“Should I marry W? Not if she won’t tell me the other letters in her name…”

That’s a quote from Woody Allen, an actual humorist, as opposed to the only sane person in this world, as it felt today.

Let’s call him B. B came to me at work, the place where I work, C, is not doing so well at the moment. I have begged B for advice on how to reverse this trend. B’s suggestion today was that D, someone I nearly fired when I caught stealing, and who was sent in disgrace to another C, come in and take over.

I nearly pooed my pants , P. So D should come and try to rectify the problem which is none of her business, and be promoted over me, M?.  After I nearly P, I had to wander around for a couple of hours, with my mouth in a goldfish ‘O’ of incredulity.

In my rage, I threw a ham sandwich across the kitchen.

(Note: rarely will you have the chance to see rage, R, and ham sandwich, H, in the same sentence).

I must have missed that episode of Dr Phil where he spoke on the catharsis of cold meat flinging, but amazingly it helped. Once the R ebbed a little, I peeled the H off the floor, and started to calm down.

If only I had had a plate of lasagna, or a chicken pie, I could have achieved nirvana.

(I am now just seething and simmering away, but don’t be afraid to visit. It was one of those days where I dream of being a stay-at-home-dad, SAHD, instead of having to spend my days in pointless frustration, dealing with B’s, C’s and D’s).

12345678910… counts…breathes…flings ham…

“A young animal may leave some droppings or urine on your shoulder but this generally stops once it’s a little older.” Quoted from ‘The Rat’ by About Pets publishers.

This is part of my research into the feasibility of having rats and small children under the same roof. Even though I kept rats as a child, I didn’t want to remember those times, joyous though they were, and allow my current attitudes to be rose-tinted. Admittedly, male rats have freakishly outsized testicles (ratpacks), which must be alarming to females of the species.

My life has been partly shaped by rats. (Aha! I hear you proclaim, just as you’d guessed!) I don’t just mean gnawed into shape, but rather there have been some pivotal moments in my life concerning this much-maligned beast.

My first great acting role was in the musical the ‘Pied Piper of Hamlyn’. I was the piper, as I was one of only two boys skilled enough on the recorder to lend credence to the role. I wore a motley satin suit of red and gold, and spirited both rats and children away with my spectral piping abilities. I count this a turning point in my life, where I grew to love the adoration of crowds…

My first real experience of grief involved leaving my pet rat, Adrian No 1, in too bright a patch of sun, and his water and life ran out, one shortly before the other. I buried him in the garden, and after the grief had lessened, dug him up a few times to observe the passage of decay. If there are any laboratory workers reading this, check no rats are reading over your shoulder…

Rats look kind of the same, so I replaced him with Adrian No 2.

Some childhood books worth rereading…: Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. A brilliant social fable, scurrilously destroyed by a film version. Who are those intelligent rats living under the rose bush? Is there something sinister to their tale?

The Rats by James Herbert. Horrifying horror, which in retrospect a child should not have read. (Rats gnawing human flesh etc.)

And finally, the Pit and the Pendulum, a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. (Again, the threat of gnawed flesh… What was I reading as a youngster?)

London was hopelessly overpopulated in the 14^th- 15^th centuries, fortunately the Black Rat helped reduce the population by at least a third, and HELLO! It was the fleas that were to blame for the plague…

I remember an album I used to listen to when I was about 14, by the Stranglers, I think called Rattus Norvegicus. It had a gimlet-eyed rodent on the cover, and was very punky. I remember that the drummer of the band the Damned called himself Rat Scabies. (Who knows, maybe he still does?)

Before you worry that I am having some post-goth-punk crisis, I am just having a twisted trip down memory lane, as I consider buying a rat for my son as a pet. (Purists would say a rat cannot be ‘bought’). Apparently one can buy big fat cane rats, as big as medium-sized dogs, as pets, or even for the pot… Mmmm roasted rat…

I don’t see that becoming one of the great flavours of the 21^st century: Barbecued Beef, Chicken or rat noodles? Maybe you too have eaten in dodgy Chinese restaurants, where the ‘chicken’ chow mein tastes just a little toooo gamey… Chalk it all up to experience, I say, even if it does make me sound ninety-three.

Rats are the new dog! Ever seen a maltese poodle in a maze? I would personally love to see the author of ‘Who Moved My Cheese’, that tiny ‘motivational’ tomelet thrown into a giant maze, covered in cheese essence, and hunted down by red-eyed sewer rats. Why don’t you re-engineer that corporation, buddy…

How much is that rodent in the window?

The one with the pink hairy tail

How much is that rodent in the window?

The one that makes girlies go pale…

Hug a rat today. And then have your shoulder laundered.

(If you have persevered, and read this all the way through, trust me, I haven’t lost my marbles. Yet.)

We may not have sat around hugging ourselves and beating djembe drums, but James and I had a good time of male bonding on Friday night. We sat huddled in the gale force wind, and I listened to other people party until 4am, and then dozed fitfully until 4.15. We had to get up early so that I could get to work, so sleep didn’t really feature.

Anyway, camping= tick: We’ll definitely do that again.

Right now, James has moved on to different challenges. Neen and I recognized a fundamental deficiency in his life today. He was playing in his paddling pool, and he found a dead ant. (Everyone hum the ‘Pink Panther’ theme music: deadant, deadant, deadant deadant deadant…) He was earnestly trying to coax it back to life, giving it little bowls of water, and speaking in soothing baby-talk to him/it. Suddenly (!) He rushed inside… the ant had come back to life! I can attest to its feeble head movements, although there was little happening in its thorax. (It was a sexiplegic). James rapidly ascribed the miraculous healing to Jesus, but sadly the ant did indeed succumb to the inevitable a few minutes later.

Unpeturbed, he set about making a little home for his new pet, the dead ant…

We have also seen him leaping about the house trying to catch a fly to keep as a pet, but when your son is happy to settle for a dead insect as a pet, it is time to act. Apart from some allergies to dogs and cats, and some degree of caninophobia, we have no restrictions on what we can keep as pets.

Neen, being cautious, called him over. James, would you like a goldfish? She probed.

Nah. What kind of pet would you like? We asked. He is not too fussy, it seems, and would settle for a hamster, a tadpole or a parakeet. I have some experience in living with, and outliving, small pets, and was able to tell him about the nocturnal attitudes of hamsters, and the short life spans of mice.

I am quite fond of rats as pets, as they are affectionate, clever and clean. (Just like me). I managed to clinch the deal, and he was about to settle for a hypothetical rodent, when Neen offered to get him one for his birthday. Ever since, he has been asking us questions about rats. What do they eat, do they bite, and can he take it to school… Neen’s only proviso is that it doesn’t have creepy pink eyes. (Sorry if you are an albino blogger, my wife can be hopelessly insensitive).

But generous. Come September, our house will be infested with rodents again, except this time it will be in a cage instead of roaming free in our ceiling. (Mental note: Get rid of any remaining sachets of rattex…)

I have seen those kids in his class. They are quite ‘exuberant’, ie, violent, and I don’t want to be like the Stephen Spender poem, ‘My parents kept me from children who were rough…’. I want him to have a fair stab at fitting in, and presenting a dead ant as his pet at ‘Morning Ring’ (kind of show-and-tell) is bound to bang some nails in his social coffin. Rats carry a certain amount of weight, socially speaking, although you don’t want to get too attached, as very few people with a rodent on their shoulder succeed at blind-dates.

James, beat that drum, and throw that rat a cookie… We’ll make a man of you yet…

My hands are the hands of a bookseller. I don’t have big leathery callouses, apart from the one on my typing finger from using the backspace key. I do have a dickey tendon in my wrist, either from reading too much or playing the guitar with too much exuberance.

I just carried a tent for two hours. I borrowed it from a colleague for James’s campout at the school. It was one of those objects that feels light when you pick it up, and even though you have a nagging feeling to the contrary, you think you will easily be able to carry it home. I was doing my best not to look like a hobo as I rode the train and the taxi, and had to resist jiggling my house keys to prove that I do live under a solid roof.

My uncalloused hands are smarting now. When I was younger I camped a fair amount, but in those days tents were tent-shaped. I had to bring this tent home today to practice putting it up, as it is a modern non-prismatic affair. I don’t want to look like a bookseller tomorrow in front of the other dads, I want to throw it together as professionally as an Everest sherpa setting up camp on the South Col. The last thing I need James to see at his new school is his dad being jeered by other fathers sitting outside their Eiger Dome Homes.

The tent is on the floor, and as I am writing, you may have guessed that I am procrastinating about putting it together. It comes in a surprisingly small bag, which hopefully doesn’t mean that some bits didn’t make it here.

James has never been camping, and he has been rambling giddily about it all week. Apparently we are going to ‘explore’, (as we will be camped on a playing field, who knows what uncharted territory we may find) and eat, and use his specially purchased torch. We have both got torches now, but their combined beam is barely enough to get a moth to raise an eyebrow, or compound eyebrow, or whatever lepidopterae have. I don’t want to barbecue in front of other professional super-dads, and was contemplating getting the pizza man to deliver one to the school. Does that make me lose dad points?

Every time I plan to do something outdoors lately it guarantees rain. We can go for weeks with nothing but blazing sun, and the minute I commit to being adventurous and outdoorsy, it pours.

Assembling the tent is intimidating me. I still have flashbacks about that terrible Christmas Eve where I spent hours trying to reassemble a pile if bolts and thingies and snibs, and turn them into a bicycle. The badly translated Chinese directions referred to miniscule diagrams with vague pictures, and said unhelpful things like ‘Place cranking shaft of (A) upon the turner making sure to tight all for entirety. Be not attaching (F.2) for this be great danger to buttock of user.

Fortunately, I was in the cub-scout movement until the age of ten, and should the tent prove too complex, I have earned my ‘Shelter Construction’ badge. I can bind leafy branches together using vines, and James and I will be safe from the elements.

I have a deep suspicion that this experience will provide material for at least one other post, so keep an eye open for part two of “THEY HUNTED WILD PIZZA”

Also: Should I be having this suspicion that Neen will be laughing herself to sleep thinking of the males outside, since she declined, a little too emphatically, to join us?

Did you wear red and white today? Did you purchase something unusual with a heart-shaped motif? Did you watch the phone, hoping it would ring… (At this point I will restrain myself from quoting the song ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight’, especially the bit where it goes ‘Do the chairs in your parlour seem empty and bare, do you gaze at your doorstep, and picture me there…’ See? I didn’t quote it in its syrupy entirety.

Love isn’t such a bad thing. Romance is vital for any relationship. (Apart from work relationships, and extended family relationships: there, the romance trapdoor is best nailed shut).

The power of tv:

In the 1970’s tv show, the Hulk, starring Lou Ferrigno, there is a scene at the beginning during the opening credits where a woman whose child is trapped under a burning car harnesses this incredible strength, and manages to lift it into the air. That’s love, man. (Of course, when I try to lift cars, I merely get a double hernia, and little cuts from the rusty undercarriage).

Why does my brain file that away under ‘love’?

I didn’t wear red, but I did buy some chocolate for Neen. Fortunately, at no point was she prostrate under a conflagratory automobile, so I escaped having to prove the intensity of my love.

May you all find someone to share your lives with, someone who values you and respects you, and isn’t afraid of being embarrassed in front of you. May you also find someone who likes the way you think, and isn’t afraid of helpfully reminding you when you are being a twit.

May you find someone that will love you the other 364 days of the year.

You’d think that being a Christian, the third most important day on my calendar would be Shrove Tuesday.

Or pancake day. Fortunately my Penguin English Dictionary (which I won as part of a proof-reading competition) tells me that shrove is the past tense of shrive. Clear? Ok, it has something to do with confession and absolution, neither of which I do in the ‘religious’ sense. Of course, as you are aware, there is plenty I do need to confess, but I do it in the old-fashioned protestant way of talking to God, or a friend.

Why, in movies, are Christians always depicted as theologically ignorant, wracked by guilt, joyless legalists? They sit hunched in confessionals, or drool wild-eyed outside death-row on picket lines. They frown on anything and everything, and are far more concerned with how people look than who they are.

There is a massive contingent of people supporting Bush as president because he is a Christian. Whether those people are politically informed, I don’t know, but I personally wouldn’t support someone merely because they profess the same religion as me. Likewise, those detractors who scoff at the ‘Christian’ fraternity in US leadership, their well-publicised prayer-meetings, and their ‘God-is-on-our-side’mentality could also miss some of the larger picture.

God does not choose sides. Remember, He loved the whole world? That was first, even before the part that ‘He sent His one and only son, so that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life…’

When I was considering becoming a Christian I worried that I would have to change my style of dressing. Now I realise that that is a fairly small issue in the greater scheme of things. I am quietly opposed to robotic and unquestioning ‘faith’, that is based more on keeping up with the Joneses. By all means, if you feel that dressing a particular way will increase your closeness to God, then do it, but don’t do it because people won’t accept you if you don’t.

I am keen on reformed theology, which is based on an unshakeable belief in the Bible as the divinely inspired word of God. I worry when Liberal theologians adapt verses according to cultural norms, or dismiss chunks of scripture as being culturally irrelevant.

Does God care if I shave my head? Sure, if I get all arrogant about it, but mostly He cares more about the stuff going on inside me. Not even just my head, but my heart. I do try not to be too rebellious, and I often stumble over the pride and self-centredness that probably affects you too, but my main aim is to please Him.

I will try not to judge you. I will occasionally eat pancakes, (although rarely as part of a religious ritual) and I daily try to get as close to Him, and stay as close to Him, as I can. It’s partly my choice, but only because He did what He did for me first.

If, theoretically, He asked me to wear an obvious toupe, I guess I would have to, but for the moment, He looks down on me, and sees His reflection in my shiny pate. Better that than I wear some ghastly ‘Christian’ disguise.

The reason I am telling you this, is so that you will understand. God motivates me. I do get daft and go off on wild silly tangents, but without Him I would just be silly. Terminally silly. If I were to die tomorrow, I know where my hope lies. Forget angels and harps. To me, the reality of heaven is my goal. Weird? I guess so, but I am secure in that hope. If you are not a Christian, then it seems as though my security is based on nothing, but if you pause. Think. Pray. You know I’m not lying.

I’m not out to insult you if you are jewish/muslim/areligious, but just trying to fill in the gaps. I can’t just make myself out to be a half-person, funny and vacuous. Sermon over.

Funny stuff to follow.

How can I have a 36 year old brother? I know that takes some of you aback, as you marvel at my ability to retain my youthful appearance. But yes! He is two years older than me, and part of me has always hero-worshipped him. I forget at what point we become middle-aged, but he is still kind of cool.

He has a built-in cool monitor. He knows what is in, and what is out, and has taught me so much about life. His name is John, and he lives in London. (Everybody say Hi, john). He has been visiting here with Lydia, his girlfriend, and it has been a real treat for James and Hannah to have their other uncle here to spoil them.

As a child, I copied everything he did, to the point of idiocy, you know that thing people say… ‘If he told you to jump off a cliff, would you?’ Well, yes. When he was arrested for serving alcohol illegally, I made certain I was too. When he got leglessly drunk and unpopular with the in-crowd at school, I did it as well. He has a knack for pointing out things that are stupid, and I hung on his every word.

Until I met Neen. Then I became more me. We have developed apart for the last seventeen years, and that is a good thing, but we still have so much in common. Of all the people in the world, there is no-one that can understand my experience quite like him. We share a childhood, and a past, and we look to the future based on past experiences.

I discover now that he is actually quite a sensitive guy, that he isn’t the in-control man I used to think he was, and it adds to his personality, rather than takes away from the myth.

James spent the afternoon making up ‘poo’ jokes to tell him, and they appear to share the same scatological sense of humour. Fair enough, so do I. Stick us all in the same room, and say the word ‘fart’, and we will be rolling with laughter, guaranteed. So we burped, laughed and said words like ‘bottom’ and ‘bum’ a lot.

Neen had fun, too, although she was morally obliged to pretend to be disapproving of the poo stuff. I guess someone has to be the adult here. The most fun we had was when James brought out a piece of an old doll of Hannah’s, just the hip section: essentially a disembodied bum. We made the bum drive a car, we threw it in the bin, we dug it out of the bin, and we laughed and laughed and laughed.

Of course, a real severed torso wouldn’t be as funny, but you have to admit, there are so many things you can do with a little plastic butt. (This was all good clean stuff, so don’t let your imagination run too wild.) We told knock-knock jokes, played hide-and-seek, and had another barbecue.

Knock-knock

Who’s there?

Hatch.

Hatch who?

Bless you!

That is James’s only joke at the moment, so repeat ad nauseum.

I prefer:

Knock-knock

Who’s there?

Cows go

Cows go who?

No, silly, Cows go moo, not who…

Now who can’t find that funny?

Bum. Poo. Ha ha Ha.

I promise, this is just a temporary relapse, and when I return, it will be as the decent, upstanding guy you know and love.

Anyway, I love you, John. We’ve been a long way, some of it together, some apart, but I appreciate the man you’ve become, and love your relationship with Lydia. Be strong, mate, and enjoy the world for all its worth. (One day. I pray that you will get to know Jesus, the way I have, but I trust that God will do that in His way, at His time).

(I guess the Lord doesn’t exactly condone bum jokes, but in the context of brotherly love, I hope I am forgiven).

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’…