My Sunday

A day dominated by buying a car (a really awesome car that cost way too much money) and saying goodbye to my runabout of the last 8 years. I shall miss him. That said, the new car is bigger, better and has (amongst other features) a camera on the back to assist with reversing. The image from the camera pops up on the rear view mirror which is a little bit unnecessary, but is also ridiculously cool and the kids want to see it all the time. Sadly, they don’t realise that I have to put the car into reverse for it to activate and that this is not an option at 100kph (forwards) on the M3.

A day also dominated by football. I only managed to catch one match (well, so far anyway, he said, eagerly eyeing the La Liga fixtures of the evening ahead), but what a match: Man City 3-2 Southampton. Oh, how I missed the beautiful game over the winter. And oh, how my wife’s TV watching is going to be sharply curtailed during the upcoming months.

Finally, as promised yesterday, getting the photos from our trip up Table Mountain up onto Flickr.

Yes, lots of touristy photos, but I seem to have some unwritten duty to promote Cape Town. Not that it needs my help on days like yesterday. It was absolutely stunning up on top of the big flat rock…

Feeling cheated…?

I’m told by a usually reliable source that some readers feel cheated when they surf the internet and arrive upon the sandy shores of 6000 miles… only to find that a quota photo.

Well… sorry for you.

Hectic day in the lab, babysitting this evening, football match tonight.

So here’s a sunrise that looks uncannily like a nuclear explosion, although we wouldn’t have one of those in SA, because, as JZ pointed out yesterday, everyone should be giving up nukes like South Africa did.

Bigger on black here. (The photo, not Jacob.)

Cheetah seized

I was browsing the rather bizarre UK Home Office flickr photostream this morning (as you do), when I came across a South African link – namely this cheetah:

He looks a little mournful as he was being transported illegally from SA to Russia, when he was detained at Heathrow earlier this year because he wasn’t microchipped.

The animal was one of four being transported from South Africa to Russia, however checks revealed it wasn’t micro-chipped, breaching strict regulations on the movement of endangered animals.

This detention led to two pieces of bad news for our feline friend: firstly, the promises of strippers and vodka were suddenly just history, and secondly, he will now spend the rest of his days at a UK wildlife park, on average about 20ºC colder than his usual habitat in South Africa. I hope this serves as a lesson to other cheetahs trying to make the move from Africa to Northern Europe illegally. You will be captured and punished.

You can see more photos of the cheetah seized at Heathrow in the imaginatively-named Cheetah Seized At Heathrow set. And while you’re at it, don’t miss the excellent Marriage Cheat Sheets Exposed set, in which some marriage cheat sheets are exposed, including some confusion over Maria’s siblings. Like whether or not they actually exist.

100,000

Sitting here knocking back a glass of rather decent foot-stomped port from Beaumont in Bot River, I noted (as one does) that I have, at some point over the last few days, passed the 100,000 views mark on my Flickr photostream.

With that landmark reached, here’s one I like from the horribly aborted Last Hurrah 2010 tour.

I’m not quite sure how this happened, but suffice to say that the World Cup helped quite a bit. As has Katrin Müller-Hohenstein’s bottom, which – depressingly – remains my most viewed photo from the tournament. Depressingly because it’s rubbish (the photograph – her bottom is lovely). Here it is again with ex-German goalkeeper Oliver Kahn looking on.

But I digress. Often.

If you’ve ever looked at any of my photos, thanks. If you haven’t, now would be the perfect time to start as I begin my journey on the path towards 200,000 views.