Dusting ourselves off

My apologies to all who thought I'd be posting about our first spuddle of the year this weekend. Alas, it was not to be. Much to our disappointment, the weather has done an about turn, a kaapse draai of note, and we've rapidly resorted to winter woollies and thick coats instead of the 'jerseys are enough' joy of the last couple of days. In fact, my daughter told me it was even snowing this morning where she lives. Snowing! 

Okay, it is still only March, and we all know this fickle month can decide to throw a weatherly tantrum at any moment. Mad as a March hare? I would suggest mad as March full stop. After all, that's what it is—a mad month. But I digress. The title of this blog is 'dusting ourselves off' for very good reason, and that is because in contrast to the rainy (snowy) chill of today, we had a visit from the Sahara during the week.

I think almost everyone in Europe has experienced this phenomenon, so I know it will be little surprise to local readers, but it really was quite a shock to wake up on Wednesday and find everything covered in fine yellow dust, pock-marked with small lumps of sand. It happened overnight when it rained as well, so it was already sticky and hard to remove before we'd even started. As I write, I still haven't managed to wash everything down, but Thursday was spent on the Vereeniging, which had turned a dull shade of brown. And then yesterday I attacked the Hennie H, whose pale shade of beige wasn't quite so unsightly, but hardly its normal, pristine white. Luckily for me, the sun shone brightly upon my efforts, and I quite enjoyed playing Mrs Mop to our old ladies, although I fear there's another fine layer of dust on both barges today. Never mind. There are worse problems in life, and they both looked spruce and shiny for a while. See the evidence below.

The sun shone brightly on my efforts above and below

And for no other reason than I like sitting by the water and watching the commercial barges and ships pass by, here's  photo of a sea-going vessel heading towards Gent.

And this was the wash it made as it passed. It was actually more impressive than it looks in the photo but it made a nice swooshing sound as it sploshed onto the rocks near my feet.

 So that's it for now, allemaal. My other activities are all work and writing related, interspersed with flurries of maintenance. As for the rot of ages from my previous post, a temporary fix is in place until I learn to weld. I'm working on that!

Enjoy your week and the spring weather when it returns.