Blah Blah blog!: Call back the past

Blah Blah blog!: Call back the past: I have always loved history. In fact, I loved it so much that I chose it as a third 'learning' subject for matric – and the truth was, o...

Blah Blah blog!: Karate Kid

Blah Blah blog!: Karate Kid: My daughter is going on a camp this weekend. L and I don't think it sounds like a lot of fun - more like an army boot camp really. She's...

Blah Blah blog!: Ferraris

Blah Blah blog!: Ferraris: L remembered reading something about Ferraris gathering, and travelling, from place to place. It was all very hush hush, as befits such a show of immense wealth in this land of ours. But hush hush, Ferraris are not...

Blah Blah blog!: Diets and Barbie

Blah Blah blog!: Diets and Barbie: I grew up with a mother who was constantly on one sort of diet or another. The Grapefruit Diet, the Drinking Mans Diet, The Egg Diet, Weig...

Blah Blah blog!: Sort of Spring

Blah Blah blog!: Sort of Spring: In some ways this is the worst time of year. Waiting for Summer. I took my daughter shopping on Saturday. I had noticed that she was lo...

Blah Blah blog!: Broken

Blah Blah blog!: Broken: "I read an explanation of the word SHALOM once. It was, 'nothing broken, nothing missing.' I always remember that, when interpreting it the ..."

Blah Blah blog!: New Books and Horses

Blah Blah blog!: New Books and Horses: "I wrote a book a while ago. I haven't done anything with it since I wrote it. I wasn't sure why until I met with a writer/editor friend the ..."

Blah Blah blog!: Waiting

Blah Blah blog!: Waiting: "It seemed like I waited forever. That's the thing about waiting. It feels like that. Like forever. I learnt a thing or two while I was doin..."

Blah Blah blog!: Crime and Punishment

Blah Blah blog!: Crime and Punishment: "Some people tell naughty children that the police will come and get them, if they are not good. No one ever told me that. But I heard it. I..."

Blah Blah blog!: Every Mother has her Day

Blah Blah blog!: Every Mother has her Day: "This morning I woke up thinking I had heard my Mothers voice. I experienced a moment of confusion, like when a dream crosses over int..."

Blah Blah blog!: A right Royal affair

Blah Blah blog!: A right Royal affair: "Of cause I watched the wedding. There were many complaints from those who claim to be anti- Royal, and some whinging on about money bein..."

Blah Blah blog!: The Luck of the Draw

Blah Blah blog!: The Luck of the Draw: "Its a long time since I have done a dot to dot puzzle. I was always rather fond of them and used them to teach my children how to count. T..."

Blah Blah blog!: You are sixteen, going on seventeen...

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Blah Blah blog!: Timing is everything

Blah Blah blog!: Timing is everything: "Timing is everything. I sms'ed that to a friend the other day, and I've been thinking about it ever since. I remember a film I saw ..."

Michelle's new blog

At last! An entry in the blog!

It seems that living in Sedgefield has breathed new life into the writer. Michelle has started her own blog and it can be found here Michelle's new blog from Sedgefield

Enjoy!

Its all Greek to me

It was L's birthday. We like to celebrate birthdays if our finances allow. This year his birthday fell on a Monday, and so we chose the Sunday to celebrate instead, and took the long winding road, between the mountains - to the sea.

First stop was Seal Point, scene of much surfing in the past, and even with an onshore wind there was a gentle point break, and a few relaxed surfers, gliding by.

Next was Jeffreys, and, still in search of a sea view we ended up at The Greek, all blue and white decor, and a bone fide Greek in attendance. His daughter was seated at a table near ours, lace miniskirted, spoiling someones baby - they all were, that whole Greek family eating around the table, doing that family thing that Greeks do so well.

I should know, Greeks have been part of my life for a very long time. I chose Maria to be my very best friend when I was just thirteen. She was totally different to everyone else - ivory skinned, with black ringlets and black eyes. Her and her family were beloved to me for many years (and still are)....

I remember their dimly lit house, attached to their cafe (of cause) and the huge tins of olives always open in their kitchen, with slotted spoon with which to scoop up a large quantity of calamata olives when we passed by... Her father dispensing cokes from behind his counter, her mother making lemon soup.

I loved going with them to the Greek Orthodox Church in Port Elizabeth, for Easter. Maria and her sister dressed me for the occasion. They were both exceptionally beautiful and they made me up as best they could, blow dried my relentlessly straight hair, sprayed me with perfume.

Together we sat in the pews, after kissing mother of pearl icons, being showered with gold leaf petals and leered at by virile, swarthy men. We whispered and giggled under the condemning gaze of a flock of black crow woman who stood up front and chanted. We bowed left and right to the sound of unintelligible Ancient Greek and our eyes stung with the incense that rose from the priests' swinging lantern.
Oh how I loved it all!
The wedding crowns in their glass case beside her parents bed, the Parthenon hanging in the lounge, Zorba their dog, the smashed plates later at Evas wedding, the dancing, round and round...

But that wasn't the end of the 'Greek Thing' in my life. During my drop out years i.e. trying to write, trying to dodge the Security Police. trying to make sense of it all... I did my share of waitressing. And I did it in Greek.

Tropicana in Port Elizabeth was where I spent many a long day and many a long night. My free meal was souvlaki, my coffee was not complete without a diamond of baklava. My best tips came from Greek Seaman, whose parties were fuelled by Ozo and kept me working and dodging their hands till the early hours. I have carried laden plates of Greek lamb whilst kicking aside the debri of smashed plates, the powerful aroma of garlic clinging to my clothes for days afterwards. I never drink one of those coffees topped with beaten milk without thinking of Mimi's orders to put lots of 'vrot' on top!

My friends sometimes visited me there while I worked, drawn by the Moussaka, Dolmades, Calamari, Spanakopita and Galatiborika! I served L there a couple of times, when he was a 'seven years older than me man' and I was just a crazy girl, and we laughed over our coffees I'm sure, before he went his way and I went mine.

I ate at Maria's Restaurant in Cape Town when just a girl - L paid but he was still only a friend then, and someone my sister shared a house with. Nearly twenty years later he took me there again on our first official date, and I think I regaled him with Greek tales from my past. We drank wine that lovely Greek way, in kitchen tumblers that you can slam down hard on the table top, when making a point! I remember Greek lamb, falling off the bone soft from being cooked in a clay oven, and piles of olives and garlic.


And now we celebrated his fifty five years overlooking the blue sea of Jeffreys Bay. I ate souvlaki and he succulent lamb, we had plenty of olives, and wine , followed by coffee (with 'vrot') and baklava. We walked on a sand blasted beach before driving home.

Driving home I felt it might be time for me to watch 'Mama Mia' again. For the Abba adolescent memories, but also for the blue sea, the white buildings clinging to the hillside - for Greece.

Life in the Son

Here comes the sun (tum ti tum ti)

Here comes the sun

And I say

Its all right

(tum ti tum ti ..)

The feeling of Spring in the air always makes me sing.

The truth is.....

I love the sun

I love the Son

(a happy English coincidence)

In England I suffered from S.A.D. That's sun affected disorder. My African brain could not function properly without light. Up in the frozen north I saw very little light. The days were short, the nights very long. I felt like I was wading through a thick soupy fog.

I needed the sun

I needed the Son.

Without the sun I get sad.

I started making handmade patchwork quilts because of it. I sat under a daylight bulb and stitched away at patches of bright colour. The doctor told me that colour and light would kick start the serotonin in my brain, and make me happy again. It worked.

I need light to be happy.
I need the Light to be happy.

I made a point of using cotton fabric cut from friends' old clothes for my quilts. Now they serve as friendly reminders. They are also reminders to me at the moment of the importance to cut out the best bits from everyone and everything in life and stitch them all together. To toss away, as it were, the stained, torn, frayed and faded sections that bring with them no joy, no beauty.

I saw some wool recently, here in Joubertina. The balls of bright colour sat tightly together in a box behind the counter in the second hand clothing store.

I wanted some so badly, especially the bloeisel pink, the spring green, the summer sky blue...

Like a butterfly, spring was beating away inside me.

When money came I bought a bagful of balls. I am crocheting them out in stripes - making a startling blanket to keep me warm when winter comes again.

And anyway, God has been showing me rainbows lately. They seem to be everywhere. A combination of rain and sun. Thats a rainbow.

So I've been thinking that maybe...

Christ is the Rainbow.
The Promise, the Hope - the prism through which all colour breaks forth.

My blanket is a rainbow in the making. I am compulsively, obsessively addicted to it. As it grows under my hands I am excited by all the different colour combinations. Blue next to yellow, pink against green, purple beside orange.

Rain and Sunlight
Tears and Laughter
Winter and Spring
Death and Resurrection Life.

Black Beauty

Black like night.
Black velvet pierced with stars.
Black like jet.
Patent leather shoes with lacy white bobby socks!

Top hats and tails .
A little black dress on Oscar night.
Onyx rings

Black tyres with white walls.
Sleek limousines with black tinted windows.

My favourite wine-gum.
Liquorice
Caviar

I have always told my children they are beautiful. They are blessed because it is true.
Black is, of cause a political term. No one is really a colour.

In England a group of National Front skinheads once pelted me and my ex husband with snowballs, whilst snarling the word 'Nigger.' I was pregnant and slipping on the black ice on the sidewalk. I remember the white snow against their Doc Martens. White against Black.

On the street in Port Elizabeth in 1990 a man nearly shot my then husband because he assumed he was assaulting me. (His hand was on my arm.) He called him 'Kaffir' and ordered him to move away from me. I remember that his gun was large and his finger was on the trigger. A white finger against black steel.

I thought there were laws in place and these and other names would not be heard again. At least not in public life. I thought people would keep their mouths shut and let these words seethe inside their heads, only.

Not so. In hidden places, like here, there is a freedom I have found to allow inner venom to spill out. To allow hatred to curl from lips and teeth and tongues, to curl into the air. To spiral into my ears, my mind, my heart.

They hurt, these uncaring, unfeeling, cold, stone, dismissive, sword-like, dagger stabbing words.
And White Tiger like, being a mother also, my teeth and claws are showing.

White snow
White lace at weddings
And smooth icing on cakes
White linen on washing lines
Arum lilies growing in glades
Warm white bread
Milk frothing from cows

Oh God
Creator of All

Piano keys play harmony

Black print on a White page
Charlie Chaplin
Black and White movies
Black ties and frilly White shirts...

Having a ball in Joubertina

I think there is a lot of evidence to show that it is very likely that God is very fond of balls.

We all live on one, for a start - this pale blue dot spinning through space, surrounded by a whole lot of other balls. I remember that wonderful Giglio show all about space. It made me feel really small and God is, of cause, very big.

I have a lot of balls around me right now in the koshuis. Pool balls, ping pong balls, volleyballs and soccer balls. Never mind the rugby ball. I'm fed up with rugby right now, and anyway it's not a true ball...

Years ago I worked in Arcadia, in the days of Apartheid. I was young, with so much passion and vision. I wanted to reach the 'lost' and the 'poor' and the gangsters on the corners, smoking boom. I remember praying fervently for them as they sat there, under their gloomy cloud.
So I went out walking with a ball. I was pretty fearless then, armed with my ball. Those boys were covered in tattoos, not body art, you understand, but 'tjuppies' - the prison variety.

I sat with them there, under the vandalized street signs, and talked balls. That was the beginning of the football team. They, like God, also liked balls.

Balls!
I am 48 this years and too tired for it all anymore. I try not to regret things but today I do. I regret the walking out I've just done again, with balls. I regret the pool, table tennis and volleyball me and my family started for children here. I regret the fact that someone closed it down after only a couple of weeks because of some childrens' petty misdemeanour. I regret the fact that it seems as though no one really cares...

I regret the regret.

I took on a job to work with food and finances. The only balls in sight were supposed to be a meatball, brussels sprout,onion, beetroot, baby potato or tomato.

Some things should be left well alone, and either I've lost my touch (dropped the ball) or doing work with balls is not what it used to be.

In a place like Joubertina I'm an English, liberal misfit (strangely enough a bit like a rugby ball once was I guess).
I stood up here and shot my mouth off about a whole lot of things. Well, there are more cannonballs and gunshot still out there than I realized. Man made balls, the lot of them. More than my mouth has been shot off.

Balls are fun, except when they come at you. Hard.
I now know how those Goalies felt.
Devastated.

It's not Gods fault. I take most of the blame.
I don't think He ever intended me to do more right now than cook up a storm.

At the moment its all a right balls' up!

Brides and other women

In Twee Riviere there lives a young woman who has a deep desire to create beauty. I have only known her for a year, but in that time she has been responsible for many displays and random and organized acts of delicate and delightful beauty.
To illustrate:

• towering chocolate cakes and muffins with her tell tale signature decorations of fresh flowers, ribbons and bows
• Candlelit dances (only glimpsed secretly through a sash window from the outside, whilst skulking in a dark, windswept garden!) with rafters trailing strings of beads and little flashing mirrors, held for all the young adults of the area
• Dance shows done by the little ones she taught, leading them through a beautiful world of fantasy dresses, and ribbons and bare fairy feet and pretty hair with bows
• Tea parties all in white, with spread tablecloths under apple trees , serving herbal teas and cupcakes, and all the ladies appearing like white sprites in the orchard
• herself quite dazzling in a purple embroidered evening gown of her own creation, as if set for a ball, a princess

We were invited to attend her latest special function. She was not alone in this, it being a joint venture with her bosom friend from the Kammanassie.
It was a modeling show and we arrived to seats set outside, under arches created from leaning Amish style scaffolding against the walls of the old stone house. These were, in turn, draped with lengths of flimsy white muslin. Orange carpets were laid down to become the catwalk. It was icy cold, snow topped the surrounding mountains and black clouds scuttled overhead. It was not raining though, and so we all settled down. Many folk from the surrounding farms, workers I mean, ladies only, had been invited.
The show commenced. It had a bridal theme. Young women in bridal outfits, ( a mothers dress, an aunts...) adapted, shortened. All had a sixties sort of theme, featuring little girls in frocks, hair neatly plaited, coronets of flowers, ribbons and leaves. Smiles flashed on little girls faces, showing no front teeth, white shoes too big on little brown feet - all charming.
All the gorgeous girls we know so well now had their moment, very Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffanys ( did they know that?), with gloves and cinched waists, elegance, elegance all.

I sat huddled, yes, cold but enchanted. I thought of how often women are not held in high esteem. I thought how unhappily women are often reduced to nothing by religion, alcoholism or chauvinism which is deeply rooted in belief systems.

Lately I have been doing some reading, mostly the Epistles, where much is said of that other bride. Us. And that first bride, Eve, and how much both were loved, are loved. How they, those brides, were taken out, as it were, first from that first Adam, and then from that second and final Adam.
How adored, how totally adored those brides were, are. So much so that One would die for her.

What romantic dreams all girls have, to be so adored, to be so dressed, veiled, beautiful, to be revealed only for that special man, that beloved one.
My heart ached there, on that icy porch, because I really think all girls are created to be adored. My prayers are only that they all will be - really, really loved one day by their husbands.

Oh to love and be loved!
What a beautiful show it was, created out of nothing.
And for afters, of cause, there were plates of the most pretty cupcakes, a gooey, yummy, scrummy pile of a sticky, cherries and cream pavlova, dainty flower biscuits with silver ball centers and cups of warm tea. Thank you girls.

Hannah and Tess - I salute you!