Admin

Apologies for the near radio silence on here at the moment.

I have been working on some stuff behind the scenes here and also struggling under a mountain of admin elsewhere in my life.
Hopefully, it should be all over in the near future. (The admin, not my life.)

Also, I’ve just seen an advert on TV for avantsa.co.za and now I want to buy (at least) one of everything on there. Especially the 700 series, obviously.

More tomorrow.

Constantia Food & Wine Festival

I’m tired. This afternoon brought with it much activity and when your right leg is incapable of much activity, you take the strain. Thus, I am strained, and was it really worth it?

The Constantia Food and Wine Festival promised much, but delivered little. It was poorly organised, poorly stocked (many places had run out of food by 5pm) and very expensive (R360 for the family to get in). The kids’ section was underwhelming, there were too few toilets and the queues for everything were ridiculous.

Thankfully, the company was good and the wine (and the beer, although Keg King ran out of some of that as well) was excellent. But we soon realised that it was too irritating to have to wait in line for ages just to get 25ml of red in the bottom of your glass, so we bought bottles and avoided the crowds – and the exhibitors. Which isn’t how it should be.

So this one will go down as being remembered for the views, the booze and the queues for the loos.

As a learning experience, it worked. We’ll save our time and money next time around.

Clarification: Mark from Keg King says (via twitter) that he never ran out of beer. But when I went to buy beer from him, I was told of my first two choices (of four on offer): “We don’t have any of that”.
I’m happy to clarify here that they hadn’t sold out of those beers, they just didn’t have any of them.

Disappointing

Service in South Africa is generally known for all the wrong reasons. And people here are quick to criticise poor service, but slow – despite their obvious amazement – to (publicly, at least) applaud good service. I have, in the past, publicly applauded good service though, and I only mention bad service on here when it’s exceptionally bad and when I’ve tried to sort it out personally and failed.

This week though, has been a revelation as to exactly how bad things can be. And thus, I present to you, a list:

  1. I bought two SA made light bulbs on Saturday. Get them home and discover that only one of them works. The cost of the petrol to get back to the light bulb shop for a replacement means that it’s not worth the trip.
  2. We bought a bedside table for our daughter from a local company. Before we actually gave it to her though, I had to repair it in two places, because it was so poorly made.
  3. Our guttering needs fixing. We contacted three companies to get quotes.
    One didn’t call back at all.
    One finally called back but hasn’t turned up. He hasn’t phoned.
    One promised to come yesterday, but didn’t show. He hasn’t phoned either.
  4. Our gate intercom broke. The gate intercom repairers turned up, “mended it” inside 5 minutes, stuck their company stickers on every electrical item in the entire house and billed us. Except the gate intercom still doesn’t work.
  5. Our recycling company didn’t turn up on Tuesday.
  6. We have three plumbing problems: one I could deal with, but two which are a bit beyond me, so I called a plumber out. He promised to come on Monday. When he still hadn’t showed on Wednesday, I called him. His bakkie broke down over the weekend. He hadn’t bothered to phone.
  7. We ordered food from a new “trendy” delivery service. Online ordering was great, the delivery was prompt, the food was terrible. Sadly, that last bit will stick with us more than the online ordering and delivery.

We’re told that times are hard. We’re told that people and companies need work, but then they treat their customers like this?
Why would I choose to support you in the future when you’ve let me down now?

Yes, guttering people, I know it’s been more than a bit wet this week. Maybe that meant that you had to alter your schedules unexpectedly. But did it really stop your phone working?
Cos mine’s been fine for the last few days. It’s just not been taking any calls from you.

Plumber. Just phone me. I will understand.

Recyclers. And now? Are you going to refund us for your no-show?
Or should we expect you to just turn up when you feel like it now that we’ve paid you in advance?

Bedside table and light bulb manufacturers. Manufacturing bedside tables and light bulbs is your job. Sort it out. Do it well.

Food people. Train your cooks. That was horrible.

I’m understandably disappointed all round.

It’s Gone

I know I’ve mentioned the weather more than once recently, but this evening, with another cold front approaching, we finally surrendered and acknowledged that Summer Moved On:

 

Alex and I switched the pool heating off and cut down the pump hours as the realisation that we weren’t going to be needing it any more hit home. It’s always a sad day – the equivalent of turning your central heating on in October (or earlier) in the UK.

But this time summer really has moved on.

At least until the weekend anyway.

Gannet

This isn’t the first time we’ve featured a photo by Chris Wormwell on 6000 miles... That’s because this was the first time we featured a photo by Chris Wormwell on 6000 miles...

But this is beautiful:

gan1

This is a fine example of a Northern Gannet (Morus bassanus), off the coast of the Isle of Man. Chris describes this as “pretty much just a bread and butter shot”, so I look forward to seeing some of his “fine dining” work at some point.

You may see close relatives of this fellow (the bird, not Chris) off the Cape coast too. But those, like just every other bird found around here, take the title ‘Cape’ – Cape Gannet (Morus capensis). And whereas there are loads of Northern Gannets to go around, our local species is classed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, so don’t go poaching them, ok?

There are some pretty cool facts about gannets. They are cleverly adapted (Evolution FTW!) to be able to dive from a great height to catch fish. Because they can hit the water at up to 100kph, special air-sacs within their skull protect them from the massive impact, like biological bubble wrap. Additionally, their nostrils are inside their mouths, preventing that awkward unintentional nasal lavage that can all too often ruin a good dive.
It must make things pretty nasty when they get a cold though. Eww.

Photo credit: Many thanks to Chris for his permission to use his photo.