Bites

I cannot wait for this infernal sumer to be over (although if it could hang around/return for my upcoming weekend away, that would also be nice).

Not only have we still had no significant rain, meaning that we are even deeper (no pun intended) in the throes of our water crisis, but this week’s calm, warm days and calm, warm nights have made Cape Town – specifically the bit of Cape Town that is our bedroom – a veritable paradise for mosquitoes. The whiney little shits.

I’ve mentioned before on here the lengths I go to in order to improved Mrs 6000’s life in this regard, but the last couple of nights have been off the scale as far as my sacrifices go. I am covered – covered – in bites. I itch.

Feel free to give me all your anti-mosquito tips and tricks, but please bear in mind that I have tried them all, and I am still trying them all. Tabard, Peaceful Sleep, Pyrethrums, Citronella, Prayer, A Big Fan, The AR15 Assault Rifle: all of them.

This morning, despite having employed each and every strategy I had at my disposal, and having checked and declared the room fully mosquito-free before retiring last night, I killed 9 of the engorged little bastards. All fed on me. Not a mark on my wonderful wife.

And why should tonight be any different? Meaning that by this time tomorrow I will basically just be one big histamine molecule.

Well, there’s something to look forward to. Ugh.

Golf

Golf. Sport of Kings. Or is that Polo? Whatever, I’m not a fan of golf.
Golf is dull.

Fans of golf – you know who you are – will tell you that it’s not dull. They’ll tell you about that exciting finish to the Ryder Cup in 2012 or some such, and yes, perhaps for that putt, we all held our collective breaths, at least briefly. But it took us four days of repeated five hour games of golf to get there! Dull.

And then there’s the fact that if you want to play some golf, you basically have to schedule most of a day for it. It’s not an hour’s footy, or a 30 minute run round the block. It’s most of a day.
Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Still, I just think that golf is dull. Brian Micklethwait feels slightly more strongly than that:

I still hate and fear golf.

A little more digging (I clicked a link) reveals that it seems to be the same issue with the length of time the whole process takes that’s the root of his hatred and fearfulness:

I remember once having a go at it, when I was at my expensive public school in the middle of the last century.  I still remember hitting one golf ball really sweetly and deciding, right then and there, that I would never do this again, because if I did, there was a definite danger that golf would take over my entire life.  And I wasn’t having that.

Brian does like cricket though, including test cricket, which for me falls into the same “occasionally a really exciting last few minutes but to be fair it took things an awfully long time to get there” category as golf.

The difference is that cricket has noticed this issue and adapted with one dayers and T20s. Horrible for the purists, but key in saving the sport.
Golf, though? Golf has only just agreed to let women be members at its most famous clubs (although they’re not allowed to change there).

So golf is actually old-fashioned, sexist and dull. And it takes ages.

No, thank you.

TBS: BBT

As predicted, today has been busy. But don’t panic – I’ve got us covered with a gentle melody from [wince] 25 years ago. Yes, it’s the gentle harmonies of The Beautiful South with Bell Bottomed Tear. And I’ve chosen the live version because it features Paul Heaton, Sheffield United fan and ex-pupil at my Infant school*.

Taken from their 1992 album, 0898 Beautiful South (the dialling code representing premium rate phone calls – mainly sex lines – at the time), this was TBS at their peak – the third of their seven Top 10 studio albums, and also featured 36D, We Are Each Other and the brilliant Old Red Eyes Is Back.

At the end of the original video, our selfish male protagonist finds himself on a Mediterranean beach, faced with a number of angry women brandishing baseball bats. Baseballbatophobes will be pleased to hear that there’s no such nastiness in this live version.

* when I say this, I mean that we went to the same infant school. I don’t actually own an infant school or anything.

And that was it.

The end of the holiday will hit me full on in the earhole early tomorrow morning, as my alarm clock wakes me for another day of toil in the lab. It’s the downside to having a break: the inevitable return to reality. Having been off work for 11 whole days, during which time we drove literally thousands of kilometres and paddled for literally another several, it’s going to be tough to face real life head on in the morning.

And it’s not even as if it’s going to be that bad. Most kids go back to school tomorrow, but thanks to the vagaries of the SA private schooling system, ours have an extra day off. So that’s an extra hour in bed.
Wednesday morning… well… Wednesday morning  is going to be obscene.

The good news is on the horizon. Another long weekend (and another, shorter trip away) at the end of the month. It’s not too long to wait.

And that’s what will keep me going tomorrow. After that though, I don’t know. The next long weekend isn’t until the middle of June.

Killer.

Stop the world…

… I want to get off.

Yep. Whatever. Call me when you can pirouette your way to safety around an Ebola outbreak or conjure up some much needed water in the Sudanese desert using just your cha-cha skills.

And who would ever want to explore Mars when there was an opportunity to wow the audience with some exciting team ballroom work?

I actually have nothing against dancers, but “future-proofing our children” by teaching the Merengue instead of Microbiology?

No. Just no.