New shoes

Not for me. For Yoshimi. And because Yoshimi has four feet wheels, it means four new shoes tyres.

And they’re not cheap, hey? Not by any stretch of the imagination.
And my imagination is particularly malleable.

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On the plus side, the last tyres did ok: 70,000km in 4½ years, including a lot of high speed stuff and a lot of dirt roads. Also, I think I got an OK deal, and I suddenly feel a lot safer on braking and cornering. There’s also the added benefit of being less likely to get a puncture anywhere iffy. Like the N2 near the airport. Or any other bit of South Africa.

As you can see above, these new tyres are chunky buggers, ready to tackle the potholes of Cape Town and the dirt roads of Cape Agulhas.

But, given the amount of money I shelled out this morning, really, really carefully.

Op

Fair play to our local vets. They opened at 8am after the Christmas break, the beagle was in their rooms by half past, and by 1pm, she’d been x-rayed and we’d been given some vastly expensive options to get her repaired. We came home, had a quick family discussion, made a decision, rang the vet back, and boom: the beagle is off to Paarl for her op tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, she has been mostly sleeping after her sedation earlier, only raising her head for a biscuit and only drunkenly wandering into the kitchen for a bit of gravy.

But there is clearly a bit more energy returning as the medication wears off, so at least she’ll get a good meal in this evening ahead of the nil by mouth of tomorrow morning.

This should be a routine op, with a couple of days in hospital and a few weeks of rehab. But please hold thumbs for this next installment of Project Colin.

This place looks nice…

I live in Cape Town in South Africa. I’ve lived here for almost 20 years. It has it all. I love the food, the culture and the nature.

And I don’t know how much Facebook ads cost, but I feel that this repetitive effort by Dutch airline KLM is a somewhat unnecessary expense on their part.

Book my ticket to Cape Town? On your airline, that’s going to have to be via Amsterdam.

No chance. You might be ok with wasting loads of money, but I’m not.

Pick n Pay Happy Hour

Once you’ve read this post, please share it so that everyone can benefit.

Pick n Pay Happy Hour??!!??

I thought that it was a bit of a gimmick, but there were a lot of signs in the local supermarket, so I updated my app, allowed notifications, and…

…then I forgot all about it.

But this morning: PING!

Happy Hour between 2pm and 3pm this afternoon. Get R250 off when you spend more than R500.

Seriously?

Well, there are two parts to this. Firstly, I needed some stuff from Pick n Pay anyway, and secondly, who turns down the chance of R250 off in this sort of economic climate? Or indeed in any economic climate?

The timing of the Happy Hour wasn’t ideal, but it was certainly doable, and so I thought I’d give it a go.

And… it worked:

R250 off, just for doing the shopping I was going to do anyway, but checking out at 2:06pm instead of a couple of hours earlier.
R250 is comfortably two meals for a family of 4. It’s 7.5kg of washing powder. It’s 10½ loaves of bread. It’s 14 litres of milk. Or slightly less of each of them if you share it about a bit, obviously.

I’m not sure how Pick n Pay gains from this, but for a family like us, who always have something on the shopping list, and usually have room in the freezer, this might actually be a bit of a gamechanger.

Add in the R115 of Smart Shopper points that I used, and that’s 46% off my R800 shop this afternoon.

That’s pretty amazing.

Note: This isn’t an ad. I’m fully transparent, and I tell you when I’m doing ads. But please share this post. Everyone needs all the help that they can get at the moment, and this offer is certainly helpful.

Nice day – here, at least

While the rest of the world fights each other over land and religion and money and politics, I’m hiding down in the bottom left corner of Africa, sitting in the sunshine and drinking a beer. It’s been a bit of a heavy week in many ways, and so I’m giving myself the luxury of a bit of a day off.

After an early start collecting the Boy Wonder from a Clown Boxing sleepover, I forced myself into a 9km trail run. Well, I say “trail run”, because I did cross a grass verge at one point, so that counts, right?

It’s all pretty relaxing and pleasant sitting here and wondering which football matches I’m going to watch later, but then I made the mistake of clicking on a news site.

Foolish. Very foolish.

WARNING FOR BRAAI LOVERS IN SOUTH AFRICA

baited the headline. It’s a difficult one, because actually, given that the Venn diagram for Braai Lovers and South Africans is a perfect circle, this means it’s a warning for the whole country. But mentioning the braai bit gets everyone very anxious and so they inevitably click through. I know I did.

So what’s the warning?

Food prices are going up. Thanks, Detective Professor Sir Sherlock Einstein. None of us had noticed that, at all..
It’s worth pointing out that all food prices are going up, not just those specifically associated with braais. Look at the onion stat above. Great on Boerie Rolls, 63% more pricey than 2022.

This Business Tech headline comes less than a month after their previous warning for Braai Lovers in South Africa:

Someone is being very lazy with the headlines and stock images, hey?

This warning was essentially “Fire burns things. Be careful.” Good advice, although, I suppose as long as it’s not the expensive onions you bought, it’s probably not that bad.

All this braai talk (not least the warnings) are making me think about the possibility of having a quick one this evening (careful now) before it gets too expensive and dangerous