Do Not Fume & Drive

So I'm about a week late with my last book review, but I finally got around to it. I read Spud - The Madness Continues ... by John van de Ruit.

But Spud is returning to a boarding school where he is no longer the youngest or the smallest. His dormitory mates, known as the Crazy Eight, have an unusual new member and his house has a new clutch of first years (the Normal Seven). If Spud thinks his second year will be a breeze, however, he is seriously mistaken. He is soon beset with women trouble, coerced into misguided late night adventures, and finds his dreams of a famous career on the stage in tatters after landing the part of the Dove of Peace in a disastrous house play production of Noah’s Ark. Hilarious, bitter-sweet, tragic and real, join Spud as he takes another tentative step forward while all around him the madness continues...
So, as I said, I am about a week late in getting this review up. Guess that's a fairly good reflection of the impact this book had on my life.

This was a decidedly average read in my opinion, but as I said before when I read the first one it's probably better if you're a boy and went to boarding school. But I do enjoy knowing it's a South African book and it does reference a few things I remember from my youth.

It's an easy read and if you enjoyed the first then this is probably right up your alley :)



Right, so yesterday was by all accounts a shocker. Work did *not* end well. Out customers are basically dictating to us something that should be entirely our call ... and it wasn't a case of "oh, how about we do this". No, no, no, it was one of those "By the way, we've already decided you're going to be doing this" things that leave you feeling all warm and fuzzy and "wishing for an atomic bomb to show up gift wrapped at their house" inside. Nice, hey? I mean, forget the fact that you've hired experts (compared to them) in the field, forget that they think what you're proposing is monumentally stupid, forget that they have now lost all respect for you and go ahead and do it anyway. Because that's right, you're the customer and that makes you God.

So, I walked out of here fuming, as one would expect. And proceeded to bump my car into the first available person. It's okay, their car is fine. My car is pretty much fine too, the bumper has just move about 10mm. It was annoying and although technically my fault, I blame the traffic cops / police (they were going so fast I couldn't tell which, plus I was more focussed on my recent accident) who raced thru their red robot (it was green for us so excuse me for thinking that meant I could drive!) with their sirens blaring causing "Car B" (as per the accident report) to stop suddenly. From my vantage point ,I heard the sirens, but could not see yet where they were coming from ... so was certainly not prepared for the sudden stop. Anyway, so that just improved my moods ten-fold. It's always a bad idea to drive when fuming.

And then I popped off to Cresta for a little more Peeb's birthday shopping (got it all done now, my dear) and then off to the friendly local police station to log my accident report ... just in case I want to claim from insurance (I doubt it would be worth it, but who knows?). At least there was a very friendly officer on duty :)

And all this while Varen was drinking away the night at Whiskey live. To be fair he did offer to give up his evening and rush to my aid, but it just didn't seem necessary. Have yet to find out how the rest of his evening was ;)

I spent the rest of it recovering with a bubble bath and a few more episodes of Weeds. Sheesh.