Shaken Really Awfully but Not Stirred.

So a lot of South Africans got a bit of a wiggle on yesterday with our 5,3 earthquake centred near Orkney.  The only one in our family who noticed anything here in Durban was Younger Daughter at work who remarked that her coffee was swilling back and forth and her desk was shaking.  Colleagues said she was imagining it – until the news came through.

This takes my mind back to the 1940s to 60s, when quite severe tremors were such a feature of daily life in the Reef or Witwatersrand area – Johannesburg etc – that they were hardly even noticed.  We would carry on speaking or whatever, and look with amazement when visitors from elsewhere gave screams and dived under tables, simply because items were falling over, pictures hanging on the walls were doing a pendulum thing, and one could feel the surface wobbling underfoot.  ‘Just a normal earth tremor,’ we would reassure them.  Strangely, many did not seem to find this in the least bit reassuring.

I wonder if the earthquake had anything to do with the fact that two of my lawnmowers went belly-up in quick succession, leaving me with this grass at the to-be-moved-into home still sniggering at me?

With not even a moan, and for reasons unknown,
Two lawnmowers conked in, thus leaving un-mown
This section alone of the grass that had grown.

I think that, for both of them, motors have blown –
Experimentation has readily shown
That cable for power is not the fault zone.

© Colonialist August 2014 (WordPress)