of toads and shoes

After interviewing me, Julie requested I return the favour which I did ~ her fabulous answers are up.

I'm way envious of some of her shoes.... especially the El Naturalistas, so I had to follow the link to check out what else they had to offer. And that's when I saw them.

Toads.

I didn't study them too closely, but judging by the fact that I didn't spontaneously throw up or go into convulsions I think they're either toys or models of actual toads. But I'm afraid they've kind of put me off the brand.

I have a phobia you see. A genuine phobia of toads. A fact for which I've been ridiculed most of my life (by my nearest and dearest of course), and so was much relieved to discover a few years ago that my 'condition' has a name - bufonophobia - and is a legitimate and recognised fear.

What's disappointing about my case of bufonophobia is that the origins thereof are really simple and easily explicable. No deep and mysterious hypno-therapy-requiring diagnosis needed, it simply breaks down like this:

As a child (and yes, that would be as an utterly privileged white child in 1970's South Africa), we would sleep with all the doors of our house open in summer, to allow the cool night breezes to waft in. And, it seems, the toads.

Attracted by the passage light, left on as a night-light for us kids, they'd hop inside and always, but always, come straight to my room. Night after petrifying night I would wake to the ominous squat and lumpy (shudder) silhouette of a toad in my doorway and I would either scream the house down until one of my parents came to remove it, or in one particularly nasty incident - and I think the one which sealed my phobia - try to jump over it, where-upon it too jumped and slapped into my thigh. Eeeeuuuwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Ok, can't talk about that any more.

On a much more pleasant note: I have a foreign rellie staying, a cousin escaping from cold and miserable Europe for a few weeks, and there's nothing quite like a visitor to make you appreciate your home-town even more.

We spent yesterday morning on this idyllic little beach. That would be Monday morning. Nice hey?

(oh and, I've been instructed by a dear friend in exile in Canada that I need to put SEX warnings on posts like this ~ that's a SEfrican eXpat warning ~ danger: contains idyllic references to Cape Town and Summer. Sorry darling, but at least you've probably no toads up there at the mo?!)