2006 August « the other side of the mountain

Debonair pair

30 August 2006 at 12:30 pm | In Human weirdness | 27 Comments

Yesterday evening, Salman and I had just concluded our usual fortnightly meeting to discuss new and exciting ways to rid the world of politicians and hippies, when we were approached by one of the eating establishment’s odd-looking members of staff. I am normally a bit suspicious when people I don’t know try to engage me in conversation, because they invariably end up wasting their time and mine by asking me for money*. This, on the other hand, was just plain weird – Mr Freaky Stranger asked us if we were from Cape Town.

It was vaguely surreal – a bit like being asked what gender you are. Salman and I exchanged “WTF?” glances and asked him to repeat the question. He explained that he thought we were from somewhere overseas**. Obviously our South African accents were insufficiently convincing, because he went on to apply the litmus test for separating locals from tourists – he addressed us in Afrikaans. His interest in us completely evaporated when it became clear that we could actually understand him.

I’m guessing that Mr Freaky Stranger probably enjoys doing a bit of recreational body-cavity spelunking with foreigners and it’s quite likely that locals just don’t do it for him.

* If you have designs on the contents of my wallet, you may as well put that thought away right now. It’s just not going to happen, okay?

** which in hindsight perhaps isn’t such an unusual idea. There are so many South Africans living in the UK and continental Europe, it is entirely possible that our unique style of speech will start affecting them sooner or later.

Weekendend

28 August 2006 at 1:47 pm | In Stalker goodies | 29 Comments

I’ve just come back from saying goodbye to Katt at the airport [sniff]. I can hardly remember when I last had such an enjoyable weekend. I also wish to place officially on record my indebtedness to Flyboy for being so unutterably cool about this. Yoo da Man! I could kiss you. Actually, I think I will. I’ve got big sloppy wet kiss with your name written all over it, so you’d better pucker up the next time I’m in the Eastern Cape*!

I took the day off on Friday and we went off to Kirstenbosch to hug trees, curse butterflies and generally commune with Nature. We (and by “we”, I mean “I”) also tortured poor M with cruel text messages like “We’re having lunch at Kirstenbosch. The weather is absolutely glorious. How are things at work, by the way?” If you happened to feel a temperature spike in the city early on in the afternoon – that was probably no coincidence.

M got her revenge by showing us her shiny new car when we went over to her place for dinner on Saturday evening. It is indeed shiny and I suppose I should have been more complimentary at the time, but I was too busy choking down my jealousy. Her bulldog took an instant shine to me, which would have been fine if he didn’t have the breath of Satan (burglars take note!). Fortunately, I was shortly banished to the kitchen while the ladies discussed power tools and hunting – in other words, a perfectly typical evening in the suburbs.

Sunday was less structured, although we did manage to play a game or two of Scrabble. This sounds a lot more intellectual than it actually was, because we were sorely tempted to go the Redneck Rules route (do you know how many points “dawg” is worth on a triple-word score? A lot!).

Sadly, all good things must come to an end and experience in this regard does damn-all to cushion the blow. If you need me – I’ll be over here in the corner, brooding.

* Although this may end badly. Very badly. He owns lots of guns.

Beginning of the End

24 August 2006 at 12:59 pm | In Marital machinations | 25 Comments

Ah, bonny Patience,
Thou – sweetest of all Virtues -
Would I kiss deeply!

Or to put it another way: my wife has finally come to the less-than-earth-shattering conclusion that her lawyer is just in it for the money. Another great “Stop the Presses!” moment. If truth be told, I suspect that she figured this out months ago – probably at about the same time that I did. It has, however, taken a goodly while for her irritation with this prize plonker’s piss-poor performance to overtake the fact that she appointed said prize plonker in the first place.

Anyway, she’s given him the old heave-ho and we now have a signed Agreement of Settlement [cue "Hallelujah" chorus]. I think I need to offer her the post of Grand High Priestess of the Church of Cayennetology, because in terms of our agreement, not only do I get to give her all my money, I also get to give her a pile of money I haven’t even earned yet. How cool is that, huh? Do you see why I fell in love with this woman?

Still, even though we are another step closer to our final parting of the ways, it’s important to note that I got to share over a decade with a truly remarkable person and (barring another concussion, of course) I will always have those memories.

Nine tenths of the law

22 August 2006 at 1:00 pm | In Abdominal rumblings, Office excitement | 26 Comments

I had another set-to with my boss yesterday afternoon. Both of us had been busily engaged in the preparation of tender documents and shortly after I’d completed my task, I strolled off to the casa del excremento to contemplate the infinite and catch up on world news.

When I returned, it was to discover that the aforementioned individual* had ransacked the contents of my MY document and made off with half the appendices to complete HIS sodding document. Now these items aren’t things I can simply reprint – we’re talking about original certificates and certified copies here. I honestly thought I was going to black out from irritation.

It looks like I’m going to have to fast-track the roll-out of Cayennetology if I want to avoid ending up as Tony Yengeni’s cell-mate. Despite all evidence to the contrary, murder is still illegal in SouthAfrica.Damn,IthinkIjustbrokemykeyboard.

* I can’t think of an expletive that adequately conveys my loathing for him right now.

Minister of Culture

18 August 2006 at 12:46 pm | In Human weirdness | 31 Comments

Owing to the overwhelming interest in the Church of Cayennetology, I believe that we may just have a new cult on our hands. Spread the Word, brothers and sisters! As a reward for your faith, you may place the Official Cayennetology Blinky (and who doesn’t love blinkies?) on your site. The necessary code can be found here.

Of course, there are still few tiny details to iron out, such as the heavily-defended compound out in the sticks, adequate supplies of Kool-Aid and so forth. It would also appear that I am going to have to start working on my Holy Text. Essentially, all I require is a basic set of rules. However, a simple list of ‘Thou Shalt Nots’ on a pamphlet isn’t terribly impressive, so they’ll need to be buried somewhere in a suitably verbose and vaguely self-contradictory kludge of pretentious prose and pseudo-philosophical rhetoric.

Hmm… now where the hell did I put that damned manuscript for my novel?