.....Has It Gone Yet?...

Remind me never again to wipe my brow and sigh with relief after a Mercury Retrograde.
Just as you relax, it bites down, harder.

Warren and I have the best possible camouflage when we're out driving the Joburg roads: we're a patently middle-aged couple in an inexpensive and definitely not new car. Therefor we rarely get stopped in a roadblock and we're not prime targets for the JMPiggyD's random pullovers.

Until Saturday.
We were coming back from the Sunninghill Builder's Warehouse - having phoned ahead and made sure they had gas refill facilities - with a couple of 9kg canisters behind the front seats, and two lengths of conduit slanting over my shoulder from the backseat. So, I guess we looked like gun-runners. Or drug mules. Or land invaders. Or perhaps we just looked like a soft target, for the two joy-riding piggies on Witkoppen Road.

You know something? I grew up with the firm belief that the Policeman Is Your Friend. I was taught as a child that, if I was ever lost or in trouble, the first thing I should look for was the Bobby's friendly tall helmet. This may still be true - but likely as a landmark to walk away from as fast as possible.

South African Metro Police are the pits. Suffering,correctly,from feelings of inferiority, they never waste an opportunity to boost their...somethings...through arrogant and unnecessary interactions with the public. Suffice to say, the search of my handbag which turned up nothing and the search of the cubbyhole which turned up the Boline are now hilarious memories: but at the time, they were enough to raise all the hackles on my back. Ah well, the Police State of the World, now.

Easter Monday dawned bright and dry. Very dry.
You remember the four or five days we were without water a little while ago? Well, the very same pipe burst all over again on Monday.Or possibly Sunday night. Whenever Mercury was busy tracking across the same part of the heavens it was traversing the first time it happened.
OK, so we can deal with that, in a way. Bottled water from the stores would stretch. And they would have, too, if Joburg Water, in their infinite incompetence, hadn't turned the water on full bore on Tuesday - breaking not only one of my house pipes, resulting in a flooded house and soggy ceiling, but also sundry pipes in the suburb. A trip down along the roads of Bloubosrand turns into a pre-canoe venture, with domestic water sleeting down several of them, and the unforgettable sight of a hand-painted board advertising an itinerant plumber placed in the path of a hill-tumbling torrent issuing from yet another broken-piped house.

Mercury Retrograde in Pisces? Thanks for all the memories.