My dear family & friends
Of all the things I miss the most, I miss my motivation. Second most - is hair.
I’ve been meaning to write for yonks, or, at least, put pictures up on the web for you to see what we’ve been up to (assuming you’re interested) - but there has always been something that comes up – like a snooze, or daydreaming, or shopping, or walking the dogs, or cleaning, or ironing, or doing the household accounts, or mowing the lawn, or building stuff, or fixing stuff, or battling with technology. The truth be told, I can spend days battling with technology – which usually means that I’m trying to get something for free.
I’ve been adding pictures to a web album for most of this year – I just haven’t got around to sharing them. Here they are.
The result is an album of nearly 200 pictures. Please believe me, you are in no way expected to through them at all. They are up on the web for your interest – if you’re interested.
You can find all my pictures in the usual place here.
I think the easiest thing to do, having not written for so long, is put the standout events down in bullet-form instead of wracking my brain to weave a story.
Shall I start with the things that annoyed me?
I’ll start with today. I’ve got the flu for the second time this winter. Very annoying.
More annoying were the useless garbage collectors who split a refuse bag in the street this morning, strewing food, rubbish and dog pooh bags across the road ... and then fucked off. Why does this annoy me so badly? We pay Ealing Council £150 per month for council “services” – including garbage collection. For my South African friends, that’s around R2,775 per month, or R33,300 per year. For that kind of money, I expect a little more attentiveness to the task at hand. What I don’t expect is to sweep this shit up myself (see last three pics in web album), especially when it’s not my garbage bag adorning the street.
I really hate British Summer Time (BST). The sun sets at around 15h30 and it’s dark by 16h00, especially if it’s cloudy. Apart from anything else, this completely upsets my beer schedule. While my internal clock says that it’s time for a beer – because it’s dark – propriety says that I still have to wait for a couple of hours. Very annoying. The early darkness is also just depressing – thank goodness we are only five days away from the solstice when the days will start getting longer again. I yearn for 29 March next year when the clocks go forward an hour, heralding the arrival of late sunny, summer afternoons.
I’d also like to hit the bastard who drove over my hat a couple of weeks ago. I was up in Ealing doing some shopping. It was a windy day, and my hat blew off as I crossed the road at a traffic light. I turned around to chase after it, but the traffic lights turned against me. Now, as a driver, I would have allowed the hapless, hatless fellow to retrieve his hat – but not the dick who was first in line. He accelerated away hard, almost running me down – and driving over my hat. Why? It’s an expensive hat, and I spent hours cleaning it with spray-on dry-cleaning fluid trying to remove the oil and rubber.
iOS8 has annoyed me badly. Tech nut that I am, I updated Lucia’s and my iPad minis immediately. By the time I realised that our iPads had become slow and moribund, Apple had stopped “signing” iOS7 – so I couldn’t go back. Apple has released two “updates” since then – but only for stuff that stops earning them money. I can’t compare our iPads to Android tablets, because I don’t own an Android tablet. What I can say is that my two-year-old mobile phone – a Samsung Galaxy S3 – is significantly faster than my iPad in virtually everything. From being completely enthralled by my iPad, what it could do, and how neat it was – I now feel a sort of wary “deflatedness”. I’m still waiting for the fix that will sort out the wifi problems from Apple. The iPad is such a neat device – why is Apple so intent on pissing its’ customers off?
Still on things tech, our Hewlett-Packard “home theatre” computer gave up the ghost. This is the computer that sits in my home-made entertainment cabinet under our television. It does our music, films, radio, and everything else to keep us entertained. The power supply unit gave up for the fourth time – and took the graphics card with it, again. It’s difficult to say whether the computer was struggling with the demands I heaped on it, or whether there was something inherently wrong with the design. Given how much it had already cost to keep it going over the years, it seemed like a much better idea to buy a new computer.
So, we bought a new computer – an Acer, and I went through the motion of updating all the Microsoft software, and setting it up to work how I wanted it to. To cut a long story short, the computer failed two days later – either a BIOS or motherboard failure. No problem, call the helpdesk. Or should I call that the roadblock desk. The Indian gentleman at the roadblock desk was only intent on declaring the failure to be entirely my fault, and that I would have to pay for the repair, notwithstanding any warranties.
After a bunch of Googling I eventually found the address for Acer’s head office in the UK, which is around the corner from one of my favourite Portuguese coffee shops near Heathrow Airport. So I wrote a 2000 word letter of complaint, took it to the head office, and demanded to see the managing director. I never did get to see the managing director, but I did get a promise that a customer sales representative would call me that day. The phone rang as I walked in the front door. Angela, with a beautiful Welsh lilt to her voice, scored lots of brownie points for giving my name the correct Welsh pronunciation. She also expressed her “horror” and deep regret at my experiences at the hands of Acer’s Indian call centre. She noted that Acer has a five-day “dead on arrival” policy, and that my computer should have been replaced with no questions asked. She offered me a refund or to replace the unit immediately.
I took the replacement – the only problem being that they would only send out the replacement unit once they had received the faulty unit. That’s standard practice. So, I got back in the car, and took the computer to the head office near Heathrow. That was a Friday afternoon. The replacement unit arrived at 08h15 the following Monday morning – and it’s working like a dream.
But that leads in to the next annoyance – the car. As I was driving home from Heathrow, the engine management light came on in our car, a Honda CRV. The problem turned out to be a failed “Lamda sensor”, which sits around the catalytic converter - £380 to repair. A couple of weeks later, one of the brake callipers seized - £500 for everything. Then this past week I had to MOT the car – the yearly health check required to licence your car in the UK. I won’t list all that was wrong, but the bill came to nearly £1000. On top of that you still have to pay the yearly registration/licence fee - £288. Bloody hell!
Talking of money and finance, my next gripe is with lazy journalism. We have recently seen a raft of scare stories in the tabloids and on television about the threat of rising interest rates, and that homeowners mortgage payments could double in the next two to three years. Bullshit! Doubling mortgage payments would bankrupt about a third of the population – which would, in turn, bankrupt the mortgage lenders, that is, the banks (and the funders of the banks – your pension fund.) Consumption expenditure would also virtually cease – because all our disposable income would be spent on servicing debt. I don’t know how we are going wean the world off the cocaine of low interest rates – but nobody has come up with an idea that I believe would have any reasonable chance of success.
I remain fundamentally convinced that we haven’t yet seen the “real” financial/economic crash. There is a cesspool of debt out there that will NEVER be repaid without debasing the currency. Take the UK. Current sovereign debt – that is, the physical amount of money that the government has borrowed (from your pension fund) – is fast approaching £1,5 trillion (£1 500 000 000 000). Unfunded liabilities (the amount that must just be paid out of tax) – government and social pensions, healthcare, benefits, etc, etc – are actuarially valued at around £4,5 trillion. That’s a total current debt of around £6 trillion. To pay that off, the UK economy would have to grow at 20-30% a year for the next 50 years, or so. That’s not going to happen. Like the age-old Chinese curse – we are living in interesting times.
VPN (Virtual Private Network): Earlier this year I emailed all my South African acquaintances about the joys and benefits of using a VPN when connecting to the Internet. Precisely ONE of you took me up on my offer. Let me restate my rationale:- above and beyond all, if you connect to the Internet on any device (computer, tablet or mobile phone) using a wifi hotspot without using a VPN, you are asking for trouble. You risk having your digital persona stolen, and your bank accounts cleaned out. On the plus side, using a VPN allows you to log on to the Internet as if you’re in another country – in other words, instead of being stuck with DsTV you could enjoy the full benefits of all UK television (or any other country) via the internet. Your internet service provider also can’t “shape” your connection – that is, slow you down. And if you (or your children) are an “illegal” downloader, your ISP can’t see what you’re doing. (All they see is encrypted data.) I use HMA (HideMyAss).
Finally, I've been somewhat exercised by the Sydney hostage drama over the past two days. As the drama unfolded, the Sydney police chief was quoted on all the news channels as saying that they were prepared to wait for as long as it took to resolve the situation – or words to that effect. Now, maybe it’s just because I’m a South African, but the same news footage also showed several occasions where the hostage-taker was plainly visible with no hostages in the way – why didn’t they just shoot him? If the cameras had such a clear view of the hostage-taker, surely the police snipers had much the same view. Without any facts to corroborate my musings, I wonder if the police hierarchy was being just a little bit too politically correct. In my view, you pull a gun, you die ... at the earliest opportunity.
I am reminded of the St James Church Massacre in Kenilworth, Cape Town, in the early 1990’s. Some dimwits from the armed wing of the Pan Africanist Congress stormed the church one Sunday evening and opened up on the congregation with AK47s and grenades because they’d heard that it was a “conservative” church. They didn’t understand the difference between political conservatism and religious conservatism (particularly of the Calvinist brand.) St James Church was probably one of the most politically liberal churches in Cape Town with a completely racially integrated congregation. My point is, the killers only turned around and ran away when one of the members of the congregation pulled his own gun and started shooting back at them. Now, who takes a gun to church???
I have another reason to remember that event so well. I had ridden past the church on my motorbike just minutes or seconds before the carnage started. I heard nothing; saw nothing. My girlfriend at the time, Cor-Lené, and I had had dinner with my mother at her home just down the road. It was a dark and stormy night, and we had kitted ourselves up in our rain gear before leaving my mom. We decided to stop off for a warming coffee before I dropped her at home. But, Cor-Lené’s mother was a journalist at Die Burger, and was on shift that night. She heard of the events at the church within minutes, and immediately called my mother. Remember, these were the days before cellphones. Oh, dear. While Cor-Lené and I were leisurely sipping away on Irish Coffees, our mothers were panic dialling everyone we knew.
Okay, that’s enough ranting. What of the good stuff?
We had the most fantastic summer, and the winter, so far, has been mild - to say the least.
Lucia was thrilled to have her mother stay with us for six weeks in July and August. I won’t even try to list all the outings – there are more than enough pictures in the web album to cover our adventures with Ann.
We also had Lucia’s first-cousin-once- removed (that is, her cousin’s son) stay with us for a couple of days on several occasions. Marc (Moir) was on his gap year, working at a private school in Devon, and we provided him with a London base, usually when he was travelling to or from somewhere around Europe. He was a most delightful guest. Marc, you’re welcome any time.
We had a barbecue at every opportunity – I keep a stock of charcoal and fire-lighters easily to hand. One of the great joys of summer is standing over a fire with a beer in one hand and a book (on my Kindle or iPad) in the other. I usually barbecue chicken or lamb chops, mielies (sweetcorn, for everyone in the UK) and onions. I’ve learned to use our Weber Grill as it was intended – with the lid on. Just before I put the lid on to start cooking, I heap handfuls of herbs and woodchips directly onto the coals which gives the meat the most deliciously aromatic flavour.
We’ve had a good few picnics. Hyde Park is lovely for that, especially in spring when the trees and flowers are bursting with colour. The typical picnic comprises gourmet sandwiches, crisps, olives and a beer, or two. Getting to Hyde Park with the dogs is relatively easy – we either catch the train to Paddington Station, or the tube to Queensway or Lancaster Gate. The dogs get a lot of attention on the train, especially from tourists who can’t whip out their cameras and start taking photographs fast enough. I get quite a kick out of it. Poseur!
I actually love walking around the busy parts of London with the dogs (not that I do it very often) --- because everyone gets the hell out of my way. Walking in London without the dogs is an obstacle course of dodging people every step of the way. I stay away from central London for special events and at busy times if I possibly can.
At the weekend, our days usually start with walking the dogs down on the river. Most frequently we walk at Kew or Richmond. If we go to Kew, I park the car on the Chiswick side of Kew Bridge, and then we cross the bridge and walk along the Thames before cutting through Kew to Kew Village, ending at Cafe Torrelli for cappuccinos. There are a number of rowing clubs in the area and there are always plenty of people sculling up and down.
If we go to Richmond, I park at Richmond Lock and Weir. We walk along the river before cutting through Richmond Palace and across Richmond Green, and then up Mount Ararat Road to the Richmond Hill Bakery for – you guessed it – cappuccinos. Sufficiently revived, we circle back to the river and along the Thames Path to the car.
I’ve also been making batches of biltong with Tony, one of our South African neighbours. He’s got power in his shed, so the biltong box I made several years ago is now stored there. Our all-in cost is usually about £23/kg, compared to about £45/kg at the various South African shops dotted around. Waitrose charges around £66/kg, when they have it available. Our biltong is actually really good, made to a very secret, age-old recipe ... I found on the Internet.
My Portuguese friend from Leamington Spa, Helder, helped me acquire a Portuguese satellite box which I wanted to help improve my Portuguese. I can read the language quite well, but I still struggle to understand the spoken word. Helder also helped me reposition our second satellite dish (the one I used with the satellite card in our old home entertainment computer), while Lucia, Sandra (Helder’s wife) and Catarina (their daughter) went off to the Science Museum. The only problem was that it started drizzling while they were away and we were up on the roof. The rain made the roof tiles quite slippery, leaving us stranded up there in the rain. We eventually worked out how to get down without killing ourselves, but it was a hairy experience. (I suppose we could have called the fire brigade, but I’m dead on certain that we would never have lived that one down.)
If we ever win the lottery, we’re moving to Portugal. Hopefully this will come before we reach retirement age. My sister, Barbara, and brother-in-law, Terry, live in the hills on The Algarve, and I envy them their life tremendously. If there is anything that I miss from SA, it is the bright, sharp sunshine and blue sky. Portugal has got plenty of that.
As you may recall from a previous letter, we had lovely holiday with Barbara and Terry in April. In terms of other travel, I’ve had three daytrips to France, taking advantage of cheap ferry or Eurotunnel deals. The first was with Lucia for my birthday, then with an old army friend, Julian, and, fairly recently, by myself to go shopping. (This link is a clever Google thingy as explained in a previous mail.) The trick is to load up with cheap booze and French specialities which more than pay for the expedition. It really saves on grocery bills – which seem to rise ever higher. I put all our expenditure into a spreadsheet and graph it all to see where we’re spending our money and to keep control of our budgets. Our grocery expenditure for the first 11 months of this year is already 5-10% higher than our grocery bill for the whole of 2013. Scary stuff.
We had planned on going to Portugal for xmas again, but we couldn’t find house-sitters and kennelling is just too expensive for three animals. Instead, we’re going to France for five days and taking the dogs with us (which adds another £30 each way on the Eurotunnel shuttle). The neighbours’ children, Gina and Louis, are going to take care of Tigger while we’re gone. The length of stay in France is limited to five days due to one of the pet passport requirements. There is a particular de-worming tablet the dogs must take no more than 120 hours before they return to the UK. So, our neighbour, David, the vet (Gina and Louis’ dad), will give the dogs their pills and stamp their passports in the evening before we leave. French vets charge a lot of money for this service – because they can.
Lucia found a delightful looking house in the seaside village of Le Tréport, just north of Dieppe, which is in easy driving distance of Abbeville, Amiens, Rouen, Le Havre and the beaches of Normandy. It should be fun – I’m looking forward to it.
Now for some matters of interest.
I watched some of the Pistorius trial with interest. My personal opinion was that he knew exactly what he was doing. At the same time, without any corroborating evidence (you really need an eye witness in these cases), it was always going to be difficult to convict him of murder. I thought the sentence was inadequate.
I was perhaps more intrigued by the Shrien Dewani case. Right from the word go, I thought the taxi driver was lying through his teeth. Perhaps it’s just prejudice as a result the brutal murder of my Aunt Eugene in 2006 (which was probably one of the biggest factors in our decision to leave SA). But still, I find it extremely unlikely that someone would walk into a foreign country and – within 30 minutes – ask the first black person he came across to find him a hitman. It seems that most my correspondents in SA disagree with me.
We had our own crime drama at the bottom of our garden for several weeks. Many of you will have heard of the disappearance and murder of the 14-year-old Alice Gross. She disappeared while walking along the Grand Union Canal, which is a just a few hundred metres down the Brent River from our house. The river is the boundary to our property. We watched the police floating up and down the river in rubberducks, stripping away every piece of spare foliage and ground cover, and doing a fingertip search in the water (see pics). Yellow ribbons adorned every tree, lamppost and railing for miles around until they found her body buried in the river right where she disappeared. What I couldn’t understand was why the police focussed the search here – until I read in the newspaper that it was the biggest police CCTV operation since the 7/7 bombings. Quite simply it is impossible to get off the canal towpath in this area without being captured on CCTV somewhere. They were even able to identify their prime suspect from the same footage.
Such is our life in London. We love living here. We love the parks, and the streets, and the galleries, and the concerts, and the myriads of things to do. We have some really lovely neighbours – in fact, I have never felt such community among neighbours before. We never walk around looking over our shoulders. We have electricity all the time. Our broadband download speed is around 75Mb/sec and there is no data cap (we regularly do 100-150Gb/month). We had a bit of a problem with a drug dealer down the road, but community action got the police to take such an interest in him that he took his business elsewhere.
Let me leave it there.
Have a very merry xmas everyone
Love, light & peace to you all
Llewellyn
Pics on Google+
