Bollamakiessie...
(begun Thursday 1st August at 3.25am)


Yesterday?  Dare I use the word peaceful?  Well, it was... Sure, there was the usual pain in the usual areas around the house, and I remember giving a yelp as I'd crossed the beam running past the kitchen door in the courtyard at some point, but there'd been a marked lack of malice for pretty much the entire day..
I'd glanced out of the French doors mid-morning to see not one, but two purple-crested loeries splashing in the birdbath, but by the time I'd managed to get the Panasonic stealthily through the burglar bars without alarming them, they'd finished bathing and had left... Too slow, dammit..

How'd you feel if I told you that by lunchtime I was feeling envious of my Vice Chair and the magic carried out at his home?  That I'd been privy to so much wizardry myself, but nothing to really touch that video clip, and I'd actually felt a touch peed off?  As it was, I'd had a chat to that good man yesterday evening, and he'd kindly reassured me that I had nothing to be envious about, and that once again I'd given Balliram more credit than he'd deserved...
*Whoever is on shift right now is so keen to see my scribbles that they've jumped from the Backfire frequency to the good old Knives to the Back, and the room itself hums with the faintest sound of his aircon(?)*

I'd forwarded yesterday's blog update title to the ex-City Manager, although chances are he's already marked me down as spam... If there's one thing about the players in this monstrous game, it's the fact that they're cowards to the core, our Mikey included...Has he begun looking over his bony shoulder yet?  Do I dare hope he feels Missus Karma's hot breath on his scrawny neck?  Do I actively wish him harm?  Hell no, it's only when I sit down here to chat to you that these ideas pop into my mostly vacant head, and I spit them out...
Those bright stars that I see so often outside this window, and out in the courtyard, before they just wink out and vanish?  Could that effect be caused by a sudden extra-dense wave of Roux's ultra-short lasers obscuring them?  Actually no, because then they'd surely reappear once that cloud had passed, and they never do... *baffled...

Friday 2nd August at 6.10am

It's late, and I can't stay.  At some point yesterday, my old man had mentioned that when he'd actually gone to pay Alpine for repairing the second of those tiny damaged sparkplug coils last week, they'd only charged him R1200, and not the whopping R1500 they'd initially quoted him, after all... Those two tiny wires shouldn't have needed repairing at all, and there are still two more to go, like I said, at Agent Balliram's leisure..
Does Alpine assign the same specific mechanic to my old man's Polo, each time it goes in for it's service, or for repairs? Just asking...

Saturday 3rd August at 3.25am

We are so not amused by the levels of crud hitting us this morning, that we actually sat on the bed ten minutes ago and said as much.. No doubt more classic footage for those with a vested interest in my torture...
Catch up?  The Thursday tracking exercise had been if anything, more than usually savage, both in my car and in the Polo. Whoever it was they had bouncing after us, hadn't held back at all, and I'd been suitably battered by the time I got home just before 2pm.
I'd had a call from the GW soon after 4pm.. Apparently he'd walked into Woollies at Musgrave and almost immediately had slipped on one of those glossy pamphlets that had been lying on the floor, and he'd taken a nasty tumble...  He'd asked the staff if someone could run him over to our GP at the San, but protocol dictated he had to be taken in an ambo nogal... So there he was, waiting for the white van to collect him...

He assured me there was no blood, but that his leg needed checking out, and he'd get back to me.. Suffice to say that we're fortunate to know several rather wonderful people who'd put their own lives on hold to bail us out...
By 6.45pm he'd called to say he'd been cleared and no bones were broken, but he was on crutches and pain medication, and was ready to come home and face our fifty-two stairs... They'd collected him and had gone on to the Musgrave parking where she'd kindly driven him home in his Polo, and he'd finally managed to totter down the stairs.. It's fairly overwhelming to find that in an emergency like that, I can pick up the phone and know there are those who are willing to go the extra mile....
So, here we are, with the old man incapacitated with what appears to be a hamstring injury, and we're sommer making the best of a bad situation... When he gets up in a few hours time I'm to be directed in the art of using his pride and joy, the computerised Samsung washing machine, for the first time ever... I confess I'm not looking forward to it, as I'm not the sharpest pencil in the box, but I'll try and avoid actual bloodshed, and get the job done, without him blowing a gasket... Old people.

On the spur of the moment I'd written to the Rocket Scientist, and out of the blue yesterday I'd received a rather wonderful reply.. You saw it?  While he carefully avoids mention of my claims that any number of 'agents' can now invisibly access one's home in real time, to both look and listen and record your private data, he was kindness itself, and his encouragement was the shot in the arm I'd needed...
As nauseating as you may find it, I'd pretty much spent the rest of the day playing Pollyanna, and being grateful for all the wonderful things in my life...  The people I've met and have still to meet, the warm winter sunshine, the more colourful of the pair of loeries who boldly took a leisurely bath a few yards from me, and the fact that my old man survived his fall, and could at least take himself to the loo, albeit painfully...
Being a simpleton has a few advantages after all, hey Jannie?  Even you must have realised by now that I see every last strand of the web that's got me tied up tighter than a tick?  That I'm under no illusions whatsoever that our lives are not OWNED, lock, stock, and barrel, by a bunch of power-addicted, callous criminals who could shut me down in a heartbeat...

When I'd run Patricia down to the Tollgate bustop yesterday morning, I'd been tempted to drive back and take a detour round to Knight Road to see the chaos for myself...  With Agent Balliram's increased vigilance and my old man fairly crippled and alone at home, I'd put the idea on hold for the time being.. Are those two beseiged properties at the foot of a rise perhaps?  Is that what's causing the major problems?  Are those two homes more prone to being flooded by the cable-stuffed stormwater drains than their nearby neighbours?
Once that stretch has finally been completed to the satisfaction of the Superintendent of Electricity for Durban, who is to be their designated Area Controller?  Will it be our own Expert in the Field, Agent Collin P. Balliram himself, who goes bouncing uninvited into those two houses, over their powerlines?

Man, for their sakes, I hope not.. Having had no precedent, the chap is like a bull in a china shop, and his gung-ho callousness has sadly set the benchmark for a whole slew of recruits to emulate...
Freddie the Accountant up at No. 12, will be following Agent Balliram's instructions to the letter as he too tutors the local youth, and he will have no regard for the effect this will have on the community's health... *at the precise moment I'd scribbled those last words, the frequency in my ears had changed dramatically.. Did young Fred imagine I'd forgotten the contribution he makes to my torture?  Not bloody likely. How often I will hear Joey or Spanky set up a sudden random barking round the side nearest to No. 12, and those pesky hadedas nearby will confirm the sudden change in the airewaves, reminds me without fail of the Accountant's participation, and his desire to please his PuppetMaster at No. 6...*

Did the charming young ex-Weekly Gazette journo deliberately post that inflammatory comment on the thread at the Sydenham Community FB page?  Exhorting the community to save water, works on me like a red flag to a bull, and I'd said as much in my reply... How much of the six standard-sized swimming pools worth of water lost each day across eThekwini can be traced to the operations on the corner of Knight and Spearman?   An astronomical amount of water wasted in order to link just those two properties to the Smart City surveillance grid?  Hour upon hour of costly labour employed in order to gain covert access to those unsuspecting resident's homes, and young Zain would have US save water?  Pass the brown paper bag, if you please...

Those sanctimonious messages that often flash up on the telly screen have the same effect on me.. Turn off all the appliances you're not using says Eskom, including your pool pump and your geyser?  For what?  While Sutcliffe's Smart City surveillance technology has great swathes of streetlights running during daylight hours right across the city, I should turn off my geyser?
And yet you'll do it... You'll oblige those privacy-thieving criminals as best you can, and continue kidding yourselves that neighbour spying on neighbour will save this country from ruin... Molto revolto, folks...
When I'd swung back onto the verge after my brief trip out yesterday, it had been to see three blue-suited and extremely self-conscious Muni Water employees emerge from their lorry HERE to crowbar the lid off THIS sewage manhole, and fiddle about briefly before scuttling back under cover..

The same manhole that had leaked endlessly down the road for weeks, despite the GW's Fault report..
A bit of theatrics staged for my benefit, or did I catch them on the wrong foot?  Did their arrival have anything to do with the repairs at No. 11?  The Moth Cottage whose retaining walls had been deliberately stripped of ivy, allowing them to collapse into the street after the very next downpour of rain?  If I'd called No. 17 yesterday, would they have had their water turned off, as fresh cabling was being rammed through those damaged waterlines?
It looks very much as though Old Bill and his little wife the Graduate won't be returning to No. 11 after all, as I'm told the cottage is being advertised to let, at a rental that quite possibly puts it out of the reach of my former neighbours...
A seemingly inconsequential unkindness that will no doubt have a devastating effect on a family that had done their best for the Smart City Project, but who had possibly stepped on Agent Balliram's toes inadvertently, and had to go...
Peace...

---oOo---

Saturday 3rd August 2013 at 3.13pm.