Schoolgirl crush

It is Summer. This fills me with glee. The air is warm, it’s light in the mornings when I get to work, I am wearing cotton Summer tops. You can see why this would make me happy. The prospects of icy cold beers watching the sun set, at eight! Yippee.

In the meantime, while Winter danced it’s dying dance (until next year, of course), I signed up for a little writing course which is filling me with nervous angst and titillating expectation. I fear I will be exposed by my fellow writing-course-writers as the frilly, over-descriptive writer that I am. There are people on the course who’ve already written novels. Novels they sent to publishers. Real ones. Oh my god, what’ve I got myself in for?

I was in the middle of one of the delightful anxiety attacks you’ve just experienced above, while downloading the video we had to watch for Module 1, which featured our teacher. He's delicious. I have a schoolgirl crush. I just know he made the video especially for me (and not the 100+ other students.) How do I know? Because he was talking directly to me, of course. Looking me in the eyes, his own twinkling at me, his voice lilting with passion for storytelling me.

It’s strange, because he’s not really my type, but there’s something about him that makes him yummy. He has an American accent, an accent which is by no means on the top of my Accent List. Good grief, I didn’t even know I had an Accent List until I wrote that! I find them a little rough normally, but his is... well… perfect.

I guess it could just be his passion for stories and writing that does it for me, but I think, personally, that it’s his little hint of a smile, especially made for me, that is my melting point. So you can imagine how pleased I was to find that he’d made me another one for module 2. My very own little video love letter, downloadable, just to me and 100+ other writing-course-writers , on the beginnings of stories.

I wonder if I need to get out more? The thing is, I need to wait at home, patiently, for Module 3, to see if he’s made me another one, don’t I?

A liitle sad story

She was running, as fast as she possibly could. She imagined that, to someone watching her, her legs would be a blur. She breathed raggedly, sucking in lungsful of the freezing air which felt like it slipped down into her lungs and created tiny icicles falling and piercing her insides excruciatingly.

Attached to her wrist was a red helium balloon which was bobbing comically in the air, trying its hardest to escape from the humdrum of this running-as-fast-as-you-can-standing-stillness. She’d flown away with it, into the bright blue sky, over green fields, but that was before she got concreted. Each time a growling car passed, the balloon bumped and pulled.

Looking around she realised that, in fact, she wasn’t moving at all. She tried to run faster, but she was concreted in that one spot, surrounded by suburban houses trying to outdo each other with higher walls and shinier doorknobs. Cars and taxis whizzed past her, growling, baring their teeth, and coughing their poison gases over her. She smelt the rot of the city.

On the verge was a small patch of grass upon which five children sat, a steps-and-stairs bunch, playing. They seemed to be conducting some sort of experiment with some snails and two ants. She tried to run towards them, her breath shortening, but she remained rooted and they started to blur, first losing their outlines, then their entire beings, until all that was left was a small shadow on the grass, an outline of love.

Her heart was being strangled by the whole scene and she began to realise, while she was concreted to that spot, the balloon wasn’t, so she began to bite through its string until it flew up, carried by that icy wind into the bright blue sky.

She watched it twist and turn and dance and as she watched she felt her substance draining away. A gust of wind blew down the street gathering her fluttering shell up in it, blowing her along the gutter to the rain drain at the corner, next to a Simba chip packet which fluttered disconsolately as she landed on it.

The bigger picture

Every now and again I clumsily climb out of my body (my spirit or maybe my so-called intelligence?) and flit around above my head, trying to gain some sort of ‘bigger picture’. I keep hearing mention of this bigger picture thing and I want to see it too, thus the attempts at flitting about to look. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, this is the type of report back that I get:

Dear Shiny,

Wake up and smell the coffee. You’re being a fool. Stop it.

Yours,
Shiny x

Great.

A letter to the computer geek

This one needs no introduction.

Dear Computer Guy,

I have spoken to you about this before, but you seem not to get it. I realise that you are superbly clever and sophisticated in a technological way, but I am not. I keep telling you this. While I am incredibly impressed with your prowess when it comes to computer talk and eternally grateful to you for updating our database, I honestly couldn’t give a rat’s arse as to the intricacies of how you did it.

To be honest, when my eyes glaze over as you start explaining in minute detail, your face close enough to mine for me to count the pores on your nose, it is not from gushing lust (as you seem to think), but pure, unadulterated boredom. Your careful explanation, to me, sounds like “blah, blah, blah”, possibly in Japanese, but I can't be sure.

Thank you, again, for your help, I honestly couldn’t have done it without you, but please, in future, can we keep our communications in English, and at a respectable ‘personal space’ distance?

Love,
Shiny x

P.S. About those pores… I’ve got a fabulous face-wash at home. Shall I bring you a little sample? I stole some urine sample collecting vessels from the pathologist when I was there having blood taken, which are just the right size for a little face-wash sample. Let me know (in English, not computer Japanese.)

I wonder if it's just me that glazes over at the mention of 'visual basic'?

The most unfortunate Uncle Jack

I’d heard of him before. Uncle Jack. The one everyone refers to as the ‘Black Sheep’ in quiet tones at the end of the Christmas lunch table. He was my mother’s great uncle, brother of her granny (my great grandmother.) My mother’s side is prone to snobbery, I fear, as this story will illustrate.

Oh, wait, let me catch you up. We went to dinner last night at a shush jush juj smart hotel in town with my uncle (mum’s brother) and aunt who are in town for a short stay from up in the wilds of Africa. My parents are still looking for turkeys (I hope) in Turkey so I dragged G along, hoping that not too many dark family secrets would be discussed. Fat chance.

My beloved uncle, after getting us drinks, and catching up on current family affairs, launched into the Uncle Jack story with glee, allowing me to tell the one I know first, and then trumping me with a second one.

The one I know:

Uncle Jack was always a ‘bit of a strange bloke’ and had some social problems that the family couldn’t abide so that, at some stage, they all lost contact. There is a time in Uncle Jack’s life that seems a little hazy (probably was for him too, by the sounds of things) and nobody knew where he was for some years.

Then Great Granny C went shopping, to the smart department store (we’re probably talking late 1940’s, early 50’s here – the time of kid gloves and hats being worn to go shopping) in The Big Smoke. The one with the elevator, into which she primly stepped to go upstairs (I wonder what she was going to buy… frilly knickers?) The lift man asked her which floor and she looked up… into the face of Uncle Jack.

“First floor, please,” she said politely. And no more. She stepped out on the first floor and went off to buy her frilly knickers (I assume), not even glancing back.

Isn’t that terrible?

Then my uncle told his story:

One Christmas… we’re a family that likes Christmas, and do the full deal ALWAYS, despite the sweltering African heat at that time of year. Nothing will stop us from roasted turkey, replete (is that the right word?) with stuffing, all the roasted vegetables, chipolatas, a Christmas pudding drunk on brandy from being fed it for at least three months before, lit and coin-infested.

Anyway, yes, so one such day, many many moons ago, before Uncle Jack ‘disappeared’, they all sat around the table, Christmas hats on heads etc. It came time for the flaming pudding and Uncle Jack was serving it when the family cat came mewling around his legs. Uncle Jack, poor guy, tapped the mewling, twisting cat on its little cat nose and the cat promptly stopped mewling and fell over. Dead.

What more can you say but: Oops?

A weekend in the country

I went away for the weekend to a funny little house on a baby dam overlooking a big dam with a huge sky above it. The sun set behind the big dam each evening flinging beautiful pinks and oranges across said huge sky. There were five of us, old friends, and the Big Black Dog (BBD) who C kindly sat squashed up with in the back of the car. She thought she’d died and gone to heaven (the BBD, not C.) It was lovely. On Friday we went into the little village across the valley for lunch and Shuzie wondered what I’d blog about. There was much blog fodder.

I could blog about the little house, with its neighbours sitting on top of us, their bathroom just on the other side of Pop and Shuzie’s bedroom, providing them with late night irritation entertainment of the bath/toilet sounds variety. Or the fact that the other three of us slept in the lounge, allowing for cosy five-in-a-bed lazy mornings of tea, chat, and impromptu Thirty Seconds challenges.

Or I could blog about the delicious lunch we had at a hidden little restaurant where a simley (moon-faced) Zimbabwean waiter served us cold beers in salad dressing bottles, ‘beautiful baby potatoes’ and risotto with ‘delicious pea sprouts’ from the restaurant garden and ginger beer out of a can which the barman swore had bits of ginger in it (as opposed to the rust it really was.) The BBD fell in love with a very elegant golden retriever and whined like a teenager to be set free to go and snog (or whatever Big Black Dogs do to their loves) around the corner.

Or I could blog about the prawns on a braai supper we had, followed by a Thirty Seconds competition as the most enormous wind storm buffeted the funny little house on a baby dam overlooking a big dam with a huge sky above it for the whole first night. I thought the roof would blow of. It didn’t.

Or I could blog about Pop, and her hair falling out in clumps from the chemo (she goes for her second session today) and our discussions of hats and scarves and healthy eating and how brave she’s being and how I want to wrap her in cotton wool and put her safely in a bejewelled box where she doesn’t need to go through all this, but that’s her story to blog.

Or I could blog about lunch at the place where the frogs live where we saw no frogs, ate not-particularly-good food but admired the deep blue of many, many peacocks and then went home to sit in front of the funny little house on a baby dam overlooking a big dam with a huge sky above it and looked at the dam and the sky and watched G and the BBD swim in the baby dam while fish jumped out around them, checking to see who was invading their territory.

Or I could blog about the revitalising feeling of spending a weekend with old friends who require no explanations, no airs and graces, no pretence. And then, a donkey to wave goodbye as we headed home toward the City Beneath the Mountain, a little cherry on top.

Or I could just not say anything about it, couldn’t I?

Backed in a corner

It’s October next week. No, I’m not lying… it really is. Can you believe? I know it becomes such a monotonous cry of ‘how time is flying’, over and over but, um, it’s just true. The older you get, the quicker it goes. Last October I did this little daily writing experiment thing (on another site) and I am going to try and be better with my writing this October. I feel like I’ve been ignoring myself and writing about other people. Okay, it’s not just a feeling, it’s a truth. I had a privacy panic. Perfectly normal Shiny behaviour really. There are things I just can’t won’t talk about here.

Spring is here and it’s new leaf time. I feel a little proud and very scared that I just sent a (very tentative, putting out feelers) e-mail to a place in The Big Smoke, asking about jobs there. I’ve been in my Real Job for 12 years and we are currently being under-appreciated so I’m thinking maybe it’s time I ruffle my feathers a bit. It’s very much tentative though, a move from The City Beneath the Mountain being a big thing. The twins (my lovely one-year old nephews) are there, though. Maybe I should make a Stay/Go list.

I am just feeling a little like a hissing kitten backed in a corner in oh-so-many facets of my life, like I need to flee. Hopefully it’s a fleeting feeling. Hopefully it’s just that time of year. Somehow, as the months creep (fly) toward December I tend to get it. Bleergh. Must remember: new leaf. Spring.

We all have them feelings, don’t we?