postapocalyptic

... by which I refer to the scenery driving out to Cape Town airport, which I have done three times today, owing to Evil Landlord's Kulula flight being delayed. Memo to self, always (a) check departure times of Kulula flights, and (b) wait to see passenger safely on board before fleeing the chaos that is the airport. But three trips through shantytowns and bits of human detritus and dirt and heat and stuff was a bit much. Of course, this is probably because I've just read Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, which is a truly superb piece of post-apocalyptic sf, heavy on the mad gene splicing and destroyed cityscapes. Bleak, depressing, beautifully written, intelligently open-ended, and bizarrely able, in the middle of the most nasty realism, to make me giggle helplessly with a turn of phrase. And the mating dance of the mad green Crake-people is v. amusing. I unreservedly recommend the book; although it's depressing, it's the kind of "I knew it!" depressing that's strangely satisfying. And, may I point out, another Booker nominee.

It sort of, almost, not quite rained last night. By which I mean we had a stupendous and deeply happy-making electrical storm, which I think must have come straight over the house - one incredible crack of thunder simultaneous with the lightning, the kind of loud that made the top of my head hurt and set off half the car alarms in the area. I think it may have hit the hospital building, actually. Sort of half-hearted rain, for half an hour or so, not enough to prevent the garden from being a blasted heath again today. I hate drought. I love thunderstorms. I'm on the wrong continent.