Fellow comrades, seethe with me.

Just got in from the Grand West Arena and the Seether concert.  Still a sweating mess and just woke mom and dad up to turn on the router coz I couldnt wait to write this entry.  Cant believe I spent 9 years queuing in the rain outside Brixton academy, dodging dodgy ticket touts or traipsing through a quagmire in the Yorkshire countryside dodging dodgy portaloos.  This was the pinnacle of rock and roll!  Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Anthony Kiedis, Noel Gallagher, Thom Yorke, Bono…your boys took one hell of a beating tonight.

Two hours has never gone so fast.  From the opening chords of “No Jesus Christ” to the closing chords of “Remedy” his royal highness of rock and roll, Shaun Morgan Welgemoed and his team put on the Best Live Rock Show…ever. And in case you didnt understand that I will repeat myself…EVER!

And this is why.

Took 15 minutes from sitting on my couch to locking the car in the Grand West carpark.  Two minutes later I had my wristband and was in my seat ( a super comfy cushion affair fitting of a Josh Groban concert).  Beer costs R10, thats 75p in pom money.  Toilets so pristine you could eat your dinner off them.  Then I find a green wristband on the bog floor that only happens to be a standing room entry ( a R100 dearer than the poxy ticket I bought).  So i took my cheap beer and walked up to within 10m of the stage.  Awesome.

First up we had some good old South African lesbian rock with Stealing Love Jones (Karma eat your heart out), then the most confused rock outfit ever, 12th avenue…are you emo? are you metal? are you cock rock?  Anyway the lead singer looked a bit like Meatloaf’s character in Fight Club…man boobs and everything. Last of the support acts was A King.  Two members of Afrikaner rock bullies Fokofpolisiekar have crossed the boerewors curtain into the English medium and got the crowd going with radio hit “The Dance”.

Then the main show…one more time…EVER! I now firmly believe it wasn’t a good show unless you can taste blood in the back of your throat afterwards.  I feel like a bit of a hypocrit writing this while swigging an Archers Aqua but it was the only thing in the fridge and Im still so flippin wired from this show.

Did I mention that they have vendors who bring the beer to you.  If they only had vendors with a portable urinal it would be the best venue in the world…EVER! I must also thank the 4 guys who dragged me into their own personal mosh pit, although it was during the ballad “Broken” which is a little weird.  Apologies to the 2 girls in front of us who were drowned in boy sweat during the headbanging numbers. 

And another thing, they also have vendors who sell you prepaid parking tickets so you dont have to queue at the machine afterwards.  The feedback from the last track was probably still ringing out as I was pulling into my driveway.  No standing on a train platform with the great unwashed!

So heres another thing.  Tomorrow is Youth Day (another public holiday).  And because our government didnt want to detract from that celebration the Comrades Marathon was today…a Sunday.  Never mind the spiritual wellbeing of the nation.  Having not watched the race since the early nineties I was in for a surprise.  Yes it still starts in the dark with some dude crowing like a cock, but you now have 12 hours to finish.  There are now 5 different medals, gold, silver, Bill Rowan, bronze and copper, oh and yes the race is completely dominated by foreigners.  So now they not only take our jobs our food and our women, they also take our running medals.  In the women’s race, places 1 to 5 were russian.  In the men’s race the first South African came sixth with three russians, a zimbo and a pole beating him there.  It really does give new meaning to the name Comrades.

 

Who do these foreign chappies think they are?

I have decided that an ostrich mentality to the news is definitely in order.  Petrol’s up, food’s up, interest rate up yadda yadda yadda…straight to the back page…oh look Bafana Bafana are continuing their quest to embarass a nation…straight to the recycling then.  Whats on the telly?  Great, we now set people on fire for daring to be more hardworking, efficient and better with the ladies than us.  I cast my mind back to news awareness tests at varsity and my Everest-size pile of Mail&Guardians still in their plastic wrappers.  Its just better not knowing.

Bur from the snippets I do catch I do know that Somalian refugees are threatening to commit mass suicide through hunger strike or by drowning themselves if conditions in their camps are not improved.  Great plan.  Here are the few teeny weeny problems I see with this course of action:

1) They first chased all the aid workers away who were there to make things better.

2) They are trying to hold a government to ransom whose response time makes the jurassic age seem zippy. Even if Thabo and his team did do something positive its gonna be a bit late.

3) Our leaders are sitting there wondering what to do with all these refugees and they go and offer them a “get out” like that.

4) Have you felt how cold the water is? Your noble action may lose some of its impact if you run back out of the surf going ooh ooh ooh the moment your feet get wet.

Anyway.  I am still employed! I am however no longer the moral compass for the country having been moved to a new project.  I now write Squeak tutorials for Grade 4,5 and 6 pupils.  This is what I can teach you to do so far. Bounce a ball, fly a hot air ballon, make the water cycle…well cycle, make a volcano erupt, pick up a car with a magnet, make pretty patterns, dodge arrows, build a wall, make an aquarium.  So when our youth are not only model citizens but have a firm grasp of basic science and maths you will know who to thank.

You may have seen from FB pics that I bought a mountain bike.  My prattling on about its speed after a quick turn around the block may have been a touch premature.  Had first real ride with JZ and the Robinzz on Sunday morning.  Its now Wednesday and my thigh is officially more bruised than my ego after my very girly tumble at the last hurdle.  “Just stick to the left of the stump you’ll be fine” is not necessarily good advice.  And an hour an half of air sucking agony for 10 minutes of downhill with both brakes on, is a less than favourable ratio of pain to gain.  But spectaular scenery and being out in the winter sun is pretty awesome.

I have also taken up action cricket.  Having no refelexes and being terrified of getting hit with the ball just add to the challenge.  On my first batting outing I looked up to the scoreboard to see that my batting partner and I had amassed minus 15.  To make matters worse we had hit 3 sixes.  So some simple arithmetic later… yup thats 11 losses of wicket in 4 overs.  Great game!

Its with great sadness that I report that Operation Wife Finding has made very little progress.  It was recently hampered by a breakdown in its translation department.  Apparently “I miss you, I wish you were here” ACTUALLY means “Im not interested in anything serious”.  But you live and learn.

Hope you and yours are all well.  Off to see Seether on Sunday so gotta find something black and angry to wear.

Nein Nein too much Eengleesh!

And who said the Germans had no sense of humour.  German newspaper Bild tells tourists how to avoid Brit filled resorts.