Dining around the world
Everybody reads the BBC News – right? No point then in linking to its greatest Correspondents around the world blogging about their best and worst meals.
Tales from a hangover
When I first moved to Smithfield in early spring, the bug nightlife had just started warming up.
A few long legged spiders, not apparently interested in spinning webs, could be found hiding behind furniture and walking walls – no match for a shoe. As spring progressed, the moths and night flyers in their thousands, from hand sized feather dusters to spinning electrons, could be found orbiting the lights in their search for lunar fulfilment. Moths are cute, but a bit annoying when they hit you in the face every few seconds. I developed a strategy to keep them away from my computer monitor at night – the bulb above my desk was reduced and a series of ever increasing wattages led to the centre of the solar system in the hall. Doors were closed at dusk (to little apparent effect).
The occasional Shongololo found its way under the kitchen door and sailed majestically across the carpet – Shongololo is the Zulu name for centipede, a 4 inch long dark brown tube of crispy shell, we played with them as kids, they tickled and smelled funny when you chopped them in half.
Button spiders of various spinning abilities set up shop in corners. OK, well, they can eat some of the night flyers. And frogs started to squeeze under doors and sit under the lights – they took care of strays and debris. Frogs are cute too, if you are a small boy, but they also crap turds the size of a Shongololo and pee all over the place. Sitting in the cat’s water bowl can also be endearing. But then they started queuing up for a dip. I now have a door charge and no crap policy – if they don’t sign up they get flying lessons. With sufficient spin they Frisbee rather well, limbs akimbo they usually make it over the stoep.
Smithfield is basically in the desert, the town water tastes like chlorinated toxic waste. The borehole water isn’t bad, but must be saved for times of drought and rationed in the garden. So everybody gets excited with every spring shower, and around Xmas a good soaking is usually forthcoming. A couple of days of dramatic downpours and the garden goes from crusty toast to nuclear green. Then out of the sodden ground, like a scene from dawn of the dead, erupt the Shongololos in their millions.
They pour under the stoep door like a crude-oil waterfall, they re-enact the battle of Trafalgar on the carpet – the French and Spanish fleets in disarray, while a disciplined line of Nelsons Shongololos head for my feet. Fortunately they can be swept up rather easily – this slightly smaller variety will curl up into round pellets at the slightest touch of the broom. A four foot wide broom comes in really handy, and several sweeps a day keeps them at bay. But while it’s wet they just keep on coming, at night I hear cracking sounds as they fail to make it to the top of the 15 foot high walls and clatter to the floor. Totally harmless of course, but I have taken to wearing shoes at all times, it’s the rice crispy crunch of them underfoot that’s annoying.
And then there is Arachnid Solifugae, otherwise known locally as the Red Roman. The Red Roman can not be found in the tourist brochure, even here they are not mentioned in polite society, only after you have been here for a while will someone spill the beans and mention the battle they are having in the bathroom with one of these scurrying monsters. I had heard the rumours and braced myself for the worst, but I also wondered if my imagination was perhaps getting the better of reality. A few months ago I heard some scurrying behind a cupboard and went to investigate with a flashlight, only to jump out of my skin at the sight of a child’s pink plastic squid lodged among the debris. The scurrying turned out to be a mouse which the cat quickly dispatched (with a wink as it spaghetti slurped the last of the tail).
Arachnids are a group of bugs that include spiders scorpions and mites, and Solifuges are an order that range over most of Africa, usually favouring desert conditions.
To quote solpugid.com (bottom left picture) “They are hunters and catch their prey in large and powerful chelicerae. Solifuges vary from a few millimetres to 10 centimetres in length and look superficially like stout, hairy, fast-running spiders with an extra pair of legs.”
They are not known to be poisonous – David Attenborough would probably hold one delicately between thumb and forefinger. The Red Roman that revealed itself to me under a piece of hardboard in the dinning room was pink and had an abdomen the size of an egg. My brain simultaneously said ‘so finally that’s what it looks like’ and ‘my god that’s fuckin disgusting’. I had a little drink the day before and considered the possibility that bug shaped delirium tremens had finally arrived. No this was the real thing, it looked much bigger than 10 cm and any minute now it was going to scurry. Shit I was leaning over it in shorts. I carefully backed off and removed a slipper. A house slipper? That was going to bounce off this monster. I sidled out and returned with a hiking shoe, it hadn’t moved. I considered going out to buy a pair of Wellington boots, but whacked instead. It disappeared in a cloud of plasma, even spiders leave a pair of legs, this bugger was history, nothing remained but goo. But why hadn’t it scurried? I wondered if it was already dead, either way, it was now.
I was lying in bed last night, keeping track of dark moving shapes on the ceiling with some mini binoculars (a Christmas present), and shooting the nearest ones with a water pistol (also a Christmas present), when I heard some cats wailing in the kitchen. I carefully shook out my slippers before crunching down the hall to break up the romance. There was a scurrying Red Roman in the passageway half the size of my first encounter – it did a couple of circles before I whacked it with my trusty slipper. It didn’t bother me in the slightest – even the big spiders no longer bother me. I crunched back to bed, turned off the lights and went to sleep.
Sleep tight!
The road to Malealea
I took a visa run last weekend to Lesotho, and Malealea lodge at the western end of the Drakensberg mountains.
You know you are a sad nerd when …
You blog about the cat …
You know you are a sad nerd in Africa, when,, you blog about a frog the frogs that turn up every night to take a dip in the cat’s water bowl.
I think I understand now why she doesn’t drink the water in the morning – frogs fuck in it.
Day of the Locusts
Huge clouds of Locusts swept over Smithfield today, they settled for a while in fields on either side of me, luckily they didn’t do too much damage, a stiff breeze blew up as they arrived and after an hour or so they had passed over. Still its an impressive site.
Why Are Atheists So Angry?
And while we are contemplating the big questions – here is an interesting exchange from both corners:
Day 1 (Sam Harris): Why Are Atheists So Angry? | Jewcy.com
Much as i admire Sam Harris’ argument, and think that its very necessary to vocalise his view- in a time when fundamentalism from Texas to Afghanistan is buggering minds and nations.
I just wish that when discussing Gaad, that Gaad was first defined. Is Gaad the sum of everything, and is this sum-of-everything-being actually interested in the bedroom antics of your average Texan, or Iranian? Does seem kind of unlikely. Is Gaad a dimly perceived natural law of the universe that could aid your actions in life. Is Gaad in the universe or is Gaad apart from the universe. Enquiring minds want to know.
Well i guess the nature of Gaad would be another discussion. But i do wonder- if they could actually define what they meant by Gaad, then perhaps each side of the discussion would be able to understand what the other side is going on about… Doesn’t the Koran have something about the secret names of Gaad?
HalleLager
Truthdig – An Atheist Manifesto
Truthdig – An Atheist Manifesto
I am becoming so intolerant of intolerance – this manifesto is well worth linking to again.
The Africa You Need to Know
The Western media love to portray Africa as a backward, famine-plagued caricature, but the world’s second most populous continent has more to offer than tragedy.
Source: The Africa You Need to Know
Originally published on Wed, 29 Nov 2006 12:47:00 GMT
Flower Power
I dont know what this herbal beasty in the garden is, but it was glowing in the overcast light the other day.
And here is a Garden inspired doodle
Letsatsi game lodge
As part of the annual Scorpio dinner, Barbara invited us all to lunch/brunch/dinner at Letsatsi – the web site needs some work, it doesn’t convey any real sense of this amazing game lodge. Unfortunately we were far too bloated from the endless buffet courses to take up the offer of a game drive.
Hard Rain
When the rains came this evening I was in the mood to watch it, a reaction that’s hard to find living in England. But I was quite happy to spend a few hours sitting on my stoep in the fading light, thunder flashing windmill silhouettes through a sheet of rain.
The windmill is a totem of South Africa’s “Free State”. High and dry, cattle are watered from tanks attached to these wind powered pumps with the minimum of fuss. Here in a small town, many gardens are equipped with their own windmill/reservoir combos. These friendly beasts rumble away at the bottom of the garden in the slightest breeze. I must investigate the proper maintenance of my own (rented) monster. They may look neglected in the landscape, but eco-power is expensive to replace.
A phone call from a neighbour – the rain is a cause of celebration – “great, wonderful rain” lets enjoy it. Winter is the dry season and spring is here. Any English thoughts of inconvenience are banished. Release from tension can be felt through the cerebral activity of the lower atmosphere. The light show is spectacular.
Sitting surrounded by the rain and wind, I am almost taken back to sailing days. It is foolish on a small boat in the middle of an ocean to blame the weather for any inconvenience. A spark of fear and excitement must galvanize tired bones when bad weather approaches, it may be here to stay for a while, don’t fight it, fight for your lives.
Most offshore sailing (as apposed to hanging around in bars sailing) is, after you have done everything to make the boat safe, about watching weather. Every change in cloud or wind means something. A wave pattern coming from another direction may indicate a storm over there, – you know it does, but will it be coming this way? A shift in the breeze is the edge of a great swirling lump of atmosphere, part of the ocean “system” you may be transversing.
At sea with thunderstorms around and the only metal pointing up into the air, you are pretty much expecting cataclysm. A lightning strike means the end of the world as you know it, at the very least it’s the end of a small fortune in electrical gear, the radios and nav aids, not to mention computers and sundry electronic toys. The gear that was telling you what this bad boy was up to, is gonna get fried, what the hell are you doing here? At worst it’s going to blow a hole in the bottom of the boat – put your wellies on.
But nothing wrong with a good old storm and plenty of sea room. Any blow smacks you in the face with reality; you are in it and enjoy it. Live for taking a sailboat from here to the next bar, peering through stinging rain to see if the next cloud is darker- more wind, or that island that disappeared with the first line of squalls.
But I love my stoep, I could call it a patio, but its not. A patio brings to mind the many variations of garden and home improvements in the UK. A stoep in Africa is formidable, more like the cockpit of a boat, a place to watch the weather, to breakfast and lunch (dinner is in the kitchen). Inevitably its open to the elements, a galvanized iron roof – as are all the roofs here, supported by sturdy pillars with a table for tea and vices. I like my back stoep, with a view of the garden, the mountain in the distance, birds bugs and windmill, all busy in the weather.
Lightning
Yesterday the afternoon thunderstorms just passed around Smithfield, and as evening descended the show was in full swing. This was the view over my garden wall.
Here is the “artistic” rendering
Africa is Big
You think it’s a long way to the corner shop for a packet of cigarettes – well thats nothing compared to Africa (apologies to DNA)
Last week i took a trip down to Port Alfred with Barbara to stay with cousin Julius and scout out the area – here are a few piks from the drive
The rains have arrived
One of the problems this time of year for computer users are the thunderstorms – these wonderful dragons fly over the hill in the afternoon, drop much needed rain and disappear by evening.
The video quality is crap – but the sound track says it all
Back in Africa
I moved into my new house in Smithfield this weekend – here are a few shots of the house. For obvious reasons it’s called the tower house and looks like a boat with a bridge
Fighting Apartheid With Her Heart
Hilda Bernstein, who died of heart failure Friday at age 91
The Bernsteins were among a handful of middle-class, middle-aged whites who had nice homes, good jobs and servants, yet risked it all by fighting for racial equality even after South Africa descended into a police state. They led double lives, maintaining an outward routine of bourgeois respectability while participating in increasingly dangerous underground political activity. And they paid a huge price: Some were imprisoned, others exiled and still others killed.
Alison in Male
Alison mentioned that you could probably walk around Mali – the capitol of the Maldives – in a few hours, so I measured the ring road inside the seawall with Google earth, and it’s 3.3 miles. At a fast clip you could do it in hour.
Alison has been sold into slavery – she thinks she’s going to work on a tropical island in the Indian ocean. I suspect they are harvesting gullible lilly white chicks for the harem of a suitable Sheik – good honest work if you can get I suppose.
Keep a Cat? Feeling Neurotic?
A Nation of Neurotics? Blame the Puppet Masters?
Toxoplasma gondii is an extraordinary creature, whose exploits I’ve chronicled in previous posts , an article in the New York Times and my book Parasite Rex. This single-celled organism has a life cycle that takes it from cats to other mammals and birds and back to cats again. Studies have shown that the parasite can alter the behavior of rats, robbing them of their normal fear of cats–and presumably making it easier for the parasites to get into their next host.
I keep getting redirected to French sites
Well OK- I am in France at the moment- but it’s a really annoying and way-too-clever-by-far tendency when sites sniff your IP and redirect you to the local version of their site. So when the BBC reported this last week that a new browser that covered your tracks was available, I clicked with interest. A brief read was enough to tell me that this “new browser” did nothing that you couldn’t set up Firefox to do.
Today I read that after some testing this so called browser is little more than an Adware machine to serve content from overture. Big slap on the wrist to the BBC’s Teck section for falling for, and promoting this junk.
Meantime I will wait for a Firefox extension to hide my IP from the clever click dicks
