TO the barometer, then, where a tapping of the glass reveals that today will be best spent in a huddle around the fireplace at the Mahogany Ridge. It'll be rough out there, with heavy rains, icy temperatures, gale-force winds and a strong possibility of air-borne excrement as the latest trend in political protest takes hold.
It would appear that, despite widespread revulsion and official condemnation from the ruling party and their allies, moves to strew the contents of chemical toilets about the place will continue from certain hindquarters of the ANC Youth League (as one of the wags here at the bar suggested several times this week) as they press on with their campaign to break down law and ordure in Cape Town and make the province ungovernable.
The latest incident of flung dung took place on Thursday evening, according to a tweet from Premier Helen Zille: "The ANCYL [and] the ANC ward councillor arrived at DA councillor Patrick Ngqu's house in Kosovo, Philippi, and tried to throw faeces inside."
This followed two earlier brown-stuffings, if I may call it that; on Monday buckets were emptied on the steps of the provincial legislature and, the next day, a meeting in Khayelitsha was slopped, with Zille's car, a bus and the hall itself getting the treatment.
The protests have had a marked effect on the standard of chatter at the Ridge. The foecal went viral, as it were, much like rogue bacillae among package tourists in Egypt. No depths were left unplumbed in the search of a turn of phrase that would have reduced even the stoutest of schoolboys to a tittering, wet-pants wreck. It started with supposedly faecile punning and went south after that most pronto.
Despite the general air of queasiness, we forced ourselves to endure a brief lecture from the Ridge's resident child psychology major, who pointed to the protestors' obvious immaturity and ventured that it was due to poor potty training rather than a legacy of what is now fashionably known as apartheid colonialism.