This Geek

I don’t know what it is lately, but the street behind my house seems to attract accidents like a venus flytrap attracts flies.

Two nights ago, at 03h30, there was yet another loud bang that roused us and our neighbours on both sides from sleep. Fortunately there weren’t any injuries, because I saw the driver walking around his car while talking on his cell phone. It looked to me like his front left wheel had come off, which accounted for the loud scraping noise we had heard after the bang. Shortly after that, 5 tow trucks pitched up to fight over who would tow him. I went back to bed.

When I was on my way to work the next morning, I noticed that the newly planted lamp post was now folded in half and lying on the ground, loking much worse for wear. I’m guessing that the guy somehow took out that pole, losing his wheel in the process, so that probably accounted for the bang we heard.

And of course, last night, a good night’s rest didn’t happen either, as I was woken up at midnight with my electric fence alarm going off. Actually, I didn’t hear the alarm. I woke up with my phone against my ear, speaking to the security company. I had not even consciously heard the phone ring. It was kind of bizarre to wake up while speaking to someone on the phone, let me tell you, also considering that I hadn’t even taken off my cpap mask, so I must have sounded really strange.

Anyway, I got up to check the fence, and discovered that there was a short in the usual location that was causing a huge spark, and setting of the alarm every few seconds. After turning off the fence and grabbing a torch, I discovered a huge ass spider had somehow decided that the fence was a good place to try make a nest. It must have gotten a rather nasty surprise.

I cleared it and went back to bed.

I’m now feeling like a zombie. It’s gonna take me a few nights of decent uninterrupted sleep to recover.

It’s shortly before midnight, I’m just on the verge of dozing off when we hear an almighty bang. Another car accident, in almost exactly the same place as a couple of weeks ago. This time it sounded like two cars colliding, and shortly after the crowd gathered, we could hear an extremely drunk sounding woman shouting obscenities in Afrikaans, and then a guy responding in like tones. It wasn’t too long before emergency services showed up. Typically, a vulture (tow truck) was on the scene literally 5 minutes after the accident. Again, typically, it took the cops about half an hour or so to show up. Fortunately the ambulances and fire trucks were on scene in short order. Good grief. Two years we’ve been in this house with no major incidents, and now we have 2 nasty accidents within weeks of each other. I’m just worried these assholes are gonna crash through my back wall one day, considering these accidents happened 2 houses up from me.

Pretty quiet on the western front - so far. Well, it is 06:18, so I guess one could expect it to be pretty quiet.

While eating supper last night (had the in-laws over), we heard a screech of tires and a loud bang. We’re not quite sure what the full story is, but some dude came severely short, pranging his car in to a lamp post behind our house, about two houses up. We’re not sure if he might have hit a pedestrian. There were enough ambulances there later on.

It’s amazing how quickly a crowd springs up out of nowhere at accidents. It’s a good thing, actually, since you can (hopefully) be sure that at least one of them called an ambulance.

I can’t believe that I have to wait 12 frikkin’ weeks for a birth certificate. That’s beyond ridiculous. It’s a real pity that I don’t have any contacts to help sort it out.