Christmas? It's 28 degrees out there

The morning after England’s latest nerve-jangling escape and it’s off to Durban. The big news is that we have arrived on a sunny day. That may sound like an obvious thing to say, and apologies to all those stuck in snowdrifts and shivering back in England, but in recent weeks this city has barely had a full dry day.

Those of the England squad and the following media pack who were here for the one-day series could barely get outside for a week. It was raining when they arrived, rained when they left and the middle bit was full of rain too. The long-range predictions for the Test are brilliant, either. “What’s wrong with the place,” one colleague has kept saying to me.

Maybe that is why I have arrived in KwaZulu-Natal with a less-than-inspired image of Durban (which isn’t the capital, by the way, that’s Pietermaritzburg about 40 minutes away). It’s hard to get a favourable impression of a place when you are stuck indoors, wiling away the hours as the rain hammers down. Especially when there’s meant to be cricket on.

However, I hate to judge a place before I have sampled it for myself so I’m not going to be making any sweeping statements yet. It’s Christmas, after all, the season of goodwill. Ah, Christmas, so it is. I’m sorry, I know it’s so clichéd and Englishman-overseas to say, but it really doesn’t feel like the festive season. It’s 28 degrees with 90% humidity. I almost didn't notice the big Christmas tree in the lobby of the hotel. Anyone fancy sending a bit of that snow down this way. I can offer you a few degrees and some sunshine by return postage. Darn, no I can’t, the clouds have rolled in again. What is wrong with this place.

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South African Airways hasn’t had much good publicity of late. Three of their Airlink planes, a smaller branch of the main airline, skidded off the runway in the space of a month and the company was threatened with being pulled out of the skies.

So far, though, I’ve not had any problems getting from A to B (that’s clearly the cue for mayhem on New Year’s Eve when I head to Cape Town) and SAA have been as efficient as any other airline I have flown.

But something amusing caught my eye today as we were preparing for take-off from Johannesburg. The safety video went through all the normal bits about seatbelts, life jackets, oxygen masks and emergency exits before reaching the section about which electronic devices you are allowed to use in flight.

“Once the seatbelt signs are switched off you may use portable razors, laptop computers, games consoles, portable CD and tape players.” Hang on, tape players. Does anyone still own one of those? Even CD players are a bit 1990s. Maybe SAA need to update their inflight video. Or maybe they have more important things to worry about.