Author: Neil Robinson

Randburg Licensing Department

Queue SignRandburg licensing department has a flat-screen TV up on the wall now. It’s very pretty and shiny. It scrolls announcements from the municipality and the City of Johannesburg. They are lovely announcements. They are all in English.

Hopefully everyone can read English. It surprisingly ostracises the other 10 Official Languages that South Africa declared. Once would think a little isiZulu or seSotho would be thrown in here and there.

When the TV isn’t giving us public announcements, it shows us the tranquillity, peace of mind, and beautiful memories that using Pfizer Pharmaceuticals can bring us. “Ask your doctor or pharmacist!”

I’ll be sure to do just that.

As I watch now I discover an announcement that is actually useful to me. My time in this queue may not be entirely wasted because of this.

One can pay traffic fines via credit card now. It’s only 2009 – credit cards have been in use for as long as I can remember. The government used to use some idiotic argument about not wanting people to go into debt to pay fines, rates and taxes, but payment was still demanded. I wonder why the change of heart?

The queue is long, but so far I haven’t noticed anyone getting too disruptive over whatever interchanges take place between the clients and the clerks. We need more chairs, but then we’ll all just be playing musical chairs for longer. They don’t have a ticket number system, which would allow everyone to sit in one place and wait for their number to be called out. Oh no. That seems too well thought-out. Instead of buying a decent ticket system, and training people to use it, they got a flat-screen TV.

Now the TV tells me that Emperor’s Palace a wonderful place full of wonderful things. Opulence. I surely crave opulence and inviting women dressed in flowing red dresses with lips pouting, and cars to win! Perhaps with the advertising revenue they generate could be used to buy us some more chairs, and that ticket-queue system.

I look at the ceiling. The domed lights high up, meant to illuminate the counters, are all fused. The only one that works, flickers erratically. What would a government department be without a flickering light?

CCTV. They have those cameras too. Oh dear. At least the camera’s don’t swivel side to side, tracking my every key press on my mobile-phone (with full QWERTY keyboard — you don’t think I’d type this all out with predictive text, do you?). I hope I’m allowed to write about the department. I hope they won’t be sending the thought-police to question me in a few moments and take my mobile phone/writing pad device away. Now that would be something worth writing about! The irony.

I’ve been in the long, straight tail of the queue, but I’m reaching the bend where it curls and twists into the intestinal section of waiting. Rows of chairs curling back and forth in almost-but-not-quite parallel lines. Like a gradual bowel-movement we are pushed forward slowly, from one chair to the next, back and forth on that circuitous route, until we are expelled from the queue sphincter into the toilet of the licence renewal desk. There they wipe us off and flush us away — once we pay our dues of course.

The sphincter is a little confused, though. There are six outlets, and the beeping red LCD screen tells each faecal particle at the end of the queue where to go (in between brightly declaring “WELCOME TO RANDB” and showing us just how much time we’ve wasted in the queue). It’s confusing because there are two bowel-queues at work here, each with different final outcomes. The LCD blinky-beepy light serves both.

Is it OK to renew your single vehicle licence at the bulk trade plates and permits counter? Who can be certain? If you test the hypothesis and are proven wrong, will you have lost your place in the queue? Will you have already ended up in the toilet, and have you been flushed away? Or would you need to eat shit and get back in the queue from the beginning? Can you be pushed back into the sphincter temporarily until it is time to exit at the appropriate point. I’m not sure. So many confusing questions to resolve this complex scenario.

I’m certain to find out, but by then I’ll no longer be waiting and will no longer have time to write this account of my adventures. So alas, dear reader, you will never know what the outcome was.

But wait! Here’s one now, just ahead of me. Trapped in toilet limbo. Swirling around and around in the toilet bowl but not getting flushed away. A terrible fate indeed. I hope to escape it.

That was another live commentary, in a similar vein to the Hospital Observations bit in this one, as written on my cell phone to pass the time while waiting in a queue. Edited to fix up spelling and grammar, and to repair the flow of the text a little.

I’ve decided to name these things Prosetographs.

Original image credit: Derek Armshaw Licence: CC-NC-3.0

The Handytard Strikes Back!

I could write a whole spiel in the style of Star Wars, drawing an analogy between the Handytards fighting the evil empire of DIY, but I’ve got the reference to Star Wars all backwards. I also can’t be bothered today. Instead, the photos must tell the story.

Handytard is making a comeback, and may even be able to turn the match around.

Photography Project is Real

Back in the mists of time, I petitioned the loyal waffle group readers to assist me in my quest to choose a project, selected photography, and then ignored my choice.

From somewhere, momentum grabbed Quinn and me and dragged us back to a Camera Club Johannesburg. It then beat us around the head and made us give membership fees to the camera club. Having paid for something, we felt an incentive to participate.

Below are the photos I submitted to get me promoted up a notch from 1 star rating to 2 star rating. Camera Club Johannesburg are more forgiving in their assessments. They are not the photo-nazis. This is good.

Exciting new wine cultivars!

I just can’t wait to get my hands on a few bottles of these paroxysm-inducing wines.

I’ve been looking for a wine that will go well with rotting carcass goulash, and the Bottoms Up! Barolo is sure to fit the bill nicely.

I rather like ducks, and because of this I’ve never wanted to invade their space by latching on to their beaks. I have, however, always wondered what the fluid contained therein would be like. With Shit-Faced Shiraz, I need wonder no longer.

I’m going to have to give the Modderdam Malbec a wide berth though. I just don’t really agree with the labour practices they’ve used to bring us this wine, no  matter how good a wine it is.

I trust I can rely on your vote?

Ballot BoxThe South African National Elections are swiftly approaching, and election posters are littering the streets.

There are plentiful examples of everyone’s favourite ANC leader, Jacob Zuma, and his cheesy it-wasn’t-me grin. Or is it more of a Alfred E. Newman “What, Me Worry?” kind of look?

Regardless of the visage of JayZee, there are also a number of posters that try to instill in us, the electorate, a passion to vote for a particular party. I’ve already made fun of the ANC’s poster, but on hindsight I’ve decided I’ve been a little discriminatory. We wouldn’t want that in the 15-year-old New South Africa.

Everyone has an election slogan, and generally these can all be improved by adding the phrase “in your pants” to the end of whatever our political overlords have told us.

If you like, you could choose your political party based on which one sounded the least (or most) ridiculous with in your pants tagged on to the end of the slogan.

Going in alphabetical order, we have:

That’s just a few. Adding in your pants to the rest of the political parties’ slogans is left as an exercise for the reader.

I will stop in your pants
I will stop at nothing in your pants
Say the right things in your pants
When electioneering in your pants
I trust I can rely on your vote in your pants

Apologies to Radiohead: Electioneering

Sheila Reynard’s Funeral

I should probably write something biographical about Sheila Reynard, Angie’s grandmother. That would be the appropriate content for this entry in my on-line journal. It’s more going to be my impressions of the funeral itself, rather than an account of the woman Sheila was. Perhaps I can persuade Angie to give a more sentimental account.

The trouble is that I never knew Sheila as a vibrant, energetic person. I certainly could tell she possessed a fiery personality and a cutting wit, but it was always within the context of the old age home where she stayed in Pretoria. Not a wide, sprawling old-age home with little cottages lined up neatly with walkways and lawns. It was a five storey concrete-block institution. That’s how I felt about it, at any rate.

I would have loved to have known her during her time in Kenya.

Angie and I have also realised that we don’t really have any photographs of Sheila. These ones I do have only serve to reinforce my experience of her — frail. I know that can’t be accurate.

We need pictures of her youth. I’m told the photo albums will be scanned and posted up on Flickr in the near future. I hope so. I want to see the vitality in Sheila that I’ve missed.

***

The funeral was a little strange. Sheila had requested that all of her great-grandchildren attend the ceremony. She has five now, with Jethro weighing in as second youngest. The other four sat quietly during the service in a most dignified manner.

Jethro wasn’t in a sombre mood though. He gah-gah-gah’ed and wha-wha-wha’ed and bashed things against the pew and other members of the congregation. He stared with great interest, and temporary silence, at the clergy as they advanced down the aisle, swinging incense and swirling smoke about them.

As a result, it was difficult to focus on remembrance. It was difficult to draw water from the well of grief, because you couldn’t crank the handles to bring the bucket up and tend to the garrulous baby.

Then to top it off, we closed off the service with a rendition of the hymn “Joy to the World” as the pall bearers carried the coffin out of the chapel to the hearse.

Perhaps this aptly sums up who Sheila was — her wicked wit shining through to the very end.

***

Pall bearers — I was one of those. It was a strangely detached kind of experience, but distributed between myself and five other people. I’m not sure about the others, but it allowed me to think that I wasn’t really carrying Angie’s dead grandmother, but rather her uncles and cousins and father were.

We placed the coffin in its position above the grave, suspended on nylon straps, and stood back. I’ve never been to a burial. Funerals yes, but they’ve usually involved cremation, and I didn’t travel to the grave itself. This time I was at the grave. A short service was carried out. It reminded me vaguely of the funerals depicted in the movies, but without the rain and black umbrellas. And with some of the people carrying babies.

***

After getting home from the funeral, neither of us felt like we’d really grieved at all — especially Angie. We rectified this after Jethro had gone to bed. We stood out in the garden and Angie spoke about her Granny. I can’t remember clearly what she said, but it struck the right chord, and without the distractions of Jethro’s antics, Angie cried about her Granny’s passing for the first time that day.

It felt right to cry, even if Sheila didn’t seem to want any one to.

Hunchwrist Repairs and Hospital Observations

Hunchwrist of Randpark Ridge
Hunchwrist Before

Hunchwrist Repairs

While pregnant with Jethro, Angie developed a weird growth in her wrist. Officially it is known as a ganglion cyst, but I took to calling Angie “The Hunchwrist of Randpark Ridge.”

So far, we’re still married.

She was admitted to Linksfield Park Clinic on Thurday to have the cyst removed. They insisted we get to the hospital at 6am, but only wheeled Angie into surgery at 2pm. She was out of surgery at 4pm. By the time Angie had eaten something and was dressed (more difficult with only one functioning arm) it was rush-hour. Almost two hours driving to get home. Bah!

The whole day was used up waiting for a 2 hour procedure. Surely the hospital knew which operations it would be undertaking during the day, and the approximate time each procedure takes? Surely such a schedule gives an indication of when a particular patient will go under the knife? Surely it is unreasonable to tell everyone to get to the hospital by 6am, especially if you know you’ll only deal with some of them in the afternoon?

We could try complaining, but one worries that they will spitefully remove the entire hand, instead of just the hunchwrist. The medical industry really is the most peculiar service industry out there. I think it has something to do with them referring to their clients as “patients,” and assuming patients are patient and don’t mind waiting.

Hospital Observations

Although I wasn’t the patient, I still had to do a lot of waiting around at the hospital. To pass the time I watched people enter the foyer and I drank a little too much coffee. Combined, these elements inspired me to write about these people on my cellphone in real-time. The transcript of what I wrote is reproduced below, edited only for spelling and grammar.

It comes across a little scathing, I think. I blame the coffee.

We really are just glorified hairless monkeys with technology.

The guy who just walked in, with the yellow writing on his T-shirt and the tattered jeans, walks with a funny gait. He thrusts his chest out too far, making him seem over-balanced and top-heavy. Or is he overbalanced because his stomach reaches out as far as his chest? He holds his hands up at the level of his chest, and flaps them around limply, bending at the wrists. Obviously he’s strutting, but what’s with the wrists? That doesn’t seem too macho.

Then there are these Eastern European types sitting across the table from me, incessantly talking too loud in a guttural language I can’t understand. The balding man wears a striped T-shirt and shorts, but I wish he’d worn trousers. It is a hospital, so perhaps I shouldn’t be so squeamish, but something  terrible has happened to this man’s legs recently. He’s obviously had those metal pins embedded in his tibia. You know the ones. Those things that stick out of your leg, instead of having a cast. They say the leg heals faster, but it makes you look more like a cyborg.

The wounds are obvious, and he seems to display the bloody gory bits proudly. One leg bandaged, the other not. Just round, dried-blood circles, with a red line joining the dots. A fleshy dot-2-dot puzzle. Join them up in order and you get a zombie!

He talks to his mother, but she doesn’t have any ghoulish markings on display. They quiet down when another couple sits down next to them. The old man of the couple cranes his neck around to the TV mounted on the wall. But’s it’s almost obliquely above him. Not a great angle to watch the cricket.

I wanted to go on about the cricket a little more, and how strange the behaviour of men wanting to watch it is. But my cellphone battery died. This also explains the abrupt ending.

Equip — Skills for Living

Equip Skills for Living LogoAngie’s charity has gone through a re-branding process and is now known as Equip.

This happened a while ago, but I was waiting for their webpage to go live before announcing it here.

Where many charities aim at educating children, Equip focuses on those who fell through the Bantu-education cracks when they were young. The philosophy is that adults who are better educated, and value education, will inspire these virtues in their children. An education will then change, not only their own lives, but shape the future lives of their children.

To this goal, Equip provides Adult Basic Education and Training to Matric level, via night schools. They also offer other courses including computer literacy, cashier training for point-of-sale machines, dressmaking and crafting skills, English literacy and financial literacy. Where possible, they also try to get people who successfully complete courses employed.

As with all charities, Equip needs donations to keep up the good work helping those in need. Contact Equip, and loosen those purse-strings!

On a technical note, the menus in the sidebar don’t render correctly in Firefox on Linux. When I complained, the developers showed me that Firefox for Windows doesn’t suffer these mysterious problems. Ah well. Linux and it’s 0.00000005% market-share will just have to suck it up