Anti-Colonialist Antics and Antipathy, Bikes, and Lots of Water

The past weekend started with swimming – self at home and then we all shot off to young J’s swimming lesson. From there it was to the Pavilion Mall, where I splashed out on a new cycle computer. After lunch we loaded the bikes, plus Much Better Half’s old Raleigh which I have fixed up again and also fitted with a computer. Not that MBH intends to use it, but Younger Daughter did, and after years and years of not riding proved the old saying that you don’t forget how. I rode down to the valley, and managed to get up to 47 KPH on the relatively short downhill, nearly beating the rest in the car. Then we did a few kilometres of circuits and bumps. Young J is still a tad insecure on a bike but, after being persuaded, once she got going she didn’t want to stop.

There was more swimming back at home, and I got stuck into trying to feed WiFi from my cottage router to a dongle in the main house. While I was crawling under a table in the front room where Younger Daughter’s computer is housed, I got covered in a number of tiny but vicious ants. Normally I don’t have anything to do with poisons, but for this nasty little bunch I made an exception and said devoutly, ‘Let us spray!’

Can you believe it, but at about two in the morning I woke up to a most unpleasant sensation and turned the light on to discover that the upper part of my body was covered in ants that were forming a procession up my bed near the head and onto my pillow. MBH next to me was totally unaffected. Sheer coincidence, or had the cottage ants received a message from the house-nest survivors to organise a revenge party? Anyway, I didn’t have any ant-icide handy, but zapped them with lots of talcum powder.

On Sunday we were entertaining a friend on her birthday, and decided to take her and her two children to the Point Yacht Club part of Durban Watersports Club. The wind was a bit fierce, but the kids loved the little waves. We took a couple of my belly boards with us.  I found I had left my costume at home, but was able to borrow the son’s (for a 13-14 age boy, which was a tight but just possible fit), went out quite far, and surfed merrily back again.  Being dumped back on the beach put the costume under a bit of strain, though.

Then the wind and sun got a bit much, so we drove back to the harbour part and went for lunch at Royal Natal Yacht Club on the Esplanade. Kids swam in that pool, but I abstained. Back home, more swimming. It is a wonder our kids aren’t totally waterlogged.

© March 2017 Colonialist