Sean Lock Hates One Thing About David Walliams

I still miss Sean Lock. But I haven't heard anything about David Walliams for a long time. Presumably he's dropped out of the public eye now. And so I doubt we'll hear anything else about him. But Sean Lock - quite reasonably - hates the fart jokes in David Walliams' stories for kids. Well, there's probably nothing else to dislike about him, I suppose. Right?

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On the Also-Walkeds

I can't bring myself to say "Also-Rans" in these circumstances, because they were pedestrian at best (and actually both went backwards), but... The GOOD Party. Never my favourites. Ex-DA upper management, and smug about how they did the right thing in leaving that party. At this point, it just feel like a bit of a personal vendetta against their former employers.

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That’s enough news for today

Scrolling through the BBC Headlines when... I don't think there's really anything that can top that for a headline today. Full story here. And there are so many lovely twists and turns, but the drug-addled driver trying to convince the policeman that the lamb was hers is a good one: Do we have any evidence that the lamb was upset by or in any danger because it was eating chips?

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Dotting eyes and crossing teas

Just a quick catch-up on a few recent posts. On yesterday's post about the new CPT-SYD flight. When this route comes into operation in October 2027, Cape Town International Airport will be the only airport in the world from which you can fly directly to all seven continents. One for the quiz nerds and trivia freaks (hi!) right there. …

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Coming Soon: Cape Town to Australia – direct!

Heading to Australia? I'm not sure why you'd want to, but if you did want to (and you can hang around until next October), it's going to be much easier to do from Cape Town. Currently, you'd have to transfer in Joburg or Singapore or - if time isn't an issue but the price is - then you might choose Dubai, Doha or even Istanbul.

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Slow count

With the municipal elections in SA all done, all that remains now if to count up the votes. And it's taking a while. While the DA appears to have comfortably held control in Cape Town, they've also made huge inroads in many of the other metros as well. Unsurprisingly, in some cases. It's not quite the Blue Wave that we saw elsewhere in the world this week, but it is still significant.

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The Mid-terms

It's voting day in South Africa. But this is for our municipalities, not our government. And the results will be "interesting" but not remarkable, and will likely result in stalemates and coalitions across most of the country. But as we vote, the results of a "Blue Wave" that Helen can only dream of are coming in from the US midterms. …

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Farflung Fun

Because there just aren't enough free daily quiz games out there, I've been playing a bit of Farflung. Geography based, but with question topics as random as nuclear power stations, The Simpsons, tigers and music festivals. In a kind of Pointless (the game show, not the "doing things for no reason") way, the weirder your (correct) answer, the better you score.

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Fikile blames potholes on climate change

Secretary General of the ANC and friend(?) of the the blog, Fikile Mbalula (you may remember him from such posts as Fikile - u ok hon? , Say Sorry, Fikile!, Useless Government Ministers, Part 3074, One ocean and over a thousand kilometres of coastline and - my particular favourite - Do try to keep up), is out looking for votes for the ANC in the upcoming Municipal Elections.

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Desperation won’t be pretty

Two very powerful men men holding powerful positions are getting desperate. And that’s not good news for every single other person on the planet. Trump and Putin, the worst double act since&#…

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A little tired

Yeah. A bit jaded after yesterday's afternoon and evening out. It was fun, but it would have been more fun if the food trucks hadn't run out of er... food at 4:30pm, with just another 5½ of the event to go. But we ordered delivery pizzas and to be fair, the organisers had no issues with us bringing them in and enjoying a picnic on the grass.

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And now… beer

I'm off to a beer festival this afternoon. And evening. What could possibly go wrong? It's a beautiful sunny Halloween in Cape Town today, and so going outside and having a few(?) drinks with friends seems like a great idea. I'm not missing any football - United sorted all that out last night already - and although I'm rather tired after a getting late to bed and letting the adrenaline subside, I'm mostly ready to go.

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The Jillon

What on earth did I just watch? Well, with Cosmo Wellings (Adultswim), Kevin Eldon (Brass Eye, Big Train), Richard Ayoade (IT Crowd), I should have (sort of) seen where it was going. "It looks like... some sort of pink gibbon!" From the pen of Harry Hill, this is 15 minutes of completely bonkers, but also actually surprisingly lovely stuff. Wow. Brilliant. I... I think.

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A lazy post (with justification)

Not wanting to be too dramatic, because it's not really much of a dramatic thing. I played football again last night, and after the euphoria of last week's goal, I was brought back down to earth with a bang. Literally, as it happens. I took a bit of a knock on the head towards the end of the game, and - and this is where the alarm bells are ringing just a little bit - I can't really remember what happened.

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The really weird thing about AI

I mean, there are plenty of weird things, but probably he weirdest for me are the alleged early-adopters. The ones who now - already - see AI as a large, and essential, part of their lives. And yet, at the same time, they seem to have forgotten about any sort of life they had before AI. Because in what way could this every be classed as "normal" behaviour?

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Worth boasting about?

I bought a copy of The Big Issue the other day. Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of it, but I recognise the benefit of the work that they do. My choice is rather to give to one of the local charities like U-Turn or The Haven. But as I say, I bought one, probably for the first time in about a decade.

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Top of the League!

After this post, in which I shared this graphic: ...documenting just how bad the gambling "epidemic" was in South Africa, I spotted some more graphic-based news about SA today. Because the above shows just how much money is being spent on gambling, and the other chart I shared in that post tells us what sort of people are spending money on gambling:

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Look after yourself

The chat at last night's birthday drinks (not me) was sadly often brought back to the number of apparently fit and healthy adults around our age that have popped their clogs over the last few weeks. And it is all anecdotal and brought up in conversation because there have been three deaths in the last fortnight of people who were known by people at the party.

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Nice light

Back to Cape Town today, but there was time for a nice beach walk in Agulhas before our braai last night. Great light, and I got some nice bird shots with the long lens, but this one was just a quick phone effort. If anyone from Cape Agulhas Tourism sees this, I'm available to help make your place look beautiful.

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Five

Up early after a poor night's sleep, I began on some of the jobs that need sorting down at the Southern Tip. But I wasn't long started, when I was disturbed by the distinctive call of some Blue Cranes. It took me a few moments to find them in the bright sky, but a quick shot with the big lens gave me this:

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More on Ebola – and how diagnostic labs work

Just because I haven't mentioned it on here for a while, doesn't mean that the Ebola (yes, Bundibugyo, but also "Ebola") outbreak has gone away. If only curing tropical viral diseases were as easy as just not writing about them. In fact, it shows no sign of going away in the DRC, and has now spread to Kenya and Nigeria…

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Another voter spotted

We had a service provider come to our house yesterday. The service that the service provider was providing isn't important, but I promise that it was all above board. Conversation tuned (as it always does at the moment) to the ridiculous price of everything. And I - innocently enough, I felt - suggested that Trump's attack on Iran had a lot to do with the price of diesel (and therefore the price of everything else).

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Ooh. That’s a long one!

Careful now. Transnet - South Africa's state-owned and occasionally operating rail, port and pipeline company have done a GOOD THING. They've broken the world record for the longest ever train length. And it's BIG. 7.602km big. Not only did they break that record for length, they also broke another one for the number of vehicles in a single train, with 12 locomotives + 2 coaches and 696 wagons, for a total of 710 vehicles.

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Starting tomorrow…

Roadworks on the M3 - long-planned and long-promised - finally get underway tomorrow on the M3 in Cape Town. For... 2 years! This is all part of the City's efforts to reduce congestion on the bit of the M3 that runs through the leafy suburb of Claremont, and it's not going to be pretty. You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs, but it's clear that the discarded shells are going to make life very difficult for a lot of people. But only until September 2028. Happy days.

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A bad day for Bristol

Some thoughts on a day out at the rugby. In no particular order. If I hadn't been at the rugby yesterday, I would have been at home watching Sheffield United beat Bristol City 1-0. As it was, I was at the rugby watching the Stormers beat Bristol Bears 49-12. A bad day for Bristol. And with it being chilly today and this evening - …

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