weekend wandering, a little bit of this, a little bit of that.

Let's kick off with a gratuitous sunset shot because... well who said you need a reason to enjoy a sunset? I took this on Wednesday night, on my way for evening visiting hours. But actually, there is a bit of a story behind it....

Port Elizabeth has been very dry lately. Theoretically we are supposed to get two distinct rainy seasons each year. We are sort of slap-dab between the Mediterranean winter rainfall climate of the Western Cape, and the more tropical summer rainfall zone that covers the East Coast.


Somehow, this year, we had very little winter rain, and I had to water the garden quite regularly (although my gasping plants will probably whine about neglect and tell you it was not often enough!!) The weather man has promised rain often enough, it is just that his promises have been somewhat empty... unless what he calls a 60% chance of rain refers to the three drops that fall and evaporate before they hit the ground!

So when I saw this newspaper headline on Wednesday, I was, I confess, a little skeptical.

That is why, when I saw that sunset, my mind was running along the tracks of "ok, at least there are clouds, that is a good sign... but all over blogland recently people have been quoting that thing about red sky in the morning, sailor's/shepherd's warning.... and red skies at night are supposed to imply good weather to come, so I wonder if this is going to be another damp squib?"

Fast forward to Thursday, hardly a drop here. I'm smugly thinking 'SEE... once again we are being misled'

Friday came, and this was the headline that greeted me in my morning paper... Apparently, along the South coast it was a different story!! Not the 50mm that was warned about, but OVER 300MM fell in one day over many parts of the coast!!! There is severe damage in many places, and people are being airlifted out as roads and bridges have been destroyed.

The coastal holiday village of Sedgefield was very hard hit. What you see here between the trees and the houses is (or was) the main freeway to CapeTown... so national transport systems have been severely disrupted.

these photos were e-mailed to my son-in-law from a colleague in George, don't know who took them.

Then, literally 3 seconds after I got Max into the house, on his discharge from hospital at lunctime on Friday, the heavens opened....yay!

But not for long, and it was over. Once again, PE only caught the tail end. Probably a good thing really, I wouldn't fancy dealing with a flood right now! But thoughts go out to all those left homeless by the latest hiccup in our notoriously quirky weather!


Can it POSSIBLY be Christmas again so soon??? Where has this year gone?
Meanwhile... while Max was in Hospital, I went off to the Greenacres Mall, next door, to get Max a dressing gown. I decided to stop there for lunch, and had a great calamari salad at Wimpy.

I couldn't believe all the Christmas hype going on already... it is TOO MUCH, people!!!!

So I would like to propose that we START A COUNTER REVOLUTION, to resist becoming pawns of the marketing circus which drives us to greater levels of stress with each new festive season....... more about this in the coming week.


And from one whine to another....
Over at Visual St Paul, Kate was chatting about the success of the re-marketing of Australian Yellow Tail wine, and how sales had rocketted since the new label was launched. I commented that, not being a wine drinker, if I do have to buy wine for an occasion or guest, I am totally influenced by labels and colour/shape of bottle (as you know by now, I have a THING about those delicious deep blue bottles!)

And I promised to show her my favourite South African label...apparently the wine isn't too shabby either!
I couldn't find out if the sales have rocketted as a result of the new labels, but here is the website with details about the re-launch.
http://www.dgb.co.za/index.php?mod=submain&SubPage_ID=225 ,tall horse wines (I actually downloaded a cute screensaver from the site, which little grandson Ethan loves. Colourful versions of the giraffes in the label galloping around the world.)

I like it when a local product doesn't try to borrow imagery from other cultures, but celebrates our own unique continent. In fact the same applies to architecture, I am appalled by the proliferation of fake Tuscan houses springing up like mushrooms all over South Africa, and I already had a little rant about the Boardwalk Casino complex in my recent post on Jazz on the Lake.


Have a lekker weekend! (translation = enjoy!!)