Reported in local news this week: There have been seven recorded cases in recent weeks of botfly infestation. The botfly is a mosquito parasite that attaches itself to the mosquito, and is then passed on to humans by mosquito activity. The botfly eggs hatch, and the larvae burrow under the skin. It used to be considered restricted to sub-tropical climates, but for the first time it appears to have migrated to Cape Town, as none of the infestees have traveled recently….

James’s best friend, the one at whose house we stayed over, and Hannah’s best friend have both been found to be lousy in the last few days. Neither of my children have lice, but their friends and classmates do. Don’t you start to feel itchy even as you read that? I think I’m safe as my head is shorn, but I still feel phantom scratches on my scalp…

I had a stomach bug the last few days. Tiny organisms reproducing at a phenomenal rate in my gut. They are speed-dating, having sex on the first date, and then abandoning their multiple offspring, who, having such poor role models, do the same.Fortunately, the nasties that always live in human guts kick into control mode, and there will be stomach bug genocide. This is my only comfort as I try to enjoy my weak soup.

I won’t do compare my little petits pois to parasites, because that is an unfair thing that selfish parents do, but rather I wonder if I am sometimes feeding off them? I love their energy, I love their unselfconscious laughter, and I love their love. I love it that my boy still asks for ‘uppies’, and that my daughter keeps on asking me to cuddle her (gimme a love, daddy). I imagine that Neen feels a real sense of loss being away from them, so for me to stay and be the central character in their story for a while has been a treat. But, when the grands pois returns, I’ll be displaced back to my equal footing area. We’ll share the things we do to keep the family machine turning, but I will have some fantastic memories of this time we’ve had together, the comfort I’ve been able to give, and the comfort they’ve given to me, the daddy-parasite.

Nursing my battered body. A few days of eating badly, some of it not my fault, left me with a hair-trigger stomach, and a deep wish that I’d sprung the extra couple of bucks for double, if not triple ply. Better stung in your pocket, than stinging somewhere else. (I’m trying to be as discreet as possible here, ok? BUTT I’m not managing…)

In case any of you are recovered from laughing at my sad predicament and are contemplating sending care packages, I have bounced back. Whipped up some very bland but tasty mashed potatoes for supper. They were creamy white mounds, as delicately fluffy as the first snows of winter. Aaaaah.

I spent the day doing odd jobs, not according to a plan, just wandering around the house. Tidy those things, fold that laundry, until I remembered a promise made to Neen that I would varnish the window frames while she was gone. They are looking very last-leggish, windows threatening to pop out and reconstitute themselves as sand. I grabbed a can of varnish, and got crazy trying to do a neat job. The more I tried to be careful, the more I splashed it around like beer at a frat party.

I got as far as two frames, and noted the orangey streaks lining the white wall like a series of comets, and gave up. The pot said stir vigorously, but I think my vigor may not have been enough. The only time I tried this before, I had tiny orange specks of dried varnish on my glasses forever. Fortunately I was ready this time. I was ready to hurl the pot over the wall in a rage if I got the stuff on my clothes or face.

It’s a beautifully clear evening here tonight. I wonder if others are staring into the skies like me. Ok, so in the States and other places, it is only afternoon, but HEY! Bloggers! I can see Uranus!

There. Got you back for laughing at me. (Apologies to those of you who have heard me make the planetary joke before. I always find it funny. Even now I am sitting on my own chuckling in a sinister fashion. Which reminds me. The alien thing seemed to evoke varying responses. Here’s a message to the Mother Ship: Could you please return all those single socks insidiously purloined from my family over the past few years? I’m tired of walking hunched over so that my trousers will cover a mismatched pair. Thank you.

Friends of ours have a big house about ten minutes drive from here. Hannah is at the same day day-mom as their youngest child , and James is in the same class as their other son. They have a large granny-flat/apartment attached to their house, and ordinarily we get on well with them. You would think that it would have been a good idea to camp ou there for a couple of days while Neen is away. You would think.

I feel a bit wrecked. Their parenting/domestic style is so vastly different from ours, that I ended up shortening the visit, as my health was staring to suffer. I won’t go into the minutiae of it, but it was harrowing for me. Maybe I just need the security of home while my wiff is absent.

As a result, I have had B-laryngitis. That curious illness which silences your Blog voice. Cough. Getting it back now…

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Tomorrow is Freedom Day here in South Africa; we celebrate the anniversary of our first democratic elections eleven years ago. You can conjure up images of groups of rainbow teens looking forward to the future, joking with one another, but for some reason that reminds me of sanitary towel adverts. Still, it is a remarkable day to remember.

Speaking of politics, Neen is now staying at the hotel where Ronald Reagan was shot coming out of all those years ago. I worry for her safety, as she is a bit short of secret service guys willing to throw themselves in front of bullets. I would probably offer to do it if I was there, but I tend to move a bit slower than a speeding bullet. If someone attacked her with an origami crow, I would happily put myself in harms way.

She’s promised to bring us lots of gifts, many of which I suspect will have ‘made in China’ in tiny letters on their undersides, but American things are so much BIGGER and BOLDER that it is difficult to fit them in a suitcase. Neen, can you bring me KFC, a McDonalds Quarterpounder and a Coke? I want to check that they really are made to an international recipe free from diversification of any sort. If the truth be told, I miss normal cooking. I have done a bit, but long for something homely, like a stew. Comfort food.

No more torturous ramblings for tonight. I need to recharge my brain…

In the meantime… Who of you believe in the existence of Aliens? I mean extraterrestrial life? (Don’t worry if you don’t care particularly, I’m just trying to weed out the real loonys from our midst) Come on, Own up! (I won’t ask you for abduction details, although any information volunteered will be treated with sniggers and ‘bee-baa’ funny-farm ambulance noises…)

Ingredient X. That’s what brewers, distillers and vintners add to their products besides fermented grain and fruit. Not much is known about it, but the little that has been tweezed open is horrifying in the extreme.

Ingredient X is what makes regular people suddenly lose their inhibitions. It’s what makes them do impromptu stripteases on bar counters, snog unlikely partners in ill-advised situations, and generally give them a misplaced feeling of omnipotence. On the way home from a hard night out (or morning, if the truth be told)? Need to wee? Heck, just pick one of the doorways that isn’t swaying, and name it your honorary toilet. You have been given the right of proxy by ingredient X to capture all open space as a potential toilet, forever dooming it to be annexed to the Mighty Kingdom of X, (wee hours only).

It is also naturally secreted. Proof of this was discovered by me only yesterday. I was taking James to school on the train, as I can’t drive, and Neen is away, and we had to walk through the subway under the railway line. The following is an almost exact transcript of the damning truth…

James: Mmmmm It smells like Ryan in here.

Me: Eh? Who’s Ryan (Thinking, it smells like drunk people used this place as a toilet)

James: Ryan is in my class. He smells like this place where the trains go over.

Me: Is it a bad smell? (Ok, I can smell some disinfectant smells now)

James: No, It’s a nice smell.

Me: Maybe it’s soap?

James: No, it’s not soap, but it smells… different. I love the smell of Ryan.

Me: (Quickly) Right then, nearly home…

So Ryan smells like a subway. Either the wee smell, or the industrial chemicals. And James loves the smell. Does Ryan pee his pants? Does he bathe in lye? My greatest hope is that Ryan is using some of that Eau de Toilette aimed at children, and James has confused the smell. (Why, oh why is he smelling other children?)

I’ve never really had much of a sense of smell because of allergies, so I can’t say whether I was nasally moved by my classmates. At the very least, maybe I should relax the ‘No Guns’ rule with my son, and feed him lots of red meat. (Nah, I’ll always love him, even if he grows up ‘loving the smell of Ryans’.

Favourite sign of the week: Today I walked past a shop that was taking advantage of the wintery snap to advertise their soups on a blackboard outside the door….

“HOT  TESTY SOUP” They promised. I rolled about laughing, inwardly, as I pictured these grouchy bowls of smooshed vegetables getting all snippy with each other. ‘Do you mind,’ they said, ‘we’re a bit fed up with being kept on the boil the whole day…’

My smallish wardrobe means that I usually try to get at least two days wear out of an item of clothing. Not consecutive days, obviously, but after day one, I fold the item informally (ie into a ball) and find the least crowded shelf to cram it onto.

Why is it, that when I take it out for the second day, stains have miraculously appeared all over the place? Greasy spots, red streaks, orangey exclamation marks and dark green smudges. How do they get there? How did I manage to wear the thing on day one without noticing? Was I loping around oblivious to the besmirched state of my clothes?

Perhaps there is some mischief-making beast living somewhere (entirely possible, given the exercise in chaos theory that is my cupboard) that turns everything upside down, all the while spraying everything with a can of Stain-On.

Before I forget, underclothes and socks are one-day-only clothes.

Anybody here over thirty? Remember the movie ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’? There is a scene where a mountain is being created out of mud (?) in some family’s lounge. My garden looks a bit like that, with the recent return of the mole rats. They push up these sandy mounds about a half metre across, and move an enormous amount of soil for such a small creature. They eat all the roots of the plants, at least, those plants which survived the drought.

Nothing gets rid of them. There are several businesses that claim to be able to eradicate them, but nothing works. Right now I am busy devising a way to get them addicted to hard drugs. I put a few lines of coke inside their runs, next week, a few syringes full of smack, and finally, a couple of bags of pure heroin. Then I’ll cut off their supply, and they’ll be forced to burrow their way to Afghanistan, where the ground is harder, but the poppies are plentiful.

Still missing Neen. Marriage hasn’t taught me how to sleep in a half-empty bed. I bet she’s busy picking up some slang in Atlanta: ‘Hey, Y’all, Supersize me!’

By now I am almost certain that Neen survived the longest night of her life (traveling backwards in time) and is in Atlanta. I kept scanning the international news for inklings of air disasters, but no disasters apart from the Jackson trial and the usual global bickering was leading the headlines.

Because of Hannah’s intermittent vomiting, my kitchen skills haven’t been challenged yet. A pot of soup here, a dash of noodles there…

I feel like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, a ghastly apparition patrolling the perimeter of my house, crying out in a hollow voice and watching ‘Will and Grace’ re-runs.

This week, I get to sleep with my sister-in-law. (Remember, the one whose jeans I wore?) She’s promised to visit, bringing my niece, and will probably stay over. It will be great to have a conversation with another human, without it involving remembering dinosaur names, or nagging me to open the ‘Powerpuff Chips’. Don’t worry, as attractive as she is (she looks like Neen,a bit) we’re purely filial.

Starting to feel sorry for myself. We work widowers need nerves of steel to cope. I guess I’m just ‘anon’ at the moment. Just how did Sir Cliff Richard survive all those years as a bachelor?

It’s the little things that cheer me up, such as this, which I read in a back issue of Focus, a Science and Technology magazine:

“(In space) NASA said they do not have lavatories; they have (or at least, had then) a Waste Collection System, or WCS. If you want to pee, there is a flexible hose, like a vacuum cleaner hose, with a suction in there, and a triangular nozzle on the end which is supposed to fit both sexes. As you can imagine, It doesn’t, because boys and girls are different. And, what’s more, the vacuum is never strong enough, so it is always a bit wet from the last person…” Adam Hart-Davis

Pretty good stuff, eh? I should invite the guy to be a guest author here. I figure, if you spend all that money on a magazine, it is money well spent if you come across only one insight of that kind.

My head is full of Powerpuffs and Pokemon today, the bilge tanks overflowing with Richard Scarry and Rikki Lake. In the course of twenty-four hours I have cauterized my synapses, on a diet of TV and junk food. Hopefully tomorrow, I will be able to venture out into the big world, and see grown-ups. Neen, if you made it to the States, please tell me how to use the washing machine…

Joke.

I work on my feet. Every day I run backwards and forwards, across the shop, up the stairs to the office, and only sit down at lunchtime.

I discovered the heartless nature of my colleagues yesterday, at the end of a busy afternoon. As I stood at the counter, my foot muscles gave way to a stabbing spasm, and I hopped around in the manner of one stung.

They looked at me as though I was mad. One of them made the assumption that I was doing a happy dance because I was about to go on leave… Not true. Before I had a chance to consider the wisdom of imparting a scrap of knowledge, my mouth was open:

‘Actually, I occasionally get piercing pains on the sole of my foot because of an accident I had while tadpole hunting. A long time ago.’

My attempts at explaining about the broken bottle at the bottom of a muddy pool fell on deaf ears. They rolled with laughter as though my maimed foot was the funniest thing on this planet.

Ever wish you’d kept it to yourself?

I got home late on Tuesday evening, and headed for the bathroom to do what you do in the bathroom. Odd. There seemed to be a really nasty smell, and that was before I got there. The smell had been there for a while, but as my plumbing skills are limited, I have ignored it. Kind of like a blocked drain smell, but only if it was blocked with a decaying corpse.

As much as I sometimes believe Neen has the capacity for a brutal slaying, I chose to select another source for the reek. It hit me. There, next to the toilet. It has been standing there so long that you can overlook it. The nappy bucket.

Now Hannah has been solely on disposable diapers for a few months now, as she is getting potty trained. The cloth diapers have been washed and folded and unused for ages. Or so I thought. I must admit, that with Hannah, I avoided the cloth ones wherever possible, and opted for disposable, but Neen was trying to save money by alternating the two.

I made the (stupid, stupid) impulsive move of removing the lid. The bucket gave a soft ‘siiiigh’, like a depressed asthmatic, and then it hit me in the face. To say ‘like a brick’ would be a major understatement. This stench was like a wrecking ball. I collapsed gagging and weeping to the smooth tiles, and forced myself to peer inside. There were several nappies in a very unusual shade of brown rotting in a pool of stuff that wouldn’t be out of place in a primeval swamp. It was evolutionary. Life forms were developing even as I watched in horror. They were learning to use rudimentary tools, and starting to speak in organized sentences.

Although weakened by my shock, I managed to stagger to the bedroom, and gave Neen the bad news before falling to the ground again. She could clearly see my distress (I was really playing up the gagging noises now) and said ‘I’ll deal with it tomorrow’. I went to sleep.

She really did get rid of the ancient rags, and although I felt a wee bit guilty for not offering to do it, I was vastly relieved. Phew.

The following day, she was repeatedly puked on by Hannah, who has a bug. She slept in her room, and cleaned up the sweet soya-milk vomit. The next day she came home from work early, and was puked on again. There was runny poop, too. I went to work.

Now I owe her big time. The concentrated nature of these calamities has enlarged their impact. How do I make up for it? No more can I turn the other cheek when the retching begins. Already today I have scrubbed the chunky bits out of the carpet. Payback time. My fear is that the stomach bug spreads, and that we will all be heaving like rookie sailors. Neen is especially edgy, as she does not want to go on a long trip with nothing but a small paper bag between her and the contents of her stomach.

Pizza anyone?

These are troubled times. What cheers me up is using the ‘What’s the worst that could happen’ theory. I was reading in a book today, ‘Everything Bad is Good for You’ that in certain types of movies we are led to anticipate the sequence of events. The example the author cited was the clichéd nubile-babysitter-at-home-alone-apart-from-the-kids-who-forgets-to-lock-the-door… You know what is going to happen next…

So with Neen headed off to the States this weekend, what are my unlocked doors?

We have had one burglary and one flood this year, and taken steps to avoid their recurrence. We have nothing left worth stealing. (Are you listening, blogger-burglars?) So if I forgot to turn the alarm on, and if the same burglars came back, they would probably leave again in a hurry. If the water tank flooded again, the insurers would replace the ceiling, and paint the bathroom. (Nothing wrong with that?)

I can up the ante a bit. Let’s say the tax people discovered that my procrastination has extended to not registering as a taxpayer, what could happen? They could freeze my ‘assets’ (good luck to them finding any!), and make copies of my hard-drive, which is full of stuff like this, rather than a trail of financial deception. So we would move in with a friend until it was sorted out. Easy.

Hmmm. The unpaid traffic fine Neen was disputing? They could confiscate our rusty ford, which would hopefully then get trashed. We need a new car. Can’t scare me.

Illness? Nope, I’m all prepared. I have a copy of the wonderful book ‘Where There Is No Doctor’ waiting to be consulted. It is a basic medical text aimed at primary care givers in an African village setting. (Sure, I could be less self-sufficient, and just go to the doctor or emergency room…) I can cure virtually everything using rehydration fluid and splints made from stout branches. My children are in safe, if somewhat unsophisticated, hands.

Gimme something with bite…

Aliens. In the unlikely attempt of jelly-beings from another universe working out how to travel light years and enter our atmosphere without their rudimentary bottoms getting singed, I am prepared. Like C3PO in Star Wars, I have mastered one language, and learned to say ‘hello’ in several others. I can offend the beasts in French, and then pour cleaning fluid on their flying orb, as it ‘gets rid of all known germs’.

And anyway, after two weeks in the isolation of my house, I may appreciate a fresh environment, even if I do end up with small hexagonal scars above my kidneys…

If Neen is kidnapped by a terrorist group trying to prove a point, that may work to our advantage. Being resourceful, she will escape, and then we can write a harrowing, poignant biography, which will be picked up by Oprah, and then we can retire on the royalties.

Now the smaller things that could go wrong seem infinitely less challenging. The kettle breaks, so that I can’t boil water for instant noodles, or my morning coffee? Easy peasy. I’ll resort to doing everything on an open fire. Washing machine breaks? Pah! Just wear the clothes till they are uniformly brown, and then buy other clothes. Like Reacher in the Lee Child novels. (He’s an ex military policeman who roams around, and buys clothes, wears them for a couple of days, and then discards them. Practicality is the name of the game).

Underneath my stoic veneer of confidence, I have my fears. There must be something for which I am not prepared. Oh yeah. The fingernails… Anything you’d care to add to my list of disasters? You are more than welcome to do so, provided you tack on a workable solution. I need you. I need your help, internet.

Survivor, Cape Town. Three people, fourteen days. Watch as two children outwit a grown man, and aim for their daily reward of as much chocolate as they can eat, and unlimited TV. They wish.

In my five years as a father, I have learned many things. I tentatively learned how to pick up a floppy newborn, and carry him through the house without banging his head on the door-frames (after a few tries, anyway), I learned how to wash his hair without touching the creepy fontanelle. (Am I the only person whose stomach turns at the idea of thin membranes, pulsing veins and delicate brain matter fizzing beneath?)

I have changed nappies, both disposable and cloth, and dealt with a small hillock of squishy poo. I’ve been vomited on, punched, had my eyeballs scratched and lost count of the amount of times my glasses have been misted by the fine spray of a baby learning to raspberry.

My youngest is now two and a half, the eldest, five and a half, and I have never cut their nails. As babies, those pale crescents were scarcely bigger than  this: (. No way was I going to go anywhere near them. Not with those ‘safety’ scissors, not with little clippers with tiny rabbit decals, and not with anything sharper than a spoon. I have been happy to trim hair. I have bathed and powdered them. I have nursed them through fevers and allowed them to cut their teeth on my fingers, but I have never touched their nails.

Which must soon change. As Neen will be away for two weeks, I have the choice of mummifying their fingers and toes in masking tape, or trimming those ridiculously fast-growing talons. I fear Neen will return to a family of children with truncated stubs at the end of their hands. They will resemble the flippers of platypuses, and will be useless for any act requiring fine motor co-ordination. They will be forced to wear stout leather gauntlets at school, and become known as ‘the webbed ones’. All that will remain to me is the hope that one day plastic surgery will progress to regrowth of fingertips, and that they won’t hate me for spoiling their chances of becoming concert pianists, or macramé experts.

And that is just the hands. How much will I have to pay some private cobbler to custom-make booties for their clunky appendages? Ever seen pictures of those women in china whose feet were bound? That is exactly the kind of image that haunts me when I consider the task at hand.

You need fingertips to do so many things. Like fasten buttons, type Pulitzer prize-winning novels, and pick your nose. They will be stump-fingered illiterates, with giant crusty boogers dangling from their nostrils…

But so much of parenting is pretense. You act as though you’ve done these things a thousand times before, but in your head you are screaming in fear, expecting someone to call your bluff: “Hey! You! You’re not qualified to do that! Step away from the baby, thaaaat’s right, back off…” Did previous generations know how to do these things, or did they just wing it, too? Maybe Jewish people have the right idea. After a circumcision, a little fingernail trimming is nothing…

Don’t tell Neen about this! I’m already having to pretend everything will be just fine while she’s away.

A separate thought: If she is flying backwards in time to Atlanta airport, if she keeps on going long enough will she be young again? If the pilot kept on going, would the plane be full of wispy headed infants pooping in their seats? Who would land the plane? Who would supervise the drinks trolley? Do you have thoughts like this, too?