Saturday 24th December 2011
A rather scrappy few days – Jeff has been hijacked to apply preservative to a log-home on the other side of the village while the rain holds off. When he has appeared he seems to have had a head full of varnish fumes…
I was hoping that he could start applying “WakSol” to the cabin, but the 25 litre barrel I ordered from the Co-Op hasn’t appeared yet. Steve and I ordered a barrel of raw Linseed oil for me and two 25 litre barrels of this much cheaper alternative to either a solvent preservative or raw Linseed oil, but confusion has now reigned at the Co-Op for the past three weeks. Only one barrel of Waksol arrived, and no Linseed Oil. Sandy collected the WakSol, not Steve, which somehow started a chain of internal miss-communication. The staff has changed almost entirely during the past year and the new lot appear to have very little practical experience of what they’re selling. When the Linseed oil arrived later I went to collect it and the Waksol which, since it came from the same supplier, should also be gathering dust in their store. Linseed oil, but no WakSol! The trip was only made worthwhile because Steve phoned me to order ten 38mm x 38mm x 4.8 metre long roofing battens. Oh boy! The recent matriculant dwaaled around looking confused among stacks of 110mm thick rafters until I found a nice straight bundle of a dozen battens neatly strapped together in a pile of rather wonky loose ones a bay or so further on. The thought of selecting decent beams from that lot seemed to fatigue the youth – his shoulders drooped so much he looked like an ant-heap! The thought of watching him tackle this obviously Herculean task fatigued me to the point of depression, so I told him not to do anything while I dashed upstairs again to pay the Till-Tannie cash for two more battens, so that I could just take the whole strapped bundle of straight timber, which would be easier to tie onto the bakkie, and I needed the same battens to support the gypsum-board lining anyway.
Since I had sufficient victuals on hand, I put off another trip to Caledon until it was worthwhile. I phoned after the long-week end, and was told that the Waksol had arrived. I also needed plastic sheet to line the reed-bed (When we’ve collected enough rocks!) and as a damp membrane behind the gypsum board… when I get around to it!Sandy asked to hitch a ride to town to do a few things, so it now seemed worthwhile.
We arrived just as the shops opened, but Sandy had to wait for the Library to open at 10h00, so we revised our schedule and she treated me to Koffie en Melktert – in an electrical contractor’s shop! A husband and wife team have combined their businesses in a converted house on the main street, so we had Coffee and Milk-tart amidst an eclectic collection of solar-panels, hand-made crockery, cheese-cake, a selection of light fittings, home-made preserves and a tasteful display of circuit-breakers and wall-sockets.
While Sandy swapped her library books, I did some top-up shopping, then it was off to the Co-Op…
The most useful person there is the slim, energetic and slightly harassed Senior Till-Tannie. Of course, this close to Christmas, the Co-Op is short-staffed, so Till-Tannie was on the PA system whenever she needed any of the “Manne” to fetch an order from the store downstairs, or to chivvy them along when they dwaaled around looking confused… which was often, while we were there. You see, Sandy ordered the same plastic sheeting as I had, but a smaller piece, to use as a “Slip ‘n Slide” for the village kids next week. I also asked for my WakSol… It took them as long to find three pieces of pre-cut damp-course sheeting as it did for one of the staff to complete an apparently extensive forensic investigation to discover that my barrel of WakSol had in fact not arrived!
I’ve digressed somewhat from writing about the various “Odd Jobs” I accomplished, but the saga of the Co-Op ties in with my previous post about the bureaucratic façade… it is all about Incompetence. Maybe I’ve just become a crabby old man, but my impression is that incompetence has almost become the norm in too many fields. Why is that so? The phenomenon can’t be attributed entirely to “empowerment” or fast-tracking, because it occurs across the board. Although the result is bad service, I’m talking about more than bad service because of a lack of product knowledge. Ignorance of what one is selling comes, in the first instance, from a lack of apprenticeship or poor training – probably both. I detect a deeper problem though, which is an absence of caring about being competent, about being the best that one can be. We have a family metaphor for this apparently old-fashioned concept: “Even if you’re just a ditch digger, take pride in becoming the best ditch digger you can be… . Dig a straight ditch!” Have our super-socialist labour laws already bred a generation of young workers complacent in the knowledge that it is very difficult to be dismissed? With the global economy in recession, jobs are so scarce that one would expect people to do whatever it takes to keep their jobs – including learning as much as they can and doing their best to keep customers. It seems though that many young South Africans are either not aware of the Damoclean sword threatening their future or have already given up. Perhaps a decade and a half of anti-elitism and implicit collectivism has dulled our competitive edge? Whatever the cause, the result is a Nation ill-equipped to grow its economy, let alone fight its way out of a real global Depression that seems ever more inevitable. Of course there are still examples of excellence to be found in many fields, but just as four million tax-payers can’t pay enough to fund social grants for fifty million unemployed, the work-ethic of a handful can’t power an entire economy.
Back to the odd-jobs then…
After the past weeks, I felt as if my mind was clogged. I’d been so busy dealing with other things that I had lost touch with what needs to be done on the property. The bi-monthly VAT report for the studio also loomed… at least it is easier to do since I have registered for e-Filing, so I got that out of the way.
Of course the cabin is still full of stuff that should be in the store / workshop, but I wilted at the prospect, so started gathering all my cash slips for the farm and sorted them in date order – about the most boring job I can think of. At least I could listen to the radio. I switched back and forth between RSG and the BBC, listening to a huge variety of topics. Imagine my surprise to hear, on “The Strand,” the BBC global Arts and Entertainment programme: “…and next on The Strand, the apparently boring topic of Film Finance… we visit South Africa to talk to Danie Bester, Producer of ‘de Hoof Mesje’ a new film in the Afrikaans language.” I’d previously heard Leon van Nierop’s glowing review of “Hoofmeisie”, so I was more than a little intrigued. Danie Bester responded to the interviewer’s questions with a rapid fire delivery, speaking at great speed as if he was expecting to be interrupted. He obviously has great energy and knows what he is talking about. The market for the film was very thoroughly researched and it was carefully targeted, just as the “Bakgat” movies were. I just had to sigh though when the BBC reporter asked him, basically, to justify making an Afrikaans language film. The irritation was that the question was framed in a way that made it clear that it was not about the economics, which Danie had already dealt with, but seemed to question his right to make “a film in the language of the Boer Oppressor!” Cue for Danie Bester to explain with admirable restraint and patience the amalgam of eleven languages and effectively eleven very diverse cultures found in South Africa! Bester also had an interesting reply to the rather sarcastically delivered suggestion that attempting to conquer the world market with an Afrikaans film was doomed:“Were not even going to try, we’re not that delusional! Too many South African film makers are, but we’re not. That said, we know that we do in fact have a niche market overseas, among the one and a half to two million South Africans who have settled outside the country. Our figures show that about 60% of them are Afrikaans speaking or can speak Afrikaans fluently, so of course we will target that market very specifically” I think Danie Bester and his group are worth watching – he seems to be ahead of the pack of a small group of young producers who “get” the local film industry as a business!
A few hours later, on RSG, I listened to half-a-dozen Afrikaans correspondents in different countries reporting on local Christmas customs and how South Africans in the diaspora were adapting their own traditions. As if to validate Danie’s strategy, I learned that there are twenty-three South African Dutch-Reformed Church Congregations in New Zealand! (By the way, the ability to speak Afrikaans will earn you extra Points to get into New Zealand, where Afrikaans apparently has Minority Language status.)
The next odd-job was a little maintenance on the bakkie. One of the plastic hinges on the glove compartment lid had broken, causing it to hang drunkenly when opened and stress the other hinge. The previous owner had attempted to glue it together, but glue alone would never work without reinforcement, so I rummaged in my “just in case” box to find a flattened bully-beef tin from last year’s stay. I spent a happy couple of hours in the workshop encasing both hinges in tin-plate, secured with epoxy adhesive. Strong enough to survive in the proverbial Mack Truck.
The advantage of doing odd jobs is that each one required different tools, which I would have to rummage for in the remaining pile behind the cabin door. Instead of being returned to the cabin, the tools would then be assigned a proper place in the workshop, so I was also making progress on the job of clearing the cabin without it becoming a chore on its own.
Working on the bakkie – now replacing the broken Negative battery terminal – reminded me strongly of my late father. A lot of my boyhood was spent helping him maintain – or occasionally tune for motor racing – the rather sturdy British Motor Corporation cars of the Fifties and early Sixties. His derision of the lightly built Fords of the same era was legendary in the family, and I wish I could remember more of his colourful metaphors to describe the differences – “Bloody Dinky Toy engineering!” was a polite example. “For cryinginabukkitt! This thing is made of fish-paste tin!” was another, and might have been his opening comment about my Great Wall Motors Chinese bakkie. He might well have been right, since China re-cycles much of the world’s scrap metal, if not most of it. Dad would also have conceded though that the higher performance and improved fuel economy of modern vehicles comes from smarter use of thinner metals to make them lighter, rather than the brute strength and “a little extra just in case” approach of the Fifties.
By this time I had got into the habit of moving from one chore to the next, which helped me to keep going. With the cabin virtually cleared of tools and hardware, I now had no excuse to delay a Christmas “spring-cleaning!” I borrowed a small but very powerful vacuum cleaner from Sandy, which had to be cleaned often while sucking up a year’s worth of sand and dust from the floorboards and planking that sweeping couldn’t extract. Psychologically, it was a great lift to be able to see so much floor space I could almost throw a small dance-party! I’ve figured out how to make more efficient use of the space, which will happen once I’ve applied Linseed oil to the exposed wood inside and start installing more lining.
One weird discovery arising from the spring cleaning is that I have too many shoes! A few pairs of the working shoes need repairing though, so I already have some more odd-jobs lined up!