“Magic says he’s sorry,” Rose said as I walked into the kitchen.
“What for?” I asked, seeing our black Labrador sprawled in the corner, looking sorry for himself.
“For whatever he’s done that has stopped us taking him for walks,” she replied.
In the bc era (before corona), Magic thoroughly enjoyed our early morning walks along Catfish beach, rain or shine, chasing his ball and coming home thoroughly wet and happy.
He growled at General Cele, or whatever rank our minister of police gives himself, on the TV the other night when he said “No dogs allowed!”
Magic would bite him if he stuck his hat over our gate!
Actually, apart from Cele’s theatrics, I was enormously impressed with the parade of cabinet ministers at the three-hour press conference on, what was it, last Wednesday night?
Just goes to show what the government can do with the right motivation.
The minister of home affairs said, and he was so sure of himself he said it three times, that the offices would be open but they would only process replacement IDs, replacement birth certificates and something else (I can only remember two things at a time).
Now if he just tried a little harder and added to that passports, marriage certificates and a few other things, we’d have an efficient home affairs in no time!
Then all the other ministers got up and told us all the things they were going to be doing.
Wonderful stuff! Imagine if we could have this show every month with the media asking questions, even stupid ones.
This crisis might just be what we’ve needed to show the government what can be done if they stop squabbling and work together for once.
They might even surprise themselves.
The lockdown brings back memories of the bad old days of the civilian army when three-week breaks from reality were a regular occurrence.
Once a year you’d be lumped together with a bunch of guys in some Godforsaken place for 21 days of the biggest waste of time of your life.
I once spent the time ‘guarding’ the oil tanks at Fynnlands, near the Bluff. We were stuck up concrete towers, three hours on, six hours off, with a rifle, five rounds of ammunition and a crank telephone.
The telephone was not really for you to alert the duty sergeant about the terrorists attacking, it was for him to ring you every 30 minutes to keep you awake.
We learned pretty quickly to answer the phone while fast asleep.
It was the most mind-numbing activity I have ever been so unfortunate to be involved in, bar none, though Facebook comes close.
Three weeks went by very, very slowly.
By comparison, this corona lockdown is going to be a doddle.
I’m at home, there’s TV, books, and a list of household chores Rose has dreamed up as long as my arm.
Now here’s a thing.
During this crisis you’re going to be wanting accurate information, aren’t you?
Do you get your info from social media or the real deal?
For instance, did you hear about the “Groote Schuur surgeon” who said 60 percent of the population would die?
Some of our family sent it to us in great alarm.
When I hear extreme things like that, I check News24, Business Day or, if it’s local, the Courier’s own team of journalists, for verification.
As it turned out, the real surgeon said it was fake – some idiot had done a voice-over on a video of her.
And there’s tons of fake rubbish going about.
Legitimate news sources don’t always get it right, but they make a damned good effort to speak to the people who should know. In the media business, reputation is everything.
A mistake here and there is human, but do it too often and you’ve got a worse reputation than Carl Niehaus.
I hope and pray that this crisis will go a long way in this digital, instant gratification era to re-establishing trust in traditional media versus social media, to the use of legitimate sources versus the neighbour who hears some snippet from a friend of a friend and merrily posts it on social media for all the world to gawk at.
But I digress.
This is but Week One of Days of Corona and I hope you’re learning fast how to entertain yourself.
Even though I don’t drink or smoke, the ban on alcohol and tobacco sales is a bit over the top, don’t you think?
There’s nothing like cold turkey for harmony in the home!
Try to look on the bright side though.
There’s no business, no factories, so there’ll be no loadshedding.
Have fun!
* * *
Did you hear about the successful entrepreneur?
He built his entire itch-cream business from scratch.
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