Honestly, I don’t know where to start this week.
There’s the abysmal outing with the binoculars. Focus on that later.
Or the four weeks or so of anger-inducing Women’s Month. We learnt last week how that’s going when the Minister in the Hat released the latest crime stats, one of which showed that in the last quarter, about five women were raped every hour, with 106 rapes a day and 3 172 a month. What an overwhelming success, then.
Viewing a cross-section of stories in our copy production system causes whiplash. There is a man who hacked and burned his partner to death and then the fancy Bennifer (are they still called that?) wedding or two. Sporting glory from the Proteas men (last Test, not so much this one) and (well, this was on Twitter, not in here) a delightfully vengeful giggle at the vile Piers Morgan twittering that he was flying home to catch Day 4 of the last Test and we also know how that went. ROFLMAO. Horrible and petty, I know, but my mean bits did a little jig.
Meanwhile, the world is going to hell in a handbasket.
Climate change is sucking life-giving water out of much of Africa, Europe and the US and dumping killer floods in other areas. Saffers face a double burden: in a water-scarce country, we can’t even keep our pipes in a row. Fix one, and the old one it’s attached to explodes.
The Russians – well, who knows what they’re doing? There are so many stories, rumours and lies, we don’t know if they’re really attacking nuclear plants. I mean, it would take a certain amount of idiocy, no? Like starting a war on an independent neighbour… oh. Wait.
And the orange clown formerly of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue unleashing spitting mad enraged diatribes after the FBI took back the nation’s secrets. But who knows whether they had already been sold to the Khashoggi-killers on the golf course. It’s unfathomable.
And here? I just can’t deal. Totally too much to keep track of who’s currently fighting or backstabbing who and what they all purport to stand for. Everyone who is in a position to make a change whining about what’s not happening.
Time for some refuge.
I took a couple of hours to put the neck strap on the binos. Have you ever tried to read the instruction manuals some things come with? They are in 3 point, on shiny, reflective paper and impossible to read. And the pictures weren’t so clear either. But, hey, even a moron knows how to do that, right, and I eventually got there.
Sat quietly near the honeysuckle and other tasty morsel jungle produce for a while, scanning for movement. Suddenly, there’s a beautiful, bright yellow weaver, right on an open branch. Lift the binos carefully, foooocus – where’s he gone? Visual check: right where he was. Binos up, leaves and branches in intricate detail. Repeat and scan. Number of birds actually caught in the amazing lenses? Zilch.
Seems I can’t even drive binos properly. Obviously need some practice and much more willingness to be eaten alive by mozzies.
But I have a cunning plan. I have bird seed and some empty cooldrink bottles to convert into feeders. If they want food, they’re going to have to come to me. That’s where I’ll start.
- Lindsay Slogrove is the news editor
The Independent on Saturday