Thunder storms, no electricity, slugs and snails.

Hot, sultry, sticky South African summer afternoon. Clouds building up to something or nothing in the distance. It's Friday and things are slowly winding down for a quiet weekend. Supper is planned for whenever we are hungry and is going to be hamburgers or steak rolls with lashing of fried onions and mushrooms.Ray and I have no definite plans for the evening, or the weekend for that matter, so we will let things plan and sort out by themselves.

A flash of lightening, a crack of thunder and as we look skywards so the Heavens open up and heavy rain with tiny hail stones lashes down onto our world. We sit quietly in our lounge looking out through the window, curtains of water falling in every direction. This is Africa.


The noise of the storm is terrific and the lightening and thunder seem to be right over our heads. There is that crispness in the air that I so love when there is a storm. That wonderful smell that only visits us with plenty of lightening and thunder.
We grow tired of gazing out the window and turn on the television to see if there is anything of interest there, as usual we end up watching a documentary. Ray gets up to turn the light on and as he does there is one very large flash and the deep sound of rolling thunder, television goes off, computers go off and once again we sit as we so often do these days with no power.
The storm quickly passes over but the power does not come on. A walk around the garden, an over the wall chat with neighbours, back to the house and still no power. It's getting dark and our tummies are rumbling, candles and lamps are lit and nothing in fridge or cupboard takes our fancy for what to do about supper.
In the end as it is getting late we decide to go out for a bite. Car out of garage, fresh clothes and off we go to Pretoria. The country roads are lovely in the darkening skies and we drive slowly along enjoying the view.

Twenty minutes later we park the car and go into a rather nice,
upmarket restaurant and decide to sit outside watching the sunset and the traffic go by, very pleasant indeed.
And that good people is when the slugs appeared, they looked human and were dressed like humans. There were what seemed to be two female and two male of their species. They talked rather loudly and swore and cussed a lot. I seem to have no feeling about smoking one way or the other, but please if you do smoke then use the ashtrays. They all smoked and flicked ash and threw butts onto the pavement. When their drinks arrived the papers from the straws were also thrown over the balcony and onto the pavement. Last of all when they had finished their meal they threw the paper serviettes over as well.
Apart from our unruly table neighbours we did indeed have a lovely meal and as we were enjoying our snails I wondered if there was any creature on Earth that would willingly eat one of the four dressed up slugs sitting so close to us.
I think not.

We all have good sides I just wish some of us would show them more often. Manners are easy things to use.