Spent the day in bed

I wish.

Remember duvet days? Prior to kids and all of the fun and games that goes along with them? Perhaps after a long night on call in the lab? Or maybe just because you couldn’t actually be arsed to do owt else.

Those were the days.

The primary reasoning behind spending the day in bed in those cases was sheer laziness. Morrissey’s new song, entitled… er… Spent The Day In Bed, suggests that there’s more to his choice of diurnal activity (or lack of it): the acknowledgement of privilege and with it, freedom, with lines like:

I spent the day in bed
As the workers stay enslaved

and

No bus, no boss, no rain, no train
No emasculation, no castration
No highway, freeway, motorway

It’s a great song, but do watch out for the rather too chirpy keyboard intro.
And Joey Barton in the video, bizarrely.

Whatever the excuse or the messages it sends out, I haven’t spent the day in bed today, or indeed for several (or more) years. But the temptation remains strong.

Anton’s grave warning

No. Not you, Anton. This Anton:

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had a lot of emails from readers struggling to work out exactly what might happen regarding the drought situation during the upcoming summer, and I’ll be absolutely honest here, I’ve fobbed them off with answers that most politicians would be proud of. I’ve meandered around the subject, filibustered relentlessly, and fed them current statistics which actually have no bearing whatsoever on the medium-term status of our water supply here in the Western Cape.

But that’s because I’m just a humble blogger. I don’t have the massive resources of Provincial Government backing me up. I can’t call upon supercomputers, meteorologists, hydrologists and Mystic Myrtle from Accounts to give me expert advice and information on how things are likely to progress from this moment onwards.

Anton has all of this (and, I suspect, more) right at his fingertips, and wow… doesn’t it just show…

Because here’s what he said yesterday:

I mean… who knew?

I had several possible scenarios for the summer planned out on the giant Western Cape water crisis whiteboard which dominates our bedroom, but I have to say that each and every one of them suggested that things were bound to improve on the drought front – at least until the next rainfall season. I certainly couldn’t have predicted that things would – and here I borrow the erstwhile MEC’s exact words – “in all likelihood” “get worse”.

And looking now, I still stand by my previous thoughts, too, because actually, without the assistance of experts, who ever could have come up with this sort of prediction: that 6 or more months of hot, dry weather locally could possibly make a drought worse (in all likelihood, at least)?

Of course, now I will have to get my (waterless) eraser out and revisit my mental machinations on the most probable consequences of the dry season on the Western Cape water crisis.

I sincerely hope that I haven’t predicted the outcome of the next rainfall season incorrectly as well. Right now, I can’t see it having any positive effect. How will water, falling from the sky make any difference to our dam levels? It clearly won’t, and it’s laughable to think otherwise.

Although, thinking again, maybe we should wait for the experts to confirm that.

After all, insight like this is exactly why we pay them the big, big bucks.

Instagram push

While we’re on the subject of photos, I want to further my Instagram usage. It’s becoming (has become?) my “other” social media home (twitter being the first), but I’m pretty sure I’m not getting as much as I could from it, simply because I haven’t got to a critical mass of followers and following yet.

Thus, if you have an Instagram account you think I should follow – whether it be yours, someone else’s or perhaps even both – please let me know. The best way to do this would be to share the wealth in the comments section below or simply to follow me on Instagram.
Note that I’m 6000coza on there because someone else got 6000 first and then promptly didn’t post anything on it. Ever. He also has 10 times more followers than I do, despite having absolutely zero content.

Grr.

I like to think that they’re all just people looking for my stuff, and that’s great, but then I realise how much they’re getting let down by me (well, him, but you know what I mean…) and that makes me sad.

I’ll be following up on all your suggestions and following back to take a look at your images, so please don’t be shy.
That’s not how social media accounts work. (See 6000 on Instagram for evidence of this.)

Thanks in advance.

UK Photos

I’ve finally put some photos from our UK trip onto Flickr. They’re not my best, I don’t think. A lot of them are from our day out in London and to be honest, I’m really not very happy with them. (Am I selling this to you yet? lol) But then we did go to London on a weird, hazy, dim day; it was seriously grey.

Yes, even by London’s oft monochromatic standards.

I’ve put them in anyway – for the sake of posterity if nothing else.
Fortunately, there were nicer days too:

So next time someone insists that It’s Grim Up North – simply point them in this direction…