23rd January 2012
Only just – the 23rd, that is, because it is late, but I’ll get to today even later.
It has been a fairly uneventful week at Boggy Pond – mainly because I spent Wednesday to Friday of last week in Cape Town. I met Christa in an audition studio for two days of call-backs and new auditions for a UK comedy series. Of course it was great to see her again, but we hardly had quality time together. Flat-out in the studio all day, then, as we were going out for supper, the Producer phoned to request an urgent upload of some of the day’s auditions to our web site! As it was, Christa was not feeling very well anyway, so we ordered a delivery of pizza & salad. I shared supper – with two fingers on the laptop keyboard – then Christa crashed into bed. When the time came to upload to our UK server… problems! I have an iBurst radio card, but the signal was completely unreliable and slow in our quiet back room. The wonderful Tintagel B&B has complimentary internet access, but I felt that “reasonable usage” did not extend to the kind of bandwidth I require for even a small video upload. I had arranged to pay for the bandwidth I would use on the B&B internet if necessary, but even that was unreliable. It transpired that the problem lay with neither connection – the entire World Wide Web was Wobbly that week. I assumed that not even the most sabre-toothed Station Executive would be clawing at auditions from South Africa at midnight GMT anyway, so I also went to bed, thankful – for once – for the air-conditioning in a City sautéed by a heat wave.
Next morning I took advantage of being awake two-hours ahead of London and uploaded via the studio ADSL line as soon as we arrived.
Of the dozen or so auditions on Thursday, one of the call-backs had to be uploaded ahead of a meeting of Station Execs. on Friday morning. We were committed to supper with the owners of the studio, so I knew I was in for a late night – and would not be able to use the studio ADSL line the next morning. Hmmm… Inspiration and ingenuity would be required…
The solution was to pass the power cable through the restored sash window and set up in the tiny court-yard. By placing the laptop on a chair on top of a table, I obtained a fairly reliable signal. Good thing there was no danger of terrorising any Swedish tourists at 02h30…
After breakfast, Christa left for the airport a little early, so as to avoid what Cape Town ambitiously calls “rush hour”. If only she’d known…
I headed downtown to Heritage Western Cape for my appointment with The Head Man.
I should have known…
Now, I was going to NOT write about Heritage… but it is not often that one encounters service which stands out – in a class of it’s own, so to speak – and deserves a special mention.
Western Cape Heritage is charged with “Conserving Our Architectural Heritage”, but it also appears to be a very “Green” endeavour. In fact, the employees all seem to be fanatic about Conserving Energy. Since it is a straight walk of only ten metres from the third-floor elevator to the Public Desk and there is no furniture to fall over, one doesn’t need light – so there isn’t any. The dim glow escaping over the top of cubicle offices behind the counter is quite enough to silhouette the looming barrier.
The Department also saves electricity by dispensing with an intercom or electric bell too. Just a simple unlabelled brass bell – the kind made famous by Private Eyes entering sleazy hotels in period movies. The bell is securely glued to the counter and consumes no electricity at all, no matter how often you ring it.
Which will be often.
Another energy-conservation method employed by Heritage staff is to stay in their cubicles. That way, they conserve their own energy. A sort of Holistic approach, one could say. The strategy obviously works well, because I saw four of them emerge on pressing errands to the shared photocopier or the toilets and walk past me at a Minimal Energy Consumption kind of pace. Racing car and airship designers know that the energy required to propel a vehicle through the air rises with the square of the speed, so, conversely, to maintain minimum energy consumption the trick is to move as slowly as possible. The same Law of physics applies to what is known as the “Gross Frontal Area” of the vehicle – or person – since the laws of Physics and Aerodynamics are quite impartial. All the women who walked past me had considerable Gross Frontal Area. Come to think of it, they all had enormous Rear Area too, clear evidence of generous quantities of Conserved Energy. Balanced, at least, but not necessarily very aerodynamic.
I was fascinated by this expert example of Applied Aerodynamics and greeted them all cheerily – several times each – but received no response. I was puzzled – until I twigged that they perhaps couldn’t see me in the dark, pale as I am. Eventually an employee of marginally less Frontal Area caught sight of me as she drifted in her very bright kaftan like a hot air balloon from one office to another. “Have you been attended to?” she enquired loftily. “Not yet.” I responded, trying to sound positive and hopeful. “Have you Rung The Bell yet?” she asked in an energy-conserving tone which could have upset less astute people than myself, because the energy-conserving tone can easily be confused with the tone required when addressing a simpleton.
“I’ve rung it four times already!” I responded chirpily, eager to show willing.
Balloon wavered in her flight path and snapped “Well, ring it again!” like Alice in Wonderland’s Queen on a really bad day. She waited until I had honoured the Ritual of The Bell yet again, side-slipped behind a cubicle screen for just a moment, then wafted onward into the gloom.
A short while later, a slim Youth appeared. I deduce that he was the newest, most junior employee, because he had clearly not learned more than the basics of Energy Conservation in Matric last year, or perhaps even after two years at University. His shoulder-length ginger hair was neatly pony-tailed and his pale blue eyes flickered nervously all the time. He spoke softly, so I assumed he’d mastered that part of Energy Conservation at least as a matter of urgency, in case he accidentally woke other employees and caused an excess of Energy Consumption. I learned that The Man I was here to see had gone to “A Site” to see something else instead. If he was back before the normal Friday meeting, my plans would be approved by the committee and stamped. If The Man was not back from “A Site” in good time, the normal Friday meeting would be held… NEXT Friday. As the meanest, most insignificant employee, the Youth obviously had no authority to promise or do anything, beyond finding out my “Case Number” which nobody else had bothered to write down for me.
During this conversation the Youth either became more nervous and tentative because of fear of making a mistake, or he suddenly realised that he had exceeded his Energy Expenditure Quota, so he carefully withdrew to the cubicle “they” kept him in, leaving me alone in the gloom to marvel at such efficient Energy Conservation.
On the way out of Cape Town, I popped in to visit my friends Joe and Vianne. Vi had just fed & watered little Emily before handing her over to the part-time Nanny so that she could get on with a freelance writing assignment, so Joe and I engaged in our usual wide-ranging discussion of absolutely anything topical, interesting, technical or philosophical. Of course we began by discussing the implications for the country of the spread of Energy Conservation throughout Government, but soon gave up because the implications are just too boggling.
At about the time I was expecting a call from Christa, now in the Johannesburg office, she called from the Cape Town airport. No amount of tinkering in the sweltering heat had enabled SAA to start one of the engines on her fully-booked aircraft, so the passengers had been disembarked and were apparently going to be tucked under the seats and in the luggage racks of several other aircraft flying to Johannesburg that Friday.
Joe and I had a long chat, so I arrived back at Boggy Pond after 15h00, about the same time Christa eventually landed in Johannesburg.
Jeffrey was supposed to work on Thursday, clearing invasive saplings from the woods behind the cabin and harvesting them for use on the plot. I found him at work on Friday when I arrived. For the first time since I’ve known him, Jeff had succumbed to baggy shorts and vest. Apparently the heat had been so intense while I was away that one of his other employers had sent him home at mid-day on Wednesday. Thursday had also been too hot for any physical work.
The week-end was a dead loss for progress on anything vaguely agricultural beyond the early morning or before early evening. I had a tummy-bug and slept most of the time – when I wasn’t blearily responding to e-mails or calls to encode and upload someone’s audition as an urgent afterthought. I also created a “Broadcaster Only” site for one of the productions, but I’m still awaiting details of who to put on it as the selected cast. I did manage to make a little progress on the second digester-chamber though. Yay!
I awoke ahead of the alarm this morning, still feeling physically wobbly, but inexplicably chirpy and positive. I decided that the plan for the day would be to get in some hard physical work while it was cool, then complete the lining of the North wall as protection from the real February heat still to come, and launder my perspiration-soaked bedding. I would also re-arrange the workshop, using the collection of cardboard boxes I had accumulated for that purpose while learning what could be most efficiently packed in which position on the shelves.
To install the battens to support the gypsum-board lining I would have to remove my laptop desk and clothing shelf, so I set up office on the new folding dining table. While I was at it, I moved the refrigerator into “the kitchen”, took out the carpet to air and be beaten later, and piled my spare luggage and cases of equipment on the bed while cooking a healthy helping of Jungle Oats. Physical work next – shifting wheel-barrow loads of sand to create a raised stoep in front of the cabin. I planned to cover the stoep with an awning, either of re-cycled shade-cloth, or more appropriately of “palletjies”. (De-barked sapling poles, which the villagers pronounce with a short “a”, hence my double “l” in the spelling.)
I set about the hard labour a little creakily, but soon felt invigorated and much better. I had captured the water from my shower, and used that to dampen the sand prior to rolling it level and firm with either a gum-pole or a 210 litre barrel partially filled with stones and recycled laundry water. A light drizzle started, so I decided to make the most of the cool weather – and free water – by applying a few more layers of sand.
Then it rained. Real rain, almost like a Gauteng shower. There were even two pusillanimous attempts at very distant thunder.
I was already damp anyway, so I decided to make the most of the weather and push on, thoroughly enjoying myself with nobody to yell at me to get out of the rain. I couldn’t transport the gypsum board from the hovel in this downpour anyway. I was appalled at the amount of water going to waste off the roofs, and resolved to install guttering and catch tanks as soon as possible – perhaps even before I leave in February, so as to be ready for the winter rains. Eventually there was just too much water for the rolling operation to work properly, since the wet sand just sloshed around and clung to the rollers, so I went inside to savour being warm, clutching a mug of hot coffee. I was debating a hot shower, but if it were to rain for two days, as predicted, the timing of a solar-heated shower became a strategic decision!
Most people, while acknowledging the benefits of rain, are depressed or made grumpy when it does rain. For some mysterious, primordial reason, I love wet weather. It is as if the rain refreshes and renews me – I feel “at home” in rain and overcast. Believe it or not, I stood in the door of the cabin dancing a little jig and singing “I’m wekking, just wekking, in the rain…” with absolutely no apology to Fred Astaire!
Then my phone rang…
That took care of the afternoon. Somebody now wanted auditions uploaded for people we had been told were completely out of the running, so not to bother. Of course that meant digging out my hard-drives and setting up “Edit Four”, as I jokingly call my remote operation. Hey, I’m not complaining at all – the income helps to make my stay here possible!
The un-seasonal rain in such quantity was useful. In the early evening I walked around the plot looking for signs of where the run-off water tended to go. The old road down the middle was obvious, but I could now begin to see where water from the woods tended to feed into it. My own new road was also obviously vulnerable to water erosion, so I ended the day with more hard physical labour, ferrying nearly a dozen wheelbarrow-loads of sand to make a low mound across the road to direct the run-off away from the long slope and into the woods. As I get to know the plot better and as more of the water-sapping invasive trees are cleared, the run-off will increase. Harvesting that run-off will be an important part of preventing erosion on the slope and making this place viable as a small vegetable farm. Whew, there’s a lot of work ahead!