This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending my first Francois van Coke show. I think most people my age were still listening to Koos Kombuis, Johannes Kerkorrel and maybe some Karen Zoid as our mainstream alternative Afrikaans music not believing that anyone else had anything real to add to the struggle.  So imagine my surprise when I dragged Gerhard along to this show, and Francois van Coke and his two man band managed to rock in Afrikaans. People could never quite manage that and always sounded like they were chocking on broccoli when attempting to rock in Afrikaans. I was blown away. What struck me even more is that it seemed as if Francois van Coke in some of his many guises managed to attract diverse crowds, not bad for an Afrikaans guy right. We missed the rise of Fokofpolisiekar, probably because we were so consumed with raising our two rockers at home, and probably because Liam and Luka were at a particularly impressionable age where we did not want to even whisper w

I wrote about blackberries a while back.  Well, I got my Kindle yesterday.  My only complaint, it kept me up all night.  This is a brilliant little device, I love this thing, I think I will marry it or adopt it shortly.  And the number of free books that you can get online, I now have access to a host of classics that I have always been meaning to read. My list of books that I loaded include Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice and hey, I even found something for Liam worth reading, the Beatrix Potter classics, Peter Rabbit, Jemimah Puddle Duck, books I loved growing up but forgot they existed.  The amazon shop must be the most amazing virtual place in the world to visit, thank goodness Gerhard set up the account.  I got the kindle for my birthday (now before you fret, don't, you have not forgotten my birthday) the package arrived and my sweet husband could not resit giving me my present a bit early.  So the amazon account already contains his credit card details...its the g

I have never been into technology or gadgets.  My poor long suffering sister and future brother in law are both in IT (I use the phrase "in IT" in the loosest of contexts here as I know they have degrees but as to what they actually do, well, they work with widgets and dongles).  These two often receive phone calls from me telling them that the "thingy" on the screen that takes me to facebook is gone, or that my documents have disappeared, yes, yes, I did press delete, but surely it can't be gone, it must still be in the laundry basked somewhere.  So coming from a very low base, I had to learn a couple of things when we moved to the farm a couple of years ago.  Having always relied heavily on the companies I worked for to provide IT (by this I mean the actual computer) as well as support (like my sister, but less irritated with me because they get paid to help me), I was extremely chuffed with myself when I bought my very first laptop, with legal copies of wor