i gave valerie a few things and said, “now don’t end up like hennie!”, by which i think she understood me to mean, don’t end up dead in the dalebrook toilets, but what i really meant was ‘don’t end up smelling like the garbage on the corner with your pants half way down’. hennie specialised in being a nom de guerre. countless times i’d catching him peeing on my shop verandah (when i still had blossom), but it was never him! many people had a soft spot for hennie with his four fingers missing, but for me he should have kept his  5 fingered hand out of his pants.

our favourite bergie was stanley and we all miss him in a funny way. stanley lived at the bottom of our garden for months and was the only bergie i’ve met who would read. locals would pass books onto him and he’d devour anything with words.

stanley never begged, but was always given things. one christmas day he sat outside the supermarket and amassed R800. he bought himself some great new clothes and ice-cream for the children in our complex. stanley loved buying the children sweets, so much so, that we had to get him to space the treats out a bit. on the other hand stanley was not keen on meat and preferred to eat vegetables, which is  a bit tough on the street when someone hands you their left over macdonalds’.

one day adrian and oli went to the supermarket to buy sweets and as usual they got a couple for stanley, who later related to me how, “my mouth was just smarting for something sweet…”  as, i mentioned, a well read man!

vulnerable on the street stanley was often the victim of theft. his jacket, his bag, his books often got stolen, but the worst was his broom. michele over the road came to his rescue so that he could rise early and sweep the cobbled street. what a gentleman!

stanley’s sad story was a life in jail. he proclaimed innocence and knowing stanley he probably was, regardless, it was a real waste of an intelligent man’s life. this made him resistant to night shelter’s and institutions. our neighbour karena tirelessly tried get him into a better situation, but he simply disappeared one day, after borrowing money from Riefa over the road. Riefa is the golden angel of bergies (ok she a stretch from golden, but you get the idea), driving them around, feeding them and making sure they have somewhere sheltered to sleep.

what amazes me most about many bergies is their loyalty and honesty (bar hennie). they will keep an eye on your things and if something goes missing they sure as anything know where it went and it gets returned. armed response should actually give them some walkie talkies! it’s not like they never get drunk and behave badly, but the same can be said of the people who frequent the brass bell in their designer jeans and coiffured hairstyles. unlike bergies these people get into cars at the end of the night and drive home. give me stanley any day!

vespa!!!

we were before our time actually, not that we had any idea, however, we did relish somewhat in the coolness that we unwittingly pre-emptied. you see, we had each longed for a vespa before the longing for each other. it was not the scooter that united, but united we found it. my two-tone 1964 mini was slowly dripping brake fluid into the gutter outside my mowbray home, until it returned to my father for surgery, so i was left with tim greene’s bicycle, to charge off to work to at a montessori pre-school. i do admit that the journey was particularly sweet as adrian had graffitied my name along the route: on electricity boxes, phone booths and yes one white wall. i must add that this was prior to tagging and graffiti artists, although defacing public property, it was at least out of passion and not fashion. nevertheless these two wheels became someone else’s transport one saturday afternoon after it disappeared from outside adrian’s tree house flatlet.

i was left with legs and then there was adrian’s… well i hesitate to call it a car: one of those 80’s models whose engine doggedly outlived its bodywork. i often wondered if the noise of the engine was an attempt to compensate for the lack of structure. finally the engine fell very silent and then like the bulk of south africans we were transportless, until…..

it was waiting for us in tableview, of all places: a primavera, or ‘piece of shit’  according to our vespa mechanic, due to its resistance to being fiddled with by men with greasy fingers. still in its original fawn colour it was love at first site, but first we had to get it home. (after bartering the price down to our collective savings.) i was the only one with previous vespa training, altough i  had not revealed that i’d actually been taught by a 14-year-old on a dirt road in houtbay. thus highly qualified to drive a vespa from tableview to town i managed to impress my beau as he followed with an exhausted and over excited three-year old in the back of the borrowed car. i think i earned uncountable points that evening. (i’m still riding on that glory).

we shared this vehicle until i disappeared to america for 4 months and then returned to claim my part ownership. by this time the 80’s renault was hopping from mild competence to mechanic to further incompetence and so on. vespa had to take us everywhere in between. that discernible putter, putter, putter and inimitable squeaky parp, parp is imbedded in our blood.

it goes without saying that two-wheeled transport, cape town winters and wind are not destined for nuptial bliss. i was often soaked through and haggled by the wind. my best memories however are of returning home at 2 or 3 in the morning after working at the ‘magnet’, adrian’s bar in bree str. i would make sure that i would drive to the magnet. (adrian was the only man in south africa who thought it sexy to be driven around by a woman on two very low wheels.) that would entitle me to cower behind, whilst adrian buffered the freezing wind on the return trip. we  either did the highway, or my favourite: salt river and woodstock by night. don’t guffaw when i tell you there was something mystical about the silence of those quiet, dark, run down buildings, which burst at the seems with third-worldliness during the day. we were invincible and at the height of coolness on our vespa, not to mention bloody cold.

sadly, vespa was dismantled to be painted and de-rusted on the day i found out i was pregnant with hannah. she’s now 13 and vespa still has body parts in various parts of cape town. the flight of the urban cowgirl was not entirely grounded though, as we baby-sit my brother-in-law’s green beauty whilst he was in australia. my fondest memories will be of picking up my hannah from kindergarten whilst my 1964 cortina was filling the coffers of the mechanic. hannah’s route to school involved, two rivers, horses, cows, geese, hadedas, ibises and as a rare treat a pelican. we flew like wild women on horseback through the air (at a child friendly speed of course), united on an italian design wonder, which has changed little since its inception.

the vespa was designed after the war by aeronautical mechanic corradino d’ascani. enrico piaggio was looking for a light-weight vehicle to flood the market with, whilst he got his aeroplane plants back into the swing of things. d’ascani was not a man fond of motorbikes, preferring to keep his trousers clean and his hairstyle intact. the design did and still does feature a covered chain, to keep your bell bottoms clean, gears on the handle bar, which can cause very embarrassing moments at traffic lights and much easier changing of wheels than a motorbike. of course this did not vouch for your ability to stay on the bike in the event of a flat wheel, nor did they take into consideration changing wheels at deserted petrol stations at night, which i managed to survive on my virgin wheel change. thanks, anyway d’ascani for giving us the ‘wasp’, but just to let you know that your little wind shield does nothing for the hair style during a south easter.

being a tree-hugging cow-kissing type i support local organic products as much as possible, but every now and then i am pulled into woolies by the hand of convenience. when there i search their organic section and buy what i can. i then get home only to  discover that the country of origin on my organic spinach is kenya. if you’re as clueless as woolies let me help you a little bit…

organic is not solely about omitting chemicals, it’s a larger world view which includes the reduction of energy in processing, transporting etc. etc. so my little bag of spinach was flown to cape town in some big aeroplane (altogether now – Its leeaaving ….on a jet place….) which uses, what? yes, petrol! clever duckies. And during it’s flight they have to keep it cold. in a refrigerator? and so the little carbon footprinting of my spinach continues until i get home, look at the packet and go EEEEEKKK!!

so why did they do this evil deed? well, the spinach in kenya and the transportation thereof was obviously cheaper than the local stuff on offer – indeed we know that spinach does grow in south africa, it’s not exactly exotic. this saving may or may not get passed on to the consumer, but we are still paying for it by the cost to the earth. yes, you’ve heard that little line before, but restructure surgery is expensive, you might as well face up to it.

there are instances when large supermarkets ditch local suppliers for a cheaper source elsewhere. ever been let down with a crop of spinach? there are is only so much spanakopita you can eat and besides, as the supermarket doesn’t pay you, you can’t afford the phyla.

gripe no 2. countless jobs were lost when they moved production to china. proudly south african my white butt.

ah and then we have the children’s’ section. it’s very important to win over the discerning adult with your social consciousness, your free-range eggs, your organic coffee, blah, blah, blah, but children are less important so we can start filling up with mindless plastic toys and trashy imagery, made you-know-where. let’s feed them barbie, ben ten, spiderman and whatever the latest popular culture dictates. it’s really just a more expensive ackerman swith the soially correct by-lines. the mind is as important a phenomen to cultivate as the body. if you don’t want crap in your child’s body, you shouldn’t feed it to their minds. there’s nothing wrong with a modicum of trash, but it is the all pervasiveness of these hollow figures that are used to whet our children’s appetites’ for consumers. I would think it would be in woolworth’s favour to mould  a more conscious buyer. (perhaps, that’s what they’re afraid of, hey frankies?)

woolies is also the great re-cycler. yeah right! if woolies could plastic wrap each individual cocktail tomato it would. try get out of woolies without the smell the oil inudustry on your hands.

enough said. you’ll find me at my local organic outlet where the farmer pulls up in a truck with the fresh produce in boxes and whatever plastic there is is bio-degradbale. become comfortable with paying more for organic groceries, its costs the earth less in the end. (now how’s that for a tree-hugging by line?)

i know this can’t be normal because when i observe the cyclops his little man only switches one light on and off at time. CLICK!!!! lights out! just one designer lamp flickering in the corner…..

i spend much of my waking day trying to get my little man to switch off a few lights, but he takes revenge by occasionally switching them all off and goes to sleep. this is usually when i most need the lights ON. i stand on my head, i go for walks, i glare at my computer screen, i stare aimlessly into space. darkness. just the precocious snoring of the little man in my head. zzzzzzzzzzzzz

there are times when he slows down and switches one on for a loooonngg time. an absolutely random act of kindness. this can be most inconvenient as i may be doing something else. i can’t drop cooking supper, fetching children, helping with homework or even doing another job when the lighthouse comes on. the ships just have to crash.

there’s all this talk of meditation to get your little man to behave. like a crash course in parenting. my little man is no zen buddhist. he’s a virgin active kind of guy.

dammit, he’s just switched off the writing light…..

we arrived on our holiday in vermaaklikheid sans toilet paper. i admit, it was an error, but really and truly, it would be a lovely little gesture if holidays house renters could just provide 4 or 5 rolls of the stuff. it wouldn’t break the bank. as a consolation we got flossie, the cleaner, who came in daily, which was truly, truly wonderful, but i do find it easier to wash some pots rather than my butt, so that was not enough consolation for me.

the cyclop’s on the other hand said,”oh you just take a shower”. this is one of the extreme – men are from mars moments, as there is most definitely double ply on venus. so off i went to the hamlet of vermaaklikheid in search of one of civilisation’s greatest gifts to women.

easier said than done.

the dorpie of vermaaklikheid is a scattering of houses on a few hillocks and a main road which, from our holiday house road, one enters from a t-junction. this should be a simple matter, but not for those who are directionally impaired. this little journey i had to do 3 times (explanation still coming) and each time i was absolutely thrown as to whether to turn left or right and whether the road back was left or right. hoo boy! i think i’ll keep mum on that little bit of technical data when i apply to become a member of mensa….

why 3 times? well, essentially the one and only little shop-come-post-office-come-ice-cream-seller-come-airtime-seller was closed. the first time i was told “dis maandag, hulle is dorp toe”. hmm, half way with the tissue box. day 2 i set off for the land of toilet paper only to find it closed again. “hulle is seker see toe, hulle is visvangers”. now that box of tissues was REALLY getting low. i’ll have you know that a box of tissues stretches much further than i ever thought.

day 3. the box of tissues is empty. “die winkel it toe!” not just for the morning or the day or the hour. closed finished and klaar. “maar daar is a huis winkel”.

i set off to the bustling metropolis of toilet paper land again. slowly keeping the oil sump clear of the humps and bumps in the dirt road for the third time (the oil sump is yet another story), searching the vast expanses of vermaaklikheid for the huiswinkel. “dis die bruin huis agter die ander winkel”. yeah right. finally, i find a brown house filled with powerboats and vissermans and by pure chance discover that this indeed is the huiswinkel.

this is another one of those moments when i’m pushed into a time machine and find myself back in Bbloemfontein. the oomie and his boep sits drinking beer on the stoep, the long life milk lives next to the gamma gamma and the chocolates hide behind an old towel next to the parakeets in the bird cage. there is the perfunctory rugby paraphernalia and i haul out my beste afrikaans. i’m too scared to ask for real butter, but toilet paper is what i need and toilet paper is what they have, in a manner of speaking anyway. it’s the kind of stuff that’s so thin it could double up as sunglasses, but it far, far better than a shower. oh and i did manage to find way back- when you have 5 rolls of toilet paper and a long-life milk, everything returns to normal….

ingrid is the lavender queen and daniël the wine king. (i’m not sure what that makes their children…) nevertheless it’s time for you to have a look at their websites canettevallei lavender and supersingles vineyard. you may just recognise the illustrations…

Now even though I have a history of fixing cars myself and could change my mini brake pads with my eyes closed, I would much rather just be a ‘girl’ and guard the luggage than change a tyre. Oliver on the other hand enjoys a good tyre change and always wishes a puncture on us.

Now, if women were more involved in the design of cars they would have a little man who jumps out of the spare tyre compartment and do the dirty deed. After all not all women have an Oliver. Another thing women would do is make sure the tyre is NOT underneath ALL the luggage. In fact I’m sure all or most men would agree on these points. So, people who make cars, please go on a holiday! And NO you cant take Oliver with you!

this all set me wondering what the greasy old bugger looks like now, i mean he’s presently about the same age as my children’s grandmother. so i went onto his website (cringe) and guess what? he still looks exactly the same! he hasn’t aged ONE BIT! why? cos all the photos on his website date back to my grandmother’s days! phew! no need for botox afterall!

the last time julio (see, we’re even on first name terms) came to south africa, it was to sun city. my gran took my mom off to see how many girls he’s loved. (i hope they were really women) and that made one more fan. i’m not so sure how my dad felt, but latin machismo is entirely camp to south african men so not much of a threat there.

so here’s to julio who has never aged and who’s posters ended up on our laundry wall to add a little spark to the domestic chores and here’s also to all the spunky old ladies who’ve loved before….

now imagine if every time a woman gave birth she got sponsorship form pepsi and raised money for all the blind orphans in kathmandu. “no, no, doctor!, I am not pushing, (breathe)  we haven’t reached the million (uuuuhhhhhh) rand mark yeeeeetttttt! aaaaghhh, yeeeeeeeeeeeeearghhhhhh!!!! just another hour pant, breathe, breathe, pant, i can do it!!!!”.

this morning i ran into mary, who lives at the back of strathmore (our humble estate) and mary has just had a little lamb, i mean girl and all she could tell me was how god-awful it was: how many hours she walked the passage at false bay hospital and how many stitches she now has after being taxi-ed via ambulance to groote schuur and how she gave birth just before they were about to cut through 5 layers of muscle and wrench the baby out. furthermore she was still in shock from the fact that she had to do all that all with or without sponsorship from coca cola. you know, if you decide to go and hibernate with the polar bears, you CAN back out…….with babies you can’t and a caesar is NOT chickening out.

so whilst women get to participate involuntarily in the extreme sport of labour, some men choose to grit their teeth whilst sawing off their own frost-bitten digits, but what i’d really like to know is: back home does lewis pugh get wussy with a runny nose? does sir ranulph fiennes balk at the thought of the dentist? does riaan manser snap at his wife/girlfirend when he has a sore throat? ehm..i think you women get the drift….

i’m all for the save the trees notion, but what are we going to do with all the electronic waste? in eleven years i personally have gone through 5 computers and 4 cellphones. not to mention printers, scanners and cameras. they have all gone to ecycling, but there is no way every bit was used. so take me and times me by 10 000 people and you then have 100 000 useless items in eleven years. and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. on the other hand i have books from my grandmother and mother, making them 50-80 years old and barely impacting the planet. when they finally go to book heaven, they will merely disintegrate. a computer, a kindle and ipad only has a limited life. they are not the stuff of literary immortality.

an old book is like an old teddy bear, with one ear and one eye and stuffing seeping out.  it has been loved to destruction and carries with it that human interaction in a way electronic media does not. dog-eared and faded, sometimes with markings in it, chocolate and coffee stains, it carries a story of the hands that have held it and the minds that have consumed it. it connects generations and connects childhoods. i will never know my grandmother’s childhood, but a book imparts a small elements of it.

on my cousin’s farm there are remnants of my great-grandparents house, abandoned with a room strewn with old magazine and newspapers, some form the war era. an ebook can never transfer that feeling of standing in that room sifting through someone else’s life. my cousin has salvaged some of my great-grandfather’s books and has had them repaired. it is the only contact we have of a man who died a young from TB. our only small insight into who he was. without sounding to goofy, those books have an energy to them and enable the connecting of generations.

‘ truth is i am not someone who buys books much. i think libraries are one of humanities most incredible establishments. movies, magazines, music and books are available for my use for free. wow! you just can’t get better than that! so i’m all for reducing the production of books which you’ll never read again and thereby reducing the impact of their surplus. i’m also all for ezines – most of which are only good for making collage in their print form.

i think what concerns me most is making electronic the tactile experience of books for children. the loss of the handing down of books. weight, format, colour, smell all increase the pleasure of a book, even if it makes you groan as you have to read it to them for the 54th time. more worrying is the  making of books more interactive. do children not have enough things that go beep and flash and cartwheel across the universe for them? the  value of quiet contemplation had been electronically shelved.

are ebooks really such a great idea for education? is it really a solution for the developing world? how can the developing world compete? what of the concept of every child having a laptop? where will they all go to when they are dead? (the laptops not the children!) which impoverished african countries will get the brunt of all the ewaste? this such a complex issue with pros and cons on all sides.

the real question is: are we thinking about what we are doing? have we thought this through from all angles? i’m not saying an absolute no to ebooks, but i am saying think through the consequences.

finally, i have a tin with letters from my close friend martin who committed suicide  about 8 years ago. other than a few of his drawings they are all that i have of his. perhaps i am unnecessarily sentimental, but re-reading these letters each time gives me a little more insight into our teenage years, when we couldn’t understand ourselves. to add to this is a folder of poems and letters from the cyclops including print outs of emails. will my children have love letters or will everything just be a lost folder of love?

(so georgie, make sure you’re also writing it down on pieces of paper with a lovely fountain pen….)