Cape Storm

What an amazing weekend. There was wind, hail, rain, sunshine. There were waves, floods, brooding clouds, open fires and numerous glasses of brandy.

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While the subject matter for great photography was obviously all there, the weather and/or the light, together with a distinct lack of skill (perhaps exacerbated by the brandy?), made it difficult to translate it into pixels. Doesn’t mean I didn’t have fun trying though: here’s the flickr set with some stuff I did manage to get.

Also now up in the Stuff from June set – photos from Giraffe House.

What time do the Kenilworth station booms close?

Well, fairly regularly, actually. Whenever a train comes through Kenilworth station.

But during the rush hours, they are closed for prolonged periods of time, otherwise they’d be up and down like a bunny rabbit’s bottom in the springtime. The trouble is, no-one can really remember at what times these prolonged periods are. And then, you chance it and you get stuck for an hour or more. Unless you’re good at three point turns.

Thus, people have been requesting some sort of reference post on here (similar in nature to the SARS minus number post) and finally, I have decided to deliver.

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There’s the aging sign at the top of Kenilworth Road – which you drive pass too quickly to read and where they should actually have a big electronic thing telling you when the booms are closed – and here’s what it says:

ATTENTION!
KENILWORTH RAILWAY CROSSING WILL BE CLOSED DURING THE FOLLOWING HOURS:
MON-FRI 06:20 TO 08:30 AND 17:00 TO 18:15

So there you have it.

I’ll be honest, this post is as much for me as it is for anyone else, because I have a huge mental block over this. But while the topical posts on 6000 miles… occasionally do really well for a while, but soon disappear off the stat radar, the reference ones continue to slowly get hits, which tells me that while it might be a bit dull, it’s still stuff that people do want to know.

Right to left

Safely down at the cottage, fire lit, coffee in hand, red wine just around the corner. We left a grey Cape Town behind and drove down through the Southern Cape countryside in beautiful sunshine, arriving just in time to see the incoming front at Agulhas:

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There are no blue skies out there anymore. The storm force winds and horizontal rain have chased them away and are playing together outside.
But hey, never mind… I’ve just spotted the brandy bottle.

Later today

The thing with my Windguru app is that it vigorously scaremongers*. Look a week ahead, and sometimes you’d be forgiven for believing that the Apocalypse was on the way. But, as the final judgment approaches, the weather app tones down its forecast, and while the sun might not shine, tomorrow is still only a day away.

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Not so with this one though, and although I do think we’ll still live to see another day, it does appear that things could get a little exciting later today. I love the way that you can see the North wind giving way between the 14h and 17th forecasts, and then the rain coming in as the centre of the deep Low passes and the frontal train hits.

Cape Town is bearing the brunt of this one. The rain is quite localised and further down the south coast looks damp and grey, but not Noah’s Ark territory. We’re going to take our chances down in Agulhas – hopefully getting there and getting the fire lit before the storm blows in there.

Stay safe and warm, local people.

* But for hour by hour forecasts from about 48 hours ahead, it’s terrifyingly accurate.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, in America

PistoriusBalls 17

Uh-oh…

I’m no expert in the forced removal of judicial buildings, but I think that this is somewhat unlikely. And with the court still firmly in place, there’s even time during a murder trial for a whimsical reference to that cookbook:

But there’s good news from Andrew Harding:

Meanwhile, Wayne Derman says you need a dollop of butter in that. Probably.      

So many meanings we could read into this. But I think it’s just that Lucy wants to get home before 3Talk with Noeleen begins.

Of course she does, because we should never – NEVER – underestimate the travails of the courtroom journalist:

Also there are communal showers. And each evening you have to sleep with 65 TB-riddled criminals. Or something…


The prison reference? Yes, it is.

I HOPE YOU SURVIVE. But then…


So you can choose your own teatime tomorrow… Enjoy!

REMEMBER: You can see the full PistoriusBalls series by clicking here.