My dear family & friends
The clocks went back an hour from British Summer Time to Greenwich Mean Time two weeks ago. That means that it’s dark by about quarter to five in the afternoon now. Getting used to the early darkness as a South African is quite an adjustment. It feels as though the day is ending just after it’s begun. I see school children walking home in the dark every day; I suppose it’s as quite normal and natural for them, but I struggle to get my head around the concept. I feel as though my day is being stolen.
In a more serious vein, Lucia and I received new debit cards from HSBC in the post a few weeks ago. I thought it was a bit strange because our HSBC UK cards were still valid for the next two or three years. But we carefully cut up our old cards into lots of small pieces. This was a mistake because the new cards were actually for our offshore HSBC account in Jersey which had changed their debit card service provider from Maestro to Visa. I only figured this out when I was doing our accounts and saw strange transactions on our offshore account which shouldn’t have been there. We had assumed that the new cards were for our onshore account because they were Visa debit cards. On closer inspection though, we later noted that the account number and sort code (branch code, for the South Africans) were clearly printed on the new cards. We sheepishly called HSBC to declare that we had destroyed the wrong cards and to apply for new ones. Mine arrived in two days.
One of the things that still amazes here is that credit cards, debit cards and chequebooks are sent to clients by normal postal mail. They stopped doing that in South Africa a LONG time ago when the banks suddenly noticed that none of these items were arriving at their intended recipient but were rather being stolen by the postal workers. The worst culprits were at the big sorting office for Johannesburg. I remember when the Post Office decided to put in some hidden cameras to catch the thieves. They did and they tried to fire them, but they couldn’t because it caused the most prolonged postal strike in South Africa ever. The workers essentially demanded the right to steal, and they won. Amazon, for instance, will no longer send items to South Africa by normal mail; they will only use courier services at vastly increased cost to the client.
Further to Lucia’s passport travails in my last letter, she went to London last week to apply for a Schengen visa at the Portuguese Consulate in London for our Christmas holidays. The Visa was refused because her British residency visa was valid for less than three months. She has to get a new UK spouse visa before she can get a new Schengen visa. The only problem is that the Brits will only allow new residency visa applications four weeks before the old visa expires. Lucia’s residency visa expires on 31 December which means that she can only apply for a new visa from 5 December. We have booked flights to Portugal on 18 December. The Home Office does provide a “same day” service for “simple” applications, but it costs an extra £300. Luckily the official at the Portuguese Consulate gave Lucia a letter that allows her to walk in at any time instead of having to book an appointment. So with luck we should still be in Portugal for Christmas.
Lucia has been working hard and long hours so there haven’t been many adventures over the weekend. We did go walking in the Clent Hills on the outskirts of Birmingham two weeks ago. You can see the pictures in the usual spot at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones. We started our walk in bright sunshine, but were soon caught in a heavy squall which seemed to blow over as quickly as it arrived. We took cover under a stand of trees while it passed over.
We also went to the Guy Fawkes bonfire and fireworks celebrations at the Old Leamingtonian Rugby Football Club on Thursday night. (See pics.)We locked the animals inside and turned the volume up on the amplifier to placate the dogs, particularly Hazel who doesn’t like loud noises and bangs.
What else?
I nearly had a disaster with my latest batch of biltong. I salted and spiced it as usual and hung it in the biltong box in the garage. But I can’t help checking on it every day, and it was just as well that I did because on day four all six pieces were suddenly covered in mould. I searched on the Internet for a remedy to rescue the batch. At £60 I didn’t really just want to give the meat to the dogs. I found a site which said that I should dab the mould with vinegar. Never a person to do things by half measures, I fairly much bathed the biltong in vinegar. I also removed the biltong box into the conservatory along with one of our heaters to heat and dry the air. The doctoring seems to have worked.
Still on food, I recently discovered flambé. I was watching “Floyd on Africa” on the Travel Channel and I discovered how simple it was to add brandy to your food and set fire to it. As a pyromaniac this was a great discovery with which I had to experiment with immediately. Luckily we had some mini steaks in the fridge which greatly benefitted from the treatment. Since then I’ve even been experimenting with setting fire to my stir fries. It’s great fun. Lucia always looks around nervously for the fire extinguisher as I yell out “Whoosh!” followed by a pleased cackle.
Oh, and I also bought some more technology. A couple of weeks ago we went to dinner with Rebecca, one of Lucia’s colleagues. Rebecca’s partner David was in Japan recently and had bought a really small wireless hand-held keyboard and mouse touchpad called an Ipazzport which was exactly what I’d been looking for for our home entertainment centre. I emailed the manufacturers to find out where I could buy one in the UK and how much it would cost. They replied fairly quickly and it was really cheap so I bought it the next day. (See pics.) I now have everything I want for my home entertainment centre apart from the cabinet which I still have to build.
Finally, I recently noticed that the soles of my shoes have been wearing out very quickly. I bought a pair of (expensive) Timberland boat shoes which lasted just a few months. At first I thought I had bought fakes, but then I noticed that all my shoes are wearing out really quickly. It must be something in surfacing of the roads and sidewalks. Quite strange!
That’s it for now
Love, light & peace
Llewellyn
