Tracy Winch Schloesser is back with another clever breakdown of life in South Africa; this time she highlights the “best” loadshedding slots.
South Africa (03 April 2024) – Tracy Winch Schloesser has been writing brilliant snippets of South African life, for some time now. Her musings have kept her friends and family thoroughly entertained since the days of the coronavirus.
Having fallen in love with writing, she continued to share her thoughts well past the pandemic and global lockdowns. Last time, Tracy broke down what the real South African Monopoly should be like and it was a hit!
The latest was sent in by Tracy and it had us giggling and thinking, “ya, same!”
The “Best” Loadshedding Slots by Tracy Winch Schloesser
Someone posed the question this week, as to which was the “best” loadshedding slot. Now I am not sure about you, but that sounds like an oxymoron to me. Best is not a word that rings comfortably with loadshedding. I mean, it’s a bit like asking which is the “best’ part of your body to be stung by ten angry wasps! But hey, let’s give it a whirl anyway.
00h00 – 02h00: This is a superkak slot in summer, especially with the current heatwave, because while you might not need to be cooking anything at midnight, you are certainly going to be “cooked” with heat when the ceiling fan goes off.
02h00 – 04h00: By now you are into your REM sleep, so when the power goes off you are more wide awake than an ANC member of parliament. The brain immediately goes into fast-forward mode and you find yourself wondering how long it takes a Giraffe to swallow.
04h00 – 06h00: There is no turning back from this slot as it’s just before “get the fek out of bed” alarm goes off. So you lie there pondering about your day and start writing impossibly long lists in your head. Then you get up when the alarm goes off and head to the kitchen with a rechargeable lantern looking like a modern-day Florence fecking Nightingale! You stumble about in the semi-darkness as you attempt to light the gas stove to make tea. Then it’s time to attempt to unpack the dishwasher in the semi-darkness – only you forgot to put it on last night because there was a loadshitting slot just as you were going to bed. So now your favourite tea cup is still dirty and the day is quickly going to hell in a handbasket!
06h00 – 08h00: This slot is just kak! I mean, you are stumbling around in the half dark, and you can’t even put the washing machine on and there are eleventy seventy loads of washing looking at you. Plus you need to get ready for work, but you can’t see that your eye shadow is darker on your left eye and you look like a comical clown looking for a circus. And let’s not even talk about the hair that you washed that you cannot dry with a hairdryer, and the finger-dried look is giving you that distinct John Lennon look!
08h00 – 10h00: Or what I call the suicide slot. Because there you are, attempting to drive to the office and all the traffic lights are off, and everyone is driving like a rectum, and you nearly have forty-three accidents. So you arrive at the office with your sense of humour in shreds and you know that trying to find it in the bottom of a cup of green tea is just not going to fekking work!
10h00 – 16h00: These slots are generally survivable when you are in the office and the generator kicks in after thirty seconds. Except, of course, when you are in a Teams meeting and lose connection!
16h00 -18h00: Not only do you have to face traff*ck again on your way home, but now you need to start cooking and the pork chops you took out this morning in the half-dark require an air fryer which you can’t put on until six and you are so hungry you start gnawing your arm off at the elbow.
18h00 – 20h00: If you didn’t manage to cook before this slot kicked in, you are more screwed than the ANC. So you might as well have your dinner in crushed grape form and throw in a block of cheese for protein.
20h00 – 22h00: Any thoughts of watching that new series on Netflix are firmly fekked and you have no option but to grab the Florence Nightingale lamp and head to bed early with your book. Except you finish your book in fourteen minutes and you don’t have a spare book stashed anywhere so you resort to playing Sudoku on your phone because what the fudgicle else must you do!
22h00 – 00h00: At least with this slot you can go to sleep – except that the ceiling fan isn’t working and there are eleventy seventy mosquitoes lined up on the wall grinning at the thought of the blood fest they are about to partake in!
And this is why methinks I need a blesser in the solar panel industry to make me an offer I cannot refuse, so that I can become one of those vrek lucky people who laugh a tinkling little laugh and say that I am not even aware when loadshedding is happening. You know, the one’s that those of us without solar want to “moer stukkend”!
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