Somebody Save Me!

Right, now that I have the extremely catchy theme tune to Smallville stuck in your head, I can continue. Over the weekend we had to take our little angel through to a different province to go stay with her grandmother for a couple of days. Not usually a very difficult thing to do. But on the way there, my lovely companion's Honda Jazz decided it was bored, and started messing about with the gauges and various indicator lights, just to liven things up a bit. As this wasn't affecting the engine, we carried on with the journey. After dropping off our little angel and enjoying a spot of brunch, we set off back home. Only now the dashboard frequently looked like a Christmas tree and the engine was losing power periodically. We were hoping to at least get home before it cut out, but no such luck. About 75km from home, it finally died. Being a man I hopped out, opened the bonnet and had a gander. I fiddled with this, and tweaked that, but nothing could resurrect the now completely dead car. And I adopted the universal stance of everyone ever stuck at the side of the road.....

After a while I stopped staring forlornly at the engine and got into the car to await the arrival of the breakdown vehicle. At some point a passing police officer stopped and asked what the trouble was. I explained to him that the car was completely dead, and he shook his head sadly and muttered "Eish, it's dead hey? Dead, dead dead." After I agreed with his extremely technical statement, he asked if we had organised some help. I assured him that we had, and he went on his way. After sitting in the summer sun in a black car at midday for two hours, the breakdown vehicle finally arrived. And finally we were heading home again! But at some point we hit stop-and-go traffic due to that old South African epidemic......road works. And that's when we learned how to pray deeply and earnestly!

The breakdown vehicle driver had either never heard of following distances or had decided that they were something that happened to other people! He would stop so closely to the car in front of us that I felt as if we were going to drive over them at any moment! My lovely companion just clung to my arm with her eyes shut. The driver, oblivious to our fear, kept jovially talking about this and that, and when my lovely companion dared to open an eye and let out a squeak of terror, he assumed that she was commenting on his story, which just spurred him on even more. Finally we managed to get out of the traffic and onto the open road again, and shortly thereafter we were deposited, sweaty and terrified, back home. After paying our savior we calmed our nerves with some ice cold alcoholic refreshment and once again came to the inescapable conclusion, there is no place like home!

The Eye of the Beholder

So finally, after 17 years of wearing glasses, I decided to get contacts. There are a variety of reasons for this. First off, every time it rains, I get drops on my glasses and hence I see spots. Every time I peel a potato or stand in front of the stove frying something, I get grease or juice on my glasses and I see spots. If I accidentally brush against my glasses with my finger, I leave a smudge and thus can't see clearly. Going to the beach meant I couldn't go into the sea with my glasses on, so I would have to leave them with my towel. Not a massive problem going in, but coming back out I would have to try and locate my towel again. This is a process of elimination whereby I would walk over to colourful blobs on the sand and squint at it, trying to determine if the blob in question belonged to me. This upset little children, and angered their parents, so my lovely companion and I came up with a system. I would go into the sea, play around a bit, and when I was ready to reach my towel, I would stand at the waterline looking lost until she came over to fetch me.

I finally decided that I was done with all the hassles of wearing glasses, so I made an appointment with my optometrist to get contact lenses fitted. Unfortunately, as I am not used to poking something into my eyes on a regular basis, it took us 45 minutes to get the first contact in. And a further 30 minutes for the second one. Then I had to go back the next day to learn how to do it myself. Which also took an eternity. I was very surprised at her patience. She calmly sat next to me, soothing me with encouraging words and gentle smiles. But if I could read her mind it would have probably been something like "Oh for the love of all that's holy! It's a simple procedure, why the **** is it taking you so long?!"

But I have finally mastered inserting them and removing them. I can walk around with confidence, and even dance in the rain with impunity. And at long last I won't scare little kids at the beach any more.....