and proves this by sending numerous SMSes while I enjoy Joburg's fantastic winter sunshine. But I do get bored and take a stroll through where people are setting up their fleamarket stalls where I buy myself ... a VUVUZELA in the colours of the South African flag of course ... but just think of it ... I buy myself a DAMN VUVUZELA. Good grief! What is happening to my mind ... I'm thinking.

So having done the deed I now have to blow on the damn thing. Not as easy as you may think ... I blow and I blow with getting a squeak out of the thing. I then take to just staring forlornly at it, wondering why I just spent R70 on something so utterly useless ... Mark mocks my inability ... and I am about to admit defeat when I notice the damn has got a small hole in it!

I go and exchange it and after a couple more tries I realise that one just has to relax the stomach muscles and VOILA! You too can produce the sound of a frustrated elephant bull with a priapism and an infection in his trunk.

I blew it so well that two different darkie photographers wanted to take photos of me and I let them. Then I got Mark to take a photo of us and then they wanted a photo of themselves with me on their own cameras and race relations in South Africa once again flourished. The revamped area around the world famous Market Theatre is really wort a visit.

Have the bacon end egg burger at Nikki's I can really recommend it at just R30. There is also Museum Africa to be investigated ... by you.

So that was my adventurous foray into Newtown and I regretted having to leave just as the first people began arriving. I had my French class to attend to. Okay it was not much of an adventure but I did leave Melville again for some other destination than Randburg and Jan's house in Parkwood.

Engaging with foreigners .... and I could once again not do a spellcheck

Having become used to the facility of engaging with strangers in Melville, I thought engaging with foreigners would be an easy task ... I should have known better.

They are as a rule mistrustful as to my intentions and it would seem that my natural sartorial elegance and suave manner make no difference.

They are in the 'most dangerous city in the world' and they ain't gonna trust nobody.

But I try. Here are the results:

First up the Americans.

I find one Justin sitting at 'my' table in 'my' restaurant (Nuno's) and I buy him a beer when I learn that he is a humanitarian worker in Afghanistan. Justin is sort of uninteresting as just a undercover CIA agent could hope to be. He is vaguely unspecific in all his responses to my questions.

Next up the Dutch.

Now this is quite problematic with the first bunch because my sister Emily's daschund bites their little girl when she wants to play with it. My engagement stops with profuse apologies.

Next Mexico.

The Mexicans are keen to engage but we have communictaion (sic) problems. One of them, Oswaldo speaks a good English and he wants to sell me a good tequila.

I have heard from a variety of reliable sources that the tequila on sale in SA is the worst kind imaginable ... and for the record I can state that if you really want to try the Level 6 on the Baboon Scale babelas ... mix the tequila on sale in SA with any other drink. You would hardly be able to breathe.

So tomorrow at 11:30am I'm going to have a tequila tasting with Oswaldo.

More Americans....

Two very pretty American women (not girls) in the company of two attractive Mexican guys. They are clearly couples but as soon as I use the word 'darkie' one of the American chicks gets miffed and they up and leave without understanding. They even leave behind several half-drunk glasses of South African red. Talk about wasteful consumption....!!

The Dutch again....

My next bunch of Dutch are more satisfactory.

They are filled with happiness. They are dressed in orange and are here to ENJOY. So I get the darkies to team up and sing ... I joined in but clearly I faked it ... Shosholoza.

Incidently I am still convinced it should be our national anthem... But I do not actually know what it means .... So I venture out to consult the nearest darkie ... but where I am most darkies are foreigners ... go figure. They are from Zimbabwe, Zambia or other countries that begin with a Z. Like Congo ... except it doesn't anymore.

So I have to hunt further down the street. I find Gunman ... he is called gunman because he actually packs a gun ... I've seen it. But he is also a Sotho and he tells me shosholoza means: "Move on/Keep on moving."

This I remember as correct from my seSotho endeavours at school. In case you do not know, the prefix indicates the language and as in: the Zulus speak isiZulu, the Xhosas isiXhosa and the Basothos seSotho.

I think I mentioned down the line that this is quite a complicated country. So let's move along SHOSHOLOZA.

So the Dutch speak Dutch to me and I speak Afrikaans to them and since the willingness to undestand each other is there. We love the understandability of each other. Great fun.

Then the Danish..

A group of nine flew in for one game. They got a special deal on the plane tickets, but despite frequent requests from my side they refused to engage... so fuck them ... I really cannot stand people who travel 10 000 miles to stick their heads up their own arses!

Then there is James. He is an American. But he lives here. He is also a darkie. He restores my faith in humankind. James is actually half Native American (Cherokee) and half Haitian.

He came here for the first time in 1999 and after 4 days in Joburg bought himself a house. It says it all.

And then I meet some Chinese from Ghana... I should have known. They wore Ghana T-shirts made in China. This is a sign that I should stop the damn blog for tonight.

Okay I promised the Danes a raw deal .... they support Germany's 4-0 massacre of Australia too loudly for my liking.

Mzanzi comes to the party ... and what a party it was ... IS.

I had my doubts about our ability to successfully organise an event of this magnitude but I need not have worried ... everything went more than well. It was cheerful and not even a shambles ... you had to be dead not to feel the 'gees'.

It was at the last minute, but Mzansi (South Africa's darkie nickname) came to the party with all the vigour of a diverse people who suddenly realises that they are capable of greatness and unity of spirit.

This morning I even left my laptop in the care of three strange young darkie guys while I went walkabout to think what I was going to write about.

While walking I suddenly realise that it is typical of us South Africans. We are always oscillating between hope and despair.

This thought brings me back to Amanda's beautiful painting called "Slave to Hope".

It is a very '70s painting in style and was done in that style deliberately. Amanda is a decor fundi and she went through a '70s phase' some eight years ago. So the painting is round ... about a metre in diameter and it hangs in the middle of my room.

On the 'hope' side she depicts herself sitting cross-legged on the edge of a magic carpet.

She's wearing a '70s reddish/pinkish flowery dress and is high up in the sky and blowing bubbles into the clouds.

It is really beautiful and I hang the painting so that I see that side the most. That means it is hanging facing me where I sit and use my laptop ... if I have a signal at home which is not often.
Otherwise I just sit and stare into space and at Amanda's painting.

Facing my bed is the 'despair' side ... so I wake up to that. Here Amanda plays Ophelia ... she is drowning in a inky blue sea and almost slipping out of the painting.

Above her ominous jellyfish float ... ominously.

Some mornings when I rush out of bed to get to the alarm clock I bump into it and it swivels on its mounting. When I finally get up after hitting the snooze button three times ... I always set my alarm for half-an-hour before I really have to get up because I find those 10-minute snoozes almost more rewarding than the night's rest. Your dreams become clear and memorable and it is ... lovely.

Okay ... so when I finally get up, I bump into it and when I sit down to have my obligatory cup of tea. It is a general rule that you should not try to speak or engage with me in any way before I had my first cup of tea in the morning.

Let's try again... When I am finally sitting down with my tea and cigarette ... I look to Amanda's painting for inspiration for the day and all I see is the thin metal frame.

Stasis between hope and despair ... a thin line ... one all too familiar to the citizens of Mzansi and I am always happy to realise that it's mine too.

But now I'm off to engage with the World Cup tourists ... I am very disappointed that there are so few female World Cup tourists. I am oscillating between hope and despair concerning my investment in Viagra that I made recently ... will the blue pills reach their sell-by date before I can try them out? I am a slave to hope...

Okay I lied... I'm off to watch SA play France ... in RUGBY!

When I get home I see the painting is actually called 'Slave of Hope' .... I wonder if my mis-representation of the title did not spring from a Freudian slap ... ok slip...

LANGUAGE IS INDEED SOMETHING THAT SWIMS IN YOUR HEAD.

THE WORLD CUP! .... THE VUVUZELA IS HERE!!!!!!!!!!

SORRY THAT I'M SHOUTING ... IT'S JUST THAT YOU WON'T HEAR ME OTHERWISE!!!!!!!!
Seriously ... Yesterday everyone who owned a vuvuzela in Joburg blew it from 12pm to 1pm ... and sporadically throughout the afternoon and evening.

My friend Jan says in his office it sounded like a beehive on the move and outside like the coming of the second revolution...

Jan must have very good soundproofing in his office because inside my office it sounded like a thousand beehives on the move .... or at least the Israelites leaving Egypt and blowing down the walls of Jericho.

I am more in agreement with his second statement and given that Jan is not prone to hyperbole, you better believe me when I say that it was an unparalleled racket...

Forget the flags ... this is going to be the World Cup of the VUVUZELA!!!!!!!!

(Just a brief note on the flags ... there were 316 of them on the last official count. The schools closed and Charles and I are no longer driving Kieran to school in Parkview so any flag count from here on would be unscientific because the parameters of our study changed.

We did briefly consider beginning a new study on our new route but when he nearly drove into some-one while counting flags yesterday ... I forbade him to count any more flags today and desisted from doing so myself. In any case we were dog tired from work because everybody else wanted to be 'off' next week ... and we wanted to be off tomorrow ... so we packed two episodes in one week .... and could not even be bothered with our own private obsessions.


Meanwhile my spy, Lizette Pretorius from Pretoria reports that she counted 173 on her designated scientific route yesterday and remarked in her confidential report: "Even Pretoria is getting it!"

The 'it' being GEES ... as encapsulated by the VUVUZELA!!!! I can even hear a solitary one now... sounding forlorn like the mating call of a moose... Never heard that sound myself but I have an imagination. Lastly flagged my hat ... SA/France...)
Okay, I admit, that was not a brief note ...

My new best friend Maphala Makgoba did indeed join my blog and now the darkies outnumber the Germans on my follower list ... so there Gabrielli.

Talking about Germans ... they seem to be the predominant group of World Cup tourists in Melville at the moment ... followed by Americans ... British ... Spanish or Portuguese (from wherever they hail, ) ... French and Italians.

This was not a scientific study but Charles Moore and I decided it should be the next survey so I began listening to the tongues around me.

But I did meet Rufus and Dan from London and Arne from Germany.
As for talking to Germans ...

I went and sat down ... tiredly ... at a German table in a restaurant in Melville to smoke a cigarette, as we do here when you are a smoker in a non-smoking section of a restaurant, and talked to them ... as I do.

Arne had two darkie chicks with him. There is something deeply unsurprising about that.

The one was Naledi (it means 'star' in seSotho) ... she did mention her last name but it was too noisy for me to hear it and the other was Patience. I did my survey on the usage of the word 'darkie' with them and they shrugged it off. No offence ... but Naledi reckoned it was "a level of education thing" or something like that.

I disagreed because I conducted a more broad-ranging survey among darkies since my last altercation with Gabrielli.

The rules of engagement are simple: I call them darkies and they call me King Charles ... sorry I could not resist that. They call me whatever ... mlungu, Boertjie, whitey... for the duration of the World Cup it would seem that we South Africans are going to be a nation united.

I am off today so I am free to mingle with the crowds ... I'll keep you posted.

WELCOME MAPHALA ... sorry ... a VUVUZELA!!!!! again.

I lost my car keys, my equilibrium and my pride .... the World Cup is HERE!

I don't even have a car ... or equilibrium or money or whatever ... but the World Cup is HERE!

At least I found my pride again. It was stuck under my shoe and smelled funny ... but hey... I found it there.

The title comes from the Tom Waits song "The one that got away'. I did indeed lose my keys yesterday and that put my equilibrium at stake because I had to sleep at Jan's house ... after only realising that I lost my keys at 5am ... Not a propitious start or end to any day.

So having slept in the foreign country called Parkwood ... Jan brings me back to Melville. We discuss flags with his daughter Julia who says that she is trying to convince him to get one and he says patriotism is a good thing for primitive people.

I agree with I think, Disraeli' .... How does one spell that!!!!? How I wish now I said: "I agree I think with Gladstone ... who said: (In politics) patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."

But let us move on. I am proud of Joburg and our embracing of the event. We are flagging up big time... We are here ... and when we drive into Melville there are flags everywhere. And everybody is happy.

But flags are not all ... the place is teeming with foreigners ... and they want to talk ... so instead of working I'm talking .... and loving it. THE WORLD CUP is here... but while I'm talking to foreigners I am also drinking and they are all having a whale of a time and I'm AT F"""kin last replacing Windows Vista ("£$%^&********) with Windows 7 and it seems to be a bit better.

One lives in hope.

I speak to two foreigners at Nuno's ... OK they are only from Randburg, but hey.... they are foreign to me. I ask them if their cars (you cannot live in Randburg without at least two cars) had flags on and they assure me that they WILL FLAG UP before the end of the week.

They are Dave and Cathy .... just for the record. Dave is "in the import/export@ business and Cathy ... is "just an accountant" .... I roll my eyes.

But the World Cup is here and Melville is buzzing and I love it.

Meanwhile Amanda gave me a beautiful painting.

A reversible self-portrait of her in hope and despair ... my normal state ...

In hope she blows bubbles on the beach ... in despair she drowns beneath jellyfish ...

OK welcome to MY DAUGHTER TAMLIN (AT LAST), Jaco Wessels, Braam van Straaten, Elize Viljoen and if I missed someone ... Welcome anyway.

VUVUZELAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ... BRING EARPLUGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

South Africans are very inventive people.

Just think about it... A South African guy invented the only South African product that was used on the spacecraft that went to the moon ... Pratley Putty. I know it is self-evident that a South African should have invented the only South African product to be used in the spacecraft that went to the moon but YOU can try to put it better.

A South African also invented open-heart surgery... the Book of the (last) Century ... Lord of The Rings ... and 'dolosse' ... those concrete wave-breakers that you see around shorelines across the world ... as well as 'the plumbing of secure internet transacting' ... apartheid (a model that the Jews and Palestinians have been trying to implement with the same measure of success that we had here for many a year ... none) ... Mrs Balls' Original Chutney ... Appletizer ... in short too many things to mention in a short blog like this one...

But then, to top it all, the world's worst wind instrument ... the vuvuzela. Now the vuvuzela is a hollow plastic tube in the form of a trumpet and when one blows on it, it produces a SOUND ...

The SOUND of ... a power drill hitting concrete... an angle grinder through cold-rolled steel ... a tomcat on heat being strangled ...

Now I've never strangled a tomcat on heat and never will ... neither have I had any contact with people who strangle tomcats on heat and if I see a person strangling a tomcat on heat rest assured that I shall intervene ... by calling the relevant authorities.

What I'm trying to get at is that this 'weapon of mass distraction' produces a sound so ugly that one would probably be better off by never hearing it. When I described the sounds above, I was talking about a single vuvuzela ... but what soccer fans are likely to encounter is that of a single one ... multiplied ... by only 90 000.

Fifa hinted ... briefly ... at banning the vuvuzela during the World Cup ... but soon backed off.

South African soccer lovers would hear none of it ... they can't hear anything anyway because the SOUND of many vuvuzelas has been proven to be harmful to hearing. It has been compared to the sound of a million angry bees with vocal cords on steroids ... and that is putting it mildly.

Nevertheless this weapon may just see Bafana Bafana score a goal as the opposing teams lose their balance as their hearing goes ... we live always live in hope in SA.

In another ironic twist ... the voices from within South Africa trying to ban the vuvuzela were just beginning to be heard when ... the Blue Bulls went to Soweto. Now it is not only the darkies at soccer matches blowing the damn thing ... it is also whiteys at rugby matches. The Afrikaans daily Beeld announced it on their posters: "BULLS SAVE VUVU". You can always count on Pretorians to be well-meaning but ultimately destructive.

In their insularity they are much like the Americans. As Churchill put it so well: "One can always count on the Americans to do the right thing ... once they have exhausted all other possibilities..."

So make peace with it ... buy earplugs and know that the vuvuzela can now be bought craftily-beaded in the colours of your country's flag by our ever-inventive 'bead-and-wire' artists on the steets of Joburg and Melville specifically ... BECAUSE WE LIKE TO BE LOUDLY SOUTH AFRICAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I got a darkie chick, one Maphala Makgoba, whom I just met, to vouch for the veracity of this blog ... so there we have race realtions again ... she said she would definitely join the blog.

"this damn whitey promised me a round of drinks in exchange of joining his blog. He apparentely has one darkie as a follower which makes me the second darkie. In two weeks he will have atleast 20 darkies. You just have to love South Africa, you meet a whitey you negotiate terms of engagement or blow a vuvuzela in the ear of whitey> and wallahhhh..."Maphala

OK that was my new best friend Maphala ... you just got to love South Africa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A real skoroskoro and a conversation about religion

My problem with taxis in the mornings is that they are all packed until about 10am when they pass the point where I join the route on foot. That means I really have to walk far to the first major drop-off point.

The reason why I mention this is that I made a decision, in principle, not to take skoroskoros anymore and rather wait for a vaguely decent taxi. A skoroskoro is a vehicle that is in fact a crock and the onomatopoeic skoroskoro refers to the sound they make when they drive .... skoroskoroskoroskoro ... the 'Os' are pronounced as if they had a genuflect accent.

But I'm late for work and my principles take a hike and I take a skoroskoro when it stops. I immediately know it is a skoroskoro because the dented sliding door will not open until the driver gets out and manoeuvres it open with a secret flick of his hips ... and then it refuses to close again ... but soon enough we are on the road.

Further clues that this is the real deal in the skoroskoro category follow quickly. Apart from the skoroskoro noise my seat dumps me on my neighbour when we go around the first righthand corner and the front passenger door flies open. But we are an adaptable lot here in the south of Africa and I learn to lean left when the taxi goes right and and the front passenger learns to hold on to the dashboard with his right hand and the door with his left hand while leaning right.

I join the other passengers in silent prayer and try not to think about the state of the vehicle's brakes or shock absorbers while it careens through the traffic ... I suspect they are close to being non-existent ... which brings me to God and religion.

Now everybody knows I'm an atheist but few of you would guess that my parents and especially my father is a deeply religious person. He is one of only a handful of people, perhaps the only one, whom I know who practises all the virtues of Christianity including tolerance and forgiveness. That is why we still get along.

Many years ago when our politics also parted ways we decided to limit our conversational topics to one ... rugby where we are both on the same page ... we support the Free State Cheetahs. This happened as if we both grasped at the same time that it was the only way to keep our relationship going and no discussion preceded the event.

Fortunately we have since rejoined opinion on politics and the weather and rainfall patterns provide further stimuli for our conversations.

With my mother there is no such problems. She berates me my variety of addictions and is fearful that I'm now addicted to the internet as well ... and also hints darkly at my godlessness when she gets the chance between analysing the latest health affliction that is making her life a misery.

That was why I was shocked when she complained about being lonely instead of her normal ailing health the other day ... and being the dutiful son that I am ... took her seriously for once. Not that I could get her interested in the wonders of the internet or google ... no sirree!

For that I had to rely on my father who, after my presentation, dutifully thanked the Lord in his pre-lunchtime saying of grace "for the wonderful technologies that He gave us".

Then we had lunch and it was time for Abrie to take me back to Kruger International.

Without prompting he begins talking about how he is getting slightly irritated by the creationists and Christian fundamentalists peopling the rural community around him. He finds their blunt refusal to take any scientific evidence into account when they expound their own beliefs especially grating.

I feel his pain ... he professes to be a Christian ... but ...

I was also there once ... and for a long time ... until I realised that faith does not readily stand up to any manner of scrutiny by a questioning mind ... and once you begin scratching the surface of your religious beliefs with a vexing question you are in for a long and hard think.
FLAG UPDATE: Meanwhile it would seem that only Joburg is 'flagging up' big time. I spotted hardly a flag around Hazyview and my father quietly removed the one I put on his car. I asked Lizette in Pretoria to do a count for me but have not heard from her since and Charles Moore reported that there were noticably fewer in Cape Town during his recent visit there. Let me know if I'm wrong.