At the seaside, Part 2

I dreamt of it last night, our beach shack, and reckon it’s a glaring sign that I need to get back over here to my blog.

There was no TV and no phone. The sum total of electrical goods in the house were an ancient fat fridge, a light in each room and a reading lamp in the sitting room. The bathroom only had a candle for years, until my father rigged up a single bulb with a cord into the house which we thought was the ultimate in luxury. The stove was gas and the water out of the taps was brack. On top of the fridge was a battery-operated radio which told us the news and played us songs.

The second drawer from the right was the Treats Drawer. Every December it contained an enormous Christmas cake (baked by my mother in September and doused with brandy regularly until it's trip to the seaside) wrapped in tin foil, which got progressively smaller as the holiday progressed. The drawer smelt deliciously dark and rich. In there, too, were the sweets and chocolate bars: two sweets or two pieces of chocolate each afternoon after lunch when my parents went to rest.

We drank water from the rain water tank which lived out the back door and to the right, a place that, when we were small and scared at night, flitting out at breakneck speed to fill the orange water jug, was full of dark shadows, possibly containing wolves. The square of light that fell on the grass from the kitchen window didn’t quite reach far enough to light the little tap. We made it through twenty years of holidays without being gulped down by wolves I’m pleased to report. The water was sweet and delicious and we ignored the mosquito larvae that floated about in it. "It's just protein," said my Mother.

If we wanted to phone someone, which of course became an absolute necessity when we hit adolescence, we had to walk over the bridge to the post office and use the ‘tickey boxes’. For our weekly dose of television (Who’s The Boss, on a Wednesday), we’d go over to the lovely old couple next door, The Cleghorns. We’d watch while the old man, Theo, ate Provitas for dinner and told us stories of 'The Olden Days' (far more interesting, even, than Who's The Boss.)

It had a specific smell, which is hard to define, but I smelt it in my dream last night and woke up feeling holiday blissful. It was a combination of grass mats, seaside mould and pure, unadulterated happiness.

It’s almost as if that house was built of love and happiness (at the risk of sounding schmaltzy). It saw me grow up and provided some of the very happiest moments in my life. When I went to university (60km down the road), my parents gave me the keys and we went down regularly for weekends (and sneaky week days, which my parents were blissfully unaware of).

It was there I had my first crush, then first fell in love and there that I lost my virginity (a fact my parents definitely would wish to be blissfully unaware of, I'm sure). I can’t think of a better place for it, all of it. That house, if it could speak, could tell many fabulous stories. There are more, but let me stop there.

I miss it.

At the seaside

We had a cottage at the seaside. My parents bought it when I was two. Living in gold mining towns, often dusty and small and farfarfar away from the sea, they bought this little piece of paradise in a coastal town in the Eastern Cape, near the university they went to (and then I). One small bite of the Eastern Cape and it steals your heart and beckons loudly forever. Thus, their purchase.

This was not a seaside holiday house in the manner of those that are found there now. This was referred to as our shack at the seaside, and rightly so. It wasn't on the sea - in fact it was a good, brisk, ten-minute walk to the beach. It didn't have any amazing views or large numbers of glass sliding doors opening onto a patio and rim pool. It was, in fact, a rather ramshackle, four-roomed square of a house, with an outside bathroom which had lots of ginormous spiders and no electricity.

And we loved it. With every cell of our bodies. And, even though it's no longer ours, I still do.
Spending six weeks a year there (one of the joys of working on a mine back then was lots of holiday time) over Christmas was like heaven. The four rooms were: a lounge into which the front door opened which led into my sister's and my room with two highly sprung metal single beds, some shelves made of bricks and planks, and a dressing table with two large drawers and three small. The three small ones were for my sister's clothes, the two big ones were mine. Always.

Our bedroom led into the kitchen which had a back door that opened onto a bricked path across which we'd fly on dark nights to the bathroom, under a tin 'afdakkie'. Off the kitchen was my parent's bedroom which contained a large double bed and a huge wardrobe which always had 'secrets' in it until Christmas and a top shelf on which my father kept coins for some reason.

The whole house smelt slightly mouldy, as seaside houses do. The lounge floor was covered in grass matting that we'd lift up twice during the six weeks: once at the beginning to sweep away the year's dust and once at the end to sweep out the tons of beach sand that we'd carried in on our salt-soaked, sun-kissed bodies throughout the holiday. Pure bliss.

This story is far from finished, but I've promised myself that I'll press 'Publish' more often this month, so I'll end Part 1 just here. 

My first love returns by dream

On Saturday night I dreamt of my first love. Probably because Stalkbook had alerted me to the fact that it was his birthday. You've got to love how Stalkbook has allowed us to become that good kind of friend who never forgets birthdays (something I am loathe to admit that I was - the forgetting type. With even more loathing I have to admit that even with Stalkbook telling me, over there in the corner, that it's Aunt Mabel's birthday, sometimes I still forget to phone. Oops.)

Anyway, my first love was of the stuff that Sweet Valley High novels are made of (am I dating myself?), but with a little bit of scandal thrown in. First, the SVH bits: he was the younger brother of a good varsity friend of mine. The first time I saw him, he came to visit with his brother and I literally had to stop myself drooling, as metaphorical stars flittered from above his head, bright light shining through his blonde locks from behind him. It turned out to be the neon light in the passage, but still.

A couple of months (and the end of year vacation) later found us serendipitously stranded in the nearby seaside village for the night, thanks to my fabulously unfaithful emerald green 1975 Ford Escort. We kissed for the first time in the sand on a moonlit beach, waves crashing, young naive hearts beating. It was lovely, and was the beginning of a beautiful thing that lasted almost two years.

I became one of his wonderful family (who lived in our varsity town). They embraced me, immediately - unconditionally. I am still friends with them all. I was surprised by their unconditional embracing, though, because (here comes the scandal)... I was the Older Woman. While I was ever so grown-uppedly in my second year of university, first love was but a schoolboy (admittedly in his final year.)

When I think of it now, the hero-worship he must've had from the pimply teenage boys in his class when I'd drop him back at school in my emerald green 1975 Ford Escort after taking him back to my digs for 'lunch' - his hair dishevelled, his tell-tale grin. He was just SO cute in his school uniform!

We grew up together really (well, a bit) in that time and our passion and intensity was that of only first love - bright, colourful, naively complicated, tempestuously calm. He was my first for many, many things, and it was wonderful. We were inseperable for that time.

In my dream, he had on a top that had been through the wash and was just too small for him, and I was pushing my hands and arms in under it to stretch it and make it fit. There's no understanding the sub-concious, is there?

A wonderful weekend

It was a square table, with eight places. Each one filled with a fabulous soul. Between songs we could hear the sea in this little town on a turquoise bay, away from the city, where the stars shine and the sliver moon smiled a skew smile at me. Conversation flowed, freely and happily. Talk of things past, things to come.

The children slept in the bedroom. I remembered how that felt as a child, put to sleep in the dinner party host’s bed – to wake, momentarily, and hear the adult voices, I’d strain my ears to discern my parents’ voices amongst the jollity and, when I heard them, I’d be soothed and fall back asleep, wine glasses clinking, people talking and laughing in the background of my dreams. When did we become the grown-ups?

It was a wonderful weekend, celebrating H’s birthday in a beautiful place where the bright blue sky melted into the turquoise sea, picture postcard-like. We ate, we soaked up the rapidly fading summer sun, we played Trivial Pursuit (I won!) and I marvelled, again, at how lucky I am, to be able to sit at such a table, filled with food, and surrounded by old friends who know my every nuance, and new loves, who make us smile. Because H has a new love who is making her smile, a lot, that wide grinned kind.

I watched as they dipped their toes in the sea, as 3-year old M ran with her mother to the water's edge and I remembered watching a similiar scene, 15 years ago, on a different beach, in a different time, when we were young(er). She looked just the same, despite having had two children. I could smell the salt air and closed my eyes for a minute, and I was there.

And then to come home, driving through the country side with a never-ending sky dotted about with child’s drawing clouds. Home to all the comfort and a night filled with funny faces and laughing… All thoughts of work wiped away with giggles.

And I got to thinking about how it is to have so many to love and to be loved by so many. I couldn’t be luckier, could I?

Heartbroken

I have wondered this before, and wondered it again this morning as the mist swirled and twirled about me, playing hide-and-go-seek with the trees along the river. Does The Weatherman change the weather according to my state of mind? While I realise it is a preposterous thought that the entire City Beneath the Mountain's weather is dependent on li'l ol' Shiny's mood, but it's just, well, very coincidental.

I have a lot on my mind, and it's twirling and swirling and storming and pouring and blowing about, this way and that, directionless. One minute I feel okay, the next I feel like it's all too much and I'm fucking it up and I'm getting fucked up. Excuse my sailor-like language, but I can find nothing better to describe this. My mother would be horrified.

I keep reassuring myself that this is just life, and that I can do this. I can get over the hurdles (even if I have to do that at a crawl, using my teeth and nails), that the good bits of life WAY outnumber the crap bits. And they do, I know they do. Just sometimes, it all seems so difficult.

And it's at those times that I really question stuff and my frustration feels insurmountable. All I want to do is walk along a deserted beach, salty wind and the frothy crashing of waves my only companions. A dip into the effervescence, a little body-surfing, allowing the bubbles to kiss every part of my skin and the ocean vapours to infuse my lungs, washing away those swirling mind mists, clearing the air. Being the real me.

But I can't. And it breaks my heart.

Beautiful day

It is the most beautiful day here today. One of those days where working should be illegal. Like Summer has snuck in through the kitchen door while Winter was thrashing about having a tantrum in it's bedroom last week, gently closing it's bedroom door and taking over the house. It's glorious, and it is impossible not to grin because of it. Like The Cheshire Cat.

I am going to see the sea after Real Work, to bask in the sunshine and watch the sun set. This makes me grin even more. And then to one of my favourite restaurants for dinner. Things are good. Oh, and did I tell you - my sister is having twins? Yeeha.

Is it obvious I had a great night's sleep last night?

Full moon and sunrise

Somebody hung the full moon above my driveway this morning and then dragged it along my path to work by an invisible string, above the gorgeous grey mountain, then pulled it down, out of my sight. I thought it was very kind of them. I got to see the rabbit and everything.

On getting to my place of work, I discovered somebody had put a big fan on down in the harbour which had brought the beautiful, fresh salty scent of the sea up here so I could breathe in some ozone. Again, how kind.

Then they pushed the sun up over the mountains on the other side, which I can see across the city-filled valley from my fifth-floor office (I like to think of myself as Rapunzel, up in my turret, but without the kilometres of hair). It seems somebody had thrown a few whispery clouds about the sky too for said sun to light up and make all picture-postcard-golden.

I really should come to work early more often.

And I got that full moon bath again last night, through my window. It was really rather nice. There's something terribly satisfying about hot nights with the full moon wrapping you up in it's cool silver-blue light through the open window.

Sheesh, I think I need more sleep... Shall I stop being so frillilly prosaic and planetary now?