Aghast…
My mother had an old, large vanity case. It was dark green with a shiny chrome buckle and had intrigued me for a long time. When I was very small it had been full of old lace and buttons from mum’s childhood and that of her own mother’s. Many a happy hour had been spent poking through it and matching the contents, pondering the history. For some time now it had been on the top shelf of her dressing room cupboards, far out of reach. Until the evening my brother and I were left with a babysitter and I went exploring.
I was a nosy child, always looking through things that I had no business with at all, which caused much consternation and endless punishments, but it was me.
Having scaled the shelving and teetering on tiptoes I gripped onto the vanity case and pulled it onto the floor. At 15 years old I was not ready for what I found.
Inside that vanity case was a lace and satin corset, browns and creams, with suspenders for stockings; a leather breast thing with steel hoops for the breasts to stick out and a latex body suit. There was also a black dildo.
There is nothing like realizing your parents are having sex. Not just any old sex, but strange stuff. I felt awkward around them both for years.
No colours anymore…
It’s a funny world, this place I inhabit. If I had known in my khol-lined teenage years that this was what would come of things, I might not have bothered to protest or get involved in anything. Somehow, we have created a global society that smacks of tall poppy syndrome. What does that mean? It means that if something stands out above the rest of the field, it gets chopped down.
Individualism is non-existent. We live in a world that believes freedom of choice in the shops is the same as being an individual. It’s not. I can buy any music/movie/whore I want. Does that mean I am an individual? No. Even those of us on the fringe think we are buying “alternative” music/books, well – no we are not. Trust me, if it’s playing on the radio or has found its way into Look & Listen then some marketer somewhere has done his job well and knows there is a financially viable market. So, think of most things in your home… are they unique? Probably not.
Heroes today are not astronauts or even adventurers. They are businessmen (a field totally lacking in integrity by its very nature) or sportsmen. Most of them have been cornered by a big company to wear their brand or promote it in some way. Hardly an honest way to earn a living, if you think about it. Me? Oh – I spin for a living. I decide which brands are a good association, I persuade people to buy certain things. Hey – everyone has to earn a crust. It may be less honest than helping lepers, but I manage to keep my personal integrity intact.
Have you ever counted how many advertising messages or PR is thrown at you in a 30 minute trip to the office every morning? Noticed how much crap you listen to on the radio? Someone is paying for that.
So, propaganda and consumerism aside, there is also the terrible tyranny of political correctness. I do understand that shouting racist words or descriptors is not the thing to do. No issue. I take issue with being told I mustn’t call people fat, or ask them if they are pregnant before I hire them. The re-writing of Enid Blyton books because you can’t have golliwogs or Noddy jumping into bed with Big Ears? But you can have signs promoting strip-joints or abortion.
Does this seem remotely sensible? No. I don’t much care for the world I have helped to create. So I don’t buy mass-manufactured things, other than appliances or technology. Everything in my home is handmade or antique. I like it that way. I will call people fat, lazy or outright stupid. What you going to do about it?
Democracy, too, is a way of always ensuring that the lowest common denominator is in charge. Most people are sheeple. And yet we entrust the building of nations to the people they vote in. Odd? You betcha.
Ya, back when I was listening to The Cure, Clash and Toyah, I thought I was fighting for individualism. It appears that, instead, I managed to be part of making a world that is beige. Where being odd means a strange ring-tone on your phone or a vanity license plate on your car.
No thanks. I intend to stay a little scarlett blip on the ocean of beige.
Medical mumbo-jumbo
I used to eat a lot of natural foods until I learned that most people die of natural causes. I wish my artist would understand this. But NO. He is a mumbo-jumbo addict. If it’s holistic anything he buys in. I have blogged in the past about the alien fungus he had, or the cure-all syphilnum homeopathic rubbish (sugar pills about the size of pinheads). Then he spreads this to the children. I don’t mean the fungus or the other stuff – I mean the cure thinking.
The latest fad doing the rounds in his artsy fartsy circles is an “intuitive pharmacist”. Yes folks, this is a proper chemist, who just looks at people and gives them over the counter cures. Somewhat dodgy I think you will all agree.
Of course, everything he says should be taken is homeopathic. I don’t have the time to get into the evils of homeopathy and the giant scam that it is, so please visit www.quackwatch.com. I have said it before: How is it that a bottle of Echinacea drops costs more than a bottle of vodka and an entire Echinacea plant from the garden shop? I’ll tell you how: It is a scam.
Never mind that, now there is a new breed of mumbo-jumbo cretin. This lot are what they call iridologists. This means that they take a photo of your eyeball and use it as a diagnostic method for everything possibly wrong with you. From worms to cancer. Sure. (www.quackwatch.com again please).
Before all the homeopathy nuts jump all over me let me state very clearly: Most diseases are self-limiting. They do not require medication. So, regardless of whether or not you are taking corenza c, Echinacea or eating rose petals, that cold is going to go.
Where the mumbo-jumbo gets dangerous is when they claim it can treat serious illnesses. Like cancer. Anyone who likes can take me on with this. My daughter had cancer at the age of three. Nothing was going to stop her dying other than chemo.
So, now I have artist swigging back loads of Echinacea, toddling off to buy crap from the “intuitive pharmacist” and claiming the fungus is taking over again because he doesn’t want to get out of bed. Um. It’s cold and wet today. I bet nobody sprung out of bed.
These snake-oil salesmen ought to be publicly flogged. And I think My beloved Artist needs a lobotomy.
Art Deco Junkies get a fix…
The weather is dire today – been huddled up in our tv den all afternoon watching Poirot dvds. The ones with David Suchet as the neurotic and anally retentive Belgian detective. Artist and I are really into art deco so we watch and spend the time like this:
Artist: “Fuck love, did you see that black trim?’
KC: “Ya, I want that in my study, but with green walls not yellow.”
Artist: “We need a gazebo so i can build pillars like that.” (note: these are deco pillars big enough for a stadium)
KC: “Love! We must get a mirror like that.”
It’s quite pathetic really. Except that we really are building a monument to art deco in our Greenside hovel. Just finished another room. The light fittings are my passion – but I have blogged about them before, with pics.
And I know I complain about the endless mess as My Artist makes sure everything that we do is perfect, but to tell the truth I am glad. Our home is really beautiful and totally true to the time it was built. When I bought it, there were five bedrooms. Now we have three bedrooms and the den (with a deco Catholic shrine that Artist built me) and my study. Well, my old study is now Kit’s bedroom and the massive front room she was occupying will be my study. A decision I made a couple of weeks ago. Kit has been brainwashed into believing it’s a good move.
Part of the pleasure of being here, owning this place, has been the slow finding of things. We have chrome light witch covers even. Probably stolen from some soon-to-be-demolished CBD building. The really big restoration job will be the kitchen. Once upon a time this house belonged to an orphanage, I think in the early 80s, and they had a kitchen donated. We have to gut it and put in terrazzo and wood in order to make it true. But the wall tiles are the original black and what used to be white.
Some of the floors in the front of the house are yellow-wood, not pine. Oh man, you see what happens when I start blogginig about my house? I get totally carried away. This is a deep and abiding love affair. I want to photograph every inch of it and blog it. Bore you all to tears.
*sigh*
I was trying to explain to a friend over lunch what we were doing. He said: “I love art deco, Andy Warhol was great.”
Bloody peasant.
You are never too old…
To be manipulated by your mother. I have been conned into spending R25k on tickets for myself and the small people to London in August for a family wedding. I would rather spend that and go to Italy, so how does this happen? Easy. Mothers know what buttons to push because they are responsible for the installation of said buttons in their children.
I don’t even really like most of my family. There is a good reason we haven’t “all been together in 20 years.” My mother somehow made this seem like a desirable situation. I know better. Nevertheless *swipey swipey* and here I sit, bracing myself for five days in the english countryside before me and my girls can hit the bright lights of London. If it wasn’t so damn expensive I would not be blogging in a complaining tone. But come on! That’s lots of money.
Especially when I know it costs the airline about R800 a seat to fly.
So, in early August the girls and I will be off on an adventure. I am sort of looking forward to it. Be interesting to see how everyone copes with my dad’s pariah status, his mistress, my evil alcoholic sole-surviving grandma etc. It will be a few days of that and then we get to cruise. I have some money over there so the girls and I will shop and tourist ourselves into a coma. Then off to stay with Artist’s sister so we can travel a bit to Cornwall and hopefully Wales to stay with yet more family there who have a sheep farm. Artist is belligerently refusing to come with. He detests London. I love London – just for periods of no longer than one month these days.
I need to have a sense of humour about this. My family is quite mad. Some in a nice way and some in a “find me a gun, dammit” way.
Oh -was supposed to go with Mr and Mrs Silwane on a trip today, but things changed. He phoned and we have agreed on a raincheck.
Lots of love
St K.
My mobile phone…
Mobile phones are about as personal an item as it gets. Right up there with my knickers and vibrator, to be honest.
I have, therefore, a major issue with people using my phone, fiddling with it and I have a particular issue with people using my phone to contact the other people in my household. I have stuff on my phone. My Artist and I are very respectful of eachother’s phones. It’s a privacy thing.
Yesterday, a colleague of mine, found he could only reach my voicemail so called My Artist’s phone to reach me. I was nowhere near my artist. I was enraged and my colleague could not understand it.
Surely I cannot be the only person that feels like this? My mobile is the way to reach me. I don’t use landlines and my cell number is available for all the world, really. But I can choose who I do and do not want to speak to. I can let people leave a message. I can choose not to answer if I am doing something that is more important than a call.
When people start stalking me with other numbers… I hate that. It actually tips me right over the edge.
I told my colleague this morning, that he had no clue where I was or what I was doing. I told him I could have been having a quick shag with someone else and there he is trying to reach me for business purposes through my boyfriend. Uncool. He still doesn’t understand.
K Chasu: Almost a burning effigy
I love sleeping pills. Yet I can’t seem to do them with any degree of grace. Last night, for instance, I nearly set the entire house on fire.
Once in while I take these incredible little blue pills called Dormicum. I get them from my dealer-doctor in 15mg form. I am a chronic insomniac and generally get by on about four hours a night. But if my head is busy it gets to the point where I am doing two hours and that just isn’t viable. I am then a more cantankerous cow than usual and everybody hates me. I can see them plotting murder…
The dose is one tablet at night. When I started taking them dealer-doctor told me to make sure everything was locked up and I was in bed before taking it. He was right. Anyway, in typical alcoholic style, last night I took two. This is on the premise that I am special and need more. I do this with every medicine. I am working on stopping that. I know it is deeply bad thinking.
So there I was reading Roald Dahl’s Uncle Oswald, artist snoring so I sneaked a cigarette in bed. I woke up this morning, with scorch marks in the egyptian cotton sheets, a cigarette butt ground into my shoulder and an irritated artist. Not terribly dignified or graceful…
Blogbuddies – I could have died. I could have gone up in a small inferno in the middle of the night…
And it doesn’t end there. Earlier in the evening I took a long soak in the girls bathroom. They have the best bath. It is HUGE. Built like they used to in the 30s. We have to use candles because the room is still being worked on and the light fittings have been removed. I put the candles on top of the loo (was concerned about setting hair on fire if they were next to the bath) just under the little built in wooden medicine cabinet (also from the 30s). I elected not to blow them out cos they looked so pretty.
Little wooden medicine cabinet is now scorched. Paint blistering off.
So, is the problem KC and fire or KC and sleeping pills?
Camping: No thanks
Artist, with romantic glaze in his eyes: “Why don’t we go camping this weekend?”
KC: “Have you lost your mind entirely?”
He has been working with glue and stuff, so being stoned could be the reason for this highly dubious suggestion.
Artist: “No, it will be great, just the two of us, in nature.”
KC: “Nature is messy and dirty. I don’t camp.”
Debate ensues.
I hate camping. I don’t feel close to nature, I feel dirty and plagued by insects. Anyone seen those spiders in Namibia? Why can’t we stay in a nice little bed and breakfast and do day trips “into nature” – an altogether more tolerable state of affairs?
I can’t cope with the creaks, tent bits flapping, weird noises that could easily be a lion or a very large spider or something altogether worse. Like a cannibal in them there hills. An inbred cannibal.
And the camping with ablution blocks is even worse. I feel like I want to wear my whole wetsuit and booties just to take a shower, which somewhat negates the purpose of the whole thing. There is always black mold on the floor and god-alone-knows-what horrible infectious diseases left by other campers.
Then there are the horrible cooking utensils. Which all need to be washed and by that stage generally have congealed gunk of unknown origin on them.
No – camping is a disgusting pastime. I will not do it.
Yeti
Artist (plaintively): “Are you ever going to shave your legs again?”
KC (astonished): ‘Maybe?’
Yes, folks, when you are actually sharing a bed with someone you can’t do the usual chick thing and go into yeti mode for the winter. Well, I guess you could, but then kiss any sex goodbye and endearing nicknames like ‘Svetlana’ hello.
So, yesterday I bought new blades and today was shaving day. Feels better, but I resist in winter. Who wants to stand in a shower, with various bits freezing off so you can spend the time shaving your legs and pits? It sucks. And shaving in the tub is uncool little hairs can get trapped in places you really don’t want them.
So, I have clean shaven legs again. For now. It may change again, the next icy cold snap we have. Then I may not care and just drag out the thermal jammies. Who needs sex anyway?
My artist never complains I can change hair colour, length whatever. This was a first. Hence rapid action on my part.
Spent the day playing volleyball at Emmarentia. It was hot, so thank god I could roll up my jeans without worrying about stabbing my team-mates to death with stubble if I bumped into them.
Gorillas in the Mist
Not all fat people are jolly. Take Lolly for example.
We were on holiday with friends at their gorgeous Hamburg home. Peace and tranquility. Then Lolly and her feeder/husband arrived. Lolly wears a kaftan, mostly because the only other option is a tent, and has a constant sheen around herself, evidence of the energy consumed by moving. In the words of Shakespeare: Lolly lards the lean earth as she moves along. Watching her grunt, sweat and complain through the vehicular extrication process was amusing. But that didn’t last for long.
Special outside chairs needed to be dragged into the dining room, because Lolly’s arse was too large and her weight to much for the more delicate ones. Although even they were robust by most people’s standards.
Lolly is a long-time friend of our friends and easily slips into the jibing banter they have always had. But Lolly likes to put down the people around her. ‘You have put on weight,’ she says to Antoinette. However, dear Toni is used to this by now and does not rise to the bait. But Lolly keeps picking and stabbing with words.
I can see it will get ugly, so retire to the upstairs verandah with my book, rejoining the group later for supper. By then the large woman has my children involved in a card game called Spite and Malice and is verbally abusing them with words like stupid and runt. My rage levels are high. I take a valium. One can’t be upsetting the people with whom one is staying.
Dinner deteriorates into an argument between Lolly and Toni’s husband. The argument is about breakfast. Lolly does not want an omelet, which we have all been happily consuming for days as a beginning to high adventure including kite flying, swimming, boating etc. No, Lolly wants fried eggs (4) and bacon. She is adamant because this is what her feeder always prepares and delivers on a tray in bed. Every day.
Toni’s husband, John, gets a tad, well, bitchy. Lolly staggers upwards and gets up to smack him. Repeatedly. She cuts him open with her rings. There is blood.
‘Fuck off Lolly.’
I squirm we never have anything like this in our lives. Certainly not from grown-ups and these are mature friends in their early 50s. I can see the rage. I go to bed. Discomforted by the display of petty anger.
Next morning I walk through and see John gazing through the large window at the sea. My two children are there, peering at the white, shimmering gloom which encompasses the little hills leading to the sea. Lolly is standing at the kitchen table.
John: ‘Tell me girls, have you ever played gorillas in the mist?’
KC Kids, in unison: ‘Oooh. No?’
John: ‘We send Lolly outside to hide and then we have to go find her.’
I snorted with laughter, turning puce, I am sure, to smother the belly laugh that was coming up like an unwelcome and ungovernable burp.
Lolly left that day.
