Odds & Ends (no pun intended on the latter)

Firstly, some distressing news. My Dad’s friend, an internationally renowned professor in his field, and former Head of School in that field at Wits, shot himself last weekend, leaving behind his wife and 3 sons aged between 7 and 15. I always battle to deal with this news, because although in the past I’ve been so unhappy as to contemplate doing the deed, I know I could never actually have brought myself to do it. There’s a level of despair that is even greater than that I felt – or anyone else who has contemplated suicide, and I know many of you out there have at some point – that I cannot begin to fathom. No-one can really explain it to us, I guess, because those people who could have ultimately gone through with their intentions. And here, a successful man in his mid-50s, with a loving family, world-wide respect for his work and no apparent huge financial burdens, has gone and done it. How tragic.

But, life goes on for the rest of us, and we take amusement in life’s witty little trivialities.

Take, for instance, my little drive up Table Mountain the other afternoon to dodge the traffic. I parked a wee bit up on the road from where all the cable car traffic parks, and sat for a while just enjoying the view of the lovely little curve of earth that is the CT city bowl. It was about 5:30, and the shadow that Lion’s Head cast over the city was disturbingly long and thin (back when I used to paint, I always looked out for these sorts of things, because it’s not immediately obvious what shadows some objects will cast, making it difficult to ‘guess’ them to portray in your art). I immediately thought “Wow, if I had had to paint this, I’d never have guessed that little dumpy poo piece of mountain would cast a shadow that is so long and thin over the city. I’d have got it totally wrong.” So it occurred to me that this shadow casts a pretty darn regular sweep over the city bowl, and if you lived in any area touched by the dark finger’s shade at any point of the day, it would happen at precisely the same time each day (give or take, given seasonal variations). In short, its shadow is like that cast by a sundial – neat, hey? “Daaaaaad, what’s the time? Well, we’re in the shadow, son, so somewhere between 5:20 and 5:35. Why do you ask when you should have known that already?”

In another life triviality (and beware, this one’s very, very trivial), that thing I’ve recently started to fear has finally happened. You know those new nifty cartons of Clover milk – the ones that make fresh milk last a lot longer than normal? Well, I’ve always been fearful of the little tag you use to tear off the top of the container, breaking during the process. It looks so flimsy, that I’ve always treated it with the greatest of care, gently pulling on it at an angle that I’d imagine would cause the least distress to the plastic. Yet somehow, my delicately precise actions still caused the thing to break the other day. So I had to hack at the damn thing with a pocket knife. You’ve been warned – always keep one handy!

PS: A huge congratulations to Peas for winning yet another blog award this year – Most Humorous Blog of 2006! And well done to all the other well-deserved winners, hope you're more skilled with your vuvuzelas than Peas is ;)