Some time with the magnificent Cath!

Cath lives in Johannesburg and was tempted to join us a few years back as the expeditionary doctor. Cath phoned me up for the first time in many months, and amazingly, we were traveling and at a loose end as to where to stay and were a mere 15 minutes from her new place. So fresh in fact that we got to meet the estate agents before we met Cath, and before Cath met the agents. After the meet up, Cath had to head to the hospital for work, so we ended up staying at her former lodgment and tested out the bath and shower. It was the most horrendously engineered piece of designer ware. The bath was wide with an obtusely angled, but non-curved backrest - entirely unergonomic. The designer was so cool that they felt that it was unnecessary to label the hot and cold taps. The designer decided to spray the water in a beautiful fan. Wonderful for aesthetics, but absolutely shite for retaining the heat of the water - it was luke warm by the time it reached the bath itself. Worse than that, the nozzle was recessed slightly, and angled at a considerable angle from vertical towards the unfortunate bather. Taking a hot bath necessitated using boiling water such that the bath was hot enough, but it also meant risking being burned like sliced lamb on a Lebanese rotisserie. Finally the tap was out of reach for bathers, so I was forced to perform a shrimp maneuver to attain the tap with my feet. The toilet too had both of my favorite gripes too: A rear-wall that slopes dramatically towards the incumbent and dual-flush buttons. Allow me to elaborate. 100 years ago there were water closets (designed by Mr T. Crapper himself!) that had a massive porcelain basin sitting about 2m above the toilet. This ensured sufficient water to flush away the brown demons. I've also witnessed an "inspection shelf" in Mozambique, design possibly of Portuguese origin that allows a user to inspect the quality of their turds as an indicator of health. Back in the 80's and 90's we had a handle attached to the toilet, that due to providing some leverage, allowed even the least dexterous person to flush the toilet with ease. Inside was a simple and fairly foolproof mechanism with a spherical float, and when that float reached the desired level with the water filling up, it closed the valve that delivered water to the cistern. The toilets used to flush till the cistern was empty, but due to water restrictions, the municipality suggested that people install a system that allowed people to lift the handle once the turd had been sufficiently flushed, stopping the flow of water. An excellent solution.

When I was in my early postgraduate years at the University of Cape Town, I stayed at the house of one of the Michaelis family of Michaelis Art School fame. It was an old house with no hot water, broken floorboards, but it was imminently affordable. We were told it would be just R600 for the month. By the time payment came for the month, and I'd moved in, she said that the price was ludicrous, and it was R2300 per month. This was the first time I encountered the dual flush system of a 3/4 moon embedded in a crescent moon. It was not obvious to me which was the lesser flush for urine and the greater flush for poops: was it the the thinner outer- or the bigger inner-moon. But it didn't matter because neither worked. The dust and concrete from recent renovations had thoroughly clogged up the delicate mechanism of the toilet, working their way between the moons and the surrounds, rendering our toilet flushable only by bucket. Strike one for the dual-flush toilet. Incidentally, when Anne Michaelis pushed up the prices further, I was forced to move out. I spoke to the residents some two years later. Turns out that she had pulled the same grift on them, charging them next to nothing, then charging more before the end of the month.

But I digress. This bathroom at Cath's, as I said, had it all. The back of the toilet sloped down at an unnecessarily shallow angle. I think the idea is that the power of the water is meant to flush off the crap better if it's at a shallower angle. The problem is, it frequently doesn't. So then - after flushing - the bog brush needs to be grabbed: a device that always freaks me out slightly. But by the time you've found out the flush doesn't work, you then need to wait for it to restore enough water to flush off both the brush and the residual bits that now inhabit the bowl. But one is always too impatient the first time, so then you have to flush a third time. What a waste of time, effort and water! The solution - make the back sloped directly down, or even backwards. That way no feculence besmirches its porcelain patina.

But we had a delightful time, and soon, Cath, Shereen and I roared off to Loskop Dam to look for Hermannia medusae (Loskop means lost head, and the medusa had her head chopped off, so it's a pun on that). Only collected by Marinda Koekemoer, it's a species that I've hunted at Loskop dam twice for now, and we didn't end up finding it. Crossing over the bridge, we did see a young croc basking in the sun on a rock, a mere 15m from us. I was under the impression that crocs stuck to calmer waters, but how wrong I was. The night before, camped out under a full moon by the rivers edge, I was going to take a dip, but Shereen spotted a croc in the water about 5m from where I was going to swim. Crazy close! But I did, on my cycle with Cath, encounter three young motocross bikers. I managed to get my first ride on a motocross bike, and it was super fun. I'm super keen to get my Starke Varg, which is the world's best mass-produced electric motocross bike; and it's made by Swedish designers in Portugal. Loskop Dam was phenomenally impressive. Even more so because it was in full-spate.

On the way back from the dam I came across a thick pipe lying on the ground across both lanes. It was oddly patchy and more so, as I was about to ride over it - it moved! I realized immediately it was a snake, leapt off my bicycle, fumbled for my phone, snapped a picture, and moved to grab it. Cath, who at this point had pulled up, had a look of horror on her face. "What are you doing?!" she gasped. Without answering, I reached down and grabbed the snake by the tail. I did not however grab it strongly enough and the snake rapidly retracted its tale and dove into the bush. It was an African rock python that I estimate to be about 5m long and about 20cm in diameter.

Thanks so much to Cath: doctor to my septic vasectomy, bath buddy, bank loaner for my electron microscope, cycling partner and friend, who has been unstinting in her kindness towards me.Read more