South Africa

Covid-19 lock down Day 6…final thought

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Gentlemen, it is important to understand that the greatest risk to you at this time is not the virus itself; even though it does seem to favour attacking us…the greatest risk to you is inadvertently setting a precedent…for example:

  • Today I mowed our lawn for the second time in 7 days…that’s twice the number of times I mowed it in the previous 3 years
  • The pool doesn’t have a spec on / in it…it looks like a fountain, on a cloud…the sort of fountain naked Swedish angels would frolic in to the sound of trumpets
  • I’ve played more games of hide and seek than I did as a kid.

These are dangerous things…one must be aware…you are welcome.

Covid-19 lock down Days 4 & 5…I think

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Probably the most notable and memorable thing that occurred over these last two days was the ‘instant feedback’ provided to me by my wife on Pretty Fly, by The Offspring, at volume, being ‘unacceptable’ at breakfast time. Oh well…

Some things I’ve noticed:

  • The Covid-19 related humor which spread like wildfire across social media has all but dried up
  • I’m doing more things slowly and deliberately…now the act of making the coffee is as important and pleasurable as the drinking of it
  • I’ve come very late to the ‘binge watching’ party…it’s eating deeply into my sleep (which is shit at the best of times)
  • Our dogs, and children have become a ‘collective’ – adults not invited
  • I’m reflecting more on where I have, and haven’t been an arse over the last few decades
  • Kids don’t see exercise apps as being the god sends that adults do…they annoy them intensely
  • More to follow…

Covid-19 lock down Day 3

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Mmmm….this ain’t going to be a walk in the park (see what I did there?). Hauled my bones out of bed, put on the excited dad face (which make me look high / like a drunk sailor / insane / special in the wrong way)…then spent 90 minutes making pancakes. Not because I like pancakes, but because that was 90 minutes taken care of. Must’ve made close on 50 of them. Small. To make the batter last longer. They got nailed by the family in 90 seconds. It was still only 9am. I did some half assed exercise thing….and had a loooong cold shower. It was 10am…still 4, sorry did I say 4, I meant 3, what was that? 2? yes 2 hours away from G&T o’clock…then a funny thing happened. My kids stopped fighting. My wife stopped asking me to do stuff…I’m not sure if it was the soothing Gin sliding its way through my system, or the awesome new AirPods Pro (noise cancelling) which I was breaking my 8 D Audio cherry with…try it if you haven’t (8 D Audio). Either way the day got better…like ‘you’ve been jogging barefoot on broken glass with a broken toe and then someone gives you a pair of Air Jordans and a foot massage’ better.

Snooze time called – 30 minutes nailed. Quick jump in pool, followed by a really slow, long bbq…because they’re slow and long, made interesting by some SA rock star doing a show from his rooftop…Sugarman rendition better than the original…thanks Ard Matthews. I hadn’t realised we were neighbours. Glad we are. It was awesome.

Then later they came…the first personal cheek cleaners of the pandemic. I was standing in the upstairs spare room (read, where the dogs and I often end up sleeping) and the valley suddenly erupted; 8pm. The nightly salute from windows, roof tops and tall trees each night to show support and appreciation for the emergency and health crews at the coalface of this shit show. There was whistling, shouting, strobe lights, cheering and mouldy, dusted off soccer world cup vuvuzelas … flashing, blaring and echoing down the valley…and I cried. The true madness of it all hit me. Better out than in. Day 4 to follow.

Bring on the redheads…

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It’s taken 42 years, but I’ve finally got a hammock slung in my yard; a cool and comfortable one, under a tree, where I can kick back, have a beer and ruminate / sleep / watch porn and play games on my mobile phone…whatever blows my receding hairline back. The point is it’s my space (until the kids invade).

Since getting this little luxury sorted I’ve spent some time reflecting on life, as you do with a two beer glow and some time on your hands. I’ve been checking off my history of loves, hates and vices through my life – everything from women, food, booze and narcotics to music, fashion and my on and off again flirtations with olives and anchovies.

It seems I’ve lived my life in 5 year chunks, and when slipping from one chunk to the next some or all of the loves, hates and vices flick over to a new set.

The summary goes something like:

15 – 20: It was blondes, spirits, dope and ecstasy, house music and trance, and I wouldn’t touch an olive or anchovies if my life depended on it.

20 – 25: blondes and brunettes, and to be honest any university chick that would fall for the lines, started drinking beer (mass market and cheap), ecstacy and the odd bit of coke and acid, house more than trance and still a violent dislike of olives and anchovies.

25 – 40: a whirlwind of change and stagnation which I won’t bore you with but on the female front it must have been brunettes as I came out of this period in love with and married to one…and able to nail a bowl of olives mixed with anchovies in 30 seconds.

But now I’m in the thick of the 40 – 47 episode of my life and things have swung. I can handle most of the upheaval but the one that’s thrown me is ‘out of nowhere, totally uncontrollable ‘thing’ for redheads. And I’m not only talking about the dark skinned, green-eyed type, it flows to the ghostly pale, freckled sorts and the skinny vegan ones who look like they’ve grown on a willow tree by a fast flowing stream…you know the type…very strange.

There’s more to come…I’m sure.

Covid-19 lock down Day 2

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So today was a little different. Jumped out of bed. It’s a Saturday. I quickly realised it’s irrelevant what day it is…so it’s simply Day 2….but the sea looks so damn inviting.

Did the exercise routine…hung with the kids…manscaped myself to within an inch of my life…mopped the house…played bat and ball…ate…slept and hit the pino at about 3pm…why not. And now I’m writing this, after a quick distraction with Google’s 3D animals in the house. Scratching my head to think of anything profound I might have learned today…all I’m doing is scratching my head.

Looking way more forward to setting fire to some dead tree stuff in a metal bowl on legs, and cooking dead flesh over the flames, than I ever have…I can’t fucking wait, and I want it to take a long time…so maybe that’s something…could there be hidden pleasures we’ve all been missing out on because we have / had so many damn options? Who knows. I’ll let you know tomorrow….Oh, I’m also wondering if ‘lockdown’ is one word or two?

Covid-19 lock down Day 1

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Day 1 started just like every other day, except it wasn’t. We all went about our morning stuff. Kids did kids stuff, we did adult stuff. I hit the home office.

About 10am things began to sink in. The dogs were getting restless, the kids were getting feral. Katherine was trying not to kill all of us.

Bat and ball came out. The exercise apps got downloaded and I found myself  in my undies doing star jumps in front of the spare room window…because, why the fuck not.

Monopoly came out. The kids fleeced me. I went back to work. Startup business to build.

5pm I’m glued to my screen, and Kath walks out of the house with a fat G&T and her shades on…she never drinks before the sun goes down, but today is not usual.

I’m being dissed about my ears on Facebook by my neighbour’s wife…we set into some banter. I then go looking for the family. It’s too quiet for me not to; and I find them outside our gate…with all of our road doing the same. Deck chairs out, drinks going down and kids walkie talkie’ing each other…for a while it felt like the nasty, malignant, odious virus was forgotten.

Then it was dinner, and bed. That was Day 1.

The way it is…

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So like everyone in SA, we woke up on Friday 27th March 2020 in lock down. It’s not so bad. 21 days. It’s doable…bullshit. It’s going to be testing, but here’s the thing it can be testing and a total waste of time…or it can be testing and fruitful…and I suppose if you’re superhuman it might not even be testing. In fact it might be kind of fun if you’re an introvert in a big house with fuck load of toys and things to ‘explore’…

The thing is although it shouldn’t have, the lock down still sprung itself on a lot of us…we were up the coast, hanging and breaking the ‘beaches are all closed’ rule in Plettenburg Bay with about 50 other folk, dotted down about 5 kilometres of sand. We could have come back earlier but didn’t.

So, you wake up to your freedom having been removed. You understand why, but it’s still gone, and you’re feeling a bit sorry for yourself because you can’t go bodyboarding, or jogging or mountain biking, and you’re wondering which of the many walls of your largish, solidly built, indoor plumbed house (with swimming pool) you’re going to climb first and someone posts a shot of a 2 meter by fuck all tin and wood shack clinging desperately onto the side of a hill about 1,500 meters from where you are and you instantly hate yourself.

When you live in South Africa you can’t feel sorry for yourself…it’s not fucking possible. This is a good thing. Not the situation, but the ‘not being able to feel sorry for yourself.’ bit. For the majority of my adopted country, this nasty, invisible thing is striking very real fear into their hearts. How do you ‘social distance’, or ‘self isolate’ when you live with 15 people in a lean to the size a garage…and that’s not a double garage by the way. Once the virus hits the crowded townships it’s going to run riot, and there will be no where to hide…and the worst of it, it’s been brought into the country by the rich folk who fly…and continued to fly…to fly in for weddings in the wine lands, and business meetings (which could have been done on any of a thousand online tools) and it’s going to make it’s way into the townships because the people living there need to work every day, and they work for the wealthy infected folk as their maids, or gardeners and nannies. It’s cruel. So damn cruel.

South Africa has been given some grace. The virus took its time to get to us, and the government has done a great job of learning from the rest of the world – what to do, and what not to do…but I think we’re about 10 days out from hell being unleashed unfortunately…let’s hope not.

 

 

Final justification…for the miserable

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I can hear them, the excited little pops of cork exploding out of heavy glass necks. I can hear them from 13,000 kms away across several oceans and from different points on the globe, and the poppers of these corks are the ‘we knew its’ and the ‘I told you sos’ who fled South Africa in mini-migrations from the early 90’s onwards.

I can picture the scenes.

The stooped couple in their twilight years. The first wave to leave ahead of the elections in ’94. They’re in their little outer London flat, or if they’re lucky a small, doily bedecked  bungalow somewhere suburban. This is cheap champagne and their sad smiles are pulled across their weathered faces. Their decision to run from black rule has finally been justified. Their years of morose unhappiness and perpetual unease at the relative stability and blossoming reconciliation in the rainbow nation; their double decade of jealous rage at the lifestyles of their friends whom remained. All of these things now justified.

The botoxed, inflated & tight waisted Jewish women in St Ives and Double Bay. The dentists’ and cosmetic surgeons’ wives, now divorced and living loud in the coffee shops, hairdressers and nail bars around Sydney. These woman cackle and tap tap their titanium gelled talons against their glasses, to choruses of ‘the fucking ANC…we knew it…we told those fucking liberal moffies that it wouldn’t work…see. Top me up. Yes!’

The young professional couple in their tidy Perth flat grinning from ear to ear. Their friends should have listened to them. They knew it. They told them that ‘they’ would drive the economy into the ground. That ‘they’ would get more violent and that ‘they’ would [insert any negative]…and that they should have come with them to this wonderful(ly fucking dull nirvana for terrified white folk). The ‘they’ can’t get them here…oh no, not here.

So what is it that has got these corks popping, the botox cackling, the young, uptight self-righteousness slyly bursting forth…it’s Zuma’s latest ‘fuck you’ to his country. His sacking of Finance Minister Nene. The man who said ‘no’ to his odious demand for a personal jet. The man who questioned why South Africa needed a mortally wounded national carrier. The one human being fighting to keep South Africa’s status out of the analysts’ junk pile…and here’s the rub. I’m not South African…so I have no axe to grind, but I have, in the past had to endure the relentless negativity and gutless whinging and whining of these modern day migrants. These settlers, ‘settling’ in far flung countries, congealing in suburbs in their numbers, bringing their biltong and  their Old Ma something or others fucking blatjang. I’ve stood squashed against them in tube trains across London and had to endure their boisterous conversations on the ferries criss-crossing Sydney’s incredible harbour. And 3 years ago I finally got the opportunity to move to South Africa and to ‘settle’ in Cape Town. To live in this wonderful land. The land I’d been told I was ‘focking mad’ to go to. ‘Was I not scared ‘they’ would kill me?’

I wasn’t scared and I was excited and I am also hopeful. Today especially I’m hopeful that this lastest nail that Zuma has hammered home is into his own coffin and not the coffin of the 60 million wonderful people who make up South Africa. I’m hopeful that people are going to see beyond politics, to humanity. That blacks, whites, Indians and coloureds are going to dig deep and find a way to rid this country of the foul, bloated creature that is hell bent on destruction and insatiable greed…I wonder if any of the South Africans abroad might choose to come home and make a difference, rather than sit in their bedsits, flats and their dull contractors’ desks toasting thier apparent ability to see into the future…I somehow doubt it.. but hey.

Farewell old friend / rogue

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It’s not what I expected. I knew you had to go and go for good, but I hadn’t grasped how I would feel. It’s bitter sweet, like losing an arm, but realizing you’ve still got two perfectly good legs.

Old rogues. They’re the most fun and engaging. All my good friends are ‘rogues’ in one sense or another and that’s why we got on. So when it comes time to cut one from your life it sucks but you know it’s for the best.

Friends come and go. Our friendship dates back over 20 years. There were good times, bad times and times when we didn’t see each other for a year or two.

In those 20 years I’ve moved countries several times, lost a parent, been married twice and now have two wonderful daughters. My second wife has never really liked you. She’s felt threatened. Has felt that you changed me. Did not want you over when the kids were awake, and I got that. She spent a couple of nights with us, but it was always strained.

So now you’re gone, and let’s be clear I didn’t really have a choice, It was you or them, and I love them and they’re what I live for, so it had to happen. I know that, but what I didn’t know was that I would suddenly feel alone. You see, nobody to pick me up when I’d been kicked down, shouted down, argued with. Nobody to hang with on sunny afternoons when the family were away. Nobody to listen to music and chat harmlessly to women with. I’m going to miss all of that. Each time I argue with the ‘other half’ and storm out of the house, which doesn’t happen all that often, I’ll expect to find you waiting. Whenever there’re are old friends in town they’ll want to know where you are…and ‘what? Fuck off, what d’you mean you don’t know him anymore.’ And each of these times is going to be hard, but I hope, I really sincerely hope that we don’t meet again. I need to get on with my life and to do that we can’t be friends. That said there will always be a dull gap which you used to fill that is going to remain…dull for awhile at least.

Happiness is…

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‘They’ say that ‘happiness is earning more than your brother in law.’

If that’s true then I’ve just come back from 5 days of depression inducing hell…Easter with my 3 brothers in law and their families.

They’re all great guys and I’ve known them for years (including as friends, before I did the unthinkable and dated, then married their little sister…but that’s another story for another time.)

I’ll lay the scene; BIL (bother in law) 1 is on the board of directors of a bank; BIL 2 is a partner at a global law firm and BIL 3, one of my oldest friends (apart from the 2 years he wouldn’t speak to me because of the sister situation (see above)) runs a little business from his house which sees him earning more than BIL 1 and 2 combined. This trifecta, this triple whack with the ‘you’re worthless’ stick, this probe with the ‘what the fuck have you done with your life’ finger (and thumb) hadn’t registered before…it’s rare that we’re all in the same country at the same time…but this Easter it happened and happened in full force in a big rambling farmhouse we’d hired for the weekend.

The 6 kids ran amok and did what kids do. The wives drank wine, flicked through magazines and did what wives do. And the guys do what apparently guys with prestigious jobs and / or high amounts of disposable income do, and talked money…

By day 2 I was spending more time with the kids. By day 3 I was even considering starting work on a novel, simply to give me an excuse not to participate in the conversations I couldn’t really participate in, and by day 4 I was drinking heavily to dumb down the internal voices tearing sheets off me. I’m not a jealous person (although a couple of ex-girlfriends might beg to differ…especially the one whose dress I cut up after she screwed around on me with some floppy German fool in a camper van…) but it was tough. As many times as I tried to divert the conversation to anything other than money, business and finances (and cars I’ve never even heard of), they managed to slickly slide back to the point they’d been interrupted at. It was exhausting.

By day 5 I was feeling like the knock-kneed fat kid at a school sports day and my ego and self-worth were both punch drunk and reeling. I’d wondered out into the never ending garden with glass in hand. I was vaguely aware of the kids voices nearby, when a chubby little 2 year old hand grabbed mine and pulled me to the trampoline.

‘Daddy look. Do like this.’ She said, and I looked down and she had her head between her knees. I didn’t understand. The she dragged me onto the bouncy canvas, tucked her head down and executed a perfect somersault and lay on her back screeching with pride.

‘Daddy look. You do.’ and I did…the first somersault I’ve done in about 25 years,landing on my back next two my youngest daughter, the 2 of us laughing madly (and me feeling more than a little disoriented after spinning my gut full of wine 360 degrees), and I had one of those rare moments where life gets thrust back into perspective with such a force that your mind slaps you upside the head…and you realise that you’ve just spent wasted x number of days feeling worthless when really you’re OK…you’re a good dad, your daughters are healthy and all have the right number of limbs and eyes and don’t think you’re a fool all the time. You’ve got your health. You’re not eating somebody else’s Pot Noodles out of their bin for breakfast and in the rain and cold you’re dry and warm under a roof that’s not made from cardboard boxes or a plastic sheet.

Life is good…I’m just not rich.