Memory Going!

Back in the bush after a month in Cape Town, and it's looking spectacular with Pride of the Cape, Wilde Dagga  and Tecomaria (Cape Honeysuckle) flowering brilliant orange and attracting all the sunbirds and butterflies from miles around.  I had written 3 blogs while on the way home as various topics raised their ugly heads (I nearly always blog when I'm angry or irritated!) but now I've forgotten them and they are on my Netbook, named Lily.  Like most women she is bloody temperamental and has been having lots of moody moments lately, so I can't open her up to retrieve my stored blogs.  The one was about Upington, where we spent the night on the way home!  With no accommodation under R600 per person it looked as if we were about to spend the night in the car - God help us!  But OAP saw a sign on a darkened, overgrown house that announced it as a B&B.  He phoned and arranged a bed for us with safe parking for our overloaded car and somewhere to plug our fridge in (I had taken all the contents of our fridge all the way to CT and some of it all the way back! A well travelled hunk of beef for roasting in particular!) and we had to wait for half an hour for someone to come and let us in.  I called that blog "I Wanna Be an Hotel Inspector" as the place was nice at a quick glance in the dark but awful after staying there for a while!  Cracks in the wall, a sagging ceiling, no towels, bath mats that hadn't been washed for ages (just the thought of someone else's feet on them made me want to throw up!), no bedside light, no DSTV which meant I had to miss Strictly Come Dancing and Downton Abbey!  Chipped tiles and mismatched furniture, grime in the corners and chipped cups and plates made me wish we HAD slept (or not) in the car, but mostly it made me wish I was a hotel inspector so I could downgrade them!  Since we seemed to be the only residents they had probably been well and truly downgraded before anyway.

Back home with our non-functioning septic tank for the main house we bought a porta-loo to use over the Easter Weekend as we had quite upmarket friends staying for 4 days.  It was disgusting to clean out but an absolute godsend for ablutions.  The smell of the chemicals will stay with me forever but from now on - unless an emergency of the unimaginable sort - it will only be used for wees!!!!  Tomorrow we have good old Elias coming to dig a trench to the new septic tank and lay pipes and all will be back to normal - I hope!