Durban Website Designers

I, as the proud possessor of an odd mix of chromosomes, never understand why women have to take the kitchen sink and Welsh dresser around with them. Here are two examples.

The car footwell.

I have yet to see a woman passenger get into a car without something. Yes, I understand that all have bags that that would send elephants to a chiropractor but it’s the ‘other stuff’. This usually includes magazines, perhaps spare shoes, other bags with contents unknown, bottled water, things they ‘might’ take back to shops and divers other bits & bobs.

And they all add to this pile as the trip progresses. Try and change drivers on a long trip. It’s almost impossible to get into the car on their side. “how about putting some of this stuff in the boot?” Ah, no. I might need it on the trip. “Need the microwave? Are you sure?”. “You never know”. Too bloody right when you’re sitting like a Peruvian mummy. Now to the other thing . . . 

The bedside table.

Now, we have a bed and two bedside tables with three drawers. Mine has socks, pant and bits & pieces (not a microwave) in the drawers. On top is an LED clock, a coaster for bottled water at night and - usually - a book.

Right, let me go and see what my wife’s side of the bed looks like. . .  Hang on.

OK, here goes: 2 large photographs, the ‘bag’ (underneath), a pile of Your Family and Garden and Homes, a pile of pages cut out from said periodicals, a clock (invisible at night), assorted medicaments, a safety pin, a toothpick, a duster (’one never knows’), a tissue box and unbelievably, a packet of rice paper for wrapping sushi.

What is it about the tissue box? Do they drip like an old tap? Are they expecting mass hysteria? Hay fever? I never see them using the tissues so what do they do with them? Perhaps they engage in floppy nocturnal origami, clean the windows. Who knows. I’ve only ever seen the tissues produced when a kid in the back of the car has spilt his entire can of Coke.

I daren’t ask about the rice paper. Maybe it’s headed in my direction and I’ll wake up wrapped like a piece of tuna.

Finally, something about websites rather than a perpetual whinge (although there’s plenty coming down the pike).

Had a small job a couple of months ago that I mentioned (the client was organized) that has gone well. The site is fluidtronik.co.za. Nothing super duper but a small, descriptive commonsense website for a local hydraulics company.

Within a week of posting, the site was at number 8 and after two weeks, at number 1. Pretty good and the client will make money from the website. Hydraulics engineers are not exactly thick on the ground anywhere but the speed that the site got to number 1 in Google is quite impressive.

I put together a small (too small actually) website for a friend who does granite worktops in Durban. The website is number 1 in Google for those keywords and around number 20 for ‘granite durban’ so could do better there but it’s only about 5 pages (graniteguys.co.za)

Other work on the go that might deserve a mention:

A job for a company that draws floor plans;

A job for a rubber company (that’s not prophylactics, Pal);

A business directory for Tzaneen;

The continuing tale of the Durban Local History Museum;

Traditional Cold Process Soaps.

Well, he probably was in the 19th century but not any more.

I know beer is a beverage close to a man’s heart and you would rather insult his religion than his drinking habits but I am going to have my say - particularly apropos the previous article.

IMHO, Castle Lager is a travesty of a lager. It’s not for nothing that the SAB brewery here in Durban is below the African Explosive and Chemical Industries settling ponds. The stuff bears as much resemblance to beer as today’s ice cream bears to real ice cream. It’s jam packed with a delicious assortment of chemicals - finings, clarifiers, foaming agents, antifoaming agents, flavourants, colourants, extenders. I read somewhere that there are in the region of 25 noisome additives in Castle Lager.

Charles Glass would choke on his beer.

The stuff’s like Coke - tastes delicious and acts like it’s refreshing you but it never will. The more you drink of this concoction, the more you want to drink. Have a glass of water - ten times better. Actually Castle Lager - despite the acres of condensation and lip smacking and mandible wiping in commercials - tastes awful. Unlike other beers it even tastes awful at -20 degrees C. Let it warm up to anything above absolute zero and it tastes like an incontinent bat has been using your glass for target practice. The lip smacking after a Castle should be to get the taste OUT of your mouth.

The other beers are of a similarly depressing disposition - Amstel, Black Label et al. I was once told by an SAB ex-brewer that Black Label is the original Castle.

There are two beers that marginally stick their collective heads above the event horizon - Milk Stout and Peroni. The former is about what it says it is - a milk stout. The latter is quite a decent continental lager providing SAB don’t bugger it up.

Like cheese, various local entrepreneurs have had a bash. Mitchells, Nottingham Road for instance, but they are not English beers and have a taste all their own. I stopped at a microbrewery somewhere in Mpumalanga some years ago and salivating for kilometres down the road after the first sign to the place.

The beer was so bad, I left most of it on the counter. Never done that before.

Also, like the cheese, there is now a brewer that brews decent beer, and, nogal, it’s up the drag.

Robson’s in Shongweni brews a small variety of ales and all of high quality. Trouble is, they’re pricey at around R16 a bottle but like decent cheese, a small amount goes a long way.

Cheese.

Or at least the apology for cheese that’s purveyed in supermarkets around SA. It’s a disgrace. This tartrazine coloured, flavourless soap hasn’t been near a cow in its life. Try making cheese sauce. Use only cheese and the sauce will not have the slightest cheezy taste. Not only that but it has the consistency of contact adhesive (which is probably better for you, particularly if you sniff the stuff). In America at least they own up to the ersatz nature of their cheese by selling ‘cheese food’ - extruded from ethylene byproduct fractionating column I woudn’t wonder. But at least they tell the truth.

Now, despite the burgeoning cheesemakers that have gallantly tried their hand at producing something worthy of the name, there is a cheese that looks and tasts like cheese. It’s Butlers from the southern Cape.

Not bad stuff and worth a little extra.

Trouble is, you don’t need as much of it as the soap but old habits die hard and it therefore doesn’t last long.

Right, for the umpteenth time, I have replaced the cold tap washer in the bathroom. Now, I don’t use it - Injun country you see. My wife won’t use the downstairs loo because our entire library is in there and is ashamed to point guests towards it. I think she’d rather them pee in the flower bed than use the dreaded downstairs loo.

We, like thousands of other South Africans have Cobra taps. Very efficient, lovely to behold and  - ergonomic. So tell me this, what is it with women that, despite the fact that the water has long since ceased to run, do they feel compelled to turn the wretched tap another few degrees?

Within a couple of months and many wrenchings clockwise, the washer takes on the shape of a pancake parked under a tank. Not only that but Schwarzenegger couldn’t now close the thing and there it is, dripping like a geriatric’s willy.

No matter how many times I tell my wife just to use thumb and fingers, I see her with a face the colour of beetroot ‘just making sure the tap’s closed’.