Wednesday 2nd January 2013
Two and a half months since my previous post! Although I have been to Boggy Pond a few times during that period, I achieved little or nothing.
I popped out here to Boggy Pond just before Christmas – partly to come to the first Village Festival arranged entirely by the local folk on their own, but also just to be a “presence” for the first time in nearly two months. My brother Stephen had called to say that somebody had tried to break into the cabin. My old labourer has hit the bottle rather badly and also has an increasingly serious knee problem, so he has hardly been here either.
That entire trip was a bummer! Firstly, the bakkie threw a tyre-valve on the highway and ruined the tyre before I could stop safely. I discovered that although I had a wheel-spanner and a jack, I didn’t have either a handle to wind the jack, or the special handle to get the spare wheel out of it’s storage! My tools were either at home or at Boggy Pond, so I was a bit stuck! Of course, I set about “collecting dots” to solve the problem – sitting on the side of the road moaning “Hau! I am suffering hyeh!” didn’t seem a useful thing to do. I had the laptop & camera in the bakkie too, so I didn’t dare leave it and walk for help. After about two hours of carrying oil to rusted parts with the engine dip-stick and wrestling with the back of a claw hammer had the bakkie jacked up, the spare freed and fitted, and I was on my way to spend R1,100 on a new tyre just before closing time.
The result of all this was that I arrived late, sweaty, grubby and fed-up with myself. By the time I had showered, I got down to the “Festival” just in time to help pack up everything!
I honestly can’t recall how often and when I’ve managed to get out here during the last months of the year – dealing with the move to Muizenberg, upgrading the new studio, running and uploading auditions for three or four productions has left me in a daze. A few times I’ve come out here straight from the studio, then worked into the early hours of Saturday morning editing, encoding and uploading. I’ve hardly had any “quality time” with Christa this year, and I was missing her intensely.
Inevitably, the few days of inactivity just before Christmas left me with nothing to do, and I was hit by the realisation that if I don’t have an Audition to direct, an E&U to do, or some IT crisis to sort out, I don’t have a “Life” of my own, which is very sad and left me in a gloomy mood. I was just to “tired” to do anything useful for a while.
I slept a lot, then slept some more, until I was just so damn bored with myself for being depressed that I started doing little jobs around the house. Hanging more pictures, re-arranging the books and boxes we have no space for so that they are either out of the way or at least better hidden!
I came out to Boggy Pond just before New year, which I had been invited to spend with my friend Penny in Onrus. Her youngest son was visiting from Tanzania, and I had not seen him for a few years, so it was very pleasant to catch up with his news. I didn’t get much done here though, other than tidying up the workshop and experimenting with copper plating some door fittings from Muizenberg. I’ve successfully copper-plated small objects before, but this attempt was a disaster! Mulling it over, I concluded that the local water just has too many minerals dissolved in it. It is known to be very acidic too. (Cheap imported solar units installed in the Caledon townships by the Municipality barely two years ago are already failing because of corrosion.)
Well, now there’s a new project lurking – a solar water still?