Belly

Yes, it's still about my belly! Who's sick of hearing about my pregnancy already - or do you find the minor details fascinating? Childfree ladies are going "oh wow, bizarre" and moms are saying "yep, remember that". And men are thinking "eep"!

How about a belly-related story then? I wiped all my stories off the blog a little while ago when I was feeling meh, but they are safe and I might bring them back one by one.

During my previous life I lived in London in a 3 bedroom apartment with Mountain Man, T and at least one other Saffa at any time. L lived across the river but would visit often as her houseshare was all boys and she needed a break! We'd been living in London for perhaps a year I think, so it must have been the summer of 2000. Oh wow, that's nearly 10 years ago!

T had recently broken up with her long-term fella of 7 years, C. She'd moved to London before him, and in the 6 months it took him to get his arse in gear and follow he'd had a torrid affair with a girl in Cape Town. He never quite broke it off and it all turned very ugly in the end when he finally left T to be with the new girl, who had moved to London following him! Obviously T was devasted, and the girls rallied round until she found her feet again.

Who remembers "Bridget Jone's Diary"? We'd all been reading it and as we lived quite close to a lot of Bridget's haunts in Notting Hill us grrrls would seek out the bars and restaurants (192 exists!) mentioned in the book and drink chardonnay in homage! One fine Saturday afternoon T, L and I were ambling through Notting Hill market on our way to one of said bars. It's a shabby-chic area, complete with tattoo parlours and strange dingy shops full of arty, vintage, antiquey stuff.

T paused outside a tattoo parlour plastered with designs and metalwork... "C never let me get a piercing. I want to get a piercing. No, I want to get two piercings!"

"You go girl!" cried L. "I'll get one with you!"

"Um..." said I, who'd never even thought about getting a piercing before in my life "Really? I'll, uh, I'll join you guys... um."

Pumped with girl power bravado we stalked into the shop and told the scarey bald tattooed man what we wanted. "Ok girls, but I'm with a client right now, come back in half an hour". How much chardonnay can you drink in half an hour? Huh, looOooser (holds hand in L-sign on forehead).

Before I knew it we were in the back room of the tattoo parlour, with T stretched out on a table getting a belly piercing, then a nose stud. I cannot for the life of me remember who went next, but a little while later all three of us were standing in the street looking down at our smarting belly rings*. We picked up a load of wine and went home to celebrate!

Of the three of us I am the only one still to have my piercing. Within a month T had to take her nose stud out for work, and her belly ring fell out, and both holes closed. A year later L took her belly ring out to please a (now long-gone) boyfriend.

But me, the one who hates showing her tummy and who was the most unlikely person to ever stud her body with metal? I still have mine (in spite of past disapproving boyfriends). It is so a part of me that I'm not even aware of it any more. For my wedding, when I bought gold sparkly earrings to wear on the day I also bought a matching gold sparkly belly bar! If you look closely at my photos you can just see the little bump under my dress...

...I took it out last weekend. The hard swell of my tummy is making the belly bar stick out so much that I'm not comfortable with the bump under my clothes. I really miss it and my belly button looks strangely nekkid. I look forward to hopefully putting it back in 6 months time!

* Yes it hurt, and mine took several months to heal properly which made waistbands a trial!

Roomies

I was following links in blogs and ended up on a hilarious post about roommates.

I have been very lucky in my life in that I've rarely had to share my space with people I'm not closely related to or in love with. In fact the only times would be when I first moved to London.

When I arrived in London in January 1999 (10 years ago!) I had all of 400 pounds to my name. I'd arranged to crash with old friends for a couple of weeks, assuming that I'd pick up work in no time and move on (Mountain Man would be following as soon as he organised his visa). Richard and Shona had a tiny one-room flat in North London, and I slept on the floor between their bed and the TV and they'd step over me on their way to work!

I really struggled to find work at first and it was March I think before I finally found something. In the meantime Richard and Shona had rented a 4 bedroom house near Wimbledon and were supporting me and at least one other newly arrived Saffa girl! They let me stay in a room of my own rent-free and Richard even ended up lending me 1000 pounds because my cash ran out. What fantastic friends!

In terms of mad housemate stories there I'm probably the one they muttered about. Being unemployed and broke I would sleep late, then catch a bus into town to job hunt from an internet cafe, then I'd come home and read books. I'd cook if it was my turn, and at night after the working folk went to bed I'd stay up very late watching TV and drinking the cheapest grog I could find... I think I was reduced to bottles of sherry at 2 pounds each! Shona and another girl cornered me one day to tell me they were worried about my alcoholism and they wanted to pray for me...

When I finally found work I paid Richard back-rent and repaid the loan, and moved into a room in a 2 bedroom flat in Kilburn, North London. I was sharing with a French/Italian couple who worked at night in a hotel. It was mostly brilliant - we never saw each other as they worked nights and I worked days. I'd see them on the weekend for a bit and they were quite pleasant.

One balmy spring night I was fast asleep when my bedroom door opened. I was awake instantly and I saw my male housemate wandering in wearing just underpants. He pulled back the covers, climbed into my bed, laid his head on the pillow next to me and went straight to sleep. I was lying on the far side of the bed against the wall (because that's my preferred side of the bed... it is also Milord's preferred side of the bed - I had to reset myself when we got together) and I didn't quite know what to do. I don't wear nightclothes so there I was frozen in shock, naked with a strange man in my bed!

I called his name and shook him - no reaction. I climbed over him to get out of the bed, pulled on some clothes, and tried again. Nothing. Then I went to his room, woke his girlfriend and got her to help me... After a lot of calling and shaking he finally roused enough to be very confused and grumpy and she led him back to their bed! The next day he had no recollection and I bought a small bolt for my door...

Mountain Man got to London in midsummer that year and a couple of months later a room opened in Tara's flatshare and we moved in. That was a 3 bedroom flat full of Saffas - we'd generally have at least 2 folk crashing in the living room. It was party central, and I quickly discovered that visiting the party zone was a whole different ballgame to living in it! I need a fair bit of space and quiet from time to time and there was none to be had here... it totally did my head in and again I reckon I was the worst housemate in the mix as I struggled to maintain my sanity. I was grumpy and snarky and disappeared into our room for hours at a time. I was the housemate who'd storm into the living room at 2am to switch off the blaring stereo, and I was the one who drew up the chore-roster and worked out the phone and grocery bills.

I liked the people (a couple of whom are my close friends) but I hated hated hated living with them!

After a year I convinced Mountain Man to move into a place of our own... and that is the last time I ever had a housemate. I'm not a "sharer". I simply can't do it!
Never again.

TLC

Being ill lately has caused me to flash back to the last time I was this ill. In October 1999 Mountain Man and I were trekking in the Himalayas in Nepal...

There should be a special name for one's "last major ex". He's not my last boyfriend before meeting Milord, but somehow the 3 blokes in between just don't seem to count. Milord can't stand hearing him mentioned - ok he's like that about all my exes, but Mountain Man really gets up his nose. I've decided it's because I don't really have anything nasty to say about the guy... the worst thing he ever did to me was a sort of amiable neglect. I can't say he was the best boyfriend ever, but he was a great friend and soulmate and for a very long time our destinies were entwined. What would you call that? "Major Ex"? "Big Ex"?

Trekking in Nepal was certainly an experience (that link is a good summary of what we did on the uphill leg). Some of it I loved, some of it I hated, and then I was more ill than I had ever been before in my life which added an extra dimension.

When I first got home after the trek I was asked if I'd do it again.
"No, but ask me again in two years."

After a couple of years my answer became (and still is):
"Yes, but only with a companion who would look after me properly."

I have plenty of tales from the trekking trip, but sadly being ill overshadows a lot of them. We'd been walking the Annapurna Circuit for about a week I think, steadily climbing along mule tracks and getting fitter by the day, when we arrived at the village of Manang where all trekkers spend 2 nights to acclimatise (it is at 3500m, and climbing a flight of stairs leaves you as weak as a kitten). We found a fabulous room in a lodge with its own bathroom and running water (unheard of)! After we dropped our bags we went walking (puffing and staggering in my case) up to a glacier then back down for dinner...


See the glacier? It ends in a turquoise lake just behind me.

I can't remember what I ate now, but maybe it was soup that hadn't boiled hot enough, because the next day my insides wanted to be outside! Mountain Man went out walking with some trek-mates and I counted knots in the rough pine ceiling between visits to the squat-loo. On the following day we should have walked on, but I wasn't well enough, so Mountain Man waved a sad farewell to the trekkers who'd been pacing us thus far (you develop quite a close bond with the people you see every day) and tried to amuse himself.

On the next day I felt no better but Mountain Man "was bored". He rolled me into the shower and when I came out my gear was packed and on the porter. We made it about a kilometer up the trail before I sat down in the dirt and wept, and then he let me go back to the village and curl up in my sleeping bag again.

On the following day we made better progress, and then we generally made the required distance although I really wasn't well and measured the route in toilet stops. Most food repelled me and I lived on snickers bars and boiled eggs on toast. We got higher and colder, and I got slower and slower. We eventually summitted Thorong La - a pass at 5400m. Most folk start walking at 6am and cross the pass at 10am. We started at 4am and reached the top at 12am. God it was a hard uphill slog through a treeless wasteland far above the snowline. The water in my water bottle froze solid and I couldn't feel my feet. I remember at one point mid morning a man with a horse came past offering lifts up the hill and I refused because I thought we were almost there... and I was several hours wrong!


That's me on the right under every item of clothing I had...

We had a long rest at the top of the pass. I was so happy to be there - from here it was all downhill!

And it was. And I began getting better... except for a nasty cough that began developing. That got so bad that we actually located a local hospital in one of the villages and lined up with the Nepalese to have me looked at. The doctor was brilliant - he must have trained overseas as his English was perfect! He had a look and listen and prescribed me a ton of antibiotics, paracetamol and codeine, and we walked on.

My cough got worse and worse. It got to the point where if I stopped walking I would begin coughing uncontrollably so I just didn't stop - I walked like an implacable machine. Eating and sleeping were difficult, and I was completely unable to talk. Very social!

By the last week of the trek I was pretty much ok - bar an intolerance to certain foods and an occasional cough - I was skinny and super fit and barely noticed the mountains rolling away under my heels except for the awesome scenery.

To this day I firmly believe that if I'd had the chance to stay in bed for a couple more days when I first got ill that I would have shaken the tummy bug, that I would not have caught the chest infection, and that my trekking experience would have been a whole lot better. We had heaps of time - there was no rush to get back to Kathmandu - but Mountain Man was bored... wanker.

These past few days being ill have brought out the best in Milord. He never resents me needing a lie down, or asking him to go to the chemist or to find a fruit I am craving. Not once has he been bored by my sickness and forced me out or abandoned me.

I'd go trekking again... with him.

First Love

I was reading a newsletter from my old high school yesterday when I realised that next year will be my 20 year reunion.

20 years! Wow that happened fast.

The year I left school I was 17. I look at 17 year olds today and want to dismiss them as "babies", but I wasn't a baby at 17. I wasn't even a child any more. I'd already made some hard choices regarding my future, and I'd fallen in love and had my heart broken by another 17 year old.

Gosh we were young and beautiful. I saw a picture of my first love on Facebook the other day and he's now completely bald and hairy and pale. Ugh. It can't be the same guy - he was an absolute Adonis at 17 with floppy blonde hair and a firm tanned hairless physique!

We met at the birthday party of a mutual friend, who was a girl in my class. Attending a girl's school boys were in short supply, so anyone with brothers/friends-of-brothers/friend-boys was expected to bring them along to any party. I can't remember the girl now, but I sure do remember the friend-boy she'd invited! I probably introduced myself and I'm fairly sure he asked something totally cheesey like "What's your sign?". We were instantly smitten.

He lived in the neighbouring city and attended a boy's boarding school so we only saw each other on the occasional weekend. Because it was so far to travel we'd take turns staying over at each other's houses - I was supposed to be sleeping in his sister's room but I'd sneak to his room most nights for a snogging session. Heavens he could kiss! We'd work ourselves into a frenzy but my panties stayed firmly in place while he called me a tease and tried every trick in the book to sway me.

It was the end of the year before he finally talked me into "going all the way", which was a total disappointment. I remember wondering what all the fuss was about, and it didn't improve the handful of times that we tried it. Final Exams passed, school finished for good, he and his family went away on holiday for Christmas and New Year, and when he came back he broke up with me by telling me he'd cheated on me.

I was devastated. This stunning, highly intelligent, awesomely hot young man didn't find me good enough to hold his attention. He'd taken something precious and smashed it for the sake of a one night stand... that probably wasn't that good anyway! Oh the pain, the humiliation, the loss. The sense of worthlessness stuck with me for a good few years, exacerbated by some very thoughtless young men along the way. I can't blame it all on my first love of course, but it did take me a long time to get over his betrayal.

I hope that when a child of mine has their heart broken I don't say something silly like "You're young, it doesn't count.", because I've found the opposite to be true - nothing has hurt as much as the first time my heart broke.

(I found out years later that all he'd done was snog some girl, but he felt guilty about it so told me he'd cheated, and I'd assumed the worst. He probably didn't mean to break up with me! Guys, a kiss is sometimes just a kiss.)

Drinking is bad for your health

Last Sunday Milord and I had a glorious lazy day. Ok, so that's true of most weekends lately. Shut up.

We stayed in bed reading the newspapers with coffee until midday, then threw ourselves in the shower and went looking for lunch. We walked into Leichart, the next suburb, which has a predominantly Italian population. Obviously we were looking for Italian food! There's a shopping/eating/apartment block at one end of the high street called the Italian Forum, all built around a central courtyard that reminds us both slightly of St Mark's square in Venice. The restaurants spill out onto the courtyard and small children run riot in the middle.

We found a table that was both outside and tucked away from the crowd, and close enough to the gas heater that we were comfortable. We ordered a bottle of champagne and a plate of antipasto and settled back to watch the world go by. When the wine waiter returned he had a shadow - he was obviously training a newbie and I listened with half an ear to the knowledge he was imparting. I spent several years waitressing while at uni - it was an interesting life lesson and I hope never to have to do it again! I'm not sure I could now actually... when I first moved to London I did a bit of waitressing until I found real work and it drove me nuts... I've been a "professional" for too long!

After the wine waiter had poured us a mere dribble of champagne (sacrilege!) and took his shadow away Milord topped our glasses up to the top and commented on the teaching. "What bollocks!" he said. "'Point the bottle away from the customer because it might go off!' Rubbish. Where do they get this stuff?"

I laughed. "I once shot myself in the eye with a champagne cork while waitressing."
"Wow, really?!"
"Yep, and to this day I don't bend over the bottle when I'm opening it!"

Life lessons indeed! What small but important lessons have you taken away from your college jobs?

Rapids

I've been reading the book Rapids by Tim Parks for the last few days. I've been thoroughly enjoying it, even though I find the characters hard to identify with (middleclass pommies abroad with kayaks). His prose takes a bit of getting used to as he doesn't puntuate to help you differentiate conversations from description, or even who's talking/thinking, but once you get into the flow of things you don't notice and it makes the action flow really fast. I'm a bit of a snapshot reader anyway - I take in a paragraph at a glance - so this works for me. I'm not sure how a word-for-word reader would like it.

I assume the author is an avid wild water kayaker, because his descriptions are amazing and there is plenty of technical jargon that doesn't detract from the story. It's like being there, thrashing through icy glacial melt, trying not to die horribly and getting one hell of an adenaline buzz. I also liked the way he gets into his characters heads. The main POV is a bereaved middle aged banker, but you get to glance behind the eyes of a couple of others too. I believe there is an exciting climax coming up in the last chapter, and I'm looking forward to it. There is also a global-warming subtext to the story but so far I've been able to ignore it!

I tell you what though, it certainly doesn't make me want to try river kayaking myself! The sport sounds generally awful: cold, wet, painful and strenuous. I've been reading this in the evenings curled into an armchair with a blanket around me, sipping a glass of wine while the dinner cooks, thanking my lucky stars that I'm warm and dry!

Edit: I didn't like the ending of the book much - it just sort of fizzled off into middle aged angst. Most disappointing.

I have done a form of river riding in the past, but it was a whole different experience. On the border between South Africa and Namibia there is a large river that runs through the desert, called the Orange river. It is wide and silty, and for most of a week when I was 19 Mom and I went river rafting with about 20 people on several inflatable boats.

We would wake up at dawn on a river bank as our guides started a fire and prepared coffee and breakfast, then push off and drift with the slow lazy current until lunchtime when we'd stop and have lunch, then drift off again looking for the evening stop. Our dry clothing and food and (chilled) drink was carried by truck to meet us each night, and we'd eat and drink and chat under the stars before curling up in a sleeping bag and falling asleep under the desert sky.

The water was pleasantly lukewarm, and if the sun got too fierce during the day we would slip overboard and drift beside the boat, holding onto ropes while curious fish nibbled at our toes (a bit freaky when you can't see through the silt-laden water!).

Occasionally we'd have to paddle, if the breeze was against us and we needed to reach our stopping point before dark. And about once a day we would have to negotiate rapids. More like ripples really - exciting but hardly dangerous - half the time the boats would mess up completely and bounce down the rapids backwards with everyone screaming, only to be fine at the bottom. Quite fun actually! The whole trip was incredibly restful and de-stressing (just as well considering we wrote off our car in the desert on the way there... but that's a story for another day).

Much more my style. You can keep your wild meltwater kayaking!

It's not the destination

I came across this in the Backpacker blog of my local newspaper. He talks about how sometimes getting to a destination can be as interesting as the destination itself, and his readers have commented with stories of the wierd and wonderful journeys they have experienced.

So here's one of mine:

A bunch of years ago I was travelling with my then boyfriend "Mountain Man". We'd just spent a couple of weeks in Ko Tao, Thailand, learning to dive (awesome), and now we were in Nepal heading off on the Annapurna Circuit Trek (even more awesome). This is a 2 or 3 week hike around the base of the Annapurna mountain range in the Himalayas.

We had all the gear, we'd hired me a porter to carry my pack (MM needed no porter thanks very much, real mountain men carry their own packs, only wussy city dwellers and girls use porters), we had our bus tickets and permits and were ready to roll. We hauled ourselves out of bed in the early morning darkness and made our way to the bus station. Which turned out to be a vast gravel parking lot swarming with busses, people, food and water sellers, and the odd confused tourist. No one spoke English, there were no signs, and we were at a complete loss to even begin to find our bus.

My porter, Sangam, found us thank heavens and threw himself into the fray, returning half an hour later to guide us to the correct bus and we clambered aboard. It was tiny - we could each get one butt-cheek on our seat and we had to balance our packs on our knees. We'd assumed we were on a bus dedicated to hikers, but then all manner of people began to come aboard... ancient wizened women, gnarled men, bright eyed youngsters in flipflops and torn t-shorts. Chickens with their feet bound were stuffed under seats, and a goat on a leash was lashed to the top of the luggage which was itself perched on the roof of the bus.

It was a long drive, and the bus got hotter and more fragrant as the day progressed. We stopped once or twice for the passengers to stretch their legs or use the loo (that'd be a squatting station over the river - don't drink the water!), and then the bus began to groan its way up into the mountains. The roads were rutted and full of potholes, many so big that we had to cross the width of the road against oncoming traffic to get around them. The drop was sheer with no railings and the occasional section of road had been swept away by landslides leaving a piece so narrow that I had to suck in my breath to help us squeeze across. From time to time we'd see the tumbled wreck of a bus far below us as we weaved and swayed along.

At first I was terrified, and then eventually I consigned myself to fate and fell asleep with my sweaty face pressed into my pack. I awoke suddenly to an almighty crash as we failed to dodge a deep pothole, and was even more startled to see a goat fall past my window! The whole of my side of the bus screamed at the driver to stop, we pulled up in a cloud of dust, and the goat's owner scurried from the vehicle to check on the poor thing. Luckily its leash was so very long that it hadn't strangled, but it wasn't very well... it spent the rest of the journey cradled in its owners lap, adding a subtle aroma of goat to our already ripe environment.

We got to our destination in one piece, but I remember nothing more of that day - it is completely eclipsed by the journey!

Shark!

I learned to scuba dive back in 2000, in Ko Tao, Thailand. If you are a diver, or want to become one - this is an amazing place to learn. Excellent diving, almost no current, and a very laid back vibe! It's a tiny island with nothing to do but dive, snorkel or lie on the beach.

My then bloke Mountain Man and I spent 2 weeks on Ko Tao. In the first week we got our PADI Open Water certificates - during which time we didn't see a single shark. During the second week we were meant to head back to the mainland for sightseeing, but Mountain Man got an incredibly bad ear infection so we stayed put until he was well enough to travel. We ended up at the village doctor, who was totally grossed out at the amount of earwax she syringed out of Mountain Man's ears. "What that?!" she kept saying. "Ew, what that?!".

(Mountain Man had been telling me off for years for mumbling... he didn't have a problem with it afterwards!)

Then we had to wait a few days until the antibiotics worked. I spent most of a week sitting on our hut veranda reading secondhand books, eating crisps and drinking iced tea watching a steady warm rain fall while Mountain Man languished in bed. We then spent several weeks trekking in the Himalayas in Nepal, which is another story. The scuba was what I wanted to do, and the trekking was what he wanted to do, so we did both! I've not been trekking since we split, and I believe he hasn't been diving...

In October 2001 Mountain Man and I went to Egypt. This was right after 9/11 and the place was empty! It's supposed to be high season, but the world was so jumpy about travelling in that region that most people had cancelled their plans. It was great actually, we didn't have to queue for anything! We spent several days exploring Cairo, Luxor, the temple of Karnak and the Valley of Kings and of Queens. Then we headed to Hurghada on the Red Sea to do our Advanced PADI certification. The diving in the Red Sea is awesome! Clear warm water, enough current for some terrific drift diving, and the most amazing coral and fish.

And sharks. I saw my first shark off Hurghada. It was a black-tipped reef shark, probably about 5 feet long. I was so stunned that I went slack-jawed, and my regulator (breathing mouthpiece) slipped from between my lips and bubbled off merrily to behind my back!


Luckily the very first thing they teach you when diving is how to find your reg under water and I had it back within seconds! Then I looked around for Mountain Man and the instructor and saw them frantically finning away from me - chasing the shark for a closer look! To this day I have yet to see a group of divers NOT chase a shark. And I have yet to see a shark NOT run away. Good, that's the way I like it!

Sunbathing...

Half an hour to go until my department goes out for Christmas lunch... I've run out of work and it's kinda boring here.

Let's go back in time...

It's 1989 in South Africa, the year I finished school, and I'm 17. The end of the year is fast approaching and it's a summer weekend - I am trying to top up my tan in the back garden. I have spread a towel or two on the grass, and have a book and soft drink within reach. I'm tanning naked today, as the garden is private, only my mother is home and I want to get rid of all tan lines. I'm stunned by the sun, hot and heavy and sweaty and I drift off to sleep, shielded behind my sunglasses.

In a corner of my awareness I hear my mum start the lawnmower. She used to run a gardening service and had this huge diesel mower that was complete overkill on our yard. It takes her a few goes to get it going, and then she begins to mow the lawn in the front of the house. A while later I wake again and I hear she is mowing the lawn near me now, beginning with the edges.

I stir, stretch and sit up, about to ask her if she wants me to move. But... it's not my mum... it's the black odd-job bloke my dad has been employing to help out around the house! He has an enormous grin on his face. I leap to my feet frantically trying to cover myself, and streak into the house juggling towels and book and drink.

From that day he always greeted me with the biggest smile...

Christmas Bus

When I caught the bus to work this morning, I was startled to find it swathed in decorations! Candy canes hung from the ceiling and streamers and tinsel wound around every available handrail. It was extremely festive. I wonder if there is a competition between the busses for the most garish bus?

So, Christmas... I'm sure we all have Christmas stories. I know I do!

Many years ago, when I was about 21, I was going out with a lovely bloke called Willy. We met when working together in a restaurant - I was studying computers and waitressing at night while he worked his way up through the restaurant hierarchy. He started as barman, then became waiter, then chef, then manager... He was wildly romantic, and I would come home from class to find a trail of flowers through the house, or soppy cards and soft toys. Our chemistry was awesome and he spoiled me rotten. I've never known anything like it before or since ;-).

Of course, if he was entirely perfect I'd still be with him today! Willy had, let's say, um, issues. He was utterly useless at managing money and insanely possessive, but what really freaked me out was his ability to passively resist things he didn't want to do. When things were going wrong at the restaurant he would simply fail to wake up for work. His housemates told me a story of breaking into his bedroom to silence a blaring clock-radio alarm that had been going off for 30 minutes, only to find Willy asleep next to it. Truely wierd!

So, this one Christmas was a bit stressful for Willy. I can't quite remember why, but it had something to do with him forgetting to buy presents, or perhaps because an old boyfriend of mine would be dropping by. I really don't remember now, but he was upset... He'd stayed the night of Christmas Eve, and in the morning I got up and showered and got ready to join my mum downstairs to open presents with a glass of champagne. I nudged Willy to wake him so that he could shower. Then I shook him. I called his name. I may have bounced on him... I do remember rolling him out of bed so that he hit the floor with a crash! At that point I gave up and left him in a heap on the floor next to the bed and went downstairs. He appeared hours later, rumpled and confused.

We were together for several years, but after I finished my computer course and entered the workforce it all went rather pear shaped. He was intimidated by my profession (he ruined the day of my graduation by picking a fight), and jealous because I was no longer working nights where he could keep his eye on me. His possessiveness started rubbing off on me and if he was late getting home I would freak out and drive the route at 2am looking for him. We broke up and got back together many times, each time more stressful than the last, and finally we limped away and got on with our lives. It helped that he'd got some other girl pregnant too...

Willy was my first real love I reckon. I still miss him a little bit from time to time, and my mum still talks about him - she adored him. Willy died a year or so after I'd moved to London - a head-on collision late at night after work. He most likely fell asleep at the wheel... I was devastated when I found out. The people you've loved never really leave your heart do they?

Phantom Student

I never had much luck in school or uni with my classes or houses or teams. I guess the Sorting Hat had it in for me, because I always ended up in the team or house that failed in competition, and the class that caused the teachers enormous trouble. My house always came last. My team always scored nil. My class often had the headmaster come and tell us off. Teachers hated us.

Now, a little of this could possibly be my fault as I'm rubbish at team sports. But the performance of an entire segment of the school can't be my fault, can it?! And I was generally the nerdy teacher's pet. Actually, it's lucky I was such a nerd, because the distraction of my classmates was pretty huge!

Anyway, one such boisterous group I ended up in was my class for my computer course at college/uni after I finished school (it was a technikon, which is a kind of cross between the two - 3 years to qualify in IT with none of the deep theory or social life of uni. Uni students sneered at us but employers found us ready to work). There were 4 classes taking the course, but I ended up in the one that chatted and laughed and threw things and skipped class to drink beer on the beach. I was one of 5 girls in a group of 30 or so youngsters, and thoroughly enjoyed being one of the lads for my time there. Although I was still a nerd and came to most classes and did my homework and handed in my projects on time... I was very popular when people needed to copy notes (or code).

Near the beginning of our first year one of the lads decided it would be funny to turn in an exam in the name of a non-existent student. He picked up an extra exam paper on the way in to the exam, filled in some rather bad answers, and submitted it for marking under the name of "George Torsolopolous", who was the little brother of a friend. I suppose all he was really thinking was that the lecturer would find the answers really rubbish but know that the student wasn't in the class. What happened instead was that the phantom student had their marks posted in the exam results, and their name added to the class roll!

We found this hilarious! From that moment onward someone was nominated in every exam to fill in a paper for George. The poor guy's marks were never very good, and we had a quiet snigger every time a lecturer asked the class if George was around. They did find out eventually - after nearly a year I think, although it may have been longer.

The funniest thing about our phantom student though, was that the real George Torsolopolous actually did do that same computer course a year or two later. I hear he had a great deal of trouble convincing the lecturers to mark his papers!

PS. I've googled his name and got no hits, so maybe I've remembered it wrong. George, if you google yourself and find this, sorry mate!

Addams Family

20 minutes left to the day and I'm bored... maybe I should tell you a story.

Flashback:

It's the mid-90s and I'm 24 years old. It is early summer, I have been in the same programming job for a year or two and I have a steady boyfriend. I live on my own in Cape Town and life is pretty good.

Except - I was bored with my hair. Does anyone else have that? As you may know I have incredibly slow growing hair. This means that by the time I have grown it long I'm ready to cut it short again and so on. I think I'd recently gone from long to shoulder length to sort of short and floppy around the ears, and I was fed up with it all. I was visiting my mum for the weekend, and she mentioned that she'd just bought a set of hair clippers to use on her then boyfriend...

Now, this was the era of Sinead O'Connor shaving her head, and Demi Moore had just done so in GI Jane, and I think a couple of other celebs were working the buzz cut. It was coooool.

So I asked my mum to cut my hair off with the clippers. To a number 4. She laughed, poured a glass of wine and proceeded to do as I wanted. It was fab! I loved it... for about 2 weeks. Then I got bored with it - there is only so much you can do with 4mm long hair!

One thing you can do, of course, is colour your hair. As I usually go blonde, and I was bored with this, I went black. Deep, solid, blue-black. In South Africa they sell a product called "Go-Black" aimed at the black people going grey, and I have never come across such a permanent product!

Oh yeah - did I mention that I usually go blonde? See, when you dye your hair blonde, you're not dying it as such, you're stripping colour out. So it doesn't matter if you slop over the hairline a little. Or get it on your ears. Or down your neck. And I thought that I should dye my eyebrows to match too of course. Never thinking how I should be verrry careful to keep the dye within the boundaries of my brows...

After I washed the black off, I discovered just how much facial, ear and neck hair I actually have! It's invisible, but man, I have oodles! I washed. And scrubbed. And exfoliated. And scrubbed. And finally I took a razor and shaved... my... face. And neck. And ears. And eyebrow edges.

Oh my.

It wasn't good. I had big black caterpillar eyebrows, and scarey very short very black hair. My co-workers named me "Wednesday" after the Christina Ricci character in the Addams Family movie.


After a week I brought home some hair lightener to get it off... Remember I said this stuff was permanent? It was permanent. I had to wait for it to grow out... and remember I said I have slow hair? Geeez.

Many months later, when I finally grew my hair into a decent style and all the black was gone, my boyfriend asked me very nicely not to do that again.


I agreed.

Teeth

Milord had his teeth whitened yesterday. Funny, I hadn't thought he really needed to - of course they'd discoloured a bit over time, and he likes coffee and red wine and used to smoke... so sure they weren't dazzling but they weren't ghastly either.

Not like some people I've known...

I went out with a chap years ago who had horrible teeth. Too many for his mouth so they bunched up and overlapped and stuck out, and they were stained and cracked too. The poor guy was not exactly eye candy anyway (it was a bad rebound alright!?) but these teeth were just the final straw. I have a thing about teeth... I like them clean and flossed and - well - straight! I've spent a fortune on my own teeth over the years, and I don't think there is any excuse for bad oral hygiene or snaggly teeth. You're never to old for braces - if Tom Cruise can do it, anyone can.

So there I was, dating Jaws, and dropping not-so-subtle hints that he should do something about his teeth, when he goes and has his back-hair zapped. Yes, he had a very hairy back, but that's not a big deal unless you're trying to apply suncream is it? But anyway he spent a huge amount of money removing something nobody ever saw - and wouldn't do anything about his teeth which everybody had to look at. I was not amused.

Needless to say, he didn't last long. Not just because he wasn't that attractive, but he was also boring and tight with money. Making your girlfriend pay her own way when she's out of work and you're earning big bucks is not endearing... We broke up on the second day of a 5 day trip to Florence - but that's another story! To this day the accent of Middlesbrough in Northern England makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up... shudder

But I digress...

I met Milord for lunch yesterday at the Sydney Fish Market, shortly after he'd been to the dentist. He complained of shooting pains in his teeth, but managed to eat lunch and have a glass or too of champagne (it was our montheversary) and went back to work. When we got home last night he really wasn't feeling ok - his teeth were aching and the shooting pains still struck every so often. I fed him painkillers and he went to bed. Poor baby - there's nothing as debilitating as tooth pain. It seems he grinds his teeth a bit so the enamel has worn away in places, and the bleach of the whitening process really stirred them up. He slept 12 hours and today says he feels much better.

His teeth are definitely whiter, but he's not sure it was worth it. It cost oodles too, which he didn't realise it would! As he said last night: "We could have bought a plasma telly for that amount of money!"

I fiddled about after he went to bed... painted my nails, watched a bit of tv, had a long bath and read my book with a bottle of wine... oops. Not supposed to drink during the week! Then I got the munchies and ate a whole jar of olives.

I'm not too bothered though, as my weight has come down a little this week - 70.6kg today! Woohoo! That's the first time I've broken 71 since March. I'm substituting juice for breakfast and dinner, have fruit for mid-meal snacks, but have a decent lunch. Seems to be working! Now I just have to hold it together over the weekend...

There is a leopard in that bush!

Earlier this year Milord and I were in the Kruger Park game reserve in South Africa.

On our first morning in the reserve we had breakfast, packed up the car, then drove to the gate of the camp to deposit our hut key and then leave the fenced enclosure. While we were at the key deposit box we realised that a few things we would be needing during the day were in the boot, and as you can't get out of the car between camps we'd need to move them within reach. We parked about 20m inside the exit gate of the camp, opposite reception, and began moving things around.

Suddenly a black man in uniform came running out of the reception building and shouted at us: "Get back in your car, there is a leopard in that bush!" while pointing through the fence of the camp. I was in the car like a flash, but milord was having trouble with the accent...

"Huh?" he asks.
"Gitbik in yorka thehiz aleppidin thetboosh!"
"Wha?"
"GitBIK in yorka thehiz aLEPPIDin thetboosh!"
"Eh"?
"Honey, he says there is a leopard in that bush, get in the car!"
"Oh shit!"

We're in the car, boot slammed, doors shut, staring like light-struck bunnies towards the fence. The 3m high fence. The electrified fence. At a bush 20m away on the other side. The not very dense bush. In the middle of the scorching hot morning. Several minutes pass.

"See anything?"
"No. You?"
"No."
"Ask the man if he can still see it."
"Ok... um... I can't, he's gone."
"Gone?"
"Yeah."
"But... so... why isn't he shouting at all the other people wandering around?"
"Since when do leopards hunt during the day?"

We sat for a bit longer watching people walk around, then shrugged, got out and continued moving stuff from the boot into the car. We reckon they were having their little joke with the stupid white tourists. I wonder how often that little man runs out and shouts at people each day to make them jump?

And we never did get to see a leopard.

Picking up my visa

The day I picked up my visa from the Australian consulate in Auckland is a tale worth telling...

Milord and I were staying with Heidi, who lives about an hour's walk from the center of town. She and Craig had to go to work, so we would be making our own way into the city... we considered taking a taxi or a bus, but decided it would be a nice walk and we needed the exercise anyway. So we pulled up a map on the internet and worked out which road to go down from where we would cut through a park and pick up the long road bridge into town. We left the house at 10:30, expecting to get to the consulate at 11:30, in plenty of time before they closed for lunch at 12. We'd also keep an eye out for an internet cafe to print off the grant letter that had been emailed to me as Heidi didn't have a printer.

It was a lovely walk though a stunning suburb. The day was cool and overcast, perfect for a long walk, and we dawdled along oohing and ahing at the lush gardens and huge mansions along the way. We could see the Auckland Skytower in the distance and we wandered along in its general direction. After a time the road began to turn away from the city, and we realised that the park we had expected to cut through was actually impenetrable bush above a steep drop. We'd been walking for long enough that turning back was not really an option, so we decided to continue, because surely the road we were on would descend to the road and bridge we could see crossing the water to the city.

Well, yeah, eventually. We finally found ourselves on the several kilometers long bridge at 11:30... Remember, the visa office closes at 12? We picked up the pace, blessing the fact that it was a cool and blustery day. At 11:45 we reached the city, and found ourselves on the correct street - what a stroke of luck! Only... we needed number 189, and we were at number 1... so we picked up the pace a little more, almost jogging now.

We reached the Price Waterhouse Coopers building which houses the consulate at 11:53. I knew it was on the 7th floor so we bolted in through the lobby to the lift foyer, and leapt into the first lift we saw. The doors closed and we turned to the control panel... which wasn't there. Seriously. No buttons. The lift went up to the 8th floor and someone got off. It went to the 15th floor and someone got off. It went to the 28th floor...

"Psychic lift?" I hiss to Milord.
"Security tags?" He mutters back.

By now we are getting some very strange looks from the suited and booted people with us in the lift. We are scruffy and panting, and m'Lord looks like he is about to expire on the spot. He has gone a strange shade of red and sweat is literally pouring down his face and through his hair. We're also quite wild-eyed and are pulling frantic faces at each other.

A young man took pity on us. "Do you know how to work the lift?" he asks. "NO!" we chorus. Turns out each lift foyer has a console where you request a floor, and it tells you which lift to get into, which then goes to only those floors. Wierd. He led us out onto the 30th floor, we requested floor 7, then boarded the appropriate lift to go down again.

We exited onto floor 7 at 11:58. The security guard told us that unfortunately the visa office was closed for lunch... she then asked m'Lord if he was alright, and did he need to sit down! Ok. No problem. We'd come back at 1pm and try again... We called another lift to the lobby. Walked very slowly over a set of chairs and sat down gently. Drank a bottle of (crazy expensive imported from Europe - why?) water and felt our pulses return to normal and our high colour fade. We giggled for a while and felt human again.

Ok, an hour to kill. We never did find that internet cafe on the way, so we decided to do so and pick up some lunch. We circled a few city blocks in our search, and finally found an internet cafe. Now, either folk in Auckland are mostly Asian, or that part of town is their Chinatown, but almost nobody spoke English! I asked the lady in the internet cafe if I could just print something, and after a lot of waving and repetition I found myself looking at a computer screen with a login dialog. Which was all Chinese with the odd English word. I had no idea what to enter so typed the word "yes" into the "Print Document" textbox. Instantly all English disappeared and I was faced with a dialog entirely in Chinese. Hmmm. Interesting. So I clicked every button on the dialog. Turns out one of them represented "Shutdown". Riiight... and as the computer shut down I caught a glimpse of the file I wanted to print and double clicked on it and managed to abort the shutdown. And was in! I hacked a New Zealand Chinese internet cafe login screen - how cool am I?! We printed off my document and went to find a coffee.

We popped into the first coffee shop we came across and I went up the counter to order two plain white coffees and two pre-made sandwiches. After a lot of repetition and waving we finally got biggest mugs of coffee I have ever seen and the sandwiches. As I gratefully sank into my chair and took a deep gulp of the enormous coffee m'Lord, who'd been reading my document, said "Is it supposed to have Chinese characters in it?" ...!!!... Somehow every "'s" and semicolon had been transcribed into funny little Chinese symbols. Oh man.

We ended up abandoning half a bucket of coffee and made our way back to the consulate, selecting the lift correctly this time and saying a friendly greeting to the security guard. We took a number which put us second in the queue and waited for half an hour for the office to open, watching the wierd and wonderful visa applicants file in. m'Lord, like most Aussies (and probably most people in the world to be honest) is a bit of a xenophobe, and had a low grumble going on until I reminded him that I too am an alien import! Once the staff deigned to turn up and open their stations my document was accepted in spite of its new decorations, and I had the visa sticker in my passport within minutes. We wandered out to the lifts, looked at each other and said "That's it?".

What an anticlimax!