Fishing down on the Wild Coast a few years ago, I was standing in a gully in about knee-deep water, minding my own business, when a “thing” grabbed my whole lower leg tight.
I couldn’t see what it was in the swirling surf. I yelled (or maybe screamed) and gave a tremendous and purely instinctive kick, and a good-sized octopus went sailing off.
Yirrrr! They’re harmless, but having a big thing go gloop on your leg is nearly heart attack material.
The memory came rushing back when I saw the outstanding documentary My Octopus Teacher the other night.
It starts out with the filmmaker telling a story of how he started snorkelling at Camps Bay for relaxation and discovered a whole new hidden world.
First off, there are two things immediately remarkable about Camps Bay. One is the kelp forest, which is thick and does not look a very friendly place to swim.
Then there’s the sea temperature, if you can call it that. At 15 degrees it is more like a geometry angle than something you’d want to put your body into. Which he does, without a wetsuit, and says that you get used to it after about a year of swimming every day.
Ja sure, when you don’t have any nerve endings any more.
Anyhow, the kelp forest turns out not to be that scary and he watches an octopus going about her daily business, learning her habits and “befriending” her, to the point he believes she actually knows him and allows him into her world.
I don’t want to give the good bits away, but the photography is absolutely brilliant and it’s an original story well told.
It’s a heart-warming story that South Africa really needs at the moment, far away from the anger and chatter of viruses and social media and politics and all that.
It deserves many awards. You can watch it on Netflix.
Then . . . along comes a dose of South African humour.
Another filmmaker has come up with a spoof of the octopus film, using a Kreepy Krawley pool cleaner.
The narrator describes the Kreepy in the same loving terms, the camera following it around a pool just like the octopus guy did.
It’s very funny and a great ad for Kreepy – which you will remember is also a South African invention. * * * It’s been anybody’s guess how many jobs were lost because of the coronavirus. 
The official stats say 16.4 million were employed last year in the formal sector and 6.7 million were unemployed.
That doesn’t take into account the informal sector, which we would guess is enormous but again, hard to put figures to.
The unemployed figures count people actively looking, but if you add those who would like a job but do not actively look for one, the figure goes up to north of 10 million.
A statistic that crossed my desk from the banking clearing house, BankservAfrica, is that the number of take-home salaries in South Africa dropped by almost 35% in July compared to the same month in 2019.
In addition, they say, a high number of individuals have not been paid a salary or wage throughout the lockdown period.
So, using that as a rough guide, 5.7 million people lost their jobs from the formal sector by the middle of lockdown.
That is horrific! It’s also a fact that the ones who will suffer most are the poor.
My young gardener came to work on Monday to tell me that a gang broke into his room in Shayamoya in the middle of the night, beat him and stole all his possessions and money.
He was luckier than his neighbour, a Zimbabwean, who was stabbed many times and is struggling for his life in hospital.
He actually recognised several of the men as residents of the area and has told police he is able to point them out.
We’ll have to see what comes of that, but it would seem that predictions that crime would rise in the wake of the pandemic are coming true. Be careful out there.
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