Two Bits – 9 January 2015

2014 has come and gone, and it’s history, even though much of what began last year seems destined to continue. There is every chance that Eskom will leave us in the dark regularly and water restrictions will get tighter if there is no rain soon.

Ballito’s notorious roadworks will resume, supposedly only to tidy up before completion, but don’t hold your breath. I must say they really did keep to their promise of having four lanes open for the holidays. It made a huge difference to the shopping centres.

Ballito was busier than a swarm of bees in a honey shop, but it all seemed pretty manageable. Sorry to hear that the same can’t be said for Blythedale, with residents reporting days and days of hooting, revving, drunken screaming and worse at all hours.

Am I hopelessly out of touch in believing that drinking and fornicating in public and leaving huge piles of bottles and mess is unacceptable? Are the police, whether SAPS or municipal, unable to enforce the law because of the scale of the problem? I for one would not want to have to tell a drunken crowd to do anything, but that’s what law enforcement is for. Bring in the water cannon if necessary, or is that considered too repressive in this age when we’re terrified of hurting anyone’s feelings?

In this issue, a reader complains of being discriminated against because he was told by a lifeguard not to braai on the beach. He feels aggrieved because other people later braaied, but were not told off.

It turns out that you’re not allowed to braai on the beach or grass, but only on concrete areas. But there is a simple truth here that many, many people – not just the letter-writer – don’t seem to get. Braaing on the beach is against the rules, and just because other people have braaied (nearby on the concrete, as it turns out) doesn’t make it any less against the rules. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Take your lumps when you deserve them.

Take fireworks. The bye-laws allow them from 11.45 pm on New Year’s Eve to 12.15 am on New Year’s Day. Half an hour is a bit tight-arsed, but that’s the law, even if they actually started beofre 11pm and went on ‘til 2am.

A group of locals decided that they’d had enough of the endless fireworks between Christmas and New Year (and after). The Sunday before New Year, they barricaded the street where a group was letting off big bangs and insisted the police take action. Which, to their credit, they did: stopped the fireworks and fined the perpetrators.

Well, that’s how things are supposed to work. I’m sure most of us who’ve chosen not to live in a nanny state like Australia or New Zealand don’t want to tip-toe around in a place where you can hardly sneeze without getting into trouble, but a bit of respect for others is not a bad thing.

I am sure there are going to be plenty of ups and downs in the coming year, but let’s start with the attitude that we’re going to do things right. Let’s make 2015 a year to remember, for all the right reasons. Let us meet and beat the challenges and make 2015 a year of success and achievement.

It won’t be easy, and we won’t always succeed, but if the hits outweigh the misses, 2015 will be a year we can look back on with some satisfaction.

We at the North Coast Courier and Get It magazine are starting 2015 with a firm goal of improving every aspect of our products – better written, better designed, better delivered, and better crafted to help our advertisers do better business. This applies to both our printed products and the digital platforms, which in itself is a brave new world we’re aching to conquer.

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An old man walks into the barbershop for a shave and haircut, but he tells the barber he probably can’t get all of his whiskers off because his cheeks are wrinkled from age.

The barber gets a little wooden ball from a cup on the shelf and tells him to put it inside his cheek to spread out the skin.

When he’s finished, the old man tells the barber that was the cleanest shave he’s had in years. But he wanted to know what would have happened if he had swallowed that little ball.

The barber replied, “Just bring it back in a couple of days like everyone else does.”