how to pick up a sailor

Someone in my building (I think I know who you are) gave my cell number (without asking me tsk, tsk) to a local yokel. The result was a baffling phone call from someone, who for the purpose of this blog, we’ll call Frikkie.

Ring ring.
B: “Hello?”
F: “Haylows”
B: “Hello?”
F: “Heylows”
B: “Yes. Hello. Who is this?”
F: “It’s, um, it’s, you know, FRIKKIE” (Shouting in case I don’t hear so good)
B: “Who?” (Thinking who the hell is this?)
F: “FRIKKIE. FRIKKIE.”
B: (Fergd’sake) “Who are you?”

And so on.

Frikkie (surprise) is a local bachelor, never been married, whose claim to fame is that he apparently makes tons of dosh from investing in beef cattle and various farming ventures. After he told me in his mangled English where I’d met him (exactly once, in my office building when he came to see his accountant whose rooms are next to mine) and who I literally instantly forgot because he’s just so totally forgettable, the poor rich beige thing.

He called on Saturday evening to invite me to lunch on Sunday.

Now, see, that’s just doff.

I made up an excuse and said in my most rounded English tones
“But we must go for coffee sometime…”

Dear heavens.

Whatever next?

I have no idea how this stuff works.

So, as always when attacked by puzzlement and confusion, I turn to the trusty Internet, which is where I get all my information about life’s important stuff such as “How to Choose a Divorce Lawyer”.

Along with some other very interesting snippets set out on “Dating 101” I have now learned “How to Pick Up a Sailor” and I copy it here for your convenience. You never know when it may come in handy, besides which, a darling friend of mine says one should try to learn something new every day.

How to Pick Up a Sailor

Step 1: Visit port towns or cities with large, rotating sailor populations.
Step 2: Frequent bar and restaurant establishments in the vicinity of docking areas.
Step 3: Visit areas that hold Fleet Week celebrations or similar Navy-based military events.
Step 4: Keep apprised of current world affairs and the Navy's involvement in those affairs.
Step 5: Learn key sailing terms and become well-versed in navy terminology.
Step 6: Get a clerical job in the Navy so that you will have access to ship schedules and personnel records.

Good luck.

not quaint but scary

Found this shoppie in Kestell which is a dreadful little dorp over QwaQwa way. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s quaint, cause it ain’t. What it is, as Eloise would say, is scary.

the empress

When I get back from town in the afternoons the dogs go berserk until I take them out for their walk. It’s endearing how quickly they’ve latched onto this as their daily rite. Their doggy hearts are broken if I fail them, which I sometimes do.

So, although longing for tea and starvingpracticallytodeath hungry, I usually let them drag me out the second I’ve changed my shoes and grabbed a hat.

Yesterday was particularly, incredibly gorgeous outdoors. You can’t describe what it’s like here at this time of year. People have to experience it. It’s to do with the quality of air and light and a sense of deliciousness, of abundance and this tremendous contentment and at the same time a desperate knowledge that you have to soak it all in NOW, and save it somewhere in your internal batteries before the brutal winter closes everything down.

Yesterday the mountain was shining like an empress, watching over the farm and all the creatures that live worshipping at her feet.

Julia and the guys from the QwaQwa University natural sciences department, Michael and Irwin, climbed it recently.

Their outing began with getting two vehicles stuck fast in axle deep mud by the river within fifteen minutes of setting off. It ended after midnight with a third vehicle wedged on a huge rock in the wetland surrounded by very curious cows who watched four of us milling around falling over each other in the pitch dark trying to jack, dig and push it out.

I think the whole jaunt was doomed because they weren’t actually invited to go up in the first place. You don’t just storm up mountains like that. Just went stomping and yelling up her slopes, grabbing plants and frogs for their laboratories (which I find a bit upsetting, to tell the truth, though I haven’t said anything).

Hollander Irwin, clutching his spiky blonde head in actual, genuine despair, swearing most foully and heaping furious blame on Australian Michael who remained annoyingly bouncy and kept coming up with new, totally unworkable solutions. It ended after midnight with beer and food and my parent’s house full of complete strangers (after Michael and Irwin called some friends to come over for a drink). All these people coming and going and yakking away at the top of their voices while frogs wrestled in Michael’s specimen bag. Slightly mad. My 75 year-old parent’s faces were lit up. They had the most fun of everyone, I think.

I didn’t go up that day. It was too hot and just didn’t feel right.

When she calls me, I’ll go.

Ul's

Divine Julia turned 49 a week or so back and threw a small party at the dam on what may have been the last truly, fiercely blue day of summer.

People came from all nooks and crannies including the two of her four chillens who are still way too self-involved to have the faintest clue what a woman - O what a woman! - they have for a mother.

“Just wait,” I tell Julia at the times when they say unspeakably cruel teenager things to her, “One day - like when they’re 45, I think to myself - they’ll realise how amazing you are.”
Not sure it helps her right now.

About ten of us spent the morning cooking, eating breakfast and yakking in the sun; sipping icy Ponzgraz and leaping from the cliffs into glittering water.

There were some people I’d never met.

A slack, pasty, trembling person crouched in the shade of an umbrella.
“I’m a novelist,” he blurted.
His eyes quivered on Julia’s riveting, tanned, bikini’d body.

He claims to have been a recce.

My bullshit radar went off with a deafening, redlightflashing foghorn alarm.

I know what the carriage of a former elite soldier looks like. I recognise the force field that goes with such men.

I could be terribly wrong. But if I am, if he was a recce, then there's something badly squiffy-’n-twisted with this one. He wrote a book about his experiences, which won awards I'm told. In Afrikaans, thank merciful God, so I never have to read it.

I fled early, gripped by bile rising inexplicably in my throat.

Lame ducks and oddballs excluded, it was a good day.

Above all, to dearest Ul’s, one of very few who understand my native tongue in this surreal journey I’m on, may you have joy in abundance forever.

winter

Winter came last night. You wake vaguely in the night to a rushing wind. The air chills. Leaves from the oak tree which were green yesterday are suddenly brown and scrambling across the tin roof. In your sleep you sense a new arrival drawing in under cover of night, purposefully setting up camp like a caravan of travelling people. Meanwhile, Summer is slowly dismantling. Down go the gaudy tents. Reluctantly frivolous drapes are torn away. The pipers and dancers and music slows.

For a few weeks the two camps share the landscape. There’s a little of each – some of Winter’s steady chill balances Summer’s giddy fuss. Everyone seems to get along so well. “It’s perfect,” you think, “why don’t they both just stay?”

But the truce never lasts.

There’s always that morning when signs of the night's big fall out lie everywhere like a massacre. The earth is frozen. Plants hang dead. The air is silent in the aftermath. And Summer’s caravan is gone, doing a midnight flit over the pass heading north, abandoning their place to narrow-eyed Winter ones who have no songs.

You know they’ll be back yet you always miss them.

But they haven’t gone yet. A few weeks still.

Denys Reitz

Just discovered that the great grand daughter of Denys Reitz, writer (Commando and others) , freedom fighter and contemporary of Jan Smuts, lives in town. The Reitz family apparently has a long history in the area. Totally fascinating. Gonna meet this woman.

Must also do a piece about Percy Fitzpatrick, writer (Jock of the Bushveld), farmer, politician, businessman, whose farm, Buckland Downs with it’s once-beautiful sandstone Herbert Baker house lies not far from where I sit typing this. Interesting interesting interesting. Must re-read Commando.

In back of mind, think about having to drive thru the pre-dawn for three hours to Big Smoke for nasty meetings tomorrow. Sick dread and twisting insides alleviated only by thought of seeing friends and having a browse in Exclusive Books and Seattle which I miss hugely. Back is damn bloody aching like hell. Dammit. What is wrong with you, back?? Don't you know I need you strong and true right now?

snakebite lady

Trekked off to a farm yonderside of Warden yesterday for an electromagnetic therapy session with the woman (doesn’t want to be Mentioned By Name and never advertises) who may or may not be a quack, but who is famed for healing the puff adder bite victim.

The idea is you get hooked up to a small machine that reads your body's electromagnetic fields (?) and produces a biofeedback report ,then zaps you with the appropriate balancing energies.

Sounds exactly whacky enough to be interesting to me (I speet on your conventional medicine).

Met the therapist in her little house slap on the bank of a fast, full river on a beef farm. Perched on her red velvet living room furniture drinking instant coffee and dunking rusks while a Jack Russel named Tequila sat at my feet staring intently at my every gulp. All very normal in a Free State sort of way.

The whole schpiel would take too long to describe, and anyway nothing happened. Just sat there making small talk while ‘the machine’ did it’s thing.

Despite my scepticism, the feedback accurately reported all my physical crumblings including pinpointing the back and neck pain, and some other stuff.

Feel a bit woozy and stiff in the neck today and I imagine the shoulder injury is easier. A bit like the day after physio. (The wooziness may be from staying up far too late, partly due to my bedroom last night being full of beetles, mozzies, bugs, crawlies, mantises and insects of all shapes. Get the message: Do not leave windows open at night, dummy. Somehow I always think this is the night the insects will stay away. Haha. It's delicious air or insect-free sleep. Prefer delicious air).

So, back to the shape I'm in ... go back for the next session in a week or so.

Will see how things go in the next few months and letcha know if I'm heeealedHallelujahGlorah!

Empire party and Vincent Maher's blogette

You may think all I do is moon about in the mountains ooing and ahhing at Nature.

I do that.

But I also sometimes scrape the mud off my face and make for the Big Smoke to see people and enjoy traffic and the indifference of shop assistants.

I went to a verrry ritzy partay a week or two ago and had a smashing time with Darling David Bullard – who is a perfect gent and a mensch and a fantastic dancer - and met the Maverick magazine publishing genius bloke, also known as Branko Brrrchigggchk (shuddup, that’s exactly how it’s pronounced) and had an almost-conversation with him about his new baby, Empire Mag, before he bolted for the undergrowth. Maybe he thought I was angling for a job like all you other journos who were snarfing down the Saxon champers.

I met this Vincent Maher guy, who I emailed for my MA research because, When I Was a Student, I believed he was some kind of New Media fundi at Rhodes and I thought he would be useful to interview. My Network now tells me (oh yes, I have a Network, people) that he referred to me in his blogette after the Empire party.

Well, just to put it straight: I did email him. Three times. And he never, ever replied. Truth. When I mentioned it to him he denied it in a round about way. Looong, convoluted wriggle about some clever email filing system he invented (snort!) which loses his mails.
Yawn.
I suspect sheer, ivy-wreathed Rhodes snottery looking down on Witsies inhabiting their ugly, grey concrete campus which, admittedly, resembles Hitler’s bunker. And I won’t tell you about how VM kept trying to sneak a look down my dress. Nearly fell off a table doing so. Rhodes! I ask you, with tears in my eyes.

But lemme tell you this much. Empire can throw a fabulous party. Thank you DDB and BB.

TikTak

The new puppy is getting all the laughs and cuddles these days, but my old Tiks is still Top Dog Wot Rules under the kitchen table.

She's 14 or 15 or 17. A few mornings ago, she was seen trotting off with the puppy, making for the calf pen. Tiks does have some truly disgusting habits. Scoffing calf manure is just one of them.

You could just hear Taks saying, "Come on Yung'Un. Follow me. I'll teach ya sumting."

Love this hoary old face. Here's to you, grumpy Tikala the Disgusting.

elephants on main street

The police patrol was out this morning as I got into town.

It gave me a big kick to see the beauties.

Leapt out of my car to take photos.

The cops loved it.

The horses looked at me calm and curious.

There’s nothing as beautiful and miraculous as a horse. Except a whale. And an elephant. And a porcupine. And ... and ... and

Animals are just the absolute it-ness.

Which reminds me, go to this site for the best of wildlife it-ness.

shopping in van reenen

Last week I went to sniff around in the ghosthamlet of Van Reenen, teetering at the top of the pass that takes you over the mountains.

There was once a busy dorpie here with a red brick station building and sturdy railway houses that would be wonderful to renovate.

Bit of a vrot place to live today, among derelict buildings and goats.

Still, you can get excellent tea in a sweet cafe in the decommissioned church next door to the abandoned petrol station.

There are a few little ghosthamlet shops, like this trading store managed by a lady in a large green headdress who is visiting her neighbour when I arrive and must be yelled for to open up.

In the window they have :

Some red hats
Some silver pots
A pair of shoes
A dumb valet

In the window on the other side of the door:

A milk can
Carved wooden snakes
Aprons
Wall hangings
Farm equipment

I like this shop.

snakebite and backache

It started raining this afternoon. After weeks of exquisite weather that had me telling everyone who doesn’t live here to get down quicksharp to witness how breathtaking the Free State can be…
“Come before Winter,” I tell everyone.
Ja, fine.

The rain on my big sash window with the vine outside and the rock pigeons canoodling on the gutter – well, it just made me wistful, then sort of sad, then just sleepy. Plus my back hurt, as it does pretty much constantlywithoutletup, so I lay down on the rug in my office to ease it and to wonder to myself if the ceiling really is five metres high, which is my estimate.

Then, with my neck on my gym bag (which was kicked under my desk weeks ago and carefully forgotten) I dozed off. Amazingly comfy. I confess I quite often lie down like this to rest my back and think about the ceiling, particularly when I feel a bit low and need a think. And I do generally find myself having a nap and I always feel better afterwards. Funny.

The thing with the aching back led me to investigate a woman who does healing based on the principles of quantum physics with some kind of equipment apparently developed by Nasa.

I came across her through a story told by the friends of a woman who was bitten on the foot by a puff adder while fetching in her washing. There was not one professional in South Africa at a poison clinic or snake park or hospital who had a clue what to do.

The Bethlehem hospital said they’d keep her for observation.
“Stuff you,” she said and went home to the farm.

A retired vet, who treated horses for snakebite in Tanzania back in the day, recommended hot poultices.

"Sometimes it worked," he said.

The victim’s friends rallied for round-the-clock hot towel duty and called in the quantum woman.

While this story has a happy ending for the victim and her limb, that grouping of words scares me ... venomous snakebite, Africa, no-one has clue ... you’d think SA doctors would be snakebite experts by now, unless all our experts have exported themselves.

So I’ve an appointment Monday to meet the healer on her farm near Vrede. Maybe this quantum cleverness can sort out my aching aching aching back. It's been hurting for years so I’m sceptical. Have done everything from special doo-dads in my shoes, physio, excruciating Swedish massage, Chinese pressure points to that weird creature in that weird suburb in Joburg with her postural alignment gibberish. Oy. So far, nothing.

But it’ll be a nice drive. And the Free State is looking lovely.

across the river and into the trees

Cellphone reception is rubbish where I live. It’s to do with having a bouncing signal and a mountain in the way.

Consequently, on the farm my phone rarely rings by day and almost never at night when normally the only sounds come from gigantic crickets under my bedroom window and sometimes the all-night bellow of a mama cow searching in heartbroken vain for the calf that The Dairy Farmer has that day wrenched from her breast.

So if my phone does shriek at 2AM I respond the way I did when I lived alone on a property in the Big Smoke and would wake from a funnynoiseinthenight.

My heart goes nuts and flings itself wildly against the bars of its cage. Adrenalin thunders. Sweat pours. Eyes bulge. Ears roar with terror.

My cell rang very late the other night and my system embarked on its full dance routine. When my heart stopped hurling itself painfully into my ribcage, I listened. From Belfast in Northern Ireland, a voice said that Ruth, a beloved family friend who we knew since I was five, had gone.

I’ve sometimes wondered if, when I die and they do an autopsy, the doctor won’t say,
“Haibo! Students, look here now. Not only was this heart broken in many places, but it also had multiple, very tiny but perfectly formed heart attacks throughout its adult life. Lovely. Hand me that pickling jar.”

Then my dear old heart will bob around gently in this big bottle on a shelf in a lab somewhere. Occasionally med students will zoom in through the glass and stare at me and say, “Check this old fossil. Sis, what a mess, hey?”

They’ll notice the raw gash that Ruth’s leaving has torn in it, even though I know she was tired and sick of hospital walls. So instead of that scene, I’ll imagine she walked with me down to the river on the farm. It’s a bright morning, the way it looked today when I went for my run, with lacy mist rising, green willow trees and waist high grass. I hear her gravelly Ulster voice and feel a quick squeeze. “Bye-bye, my wee love” and she steps into the water, sloshing happily across. Then, wringing out the hem of her skirt, she grins triumphantly from the other side. Happy travels, Ruth.