The first parent/teacher conference you attend should be ground-breaking stuff. This is the moment when you get to establish the status quo, and try to persuade her not to contact social services.

Grade ‘R’ is actually a pre-school year, but they take it verrry seriously. All the other parents of five-year-olds seemed to have focused goals for their children, ten-year plans and short tempers. I was trying not to laugh as I sat on the floor, and Neen sitting on her tiny chair was also pretending to be a real grown-up.

We had to go and meet the teacher, which was fun, and gloat over James’s superior art abilities, and managed to avoid volunteering syndrome. That’s what happens when someone in authority says they need volunteers, and you end up taking pity on the desperate look they have in their eyes, and signing up to do things in which you have no interest, for which you have no time, and in the knowledge that eventually you will   disappoint someone by not keeping your commitment.

No problem so far. The problems came later when we moved through to the main hall for a general meeting. We had spent too much time in the other class, so there weren’t any seats. Unless you wanted to go halfway down the aisle, and push through to a single seat. Naah. Neen and I needed each other. The headmistress (or chief educator) was doing her speech.

I thought I had heard her wrong as she started… ‘A is for…’ and carried on all the way to z. By ‘B’ I was already starting to look around the hall at the other parents, trying to gauge their involvement. Most appeared to be sitting there under duress, as they had fixed stares on their faces. Somehow they were able to project the impression that they were all  listening keenly to every a,b or q of the speech.

I started to do that panicky circular thinking thing. ‘Oops, I just scratched my left ear. Doesn’t that mean you disagree with whatever the other person has just said? Maybe I should try to compensate by placing my head at an angle, and cupping my chin in my hand…Oh, no, wait, that means I am bored. Ok, Ok, I’ll stand on this leg, Hey my glasses are falling off. Aaargh, itchy nose. Must scratch. Must scratch. Try not to make it look as though I am wiping nose with hand.’

Try watching someone fidget like that for an hour. The more I tried to stand still, the more I leapt around. So now all the other parents think of me as the weird man with the tic. But I always do that with body language. I only think about it after I’ve sat in the wrong way, or supposedly given the wrong impression. If you sit in a job interview trying to position yourself correctly, you don’t concentrate on the important stuff, like not playing with switchblades, or signing contracts that force you to work hundred hour weeks.

I guess some important things were said last night, but the only two that will remain with me are as follows: 1. Recycle, and 2. Don’t watch T.V. So tomorrow I’m off to the recycling center with our tv, and then my education will be complete.

Seeing as I only had about four minutes sleep last night, (when, oh when is Hannah going to start sleeping through the night?) I will share with you only one extended thought today.

Why is it, that when people come into my bookshop carrying a book or magazine, they hold it up and say boldly ‘I’m coming in with this’, or ‘Do I need to leave this at the counter?’

(Note: I know why they do this, really, I’m not that daft…)

My thought was this… Why, when I walk into a shoe shop do I not wave my feet in the air and say ‘I’m wearing these’, or ‘Do I need to leave these at the counter?’ The same would apply, perish the thought, to clothes. ‘Hi. I’m coming in with these jeans. Would you like to hang on to them for me?’ Or underwear. ‘Hi’ (lifts waistband) ‘Can I take these in, or do you need to lock them up in a little cupboard?’

These are the thoughts you get when you haven’t slept well for two and a half years.

The best bit of the film ‘the Usual Suspects’ is the bit at the end, which I can’t tell you about, in case you are one of the few people who haven’t seen it yet. It has a twist, and I feel like I need a dramatic twist in my tale tonight.

I get so fed up of the predictability of life, that I often wish that I could add a big fat twist. Something that would make people sit up and say ‘ What the heck happened there? We never saw that about him!!!!’ I don’t want an affair, in fact, that is exactly what I don’t want: the predictability of a furtive unsatisfying liaison, and the ensuing fallout. I don’t want to take up a potentially fatal sport, or even a safe one.

Being a naturalized South African, I have to work at feeling at home here, even though it has been 24 years. A lot of people like me, whose families came here from somewhere else have left to make homes in other countries. There was a mass exodus of Safricans to Australia recently, and the temptation is to follow suit, just to keep life interesting.

I could go to the UK, like my brothers, who seem happy, apart from the constant drizzle, and pies. I could go somewhere exotic, except I am not very qualified. I ended up a bookseller by default; I love books, got a part-time job to pay the bills, and I turned around ten years later and it has become a career. Neen, on the other hand, is incredibly gifted and marketable in her career, but I am (anachronistically) uncomfortable with the idea of her supporting me.

I feel as though the world is not so much my oyster, as my winkle. A winkle is the lesser known shell-fish, unlikely to feature in poetry, erotic or other, anytime soon. You dig the tangy flesh out of the shell with a pin, and swallow it whole…

I’m supposed to be writing a book, but that hasn’t progressed very far. Or at all. I get stuck on the very first bit: Dedicated to ?

The original purpose of becoming a glamorous, famous writer, was so that the guys in my class at school would be amazed at my success. Turns out, they are all successful, and as the years pass, they probably wouldn’t recognise me anyway. The thought takes me to write trashy romances under a pseudonym, but where’s the fun in being a success if you haven’t used your own name? People would just look at you funny if you claimed your name really was ‘Rose D’amour’.

‘Hi! My name is Velour Petal, and I live in Zanzibar. I work as a podiatrist to the Stars, and have seven well-balanced children’…

Occasionally when you read other people’s blogs they are going through that temporary crisis of being flamed. Vicious characters who clearly weren’t hugged enough as children have found the time to write obscene/hurtful/threatening messages. Here at ‘Husbands’, the only viciousness is my own inept sense of humour. I am constantly at war with the cynical voice on my shoulder, and I love the kind and helpful things that are often left here.

The reason I am thinking this way is that a customer of mine at the shop, a friendly university academic, who often comes in with his child in a pram, and chats to me about his collection of books, beat a former colleague so badly with his umbrella that the guy lasted a week in a coma before dying of his injuries tonight.

Obviously, my sympathy goes to the dead man’s family, and I don’t want to get philosophical at their expense, but the absolute shock of hearing that Mr S is now a killer has made me consider the rage so many of us carry around. Do I have the potential to snap to the extent of extreme violence? I hope not. The very worst I get is when I am incompetently served by people in a service industry, and I raise my voice to something above a murmur, and use nerdy words like ‘blooming’ and ‘appalling’. My conscience then ruins me, and I end up going back to apologise to them, which is strangely a much better feeling than the original letting off of steam.

I carry on my right hand three crescent shaped scars, right on the knuckles. When I was ten, a boy in my class at school…(thinks back)… Stuart, I think, teased me anout something. Did I recite the ‘sticks and stones’ mantra and walk away? Did I heck. I wound up what I hoped was going to be the biggest haymaker of a punch ever thrown, and of course, he ducked. I presume he ran away after that, but it is all a bit of a blur, because slamming your fist into face-brick as hard as you can makes you see stars for a while.

There have been other times of violence in my life, but most of them involve me slamming my face into somebody’s fist and crying. Once I did hurt someone by kicking them in the mouth, but they were trying to mug me, and had hit me on the back of the head with a brick. No way was I going to let them steal my tasseled suede cowboy jacket. (It was the eighties, ok?)

Sadly, I know many families whose patterned violence has caused much hurt. The ‘sticks and stones’ mantra doesn’t apply there. Run. Run fast, and don’t look back. Nobody has the right to hit you, drunk or sober.

I look at Mr S, and I think of his sweet family. I wonder if he will be sent to prison. I have read books about South African prisons, and if ever there was an incentive for staying on the right side of the law, there you have it. They are controlled by ruthless gangs, and horribly over-populated. What made this man internalize all that anger until he blew a fuse? He was in the shop two days before it happened, and he was fine.

Although SA has something of a reputation for violence, some of which reputation is warranted, it is still shocking when it spills over onto a university campus.

How well do you know your neighbours? Are they mild-mannered, like Penry, the mild-mannered janitor dog who turns into Hong Kong Phooey, Number one Super Guy? Are they decent and friendly? Do they have the capacity for violence? It seems so. Now some of you may have neighbours so twisted and strange that you wouldn’t be surprised if the FBI started hauling corpses out of their crawl-spaces, but most of us live in normal suburbia.

In an abnormal act of multi-tasking and fate, I was half watching the tv now while I was writing. There is a rerun of the ‘Naked Gun’ movie series. The scene I turned around to watch was the one where OJ Simpson is getting blown to bits. Now there’s a neighbour I don’t need.

So I guess flamers aren’t quite on the same league as murderers, but let’s face it, it’s only antisocial to be rude and cruel to someone you don’t know. If I incite feelings of brute rage within you, by all means, delurk and tell me how I hurt you, but try to do it rationally. If you don’t, please make sure not to stand anywhere near a wall when I try to pummel you.

Thank you, and keep the peace.

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.