A table of men

I went out for dinner last night with my friend C, just around the corner to a little place I frequent owned by a very Grumpy Man with a big heart. I love going there because he treats me like a favourite. Last night he threatened to fire the waitress who was trying to turn us away because they were full if he ever heard her sending me away again, while he arranged a table near the kitchen for us. Love it.

We were sat next to a long table (empty on arrival) that gradually filled up with old men. Turned out it was a 50th school reunion from one of the boy’s schools. Fifty years and they managed a table of sixteen of them, amazing. It was wonderful to watch as each one arrived, a little unsure at first, some introductions necessary (I guess one changes just a tad in 50 years), the telltale cock of their heads giving away the age of their ears.

One of them had brought the school album from the year they’d left and they passed it around, laughing, talking up a storm, almost schoolboy-like. I was chatting to C, but suddenly, from the corner of my eye, I could see it. Those sixteen boys, in grey schoolboy shorts and long socks, satchels on their backs, marbles in their pockets. You could see, still, which of them would’ve had perfect, straight, ties and which would’ve been slightly more dishevelled – shoes scuffed, white shirts not tucked in properly.

It’s weird that I felt such a sense of loveliness because, honestly, I have no desire whatsoever to go to any school reunion of my own. Varsity? Sure. And there are a couple of people from school I wouldn’t mind catching up with but the thought of a full-on reunion fills me with dread.

Maybe in another thirty years time I’ll feel differently?

The unlonely man

I went for a follow up X-ray this morning but don’t fret, this post has no gory details of innards and such, it’s about the people I saw there. Mainly one of them. G took me, which made it much more fun. We decided to go a bit earlier and have some breakfast at the hospital canteen. I had Eggs Florentine for the first time in my life. It was delicious, other than the fact that the cheese sauce (I thought it was meant to be Hollandaise?) was made from processed cheese. Let me not get into a food review though, I am (again) straying.

I am always struck in hospitals by the invisible fog of emotion. As the electronic doors open, the fresh air from outside rushes in to dilute the flitting-about emotions inside – sadness for sick loved ones, ecstatic happiness for new beings just born, worry for unknown ailings – it swirls and twirls.

We sat at a table on the edge of the canteen, listening to the three ‘older’ ladies two tables away discussing last night’s episode of Survivor, something they obviously do every Tuesday morning, each one religiously sticking up for their favourite animal in the cage contestant.

As we sipped on our café lattes, chatting about all manner of things both of us looked toward the edge of the canteen area as an impeccably dressed man arrived, arranged his filofax and book neatly on a table, folded his jacket neatly on a chair and sat down. He ordered coffee from the waitress and sat with his hands neatly clasped on his lap. She brought the coffee and he ordered some toast and anchovette and ate it, also neatly.

In between his foodly orders he made a few phonecalls (one to the lady he was waiting for, to check he had time for the toast before she arrived, one to somebody (a friend perhaps, or a patient) to see if she was feeling better and had a good night), he received a call (I think from his lover, but that’s just my imagination running away with me) who he told he was waiting for a rep, having some coffee and toast. I sound nosey, don’t I? This was all done loudly, in a coffee shop, at a table near us, so I figure he wasn’t looking for privacy.

This all sounds pretty ordinary doesn’t it? But it wasn’t. You see, throughout all this (between his waitress interactions and phonecalls) he conducted a solid conversation. With himself. Just below hearing level. It was amazing and, as I said to G, what a great way to be! He must never be lonely, having himself as a constant companion, somebody who understands him fully and who he gets along with oh-so-very-well. I guess some people would call him mad.

We should all be so lucky to be that kind of companionable mad, shouldn’t we?

Spring cleaning... from the inside

Urgh. If you are squeamish about... erm... toilet things, then go no further. You have been warned and I can now take no responsibility for spoiling your Sunday lunch if you choose, despite my being very clear, to continue.

Normally, these are not things which I write about, them falling into that file underneath all my others, the tatty brown one with the torn cover that says UN ENTIONABLES on the spine, the M having been covered by a splat of coffee from the mug which I bumped one misty Saturday morning while trying to coordinate my limbs before fully waking up. It's just that it was something that was so horrendous and, in a sick way, hilarious, that I can't not write about it.

Let me begin at the beginning (I keep trying to read up on how to write properly and there is one thread that goes through all the words of writing wisdom: Start at the Beginning. I'm trying.) Here goes:

I've been feeling just a tad under the weather for a while - bloated, vaguely nauseous, very tired and I decided last week to stop ignoring it and see the doctor.

I love my doctor, he's like a grandfather and often tries to persuade me to go to whiskey tastings with him. He prodded me and sent me off to have an X-ray, the report of which I read on my way back to him. I hate the way X-ray people seal the envelope with the report and disc (no longer do you get a huge envelope with enormous negatives showing your innards) as if it's a secret you're not allowed to read. They're MY innards.

Unfortunately, the report said something I didn't like. I have faecal loading (ugh... a medical way of saying a blockage in my intestine, a.k.a. severe constipation.) Wierdly, my normal 'routine' had been, well, normal, but inside me, there it was for everybody (who saw the disc or read the report) to see. And it certainly explained my malaise.

My dear old doctor smirked at me as he said: "You'll have to do a major washout. Best you set aside tomorrow. You won't be going anywhere," as he wrote a script for a melodiously odious sounding Golytely. Honestly, who names this stuff?

Things I learnt on Friday, on my date with said Mr Golytely:

1. Drinking four litres of what tastes like salt water over four hours can not be likened to cocktails on a Friday afternoon.
2. Adding a vaguely vanilla-ish aroma to said salt water just makes it more sickly (but thanks for trying, manufacturers.)
3. Looking 6 months pregnant due to the 3 litres of vanilla-aroma'd salt water in your poor tummy makes one feel sicker. And silly.
4. Expelling four litres of vanilla-aroma'd salt water from your nether regions over a period of approximately 8 hours, which feels like 8 days, is not fun.
5. Being phoned half-hourly by your sniggering sister for running commentry on 'how much has gone in and how much out' does nothing to improve one's mood.
6. Having one's stomach sound like a cross between a coffee percolater and a tractor is disturbing in the most disturbing way.
7. When having to go through such an ordeal, plan it for a work day, so at least you get a day off school in return for your pain and suffering.

Problem, is after it all, I don't seem to be feeling better and my tummy (poor thing) is still not a happy camper. I am holding thumbs that this doesn't mean that I suffered this ordeal for no better reason than to regale you with my sorry tale, I shall speak to my kindly doctor tomorrow. Blegh.

I told you to stop reading if you're squeamish, didn't I?

Small Town Sadness

There's something about Small Town South Africa that is dusty. Even a little town in the greenest, lushest valley has a layer of dust over it, like a house that needs a featherduster. The shops in the main street (and I'm talking generically here) generally have sparsely stocked shelves where you can find handcreams still in the bottles they were made in in the 80's and sewing kits with those little silver threaders in them. All made slightly dull with the layer of dust.

It's not only the literal dust, though. The buildings and, often, the people have it too. They don't gleam and shimmer like city buildings and city people. They don't knock down the ugly 70's shop that houses the Pep store (another Small Town requirement) to replace it with a steel and glass architectural monstrosity where beautiful people can sip cocktails while pouting their collagen-filled lips and blow air kisses at each other, falsely. Pep stays, it keeps the same stock of cheap and cheerful clothes, homeware and TV bars at the counter, as it did in my Small Town when I grew up. It still smells exactly the same.

It's real. I think that's why there's the dust. People are just humans, there is no need to silicone, liposuck, extend one's eyelashes because people here know who you are, they've watched you grow up, they've seen you fall, pick yourself up again. Good grief, they've talked about it on a Friday night at the bar. You've talked about them. It works both ways.

Our little town we went to had that dust and the Pep store. We drove through it on the Monday evening when we arrived, the wide main road looked at us quizzically in the afternoon sun. It was quiet but we thought that was just Small Town. The vaguely sad, still feeling was there each time we went into town (from our cottage on a farm next to the river) during the week.

We decided to have our hair cut while we were there, entranced by the local hairdressing salon: Hair by Me, opposite the garage. Me seemed a good person to give one's hair a trim. Stopping outside the shop on the Thursday, we noticed a small bunch of flowers, and a poster with a girl's name on it saying "In loving memory. 2010/09/06". The Monday we'd arrived. Me, the hairdresser was not there. She'd be back next week, according to a sign on her door.

On the Friday we stopped in for a beer at the bar. And there we heard why the little town was so still. A little girl, she was to turn 11 that Thursday, had been knocked over by a bus that was coming out of the garage opposite Hair by Me on her way to school on Monday morning. She had looked the wrong way and stepped in front of it. The funeral had been that morning.

The stillness of the town was not just a Small Town thing, it was a palpable sadness, the heart-wrenching brokenness of a place that had lost one of its young, way before her time.

The girl in the bar

She could be fifteen or thirty-five, it’s hard to tell. Her hair is two-tone – blonde above, black below, and a little greasy. Standing up in her aubergine-coloured velvet tracksuit as we enter the bar, it is obvious she needs to lose a little weight. Her smile is sweet and kind, but her eyes hide something. The bar smells of smoke, as if the windows (which are all there, eagerly awaiting) haven’t been opened since 1976. In fact, bar the enormous flat screen TV in the corner blaring E!, nothing much has changed in this bar since then, with it’s stained carpet (each one, I’m sure with a story to tell) and fake leather chairs.

It’s early Friday afternoon and the place is desserted. She fetches us two wonderfully cold beers from behind the bar. It’s a typical small town South African bar – an enormous bottle of brandy half-full (she says the farmers come and drink five litres in a night) amongst multi-coloured bottles of too-sweet-headache-inducing-shots, the essential array of foreign notes stuck to the walls and a couple of ‘bar joke gimmicky things’ strewn about the place.

She plonks herself next to us, at our table, and first explains what’s going on with the Playboy-Bunny-Types on the TV, my inquisitive soul asks questions, encouraging her tales. Her family bought this hotel four months ago and she lives here, alone. They visit at weekends sometimes. She is essentially a small-town girl, who has had flashes of city life. They didn’t agree with her, you can tell, but she doesn’t elaborate. Her loneliness spills over our table in a sweet stream of strangely naïve but street-smart stories of her life. This girl has seen things she wishes she hadn’t.

The boys who manage the golf club arrive and they greet her by name, in a brotherly fashion they tease her. There is no question that they will join our conversation. They get their drinks, and do. It’s friendly, it’s small town, and it’s Friday afternoon. Then the local mechanic and his sullen wife with their two children (!) arrive. The children have a pack of cards and they sit at the next table and play Rummy. He turns his back on his wife, talking to the golfing boys as she sips on her alchopop. The Jukebox is cranked up to a volume where conversation becomes difficult.

We’re hungry so we leave them to it. The Friday afternoon sun shines on the dusty main road outside as we leave, loud music following us down the street.

Her eyes are haunting me still.

300th post... Well sort-of

Oops, I missed it. I'm not sure how, because (I thought) I was watching so carefully, each time I signed in and wrote a post, seeing the numbers click up... 298... 299... and then, whamo!, this morning... 301. I was planning a great 300th post. 300! That means I spilled out words onto a screen 300 (and 1) times. Sheesh. Obviously a pretty cloud scudded by or a hadeda flapped and shouted over at me, or something, which distracted me, and made me miss it. It's not serious, though, because this 'centurial' birthday, I don't think I have anything momentous to announce. No great blurts, like the 100th and 200th. You know my Tragedystory... you know pretty much all. Well, all of the things I'm willing to write in a public forum. Oh, the privacy thing, yes, it's still there.

So what to say on this, my 300th (+2) post? I think the thing I want to say is Thank You. To the world, really, to Blogland and the real one. I realised while thinking about this post this morning that both the real and the 'unreal' (blog) realm provide me with so much entertainment and just stuff to write about, be it sometimes just inane rambling. Had I not got into this blog thing I would be neglecting my writing even more than I do already. And I really do love it, once I start.

This all sounds a bit like an Oscar acceptance speech except that nobody is starting to play music so that I’ll shush and leave the stage. I am back from my break in the countryside to a little place on a big river in a village with an aching heart. We ate, we slept (a lot!), we played Trvial Pursuit (a lot), we read books, and we stared at the stars and the beautiful new moon. And it was quiet, except for the sounds of birds and the occasional tractor. I was meant to write while I was there. I didn’t open my laptop once. It was bliss.

I have lots of stories to write now – of the village with it’s sad tragedy that happened, unbeknownst to us initially; the young girl Heidi-like, up in the hills, doing wine tasting; the old man, youngest of eight, at the bottom of the hill, making wine; and the talkative girl at the hotel bar, fixated on E!’s inane ramblings of blondes drinking too much and taking their clothes off, her story too dark to tell in our fleeting meeting, but I could feel it was there.

Best I get to work then, isn’t it?

Moments away from holiday

We're going away. To the country. Next week. To get there we will mount the silver-winged unicorn and she will carry us gently away from The City Beneath the Mountain, with her fast cars and fumes, bright lights and loud people. Through the dark tunnel where gnomes mine for precious gems we'll travel and out the other side to unpolluted blue skies and fresh air, the mountains towering above us, watching as we trot along the narrow black strip at their feet.

And then toward the gentler, greener, hills, vineyards dotted about (and hopefully a donkey or two) toward the big brown river that meanders through, creating an emerald landscape. On the banks of that river, our silver-winged unicorn will come to a stop and it is there, in that peaceful place, that we will rest. For the better part of a week. No internet access, intermittent cell-phone reception, and oodles and oodles of air.

A place to read, to write, to breathe and think. To look up at the stars, an uninterrupted upside-down paint-by-numbers, no city lights to dull it. A fireplace to stare into, not just at night, but at 10am, if we feel like it. And with a glass of red wine too, if it takes our fancy. It is only just coming in time, before I murder a colleague or jump out of my fifth floor Ivory Tower window myself. A holiday. Away.

Is it obvious that I can't wait?