“When uncle Eddie said he didn’t like his teddy, I knew he was a no good kid…” 

Funny, thought Francois, how Rocky Horror Picture Show tunes made their way into the most inappropriate moments.

Take the office for example.  Susan would sit down in a meeting room and in his head would run: “t-t-t-t-touch mee, I wanna be diiirty..”  It wasn’t even as if Francois found women attractive, but Susan just had a certain Miss Priss look about her that made him want to do unspeakable things to her and put some dissipation on her face.

“I wanna, be evil, I wanna be bad…” Eartha Kitt now; rasping through his head.

Back to the present and the task at hand.  Francois’ mother, an evil old witch by any standards, including Myra Hindley’s, was dead and it was his dubious honour to be the only family member sane or sober enough to go through her belongings and decide what to do with them.

Francois had known this would not be pleasant.  His mother was a Keeper Of Objects.  He could barely move through the jammed spaces of her small Karoo home.  Starkly, he remembered his shame of having friends over to see how he lived.  No, Francois had preferred to visit, rather than be visited.  It wasn’t only his mother though that brought this out in him.  His father had been a perpetual drunk, abusive and angry:  Doctor Jimmy and Mr Jim, the one coming out when he drank his gin. 

Yet, gazing at what was before him, he knew a call to the old bastard was in order.  Francois had to understand why there were 10 large old-fashioned jars, filled with metal swastika’s at the bottom of his mother’s cupboard.  Hidden behind shoe boxes and other paraphernalia.

“Dad, it’s me.  What’s with all these swastika’s?”

“Ag, that’ll be uncle Eddie, me lad.”

“No dad, these are most definitely not uncle Eddie, they are metal swastika’s and I want to know where they came from.”

“Off the Germans of course, you fucking fool.”

“Off what Germans,” shrieked Francois, automatically matching his father’s volume.

“He shoulda been decorated, your Uncle Eddie,” slurred Jim.  “Each one of those swastika’s is off a dead kraut.  Gestapo mostly.  Eddie hated the fucking Gestapo.”

“He killed all these people?”

“Aye, but that was only in the war.  Gave him a helluvan excuse did that war.  Uncle Eddie always liked ta kill wee things.  Then the war made it alright for him to move on to bigger prey.  Did I ever tell you about that time we was in that steenkin’ fuckin, baguette and garlic infested c…”

“OK, dad, I need to go now.”

Francois looked at the Swastikas.  They looked back.  Must have been at least 300, he estimated.  All Gestapo?  Uncle Eddie?  Memories of a brandy-soaked, vulgar, cheap tobacco smelling old fat man.  Uncle Eddie had been shipped off to a home as soon as possible.  He was an embarrassment and died several years later, after being moved from home to home for vile and despicable acts against the other inmates and staff.  There was something involving a student nurse, vasoline and a zimmer frame…  No, the memory was gone.  Probably a good thing.

The swastikas were an affront to Francois.  He had been a Buddhist for many years, while his life partner was a profound catholic, although he had left the seminary shortly after meeting Francois.

He couldn’t pass on the swastikas to anybody.  That was just wrong.  Like handing someone a slice of bad karma and saying “have a nice day, now” with a great big shit-eating grin on your face.

No.

He was not sure what the metal actually was, could be tin, could be silver-plate.  He rang his artist friend, Basil, up in Johannesburg and they reached a solution.

So, Francois gave away small, hand-caste Buddah’s to all his friends for the rest of his life.  His brother, Anton, ended up riddled with aids from a life ill-spent and in prison for murdering some German tourists in Prince Albert.  He had shot them far too many times for it to be even considered “accidental.”  There was, too, his running down the street screaming about the “fucking kraut boot heeled Nazis invading…”

The Eddie gene had avoided Francois, but seemed to run rampant through Anton.

A serial killer gene.

“I knew he was a no good kid…”

About four years ago I decided to be a grown-up and start putting money into a Momentum education policy for my kids so there would be some money for university. Today I met with my financial advisor and we looked over everything. The return on the kids’ policies? 3%. This in a market that has been a Bull one, with profits on anything from property to unit trusts not going below 18% and often at 40%. How can this happen?

I have no idea. But I am cancelling everything I can with Momentum and shipping my money off somewhere else. A standard savings account would have yielded a better return.

If you are with Momentum – take a long hard look at the performance of your policies.

Go into your kitchen in the deep dark night, head towards what is probably the third draw down. Open it carefully. See the tin foil? The little plastic bags? The arbitrary things you bought in a fit of shopping like little ice-cube bags…

In that very same draw is a seemingly-innocuous roll of cling wrap. Or five. We all buy it. We all willingly and knowingly admit something that is clearly spawned by the devil into our homes.

Pick it up. You will see the nasty ragged little bits where unsuccessful attempts to use it have resulted in nasty little clumps of see-through plastic. Then attempt, go on, dance with the devil… to unravel it and use one single solitary little square to wrap anything. Yes – anything you like. A sandwich? A banana? The top of a plastic tub (funny how they always lose their lids). Watch as, no matter what you do, it curls and catches itself then stretches funny. You may need to call someone to stick their fingers in the tube so you can pull a square off properly.

Observe as it somehow and demonically reduces itself in a sticky mess to something you couldn’t use to wrap half a boiled sweet.

That experience my friend was brought about the devil. The devil invented cling wrap. Go forth now and throw every one of those mangled rolls of the crap out. Quick! Your life and sanity may depend on it.

I have not one bean to my name after the UK jaunt. nada. zip. I have never been anywhere where food costs as much as it does there. Anyway, I did discover some truly excellent things about waving plastic in the UK.

First, shop when the seasonal sales are on. UK sales are proper ones. 80% off etc, unlike our paltry maximum here of around 20%.

Secondly, if you do big retail shopping, like Debenhams, Hamleys, Harrods – use your SA credit card. They have a system that immediately discounts you further by taking off the 18% VAT that poms pay. That’s a lot of moola.

Thirdly, if you have a Virgin Money credit card and use it on any Virgin product (especially the Megastores *drool*) you get an instant 10 – 15% discount.

Food? Well, you gotta eat. But even a Starbucks coffee and Rocky Road for three people sets you back about R180. Ouch. Eating out is very costly (R300 for three pastas) and even Tesco food is more expensive than the same in SA. Chinatown is good value.

Transport – viva the daily TravelCard! And that children under 11 travel for mahala. Accommodation is also expensive. Get to know someone. We stayed in a really good Chelsea hotel that should have cost 120 pounds a night each and I paid 40 quid a nightg for all three of us. It’s who you know.

Dolce – darling, the shoes!!! Plutz. There and then.

Anyway, I spent lots but had a really fine time with my girls.

Oh – went into Cartier and tried on a vintage art deco necklace made up of thirty 57 carat diamonds. Orgasm. Price – heart failure.

When I was a kid I was not a huge fan of Noddy, but I did love other Enid Blyton stories. Most had golliwogs in. For those of you who are not aware of what one is, they were stuffed toys, black of course, with bushy hair and those huge red lips. Not politically correct these days and the new versions of Blyton’s books have had them removed. Yes – strange but true. They have also removed from the Noddy books any reference to Noddy and Big Ears sharing a bed. What a twisted little world we live in.

Anyway, I was in a little toy shop in Stratford when visiting that great soap-opera writer, Shakespeare’s birthplace and guess what I found? Yep – Golliwogs. Lots of them. The joy! Not because I am racist Rhodie pig, but because (FINALLY) people are not that concerned anymore.

I bought one – just a fridge magnet. It took me back to my very tiny days in the foothills of the Vumba mountains and my grandparents’ home there where I was given one handknitted by my Nan. Such a nostalgia trip. I was informed, however, upon emitting the joyous shriek of “Golliwogs!” that we now call them just gollies.

Funny how things go huh? Wog used to be a pom nickname for Worthy Oriental Gentlemen. Then got abused. The character itself came from some woman, Bertha somethingorother, who wrote children’s books. They were sort of based on the black and white minstrel show.

Anyway, I am trying to figure out if, when and what, there has been a deeply offensive nickname for whities? I personally don’t find any of them really bother me at all.

So, our trip to the Uk was delightful in every way. Of great amusement was the warning upon landing, from my family, that we should keep our wits about us because there are muggers around. Muggers? Puhleeese! I am a Sarf Efrican, I eat muggers for breakfast. Pom criminals stood no chance. We don’t realise until we go elsewhere just how street smart and aware we are coming from one of the world’s crime capitals. We must have smelled like trouble to the pickpockets etc because we were harassed NOT ONCE. Closest was my near sexual harassment of a particularly beautiful Italian waiter in Camden.

The six days my daughters and I spent in London were fabulous. We were entirely without fear and only hit the hay at about midnight every night. We negotiated all forms of public trandsport, Soho on a Friday night after Mary Poppins (fucking supreme show) and hordes of people as we did a few mainstream tourist things. All without incident.

It was strange for the kids being somewhere they could walk the streets and catch buses without any fear. For all its nanny-stateness, the UK makes you feel very personally safe.

We stayed in a Chelsea hotel while in London and there was the usual constant city traffic noise and lots of police sirens. Two days in, Purple Dot was peering out of the window at cop cars and says:

“It’s nice to know the police are doing their job here.”

She is eight.

Anyway, more about the trip as things occur to me.

It is utterly fucking brilliant. In the style we all know and love “Some of My Best Friends are White” is refreshing and hysterically funny.

I think one of the things I love most about Silwane is the total lack of need to be deep and meaningful and full of suffering. The man knows how to take the piss out of everything.

So – go to EB and buy the book. You will not regret it.

I am a white catholic woman who considers herself an African. But it filled me with great pride, sense of history and the roots of my kind on a recent trip to the UK. I took my two daughters along. They are being taught South African history at school and, as it always is, history has been written by the winners. They learn about the evil of the white man and African life before the arrival of the colonists.

I took them all over the place in London and Wales. We went to a church built in 475, still in use. I showed them how history works, where we came from. We whities are mongrels. The poms were colonised by the vikings, the romans and have encorporated all sorts of other cultures through victory, defeat and their own empire. But these are mine and my children’s historical roots.

Our tribe.

I refuse to let my children grow up feeling shame for the colour of their skin or guilt over what their ancestors did. Yes, my family was a long line of colonials and empire builders. And that I am proud of. The courage, faith and strength in us is abundant.

Of course there is always bad alongside the good. The crusades, inquisition, slavery etc – but history serves a solid purpose and that is to help us learn from mistakes. History should never be denied.

We saw museums, churches, cottages, grand houses, bridges – the focus this trip was on history.

This holiday I showed my children what giants they stand on the shoulders of. I never want them to feel like aliens in the place they live – I want them to be proud, not ashamed.

There will be many UK based things I write over the next few days as I let some of it sink in and be digested.

Aloha blogbuddies – long time no scribble. Anyway, I am off to the UK tonight with my girls for two weeks. Should be a blast. A week in the countryside doing family stuff and then a week in London. We are staying on Kings Road – YAY! Got hectic discount for Chelsea Lodge Hotel from a relative, so we will be living in style but not paying through the nose. Always good.

Plan is to drag the kids off to do all sorts of cultural things. They are begging to see Harry Potter naked in Equus. Little pervs! Maybe – anyone seen young Daniel Radcliffe lately? YUM!

So, I’ll probably check in from time to time while I’m there, but mostly I intend to look and shop till my legs fall off.

Must buy a brolly when we land.

Love you all long time.

Things necessary for a great soak in the tub:

Hot water

A good book

Bubbles AND oil

Soap 

The trick with a bath is to make it as hot as you can bear.  Get in when it is just deep enough to come past your crotch…  turn down the water strength, but let the hot keep flowing in. 

Recline.

Read book for 30 minutes.

 Keep adjusting water with toes until it reaches the overflow, but if you still have hot water in the geyser – keep going.  That’s what the overflow is for!

Spend four minutes scrubbing.

Remove self from bath, looking like a bright red prune, squeaky clean, before the water even remotely resembles cold.