Thank goodness the car's window is finally fixed. My assistant in Somerset West made me a wonderful plastic sheet, temporary window (after the freezing cold trip there in the morning). Thank you Elvis. It was quite well made. I think he might have done it before. It did make a hell of a racket though, once I started driving. Sounded like my own private little thunderstorm in the Yaris. Only a bit drier. I must admit, I am even more of an idiot than even I had anticipated. I mentioned before that the face of the radio was not a removable face. Turns out, that it was. I was just too dumb to figure it out. Took a good-for-nothing, window breaking, b*stard, son-of-b*tch criminal to get it. So much for half a decade of studying engineering. I did also discover, whilst finally cleaning all the bits of broken glass out, that the car has a THIRD storage compartment in the front. On closer inspection, this revealed a case for the radio face (that supposedly couldn't come off). Yeah. Idiot. Anyway, the window has now been replaced and I drive in peaceful serenity again. No more raging thunderstorm. Also, no more blaring In Flames. Buggery. Will have to talk to the boss about a new radio. I can't work under these conditions.
To start off the wonderful week of R&R, the girlfriend took me on a romantic weekend getaway. Well, more of a romantic night away. Seeing as I still had to work on Friday and Saturday, before I could go and loaf for a week, she took a day's leave for Monday and we left straight after I closed the shop on Sunday. She found a place in Grotto Bay, called The Beach House. Almost very aptly named. Almost, for two reasons. Firstly, when we got to the security gate boom thing (very security conscious community), we were questioned by a white, middle aged lady about where we were headed, etc. Usually people manning these things are strong, fit, black young men, that one would imagine could do something about unsavoury characters who might spoil the idyllic ambience of the place. It was just weird, ok? So I tell her with my most charming smile that we are off to a guest house called The Beach House. This seemed to take her completely by surprise. "The Beach House?" she asked, completely perplexed. I replied in the affirmative and she said, "Which one?" Now it was my turn for a bit of confusion. How does she mean which one? The girlfriend came to my rescue and said that it is run by a somebody and Michelle. I forget the one now. Light dawned on the face of the security lady and she said, "Oh, ok, because there are two." How odd, I thought to myself. Anyway, she guided us to the correct Beach House and we drove off. Secondly, Grotto Bay is a beach town, but the house we stayed in is not exactly right on it. The beach, I mean. There is a veritable forest of Port Jacksons between the house and the beach. We had to walk for about 15 minutes before we even saw it. It was quite pretty when we finally got there. And then it rained. The journey back was considerably shorter and came with an extra portion of huffing and puffing. Damn, I'm unfit. One can see I haven't been to football in a while.
At the house, we tried to make the best use of the time we had. Part of which, was enjoying the specifically ordered jacuzzi. The girlfriend trawled all of the intrenwebs for hours on end to find a place that had a jacuzzi (the other Beach House in Grotto Bay doesn't have one, so there). So we were damnwell going to use it. The somebody and Michelle ladies did turn it on at 4 that afternoon, so it could warm up a bit before we got there. Turns out, it needs quite a bit of warming up. It was around 7 in the evening and getting pretty nippy outside. We did not want to go sit in the thing and freeze our bits off. The girlfriend started boiling kettles of water and throwing these in the jacuzzi to speed things up, because it just wouldn't get warm enough. Eventually, after a few kettles we ditched the warm clothes and went for a bit of a bubbly dip with lovely red wine. It was great fun. We did however think about how may other people have had THEIR fun in the same tub. We decided it would be best not to drink the water.
We left the jacuzzi on all night for a quick morning splash. We had to be out by 11 so it had to be just a quickie. All excited (we're not used to much, well, I'm definitely not) we ran downstairs for our morning bubble tub, only to be met by Satan's steaming kettle of spitefulness. The damn thing was near boiling point. We switched it off to see if the cold morning air could take the fiery edge off, but to no avail. We had to leave without a morning rumpus in the bubbles.
We quickly packed, checked that everything was locked, etc, hopped in the car and... nothing. The car's ignition made an all too familiar, horrible, hhhhnhhuuhnnn-hhhhnuuuhnn sound. The battery was dead. I looked down at the radio face. We were in the girlfriend's car. Her face comes off. The radio's face, not her actual face, of course. It was still in he car. Now, neither of us know how to switch her radio off. The best way is to just clip the face off and take it with you. Usually, I would do this, but when we were interrogated by the boom lady the day before, I had turned the volume down so low, that I didn't hear the radio was on when we stopped. So it played on merrily through our night in the funhouse. Bugger. The girlfriend offered to push, but I was feeling all too gentlemanly and, besides, I should have clipped the face off, so it was kinda my fault that the car was dead. I got out, made her steer and applied some elbow grease. And knee grease. And hip grease. And.... I think you get he picture. The car was parked on an incline, rear facing up. Luckily, a cleaning lady offered to help. The girlfriend also tried to push a bit and tried to steer at the same time. This did not work so well. The bush next to the driveway found this out the hard way. The driveway was made from loose gravel. On loose sand. I made foot-wide canyons in it, getting the car out the driveway and into the road. Hope somebody and Michelle don't notice. A kindly, elderly gentleman, presumably the next-door-neighbour, saw our distress and offered to help. He didn't look like much of a pusher, so I ordered the girlfriend out the driving seat and made her push, while the old guy would steer. After one or two attempts at running starts, we finally got it going and as the old guy pulled away, I thought to myself: "I really hope he is a kindly, elderly gentleman, who will bring the car back and not drive off with it." It might have been a little late for that thought to surface, but at least I did have it at some point. Luckily, he did stop and gave our car back and had the grace not to say, "I could've stolen this lot, you stupid buggers." I thanked everybody involved, gave the cleaning lady some money for the extra bundle of wood that the fireplace ate the night before and we were finally on the road.
We decided to go to Groote Post wine farm, which is just opposite the road from Grotto Bay. Actually, to be more precise, the sign post and road that leads to Groote Post wine farm is opposite the road of Grotto Bay. The actual farm is two days' bloody rally driving away, complete with mud and water hazards. You never get to see the vineyards, so if you ever decided to go there, as long as you don't see anything to do with wine, you're heading the right way. Once there, it was rather pleasant. There's an Afrikaans chap, who does know his stuff reasonably well, that helps you with he tasting. The wine's not brilliant, but really not bad at all. We bought a bottle or two. After quite a few tastes it was time to head home and go get our Djoom on at band practice. This as how the week of loafing started. And it was off to a hell of a good start.
TFLNOTD:
