We tend to gloss over the things that go wrong – or potentially wrong – and, quite rightly, focus on the more positive aspects. Sometimes, however, life’s little niggles cannot be ignored. The part of the Eastern Cape where I live is notorious for its dangerous ticks. Even though we are very careful to inspect ourselves after walking through the veld, a few years after we had settled here I fell victim to a tick-borne disease that attacked my nerve sheaths. It was traced to me having imbibed non-pasteurised milk! All ended well. I was nonetheless wary when I found a tick crawling up my wrist while I was out walking.

Then there is the summer that I look forward to from the moment the weather starts cooling down. We are used to experiencing temperatures in the middle to high 30°C, but swelter when days peak at 41°C or above.

I reversed out of our driveway only to discover I had a flat tyre! It isn’t nearly as easy to get the wheel off as it used to be, so changing it took a while and I was grateful to receive help.

Do you remember when, at the start of the Covid pandemic and most of the world was in lockdown, people began to panic-buy. Shelves in supermarkets were quickly cleared of bread, tinned food and especially toilet paper. Well, last week I was faced with shelves empty of loo rolls and was confronted by the sign below. On Thursday I heard tell of people exiting the supermarket with bags of toilet paper in their trolleys – the following day there was nought to be found.

I often mention the lack of water in our taps. This is a reality we have had to become used to over a number of years. The prolonged drought has had a lot to do with this as has increased water usage as a result of the enormous increase in population when the university students and boarding school pupils return at the start of each academic year. Ageing infrastructure and a lack of maintenance means pipes regularly burst all over town and these leaks are not always seen too. The resultant potholes are a boon for cattle and birds to drink from – but not good for the rest of us. Our water supply is cut off every night, but there are times when we have no water at all for more than a day at a time. To remedy this situation, we have at last installed a buffer tank with an electric pump that will provide us with limited domestic water over such dry days – providing there is electricity of course! Note the metal cage covering the pump: a necessity these days as they have increasingly fallen prey to thieves – which is also why all the pipes are plastic rather than copper.

While on the subject of water connections: I turned on the tap yesterday morning so that I could do a load of laundry, only to find the connection burst away from the tap covering me with water in the process. The hunt for plumbers tape was on and eventually a washer was found to replace the perished one. I gingerly turned the tap on for the third time – and it worked!

Life’s little niggles indeed.