Weather and a secret addiction

Anybody who has read more than two posts on this blog will know that I have a great love of The Weatherman and am fascinated by weather reports and have not-so-secret crushes on all the TV weather people. I could go into the pros and cons of each, but I shan't bore you. I'll slip in there that Paul Monare is my favourite.

The reason I'm bringing up the weather is because it directly influences my desire to put pen to paper. Give me a grey, weathery day and I want to hole up and write. Today is one of those, pleasantly coinciding with Friday, allowing me to cocoon inside, while outside The Weatherman is wreaking havoc. The wind is howling and making The House in The Middle of the Street's bones creak, the rain is beating out a lullaby on the tin roof and The Big-Boned Cat is greedily pushing herself between me and the computer, purring loudly and demanding attention and warming hands.

It's just lovely. Then I say it makes me want to write, and it does, but I have a terrible confession to make: I have become most ridiculously addicted to playing Scrabble on Facebook. I. Can. Not. Stop. I've always played it, having various games on the go all the time, making a move every couple of days, but I've now discovered something new and sinister...

Two Minute Scrabble. Each player has two minutes for each move which, in essence, means approximately half-hour Scrabble games. Addictive? Hell yes. I've taken to starting three games at once and playing SuperSpeed Scrabble. Great fun, but the minutes slip into hours, which slip into days, as the Things That Need To Be Done gather dust in the corner. You see? Like I said - sinister. Like it was sent directly by the devil.

The funniest thing, though, is the number of men playing Scrabble on Facebook who are using it as a means to hook up. The number of "U're sexy" and "Nice tits" (I kid you not) that I've had is astounding. Then again, even more astounding is the fact that they know I have nice tits from the 1cm x 1cm picture of only my face that shows up next to the board. Funny, in a vaguely disturbing way. I'd have thought there were better places on the internet to go looking for such things but who am I, a self-confessed Scrabble junkie, to judge? And there was the rather seedy tale of Scrabble Boy.

Excuse me, I must away. I have things to attend to. Ahem.

Weather

It’s weathery here on the tip of Africa. I do not use the term ‘weathery’ lightly, either. The winds gust and howl as the heavens open, showering down huge drops of rain and even some hail. The clouds are dark and heavy, leaking onto earth, obscuring the mountains, giving everything a feeling of dampness and a pervading sense of melancholy.

It’s the type of weather that makes me want to stay home, light a fire in the hearth, and write. Yes, write! Woohoo. It’s been a while since I had that urge. If only I could magically transform into a trust fund kid and didn’t have to come to Real Work, then I could feed the urge.

Instead, here I sit in The Ivory Tower, staring out across the Cape Flats, watching the hadedas flap against the wind and rain while I deal with the rigours and tragedies that are my Real Job.

Tomorrow, though, I shall stay home and pretend to be that trust fund kid.

Surreal. Nonsense.

It's hot. I'm not complaining (too loudly), though, because those little signs of Autumn are about and I'd far rather have hot, than Autumn. Autumn brings Winter and Winter turns me into a grumpy whiney person with no personality and a two-dimensional smile, if any at all.

I've had a vaguely surreal-feeling weekend for some reason, probably due to the hot nights causing a distinct lack of restful sleep. I saw friends, ate while we sat outside enjoying the balmy night, reflected to myself the priviledge of having old friends, and listened to conversations that I seemed to be flying above.

It's as if my mind seems to have shifted slightly off centre. Perhaps it was always there and now, in a flash of middle-aged wisdom, I've only just noticed. Did I really just say 'middle-aged wisdom'? Good god. If anything proves the point, that sentence must be it. Did I say my mind shifted slightly off centre? I think what I should've said was, my mind has taken a flying leap off a high, and particularly pretty might I say - the lillies are flowering in all its crevasses - cliff.

Waffle, waffle, nonsense. But it's writing, and I need to get back into it. I figure if takes thousands of a couple of nonsensical wafflings, so be it.

Monday rainfall

The incessant heat was momentarily broken by delicious, fat drops of rain falling hotly on the tin roof of The House in the Middle of the Street as I woke, turning my tired sigh of an impending Monday morning into a pleasure-filled one. It rained, heavy and strong, for a short while, interspersing rain clouds with golden sunshine and rainbows to make leprechauns leap.

You could almost hear the plants yelling out in delight and the soil slurping greedily. Almost.

The mist

There’s something about mist that is lovely. Perhaps only for those of us who don’t have to experience it too often, though, I’d think. It just feels to me like a hug from The Weatherman, albeit a slightly damp hug.

It seems to me that in thick mist, like that that fell over The City Beneath the Mountain this morning, the trees and plants get away with doing things they can’t (or won’t?) normally do. Like jumping up and down, or wiggling their trunks, or dancing a little. They know, that, if we humans notice, we’ll shake our little heads and blame it on a trick of the mist on our eyes.

There is the most beautiful huge old Wild Fig tree down there, on the other side of the river. It’s so big that it’d take about six tree-hugging hippies, depending on how long their arms are, to hug it. It stretches into the sky with its branches waving very much toward the direction in which the wind blows, like a wild hairstyle. Today, as I looked across when we drove past on the way to The Ivory Tower, I swear I saw it, through the mist, wave one of its ancient tree hands at me.

I waved back, in the hope that a human response might encourage it to wave again, even when its not misty.

The Wedding and, finally, The Blurt Revelation

So there we were, in all our finery, about sixty of us, waiting, watching the door, anticipatory, supping on our champagne, all sophisticated-like. I wore sequins. Lots and lots of them. And sweet little diamante earings. And eye shadow. It was An Occassion you see. Deserving of everybody's finest. My love looked amazing. And how lovely to go to our first wedding together.

We were squashed into a smallish room because The Weatherman blessed the happy couple with some beautiful rain, necessitating a move in from the courtyard outside. Lucky the bride it rains on and all that, except we need to modernise it slightly, and get it up to speed... Lucky the grooms it rains on. The room was full. Of people. And love.

And then, the music changed and there they were - fabulously gorgeous, blue-silk-tied and black-suited, looking more handsome (both) than any childhood prince I'd ever imagined. And glowing, with love, that coursed its way through the already love-filled room. Incredible. A beautiful ceremony, my one tissue not nearly enough. I always cry at weddings and never remember to bring tissues. Thank goodness for C remembering. Poor thing had to make do with one, being kind enough to give the other to me, thus allowing me to keep my dignity and not have to wipe snot on my sleeves.

The reception was gorgeous - delicious food, lovely people, incredible speeches. All of them. It is seldom that you find every speech at a wedding is good. There is normally (at least) one that drags on, or has cringeworthy inappropriateness. Not this wedding. They were all carefully thought out, funny, short enough and, again, so filled with love.

We sat at a table with a fantastic set of people. A gay couple to my left - gentle, sweet boys, the kind I'd like to invite over for dinner (if they didn't live so far away). They seemed to have a wiseness about them. Next to them, the youngster, checking his phone every five minutes (at a wedding!). He was aghast with horror at my challenge for him to try not having his phone for a week. Next to him a wonderful Fag Hag and her Fag - beautiful cleavage in a fantastic lace dress, foreheads as smooth as a baby's, both of them. Botox parties - they have Botox parties in The Big Smoke. Seriously. They all get together at somebody's house and the doctor comes and injects them all. My turn to be aghast. It's a different world up there in The Big Smoke. And then the Robbie Williams lookalike.

Food, wine, more food, they met on Facebook. My first Facebook wedding, my first wedding with my love, my first wedding with two boys doing the wedding-ing. And all so fabulous.

Then there was 'gift time', when each guest got a feather boa, and the dancing began with the following announcement: "The first dance is for everyone." Brilliant. And even brillianter (poetic licence - my blog, my vocabulary) music. The dance floor was full. Every. Single. Person. Was on it.

My highlight? When the groom (A) stood up and said his speech, a beautiful, heartfelt declaration of love. He had been nervous of his Dad's reaction you see. His Dad had accepted that his son was marrying a man, and come to the wedding, but I think he was still worried. It's one thing to be accepting of your child's sexual preference, but quite another to be fully exposed to him kissing a man, in front of you. And fifty other people. Well, mid-speech, he spoke about just such things, and of his Dad, and his Dad stood up, walked over to him, and hugged him. Awe-inspiringly beautiful moment.

It was just the kind of wedding that inspires faith in humanity. And reinforced my belief that love doesn't see gender. Or race. Or religion. Or any of those other things that people use to try and quell it. It just doesn't have any boundaries. Or stipulations. Or rules. And we should just be so grateful if we are the lucky creatures who have it. It is SO precious.

Which brings me to my revelation, finally. Seeing the openness, and joy, and beauty of their love has brought me to this, exact point. Where I feel like I can say it.

My love is a girl. A wonderous, beautiful, amazing woman. I am, quite possibly, the luckiest girl in the world, to be loved by her. There is more to all of this, of course, which I may (or may not) bring up. It is not a lifestyle either of us has openly embraced before, and not really something we have chosen (honestly). There is a lot of angst and uncertainty and complication involved, but we both believe you fall in love with a person, and not a gender. And we did.

Phew.

The ash cloud

On the way to Real Work this morning, my love made this comment about the ash flying around up there above Iceland and the rest of Europe:

“Mother Nature just makes a small fart, and the world grinds to a halt. It’s a good lesson for humanity.”

I really couldn’t put it better.

Winter is upon us

Oh dear, oh dear! Winter is here! It's the first rainy, windy, grey day. I realised yesterday that this could, well, be the reason for my rising melancholy. I do not like the cold. At all. Yes, I love a day spent next to my crackling fire, listening to the rain on the tin roof in the company of lovely people but, unfortunately, in reality, that is not how most of my Winter is spent (although I try to make those occassions fairly regular).

Mostly it's spent getting up in the cold dark, muddling through the rain to work and slinking back home to try and warm up in my made-for-Africa (i.e. NOT warm) house. Don't get me wrong, I love my House in the Middle of the Street but no, the bottom line is that it is draughty and cold. Unless you're sitting right next to the fireplace. Here in Africa we don't do central heating. We just ignore the fact that, for four months a year (sometimes more) it's bloody freezing.

I think it's like they say childbirth is - during labour you scream and swear you'll never again and then you forget the pain as soon as you see the baby. Then you do it again. All Winter we talk about installing solar heating, blocking the gaps under the front (and back) door that allow the freezing gales in (and sometimes the rain too, if it's heavy) and vow to buy more energy-saving heaters (I do try to be environmentally-friendly). But, as soon as Spring curls her pretty fingers around us... whoosh... out of my tiny brain it goes.

In other, fascinating, news, the milk I have at the moment seems to make a skin on top of my tea the minute I let it stand. Most disturbing. I told you it was fascinating, didn't I?

Hot. Just, plain, hot.

The heat is unbearable. We went out for dinner last night, sat outside, came home at 9pm and were still, then, boiling-to-the-point-of-sense-of-humour-loss. I know that this is Africa, and it’s supposed to be hot, but sheesh kebab, it’s sizzling. Like in oppressive, thick heat. It almost feels like somebody has wrapped me in a thick, feather duvet and then tightly circled duct tape around and around, pinning me inside.

In the early hours of this morning, great bolts of lightening zig-zagged on the other side of my pale curtains, the skies rumbled like a very hungry, very big tummy, and we had a short, heavy downpour. It was delicious, and the smell of the wet dust through the window made me want to go out and roll around in it. The thought of the cooling down effect made me gleeful.

It did not, however, cool anything and I’m sitting here at Real Work, listless, and listening to our poor air conditioner, duct-taped into its own feather duvet, struggling to cool the soupy air around it. My brain is slow-cooking in my skull.

Please, Weatherman, could you tone it down, just a little?