Till Sunday 22nd February 2009 - Hallelujah! This week sees the end of preparations for the SPAF meeting....... till the next one in May at least! With a sense of dread, I preempt being asked to take the meeting minutes, and sure enough, the question came! No biggy right! You'd think - but I've never taken minutes before, and I'm sat in a room of near 20 strangers, whose names I cannot pronounce, let alone spell, (Mijnardt, or Maynard to you and me), and the speaker is talking at a rate of knots, about subjects I barely understand, with a few obligatory South African acronyms thrown in for good measure! Arggghhhh!!!
Cunning plan, if I produce a dismal set of minutes, surely I won't be asked to act as secretary again! Unfortunately, my minutes pass with flying colours - dam and blast - it must be my Mothers' genes! Although typing them up was not without incident! The Rangers surged the system and all electrical equipment cuts out - just as I'm nearing the very end! Murder by insanity! A miracle for them, my work has saved!
Cunning plan, if I produce a dismal set of minutes, surely I won't be asked to act as secretary again! Unfortunately, my minutes pass with flying colours - dam and blast - it must be my Mothers' genes! Although typing them up was not without incident! The Rangers surged the system and all electrical equipment cuts out - just as I'm nearing the very end! Murder by insanity! A miracle for them, my work has saved!
Confirming I'm working in the wilds, I had an unexpected visitor fly into my office, a swallow no less, which took to circling the ceiling - I know the feeling! Also a Red hartebeest galloped past my window, and Fred the 30 year old tortoise is back on his favourite patch of grass in front of my office! So I am not short of mates!
Which is a good thing by all accounts as my friendship with the Desert Wee Lassie has hit rocky ground!
Not content with just one sighting, the greedy little minx has now seen Mr Leo Pardus TWICE! To add insult to injury, Kirsteen had the gall to e-mail me a piccy of the magnificent creature (personally I think she's googled the image!).
An official tongue in cheek complaint was hastily written to the GVI co-ordinator insisting on an immediate transfer........to which I receive the jest response, that nowhere in my GVI contract is a sighting of leopard guaranteed, that I need to stop complaining and be content with bontebok! Charming!
The dirt tracks on the park became a little less safer this week, as I take one of the bakkies out for a spin, chaperoned by the obliging Bulelwa! Thankfully all the tortoise get to live another day! Next week, avoiding the pedestrians in town when I get to experience foreign roads!!! Bring it on!
My weekend unexpectedly picked up the pace, after being invited to join Bulelwa and Phiebe on Saturday, who were playing hostesses to the visiting Trony and Andries from Pretoria HQ. We socialised all afternoon and late into the night, eating, drinking, chatting and listening to Xhosa music! All very relaxed, it was difficult to image that just 11 years ago, it would have been illegal for them to have made my acquaintance!
Sunday was spent in my usual haunt near the river, my nose firmly in the book 'What is the What' about a Sudanese boy refugee and his harrowing journey to safety in Ethiopia. Not my usual reading material I must admit, lets say my horizons are being broadened.
With many lift offers declined, I walk parallel to the mountains and see the veld change week by week, thanks to the previous rain, bulbs have started to sprout, although a member of the amaryllis family, many look like crimson alliums flowering just centimetres off the ground. They are quite spectacular.
