Not a bad weekend, even if I didn't get to go fishing...

thanks to the weatherman. Windguru.com had predicted that the strong SE wind would drop on Sunday afternoon but, as usual, the weather "guru's" were wrong. It blew non-stop, at gale force, from Friday morning right through until this morning when it calmed slightly, even though it's still too strong to go and wet a line at the moment.

Getting back to the weekend, it wasn't a bad one. I managed to keep busy and see some of the Super14 rugby games including the one where the Sharks came from behind to beat the Stormers (whew!).

I guess it all started on Saturday morning though. As planned, I got up early, had a cup of coffee, checked when the good sport was to be broadcast on TV, then got stuck into the garden. I pruned some trees, mowed the lawn and swept up the berries from these godforsaken bushes they have on the coast here. They're worse than bloody syringa trees, honestly! At least with syringas, the stuff that falls off them doesn't stink, but these bushes (fuck knows what they're called) have a little blossom that turns into a little white then purple berry that falls onto the ground and putrifies like a week old dead fish. I must have filled about half a black plastic bin bag with all the berries.

Anyway, I dumped all the rubbish into the back of the bakkie, then took a drive to the dump. I was going to go to the newly-discovered Kommetjie dump which is just around the corner from us, but fancied a scenic drive to Simonstown dump instead. I will do almost anything, including drive out of my way, to have a look at the sea. After leaving the dump, I made my way back over the old pass, but not before stopping to rescue a distressed "Boomer"-like dog that was obviously lost. Meet my new pal, Sandy...



Luckily Sandy had a tag on his collar with a cell number which I called. The old man who answered the call was very surprised to hear that his dog had gone walkies, as he had "just dropped him off at a dog-minder as we are going away for the weekend". My first words to him were "Call your dog-minder and ask him how Sandy is doing". I'm not sure if he did or not, but it would have been good to hear the response. Sandy jumped into the old man's Merc and off they went, and I left for home after taking a photo of the dog to show Steph (and claim my bonus points).

Once I got home, I resolved to finish off the antique desk I was renovating. I was tired of seeing it stand under plastic on the patio outside the house. Much longer in this salty air and it would probably start rotting. So I finished off the sanding, fixed a crack in one of the pillars, then used wood filler to fill some old screw holes on the drawers, left by the old handles I'd thrown away. It wasn't going to be an easy job though. We'd had a new surface made for the desk before we left Shit Towne and, as Murphy would have it, it didn't fit the frame properly. The pattern you can see in the surface edges did not correspond with those on the old frame, but I wasn't to be outdone...I have a router and a circular saw. First, I routed the edge of the frame to see if I could get it to match the surface, but that didn't work as I couldn't get the corners routed far enough back without cutting into the corners of the desk. Then I decided to make the corners a feature of the desk, taking a few centimetres off each of the sides so that there was just a part of the routed corner left showing. As you can see by the picture, the corners now look like they are part of the new surface, rather than part of the old frame.

Once that was done, I started oiling the desk with Teak Oil and the colour that came out of the Kiaat wood was amazing. Deep hues of gold and brown. The oil soaked into the wood quickly and I gave it three coats with a rag which, with hindsight, was not the best way to do it as there are little bits of fluff (which can be rubbed off by hand) stuck to some of the rougher parts of the plywood panels. I have to replace those panels sometime as I sanded through to the second layer on some of the panels when taking the old varnish off. That's for another day though. Right now, it looks great and it's good to be sitting at a proper desk instead of a sewing table.

Incidentally, when I went looking for new drawer handles and told the old geezer at Mica Hardware that it was an old government desk, he seemed to be knowledgable enough to claim that it was probably made by prisoners in the old days. He appeared to recognise the type of work they did back then so spoke quite authoratively on the subject saying that prisoners made a lot of the old government furniture in their workshops. Maybe he was a prisoner back in the days...

So I finished sanding the drawers, oiled them three times, drilled the holes for the new drawer handles and carried the frame into the dining area out of the sun. Once I'd fininshed screwing the new locks and handles onto the drawers, I put them into their rightful slots and laid the surface onto the frame...magnificent.

I haven't mounted the surface on permanently yet, as I'm trying to decide whether to screw or glue it on. Fishman, suggestions please...I think glue, like the old top had.





While I was busy on all this, SWMSBO and my mom (who is visiting for three weeks) went out shopping. I thought they were going for a movie too, but they were back quite quickly considering they were two women in a mall the size of Sandton City.

On Saturday evening, we went to the Imperial Garden, a Chinese restaurant in Fish Hoek. Very good value for money and the wine was half the price of any other restaurant. If I remember correctly, the bill came to R440 including tip, and we all had starters, main courses, and the womenfolk shared a deep-fried banana as dessert.

On Sunday morning, I decided to lie in bed and read a while, crawling out into the daylight at about 11h30. I'm almost finished Ken Follett's newest novel "World without End" which is just over 1,300 pages long but is quite a good read, full of information about medieval England.

The three of us manoeuvered the desk into its current place and rearranged the other furniture to make it look like it had been there for a while, then I got out the fishing tackle bag and sorted out the contents. I also stripped my Torium50 reel down to give it a good oiling, something I hadn't done recently. I also though I'd fucked up pretty badly too as there was a drag ratchet pawl on the handle that sprung out on its spring when I loosened the star drag. Once I'd oiled the reel, I battled with my mind as to how I was going to get the pawl back in place and it took me a good half hour before I realised the little hole on the end of the main shaft was there for more than just oil. I placed the pawl in its slot on the spring, pushed it into the recess and slid a thin bait needle into the hole...voila, the pawl was held in place and I wound on the star drag to its rightful tension. Having the parts diagram next to me was a big help too, as it just confirmed that the pawl wasn't just some spare part that wasn't actually needed, even though it didn't explain how to get the pawl back into place. With all the bits and pieces in place in the bag, I decided I needed to make a light frame to support the bag contents rather than just having everything stored in a soft bag. Today I went out and bought the aluminium angle rods and this coming weekend I will build a frame for the inside of the tackle bag...stand by for photos of that.

The rest of the evening was spent in front of the TV, watching the Mnet movie ("Rendition" - with Reese Witherspoon, who plays the wife of an Egyptian who is arrested for a bomb plot in Cairo) and then reading myself to sleep after that. All in all, a nice relaxing weekend...

Hope yours was too...