Gremlins Pay it Forward

The day started out as normal; although others may not see my days as normal. Running a BnB can be full of surprises, some good and some really weird ones, especially some requests.

Year-end Party-time

It's as if everyone is trying to make up for lost time this year as last year's festive season was brought to a rude halt by Omicron.
I've been having this kind of request time and time again for this period -

I'd like to book for 4 guests, but do you mind if we have friends over for a braai (BBQ)?

'How many friends?' I ask

Only about 20...

Well, I think you can guess what my response to that was!

My patience wore out after one too many of these requests, and I bluntly had to tell them this is not a party venue!

The Baptism

We've already had a baptism in our pool, but this time I had to turn down a request for yet another baptism, as we're fully booked and I don't think the guests would be too excited having to vacate the swimming pool on a hot summer's day to watch people being dunked in the pool!

Big Daddy Papaya collapsed...

....following a couple of hectic thunderstorms. He was a giant old man and had lost his two female partners a couple of years ago. We'd been watching him reach for the skies and wanted to cut him down, but as always is the case, we kept on putting that off until it was too late.

Fortunately, he collapsed onto a concrete fence post and not on the house, as one of his female partners did a couple of years ago!

I was shell-shocked when this happened after two separate incidents with electricity that were affecting our guests, as it's peak season so totally forgot to take photos of his demise.
The poor old giant was cut into smaller branches and taken to the garden refuse site.
This is what is left of him - note the trunks have a hollow centre. This is one of the reasons one should preferably not trim a papaya tree, but if you do, the cut stem needs to be covered so that water cannot get in, or else the tree will start rotting.

I'm going to miss seeing his silhouette when the sun rises in the morning!

The photo was taken last year in October when he still looked healthy.

A couple of years ago, this was one of his female partners, beautiful and full of fruit, thanks to big daddy!

Then she also became tired and nearly damaged our cottage roof.
We're now left with nurturing their babies and hope they will flourish and bear fruit just like their forebears.

Electrical Gremlins!

As I said earlier about electrical faults, the circuit in our studio apartment kept on tripping, not nice when you have guests in there!
The first fault discovered by hubby and our gardener/diy guy, was a loose wire on the aircon plug, so we thought all was well. Not so, as a couple of hours later, the circuit tripped again and this time the culprit was a faulty power-surge protector adapter, courtesy of load-shedding!
I know it's better that the adapter is killed by a power surge rather than electronic appliances, but still...an inconvenience for our guests, who were such a charming couple, and not perturbed at all!

Then another electrical gremlin popped up - an outside electric connector box was flooded after a couple of thunderstorms, so our automatic gate refused to open in the morning as it had not been charging, without us knowing. Another big concern for our guests as we don't have a gateman :)
A call to our insurance company's helpline and a promise that they'll send someone out pronto, took longer as it was the day before a long weekend, but they eventually came just before nightfall and fixed the problem. The electrician informed us that an incorrect cable was used previously, and said this one can even be covered in water and not cause any issues.

The power surges following the frequent load-shedding we're experiencing are killing off the appliances of many. We run around turning everything off, and turning it on one by one after the power has been restored, but cannot do that in the dead of night!

Calm returned

Our beautiful loyal housekeeper Cynthia posing in the garden.

Are there any cloud watchers out there who can tell me what type of cloud this could be?

Sugar & Spice & all Things Nice

I finally got around to making my spicey brandied fruit filling for the Christmas mince pies - Cake fruit, Cinnamon, Mixed spices, Cinnamon stick, Brown Sugar, Orange Rind & juice, Grated Apple & Butter slowly boiled, and Brandy added afterward. Bottled and supposed to stand for 3 weeks to soak up all the juices, but one week will have to do, and it already tastes delicious!

World Cup Football

We've really enjoyed the football with all the excitement and many underdogs sending top teams home.
Who do you predict will win this year's World Cup - France or Argentina?

Pay it Forward

Remember when I spoke of @ericvancewalton's Pay it Forward for the Holidays?
Hubby and I bumped into a couple who were the recipients of tickets to an Andre Rieu show a couple of years ago, courtesy of hubby. A really nice work colleague whose wife was undergoing treatment for cancer. She used to be an opera singer so this was her kind of 'dream come true' during a very difficult period in their lives; they spoke of how uplifting it was.
We try to pay it forward regularly in many small ways.
Something that costs nothing is decluttering, so that's exactly what we did when our neighbours held a jumble sale today for the church that he started in a very poor area that is in desperate need of guidance. The youth especially, with many addicts who live on the street.

It costs nothing to declutter and pass on idle possessions to charities that can make use of them, plus you will find it really liberating once you've cleared out that clutter.

Please think of just one thing you can do to pay it forward, and share it here with us; who knows, it could just start a wave of goodwill to all.

---

Original Content by @lizelle
Thank you for stopping by
Copyright @lizelle – All Rights Reserved

JOIN Hive using my referral LINK

---

Come and join our Silver Bloggers community

^{Artwork by @artywink}