THE GREAT SEA WOTA ENTERPRISE START UP
Returning back to the farm I just had time to throw dear Poppy off a speeding quad bike, well actually she threw herself off. Not being the sharpest tool in the box and for reasons that are as fathomless as only Africa can be, she had taken it in; to give another large lady a ride to the road. Against all sense, the rules and her profound ignorance of the hazards of the internal combustion engine, the inevitable occurred, she and the bike came a cropper, lots of screaming and wailing to welcome my sister and Nick straight off the plane.
They were very impressed with the snappy ambulance service that dragged the wailing and very contrite Poppy off to the hospital with a lot more powerful drugs from Nick’s vast portable pharmacy than the ambulance man had to offer, rattling inside her.
Thus did my second Holiday start.
After an hour or two I got a call to say that Poppy was fine, bruised and bumped about but in a better condition than the bike which was really quite bent, and they (Norah & Poppy) required transport home, but that they might be able to get a lift, perhaps, who knows, so I gather my large brother in law and trundled far down the road to fetch them. I thought I had given clear instructions to call us if they got their ride, which they failed to do, so we were left standing like lost farts at the hospital when they finally called to tell us that they were now in town and where were we?
My patience was being severely tried this day.
Collecting the girls and loaded down as we were, in the B in L’s dinky rental French shit mobile, with 2 large men, 2 unhappy ladies plus wailing child, we naturally lost the exhaust!
This was turning into my worst day ever.
I was consoled with the thought that that was 3 strikes and as such must be the end of it, which in fact it was and a second period of doing nufin with friends opened its arms to me.
Now although most think that I never do anything and as such should be an old hand at doing nufin, I find it quite tiresome and so the mind drifted back to the story of the sea water. Every south African will tell you that it is a bottom line requirement that when on vacation, to the coast, a bottle of sea water, with sand in, to authenticate its provenance, was brought home for the nanny/ gardener what ever, which was always very gratefully received, so me thinks “ Hey! There has got to be ammo in this”.
Especially as the water I had brought back with me from Plettenburg Bay was greeted with such joy!
I did my usual trick of sticking my face in strangers path and engaging them in whether…they
• Would you like a bottle of sea water?..............OH YES
• Would pay for such? …………………….Yebbo
• And how much????????????? ……………?????
• Mebe R20 !!!!!!!!!!!
• Holy smoke!!!!!!
• “But I have never been offer theees befo”,
• Which I found particularly interesting.
Much discussion was entered into, Norah was sent off with samples to return with the news that there was indeed a demand and the long and short of it was that Greg and I have shaken hands and are now the ‘ Eh Sea Wota Kings’ Which was why he was accompanying us down to the coast to pick up some stock.
So off to Shaka’s Rock for a bit of beach, sun and a dip into our new ‘store room’ as we now considered the sea! We treated the in-laws to the wonders of the local Nampac warehouse in Durban to get bottles, which they assured me was with out doubt the most original tourism venue I had found to date.
The wonders of the North Coast which I fondly recalled from my youth of quaint fishing huts and oyster beds is now a thing, lost in the mists of time, the frantic rush for coastal property has created a weird new type of village, empty ones. One swings off the highway and straight into endless new development that is all empty, not a soul stirs!
It seemed as if the world had been infected with some weird virus that had evaporated the entire population except for the cleaning, security and gardening services! Really quite bizarre to travel through miles and miles of suburbs, people, nary a shop or restaurant, just empty locked up mansions, we are talking serious ammo lying around the place doing nothing.
At first it was a bit disconcerting and till the Mall was found, very worrying, as there seemed no place to eat or get anything for that matter. But we had a great time filling the bottles, or rather getting some lads to, anyway.
In some ways this country has not changed and a few bucks still gets a lot of toil, but mission accomplished!
350 bottles filled, corked and packed in the truck.
And very fine and dandy our bottles of water looked in their slick, sealed little bottles, all we needed to do was get them home and they would turn into real folding money, in fact they already had, in our minds.
The enthusiasm for this latest ‘Darvall” scheme was high, we could see no fault in our calculations, many people wanted it, who cares what for. We can’t be held responsible; we make no claim, other than it is seawater and sea sand. There already is a vast distribution network of tomato and apple sellers who are ideally placed to flog the stuff, I could see our tankers covering the continent delivering sea water to a grateful and appreciative market, with all the commensurate filthy lucre that that sort of thing gets a boy.
Greg was sent back to get the first lot of bottles sold through his nanny and her indolent sons.
The anticipation was high, for fast and furious sales with another trip to the coast already planned, boxes sought and labels printed, while this big financier and business genius with his jet set relatives spent a pleasant time eating and traveling about the place visiting friends and avoiding relatives.
Notable among these is Dib, a friend from the days of yore when we were all little white people in the Northern suburbs of Johannesburg, who is now an old lush, concerned with the plight of the poor from her million dollar designer pad overlooking a national park, really ones heart goes out to her.
We had planned to go 150 klm. Up the coast from Cape Town to a fishing village where there was supposedly a restaurant that was worth the trip (cheap and large crayfish) and where we could over night in salubrious off season 5 star comfort.
Caroline and I had done our jerks together and gone for a long walk etc before the others had managed finally to get out of their pits and when we returned Madam Dib’s was on the blower in full cry.
It turned out that her long-suffering nanny / house executive, had been accused of shoplifting!
Dib had a mission on her hands, which had priority over our pleasant excursion and was in full voice, as we all, house executive included, squirmed in embarrassment while she harassed some poor shopkeeper.
When I entered into the equation she had already been trying for some time to be put through to some sort of authority and had some unfortunate on the line.
“ What is your name” Dib demanded “ And who the hell are you???”
“ Ralph, the assistant’s assistant something” was presumably the reply
“ Well Ralph that is not good enough” Dib yelled down the line, “ I want the chairman of the board at least, if not the manager “ for which she got a polite rebuff which delayed her not, as she went ballistic.
“ Now look here” Dibs bellowed down the line, “ My good friend, an honest and religious person, was at your emporium and was dragged out to be BRUTALLY searched by YOU!!! …..and accused of being a …THIEF!!! This being a woman of the very highest moral probity and I want to know what YOU!!!... are going to do about it???????”
Long pause as one imagines the thoughts flying through the mind of the 20 something assistant to the assistant floor manager who has been delegated to ‘handle’ the ‘crazy woman’ on the line.
“Um….ahhh, well you see madam” is probably all he could get out before Dibs who one really suspects, had no interest in his take on the matter, sounded of again into his shriveling brain,
“Now, now young man, be damned, let me tell you that my friend of many years, who would NEVER steal a penny and is an upstanding member of the community, the church, a deeply religious, kind and altogether wonderful human being, who I have know for years, gets waylaid and publicly called a SHOPLIFTER!
She is here in tears, disgraced and humiliated in the eyes of this communityso I want you to get your ENTIRE staff together and apologizes publicly to her and PUBLICLY AND TELL EVERYBODY that she is not a thief, and, I am shocked and appalled, appalled do you hear me? and, and.”
She eventually petered off and the unfortunate Ralph was able to get a word in
I can only imagine that he said something along the lines that he is terribly sorry that they did not find anything incriminating on her (this time), but that shrinkage in the retail biz is a multi million Rand affair, that she; the honest (white) consumer was ultimately paying for in higher prices and …………and
Well he got short thrift, “NO, NO, NO, I am not interested in all that, you have humiliated, maligned and besmirched the good name of a deeply religious woman,” Dib thundered on, “ Do you realize that the entire community now thinks that my dear friend and companion is dishonest, THEY ARE POINTING FINGERS AT HER. Why even her brother called, as he had heard that she had been ARRESTED.
Dib was going red and blue in self-righteous dudgeon, great plumes of smoke were gusting out of every orifice and to give her, her due she did not say ‘fuck’ once, while the rest of us did our best to constrain our amusement as she would then have been turned on us for sure.
I am sorry to report that there was no conclusion to this saga, and can only imagine what would have happened if we had not insisted that she leave there and then with us, the thought that she would in all likelihood have dragged that unfortunate woman down to the mall and started screaming the odds is too horrifying to contemplate.
So off we trundled along the N27 North towards Namibia and the wonders of Paternoster, Caroline who bears the brunt of our genetic make up was struck low with a migraine of gargantuan proportions, so it was a quiet trip with just a stop to let an angel of mercy stick some powerful narcotic into her which changed her from a groaning refugee wrapped in rags back to The Baroness in minutes, a veritable miracle of modern medicine.
Paternoster is one of the latest fash villages that are up and coming, unlike my own, and is in truth charming. The crayfish are cheap and plentiful, we indulged in some conspicuous consumption at the local tourism shops, stayed an extra night and got the news that our bottles of sea water had been uniformly rejected by the buying public who doubted their authenticity and accused us of using river sand and salt, it seemed that we had of all things a credibility problem, (more shells was the accepted solution ). Such is the nature of the market, if we did not know better (remember the remark….I have never been offered this before?) we would be forgiven to think that we were not the first to come up with this scheme. In fact the only punters we could find were white people buying the stuff for their staff!
So we are stuck with hundreds of bottles that no one wants, unless they are free, such is the nature of Juju medicine!
It is a somewhat disheartened me that is now again in the saddle here in the bundu, what with the resounding failure of the ‘Sea Wota’ enterprise, though we are determined to soldier on nonetheless and have staked our all on the rural market. Pension day is the time.
They were very impressed with the snappy ambulance service that dragged the wailing and very contrite Poppy off to the hospital with a lot more powerful drugs from Nick’s vast portable pharmacy than the ambulance man had to offer, rattling inside her.
Thus did my second Holiday start.
After an hour or two I got a call to say that Poppy was fine, bruised and bumped about but in a better condition than the bike which was really quite bent, and they (Norah & Poppy) required transport home, but that they might be able to get a lift, perhaps, who knows, so I gather my large brother in law and trundled far down the road to fetch them. I thought I had given clear instructions to call us if they got their ride, which they failed to do, so we were left standing like lost farts at the hospital when they finally called to tell us that they were now in town and where were we?
My patience was being severely tried this day.
Collecting the girls and loaded down as we were, in the B in L’s dinky rental French shit mobile, with 2 large men, 2 unhappy ladies plus wailing child, we naturally lost the exhaust!
This was turning into my worst day ever.
I was consoled with the thought that that was 3 strikes and as such must be the end of it, which in fact it was and a second period of doing nufin with friends opened its arms to me.
Now although most think that I never do anything and as such should be an old hand at doing nufin, I find it quite tiresome and so the mind drifted back to the story of the sea water. Every south African will tell you that it is a bottom line requirement that when on vacation, to the coast, a bottle of sea water, with sand in, to authenticate its provenance, was brought home for the nanny/ gardener what ever, which was always very gratefully received, so me thinks “ Hey! There has got to be ammo in this”.
Especially as the water I had brought back with me from Plettenburg Bay was greeted with such joy!
I did my usual trick of sticking my face in strangers path and engaging them in whether…they
• Would you like a bottle of sea water?..............OH YES
• Would pay for such? …………………….Yebbo
• And how much????????????? ……………?????
• Mebe R20 !!!!!!!!!!!
• Holy smoke!!!!!!
• “But I have never been offer theees befo”,
• Which I found particularly interesting.
Much discussion was entered into, Norah was sent off with samples to return with the news that there was indeed a demand and the long and short of it was that Greg and I have shaken hands and are now the ‘ Eh Sea Wota Kings’ Which was why he was accompanying us down to the coast to pick up some stock.
So off to Shaka’s Rock for a bit of beach, sun and a dip into our new ‘store room’ as we now considered the sea! We treated the in-laws to the wonders of the local Nampac warehouse in Durban to get bottles, which they assured me was with out doubt the most original tourism venue I had found to date.
The wonders of the North Coast which I fondly recalled from my youth of quaint fishing huts and oyster beds is now a thing, lost in the mists of time, the frantic rush for coastal property has created a weird new type of village, empty ones. One swings off the highway and straight into endless new development that is all empty, not a soul stirs!
It seemed as if the world had been infected with some weird virus that had evaporated the entire population except for the cleaning, security and gardening services! Really quite bizarre to travel through miles and miles of suburbs, people, nary a shop or restaurant, just empty locked up mansions, we are talking serious ammo lying around the place doing nothing.
At first it was a bit disconcerting and till the Mall was found, very worrying, as there seemed no place to eat or get anything for that matter. But we had a great time filling the bottles, or rather getting some lads to, anyway.
In some ways this country has not changed and a few bucks still gets a lot of toil, but mission accomplished!
350 bottles filled, corked and packed in the truck.
And very fine and dandy our bottles of water looked in their slick, sealed little bottles, all we needed to do was get them home and they would turn into real folding money, in fact they already had, in our minds.
The enthusiasm for this latest ‘Darvall” scheme was high, we could see no fault in our calculations, many people wanted it, who cares what for. We can’t be held responsible; we make no claim, other than it is seawater and sea sand. There already is a vast distribution network of tomato and apple sellers who are ideally placed to flog the stuff, I could see our tankers covering the continent delivering sea water to a grateful and appreciative market, with all the commensurate filthy lucre that that sort of thing gets a boy.
Greg was sent back to get the first lot of bottles sold through his nanny and her indolent sons.
The anticipation was high, for fast and furious sales with another trip to the coast already planned, boxes sought and labels printed, while this big financier and business genius with his jet set relatives spent a pleasant time eating and traveling about the place visiting friends and avoiding relatives.
Notable among these is Dib, a friend from the days of yore when we were all little white people in the Northern suburbs of Johannesburg, who is now an old lush, concerned with the plight of the poor from her million dollar designer pad overlooking a national park, really ones heart goes out to her.
We had planned to go 150 klm. Up the coast from Cape Town to a fishing village where there was supposedly a restaurant that was worth the trip (cheap and large crayfish) and where we could over night in salubrious off season 5 star comfort.
Caroline and I had done our jerks together and gone for a long walk etc before the others had managed finally to get out of their pits and when we returned Madam Dib’s was on the blower in full cry.
It turned out that her long-suffering nanny / house executive, had been accused of shoplifting!
Dib had a mission on her hands, which had priority over our pleasant excursion and was in full voice, as we all, house executive included, squirmed in embarrassment while she harassed some poor shopkeeper.
When I entered into the equation she had already been trying for some time to be put through to some sort of authority and had some unfortunate on the line.
“ What is your name” Dib demanded “ And who the hell are you???”
“ Ralph, the assistant’s assistant something” was presumably the reply
“ Well Ralph that is not good enough” Dib yelled down the line, “ I want the chairman of the board at least, if not the manager “ for which she got a polite rebuff which delayed her not, as she went ballistic.
“ Now look here” Dibs bellowed down the line, “ My good friend, an honest and religious person, was at your emporium and was dragged out to be BRUTALLY searched by YOU!!! …..and accused of being a …THIEF!!! This being a woman of the very highest moral probity and I want to know what YOU!!!... are going to do about it???????”
Long pause as one imagines the thoughts flying through the mind of the 20 something assistant to the assistant floor manager who has been delegated to ‘handle’ the ‘crazy woman’ on the line.
“Um….ahhh, well you see madam” is probably all he could get out before Dibs who one really suspects, had no interest in his take on the matter, sounded of again into his shriveling brain,
“Now, now young man, be damned, let me tell you that my friend of many years, who would NEVER steal a penny and is an upstanding member of the community, the church, a deeply religious, kind and altogether wonderful human being, who I have know for years, gets waylaid and publicly called a SHOPLIFTER!
She is here in tears, disgraced and humiliated in the eyes of this communityso I want you to get your ENTIRE staff together and apologizes publicly to her and PUBLICLY AND TELL EVERYBODY that she is not a thief, and, I am shocked and appalled, appalled do you hear me? and, and.”
She eventually petered off and the unfortunate Ralph was able to get a word in
I can only imagine that he said something along the lines that he is terribly sorry that they did not find anything incriminating on her (this time), but that shrinkage in the retail biz is a multi million Rand affair, that she; the honest (white) consumer was ultimately paying for in higher prices and …………and
Well he got short thrift, “NO, NO, NO, I am not interested in all that, you have humiliated, maligned and besmirched the good name of a deeply religious woman,” Dib thundered on, “ Do you realize that the entire community now thinks that my dear friend and companion is dishonest, THEY ARE POINTING FINGERS AT HER. Why even her brother called, as he had heard that she had been ARRESTED.
Dib was going red and blue in self-righteous dudgeon, great plumes of smoke were gusting out of every orifice and to give her, her due she did not say ‘fuck’ once, while the rest of us did our best to constrain our amusement as she would then have been turned on us for sure.
I am sorry to report that there was no conclusion to this saga, and can only imagine what would have happened if we had not insisted that she leave there and then with us, the thought that she would in all likelihood have dragged that unfortunate woman down to the mall and started screaming the odds is too horrifying to contemplate.
So off we trundled along the N27 North towards Namibia and the wonders of Paternoster, Caroline who bears the brunt of our genetic make up was struck low with a migraine of gargantuan proportions, so it was a quiet trip with just a stop to let an angel of mercy stick some powerful narcotic into her which changed her from a groaning refugee wrapped in rags back to The Baroness in minutes, a veritable miracle of modern medicine.
Paternoster is one of the latest fash villages that are up and coming, unlike my own, and is in truth charming. The crayfish are cheap and plentiful, we indulged in some conspicuous consumption at the local tourism shops, stayed an extra night and got the news that our bottles of sea water had been uniformly rejected by the buying public who doubted their authenticity and accused us of using river sand and salt, it seemed that we had of all things a credibility problem, (more shells was the accepted solution ). Such is the nature of the market, if we did not know better (remember the remark….I have never been offered this before?) we would be forgiven to think that we were not the first to come up with this scheme. In fact the only punters we could find were white people buying the stuff for their staff!
So we are stuck with hundreds of bottles that no one wants, unless they are free, such is the nature of Juju medicine!
It is a somewhat disheartened me that is now again in the saddle here in the bundu, what with the resounding failure of the ‘Sea Wota’ enterprise, though we are determined to soldier on nonetheless and have staked our all on the rural market. Pension day is the time.
posted by Francis at 9:35 PM
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