CONFINED TO BARRACKS

WEDNESDAY 17th NOVEMBER

  Since leaving Cape Town on Monday bathed in sunshine with the temperature at 30 degrees, the weather has gone rapidly downhill since arriving in Durban.  It rained most of today, so much so that I didn't venture out of the hotel until after 6.00pm, when I went for a half hour stroll down the waterfront.  I went as far as the Tourist Information Office, and made note of its location as it looked closed by then.

    In fact the most exciting thing I could see in the outside world was a series of ships on the horizon, of which I counted eleven - you may be able to spot some of them in the photo above, taken from my hotel room.  As luck would have it I received an e-mail from Matt at Charly asking me if I could check a 51 track Celia Cruz compilation.  I got through 24 of them yesterday as well as watching some cricket and England get beaten by France at Wembley.  I was also around to field a call on Skype from Peter in Warsaw, who told me that he had checked matters out and I would not be liable for tax either in Poland or the UK on the compensation that I might get in my case in Poland.  Providing I lived for another seven years I could pass on funds to the boys, also without a tax liability. The lawyers didn't seem to think that a payout was likely in under a year, and based on recent payouts in similar cases, Peter confirmed that I was unlikely to become a sterling millionaire, but certainly a Polish one!

   A head splitting noise of drilling seemed to go on all morning, it was so bad even Peter could hear it in Warsaw!  I went down to reception to voice my complaint.  The young lady receptionist made a series of phonecalls and eventually told me that the man in charge of the workmen would be coming shortly.  A dodgy looking moustachioed chap with a cap turned up, and when told that the noise was ear splitting on the 7th floor, promptly replied that it couldn't be his men because they were working on the ground floor, turned smartly on his heels and buggered off whence he came.  As the noise had stopped by this stage, I told the receptionist I would go back to my room, but if I found the noise intolerable, I would be back.  Amazingly there was only one more short burst of drilling, which was relatively muffled compared to the previous dire noise, and that was it!

  By chance I looked in my Spam box on my e-mails and found a message from an Ingrid Sinclair who works for a company called Flowsa who maintain the website for Table Mountain.  She apparently had come across my blog "Atop Table Mountain" and was sufficiently impressed by my prose and photography to ask if the piece could be reproduced on the website http://www.tablemountain.net/ - naturally I agreed, so hopefully that will occur soon.