CALLING THE SHOTS..
(begun Monday 16th January at 3.40am..)

I only had a couple of candles burning here at the desk, so when I heard the bang at 3.20am, I'd thought it was an accident nearby.  Silly me.  Sue had called a minute later and said that Friday's three new copper lines had just bitten the dust, and the GW had staggered forth and gotten us an official Faults number right away. *yawns..

Can E.S. Electrical or 3-Core Electrical account for where ALL their vehicles were at 3.20am this morning? *winks.. I'd seen my old friends the Mthiyane Contractors pulled in near the Westville Hotel last Thursday, while they unloaded a gang of wekkers kitted out in Muni blue..  The same old pole scramblers as always, though it's an upgraded bakkie with a logo that now reads Mthiyane Plant Hire... Plant hire se GAT! *grins...

I'd been chatting to my Vice Chair at lunchtime yesterday, when he'd reminded me that his adsl service had been playing up and switching itself off for over a month.  At that point my cellphone had been down to one bar and I'd warned him that my phone was about to die.. Which it did a minute later, at precisely the same moment as the GW lost our iBurst Connection on the PC..  Hau!  I'd been sitting in front of the TV at the time and there'd been no sign of a dip or surge on the screen.  He'd re-started and re-connected only for the computer to switch off again, much as I guess my VC had just been saying is happening to his adsl... *yawns...
Obviously Balliram had at that point felt the overwhelming need to demonstrate the simplicity of that particular bit of mischief, and couldn't help himself...

During the course of conversation my VC had casually mentioned that he's being bothered greatly by cramps, never mind the gout-like symptoms with his feet and ankles, though I didn't get to ask him whether they're the weird shin-cramps that I've blogged more than once in the past...
Things are getting really interesting, as he also tells me that she's told him that SHE now also has gout, but in her knee... *blinks..  Does her friend Earl imagine that if he puts her on the Pain-Wagon I will assume I've been wrong, and that in fact she's one of us? *interested..
Am I meant to believe that once the promises he made regarding her kid's political aspirations failed to materialise, she's turned against her would-be Mentor? *snorts...

Dominic? *waves... You managed to pick up any conversations in her home that could confirm this?  I explained to my VC that I felt her latest brief was a fairly simple one, and that all it probably entailed was to break down the trust he has in me.. To slowly, and bit by bit, chip away until he writes me off for good...
Certainly not a task that with her awesome skills, would cause her to even break sweat.... Playing people off against each other appears to have become the Druglord's forte, and with access to their most intimate of conversations, it's now a simple matter to stir the pot, ne Earl? *winks..
The way I see it, is that while your failure to deliver on your promises this time, may cause her to look at you sideways, all it would take was one phone-call and a demonstration of Good Faith to have her safely back in the Fold...
BTW, I forgot to mention that I'd spoken to my VC much earlier in the day, while he was out and about, and he'd said he'd be staying home for the afternoon as he had work to do... Unsurprisingly then that when he'd called me at lunchtime it was to say he'd arrived home to a powercut... The Sad Creature simply can't resist temptation... *shrugs...

LATER at 5.55am

It must have been well after 4am when I'd gingerly clambered back on board the Sacrificial Altar and had been allowed to fall asleep... At 5.30am on the nose our Controller decided I'd had enough kip, and hit the top of my thigh with everything he had... As there's absolutely no arguing with a psychopath, I gave up and got up... Though that astonishing pain has miraculously since disappeared as I sit here at the desk, the relentless attacks on that specific area over the past month cannot but have crippled me forever... *shrugs..

LATER AT 7.24AM

Worth mentioning is that the courtyard is dry, as are the steps leading to the road. A road which looks remarkably as though a river passed down it during the night.. Are such details visible on the real-time google street view, and if you'd had ours pulled up on your screen between midnight and 3am, could you have witnessed such a runoff?  *curious...
Is it sufficient to read in the press that the Fat Cat officials are going down like ninepins, quite clearly in main due to the fantabulously invasive properties of the Wireless Project?  It doesn't bother you that so few are actually brought to book for their greed, at the expense of the country's power and water supplies?
That just in our tiny corner of Ethekwini alone, millions upon millions of litres of water have had to be deliberately wasted since 2005, on behalf of this Invasive Scheme?
A corner of the city that apart from Balliram himself and several of his cronies, holds no criminals of a stature that could begin to justify this appalling waste?  *curious...

Seven years later and they still don't appear to have got it right?
Mr. Spence's highly technical computerised anti-theft devices have turned out to be the joke I'd predicted, and the new water lines laid, appear to 'burst' as often as the old ones did... Apart from our designated Area Controller's stunning successes in destroying our health by a means already heavily documented in other countries, and thereby providing endless cruel entertainment for the otherwise bored-out-of-their-wits Troops, I see nothing to justify the vast sums of money poured into this tiny area.. But then I wouldn't, would I? *winks...

Tuesday 17th January at 5.20am

It must have been mid-morning when the GW had said there was a ladder up against our pole.. Halleluja!  I'd gone into my kid's room and studied the droog at the top of Baliram's pole, and the thick single-line cabling that he was struggling with, before fetching a 2-litre bottle of iced water for the crew. I'd painstakingly made it to the top only to find that it wasnt the Raw Power gang doing the job this time, but a different lot altogether..
I expressed my delight to the Head Honcho who'd emerged from the seat of his bakkie at my call, and asked him whether they were the E.S. Contractors I'd seen by the Madressa last Thursday, stringing up that humungously heavy-duty cabling...
Yes, he'd replied.  They were the same crew that did that job, but they weren't the E.S. Contractors, but the  ----  and at that point the gentleman turned back the collar of his red work jacket and studied the logo on the pocket before showing it to me.. The DJF Contractors! *falls over laughing...

Quite clearly the chap had to check to see which of the myriad Muni-created Contractors he was managing on this occasion, and when I'd offered him some cigarettes for his wekkers, he'd had to ask the fellow up the ladder whether he smoked.. Something that, as the GW had pointed out later, he would've known had he worked regularly with that crew.. *shrugs...
Small errors I grant you, but they go a long way to confirming my allegations that these contractors never know whether their next callout will be to cut and remove cables, or to replace the ones that their counterparts nicked the night before... Sies vir julle....

Our power came back on at 1pm sharp, and I'd sent a text to Sue the Book straight away, as she was at work and no doubt anxious about her old mum being without power..
It had come as a nasty surprise then, when Missus B.Snr. had called me at 6.20pm yesterday evening to ask if our power was on.. *vomits..
We'd checked only to find that while the rest of us suckers had had our lights restored, for some reason only No. 4 remained without theirs..
When I'd gone up top to see the GW off after midday, the crew had still been hard at it, and I'd remarked to my SO how I'd watched a redsuit-kitted droog as he'd stood at Balliram's gates as if he were waiting for something.. How a minute later he'd looked down the drive, given a thumbs up, and grinned... Was he confirming that they'd seen to it that No. 4's power would remain dead after the switch-on at 1pm?  Was he simply looking at No. 25 (the maid) or the home-owner himself, at the time?  Oops?
Oddly enough I'd subsequently had 2 calls during the afternoon. One from Ephraim? asking whether my lights were back on, and much later, the official call where the lady was clearly marking off the work-load for the day, and I'd expressed my thanks to both..

I'd sent another text to Spence straight after Missus B.Snr's call, and I'd mentioned my disappointment at this latest dodgy behaviour.  Whether he got it or not, is unknown..  Fact - the slimy Bastard next door had seen to it that my friend's power wasn't restored at 1pm, and I'd not be surprised to find that even now they remain without electricity, and have done since 3.20am yesterday morning..

The thing of it is, Al old boy, that 'they' don't all look the same by a long shot, and I could pick that guy out of a line-up with ease, were you to care to follow up my accusations.. Let's ask him exactly WHO he was looking at, down in Balliram's property, and who warranted that nod and thumbs up just before the crew packed up and left, and whether or not he knows why No. 4's power didn't go back on with ours...
I'd noticed later on last night that the overheads by Kasim's at No. 2 were out as well, and I guess Mr. Smarmy will cover his tracks by saying he's merely filling his load-shedding quota and that B.Snr's  home was included in the exercise.. *spews..

A right bunch you signed up to work alongside, hey Mistuh Spence, and you're most certainly not calling the shots in this neck of the woods, and never have... A fact that in no way makes you any less guilty of what's going on here....
C'mon Al - How's about you hook up with Karl Muller and Tracey-Lee Dorny and come knock on our doors to find out exactly what's been done to us since you handed over the power circuits in 2005 to a carefully disguised Druglord and his minions?
Then let's get a Sunday Times journo in to do a piece on the OTHER side of the Project designed to oust the Ruling Party, where it would reveal that the corrupt FatCats outed by the surveillance technology are not one iota as wicked as those actually running the scheme..

Peace..

---oOo---

Tuesday 17th January 2012 at 10.23am..