I look across at Neen. There she is, pulling on a floor-length coat, over her quivering limbs. Her wild beautiful hair seems even more unruly today. Where are you going? I ask, wondering about her restlessness. Off to the center of town, she says. But it’s dark! You’re mad! I choke out. She levels one of those ‘do-not-cross-me’ stares that is usually reserved for our children… I’m going to score some drugs she whispers.

This scenario hasn’t quite happened yet, but is seriously close to being a reality. Everyone we know is, or has been, on some kind of pill to help them through a difficult emotional time, but can Neen get a pill? She can’t even get sympathy from our doctors. I reveal these secret things only because she has, and because it is not a shameful thing to suffer from PMT, or depression. To be safe, I will ask her to veto this before I post.

Other people can casually mention being in a bad mood to their doctors, and they whip out their prescription pads faster than you can say ‘Dr Nichopolous’ (ie: Elvis’s physician, for the uninitiated). They agree that sometimes we need help through a stressful time, and are happy to treat the whole person, rather than just the constant mini-illnesses you get when you are run down and at the end of your tether. Our doctor, who seems to be hesitant to treat anything larger than a mild cold, hands out referrals to expensive specialists like comps to a New Years Eve party.

He is fond of consulting a worn physicians manual, which I have grave doubts about. Above his mantelpiece, which houses a green-haired troll doll, is an almost perfect reproduction of a doctors certificate, but I worry about that book. Does it have penicillin in it? Why does he habitually prescribe drugs that are as effective as placebos? Still, he is very kindly, and we always return to him.

The specialists refer us to other specialists, who shake their heads and offer to do batteries of expensive tests. We look at our medical aid budget for the year, and sadly decline. Normally, we recover.

Before you get the wrong idea about Neen, she isn’t a mad drooling loony yet, but she recognizes a pattern of physical exhaustion that happens every month. There are chemistry students all over the world perfecting pills to help people battling with problems like these, so why can’t we get any? Maybe the old days were better, where your family would have you committed the minute you let your happy face drop, and then some wacko ‘doctor would pith your frontal lobe with a special lobotomy tool, until you were incapable of expressing emotion in any way besides gloomy farting.

So before my beloved wife heads for some shadowy street corner with a wad of crumpled ten Rand notes in her hand, please, medical fraternity, let her be treated…

Love you, Neen, and we’ll get through this.

A pleasant Sunday afternoon. I had all my body and facial hair systematically removed by naked flames. Well, maybe not entirely removed, but whole swathes of it were reduced to yellow brittle curls.

No, I am not the designated fire-eater in a drumming circle, or a mad alchemist playing with chemicals to create gold, but just a regular guy, trying to braai/barbecue some meat for his family.

Pride refused to allow me to succumb to the elements. Neen had asked tentatively whether I could get a fire going in the rain. Sound like a challenge to you, too? She had invited her sister around, and I had offered to do the cooking. Rain! I scoffed, It’s barely spitting… The fact that the bag of charcoal was lying outside in a puddle, and that I had no kindling apart from some sodden chipboard I hoped wasn’t slathered in chemicals, wasn’t about to deter me.

Interestingly enough, I battled for about an hour trying to create flames from soggy mush. I used most of the previous week’s Sunday Times (I knew there was a reason to buy it) and wheezed and blew like the ‘Human Bellows’ act at a circus. There was quite a sneaky wind in our back yard, it would wait for me to crouch near to the tiny flames before it would blow, great billowy blasts that recreated scenes from the movie ‘Backdraft’, and as I staggered around the yard clutching my scorched face, Neen sat inside with my dear sister-in-law, ignoring me, even though I stumbled blindly into the door once or twice.

She did, I admit, express concern the first time my eyelashes got frazzled, and then again when I came in to put butter on a wounded thumb. I guess by that time I was stubbornly refusing to give up, although I was feeling a bit nauseous because of the burnt beard smell. Their gentle conversation and laughter was a brutal mockery to me, outside in the garden, wrestling with the elements.

Eventually man triumphed, and as I peered through watery, weepy eyes, it looked as though the food was done. A succulent boneless leg of lamb, and some chops and sausage were borne triumphantly into the kitchen. And were they ready with the salads? Just. The butternut wasn’t done, though, so I had a bit of time to wait before eating, which was fine, because it gave me time to allow the swelling to go down.

A good shower washed the last of the ashen chunks off my blistered scalp, and I count it an entirely successful afternoon.

It’s amazing what passes for fun these days.

Aaah. Just got back from the same restaurant franchise I was hounding in the previous post. Told you we never learn from our mistakes!

Trying to control Hannah was like trying to control a dozen boa constrictors all trying to variously throw themselves out of the window, drink daddy’s juice, and see how the place looks from different aspects. I say juice, because since we were last there, it has become completely halaal to cater for a growing muslim population.

Not that I need alcohol to numb my pain, but it does help to have a glass of wine with your meal, to dull the very real pain of being stabbed in the face by your two year old, and have her walk indiscriminately all over your lap with her pointy sandals.

I realized that I have only got one t-shirt left that is up to wearing in public, as the others are stained/stretched to the point of only being good for pyjamas. I get given loads of promotional t-shirts, promoting new books, but for some reason they all seem to come in xxxl only. I, however, am medium. Short of taking steroids to bulk up, I usually have to give them to larger friends (obviously diplomacy is required here).

Plus, I’m fussy. I wouldn’t wear a Guinness World Record Book t-shirt, or a Harry Potter in Afrikaans (Harry Potter en die Towenaar se Steen). Neen was begging me to buy another t-shirt to wear for the remainder of summer, and offered to take the children to ‘Jimmy Jungles’, a huge indoor playground, so that I could dash to the shop and buy one.

This I did, but apparently this season the torn army surplus look is in, or else the hip look with bizarre phrases on the front: ‘Cool is Courage’, or ‘Wild Rocking Stars’. I ended up having to do the jughead thing and bought a black t-shirt. I’m not averse to colour, but when the choice is taupe, puce or coral, I’ll take the black, thank you.

So what if I look like Lou Reed.

We also bought two armchairs today, as we have been trying unsuccessfully to cover up the leaking stuffing in our current chairs with cushions. Long before we had children, we bought a lounge suite with blue, red and white stripes. The white has become a dull brownish grey, and they were clearly not designed to cope with heavy foot traffic. Our new ones, however, are a sensible brown, and appear invincible. Almost makes you want to have another baby just to find out…

It wasn’t a bad sort of a day, but very tiring. Retail therapy apparently only works if you are on your own, or with a girl-friend. I mean not me with a girlfriend, I mean a woman together with another woman. Me shopping with another man would be just a tad creepy. Unless we were shopping for drill-bits, or sacks of cement.

It’s not easy being a man sometimes.

Here I am. Home early. I wanted to cook something to surprise Neen, but a cursory glance in the fridge revealed cheese rinds, some old beetroot and eggs. My culinary skills are beyond turning that into anything resembling ‘food’.

On closer inspection we can add swiss chocolate, a bottle of wine, breadcrumbs and some tuna. I just hope she is at the shop buying up a storm, otherwise it may be dial-a-pizza night. We have been through a bit of an emotional storm at the moment, with Simon dying, and then another couple we know losing their son to a brain tumour. Things like eating and cooking have lost their importance.

I had a gift voucher left over from Christmas, so today I went out and bought a cd. This time it was the Rolling Stones –Hot Rocks 2. It is packed with fun and energy, and I don’t have to get emotionally involved with it. Our cd player seems to be giving up, so I have to beg and plead with it. The other day it shot a cd across the room, a-la-poltergeist, so gentle coaxing rather than the brutal slaps reserved for the work computer is what it seems to need.

As much as I am finding comfort in the Bible, and praying with Neen, It is also great to stick on a song like ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’, and have silly memories of the bad haircuts in the movie ‘The Big Chill’. Also, I am on my own, so I can dance around, or play along badly on my guitar. At least I have an actual guitar, and have progressed beyond the Air Guitar level.

If I were Nigella Lawson, with an overstocked larder, I would whip up a gourmet treat for Neen. I have been meaning to barbecue a fish, but poached smoked fish is also something I am craving. Brain food. Don’t you love those menus at certain restaurants where the food seems to exist in a parallel universe? In Foodland, nothing is chucked onto a plate, it ‘nestles on a bed of something unlikely’, and is seasoned with ‘garden herbs, individually gleaned’. It floats in a reduction of this weeks’ favourite tropical fruit, or something called ‘jus’. It shimmers, glistens and pulsates, until it is no longer food. It starts to have reasonable thoughts, and eventually glides off the table to set up home in a charmingly positioned cottage.

At the moment, we go to restaurants where they have mid-week bulk specials, and colouring-in pictures with cups of crayons. These seldom grab our children’s attention for longer than two minutes, so we find ourselves doodling away, trying to stay within the lines of a picture of a Native American brave, instead of making lucid conversation. We order food that won’t get eaten, and spend an hour picking up sachets of sugar, or moving the condiments around the table to escape the clutches of curious small hands.

We judge a restaurant on the quality of its Free Toy, as opposed to the taste of the food, and the waiter who makes our tearful little ones laugh gets a big tip, as opposed to the remote people who leave you sobbing and praying that they will bring the bill in this century. I have been able to time my son: it takes less than ten minutes between downing a milkshake (despite my ‘gentle’ protestation) and turning into monster boy. To please Jill, I get to use the word ‘rictus’. That is the expression on the parents’ faces when both of their children have sugar dementia in a public place.

Other patrons will twist their lips at you, snarl, and even offer unsolicited and unhelpful advice. ‘Shame. He looks tired. Why don’t you take him home?’ They mutter and complain, as though they expected this crummy ‘child-friendly’ restaurant to have the atmosphere of a Buddhist retreat. Eventually we stagger out, vowing never to return.

But we do. Days pass, and our short-term memory seems to be fading, as we glibly suggest going out for supper, as though it is still the treat it used to be. For more fun, we should actually be saying ‘Let’s go and strip the paint off our garden walls using only our tongues’, or ‘Let’s stick splinters under our nails until the nerves start to twitch’.

That is why I think we will call the pizza guy, rather than go out. Then I can duplicate the experience by buying a horrible useless toy and throwing it against the wall until it breaks. I’ll get the crayons out, and then we’ll cry ourselves to sleep. Again.

How come reality seems so unreal sometimes?

The joy of working in a service industry includes getting sworn at, shouted at and mocked for no apparent reason, and having to smile while your head implodes from the unfairness of it all. Why thank you for taking me into your confidence, Mr Racist, and telling me you hate ----- kinds of people as if I should agree with you.

I don’t. I’m tired of listening to garbage that belittles entire race groups, or listening to your weird little conspiracy theories.

In the same breath, Mr customer, you are telling me that you have seen aliens, and that they frequently fly over your house. Happily, this gives me an opportunity to practise my ‘you freak- I’m not listening anymore but I have to smile’ face, one which I use more than I care to during the course of a day.

One guy is a senior free-mason, and tries to give me the secret handshake, but I smile all the way as he nods and winks his way through a one-way conversation about the Rosicrucians, Knights Templar, and the Gay TeleTubby.. .

I have had to help people who say they don’t read American writers, romances, thrillers or biographies. They say helpfully that they enjoyed ‘Tuesdays With Morrie’, as though it is an entire genre of writing.

Do you greet people in shops? I hope so. Please smile at me, and I will smile too. Please don’t attack me if it is you who can’t remember the author or title of a ‘purple book’. I am reasonably well informed, and will do my best to track down something. I enjoy it when I can read a person well enough that they will come to the counter and say ‘Ummm’ and before they even mention the book I have put it into their hands. They act as though I am clairvoyant, but if you spend all day in a bookshop, you get used to the things people will ask for.

I could probably recommend something for you, too. Need something good to read? Go on, try me…

Course, if I am wrong, you can probably get your money back…

Monday rant over.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, houses on big estates, or stately homes, were often occupied by inventive, half-crazy, eccentric gentry. They would choose obscure facets of science to patronize, and fund mad adventures of explorers into the vast unknown reaches of the world.

Left to their own devices, they would perform bizarre experiments in hidden cellars, and form short-lived societies of equally ‘creative’ minds. In the midst of these lunacies, great discoveries were often made, and have affected life as we know it now.

That has nothing to do with what is on my mind.

These landed people, apart from doing ill-advised things with test-tubes, also displayed great inventiveness when it came to their gardens. It became common for each sprawling acreage to have a folly, a building- often a tall tower- with no purpose other than to stand on their grounds as a massive monument to their boredness.

Many of these follies still stand, some not even having windows, some, a small pointless room, and can be visited.

Another trend was to have a hermitage in a leafy nook, preferably near the entrance and access road. A humble abode, often a cave-like pit, where your hermit would live. He would pose thoughtfully at the entrance to his hovel, and act as a conversation-piece for the visitors. Having a hermit implied a certain level of contemplation within his employer; perhaps that the local Lord was a philosopher, or thinker. He would receive a small wage, and of course be allowed to dwell in his shelter.

So I ask: where have all the hermits gone? Is it too late to pack up a dodgy loincloth and head for the manor? I just feel like dealing with people can be hard work sometimes. I feel like the things I do at work produce what seems to be a folly, of no lasting meaning, whilst providing temporary amusement for the few.

I guess real hermits can’t have scraggly headed kids bopping around, or a  glamorous wife who is able to do a million things at once. Hey, dear! Would you mind vacuuming the hovel later, please? There are strangers coming past!

Am I the only person in the world that looks at Rodin’s ‘the Thinker’, and imagines that he is having bowel-movement problems?

Brain tired.

Brain need rest.

I wonder if my neighbours would complain if I had a 90 meter tower tuckad away at the corner of our modest garden. Ok, small garden. I would, if there were no water restrictions, have to get out the garden hose to hose off those extreme sportsmen practicing their free-climbing. Hey! You! Stop abseiling down my meaningless architecture. And don’t talk to the Hermit, he gets grumpy when it rains.

Phew.

Deep Breath.

Moving on to something to focus my witlessness.

Tertia is a friend of mine. She of the ‘2100 hits-day-blog’. She has just given birth to beautiful twins, and has been posting questions she has. Given the traffic through her site, you would imagine that all her questions would be answered, in innumerable ways, with all the variety of a freshers week at Baby University…

But you’d be wrong. Some questions are left tantalizingly open-ended, while some are incredibly important, and yet overlooked. Here are some facts, answers and info you cannot do without, during those pivotal early months.

1. Did you know that you can choose your baby’s appearance? Yes, you now have the freedom to choose between any of the following faces, for a fun-filled ‘guess-the-celebrity’  game:

 A) Mickey Rooney- always smiling, with chuckable chin.

       B) Winston Churchill- Serious in mien, prominent lower lip, and stiff                                      upper lip

      C) Leonardo DiCaprio- Boyish, foolish and cute.- Hey, brains aren’t everything!

 And D) William Shatner- Lookin’ good with that full head of ‘hair’, and the skintight gear.

2. Memorise the colour of those early stools. That colour is known only as ‘baby poop’. That colour is perpetually unsuitable for items of clothing, bathroom co-ordinates, or house paint of any description. Failure to note this will result in people looking at you/house with invisible thought bubbles: ‘Hmmm. What is that colour? I know I’ve seen it before….Aaaaargh!’

       3.Get to know your stool. Now that you are a mom/dad, a turd is a ‘stool’. This, however, does not add an iota of glamour to a grim subject. You will be questioned on the colour, smell and consistency of your child’s poop. What, in the past, you would have sent spiralling downward faster than a belly-up goldfish is to be consulted like an oracle, revealing the ‘inner-secrets’ of your baby.

4. Forget brand names for baby clothes. Get a few toweling baby-gros, or rompers, and rotate them until your child is about three years old. They stretch, they grow with those sprouting limbs, and this is the only stage in a human being’s life where it is acceptable to be clad in an all-in-one lime-green toweling junp-suit. Fair enough, Abba did try to turn them into popular adult wear, but they remain the property of the small people. (Author’s note: I do admit a small amount of envy. Those things look great!) Frilly branded clothes will be worn once, and then be too small.

5. Take up a new hobby for those mid-night feeds. Your hands may be occupied, so go for some craft or skill performed by the mouth only. The Nose Harp, for instance, is easily mastered, and oddly soothing to the neo-natal. The didgeridoo can cause vibrations alarming to the neighbours, however, and should only be attempted by isolated moms.

6. Try not to dwell on the mystery of the fontanelle. Anything to do with membranes and craniums should be left to the experts. Plus, it looks icky.

7. It’s not too late to have umbilicoplasty. Get in there while those scars are fresh, and help choose your child’s umbilical future. It may seem a small thing now, but we often carry the weight of these things into adulthood. (Ok, maybe that last is just me). Outies Rule! 

8. Cultivate babysitters. Bribe them. Cajole them. Ignore their eccentricities, such as bringing a sack of sweets, or hormonal boyfriend/girlfriend. Make sure they know how to use the phone, but don’t, and that they can stay the pace with boisterous kids. Reward them.

So, Tertia, I hope this is helpful in some way. By the way, I personally think circumcision for decorative purposes only is a bit barbaric, seeing as you asked. Hygiene? Sure. Religious purposes? Go for it. I still get edgy every time I see a razor blade or scalpel, and there has been a lot of water under the, er, bridge since then. So to speak.

Some questions never get asked, but I bet you are all thinking these things. Anybody got some advice/examples/old wives tales to add to this highly informative page?

I know this is supposed to be funny blog about family life and other esoteric observations, but please allow me to add another pigeonhole. For those of you looking for a great belly-laugh, try Dooce, or Lee today.

Today I got devastating news. One of my favourite people in the world died very suddenly. He was Simon, the lead pastor at our church for fifteen years. His irreverent sense of humour convinced me at the beginning that Christians don’t have to be white-shoes wearing conservatives, with perma-scowls and bad toupes.

He was, in a very real sense, like a father to Janine and I. At our church, we don’t call people by titles, like ‘pastor’ or anything else. We don’t dress any differently on a Sunday than we would normally, and even the leaders can be found serving tea, or building houses, or just hanging around a barbecue making stupid jokes.

This man was so utterly convinced that God has given us grace, grace to all people, no matter how big or small our mistakes, that he staked his life on it. He spent his energy traveling all over Africa, to places like Sierra Leone in the midst of a violent war, to townships where white men were rarely seen, to meet with the locals. Not to force them to become westernized ‘religious’ types, but because he loved the poor, and was utterly devoted to displaying Jesus to them.

He was a big man, well over six feet tall, and yet it was his personality that dominated a room. His belly laugh would infect everyone, and to be hugged by his giant arms was a comfort I won’t forget.

He bumped into me at work once, and hugged me there, too. See, he wasn’t a man to be wheeled out and displayed on a Sunday, but a man who lived a consistently passionate life. His wisdom and advice could stir you up for months at a time, He could weep over the poor, and gave generously. He hated injustice, and loved to give praise to people, but the glory to God.

Two weeks ago, on the 26^th of December, the church gave him a party for his fiftieth birthday. He was completely healthy, and looking forward to a busy year.

On Sunday, in the church bulletin he wrote:

“ Perhaps the start of a new year is the ideal time to reflect on how precious time is and how each day we are given by God is an opportunity. The apostle Paul says in Ephesians 5:15 ‘Be very careful, then, how you live- not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil’….. We need to treasure each day and make the most of the opportunities God will send our way to experience His grace, to do His will and to glorify His name.”

On Friday he left to preach in New Zealand, and on Saturday night he had a heart attack and died.

Maybe your experience of church has made you picture a remote guy with good manners at the front, but Simon was not like that. I feel like a family member has died, and despite all the wonderful memories, I am crushed.

Simon, you were father in the Lord to me, I’ll miss you. I can’t wait to get to heaven, to hear your silly jokes, and to see you happy in the arms of your saviour.

What a man! What a life!

Simon Pettit: 1954- 2005

There you sit, watching the grey sheets of rain billowing against the windows, the comforting warmth of wood smoke in your nostrils. The sky, when it emerges from behind the smudgy darkness, is the fickle colour of a baby’s eyes: blue for a heartbeat, and then swallowed up in drab gloom.

Sound familiar? Then you must be one of those odd people who make the Northern Hemisphere your home. I suppose you could pretend to enjoy the infinite winters and momentary summers, but let’s be honest, wouldn’t you rather be sitting out under the sky on a still summer evening, the moisture droplets dripping off your glass onto your clammy hand?

So you had a white Christmas, but did you not know that you can buy a can of spray-on-snow for that purpose? Nothing says ‘tis the season’ like a sprizz of white goo.

How did I get here? Oh yes. We are in the throes of the driest summer in a hundred years here in Cape Town at the toe-end of Africa. Those of us with gardens are only allowed to water once a week for a half an hour, using buckets, because of water restrictions. On the weekends I get to kick a ball with James on the scratchy brown stubble that we used to call a lawn, and pluck the withered corpses of flowers from their emaciated stems.

I have a theory: Healthy people caused this. See them walking around, clutching their bottles of mineral water, drinking their eight liters of flower food a day. Watch them swigging their water as they walk round a mall, or stroll to the post office. Come on! Did generations before ours keel over because they only had coke, or lemonade?

Two of my staff members went on what seemed to be the ‘wee diet’ a while back. They sucked on bottled water like giant babies, and hopped around as they tried to avoid losing control of their bladders. Every fifteen minutes they sashayed off to the bathroom, and did they lose weight??? Not an ounce! Did our dams and rivers suffer? I offer exhibit ‘A’: My dead lavender, daisy bush, fuschia and leucospernum. Fat people killed my garden!

No, wait, not fat people, but hydromaniacs. I, personally, avoid drinking water unless it has coffee, sugar and milk in it. Fizzy drinks? Yes please. Fermented grape juice? Yahoo! (Before you argue that vineyards use loads of water, I can’t hear you: I’m putting my fingers in my ears…) I could concede that if you had been crawling through the desert, chewing on salt crystals, or adrift on the ocean, eating raw fish for a week, that a glass of water may have its appeal, but ultimately it is just nothing. No taste. No fat. No fun.

Like salad. Salad is just water in disguise. Lettuce tastes like wet paper. Tomatoes are mere watery orbs, and cucumbers, while good for enhancing the taste of cheese, are, let’s face it, never going to satisfy a workin’ man.

We Southerners will sit in our cremated yards, wrinkled and thirsty, quietly chuckling at you Northerners, hunched over your heaters, watching your rain-suits drip onto the rug in the hall, and be content in the awareness that we have made the superior choice.

Of course, if you’ve been talking to my son James, the title of this entry would have an entirely different meaning. Poor kid has never had 100% hearing, and with the latest ear infection things seem to have dulled that sense a little.

He was busy teaching himself to write (do I hear ‘child prodigy’?) as we have chosen not to, and he painstakingly curled out the word ‘BOOB’ in block capitals, followed by ‘CRAC’. Neen was very impressed that he could write that well, and asked him what it meant. ‘BOOOOOOOB’ is seemingly the noise a vast explosion makes when you have a middle ear infection.  ‘CRAC’ is probably a gunshot.

I’m waiting for the day when he goes into a career as a special effects designer: Picture the latest James Bond movie, or some action fodder, with heavily armed fiends whipping out their mortars, and firing off a round to the rollicking sounds of ‘BOSOM!’ or a machine pistol rattling out its staccato belch: ‘TITTY TITTY TIT’. Pretend you didn’t read that last bit. I think I carried the metaphor a bit far.

His favourite books at the moment are some books given to him by his Scottish Granny. They are comic books, starring a mischievous boy named Wullie. Wullie is how you would pronounce Willie in Scotland. The books use heavy Scots dialect, of the ‘Och, hoots mon!’ type. He enjoys them, even though he can’t read much more than a few words, and rolls around laughing sometimes.

He’ll take them in the car, or to the shops, and to his friends houses, and when asked what he is doing, say, without a trace of humour: ‘I’m just looking at my Wullie’, which may look fine on a page, but shouted across a restaurant is somewhat disturbing.

I love to see my children getting into books, even if they do get confused sometimes, so I guess I can live with a few ‘wullies’ and ‘boobs’ for a while.

If any of you were hoping to read about jiggly fleshy bits, I apologise. Even if you weren’t hoping to, I apologise. Don’t criticize me, I may whip out my catapult, and HOOTER you on the nose!