h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's a cloudy, grey day outside today. I had quite interesting dreams, again involving a MLer (a different one from last night).

There's a big new movie out, "Faith Like Potatoes". It's the story of a Christian South African farmer. Very popular indeed - I went to three Christian bookshops to get a copy on DVD, and they were all sold out. One of them sold out their entire stock in one day.

Time for .

It's actually quite chilly out today! Windy and grey. Not unpleasant though, not at all; I much prefer grey and windy and chilly, to hot and windy, which weather I abominate. The only thing I'm thinking about the weather now is: Let's rather have this grey and windy and chilly weather in the winter or autumn please, and have hot sunny weather in the summer.

Anyway the weather is what it is. I haven't been out today. I would have to put on some kind of jacket if I went out in this weather.

I did enjoy dinner last night. Well it took me a while to relax, but after the meal was over I started chatting to Pearl and enjoyed that very much. Also it was a revelation, being out and in company and not drinking a drop of alcohol. I felt, and feel, really liberated. I am so pleased. I've been a problem drinker since I was 14 years old, and now it's just fallen away with no difficulty at all. It seems the felt 'need' for alcohol was just a mirage, not something real at all. Thank God.

Sun is trying to come out, and shining weakly. I suppose I could walk over to Die Boord and get a DVD out for tonight.

Went for a walk to Eva's flat - she lives and works in Namibia, but spends the holidays in Stellenbosch. I first met her when I lived in no.1 of her block, back in 92/3. Her car is there but she was out.

Blimey though, the vibes at that block are DISMAL! I remember them from when I was there before. No wonder I was so unhappy in my first year in Stellenbosch. Terrible, terrible atmosphere in that block. I wonder why.

The sun is out now, and the patch of sky I can see from my window is blue.

I have been thinking idly of further study. I will really have to start talking to someone who knows about this stuff. I wonder if there is a friendly Prof at the Theological Faculty I could book an appointment to see. The thing is I really need to chat informally at the moment. I am not nearly ready to present anything on paper. And I still don't know for sure if it is God's idea or not. If it isn't, then I wouldn't want anything further to do with universities, which I have always found to be incredibly stressful places. I certainly wouldn't put myself through five or six years or further study on a whim. I like studying, but I'm not so into it that I would want to put myself through all that stress yet again, just for the sake of some more letters.

Goodness me - the wind has really got up, and it's really dark now. Strange weather. But nice - it's not cold, and quite comforting sitting in my warm flat while the weather does wintry stuff outside. (It's cool and dark and windy, which is Good, not hot or warm and sunny and windy, which is Bad.) In fact I can smell rain - it's raining, quite hard. Glad I got in when I did.

At times like this, I wish I had a telly, and a DVD player. I feel I would enjoy the comfort of the moving pictures and the mindless nonsense you get on South African TV.

A telly is expensive though. I would want an LCD flat screen one (not a plasma one). I saw the model I liked, a Sony; it cost about R12000. No can do. Plus I don't think the picture here in this block is particularly good. There is one TV aerial on the roof of the block which feeds into all ten flats, and I've seen TV in other people's apartments and the picture wasn't brilliant. I'm a bit of a perfectionist in that way - if I have technology, I want it to work perfectly, or I'd rather do without. The signal in Stellenbosch is bad anyway, apparently.

Onspeed actually slows down the loading of pages, and quite often it stops them from loading completely. This WILL NOT DO! Very annoyed at this indeed. Especially annoying with hootoo which has so much to download. Not good enough.

Use Opera for hootoo.. and set (or leave) the preference for checking images to hours or days but set the check for documents to a short value.

jont {;¬· >···{

Watched Monsignor Quixote, a film adaptation of Greene's novel, which is one of the few books I have read more than once. It had a great cast: Alec Guinness, Leo McKern, Ian Richardson, Maurice Denham. 1985. Splendid viewing - the film caught the atmos of the book perfectly.

Now I'm going to have a break for a bit, then I've got 28 Days Later, which I saw at the cinema I think.

The more I think about it, the more ideas I get for a possible thesis on African Wisdom, Greek theological and Jewish Wisdom cultures, in an attempt to chart a way forward for the church in South Africa, and indeed an attempt to build a theoretical basis for a common South African identity that can be shared by black and white alike.

At the moment, there is no common South African identity. Only the shattered remains of apartheid culture.

I am on fire with these ideas at the moment, even though they are only in their very early stages.