Why do bad things always happen in threes?

I have to apologise for my very poor blogging form over the past few weeks. You see, it’s not that I have run out of stories to tell you, it’s that I no longer have a laptop (I unfortunately had to hand it over when I resigned from my last job) and I have been forced to beg, borrow and steal computers and 3G cards in order to post anything.  Sorry…But here’s a little something something for you to nibble on while I save up for a laptop of my own.

Two weekends ago the Hot Fisherman and I left the big smoke and made our way to a game farm close to Thabazimbi. Since my Ford Ka is not exactly designed to carry more than 60kg and the Hot Fisherman’s (almost extinct) Citi Golf is not much better, we hitched a ride in Jacko’s car (the Hot Fisherman’s housemate’s car) along with Jambo (the Hot Fisherman’s other housemate) and Lenski (my housemate who is engaged to Jacko). Before I go any further with this story, I need to give you the background scoop on Jacko.

Jacko is a successful CA with short arms and deep pockets – as the Hot Fisherman puts it. But what he lacks in height, he most definitely makes up for in confidence. He is one intelligent guy. So intelligent in fact, that he is able to manipulate people into doing whatever he wants them to do. His best friend, Phillip, is wrapped around Jacko’s pinkie finger and does just about everything for Jacko, including getting his Subaru serviced. Unfortunately for us, Phillip is overseas and therefore Jacko has been left to deal with the harsh realities of everyday life all alone. And this is where our story begins…

We left Joburg at 3:30pm on Friday and sat in peak hour traffic along William Nicol because the lights were out at Main and William Nicol and surprisingly nobody volunteered to skip Friday afternoon drinks to direct traffic. We stopped for a Steers burger in Britts on the way there. This according to Jacko is where it all fell apart. The Hot Fisherman ordered a King Steers Burger, waited half an hour for his order and then received a Steers Rib Burger instead…twice. When we finally got back into the car, it was already 7pm and the sun had long since vanished.

The road to the farm was hair razing to say the least. There were potholes that would hold a small rhino (or a Ford Ka) every hundred meters or so and we had to dodge these for the last 80km of the ride. About 30km from the farm, we smashed into a particularly colossal pothole. It jumped out at us from nowhere and the jolt was enough to confirm what we had all been dreading. We had a puncture…in the middle of nowhere…on a dodgy road…and Philip was nowhere to be seen.

We stopped on the side of the road and began unloading all the bags, booze and bikes off the back of the Subaru. Every few minutes, a titanic truck would drive past and produce enough wind to blow-dry a mammoth, which made standing a mere meter from the road quite terrifying. When we eventually pulled the spare tyre out, we all breathed a sigh of relief to see that it wasn’t flat. The Hot Fisherman began loosening the bolt-things on the flat tyre while Jacko continued to rummage around in search of the jack. Jambo pushed Jacko aside and had a look for the jack too. Then the Hot Fisherman had a look. The jack was MIA. This was Jacko’s first offence.

We phoned Jacko’s dad who was already at the farm and told him the story. He told us he was on his way.

In the mean time, Jacko took out the triangle and placed it a hundred paces in front of the car. Jambo decided to flag down a car with the triangle and discovered that Jacko had placed the triangle the wrong way around (reflective side facing away from the oncoming traffic). This was his second offence.

After 20 minutes of dust blow-dry’s from passing trucks, we managed to flag down a dude in a 4x4 with a large trailer on the back. Jacko ran to where he had stopped and began directing him to reverse closer to where we had pulled off the road. The Hot Fisherman had a bad feeling and said, ‘Please don’t let Jacko reverse them into a hole’ under his breath and not a second later, the left hand side of the trailer disappeared into a large ditch. The trailer was almost on its side in the bush and Jacko just stood there with his hands on his head in disbelief while the other two boys raced over to help get the trailer out. To cut a long story short, the boys managed to maneuver the trailer out of the ditch and the owner of the trailer got out his jack. The Hot Fisherman changed the tyre and we waved goodbye to the friendly dude with the trailer.

While we were all smiling and waving goodbye, Jacko attempted to start the Subaru. Nothing…The battery of the Subaru was dead and we were stuck…again. This was Jacko’s third offence. Luckily, Jacko’s dad arrived with jumper cables and saved the day.

All I can say to Jacko is: you got away with murder that weekend son, but the baby rhino sighting more than made up for the dismal start to the weekend and I won't soon forget this little outing.

Sour body parts

Few things excite me more than a bag of chewy, gummy, sour sweets. I am puckering and salivating like a bulldog before breakfast at just the thought. My dilemma is that my favourite brand of deliciously juicy ‘sour body parts’ (not the most appetizing name mind you) happen to only be sold in very select stores. The only place I have seen them is in garage shops.

Unfortunately, I happened to come down with a pretty severe craving for sour body parts at 9pm last night while sitting on the couch with ‘The Hot Fisherman’. The conversation went a little something like this:

Leggi: Hmmmm. Sour sweets.
Hot Fisherman: ?
Leggi: Hmmmm. Sour sweets.
Hot Fisherman: What are you saying?
Leggi: You know what would be awesome right now, is a packet of sour body parts.
Hot Fisherman: Sour body parts? I tell you what, I won’t shower for the next three days and then you can have sour body parts.
Leggi: That’s disgusting.
Hot Fisherman: Mwa-ha-ha-ha [Laughs nastily]

It was clear that I wasn't going to get anything out of 'The Hot Fisherman' last night. After sulking for a few minutes on the couch, I gave up and went to bed. So this afternoon I will be on a mission to find myself a packet of sour body parts which I shall place in the freezer for about an hour prior to consumption (so they get nice and hard). [Squeels like a little girl in anticipation]

Gym fail

The benefits of exercise are blindingly obvious when you are sitting on the couch feeling guilty about eating yet another piece of cherry nougat. All I can think about at that stage is how much healthier I feel after exercise, how much better I eat after exercise and how wonderful it feels to be fit enough to run 8km’s in the mornings without keeling over half-way from exhaustion. I felt this familiar nagging sensation after eating a steak laden with creamy red wine sauce on Friday night, after polishing off an insanely scrumptious chicken lasagna with ‘The Hot Fisherman’ on Saturday evening and after licking my plate clean of any visible traces of chocolate croissant on Sunday morning. After spending a considerable amount of time weighing up the beauty and informational benefits of an extra hour of shut-eye followed by an hour of long-distance stalking of Will Smith through the E True Hollywood Story vs. going to gym, I finally let ‘The Hot Fisherman’ bundle me into my car late Sunday morning.


After spending a small fortune on two bottles of water (I chose an expensive brand of water which is supposed to be equivalent to taking vitamins – great marketing gimmick that) we finally loped through the turnstiles of the gym. Coughing up half a lung and sneezing from the insult of chlorine on our mucous membranes, ‘The Hot Fisherman’ and I ascended the stairs to the weights section. There, we performed a series of death defying exercises such as:

• A gazillion lunges with 6 kilo weights in each hand,

• Squats with weights,

• Quadriceps extensions,

• Hamstring curls,

• Abduction exercises or the ‘Yes/No machine’ as The Hot Fisherman refers to it,

• Leg press AND

• Ab exercises

Finally, after an hour of torture, ‘The Hot Fisherman’ and I limped out of the gym to the car.

The second day after gym is always the worst. The benefits of exercise are no longer relevant when you wake up in the morning with legs so stiff that the only way you can get yourself mobile is to walk with straight knees. I am a walking stick man...or woman. It looks like my legs have been placed in Plaster of Paris. Forrest Gump in braces has got nothing on my limp. Worse still, my bum is so stiff that every time I sit down I have to let loose a little groan of pain like an old lady after a hip transplant. I have to hold onto the railing when ascending stairs as I may pass out from the throbbing in my quads and I am considering buying some ice during my lunch break to attempt to reduce the inflammation in my calves (I had to wear high heels this morning because it was physically impossible for me to put my heels on the floor). This evening, I will most definitely make a date with Will Smith on my couch and that piece of nougat I have been saving will never taste sweeter.

Fly fishing is not for ants

Over my December holidays, I spent two weeks with ‘The Hot Fisherman’ in the Eastern Cape. On one particularly sizzling day, we decided to trek to Stutterheim to do a little fly-fishing. I thought our little fishing trip would be quite romantic. Hells bells, could I have been more wrong?


I caught everything – dead trees in the dam, reeds, the branches of trees behind me and I even managed to hook myself (twice). After just about every cast, I found myself trudging up the hill to locate my fly (prickly little suckers those flies are) which had lodged itself in some immovable object. The funny thing, is that I could cope with the leeches burrowing little holes into my feet and ankles (unfortunately they weren’t big enough to justify quitting for fear of blood loss) and I could cope with the Horse Fly’s making mince meat of my calves with their little serrated mandibles, but what I couldn’t handle, was the fact that I was undeniably a terrible fly-fisher woman. To make matters worse, ‘The Hot Fisherman’ has been doing this since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. There I was, stuck on the side of a leech infested dam, bleeding and feeling about as useless as a pork chop in a synagogue. It did get better though. Eventually, I was only fetching my fly from the grass behind me on every second or third cast!

Here is some common fly fishing terminology I learnt on my outing:

Stripping line – the point at which you begin removing your saturated clothing, because you are dripping sweat like a sumo wrestler in a sauna while waiting for the bloody fish to bite.

Unloading the Rod – when your hot fishing partner gets turned off by your dismal attempts to cast, your bleeding legs and the mud splattered all over your face.

Wind Knot – the knots you get in your line because of pathetic casting.

Sink Rate – the speed at which you become submerged in mud while attempting to retrieve your fly from the immersed branch you just caught.

Impressionistic Flies – the mark the hook of a fly leaves in your skin after catching you in the back.

On the whole, I would say it was a very successful trip and I would do it again in a heartbeat.