Joburg, visas and family

Shereen grew up in Joburg, so we visited her Dad where her brother, Jonathan and Tish live. We were greeted by a throng of hound-pooches, 14 to be exact, two parrots and a wayward pussy. After the full-on greeting and the hounds settled down, we got to chatting with Jonathan and Tish. Shereen last saw her brother and father in 2018 so there was plenty to catch up on. We ended up spending two nights there, and left with gifts from Jonathan including a toolkit that I ended up using a few days later. Shereen's dad's workshop came in handy and he helped us with a plan for the tent rods that we'd been struggling with for weeks, the fuel tanks that were prohibitively in the way, uniquely designed tent pegs and a hose for our water tanks. I braved playing with (tormenting) the parrots, one of which threatened to bite me, and the other which shrieked so loudly that Tish came running thinking that the dogs were attacking it. We also played a game of arsehole. A card game that Jonathan explained to his 11 year old son, could not be uttered except in the context of the game. It was a raucous game and the positions of both president and arsehole were hotly contested!

Our next stop was Aunty Beth and Harold and her now grown cousins whom Shereen had not seen for ten years. The entire family had a rock band, so we shared in great conversations about the greats like Meatloaf.

Obligatory visitations included Shereen's mum, Jenny, who had been cautious about the prospect of seeing us. The bathroom wall was in a state of disrepair, so while the girls' shopped, I sneakily bought the hardware for fixing up the wall. Under false pretenses of having a super-long toiletry requirement, I scraped, scrubbed, rubbed and plastered the wall leaving it with a sheen of sealant. Jenny then mentioned a hoover appliance that no longer worked. With Jonathan's toolkit I sliced, spliced and tackled the loose power cables in the depths of the belly of the beast. Verifying the connection, Jenny turned off the electrical supply... or so I thought. Suddenly the beast sprang to life. I was THIS close to getting inadvertently executed by my "mother in law".

Our visit extended to Cousin Lee and hubby Jimmy, who were experts in using pharmaceuticals to attain focus for the day ahead. In particular, Jimmy had hacked his ADHD, evident in a sprawl of fish-tanks and terraria that housed exotic and native millipods; that bubbled and whirred away in his office. Using a micro dose of sleeping pills in the morning to put the distractive part of his brain to sleep, allowed Jimmy to perform mental miracles at his job. The downside: the medication has been strongly implicated in leading to early onset Alzheimers.
James Cole, Shereen's five-year old nephew with a keen curiosity of bugs was gifted with our new favorite bug-book. The second afternoon we gamboled up to Northcliffe ridge. The view was surprisingly verdant over the suburbs, and it was a treat to investigate the composition of species there. The usual Clematis rambled there, but there was a hairy species, Clematis Villosa, that I hadn't seen before, a crab spider inhabiting its hairy fruit cluster.Read more