Category: that’s a bit mad

Cape Town Cocktails

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It’s almost SA Cocktail Week: “the annual week-long summer festival put together to showcase the vibrant local cocktail community and foster creativity behind the bar”.

The thing is, this is a liquid-based series of events – and I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this – but we’re a bit short of water here in the Western Cape. I’m therefore hoping that any creativity fostered behind the bar takes this into account.
To that end, I have a few suggestions for what you should be drinking this weekend.

1. Dry Martini. Literally a dry cocktail. Because if it’s not wet, you can’t be wasting water, right? No ice. [recipe]

2. Old-Fashioned. Helping you to remember the good old days when you could shower for 10 minutes and not worry about tripping over a bucket. No ice. [recipe]

3. Dark ‘n’ Stormy. More of this would have helped during winter. It didn’t happen. And now we’re buggered. No ice. [recipe]

4. Blood and Sand. A worrying prediction of the state of affairs in waterless Cape Town by next April. No ice. [recipe]

5. English Garden. This cocktail contains apple, elderflower and lime – it’s basically a list of plants that have died/are dying in the gardens of Constantia. No ice. [recipe]

6. Sex On The Beach. Maybe try something else instead of a cocktail. This seems to be a water-neutral activity. Obviously, try this on a sandy shoreline, not on the rocks: no ice. [recipe]

7. After Eight. Vodka, Creme de Cacao and Creme de Menthe make up this reminder of “Level Nine” from the now infamous 6000 miles… Extended Water Restrictions post.

No ice. [recipe]

8. White Lady. Consider whether Helen Zille could have done more to mitigate the effects of the Western Cape water crisis while sipping this refreshing, gin-based offering. No ice. [recipe]

9. Penicillin. A great use of whisky to fend off all those skin infections we’re going to get in February when we can’t wash ourselves anymore. No ice. [recipe]

10. Snowball. In this drought? No chance. No ice, see? [recipe]

Have a great weekend and a wonderful SA Cocktail Week and don’t forget to use a disposable paper cup to save on washing up water, ok?

Famous Last Words

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Well, maybe not so much “Famous” as “Favourite”.

Remember Thomas de Mahy, Marquis de Favras (March 26, 1744 – February 19, 1790)? Of course you do. He was a member of the French nobility and well-known supporter of the House of Bourbon during the French Revolution.

Sadly(?), he got what was coming to a lot of the French nobility in the early 1790s. But there were two things that made his execution somewhat notable:

Firstly, that he was hanged in the Place de Grève – no distinction being made in the mode of execution between a nobleman and a commoner – and secondly that upon reading his death warrant, he is reputed to have remarked:

I see that you have made three spelling mistakes.

If you’re going down (and I suppose that his seeing that particular document indicated that he was), you might as well go down with your literary standards intact, you mad, smug bastard.

Cape Town Earthquake!

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Sort of, anyway:

That email to me (personally, see the header) from the USGS ENS, telling me about a quake just down the road ocean from Cape Agulhas. I never felt a thing. But then it was about 2000km away.

Here are the details – phew, it looks like we dodged a bullet:

Although, has anyone heard anything from Bouvet Island this morning?
Their twitter account (here) doesn’t mention anything. Mind you, it seems to have given up when Trump became US President. Perhaps understandably.

An aside: Bouvet Island looks amazing. I’d certainly visit there if it wasn’t for the earthquake danger.

The Architect

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No. Not you. This:

Here at 6000 miles… HQ, our quest to bring you (good) quality music never ends. And, as has been recently proven, we’re pretty good at what we do.

Here’s something new for you then: Jane Weaver

Some phat Ultravoxy electronica and La Rouxy breathy vocals going on there. Wonderful.

You may remember Jane from such bands as Britpop group Kill Laura, or the folktronica project Misty Dixon, or like me, you may not. But either way, this is a great piece of work.

Says Jane:

Having spent a large portion of my childhood in the foreboding shadow of the 1965 Bernard Engle constructed concrete shopping center I developed a very visual love-hate relationship with the modernist architecture of my home town, but after travelling the world and appreciating both brutalist and modernist design from an exotic perspective I soon began to crave the incredible geometric design that de-saturated my 1980’s upbringing.

Yes. That’s pretty much how I feel about old buildings too. Sometimes.