Two Bits: Better than the stock market

I’m not much of a gambler with my hard-earned cash. A mild flutter now and then is all I’m prepared to do. When the Powerball stood at R230 million last week, it seemed just the right time for a small outlay. So I wagered R45 with numbers picked entirely at random. Some people play the same numbers, week after week, and maybe it works for them. I don’t play enough to have a system, so crosses anywhere are good enough.

I spent the next couple of days, in idle moments, wondering what I’d do with R230 million. First, how to keep it quiet from my wife. I know her, she’d find some reason to give it away. No, not really, I’m teasing. My life wouldn’t be worth living when she found out. Then, I thought, family I haven’t seen in years would be knocking at my door. Even family I didn’t know I had would be there, hands out. Perhaps we would take a round the world trip. That would be okay for a while, but I’d get bored pretty soon. No, I finally decided, I wouldn’t really know what to do with all that money. Of course, I was lying to myself, I was just preparing myself to be let down gently.

The news was that there had been one winner of the jackpot, so I deliberately held off a few days before presenting my ticket. Well, what do you know, I didn’t win millions, but I got R620. At about 1200 percent return on the wager, that shoots the lights out of the stock market. Tax free, too. Maybe I should start a Powerball habit.

It’s not quite true that I don’t gamble, just not much on games of chance. Eight years ago a friend and I bought an apartment in Zimbali as a longer-term gamble. Flash destination, all the right people were buying there, beautiful landscaping and golf course, what could go wrong? We did manage to let it out the whole time, but on selling it last year we only got what we had paid for it, making about three percent on the deal over the period. We would have been better off investing in Simbithi where those who got in early made a killing.

It comes as a surprise that a proposal to incorporate the Mt Richmore estate and shopping centre into Simbithi was voted down by homeowners last week. A group of investors plan to buy Mt Richmore and add a hospital and frail care centre. With that plus the shopping centre and Curro school within a golf cart’s drive of all Simbithi residents, you would have thought it was a no-brainer. A 75 percent vote was needed for the special resolution but the proposers only managed 71.4 percent. Friends in Simbithi tell me they would have attended the meeting if they’d been aware of what was at stake. Next time they should take an ad in the Courier.

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Dog training classes on a Saturday morning with Scott and Gaby at Townsend Park have become a regular routine with our new Labrador. It’s great to see the dogs progressing, becoming more and more manageable as the weeks go by. Or maybe it’s the owners who respond to the training! There’s quite a process to learn how to speak dog.

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At dusk on Saturday, after a sizzling hot day, the western sky turned black and looked ominous, but I dismissed it because our weather normally comes from the southeast. One notable exception was in 1987 when a huge flood come out of the north, borne on the wings of a cyclone. No, I thought, nothing can come from inland.

I was wrong. Within a few minutes the sky was filled with the most extraordinary roiling, boiling black clouds racing eastwards, followed by a brief storm and they were gone. I’ve only ever seen clouds like that once, before a storm in the Amazon jungle.

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A lovely story from a BBC TV presenter. While interviewing the singer Dolly Parton, she stretched out her legs and was examining her shoes. He remarked that she had really small feet. Quick as a flash – while adjusting her generous superstructure with both hands – she retorted: “Nothing grows in the shade, honey!”