Thursday 4 June.
I got up and made a cup of tea about 6:30 am. The dogs were outside, Alex must have let then out through the French windows in his room so they didn't make a noise as I wandered about now. We had our tea in bed and read yesterday's newspaper, the WiFi was off so we didn't get today's 'Telegraph' until later in the morning. Alex got up an hour later and we then made a move and had our breakfast. There was a packet of muesli in the cupboard that we had with yoghurt and toast with our tea. At 8 am Moira phoned the podiatrist in Edenvale and got appointments for us at the beginning of July when we come back up to the Highveldt. I then gave Lynne Semple a call. She just got back yesterday from running the Comrades Marathon at the weekend. She did quite well, her time was a respectable 10hrs 15 min. I asked if she knew Jenny Ingram and her time but she didn't know her even though she also runs for Benoni Northerns. Lynne told us that Derek Anderson ran but missed the 12 hour cut-off by 2 minutes. We promised to see her when we come up in July.
Alex took his dogs out for a walk but was back on time to run us to the airport for our flight to Durban. Once we got to O.Tambo it was just a matter of printing out our boarding passes on the machine, we needed help and there was an assistant standing by for that purpose, to look after old idiots! After checking in our two cases it was through the ordeal of security but again there wasn't any problem. We had over an hour to wait before boarding, the plane was late coming up form Durban. We were half an hour late getting into the air but the pilot said he would make up some of the time with the aid of a strong tail wind. We bought a coffee each and had sandwiches that Moira had made before we left; that was our lunch.
Once we got off it was just our cases to collect then to pick up the car Moira had booked on the internet to hire for a month. Our cases were the first to arrive on the carousel, the first time that had ever happened (or did it, see later!). After everything going so smoothly something had to go wrong and it did, our credit card for the car hire. Moira had taken particular care to inform Santander that we were going to SA and to clear the credit card for use there; they said everything was in order. After taking about 20 minutes to enter all our details into the computer ( I thought this was done when you book online and so save time later) she swiped the card through the machine and it said lack of funds. They phoned the Visa number on the card but they refused to clear for payment. They then tried to telephone Santander in the UK but couldn't get a response. I suggested trying our Nedbank card which we knew was valid, we had used it to book the flight from Jo'burg but the woman said as the original booking was in Moira's name we would have to change to a completely new booking under my name to use my Nedbank card and it would cost more. Moira asked her how much more and it was calculated at about R6000. With all the hassle and argument going on the manager arrived to see what the problem was and she said that we could use my Nedbank card as I was a named driver on the booking, it was just a matter of changing the two names round. I said that the woman dealing with us said it would cost more and when I confronted her, she denied saying that. I was going to have a real go but Moira stopped me and we waited patiently while she redid entering all the information into the computer before trying out the other credit card. Fortunately it worked and we were on our way to collect the car. It was a Chevrolet Spark, that used to be the Daewoo Matis that we toured Australia in a few years ago. We liked that car very much and it never let us down in the year and 30000 km all round the continent.
Our route was the N2 motorway all the way until we cut off at Hibberdene. There was a small section of toll road after leaving King Shaka airport and that cost R5 then it was freeway for the rest of the journey. Moira drove all the way and it was busy until we passed the N3 going into the centre of Durban then it got more and more quieter the further south we got. It was longer than i thought from the airport to Umtentweni, about 150 km and it took nearly 2 hours. The car went well and ran smoothly, I tried to get something on the radio to listen to but couldn't find any station with good easy listening music. Before heading up to Lourie Gardens and our house there we went to the doctor's rooms where Moira managed to make an appointment for 8 am tomorrow. Our next stop was the Spar supermarket for bread, milk, cereal and yoghurt for breakfast then some beer and wine to keep us going tonight.
We called in at Alison's house for our keys and got the bad news. The people who were to buy the house have pulled out and are going to Cape Town instead. Alison said she has someone else interested so we will see. It could be a wasted trip but we will arrange to get our stuff shipped over to Scotland anyway while we are here. The house was in very good condition and the only problem was the floor tiles. They are beginning to lift in places and will probably need to be totally replaced, but we knew that all the houses in the complex had this building fault and for some reason isn't covered by the builder's guarantee. I made a cup of tea then went up into the loft to see if I could find the TV set. I couldn't locate it at first and started to bring some boxes down while I was there anyway. After I moved a few I found the TV at the back. Unfortunately it didn't have a scart plug connection for the Freeview recorder that I had brought but I found an old video recorder and when I connected it up it worked. We had a few VHS tapes and when I tried them out the picture quality was good but the sound wasn't very loud but its something to watch. There was also our CD player there and it still worked but there was only one CD in the drawer, all the others are in a box up in the attic. I will hunt for them maybe tomorrow.
While I was playing around with the recorder and video player Moira had gone down to the shopping centre and got a pizza for our dinner at the take-away restaurant. The toppings were good but the pizza pastry was a bit on the thin side. After our dinner I had a look through some of the video tapes and found one with a 'Dalziel and Pascoe' episode but the sound was too poor and I gave up. Moira was through in the bedroom unpacking our cases but couldn't get the key to open the small padlock on mine. I tried but the key would fit the lock but would't turn. I resorted in cutting the lock off with a hacksaw (my tool box was still safely in the cupboard). When we eventually got into the case it was to find to our astonishment that it wasn't ours. We had assumed when the two cases came through on the carousel together and the first one had our yellow recognition ribbons on it that they were both ours and didn't bother checking out the second one for the yellow tags. Tomorrow Moira is going to phone the airport and hopefully sort it all out but it looks as if we might have another drive all the way there and back to pick it up.
By this time I was completely fed up and my throat had started to get sore. I was also very tired and decided to get to bed early, it was only 8:30 pm. Moira had found some audio tapes and the CD player also had a slot to play them. She stayed up and listened to some music while I tried to get some sleep.
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