Logic goes down the drain when it comes to saving water
‘SOME people are very hard to please,” said Bert as we sat in my desert garden and sipped a comforting beer while admiring the last of the daisies dying in a dusty corner of what was once a flower bed.
“Take our lady mayor, for example. First she yells at us for using too much water, so we all start saving water enthusiastically. Now she’s cross with us because the city has not sold enough water, so she’s going to fine us all R1.6 billion for not using the water she asked us not to use. Women! There’s just no pleasing them.
“I’d hate to be a shopkeeper with her as a customer,” he added, carefully picking a dead bee out of his glass where it had committed suicide.
“She’d probably demand to be paid for not buying your baked beans and then demand a refund for not returning the beans she didn’t buy.”
I tried to unravel this latest statement, but gave up. It was a very hot afternoon and life is simply too complicated even without Bert’s tangled logic.
In spite of the heat, I was actually smiling smugly because I had recently discovered a natural mountain stream not far from home and had filled two five-litre bottles there with clear, potable water.
A neighbour had told me about the stream and had sworn me to secrecy before telling me in a dramatic whisper exactly where it was.
These days we tend to keep information like that to ourselves or the site would soon be swarming with greedy people bringing bakkie-loads of water tanks to fill. They tell us the next war will not be fought over oil or territory, but over water. I can easily believe this.
At present Cape Town folk are quite polite around our few natural waterholes, but I can see things becoming a little less civilised when the taps do run dry.
No, sorry. I can’t divulge where my spring is. I have been sworn to secrecy. Besides, if too many people start using it, our mayor might notice and charge us a spring water levy.
Cell by date
As I expected, several people sent messages mocking my claim that computers and cellphones have minds of their own. But at least one tavern reader knew exactly what I was talking about. David phoned from Gauteng to tell me his story.
“I was sitting reading when the phone lying on the table near me rang and I answered it. It was a call from a friend in Israel. I was delighted and surprised. ‘What’s your news?’ I asked, and after exchanging a few pleasantries I asked why he had called me. ‘I didn’t call you,’ he said. ‘You called me. My phone was lying on the table and it rang and it was you phoning me’.”
Explain that, you sceptics. Two phones, half a world apart, neither even being touched, phoned each other to chat. Maybe phones also get lonely at times.
Last Laugh
A slightly drunk man approached a pretty woman in a bar and said: “I’d like to call you. Could you give me you telephone number?” “It’s in the phone book,” she replied. “But I don’t know your name.” “That’s in the phone book too.”