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Monday 21st May 2012
I’m getting used to changing three times a day. The night temperature is gradually dropping lower and lower, but if it isn’t raining, the middle of the day can still be sweltering. Much as I like rainy, misty weather, early mornings are becoming a bit of a trial. I’ve been waking early, re-heating my hot water bottles, and getting straight back into bed with a laptop to write by the light of a candle. It is a gentler way of greeting a new day than assaulting the dark with a hundred Watt bulb. That is the plan. Some mornings it has just been too cold – the lure oif snuggling down toasty-warm completely beneath the blankets is just too strong.
I did venture out though to take some photographs in the morning fog.
Just below the cabin
I’m also finding it frustratingly difficult to find focus, either on my writing or on the chores about the plot. Distractions and interruptions keep cropping up and I suppose the truth is I turn them into excuses too easily. Of course there is the necessary remote management of our casting web site/s, which at least represents some income. The problem is that we’re starting a new “Block” on our biggest production, which seems to have reached a crisis. Scripts are late, so re-writes are late, so the characters don’t stabilise until the last moment – which means I can’t finalise the web pages until the last moment. Before I left Johannesburg, this production had set a record for the number of pages and the volume of video placed on our Server – in the three weeks that I have been here it has twice broken it’s own record, which now stands somewhat over 2 GigaBytes of video across 60 web pages.
I’ve also been dealing with a flurry of Bureaucracy by remote control. Transferring ownership of the MGB GT sports car I sold earlier this year has turned into a nightmare of jumbled serial numbers, incorrect forms dating back 25 years! My little yellow car was among the last to be assembled in Cape Town by Leyland South Africa from CKD parts (Crated Knocked Down) imported from British Leyland Cars in the UK. The result is that the vehicle carries two sets of serial numbers. The car has changed hands only twice until now, but on each occasion the Licensing Authority used a different combination of parts of each set on the forms. I spent hours over three days explaining this in a Sworn Statement based on photographs and scans emailed to me by the new owners, getting it stamped at the Caledon Police Station, posting the originals, and scanning one copy to email back to them.
On the way to the Police Station I walked past the Lewis Store where I had bought my refrigerator and Microwave. The Sales lady who had first helped me was just leaving for lunch, so I greeted her. She looked thoughtful for a moment then stopped to talk to me. She said that when I collected the microwave I had dropped a receipt for motor spares I had bought from Midas up the road. She had put them away and I could collect them any time, but at the moment the store was in turmoil because new stock was being unpacked. An unimportant exchange in a way, but it did highlight an aspect of life in a small town – people are recognised as individuals, rather than processed as an insignificant fraction of a mass. Later, when I went back to the motor spares store to swap the incorrect fan-belt for a spare of the right size, I didn’t need the slip, because the sales assistant remembered me. When I visited Wimpies DIY to buy paint for the compost bins, the staff greeted me as soon as I parked outside. Wimpie himself came out of his office to offer advice and to chat a little while I was selecting the paint. They even all indulged me with a laugh at my joke about simply tossing my wallet in the door next time I was in town.
The Police Station was manned by a solitary Warrant Officer in an electric wheelchair. I waited briefly while he attended to another person, and couldn’t help noticing the more pleasant tone towards the “Customer”.
With the Statement signed, sealed and posted to the hinterland, I decided to have some lunch at “JJ’s Pub” near the Spar. Although I’ve eaten mostly in Pubs when travelling in the UK, I seldom go into what we call “Pubs” in this country. Perhaps it is my own left-over prejudice from earlier days, when they were cesspools of surplus testosterone called “Bars”.
JJ’s, like the rest of Caledon that day, was almost deserted. Four elderly Boere sat at the far end of the horseshoe bar, quaffing beer or Rum & Coke while they waited for their food order. I chose a table in the window, near two women who were the only other customers. I suppose there must be busy times at JJ’s, judging from the wooden plaque on the wall near my table. Like a high-school sports trophy, it bore perhaps three dozen metal plates recording the prowess of competitors in the “JJ’s 1Kg. Rump Steak Challenge”. I could find only one female competitor – Alida Swart took 55 minutes to devour her side of beef, which put her second-to-last on the league table. Hentie Bul was last. Next to his time of 2880 minutes was a helpful “(2 days)” in brackets . The Olympians in this battle of Testosterone versus Cholesterol were clearly Jacques van Zyl and Gafie Le Roux. Who shaved their times down from 9 minutes and 8 minutes respectively over three years until Jacques finally settled the duel – and 1 Kg. of rump – in a gut-wrenching 6 minutes!
I seem to be getting into my stride, managing to do increasing amounts of physical labour every day during the mornings and late afternoons – when it isn’t drizzling. I started by taking a few exploratory pecks at the sides of Boggy Pond to see how feasable it would be to enlarge and deepen it. I managed to dig away quite a bit on the Eastern side. The soil looks dark and rich, unlike the very sandy soil on most of the plot, so I’m going to remove that carefully and use it to start the compost bins. Not too surprising, since floods would have carried a lot of topsoil to the area before it was dug out and dammed up. The Western bank is another matter though. It looked as though a long, broad step was cut into the wall below ground level – until I started digging there. I suppose in a hundred years an Archaeologist might grudgingly call it a “midden”, but right now it looks like a rubbish dump to me. I suspect that the advent of piped water – and evidence of the crude wall being breached – led to the hole being used as a tip. Sneakers, a transistor cassette recorder, plastic medicine sachets, cold-drink bottles and household linen snagged on my pickaxe as I dug into the long green grass covering the bank.
I’ve also spent time in the workshop making a crude drag-line bucket from a narrow piece of corrugated roof sheet. Before going to the trouble of putting sides on it, I took it out this morning for a test -run. Hmm… it sort of works, but I am going to have to devise a winch system to make it an improvement over a spade and wheelbarrow… so I put that project on gold and went back to the dam.
There is a straggly line of trees on the Eastern side of the pond. These will have to be removed if I am to broaden the dam, since the side wall will will traverse that area. Dam-building 101 says one shouldn’t build a dam wall around tree stumps, because the trees will rot away, leaving a cavity in the wall, which will weaken it. I’m not quite up to taking 3 metre trees out yet, so I contented myself with stripping the thinner branches so that the trunks can be more easily reached.
By mid-morning it had become way too hot and humid for heavy work in the sun. I was ready for a tea-break anyway.
The rest of today was devoted to the fiddly job of painting the compost bins, so that they can dry for a day or two while I gather the soil to fill them. I’m going to make the pickup do something agricultural for the first time tomorrow by parking it on the edge of the dam so that I can toss the sand directly into it. That’s the theory anyway.
We shall see what the new day brings.