halloween grinch

I just ... don't really like Halloween.

Most of my reasons place me firmly in the 'old fart' camp, but strangely I'm okay with that.

1. Really? Since when is Halloween a thing?
It wasn't when I was a kid, or even a young adult, or even a not-so-young adult, but gradually the long arm of consumerism has elevated 31 Oct up out of the calendar and into a place in which money must be spent and effort made and something celebrated.
Oh no wait, nothing gets celebrated, except by the manufacturers of candy and fake blood - they're having a lovely time.

2. The candy is gross.
I'm not a sugar nazi. I have a firm suspicion that my youngest (she of the remarkably sweet tooth of course) should probably not eat too much of it, I suspect it makes her bonkers, but I'm not proactive enough to try and ban it and I think I have a pretty standard policy on sugar consumption (ie not enough to ruin dinner and/or make you puke), but I don't like shit sweets.
And because everyone's compelled to buy so much of it to hand out on Halloween, there's usually a lot of shit, fake, disgusting plastic-masquerading-as-candy candy.

3. Scary is not cool.
We live in a country, nay a WORLD that is completely and utterly terrifying on a daily basis. Scary lost its cool in my book a long time ago. Round about when I become an old fart probably.
Ditto: wounds, blood, violent deaths, embracing the dark side, jokes about Ebola, weaponry of any kind.

4. Entitlement is unattractive.
Already our kids, all of our kids, even the really nice ones, are becoming painful about expecting Christmas presents, birthday parties, chocolate at Easter and cash from the Tooth Fairy. Now we're encouraging them to run around with buckets demanding sweets from people not even related to them or obliged to put out because of a complex social code of reciprocal present-giving.
Really?

5. It blows.
The wind that is. Late October in Cape Town is howling, throbbing, blasting South-Easter season. An invasive and spiteful wind that chills you to the bone, even when the sun shines, that blows grit into all your exposed orifices (and some that aren't), that ruins your hair and your picnic and your mood.
It always blows on Halloween. Really not a good time to be outside.

HOWEVER, the good news is: there is wine. Plenty of it.

And if you're lucky there are friends who aren't old farts and arrange fun and age-appropriate Halloween events in which you and your children can participate.
Friends who make snacks, and provide safe and welcoming environments out of the wind in which to eat those snacks, and drink that wine, while the sugar-fueled children run amok in the night.

My grinchiness abated .... did a slight encore to accompany my hangover the next morning, and then went back into hibernation until next year.

The Littlest Jaguar and SHOUTY MUM, appropriately wind-swept.

more about the phone

To reiterate, I'm not one of those Mother Grundies who goes on about the whole phone = zombie thing.
I mean, a second related post in one week doesn't count as going ON does it?

In fact, I loved this meme my sister-in-law posted recently ...

... let's keep some perspective okay?

However, I am more consciously noting in public how many people are busy with their phones. Just noting mind you, not judging.

And maybe I'm being more conscious about pulling out my phone as my default response when waiting, or bored, or when hanging out with friends.

I went partying last Friday night and consciously only took my phone out my bag twice. The first time was to send husband this message:

'Have ditched my lift home. Am officially With The Band. Don't wait up.'

The second was to check his response. It was:

'Rock on.'

This is why I love that man.

I don't have any photos of the evening, no Facebook check-ins or updates, I may even one day (gasp) not remember the evening at all ... but I danced for 4 hours and had some hilarious conversations, face to face.

And only 2 people bumped me on the dance floor because they were texting while dancing ... not judging, just saying.

stuck in the middle with you

I used to joke that while some people lived 'all over the world', we'd lived 'all over Obs', and that in many ways it was the same thing. I'm starting to realise that was truer than I'd thought.

After 20 years of living in small rural towns, a couple bunking with my parents while I was studying and then 15 living in Observatory (I've just checked the maths, I think that's about right), it seems I'm now experiencing urban, middle-class, predominantly white, mostly Christian, South African suburbia for the first time.

And it's ... not that interesting.

In fact, it's a little drab.

I realise now how unique life really is in Observatory. A diverse suburb never torn apart by the Group Areas Act, always integrated, always diverse.

It was easy while living under the rainbow of South African nationhood to assume that it arched over us all, encompassing our differences while in a weird way keeping us all on the same page. Living in Obs was our commonality, and that gave us the freedom to express our individuality.

I have no doubt that the longer we live out here in the 'burbs the more people we'll meet with shared interests beyond just our age, our breeder status, our common wish to bring our kids up safe and healthy. But I think they're fewer and further between.

In Obs I never felt I had to look this hard.

In Obs I never felt I was living a stereotype. In middle-class 'burbia the part-time working, 30-something, home-owning, Golf-driving, flip-flop wearing, under-her-breath swearing mother-of-two is the Queen of Stereotype and I seem to fit the part perfectly.

Where we live is still utterly amazing, but as we venture out finding schools and attending swimming lessons I'm encountering the curse of the middle classes ... the banal names, the fake Christians, the bad genes jeans, the lack of critical thought, the material 'must-haves' and the emotional taboo's. And it's ... a little drab.

I'll tell you what's not drab though. Getting on a boat in your pyjamas before breakfast to visit a flock of flamingos. To watch them take flight above you and wheel over your heard in a flurry of pink and black against a grey blue early morning sky. To look over and see their long legs reflected in the eyes of your daughter as she gasps in delight.

That's what I'll remember as I grit my teeth and ponder my identity next to a warm chlorine-and-pee soaked pool on Thursday. And as I try not to overhear the banal conversations about Jayden's Christmas wish list and how expensive horse-riding is these days and who's under-15 rugby team is the best and who's fucking who on the PTA (okay, I made that up - I'd love to be privy to that one), I'll try and remember too that we'd all rather be frolicking with flamingos than doing the school run right?

We all know there's more to life than the new store in the mall right?

Please tell me I'm right?

street art

A new tattoo 'parlour' (why? why are tat shops referred to as parlours?) has opened in my 'burb. And it's causing a stir.

Located at the main intersection - renowned for moving in cred i bly slow ly - Tattoo has big open shop front windows, good lighting and all the action takes place right there, street side, so you never know what you're going to see while waiting for the light to change.

I'm told by those in the know that there is a back room should you not feeling like going under the gun in full public view, but from what I've witnessed in the last few weeks, there are many punters out there unabashed to be inked in public.
I did notice however, that soon after it opened the shop owners had someone put spikes up along the low external window sills, seems it became a gathering spot of sorts for the local indigent population keen on a bit of street theatre, I'm guessing there's a difference between being admired by passing motorists and leered at for the duration of your tattoo by a one-eyed guy smoking newspaper roll-ups and providing a running commentary in unspeakable language?

Anyhoo, it's a welcome change for us passing motorists after just having the one-eyed guy to look at for all these years.
I've seen some very special sights. No genital piercings as yet (though a friend saw a guy getting his nipple spiked - that's a traffic safety risk right there), but I've seen some nice work being done on some nice bodies. I've appreciated some rippling torso, a shapely calf or two, some very nice bicep. The tattoo artists themselves aren't too hard on the eye either ...
I've seen some serious slapper cleavage too though, a bit more cellulite than I'd like to while out buying the paper, not to mention some hairy shoulders. Eeeuuuwww.
Husband's still livid about the evening (tat shop's open from 1-10 pm) I saw a pretty young thing drop her shorts to expose a tiny g-string and a great ass. Now there's a fender-bender danger.

But my favourite sight was this evening's. A lithe young thing stretched out on the full length bench. Clad in jeans and a bikini top she was getting the colour-work done on a full back piece. She had two artists working on her, the shop's resident pit-bull (of course) sitting solemnly by their feet.
And just outside, hands clasped disapprovingly behind their backs, heads shaking and tongues no doubt cluck clucking, 3 elderly aunties, aghast at the antics of the kids of today, but unable to draw themselves away.
'What would her mother say if she could see her now tsk tsk tsk .... '

bore-rocracy

The UK has recently decided to tighten its ass borders (who hasn't I suppose), and clearly regard us [shudder] Africans as a real threat (who doesn't I suppose). For the first time South Africans need a visa to visit Pomland. A very expensive and tediously detailed visa.
One which requires the completion of a 12 page form (which includes questions along the lines of 'Have you ever been involved in any activities which could cast you as a person of dubious character?') - I say old bean? Me, dubious, nevah! - and the collection of all kinds of letters of sponsorship and proof of this and that and, lordy, I just want to go for a 10 day stay!

Prior to this flexing of its chinless superiority, Britain let South Africans breeze in and out with an automatic 3 month visa and just a little bit of requisite questioning at Heathrow Immigration. Very sporting of them, what?

But those glory days are over. Now it's a mile long form, a dossier of accompanying documentation and - shudder - an interview.
So I toddle along at the appointed hour with duplicate copies of all said documents and my tongue firmly instructed to behave and my eyeballs instructed not to perform any rolling. I wait in the queue 'til the automated voice calls my number (and here, despite my annoyance with the whole process Ms Tannoy reminds me of the Tube and I feel a flutter of excitement about London. Yay!), and then all I have to do is hand over my dossier and go home (oh and be photographed and finger-printed. Yup, like a convict.) It seems the whole 'Interview' is merely a guise to actually see my face, to check that I really am the nice middle-class blonde I claim to be.

And if I wasn't?

Daily there are stories in our papers of ex-political activists being barred from travelling due to having 'criminal records' (i.e. charge sheets from the apartheid days) and Muslim clerics being barred for no good reason. But even for less illustrious travellers, it's getting harder to go anywhere. Unless you're in possession of an American, British or EU passport (and I think a Brit one is still first prize) you're basically doomed to a travelling life of exorbitant visa fees, pen cramp, queues and very possible major disappointment. Not to mention having to reveal all kinds of info about your life, family (the British visa application wanted me to list everyone I'm related to or know in the UK with their addresses and telephone numbers and 'nature of our relationship'. Excuse me big brother but actually you can fuck off.), financial situation, past, future, sexual preference, health (can you believe that HIV is a notifiable disease for an American visa applicant?) etc. etc.

Is this how we're ghettoising the global village?
We all purport to be sooooo interested in each other right now but what, only if we can communicate over the internet?
Let's have an massive rock concert to raise money for those poor Zimbabweans, but dear god don't let any of them in here!
We like to have your South African art in our government buildings but no, no, don't worry, we'll come over there and collect it.
We'd like to stock your homeware in our super exclusive stores but we want to pay even less than your local wholesale rate, oh ja and we're going to rebrand it and say it's from 'Africa' as opposed to an actual country within that vast and diverse continent.

Ok, I'll shut up now, I'm just having a little moan about cultural imperialism and bureaucracy and the fact that I had to spend so much time on this piddly little piece of paper in my passport.

Which, did I mention, I got! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay - bring on the London funtimes! Yes I will flock to your foreign shores and spend my hard earned forex and take a zillion photos and go on and on about how amazing it all was to the utter boredom of everyone at home. And yes I will glance away from the bench of desperate asylum-seekers (many of them African) as I breeze through immigration, visa in hand, to visit the Tate Modern and gorge myself on European cheese and relish your efficient public transport systems.

Yes, I will pander to the West you fuckers. I can't wait!

writing on the walls

I've mentioned before how much I like living in a part of town where people paint on the walls. In a suburb of thinkers, students, activists and drama queens ~ many of whom seem to like to live out loud.

I've also said how I love that South Africans have such a strong tradition of political commentary, often expressed through satire. This trait kept many people sane through the apartheid years, and I'm pleased the trend still seems to be alive and well.

This professionally printed poster went up in a random shop window within days of South Africa refusing the Dalai Lama a visa, and remains there still.

Ja, wtf was up with that?? 

And then, just days after we got our new President (he of a dubious legal past), these went up all over the 'burb. 

And I had to include this one, also a new addition. A simple Peace sign. Nice.

Of course I nearly stood in dog poo twice while taking these pics, and I drove from site to site 'cos I didn't want to risk walking with my camera on my own. And I got some broken glass lodged in my shoe. 

But hey, sometimes I think I'd still rather bear all that than live in a suburb filled with fake Tuscan architecture and whiny middle-class whingers.

the deep and meaningful one

I had occasion today to ponder the role of spiritual guru's. 

This is not something I make a habit of by any means. Pondering stuff that is. But today I met a woman of whom much has been said in a number of different friendship circles, a woman who seems to be some kind of spiritual healer, advisor and, from what I can tell, general all-rounder in the field of esoteric um ... anything.

And I found her smug. And self-satisfied. And also, b-o-r-i-n-g. Oh and, she complied with a few too many of my 10 Basic Reasons Not To Like Someone.

no. 4 Ended every sentence with a smile, not a real smile tho' -it never reaches the eyes- just a condescending little 'are you following me?' smile.  ✓

no. 7 Used her hands when speaking in a manner which I find overly dramatic, and therefore pretentious. ✓

and,

no. 10 Annoyed the crap out of me. ✓

And it's not like I'm prejudiced or anything. Noooo, I'm like the least judgemental person you've ever met. No, really ...

Ok, not really. I'm a sceptical, cynical dried-up old hag. Especially when it comes to spiritual guidance. [Please note: not spirituality per se ~ that's a whole other kettle of two fish CGI-ed to feed a multitude ~ today I'm just talking about spiritual leadership.]

I have never been able to shake the feeling that religious or spiritual 'leaders' are almost always entrusted with too much power, too much influence, and too much power too often equals abuse thereof. And smugness. Have I mentioned how much the smugness annoys the f*ck out of me?

Whether it's a sanctimonious Dutch Reform dominee with a perfectly knotted tie and suspiciously clean hands, or a fake lace be-clad ohmming auntie with cool sandals (see? no prejudice from me), it totally frikkin' irks me. No, I don't want to take instruction from you as to how I should feel and conduct myself spiritually. I'm not interested in your interpretation of what's going on 'out there' and what might happen to me if/when I die. I don't really feel like receiving your guidance on how I should handle my relationships.

Is it arrogant to assume I'm qualified to unravel all that alone? With just my context, my experience, my friends, my touch-stones and, er ... my life. I'll risk it.

Maybe when I find one god to believe in I'll be more inclined to listen to it's disciples. For now, I'm just not that into you, guru.

democracy - must it apply to everyone?

This evening I went to a public participation hearing for a new City by-law. In theory I love the democratic concept of being allowed a forum in which to express one's opinion and comment on City policy and legislation.
I just wish we could curtail who exactly gets to exercise this democratic right. Some animals may not be more equal than others, but some people definitely are more full of shit!

The hearing was in the Civic Centre, a monstrous monolith of mighty eyesore-ness and impracticality in the city. During office hours it's inhospitable enough with no parking, no signage and absolutely no visual appeal, but on an unseasonably cold and stormy evening it's gloomy, deserted and filled with eerie noises from the howling wind. Like the complaints of all the frustrated tax-payers and the exhausted humdrum of the underpaid city workers take voice after everyone has left, and moan and sigh around the deserted halls.

That said, the hearing was well run, and the by-law we were examining very relevant to the city, and progressive and necessary for Cape Town as an internationally acclaimed destination for events and tourism, especially in the lead-up to 2010.

However, a contingent of the participants were from the dreaded Ratepayer's Associations and Civic Organisations and other community bodies which I'm afraid, in my experience, do very little but moan and complain. And as another Concerned Citizen used the opportunity to spout forth his incredibly boring personal campaign against Anyone, Anywhere, Ever Having a Good Time Ever, the only way I could stop myself from ramming my pen into my eyeball was to doodle this list:
whinge
sanctimonious
self-righteous
prejudice
boring
mother grundy
self-aggrandising
self-entitlement
asshole
whinge
whinge
whinge
urgghhhhhhh

His barely-veiled prejudice against the Other was just frightening, his fear of his suburb being over-run by "these people" (who? soccer hooligans? cheerleaders? candy-floss toting Nigerians?), his whiny self-righteous sanctimonious nasal tone, his pursed lips sense of entitlement - urgghhhhhh! I mean who, who, thinks it's still okay (or even relevant) to say, in public, things like "15 years ago this would never have happened..."??
Dude, 15 years ago we wouldn't have been sitting in this room with black people! WAKE UP YOU WANKER!

Or please, please, immigrate to somewhere small and cold and very, very dull.