Great gig, bizarre encore: David Gray in Cape Town, 2022

I mean, you knew that the evening was going to be a belter when you get escorted right across the local casino, drinks and all, into the VIP room with free beer, bubbly and gourmet pizza before the concert has even begun. [Thanks, Andrew 😉 ].

And then, when it did begin, it was just a lot of fun with some great music. Ten songs in the first half, starting with You’re The World To Me and Fugitive before finally getting the audience involved in Be Mine, and bewitching us all into silence (incredible for a South African crowd) with a raw, emotional performance of Alibi. Hospital Food rolled neatly into the catchy Nemesis to end off a tight, professional set by a clearly accomplished band and singer.

Twenty minutes later – beating most of the bar-queuing audience back – he returned with a new drummer (the one and only Craig McClune) and a bang, for the main event, and Please Forgive Me and Babylon got the crowd – and the band – bouncing.
Running on through the album, he remarked on his two favourite songs that “took him back like a time machine to that tiny bedsit in Stoke Newington, N16”: Nightblindness and Silver Lining. And then after those two poignant, introspective numbers during which he seemed strangely distant, it was like a switch was flicked and he back to engaging the now slightly less reluctant audience with the now seemingly obligatory cellphone waving to This Year’s Love: “Come on, I know you’ve all got phones. And I know you’ve all got arms!”.
Sail Away and a really beautiful Say Hello, Wave Goodbye completed the album set and then there was… the encore.

Right.

Back on then, and having just given us one Marc Almond number (from the album), he went straight into another song that Soft Cell made famous: Tainted Love. A real poppy, swingy, almost silly version though. It was fun, but it didn’t quite fit. And then he sat at the piano and told us the story of the day in June 2000 that White Ladder and David Gray finally made it into the big time. A tale of a father on chemotherapy, a lucky break of a near headline slot at Glastonbury, and a chance backstage meeting with an apparently bewildered David Bowie, complete with pictures of the whole thing. It was more what I had expected from the whole evening: a bit of background, some anecdotes etc. But this was the only window we got into the story of the album. And then – using the somewhat tenuous Bowie link – the rest of the encore: Life On Mars and Oh! You Pretty Things. And it was great, but it wasn’t David Gray, it was David Bowie, and it wasn’t what the audience had come for. I’m sorry to say that we watched a fair percentage leave during these two songs. Bit disrespectful, but then that’s sadly par for the SA audience: we’ve been here before (more than once).

When you’re playing your biggest album in full, you can’t save your biggest hit for the end of the encore. Still, we thought there would be a rousing repeat of Babylon or something, because why not? But the second Bowie song was segued really awkwardly into the last few (admittedly energetic) bars of Please Forgive Me. But only the last few bars. It was just weird to finish off a concert with 4 cover versions (from three different artists) and then the false ending reprise of one of your songs.

It was still really good, but it was also really odd.

Anyway… overall, an altogether lovely evening and (even before the encore) we’d been treated to a lot of genuinely great music and some amazing vocals. It’s been 16 years since we last saw him here, but if he does come back again, I’ll definitely be there.

Welcome to South Africa

Occasionally, I use a service called UCOOK. they deliver recipes and ingredients, or they deliver ready made meals for you to reheat. It’s not cheap, but in the first instance above, it’s quite fun to make something different, and in the second, it can be very convenient.

I will be more likely to use UCOOK when they have a special offer on. Usually it’s some wine with your meal, but today’s offer was for some Stella Artois and some Stella Artois chalices.
Yes. Chalices. That’s what they’re called.

I was expecting delivery before 5pm, but then I got this SMS, which I could only ever have got in South Africa:

“Apologies for the inconvenience”? Never mind that, tell me if the damn driver is ok. I’m not even particularly bothered about my glasses chalices. I can’t believe that a UCOOK truck filled only with frozen craft pizzas and a few cans of Stella got hijacked.

I mean, it’s not exactly a high risk shipment, is it? It’s not cold, hard cash or expensive jewellery or illicit drugs. It’s pizza and beer. And not even a lot of pizza and beer. You could hijack a pizza van and a beer van and get loads more (albeit for twice the effort). And you’ve still got to cook the pizza and cool the beer – no mean feat given the fact that there’s zero electricity around at the moment.

It’s just a bizarre – and uniquely South African – thing to happen.

On a more serious note, I have emailed UCOOK to enquire as to the well-being of their driver, and to pass on our support and sympathy. I’ll drop some feedback here when I get it.

Wet summer ahead

I mean, it’s not going to rain all the time, but climatologists are predicting that it will be wetter than an average summer. And that’s no bad thing, given that Cape Town generally gets less than 100mm of rain between November 1st and March 31st each year. So a bit wetter than that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

Wandile Sihlobo, Senior Lecturer Extraordinary at the Department of Agricultural Economics at Stellenbosch University describes the forecast as “comforting”:

And with our local dams also at a “comforting” 85.6% full, it’s all looking rather rosy.

Water-wise, at least.

Also, if the “comforting” rains could just hold off for the next week or so, I’d be really delighted. Please can someone organise that for us?

Thanks in advance.

More on that thing

The that thing in question being loadshedding. Rolling blackouts. Power cuts. And I’m sorry to go on about it because I know that it’s really not a thing that South African residents need to hear any more about, and it’s probably not a thing thing that is of huge interest to those overseas.

Yet.

But it is completely dominating our lives at the moment, and it occurred to me, as my inner voice breathed a huge sigh of relief that our planned 12 hours of electrical darkness was reduced to “just” 8 yesterday, that I’m clearly suffering from some kind of Stockholm Syndrome. I think that it’s important not to do that. In a semi developed country such as SA, we shouldn’t have to accept 8 hours of no power every day and just be able to turn the other cheek, smile and say “Well, at least it wasn’t 12!”.
We shouldn’t be normalising loadshedding. We should be angry about it.

The courier guy who just came to our door (alerting me to his presence at the gate by a whistle, because the doorbell isn’t working, because we have no electricity, because of loadshedding), was certainly angry:

No, man. I’m so moeg of it. And then your electrical items like your fridge and your TV get fucked up because of it.

There’s nothing quite like an expletive in a Cape Coloured accent to really drive the message home.

That said, there needs to be some balance and understanding as well (whatever your accent). Because the constant anger and stress will do our collective health no good whatsoever, and it won’t make a jot of difference to the situation.

THERE IS NO QUICK FIX. We’ve missed our opportunity to to do that over the last 14+ years.

Meanwhile, our government is doing very little to remedy the problems – some are even exacerbating them – although there was this absolute gem from serial disaster merchant and wannabe ANC leader, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma:

Well, no shit, Sherlock. Thanks for that valuable insight, just 14 years in the making.
What a woman, trying desperately hard to be relevant ahead of the December ANC conference.
So much soundbite. So little action.

Still, even given all the nonsense I have described, those individuals who go out of their way to USE MORE electricity (when they have it), just because Eskom told them not to and they don’t like Eskom, are equal parts irritating and amusing. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. To be honest, I’m sure it’s mainly internet bluster and bravado: surely no-one could actually be that stupid, right?

Love it or hate it [Really?!? -Ed.], we’re unavoidably stuck with loadshedding for the foreseeable future and beyond.
And as is clear from the several hundred words above, my advice is to just get used to it, but also very much, don’t let yourself just get used to it.

I hope that helps.

Is it Spring yet?

Well, as we’ve said before on here, yes. But actually, no.

But if it’s not quite here yet, it’s certainly coming very soon. I can’t recall a year when I’ve noticed so many things in nature are just “ready to go”. The plants, the weather, the birds… they all seem to be priming themselves in preparation for the joyful explosion that is the end of winter.

And indeed, from my current position atop the deck at the cottage, while I have my warm top on because the wintery wind is rather chilly, it’s also serving a dual purpose in preventing my neck from getting burned by the springtime sunshine. Being from Northern climes and a mix of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic bloodstock, I have to take things a little carefully in the powerful African sun, especially when it hasn’t been around for a few months.

But the yellow-billed kites are back and the greater striped swallows are here, whizzing around me (not sure of their unladen velocity), the bulk carriers are rounding the southern tip of Africa at a safe 10 nautical miles, on their way from China to Nigeria, and Durban to Fortaleza (technically not necessarily a spring thing). There’s a Cape Weaver begging for some of my loadshedding lunch of some chips (crisps) and a Black Label. And across the way, two male Rock Kestrels are fighting for the attentions of a female of the species.

We’re nearly there.

But even as I type, the weather is turning for the worse. Nothing dramatic, but it’s noticeable that there is more white water on the ocean that when I came up here an hour ago (no, I haven’t been blogging the whole time), and the wind is definitely getting up. I have no worries for the evening braai, though. The cottage was designed to be protected against both the ubiquitous southeasters of summertime and the vicious northwesters of winter. So somewhere in between, as we find ourselves right now, should be no problem at all.

Apologies for any typos: the sun is actually ridiculous now and I can’t see a thing.

I think it might be summer already.