The M.A.D. post

The M.A.D. Post  

(steampunk pics are acknowledged with links to original creators' sites, click on captions to go to the websites)

My brain has been a whirl of ideas and undone creations, and my memory is not serving me very well. I forget where I put things, and I forget what I came to the bedroom for, or why I’m standing with a newspaper and a knife in my hand. All this ‘mindly’ matter got me thinking about technology and the ‘thingamabobs’ that aid us in so many ways. A friend showed concern a while back about Facebook shutting its virtual doors on us in March, because what’s-his-name (what is his name?) was tired of it all and wanted a social life, A SOCIAL LIFE. Nah, I don’t think so. And tired of all that money rolling out, paving his socially inept path - don’t think so. Anyway, I feel safe in the fact that my relationship with FB is still ongoing. I first opened my FB account when my daughter went to Sweden, just so I could see her pics and catch up on her news, and then I started finding glorious people from my past. I don’t think virtual friendships are the ideal, nor do I need to know what friends had for supper (unless it’s truly exotic and there’s a pic) or that they’re going to feed the dog or are going to bed. I am not mad about being poked, but I do like being liked, and I love knowing about friends’ creations and dreams and travels and children, and when they’re feeling down so I can send the vibes. Without FB I wouldn’t be in touch with friends who have moved away, or those I last saw in childhood. Nor would my creative world have been opened up by the inspiration from friends who I have met through their artworks and who have become friends on FB; friends I can now say I know and love through being exposed to their inspirational work and family pics. I would not for one second swap ‘real’ relationships for the virtual kind, but social networking on FB serves me so well. I have tried to Twitter or Tweet, but I have not figured it out, so, because I don’t understand it at all, I shall leave it for the birds.

Hang on, I was talking about my memory, wasn’t I? Well, if they can walk on the moon… no, I take that back, not sure they really did…have you seen those dodgy landing photos?  If they can create all these technological miracles that can do just about everything for you, then how about a Memory Aiding Device? I would be the first in line for a Memory Aiding Device (M.A.D.). Imagine getting a brain tweek just as you’re about to put your sunglasses in the fridge, or a twinge as you stand looking vaguely at the grocery shop shelves without your list, and the twinge would stop as you get to the item you need. A M.A.D. is definitely where I’m at, and how difficult can it be to make this? If they can make iPads and iPods

my little eye pod

and docking stations and miraculous wonders named after brainless fruits (Blackberries and Apples…REALLY) then surely they can do this. Talking about fruity technology, is it meant to confuse the confused and embarrass the techno challenged oldies? Apple technology used to be about      how you put fizz into apple juice, now it is about strange and wondrous applications that enhance your life in fabulous ways. I can just imagine asking my 90 year old mum if she’d seen my Blackberry Torch. What would she think she was looking for? 

      my blackberry torch

It seems it might be a trend to name the latest techno gadgets/companies after fruit. There’s even a phone company named Orange, but I guess it could be the colour not the citrus. The whole idea is just utterly bananas as far as I’m concerned.

Talking of M.A.D. I could also do with a N.O.D. (Never Over-react Device). This device would distract you in an urgent manner when you needed to stop doing the “diva drama queen” routine. We all know how bodily functions stop us in our tracks…like…I need a wee NOW! Well this device could tweek your bladder just as your rant gets out of hand, you know, when you actually leave your body and see yourself letting rip at some poor, unsmiling shop-teller who has scanned your peanut butter three times by mistake. You float there above your ranting self and think “Gees, woman look at you, this is humiliating, stop already, you look too red, the manager is heading over.”  Well, if you were just given a prod from the N.O.D. you would leave the shopping items and head to the nearest toilets with your legs crossed, saving you from getting the teller fired, the manager apologizing and you from having a stroke. It would however mean, that to save face, you'd have to start your shopping all over again at another mall. If everyone had a N.O.D. then there would be no more road rage, but then I think the device would have to tweek something other than your bladder or there would be far more people than there are already, peeing against walls all over Durban. Perhaps it could just cramp up a leg muscle which would be released as soon as you step away from the victim’s vehicle and get back into your car and put down the full 2 litre Coke bottle you’re wielding.

Steampunked laptop

Now to me all these amazing 

high- tech inventions are just ‘thingamabobs’. The word thingamabob is a bit archaic I guess, and it brings to mind the mad professor inventing machines to take over the world, using clock cogs and brass pistons. I quite like the idea of thingamabobs - less sleek and more fantasy. There is actually an art form that does just this - makes thingamabobs and doodats. 

This type of artwork is called Steampunk. Steampunk is just about the coolest thing I’ve seen (ever) and I’m collecting old watches and rusty keys, washers, chains, eye glasses, magnifiers, stray hands, articulated joints and flying goggles for my inventions (any donations welcome…I’m serious). You may be wondering how this relates to the whole memory/ranting new device theme, bear with me. Steampunk refers to an art form that adds an antiquated Victorian aesthetic to modern technology. I love it, and if my memory device could be Steampunked, then I’d be overjoyed. 

If a computer can have a 
memory device why can't I?

Somehow the sleek look of the latest devices just adds to the stress levels of those trying to understand how to switch them on. By Steampunking them, more people might feel an affection for them, an excitement, as though you were about to embark on a wild adventure in a Zeppelin. By seeing little cogs and tiny brass screws they would be determined to understand the wonder of a device that would enhance their lives. No one would be able to bring themselves to throw a wondrous gadget that seemed to come from a story book against a wall in the frustration of sending yet another blank message to someone. 

blue tooth

The wonder of having the latest technology in a curious Victorian casing would definitely endear me to it. It seems man has always wanted to be transported back in time to fix the mess ups that have caused the chaos of living today. Having an item that looks like it was found in a Victorian attic would give that feeling of another time, when spinning cogs and wind-ups made sense.

I think what I’m really saying is that there are times when all the spinning chaos of such a fast paced life, has me needing to just simplify things. I have this desire to find a large glass shaft, stand in it, and ask to be beamed up, in the hope that there is a tray of brownies, iced tea and a swaying palm on the other side.

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Links to the steampunk devices pictured on this blog (have a look at all the inspiring stuff): 

http://www.toxel.com/tech/2009/07/12/12-steampunk-gadgets-and-designs/

http://www.tektuff.com/extraordinary-steampunk-computer-workshop/

PS: speaking of  'thingamabobs', please watch this video of The Real Group (I saw them live last week,wow). They are the most amazing acapella group from Sweden, and this song in particular sums up the confusion I feel when I'm faced with the never-ending, always evolving, technological whirlpool. 
It's a must-see, Steampunked sort of song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpyMQNFkgRc&feature=related

Tread carefully

(apologies for the poor quality of the pics. I took them on my cell phone, and it was made before cells had mega pixel cameras) 

Last week I was coming home from Westville on the concrete highway. I was in the fast lane next to a pantechnicon, when I heard an almighty bang kaplunk, slap slap, gonk, kapow, crack, crack, crack. It was coming from my car, not the truck, and I nearly had a seizure (the fact that I’m writing this blog means I survived). I didn’t know what to do, there was no garage, no houses or shops to pull over at. I wondered, should I stop here on the highway, risking being squashed by a truck or mugged by someone who might pretend to help (now don’t go thinking I’m being neurotic because I heard a story of a guy who had a flat tyre and stopped to change it, three friendly guys stopped to help him, then drove his car into a neighbouring country, leaving him on the roadside, without his phone, laptop and lunch) or do I risk being blown-up in my car by driving home? I decided, I’d take my chances driving home. So I crawled. There wasn’t any smoke or engine smell, so I just crept, kaplunking all the way and praying for green lights. I made it home and went to check the side the noise had come from- there were huge chunks of tread missing from the tyre. Don’t think that you’d never use a re-tread because they’re dangerous, because this was NOT a re-tread. The AA came and changed the tyre saying “re-treads can be dangerous”, then corrected himself by saying “Oh, this isn’t a re-tread” and “I’ve never seen this happen before”. Over the years many people attending to things that have gone wrong for me, have said those very same words (like the electrician who said it after I was almost electrocuted by touching the hot tap, but that’s another whole tale).

the desk where you pay for all four tyres

The morning after the de-treading, I got up earlier so there was time to gird my loins before going to the garage to have the tyre story sorted. Now I say girded because workshops and garages are very overwhelming for me. I think it has to do with those polystyrene cups at water machines, the grease, overalls and testosterone fumes. I sprayed extra perfume on my wrists thinking if it gets too gamey I can always snort them. So I get there early and there’s already a queue, then I realise, I do not have a book to read and if I decided to read the car mags on the table, I didn’t have my reading glasses. I cursed under my breath. One of the mechanics/tyre guys checked out the damaged tyre (told me it was just old and had started to split) and then advised me to change them all. I almost asked for a brown paper bag at that moment, but remembered the terror on the freeway and decided to get them all done (I don’t neglect my car and all tyres had the legal amount of tread on them, except for the offending one which did have lovely tread on the parts that still had tread). This salesman could feel my vulnerability and honed in like a jack-hammer, perhaps he had a whiff of my perfume and interpreted it as a sign of weakness.

Did she also forget her glasses?

So off to the waiting room I went. Now I have to be honest, this is not a bad looking garage if you’re a man. It is black and yellow and chromed with that rubbery floor stuff with small raised circles all over it. In the waiting room there is a water cooler, big screen TV, fairly comfy chairs and a carpet mottled black and brown- I think it was the way it was dyed not from grease and sand (clever colour choice). It is also air-conditioned.

I relax a bit, thinking, well, it’s cooler than my car and I’m comfortable, how bad can it be? There were about five others in the waiting room, they all had their reading glasses with them or they didn’t need them so were reading their newspapers. One woman was lap-topping, and another just gazed into the workshop area blankly (she obviously hadn’t prepared herself very well, because I could see she was trying to hold it together and her dazed look wouldn’t allow her to smile at me). So I sighed and relaxed into my chair (black artificial leather, also a good choice). There is rugby on the TV, but the sound is down thankfully. I wonder why they don’t put some wors rolls by the water cooler, or some biltong or even a couple of samoosas. I guess they don’t really want rugby fans loitering about getting all social after their cars are done. Hang on a minute, I see the ball is round. It is soccer on the TV, but I don’t know the rules of either very well, and can usually only tell the difference by the ball shape, yet I don’t see a reason to use a funny shaped ball to play rugby, a round one seems perfectly sensible to me.

The view

I glance over the road, train lines look grey in a grey world highlighted by an almost white hot sky, litter clings to a barbed wire fence. 

Rather than watching the cars slide past across my view and rather than watch the soccer, I decide to find my microscopic note book and jot down thoughts for my blog. My car is sitting without wheels in the distance and the queue for the alignment is getting longer, this will take a while. I’m comfortable and jotting ideas and smiling to myself. It is quiet except for the odd clang of a wheel spanner falling. These tyre guys wield those spanners like ninjas. One has his spanner in his belt making a cross over his bum, ready at any moment to swing it into action, a veritable Darth Vader in overalls.

I jot, and think, quite pleasant actually, and then……. someone comes in with a vacuum cleaner. A small vacuum that has lost all its brushes and nozzles, because it is quite obviously only used for vacuuming carpets in cars. It only has the pipe coming from the machine and, I kid you not, that guy knelt down (because the pipe was too short to stand) and he vacuumed the whole carpet (about 8 square metres of it) with the 2 inch end of that pipe. If I am not at the end of a vacuum cleaner pipe (and that’s not often, ‘cause I’m a failed housewife) then I can’t tolerate that noise. It is like swarms of things in my head, it drones and butchers my thoughts) so I stop jotting and speak to the vacuum man, who complains bitterly from his crawling position about not having a longer pipe or any brushes. I think to myself that there are some guys on the workshop floor who would be better suited to vacuuming with a short pipe, seeing their knuckles are almost touching the floor when they walk. Earlier I saw one of them rolling two tyres in tandem across the floor and then hoisting them up. Tyres in their rims are heavy and this has lengthened their arms somewhat. I resign myself to the fact that I will spend another hour waiting and trying to hum a tune to the drone. Finally, silence again, and the vacuum operator smiles at me as he leaves. I am too exhausted to jot or think, so I wait and almost doze but stop myself because I may snore and just become part of this testosterone hell.

Finally my car gets aligned and I’m told about the importance of rotating the tyres every 6 months. NO amount of imagination or clonking sounds created in my head allow me to see myself doing this again in 6 months time.

Back then the cars had a trap door that we could pull open with a chain to check our tire wear.  Tim Flock  

For any guys who may be interested in these trap doors here's an article...just looking at the website reminds me of my ordeal http://www.circletrack.com/featuredvehicles/ctrp_0711_fireball_grand_national/photo_13.html

(D)Urban Legends

It has taken a week to get to my blog. I’ve been mulling over what aspect of Durban to write about, and I remembered reading lists sent by email about things peculiar to South Africa. They made me laugh, and they rang true to the South African experience. I decided to make my own list typical of Durban but fairly ubiquitous throughout South Africa. Being in Durban means…..

•  If you’re catching a taxi to the Bluff and you hail it down by putting your index finger up, you will end up in the CBD.

• When you take a dip in the ocean (and you’re alone) you have to place your towel, shoes, keys and cell phone in a zip lock bag and tie it to your chest, ‘cause if you leave them on the beach, you’ll be without a towel to dry off on, no means of transport and no cell to call for help or money for the pay phone, and you will be walking home with burning feet!

• You can buy 4 chappies, a loaf of bread and some tik all at the same corner tearoom.

• You had to change the name of your restaurant from “Bistro on Cowey” to “Burgers on Problem Mhkize”.

• People can green up the neighbourhood by planting trees in the potholes on every street.

• Sink holes pop up even in the most affluent neighbourhoods, and people have nearly drowned in them (in their cars nogal)....not called sink holes for nothing.

• At robots, guys hand out fliers advertising the doctor who has cures for ailments that would make a warrior blush.

• Young ‘happening’ people drive their cars with the seat pushed right back, so they can lie down and steer with one arm that barely reaches the wheel, while they drink a Black Label.

• Real men marinade their steak in beer before throwing it on an open fire.

• You could get arrested for smoking within 5 metres of a restaurant but you can drive at 100 km per hour in a 60 km zone with your child standing (without a seat belt) on the front seat.

• Vuvuzelas may cause permanent hearing loss but they will only be banned if they are used as missiles at a match (this is a REAL FIFA rule, so do not throw your vuvuzela, you have been WARNED).
• Takkies dangling from an overhead power line are never just takkies dangling on an overhead power line.

• ‘Car guards’ who have never driven a vehicle get to show you how to reverse.

• The best bunnies in Durbs are not the fluffy kind.

• If you are one of three elephants made by Boetie (the international sculptor), then you can pretty much pack your trunks and waddle off penniless into the African sunset.

• “Walkie talkies” are not those little radios you lusted after as a child and “smilies” are not the little icon thingies you attach to your mail so your friends think you care. They are chicken feet and heads (walkie talkies) and are sheep heads “smilies”- you can buy them frozen or fresh on the side of the road).

• Music in said taxis rocks with the highest decibels that cause the lowest hearing in later life. Going deaf could be a greater problem that HIV.

• A “boom” used to be something you sat under for shade…now you can smoke it.

• On facebook, when you get poked it’s just silly fun, but in Durban you usually don’t live to tell the tale (Indian slang for stabbing.

• Eskom holds no power.

• You can have a “mother-in-law’s tongue” curry that will blow your socks off and singe parts of you for days on end.

• Seeing men peeing on walls is as common as seeing children under 10 begging in the traffic.

• Laughing at yourself with others is a genuine cure-all.
  

Durban is a place of contrasts, where spice and sweat and grime contrast with billowy days held together brightly by blue and white laced skies. Where people who have too much, flaunt their wealth, and those who have nothing, sleep in doorways. Where a warm ocean invites, and night streets threaten. Ja, this is my Durban, and sometimes it hurts like hell, and sometimes it’s just lukka. 

Hitting reverse gear

For those of you not familiar with car guards, they are the people who ‘look after’ our cars while they are parked outside businesses, in parking lots and at outdoor or sporting events. We need them because it was happening too often that when you thought you’d forgotten where you parked your car, it was actually on someone’s  shopping list in Mozambique and was already on its way to the border, while you stood laden with shopping, facing an empty parking spot.

Car guarding started off in an informal way, with entrepreneurs taking tips in exchange for looking after your car. It was a way for the unemployed to feed families or drinking habits. Now they have been rounded up by people who knew a money making opportunity when they saw it, and who had the education to go to shop owners and register their services and then employ people with less education to work in the lots. Each of these people now pay for their lumo vests, and a sum of money to the business owner before they can work at looking after cars. Each guard is assigned an area in the parking lot, and the newbies are assigned to the outer reaches where few people park because they don’t want to walk in the heat to get to the shops. These guards often don’t make enough money to pay for the fees to work the day.

colours of the car park

White people are really not suited to this job, because having no skin pigmentation means melanomas, and I have yet to see a guard using sunscreen, even though I always offer advice to them about it. White car guards look like people stitched into leather skins. Car guards may be locals or from other African countries. Sometimes you may be greeted by the beautiful French Congolese accent, Shona accents from Zim or Portuguese from Mozambique (hang on a moment, should we be trusting them to guard our cars when Mozambique is hauling several cars over the border as we speak?). Anyway, car guards are ubiquitous in South Africa, they are beacons on every street corner and in every parking lot, and they are part of our days and nights (if one is brave enough to park outside at night).

my local car guards... wonderful men from the DRC after a long day in the sun at ...................

 

 

I admire them and tip them (most times), and being unemployed myself, often think I may end up as one. If I did end up as one, I would know how to help people to reverse, and I would know which people to allow to reverse unaided. And in some cases, judging by the skills of some drivers, I would actually do the reversing for them. However, with all the compassion in the world, I do not want to be told how to reverse when the sweat is pouring down my face, and even though I said I was fine, the guard has just helped me pack shopping bags into the boot of my car, and the packet with the strawberries and eggs is now under the packet with 6 kgs of dog food (this only gets discovered only when I get home), I want to t get out of my car and say, ”Listen dude, I’ve been reversing for 30 years now, and although there are many things I need help with (directions, finances, making order of my life) reversing is not one of them. Move away from my car or my tyres will clamp your feet to the tarmac”.

Another thing is I don’t need help with is finding a parking when the lot is half empty. They swagger out in front of you and, as though conducting the orchestra through a Strauss waltz, show you where to park. I never park where they tell me to, it is my small rebellion. Sometimes I’ll be waiting for someone to leave a parking so I can take his spot. I wait for the car guard to show him how to get out of the spot, then, with a great sweep of his arm he shows me the parking space, as though I’d been daydreaming and he had discovered Antarctica. For fek’s sake, I have been waiting for 5 minutes while the car moved out of the spot. WHAT DID HE THINK I WAS DOING? Did he think I had stopped to watch his “how-to-reverse” skills?

back, back, back

flappy, shouting … “BACK, BACK, BACK”. Sometimes they even stand directly behind the car and start flapping you out, so the only way out is over them: it is tempting, really, really tempting.

Now, I believe most car guards need empathy and respect for doing what they do and for the reasons they do it. My heart goes out to those so far from home who cannot stay in their war torn countries. However, there are some who can turn a parking lot into a veritable circus arena. I have seen women guards having cat fights over tips or lanes (they are very territorial). I have encountered guards so drunk they see two of your car and allow one to be stolen. I have seen sober guards watch while a car is driven out the lot (and not by its owner). I have also seen two car guards show two parkers how to reverse into each other. I have had a guard see me waiting 10 minutes for someone to leave and then wave a new-comer into the spot- this has caused a form of parking lot rage that I am not altogether proud of. I know it is JUST a parking, but in Durban’s heat, when the lot is full it is not JUST A PARKING. Car guards also will not take to task those female 4x4 owners who only use their wheels for shopping or to take their children to school, or to do lunch. These vehicles are often sprayed with mud by some sharp business man advertising, “we will spray your off road vehicle, so the world thinks you’re an authentic, rugged adventurer”. The guards cannot stop these selfish painted gals from parking across two spaces so nobody bangs their cars. This makes me so mad, and I always tell the guards people shouldn’t park like that just because they are rich, and they always smile and nod and agree, but they are just humouring me. I wonder if double space parkers tip better.

Although I’d dearly love to reverse out of my parking unaided, I would miss these guards if they weren’t greeting and grabbing and waving and in my way in the parking lots. They are part of our country’s workforce, and certainly part of the Durban scene. They work in the blazing sun, or heavy rain, in parking areas all over South Africa, they add colour and frustration, and every one of them has a story to tell… if you’d only ask.

It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.
~ Muhammad Ali ~

P.s. What sort of person rushes off to the car park to take pics of guards who are very suspicious of their intentions, while everyone stares and wonders? What is becoming of me? Am I turning into a BLOGGER? gasp!

Monkey Daze

The vervet monkeys visited me today. A big bloke announced his arrival with a thud on the little overhang outside my bedroom window. This ‘overhang’ is not strong and barely holds the rain out of my bedroom, so one day I could have the troop in my bedroom, tumbling one after the other through a great hole. I sat on my bed and watched, and a teenager watched me, his small face full of summer. He twitched his eyebrows and bobbed when I moved. There was a mother with her baby clinging tightly to her stomach, his small arms embedded darkly in the maternal fur as though she carried a cheerful parasite. The light caught his perfect face shining through his big ears, ears he will grow into, transparent in the sunlight like two great pink cockles on his head. His mother knows him, he is her own and she protects him with all her being.

I hear the sounds of pellet guns, and I know a neighbour is trying to chase them off. So many monkeys have pellets in them and they die slow and painful deaths. These people feel they’re pests who are out to attack them and steal their bananas or bread rolls. Now make no mistake, these guys are opportunists of note, and if you leave your custard buns on the kitchen table and the door open, a hairy guy will definitely take them. Monkeys are not out to attack people unless they are threatened, and I would so prefer these intruders to those who could come in if a door was left open, and take so much more than just some fruit. If only these narrow-minded folk would see that we have displaced these animals; their habitats are shrinking and the alien plants enveloping our indigenous trees offer no food for monkeys. These people with pellet guns deserve to be banished to a barren sandy island where there is no wildlife to threaten them, not a single tree for shade or a monkey, and just sea water stretching out in front of them.

I did have a monkey in my kitchen once and he swiped my lunchtime buns. I tried to get them back, but he sat on the roof looking at me, exposing his bright blue genitals,  and then threw the plastic bag down at me. Speaking of blue genitals, to the artist’s eye, they are the most marvellous blue, and the girls in the troop sure love a good set of them. You know sometimes you see a woman (often an academic) wearing blue eye- shadow right up to her eyebrows, like Twiggy did and like Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe from the 60’s, well to me, those are monkey ball eyes. They are the same blue and have the same startling affect when they flash at you. Of course the monkey ones are far more attractive.

When I attended writing groups many years ago, the woman whose home we wrote in, had her doors open to monkeys when she was at home. I remember one day watching them walk in, one behind the other, and then sit in a line on the banister of the sitting room stairs to watch us. I have to admit, my suburban roots did throw up some fear, which soon dissipated as they swaggered past, out into the garden through the sliding glass doors. A friend writing in the garden had her pink-lensed sunglasses (this was the 80’s, pink was in) taken from the table, and the culprit sat in the tree above her head taking some suspicious bites at them and then smelt them and put them close to her eyes and peered through them, not liking the way the world looked though the rose tinted glass. She then threw them into the leaves below. They survived to lessen the glare for my friend for quite a while after the incident and I think she quite liked telling people that those were monkey bites decorating the frame. If you're going to wear rose tinted glasses they might as well have the scars of a little wildness.

We watched each other

Later the troop moved to my bottom garden and some of the youngsters rolled and sprung and tumbled from branches, until the bull male ‘chuck chucked’ at them. They were there for the afternoon, much to the dogs’ dismay.

I remember seeing a vervet’s hands up close once, and feeling a soft but bony finger. They have perfect, dark hands with tinyt palms, and each small finger has a tiny print on it, like a human’s, but finer,  just a tiny sketch upon a finger pad. I wonder if that empty man with his gun would respond if he saw those hands so like his own, holding the flowers and fruit they find in my trees, would he still be so set on removing them from his world. Would it change his attitude or will he be happy to tell his grandchildren, that we once had monkeys, wild, in our gardens? I hope their words of, “Gee, Grandpa, that must have been so cool,” ring out in his vacant head for all eternity.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.  ~William Shakespeare

Solving the Problem

Well, as I went up Gladys Mazibuko Road and turned left into Problem Mkhize, it brought to mind the recent debacles/discourses/rampant fist fights, about the changing of street names to honour South African heroes from the struggle times. I can just imagine our beloved Ghandi is not completely content about Point Road taking his name, but I think perhaps Problem Mkhize is a real thorn in the side of the Cowey Road residents. Not that Problem doesn’t suit the road, congestion at the intersection is stressful on a cool day let alone at 33 degrees. I’ve heard it’s difficult to sell a property there as a business owner, even if he doesn’t have problems walking under ladders or spilling salt, may not want to take a chance on having Problem Mkize road on his gold lettered letter-heads. While I waited for the traffic to move I imagined opening a bistro and calling it, Calais Bistro on Problem. Dining there might be a challenge for fine diners: would you have a finger nail in your tarte tatin or half digested garden sand in your snails? You can’t blame restaurateurs for setting up shop in one of those tiny lanes unworthy of any great hero; Bistro on 9^th Avenue, now we’re talking.

The problems I have with the name changes are, that I can’t pronounce them, they aren’t in my map books, and that the people who should know about these struggle heroes don’t know them at all. And the old familiar road signs have been ripped off their posts by the municipality, because irritated/irate/red-in-the-face, white dads standing on kitchen stools, sprayed the new signs with black paint, thus annoying the city managers (now consider that a spiteful slap on the wrist, boet).

You must understand I have an incredibly bad sense of direction. I get lost in supermarkets and whenever I visit Pinetown I end up in a taxi rank (I mean every time). So finding myself in Stalwart Simelane Street, when the original sign is gone (no more Stanger street), or being told to go to Dr Pixley KaSeme Street sends me into a panic attack of note. For all the saints, Dr Pixley KaSeme Street used to be WEST STREET. So if you don’t have a Global Positioning System in your car, or like my daughter has, in your head, then negotiating Durban is interesting and you discover places you didn’t know existed, especially if you add in the unsynchronised traffic lights and pot holes you could drown in.

Durban may be going to seed (the jury is still out on this I feel), but it’s painted in all the colours of the spectrum, with dashes of honour and sprinklings of brilliance and buckets of people and things that don’t work, and it has hours of horror and moments of heroic gutsy action and the people all glisten in this Durban steam, especially when Eskom has “met with a problem”. Ah yes, you surely need a sense of humour and great big balls to stay here.

p.s.: I thought I’d add, East Coast Radio lists Ally Cat Clothing as one of the top ten factory shops in Durban. It’s at 260 Magwaza Maphalala Street. Look it up ‘cause I have a problem.

Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you're riding through ruts, don't complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don't bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality.

Wake up and live...Bob Marley

Observations and sounds from a sizzling day in Durban…driving along lamenting not having an air-con in my car or at home, sweat popping out of my eyeballs, I heard two men singing in harmony while they dug a ditch across the road, their overall tops down and the sweat gleaming on their lean muscles. A tired little girl sat on a pavement with her feet in the street and waited for a bus from school, all new and bright in her uniform but way too young to be alone. I heard a woman in the shop saying….”I just want to know about the cheese, HOW LONG DOES THAT TAKE for shit’s sake? I don’t want you to milk the cow and separate the milk and process the cheese”. 

There was a boy about 12, begging, with his glue in hand and his feet, bare on the almost liquid tar road, and as I passed Mark Gold restaurant (my car is really a bit gross for passing Mark Gold), I saw sweet, pretty young things seated alfresco, sipping iced water from a huge jug filled with water, ice and fruit. Their summer dresses were all wafty in the small breeze. Oh the bitter- sweet contrasts of our city at 33 degrees.

Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
-- Warren Buffett