Good morning, friends and fans!
Welcome to another “Peek Into My Week”, a behind the scenes look into the (I hope) interesting events occurring in my daily life!
For the most part, my weeks are the usual ensemble of dreary routine events – work, book marketing, finding time to write, highlights, lowlights, tinkering on Dolly (my 1962 Beetle and daily transport), arguing with my wife about dinner, tripping over cats, or rearranging the furniture – but just occasionally something interesting happens, interesting enough to want to tell someone about!
Here then, for your enjoyment, is my recollection of noteworthy events in my past week!
While I’ve been posting these journal entries, it’s probably come to your attention that while I’m a writer I’m also just an ordinary person with an ordinary everyday life, and ordinary everyday person problems! That’s all I ever hope to be, no matter how much success I achieve as a writer! That said, let’s take a look at the past week – excuse the occasional rants! 
Monday:
What’s On The Slab?
I had a busy day on Monday, filled with the usual things that make ones work day busy! In the evening after work, my friend Morne’ came to pick me up and we went to fetch 11 cement wall panels I’d bought on Farceblock marketplace. Finding the address on the other side of town in evening rush hour was not as much fun as you might think, but we found it and loaded the slabs in the back of his truck (in South Africa we would call it a “bakkie”) and then offloaded them at my home again. Why would I need 11 of those things you might ask? Well, to use as floor paving in our greenhouse of course! It’s a project that’s been on hold for a while (as I was waiting for the right set of slabs to come along) but now that I have them, I’ll be able to get that off my back as soon as this weekend, probably! 
Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday:
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were a blur and a blank spot on my calendar! 
Friday:
I had a little news from Hally Park, who let me know that “African Assignment” and “A Way Of Life” had been returned from “first stage” editing and then sent in for “second stage” editing. Hopefully they will be able to get them in print before the end of the year – and get more than two books done per year, or this is going to take a long, long time!
Exhausted!
In the afternoon I fitted the free-flow exhaust I got for Dolly. As I probably should’ve expected, this was a lot harder than I initially thought it was going to be. Once I’d removed the old exhaust (in two sections) I discovered, much to my chagrin, that the exhaust I’d got the previous weekend was made for a 1300 or 1600cc bug motor, not a 1200! The only difference was the distance between the exhaust ports on the cylinder heads… which meant it was a bit too wide. No worries, I rolled up my sleeves (a little further up) and took it to my workshop where I heated and bent the tubes to match the measurements I’d taken. One thing’s for certain – working with stainless steel is much harder than ordinary mild steel – a fact my arm, shoulder and back muscles were still reminding me of by Sunday!
Another thing that became apparent is that I need to remount my workbench to the workshop wall using more and bigger rawl bolts! That said, after about three hours of struggling to get the measurements just right, I was satisfied! Thereafter, all I had to do was take the exhaust back to the workshop and repaint it since the paint had been scraped and scratched in places. After a coffee break, the paint was sufficiently dry to fit the exhaust, and once done, I started Dolly and took her for a short test-run around a few blocks! Satisfied with a job well done, I returned home for a scrub in the tub!
Saturday:
Around Town – And A Visit To The Beach!
Saturday is our usual day for doing a little grocery shopping. After a visit to Telkom to ascertain why my landline account had still not been canceled after two visits in June and July, my love and I visited a few shops around Port Elizabeth, had a lovely brunch at the Ploughman at Moffatt on Main, where I also bought a book missing from my Asterix collection. It being fairly early and us having concluded all our business for the day, we decided to take a nice cruise to the beachfront for Kay to look at some clouds and the sea, and to pick up some shells to send her landlocked mom!
Dolly went very nicely with her new exhaust – although it’s a little loud (turns out it’s from a beach buggy or baja bug! 
Laying The Greenhouse Floor!
In the afternoon, once I’d changed into some work clothes, I set about the task of laying the greenhouse floor using the concrete slabs I collected on Monday! Yes, glutton for punishment and physical abuse, I am! Anyway, After cleaning out the clutter in preparation for the job, which included lifting and removing the old tiles I’d laid some years previously, I was quite pooped, and so with the raking and levelling of the rough earth surface and carrying of the slabs single-handedly, I finally only managed to lay five slabs on Saturday afternoon. I called it a day and decided to finish the rest off next weekend!
Sunday:
Cheers!
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