the adlards

The weather was filthy in Cape Town on Monday. It was chucking it down with rain and the wind was so strong it whistled in the gaps around the car bonnet while I drove. I popped into the office in the afternoon via the Atlantic seaboard where the sea was up and belting huge combing waves into the normally placid resort beaches. Returning via Rhodes Drive – possibly not the wisest route on a day like that – the winding road through the forests was a carpet of leaves and branches. It’s a challenging road at the best of times, but wet-and-leafy with the added overhead of having to keep a wary eye out for falling trees shifted it to a whole new level of fun.

In the evening I flew to Joburg for a day of meetings on Tuesday. My new strategy to attempt to make heavy-commuting weeks sustainable is to leave home after we put the girls to sleep, stay over “up norf” and arrive at my meetings fresh. I cope much better with a series of late nights than a series of early mornings. So at 8.40pm I flew to Joburg for a 24-hour stint to return at 8.40 on Tuesday.

I spent a – thankfully brief – few hours in a hotel with light fittings supported on crossed faux-ivory tusks and bling marble bathrooms with vaulted ceilings and dim lighting. I couldn’t find a light in the room bright enough to allow me to read the label on the mini-bar can of Pringles to see if they contained MSG. Apparently Dubya stayed there on his last visit. He probably brought his own lights with him.

Tuesday morning dawned it’s usual dusty red in Johannesburg. This is the wet season in Cape Town where all is leafy and green and the dry season in Joburg. There the morning at this time of year is blanketed in a toxic mix of red dust, mist and pollution. If you fly in during the hours of daylight you approach an envelope of rust-red air that obscures the ground. Another good reason to fly in at night.

It was a mild, clear winter’s day in sharp counterpoint to Cape Town’s weather. I won’t bore you with my tour of meetings in Johannesburg and Pretoria except to say that the very best part of my job at the moment is the sitting down eye-to-eye with people and contributing to their success in ways that are meaningful for them. I’m having a good run at the moment and love seeing faces enliven as people begin to really engage.

My first schedule change happened at 11am when a time-critical engagement ran out of time. Last-minute changes in schedule are not unusual at all and the routine of calls from the car to change flights, cars, hotels and meeting arrangements is pretty automatic now. So 24 hours stretched to 42.

My second schedule change happened when it snowed in Johannesburg overnight. I came downstairs to be met with “Good morning Mr Adlard, I hope you’ve got lots of layers on” and the somewhat unusual sight of a beaming doorman walking across the lobby with a huge snowball balanced in his right hand. It was 1 below freezing and everything was covered in snow. That’s not strictly true, the roads were clear, it was the cars and verges that were covered in snow. Traffic was flowing well and we made good time to my meetings.

Now you would have thought that if road traffic was flowing air traffic might be doing the same, but you’d be wrong. Quite substantially wrong. Entirely wrong, in fact. Well, not entirely wrong. International air traffic was running (with some diversions to Cape Town). Local air traffic was shot to hell. When I arrived at the airport at about 11am there were people who’d been waiting for their flights since 6.30. People weren’t being called for flights that were leaving (I think these people must have been inexperienced ones who haven’t learned that the Airport Company’s software can’t let go of delayed/cancelled flights so fills up the departure boards with those and doesn’t show current ones – the only reliable way to find your flight is to ask someone wearing the right kind of uniform who is standing behind a terminal for the use of which they have had the requisite training).

I landed at 3.15 and went straight onto a conference call for the duration of the journey home. I dropped off it somewhat abruptly when hugging MGW triggered my handsfree. So all of you who heard “Now exiting …” at about 4.05 know why.

It’s been better since then. Sunny skies. Some fog on my return to Joburg this morning. Accidents on the main routes into Joburg. The usual.

Pics of Sophie’s birthday now finally in the gallery.

I thought I was going to have to sleep in Zoo Lake park tonight. I’m growing to love Johannesburg the more I invest in her, but not enough to particularly want to sleep rough. My hotel had waitlisted me for tonight and all the others that I know (and their overflow facilities) are full. I can’t imagine why. Barcelona’s playing just up the road, but who would’ve thought they’d draw a crowd? At 4.30 this afternoon there was a cancellation so I got a room, which I have to admit was something of a relief. I think I rather startled the clients I was with with my exclamations of praise for the beleaguered reservations clerk.

It turned out to be a smoking room which had had the aircon off for the day while full of smoke. Still … better than sleeping between the croc pond and lion enclosure. Just. Well aired now and entirely liveable. I’ve ordered pillows from a non-smoking room before I turn in for the night.

It has been pointed out to me that I have still not posted pics of Sophie’s birthday. I shall. I shall I shall I shall. As soon as I have time. Around her thirty-second birthday then.

… headache in my bottom.

Oh!? Why do you think that is, Jo?

Well, I’ve got stinky windies – even stinkier than yours Mum.

I’ve spent the last hour sitting on a plane on the apron at Jo’burg airport while they attempt to disengage the bridge from the plane. Yes, one would have thought the manual override would take about ten minutes.

In related news (of incompetence) the jumpers are still to run.

I’ve had a great evening. First I found the best toyshop south of Hamleys and east of New York. It had a massive Lego selection including a truck I have to buy for Josie. She’ll love it. When you construct the engine block it has moving pistons in it. It has fully-functioning hydraulic suspension …

As if that wasn’t enough, I found a niche music store that was packed with stuff-dads-like. Pink Floyd, lots and lots of jazz and not a little nostalgic Iron Maiden.

To round things off the guy in Exclusive Books did a double-take because he thought I was José Mourinho. With a little work on the bridge of my nose I could be.

Sophie turned two on Tuesday to much shouting of “Hooray!”:
Happy birthday Sophie!
[arms at side, head thrown back looking at the ceiling] HOORAY!!

We had a lovely day, albeit with small disruptions for both cars to be serviced and a brief client meeting. Granny and Grandpa came for tea in the morning and Tim, Claudia and the boys came for supper. The selection of gifts was just right to allow Sophie to progress to the toys that used to be best as Josie had “a turn” with her new ones.

Josie has been out of night nappies for a little over a week now and on Monday stayed dry through the night for the first time. May there be many more nights like that. Soon.

I finally buckled and ordered a DSL service last week. Yes, it’s obscenely, absurdly overpriced (about 30 times what we’re used to paying if you take bandwidth into account), but it still promises the best quality of service where we live and at the end of the day service is what we need. MGW has been online about three times since February. I’m surprised I’m not buried at the bottom of the garden for having procrastinated this long.

When I ordered I was told it would take about two weeks to activate. Imagine my joy then when I got voicemail a couple of days later to tell me the line was active! I spent a good part of the evening setting up my routers and then tracing back all our telephone wiring to rule out any on-premises cause of interference when the thing wouldn’t sync. I rang them up and was told the line had been activated, perhaps I should log a line fault. I rang the line fault guys who ran an actual check and confirmed that the line had not been activated at the exchange at all. I agreed to wait.

This afternoon I got back from a few days in Jo’burg fully expecting to see lights on the router and when there weren’t I called up for a progress update:
“Ummm … yes, we’re still waiting for someone to run the jumpers in the exchange.”
“Doesn’t that cause terrible trauma to their knees?”
[silence] “Would you hold sir while I put your request through?”
“Of course.”
[more silence] “Thanks for holding sir, can I confirm your number …”
“It’s just I would have thought they’d specialise as either runners or jumpers. Perhaps the confusion you’re experiencing in getting the service live has to do with division of labour rather than your inability to balance the supply and demand sides of your business in any sort of economically effective way. While we’re doing requests, could I add one for your market share projection once metropolitan-area wireless networks have been rolled out?”
“Sir, someone will contact you when the jumpers have been run.”

Last time I saw jumpers being used on anything other than a car battery was in highschool physics class – I can only imagine what the exchange looks like. A friend of mine once had a networks manager who used to carry a Stanley knife around with him and if he found messy rack wiring would just slice through it all and make his guys start again. I would have fired him but I’m guessing the local exchange could use some of that sort of discipline.

There is an art to dining alone. To not feeling conspicuous – an object of pity even. It has taken a lot of practice to get to this point of being comfortable holding court with my imaginings, conducting scintillating internal dialogue and not making spurious eye contact or grinning broadly at every waiter that walks by (yes, waiters, I’m not eating in McDonalds).

I know I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating that the first time I did this in the early 90’s was one of the worst experiences of my life. That’s what I call a converse blessing … excuse me – passion fruit sorbet has arrived between courses … yes, converse blessing: if that’s as bad as it’s been then I’ve been a lucky boy; and so I have. The point, however, that I think I was trying to make is that back then I felt crushingly, suffocatingly, achingly lonely – something I’ve felt on perhaps two other occasions to date though not, I am pleased to say, in a restaurant.

Where am I going with this I hear you say. Where indeed.

Right, all done now. So there it is: strategy #1 for enjoying dinner alone. Blog right through the bits that don’t require chewing.

It’s fitting that just two days after the snow Christmas arrived – Lavazza, nectar of the (Roman) gods, courtesy of the Coxes. Thanks you four (and especially Mark)!