What else Can Possibly Go Wrong, Go Wrong, Go Wrong?

While I'm laid up with stupid leg in plaster and both leg muscles feeling as if I've been working out at the gym for hours at a time, OAP took the car into town to get a few things - and the WHEEL FELL OFF!!!!!!!!

It had been squeaking badly for some time and last visit to Joburg I took it into Honda instead of having a couple of hours browsing the Mall.  They put it up on the ramp and then called me and said it was unroadworthy and I should call a tow truck to get us back to Honda Rustenburg.  SO, of course, we drove back to Rustenburg and R, scoffing at the scare tactics just put out by some pimply mechanic to make me spend tons of money with them, drove it into Rustenburg next day to see HIS mechanic.  His mechanic scoffed at the idea of the wheel falling off but said that it DID need work done and ordered the parts.  Since then it's made 4 more trips into Rustenburg including the one on Monday where I had X/Rays and then got my leg put in plaster.   I suppose I must be grateful the wheel didn't come off THEN!

Anyhoo - OAP drove off gaily yesterday and then phoned about an hour later to say the front left wheel had come off just as he turned a corner SLOWLY thank heavens and he now needed a flat bed truck to take car to his mechanic - yes, the one who said it wouldn't come off!   I am a member of the AA - not OAP who feels it's a totally unnecessary expense!  So I phone the AA and tell them the story and the operator says they can only respond if I am in trouble so I put on a pathetic voice and tell him I am at home with a broken ankle and had to send OAP with my car to do the shopping, etc.  The AA go out and collect him and he had to sit at the mechanic's all day waiting for the parts and then getting a lift home with a friend who is temporarily living in the house just above us here in Utopia.   I suppose it could have been worse: like ME driving, or on Monday when I'd just been put in plaster, or at speed on the highway on our way into or out of Joburg!  So here we sit with no Honda and only OAP's old Merc which we can't drive further than the end of the road!

Moral of this story? Don't get up early in the morning!

It does not pay to get up early! It is the one thing that I hate doing and yet I love birding so every now and then (like once a year) I make the effort. This year was Saturday morning. We’ve had house guests all week – first a hippie couple from Cape Town for three nights and then a great couple from our hiking club for two nights. But 6 days and five nights of constant talking pushed me into making the effort to join the bird club at a local reserve to look for the Painted Snipe. At 4.30 am my alarm went off and I got up, dressed, made tea and a sandwich and OAP came downstairs to say goodbye just I was slipping out into the early dawn. It was GLORIOUS! We’ve been having such hot weather and this was cool and clear and obviously going to be a scorcher of a day.


An hour later I arrived at the gates of the reserve and paid my entrance fee along with 6 million masochistic cyclists fully kitted out in the latest gear with their little water packs on their backs and their little pipes next to their cheeks should they feel the need to have a “sluk” whenever. I remembered the days when we cycled and wore an old Tshirt and a pair of padded hellenca stretch cycling pants and had a bottle clipped onto the bike frame – obviously not good enough for this lot!

The rest of the club members arrived (having got up about 10 minutes before) and we set off for the camp site in the top end of the park. From there we picked our way through the waist high grass, praying the snakes were still asleep, down to the wetlands below. Normally you are not allowed to do this but we had permission which felt great. That’s the nice thing about joining clubs for this and that – you get to go places where the plebs can’t go! Down in the wetland area we discovered why we had been advised to wear “wellies”. The water was about knee deep in places and the mud even deeper! I don’t have wellies as I put them in the “box for France” (this is a box in a store room in town where we put all the things we want to take and know we’ll forget! It used to be the Swiss box but is now the French box). So, not having wellies I wore my hiking boots and having forgotton socks wore two pairs of OAP’s gym socks that he’d left in my car. Hiking boots were by far the best footwear unless you had a pair of waders anyway as one or two gave up on the chase after getting stuck in the mud and others ended up with as much water in their boots as out. Once I got my feet wet I didn’t mind the feel and just sploshed along with leaders of the hunt. You needed to be up front as they flushed the birds and that was the only sight one got! They sit still until you nearly tread on them and then suddenly flap up in your face giving their drumming call – heart attack stuff! I was chief flusher after the first half hour as the two lead men wanted to try to get photos so there I was like a retriever squishing around the tufts of long grass trying to stay out of the deepest areas. Some of the flatter areas looked so tempting until you put a foot on the grass and realized that the whole “lawn” was afloat! After 3 ½ hours of this we decided to go back to the cars and join the others and look for other birds in the area. Almost back at the road I fell into an Aardvark hole and twisted an ankle. It was hidden under grassy tufts and I must have just got the edge with my right foot, so the ankle went over and then down 3 feet! It was actually so embarrassing that I made out it was nothing and managed to pull myself together and hobble back to the car where we ate our breakfast – I took off my boots as my ankle was screaming but this was possibly a mistake as it ballooned out spectacularly! Couldn’t eat breakfast as I felt quite sick and left soon after to go home while the club went off looking for Tree Pipits (that would have been a first for me but I just couldn’t think of anything worse!). At home the guests had gone and I lots of tea and sympathy and I am now feeling a bit better and am able to stand on it but can’t bend it or move the foot, so tomorrow am off back to Rustenburg to have X/Rays.

Tuesday: X/Rays showed a fracture - the whole knob bit at then end of the bone has broken off so I am now in plaster up to my knee and not allowed to put weight on it.  In two weeks time I have another X/Ray to see if it is knitting (not crocheting) and if not then I have to have a screw inserted.  Don't like the sound of that so I am being fairly good and hobbling around on OAP's crutches.  Not easy - all my weight is divided between my left leg and the crutches and boy am I heavy!  Also the cast feels like I am wearing my right knee length boot from the 70s - too tight and I want to take it off, especially before getting int bed!  That just feels WRONG!  I can't lie on my stomach either as then it hurts like hell.  This is going to be a LONG two weeks with the house getting dirtier and dirtier (OAP doesn't see dirt!) and, as we've had a constant stream of guests, there is much to be done.  This morning I had to instruct OAP in the art of getting the weekly wash done - what a frustration!  Everything I take for granted had to be explained over and over and then all the clothes and bedding got slung in lumps over the line!  How the heck does he think it will dry?  At least I can ask one of the ladies here to iron some things for us or he can take a bar stool and I can sit and do it. 

Happy New Year!

Sorry I haven't blogged for so long but I have felt that nothing worthwhile has been happening!  After Sally left for Oz I felt flat and also panick-struck as I realised I only had a month left in which to finish my last assignment.  I now only have 4 days so I decided to blog instead!  I also listened to a pod on my mp3 all about procrastination and why some people are prone to it and others not.  I learned it is an illness (much like alcoholism!) so now I know why I never get things done until the last minute - I am ill!!!!!

To please OAP I agreed to go to our Hiking Club hut and campsite on the other side of the mountain for New Years Eve but I refused to put up a tent for just 2 nights.  My little isodome is falling to bits and I cannot be bothered to erect the big cottage tent - no sooner would I have it up than it would be time to take it down again!  As it was, there was a small room in the hut that we could use (the other rooms were full - 5 men in the one, from where a most awful cacophony of snoring emanated each night! and a man and two women in the other) - it's very basic but at least we were dry which was more than could be said of the campers as it hailed and rained for a couple of hours on Sunday night and again on Monday morning.  That dampened the spirits no end and not a few packed up and left!  The weather has been appalling for the last month with hideously hot days followed by a dreadful storm and then two days of winter!  Many are sick with flu, coughs, colds, etc.  luckily we have missed that.   So - we, at least were dry, and I could retreat to our little room (with a curtain for a door so not soundproof) whenever I felt I'd had enough company or felt the urge to type a bit more of my assignment into the computer.  Actually it was nice to see the old (and I do mean OLD!) faces and catch up on gossip.  On Monday morning I nipped home to get us each a jersey as it had been so hot when we left Utopia that I forgot to put anything warm in! And when I got back it had warmed up and even at 11pm we didn't need anything warm!  Oh well!   OAP, as usual, tried to drink the bar dry so we went to bed at 11.30 and I heard the countdown from bed!  But we never usually see the new year in so that was fine.  In the morning we had a champagne breakfast with 10 of our best friends and I think, somewhere in my enthusiasm of being with old hiking buddies, I have booked myself onto the GR5 hike in the French alps for next summer!!!!!!  Still I can always cancel - WILL cancel, using OAP as an excuse!   One of our friends who is now living in UK but was back here for a holiday kept exclaiming "I can't get over how none of you have changed!" until she bumped into a guy she used to hike with and called his partner Sheila - the name of his ex!!!  After that, every time she said how little someone had changed we'd say "except Sheila, eh Gaynor?!!!!!!" she will never live it down and neither of the couple spoke to her after that!

Last night we went to dinner with friends of ours on the other side of Utopia (near the tennis courts for those that know Utopia).  Had a great evening - even though it rained again!  It rained last time we saw them too!  Got home at 10.30 and slept like logs!

Carolyn is settled in Natal and getting her new school ready for the opening - next week I think.  Ciaran seems to have settled too and made lots of friends. Marc seems to be working in Jhb still and is flying or driving up and down each weekend - don't ask!  Lisa, Schalk and Jack are having an exhausted blast in Switzerland - hope you've been reading her blog?  Kean and Gisela spent a week in the flat in Cape Town as it was Gisela's best friend's wedding.  They enjoyed it so much that they want to go again in February.  May as well before we sell the apartment and everyone says"Oh I meant to go down and now I can't!"  Use it or lose it is my motto!

OAP is walking well and wants to have the other knee done in February which gives him 6 weeks to recover before our Belgian friends arrive for 2 weeks, but we will leave it up to the surgeon.

OAP is the one with his back to the camera - he's making the toast!

May 2013 be a good year for all of you and I hope you stay healthy and happy.

OAP is Poster Boy for Joint Replacements!

OAP had a left knee replacement 2 weeks ago and is doing SO well in recovery that his physio is considering making him the Poster Boy for the op!  He was in a ward with 2 other men, one of whom had a hip replacement (OAP had that done 2 years ago) and the other a knee replacement.  They whined and moaned and pressed their bells every 5 minutes and screamed and whinnied with pain when they were forced out of bed by the physios. All the while shooting dagger-like looks at OAP as he happily ate everything put in front of him, did his bed exercises with alacrity and leapt off down the corridor each morning and afternoon in his zimmer frame.  Once home he used the zimmer when he went for a shower as it gives support under slippery circumstances otherwise it has become a clothes horse!!  He uses crutches in a way I have never seen before swinging each one forward with the opposite leg - most odd but it works for him!  He says there is no pain but at 11pm he does concede to take 2 Stopayne so that he has a peaceful night (and so do I!).  A friend of ours had a mole removed from his leg last week and could barely walk so I reckon we all have a different pain threshold and R's is sky high!

The hardest thing about the knee op is that he has to wear an elastic stocking and I have to put it on and take it off each time he showers.  As I put my back out a while ago this is excruciating first thing in the morning - I loosen up during the day but at first its all I can do to get MYSELF out of bed!  So there I am, lowering myself gingerly onto the floor, rolling down the stocking and peeling it off the foot, careful not to pinch a nerve in my lower vertebrae.  Then while he crutches his way to the shower i carefully ease myself up using the bed, chair or whatever to lever myself upright.  Once up I have to go to the shower and, door open 6 inches, wash his majesty's back while trying not to get wet and flood the bathroom floor!  He also insists on his legs being soaped - since when did THEY get dirty?  So it's back onto all fours in order to soap the royal calves and feet - 2 days ago i used the lavatory brush with the facecloth wrapped around the bristles and he LOVED it until he saw what I had done, then he couldn't see the joke and felt "used"!!!!!!  Actually I thought I was pretty darned clever!

SO we are in Joburg tonight at elder daughter's house and tomorrow he is supposed to have the staples out and new dressings put on (although the old one came off in the shower and I had to replace them myself) and more exercises given (including stairs I think) and also he wants to know if he can drive the car soon which will be such a blessing as he can then take himself off for a while to friends nearby and I can have a little "me" time with my iPod and my Game of Thrones!

You get what you wish for!

Be careful what you wish for - goes the saying.  Well I've been wishing for our concierge to bring us a load of firewood in readiness for winter here in the Alps.  Not that we will be here but eldest daughter with boyfriend and favourite grandson WILL be.  I so wanted to make sure they were all set for the snow and freezing cold and didn't want them to have to hesitate before lighting a fire each evening and, if not skiing, have it going all day!   Well we've been here 2 months and no firewood has been forthcoming - until this morning.   The concierge arrived with a CORDE of wood (thats a cubic metre) - he did ask if wanted a corde or half a corde and we quickly said half as we had seen last week what a corde looked like - its enormous!  He had it packed in boxes and loaded on his mechanical wheelbarrow and box after box came off and was stacked against the wall on the patio.  After 6 boxes I realised he still had 4 more on the wheelbarrow and decided to call a halt to it all!  Non, Non!!! S'il vous plait!!!  Halt!!! I felt like Mickey in the Sorceror's Apprentice when he cast a spell on the broom in order to get it to fetch water from the well, although Antonio was easier to stop!  So, daughter mine, you can have a fire EVERY day you are here - DO NOT stint yourselves as we can't take it with us!!!!   Although if there is much left we jolly well will have a bash and load it in the car and take it to France next year - but hopefully you will use it all and we won't have to bother!

New Job Prospects

I just found this post in my drafts section - it brought it all back to me so I decided to post anyway even if it was months ago!

I have decided that if OAP and I hit the poverty line, I will become a Hotel Inspector!  Actually, I would happily do it for free right now.  Here we are in Upington - this place really is the arse-end of South Africa - and yet it was impossible to get a room for the night under R600!  OAP really objected to that and we had just decided to drive on to the next town (like heck! The next town is Kakamas which is 145km away and it was already dark) when we saw a place called Azalea Guest Lodge.  We phoned and talked the owner down to R350.  I now understand why.  At first glance it looked nice and we could bring the car in where our tons of stuff (we don't travel light) would be safe.  Then OAP made like a very old man so the owner's husband carried our car fridge into the unit and plugged it in and then went home to nurse the hernia he had suddenly developed!  I unpacked the fridge into the one in the unit and mopped out the milk that had spilled - no use crying about THAT! OAP went for a shower only to find the bracket holding it to the wall broken so he used it in one hand while soaping with the other.  I then went to shower and totally flooded the bathroom as the jet hit the wall at the end of the bath and water cascaded everywhere.  I was washing my hair and was totally oblivious.  Serves them right as there were no towels (luckily we had two small gym towels in our bags).  Then the one and only bedside light wouldn't switch on and after much plugging and unplugging we decided the bulb was gone.  No other bulbs in the house as, can you believe it, all the other lights are strip neon tubes!  TV is the limited bouquet sort so I missed Strictly Come Dancing and Downton Abbey - outrage!  What else is wrong?  Well the tiles are chipped, the fittings are plastic, the furniture is mismatched and saggy.  The mattress is saggy so God help my back in the morning.  There's gaps in the walls, saggy stained ceilings and although it's superficially clean I can see grime in every corner and hairs everywhere - oh yuk! 

How is THIS?!!!  I will never view the mountains in the same way again!  I have flown in over the alps to Geneva in winter, but today we were flown in a small, single-engined plane called a Robin, over all the areas we have ever walked in (and a few we haven't!).  What a thrill!  Years ago when we first had computer difficulties here we enlisted the support of a computer geek in a village below called La Poste.  As he spoke NO English he enlisted the help of a friend who did and Remy has remained our friend ever since!  A smashing guy who has lived in Australia for a few years so his English is good, each year we phone him or he phones us and then we meet and catch up on our lives.  Normally, if it's winter, he comes to ski above us and then skis down to visit us, after which he skis off the edge of our patio and home through the forest!  In summer, he will walk up the mountain and hike for most of the day in the peaks above us then visit on his way home - he makes us feel OLD!!!!  But in the nicest way!  Anyway he announced this trip that he has his pilots licence and would like to take us up so we met at the tiny airfield in Bex in the Rhone Valley below at 11 am and up we went.  First down the valley and out over Lake Geneva, then up over the mountains to Gruyere and Gstaad and then over the Diableret Glacier (a picture of which is above) and then he steered the tiny plane along all the hiking routes we have ever done!  And I was impressed - with US!!!!!  It is absolutely formidable up in the mountains and yet we, OAP, my sis and I, managed some great hikes.  Sis, the only one we didn't fly over was that hellish high lake set in a sort of volcanic crater place in the mountains where it was SO steep that we never thought we'd get there, then SO steep walking back that it was almost as hard going down as going up!! The hike around Anzeindaz was incredible and here I must add another picture of the 'miroir' where we sometimes see people climbing - like tiny ants against the rock face!

,Whether there's anyone on the rock face I don't know but doubt it as today is Tuesday and they normally climb over the weekend.

In the pic above you can vaguely see a zigzag path going up and there were people on the path heading for the summit of this mountain whose name I can't remember but we actually look out onto it.  On the 1st August - Swiss National Day - there will be a blazing bonfire on top and today the climbers were hauling the firewood up to the summit for the bonfire!

And this is our little Robin with OAP on the left and Remy, our pilot, standing on the wing. 
What a day!  Which, I might add, began with a panic as we suddenly realised we'd double dated ourselves as the car was due for it's MOT (Roadworthy to the SA readers!) at 10am.  We got there at 9, no one spoke English, my French was understood but their replies were not understood by me and we caused havoc by placing ourselves plonk outside the doors when we should have parked in the little diagonal bays at 90 degrees to the doors!  But being Swiss they were incredibly polite and just drove round us until it was our turn!  I had to do it as my French is better than OAPs and it was fascinating - and fast!  I'll tell you about it in an email!