Category: General

Thanks everyone!

It’s been heart-warming to read (now that I can read again) all your good wishes and remarks, and it’s about time that I thanked you, individually and as a group, for your support and encouragement.

Thanks!!

Six weeks and a day ago, someone turned my lights off – put my processor into hibernate and pulled the plug.   That was the last I knew until about two weeks ago, when it began to occur to me that I was a person tucked up in an intensive care ward, that the wonderful caring person who helped look after me each day was in fact my angel of a wife – Boadicea, and that it was time for me to fire up the backups, reboot my software, engage the language routines and start behaving like a human again.   It took a couple of days to get going, but, touch wood and whistle, it’s been upwards ever since.

So, a week ago tomorrow I was released to continue my recuperation at home.   I am indebted to the paramedics and ambos who took me safely and swiftly to the emergency theatre; to the doctors and surgeons of the team who spent three hours reconstructing my cranium, and to the nurses and specialist technicians who kept me functioning while I was away with the fairies in cyber, hyperspace where time has no meaning.   To my GP and all the other experts who did their essential best.   Thank you all.

I’ll spare you the details – and I’d probably get them wrong – but if you met me you’d probably be hard pushed to detect anything wrong (though there are still a few things that have yet to put themselves right).   Perhaps I’m a little more polite and tolerant than I used to be, and readier to acknowledge other people’s point of view, but there again, perhaps I’m not.

Best wishes to all Charioteers. 😀

Happy Easter!

…to us Easterners. Still not the same without mageiritsa, but the midnight service had a particularly cozy feeling.

The outdoor bit was finger-numbingly chilly, however, so I wondered how much booze was running in the veins of the clubbing girls we saw while walking back, the kind in dishtowel-sized dresses and skyscraper-high heels.

Here’s to successful negotiations, later in the month, about taking over St Martin’s church permanently. It’s a listed building, so it’s not going to fall to ruin, but it would be much better put back to its original use.

The Merry Wives of Tshwane

Yesterday it was confirmed that South Africa’s very own Falstaff is to marry for the 6th time. Our polygamous President Zuma, currently enjoys the company of only three wives, having divorced  his second, while his third committed suicide. He has been engaged to his latest fiance for a number of years, but the forthcoming nuptials will formalise the arrangement. JayZee as he is sometimes known, has publicly acknowledged upwards of 20 children by various wives and mistresses, but others claim that the real number of progeny far exceeds this.

In any event here is a happy picture taken at his recent 70th birthday bash.

Got to say, though, that the missus on the right doesn’t look too chuffed.

The Merry Wives of Tshwane

Strange Stuff

There is a whimsical little column in the Sunday Dark Side by Sir Terry Wogan and this week he is on about eating strange stuff. Snails and stuff Sir Tel’s wallet is way heftier than mine so he can afford the chi-chi French restaurants where you can get escargots and haute cuisine, but my budget and tastes are somewhat more humble, though no less exotic, and it got me thinking.

Esteemed Charioteers are spread across the globe and have an immense depth of experience, so what’s the weirdest dish you’ve ever eaten?

OZ

New Poetry Competition

The problem, of course, is that I do not know enough about poetry. 

I do have a 45 year old ‘A’ Higher pass in English but we State school Jocks never got the chance or time to do both Literature and Language seperatim so I’m a bit challenged when it comes to metre and form. I can anapaest onwards from time to time and I have never been averse to the odd spondee but I do know my limitations. Continue reading “New Poetry Competition”

Unbelievable

It’s so reassuring to see that the EU is not letting itself be distracted from the really important things by all these moutain ranges of debt building up in the eurozone.

DT article – Austria-and-Slovenia-row-over-sausages

We frequently buy the sausages in question as part of a barbecue pack from Billa, the Austrian supermarket chain.  I don’t remember them having a “proper” name – Wurst mit Käse, as I recall.  So heavily indebted member states are paying vast sums to a bunch of eurocrats to sort out this sort of problem!  To quote the German – ‘raus, ‘raus, ‘raus!