Top End Untroubled

While the hoi polloi continue to struggle under the hefty cosh of financial hardship, there’s some good news on the horizon. Apparently, all you have to do to avoid this sort of troublesome existence is to earn pots and pots of money.

Who knew?

But here’s the proof that those at the top of the tree aren’t really struggling very much at the moment:

TROPHY homes are back in vogue with estate agents reporting a strong increase in property sales in wealthy suburbs where price tags typically exceed R10m.
Lew Geffen, chairman of Sotheby’s International Realty in South Africa, on Tuesday described the top end of the market in Cape Town and Johannesburg as being “on fire”. Neither the upcoming election nor the prospect of further interest rate increases had done anything to slow demand for luxury housing.

Fortunately, I don’t think it’s the actual homes, so much as the market that Mr Geffen was referring to. And he’s not alone in his observation: Andrew Golding of Pam Golding Properties, Samuel Seeff of Seeff Properties and Dave Property24 of… er… well, never mind… all agree that sales of properties costing more than R10,000,000 are on the up, giving the media the opportunity to use phrases like “swanky homes” and “leafy suburbs”, in a completely irony-free piece centring around estate agents.

“Until recently, there has been little interest for properties priced above R10m in Constantia,” said Gerald Romanovsky of Rawson’s Constantia franchise. The change became evident soon after the start of this year when we suddenly found ourselves in a new ballpark, handling five or six genuine enquiries per month for this type of luxury property from both local and foreign buyers.”

For me, Gerald’s comments raise more questions than they give answers, namely as to why they haven’t been selling ballparks and exactly how many faux enquiries they’ve been handling each month around luxury property.

All in all (and heavily dependent on your political viewpoint), I suppose that it’s good news that there are still people out there with money to spend, whether it’s from within SA or from investors abroad. These people generally know what they are doing (or at least employ people who do) and if they are still happy to put large amounts of money into large houses here, then maybe things aren’t as bad as they seem.

Dream Job?

Having just dealt with 15kg of Lego at Alex’s birthday party this weekend, you might think that I’d have gone off the plastic stuff for a while. But no – and what could possibly combine Lego and my love of football better than a combination of Lego and football in Chris Smith’s “English football stadiums built out of Lego” project? Not only does Chris get to… well… build English football stadiums out of Lego, he also got the UK Government to give him a grant of £5,000 (that’s R89,148.01 at today’s exchange rate *involuntary clench*) to do it.

ZZ230414legostadium-2 Here he is “doing” Goodison Park, just down the road from where Steven Gerrard threw the title away this weekend. Interestingly, the supposed omnipresence of Lego was found wanting by Chris, which is why he started doing what he is doing:

The 31-year-old former primary school teacher came up with the idea after searching the internet for football-related Lego already on the market and drawing a blank. He uses pictures of the stadiums, Google Street View and his own experiences of grounds he has visited to build the models.   Mr Smith is now hoping to turn the project into a business, Brickstand, and intends to sell the finished stadiums, branded t-shirts featured images of the models and other football memorabilia built from Lego.

It’s a brilliant idea! The plan is to do all 92 of the football league grounds, but on Hawksbee and Jacobs’ podcast yesterday, he suggested that he might just “go rogue” and throw in Celtic Park as well. YOLO! I’m left wondering what I can build that people might want to buy and that hasn’t already been done by either Lego or someone innovative like Chris?

Dew Diligence

One from the back garden last weekend. I really like it, so I’m leaving it really big.

A scene of contrasts, no?

It’s busy. There are the complicated lines of the restios and the spider web, but equally, with the dew, there’s the elegance and the tranquility of the early morning.
It’s light at the top. It’s dark at the bottom.
It’s intricate and detailed at the bottom. It’s all fuzzy and defocused at the top.

It was a lucky shot, made good by the subject, rather than the skill of the photographer, but I won’t tell anyone that.

As I said earlier, I really like it.

Bigger (if you think you can handle it) here.

Hudson’s Claremont, marks out of 10

Burgers here with the boys of the MBCC last night. It was fun.

hudos

Burgers: 9. Damn fine burgers, as you might expect from a place that markets itself on its burgers. I had the iconic BOOM BOOM burger, though I could have chosen one of the others from the menu if I had so desired. That’s why they have a menu.

Beer: 9. Nice selection of draughts and bottles. Black Label and Jack Black on tap. Lots of craft, but sadly, very little (branded) One One Eight.

Service: 9. With a smile. Loses one mark because it plainly has an overtly sexist employment policy for waiting staff. If my boy ever wants to work here, he’ll have to somehow be sporting an utterly spectacular cleavage at interview.

Price: 9. Is cheap cheap, eh? Chili popper starter, 250g burger, “frites”, a couple of large draught beers, a coffee (someone substituted an excellent waffle here) and a double whiskey (and tip) came to R250pp. That total is only a little more than the price of (just) a big steak down the road at Barristers. The Barristers steak will be absolute perfection, though.

Music: 9. A bewilderingly random selection featuring Billy Joel, The Bangles, Berri, The Troggs, absolutely no One Direction and more. One after the other. But it worked. All of it. Oh, the memories.

Extractor fans: 1. Got home smelling like I’d been working in their kitchen, which – despite having had a few beers and a nightcap – I’m pretty sure I didn’t. You’re cooking several (or more) burgers each evening. There will be fatty smoke. Deal with it better.

But overall, it’s a pretty decent score (you can do the maths), just let down by the that lack of adequate exhaust from the grill. And I’m sure that once they read this, they’ll sort that forthwith.

This was an excellent night out and drops neatly into the 6000 recommends… category.

Vodacom tablet repair no update update

It’s been a while since I updated you on how my tablet repair is getting on. And that’s because it had been a while since Vodacom updated me on how my tablet repair was getting on.

Just to jog your memory, it was dropped in (not literally) at their Anal Walk store on the 9th of April and I last heard from them on the 14th April, when I was told that it had arrived at the Advanced Repair Centre and then was being assessed at the Advanced Repair Centre.
I was ready to go into this post, all guns blazing, but weirdly, almost as soon as I began typing the V word in the title, my cellphone notified me that an SMS had arrived.

Guess who?

Job Number XXXXXXX is currently in the repair process.

This is good, because we are 8 working days into the 10-15 working days I was quoted for the return of my device. The only worrying bit about this is the fact that it doesn’t say where this repair process is taking place. Previously, they have been very careful to tell me that everything is happening at the Advanced Repair Centre. Their apparent reluctance to inform me of the location of this “repair process” is very worrying. I imagine my beloved tablet in some dark, grubby, back street repair centre in downtown Hillbrow, not an Advanced Repair Centre like it deserves.

Yes, obviously I’m concerned.