As irritating, infuriating and exasperating as it might be, I cannot see how President Ramaphosa had any other choice but to take the country back to Level 4.
It is a huge blow to alcohol-related businesses, restaurants etc, but with the soaring numbers in hospital and dying, he would have been roasted for doing nothing.
I just feel so bad for people at the bottom end of earning, waiters and cooks and kitchen staff.
The last 18 months have been a tough break.
I cannot understand those red devils (not that I ever could).
The EFF has been demanding the closure of schools because they are supposedly super spreaders, but sees fit to march in their unmasked thousands to demand jabs from unapproved Chinese and Russian vaccines.
Maybe they are expecting gratitude money from Moscow, or they are just rabble rousers. Shem.
Covid Delta variation: Lockdown level 4.
Power station breakdown variation: Loadshedding Stage 2.
Tembisa Ten variation: Outright lying level 10.
Daily life variation: Frustration level way up there!
It’s said that moving house is one of the most stressful activities, along with divorce and oh, I dunno, trying to get out of Sheffield at rush hour.
We completed our move to Christmas Bay last week, way at the end of Sheffield.
Rose is always on the lookout for a bargain, so when the house movers said it would be cheaper if we prepacked ourselves, the game was on.
She decided to pack our whole house into cardboard boxes, scrounged gratefully from surrounding supermarkets.
In the course of which we decided to discard many of our possessions.
The real surprise came at the other end.
On opening the boxes, we realised that a quart still doesn’t fit in a pint pot.
We’d downsized deliberately, but only discovered at the other end that we still had far too much trash.
Out went the old school photos, 50 years’ worth of birthday cards and letters – why we kept them, I have no idea – tattered Christmas tree decorations, piles of photographs, negatives and LPs (remember those?).
The SPCA shop shelves must be groaning with all the books we’ve given them.
Complete works of Oscar Wilde? Guide to the catacombs of Rome?
Twenty-five different sets of connection plugs and cables for TVs, DVD players, computers and outdated iPads?
We had them all and they’re somebody else’s treasure trove now!
The real wrench was discarding possibly the most useful travel guide of all time, the South American Handbook.
In 6 months backpacking around that continent, that book was our Bible.
Best places to eat cheaply in Lima? See the handbook. A cheap but clean pensione in La Paz?
The handbook had it. From the top to the tip of the continent, the handbook was da boss.
But there’s no use hanging on to a 40-year-old travel guide.
We’ve barely had time to look out of the window since we arrived but oh my, the view!
That’s why we did all this upheaval, to move to the most incredible outlook and the roar of the breakers right below our doorstep.
Well worth all the agony of moving.
We built on one of the steepest plots, almost vertical on a sand dune.
So, the retaining walls and foundation concrete were, are, formidable.
I bet every jogger and walker along Colwyn Drive must have thought ‘those people are completely crazy building there’.
Well, thanks to a very dedicated and professional building crew, the end result is our castle, our haven, our Xanadu.
Like the neighbours, we are going to learn to ooh! and aah! over the parade of dolphins and whales, revel in the sunrises and full moons, enjoy the sea breezes – as well as the roaring gales – and become Sheffielders.
And it’s the very last time I move, I swear.
The next time will be when I’m carried out.
* * *
Every evening news bulletin starts with “Good evening”.
And then they tell you why it’s not.
