Aboot the boot: Rugby World Cup 2007

Confession time: we don't watch rugby, cricket, or golf.
We don't have a tv, and just cannae be bothered...except this year. We are bothered.

Go Springboks!

I am mostly kept informed by my colleagues, in retrospect, of developments in these sporting multiverses. It usually goes like this:
I arrive at school in the morning and bump into Colleague 1.
'Hê-hê, we trashed the Boks fair last night,' he says, poking me conspiratorially in the ribs.
'Eh,' I respond.
'What did you think of the game last night?' asks Colleague 2 excitedly in front of the pigeon holes.
'Er, what game?' I reply tentatively.
At which an onimous silence descends over the entire staffroom, the copier stops working and the sports coach chokes on his coffee.
John, my head of department, gallantly comes to the rescue.
'Cricket. Scotland beat South Africa in the Super Minus 13?'

They are too nice ever to say anything, but my lack of involvement in these games (especially as a South African who represents limitless bantering potential) is a huge disappointment.

But this Saturday, we will have something in common: we will unite and cheer wildly for the mighty Springboks!

Scotland How-to: Money

Money can be confusing.







This guide should help prospective spenders heading for Scotland to get an inkling of what Scots currency looks like, and what you can do with it on a rainy morning.

These are the coins and they are actually worth something. The heavier the coin, the more it is worth, so you'll immediately feel that £2 will get you a few yards further than 50p.*
*£ = pound; p = pennies, or p's (pronounced 'pees', as in 'pee-pee')

All of the above coins will enable you to purchase

a large cappuccino from Costa Coffees.

I think you could squeeze in a croissant.
(Clearly, I need to do some research here.)




The next note of worth is the fiver.

With five pounds you can breathe a little more freely, and buy

two of you favourite magazines!
(Yours, not mine - I'm trying to appeal to a wider audience here.)








And then there is the twenty pound note (see image above), purple and proud. You can splurge out on several toasted sandwiches, an Americano and a copy of The Times to prolong the experience. And enjoy stories like Hologram Tam's banknote scam

Icons

A blog's look is vv important. The more blogs I read, the more selfconscious I become and explode into a flurry of changes. Faithful followers of my blog will attest to this (sorry).

After having discovered how to post pictures in the sidebar, a depression of the highest order descended. I needed an icon to summarise, in one elegant swoop, what I the blog is all about. I chose a rondavel.

WHY?!

It's a play of words, you see. My maiden name is 'Davel' and rond means 'round' (which is by no means a reference to my morphology), and should allude in a quasi-existential, neo-metaphysical way to the completeness of things, the circle of life and cake tins.

But a rondavel is something quintessentially African, and that is me.

What is the national icon for Scotland? It's not a rugby ball, neither is it a bloodthirsty highlander in the form of Mel Gibson, but it is the thistle. Humble, thorny, enduring and edible.

...just like most Scots.

Off sick

So, how does it work when you're sick in Scotland?
Amazingly, if you're working in the public sector you don't need a doctor's letter for the first three days, and you are allowed to write your own sickie note for the next 4 days. Therefore you can be off work for 7 days before your boss requires an official letter from the doctor. 7 days!!

I say amazing, because the system seems to place a lot of trust in people. In South Africa you have two days of grace, and then you must produce a medical certificate. This has had the knock-on effect of creating a huge market for false certificates: just add the illness.

Recently, while getting my papers from the doctor, I asked how difficult it would be to bribe him for a certificate. He shared some funny requests he's had from patients coming to see him after more than 7 days off the job with trivial complaints like headache and runny nose, demanding a sick note. He assures me that although he takes all complaints very seriously (and he does, bless him!), he is not allowed to write a med cert in restrospect. Another case was a woman who worked two jobs at the same time, and one unfortunate day her shifts were going to clash. So she promptly asked the doctor to write a quick note to kindly help her out of the fix. He declined, of course, but still considers that one of his more memorable stories.

Compare this with my mother-in-law who, in South Africa, manages a large number of personnel. She received a call the other day, that went something like this:
Wife of employee: 'Good morning, I'm afraid my husband is unable to come to work today.'
Mum-in-law: 'Thank you for calling, is everything okay?'
Wife: 'No, he is not fine - he has a demon and cannot work.'
Mum-in-law: 'A what??!!' (Sure she must have heard wrong)
Wife: 'A demon. Very bad, very bad.'
Mum-in-law: 'I'm very sorry to hear about the demon, but your husband still need to get a sick certificate from the doctor...'

I have to remember to share this with my doctor when we next meet!

From the Press

In today's Times, there is an article that compares the number of white and other (colour, I suppose) kids in primary schools in Britain today. There is actually a graph that shows these statistics. Gasp. Can anybody imagine something like this occurring in a South African paper? I still occasionally reel from the free use of descriptions like 'a Pakistani man' or 'a black man' in the press over here.

In South Africa this has become a big a no-no, the reporters mostly referring to persons. In this article of South Africa's edition of the Mail and Guardian, there are bodies, men and women all over the place. Note the absence of colour, race or anything else that might state the obvious. (I'm surprised they're still differentiating between genders - somebody should put a stop to this!)

The UK press has never avoided their duty of calling a spade a spade, in fact, spadecalling has been developed into an exquisite art. A blush-inducing art, believe me.
Calling attention to the fact that many UK state schools are rapidly filling up with non-white. non-British children, is statement of a fact. In South Africa it would be considered racist.

And South Africans have just become very adept at reading between the lines.

Accidental animals

It's been two weeks since the big bang, and life is settling into a new rhythm. Each morning Duan wakes up before me, and I get to snuggle my head deeper into the pillow for a few more dreams. At some point he serves me with a steaming mug of decaf coffee and a bowl of porridge. My acquiescence that it is indeed morning, and time to wake up, is to prop myself higher on the pillow (grunting and huffling, not everyday that you break a bone in your back) and grab the mug. And, of course, give my angel husband a nice, big kiss.

Our room looks out on a miniscule back yard with a tree from which our bird feeder is suspended. Our squirrel-proof bird feeder that attracts an agreeable assortment of birds and one very crazy squirrel. We were woken one morning by what sounded like an old Marlboro smoker in lung therapy choking on a fish bone.
Uaghk. Uaaaghk. Uuaaghk.
It was our squirrel, hanging onto the feeder and barking to all birds, beasts and other creatures that this was, from now on, HIS patch.

People from over here don't understand how we get so excited at the sight of a rabbit or a squirrel. I mean, we have the big five, right? But in Pretoria you rarely see wild-ish animals in your back yard. They get eaten. Although...now I'm really thinking about it...I've seen recipes for squirrel stew, and this guy, Fergus Drennan, will eat, literally, anything. (For advice on roadkill cuisine, read his blog on the subject.)

For now, our mad squirrel is safe.

Here are a few squirrels for thought. Neither of them are ours, who hates the paparrazzi.

Accidental musings

I was in an accident. The words seem so innocuous...such a cliché...until the day it happens to you.

At the start of my lovely daily commute,there is about 1 mile of cycle route that happens in traffic. This is legal and fair, and at 7:30 am you'd think there's not much traffic around, right?

There I was, obediently signalling to the left in order to exit the roundabout, and from the corner of my eye a huge, grey blurb moved closer, and closer...ta-dum...ta-dum...a modern-day Jaws...and bang - I went flying. What an absurd moment. It happens so slowly and yet too fast to do anything about it. Sailing through the air, I screeched like a harpy; the sound transposing into a stretched out yelp as we (my bike and I) slid across the asphalt.

My first reaction was absolute, red-hot, straight-from-hell, dripping FURY. But then the pain made itself known, like an unwelcome salesperson persisting at your door.

'Knock, knock.'
'Who's there?'
'Pain.'
'Pain who?'
'From this moment, your constant compainion!'

I left a few things back on the tarmac. A trust that a motorist would see a pink neon-clad cyclist on huge purple bicycle in the
prime position on a bright morning with no other traffic around. A bit of skin. A tad of ego.
But I am alive, in one moving piece, and VERY grateful for that.

PS: On a sober note, according to this brilliant (yet belated, in my case) article on the Cycling Plus website, bikeradar,
this is the rule of the road:

Stay alert, follow the traffic rules, stay alert, look out for HGVs and stay alert.