Down for the count

The weekend started well enough – a few glasses of red wine, a juicy slab of rump steak and more World of WarCraft.

Things headed rapidly downhill though from about 3am on Saturday morning, with a phonecall. Paul’s 86 year old grandfather, who had last month moved to frail care from the family home, was on oxygen, lapsing in and out of consciousness and asking for Paul’s father. Paul’s father rushed to the home to find Paul’s grandfather completely unresponsive – this after he’d been having mini-strokes, and getting progressively weaker for a few weeks now. Before Paul could get his just-woken gran to the home, his grandfather passed away, probably around 4am.

Death is really weird if you think about it. One second a person is there and then they’re gone forever. It just doesn’t really register at the time. And life around you just carries on perfectly normally like any other day.

Whether it was a good or bad thing, we couldn’t take it easy on Saturday. Functioning on 5 hours sleep for the second night in a row, we headed to a 3 hour Beginners Kettlebell workshop at the Novagen premises in Morningside. Certified kettlebell instructors from Kettlebells for Africa were down from Johannesburg, to teach the class foundation techniques and help us work on our form. And it was a big help.


I’ve been doing Russian kettlebells for a while now and I really recommend them as a fun, “different” conditioning technique that produces super gains in strength and flexibility without bulking you up. Plus, your average routine is intense, but averages just 20-30 minutes, so you don’t have “I don’t have time” excuses.


After working with an average of 16-32kgs in weight, Paul and I were busy past 7pm helping a friend move from Westville to Morningside. The Morningside flat was on the top far right corner of a 3-storey apartment block… without an elevator. Three dismantled beds, several bookshelves, a fridge and one mother of a TV were all lugged up the stairs, with increasing difficulty. So, yeah, Saturday was a full day of exercise and weight lifting. I’ve come to the conclusion that singles should stay where they are… or hire professional movers for their heavy crap! ;)

After such an emotionally and physically draining day, we crashed and burned, collapsing in bed by 9:30.

Not that we could lie in on Sunday though. Just prior to the kettlebell workshop Paul’s work called him to say that their operations base in Sabie had burnt down in the out-of-control wild fires currently plaguing Northern KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga. Paul had to leave on Sunday 10am, driving 8 hours up to the Nelspruit area with one of his bosses to fast-track the new fire detection base they were already in the process of setting up prior to the blaze. He’ll be in “Silent Hill” (as he describes the eerily quiet, smokey area) until Thursday. The funeral is on Friday.

Given the chaos of the past few days, after dropping Paul off, I made the rest of Sunday a “Me” day. Mostly I lay out in the sun and finished skim reading Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince. In the evening, after a family braai, I FINALLY started Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I’m 6 chapters in and the body count is already mounting while events move at a blistering pace…

Anyway, I’m hoping for a week that keeps me occupied but not overworked. My dreams these past few nights have been bloated with images of death and destruction. Of course, Harry Potter isn’t helping... but I think this is going to be a week of evenings spent under the covers reading.

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