Twigbitch

Heh, they'll never know.

Today I went to my first truly African spinning class.

The instructor was a truly alarmingly large woman, who I shall name Lafwanda.  I’m afraid to say that when I first spied Lafwanda, my immediate thought was that woman cannot be the instructor; her one leg is the size of both of my thighs combined.  I was very skeptical about her fitness levels and the exertion levels of this class.

I pondered this while setting up my bike and looked up to see Lafwanda eyeballing me:

Lafwanda:  Hmmm, I think your seat is too low. It should be at hep height.

Me: [Skeptical of her judgment, jumps on the seat and then quickly off again] Yes. [Grudgingly] I think you’re right I’ll adjust it.

Lafwanda: You best, because if it is too low it will hurt your PUSS-AY. [Gestures towards her lady garden] And you do not want to damage your PUSS-AY.

Me: [Totally gob smacked, did she really just mention my vagina?] Gosh, well, um, yes, thank you for the warning.

I should have known that a woman who can mention your pussy within 2 minutes of meeting you is a force to be reckoned with.  For 45 minutes Lafwanda, with her gold nails and massive thighs maintained an unrelenting pace.  I’d look up sweating, red faced, lungs burning to see her incredible thighs rhythmically turning and quivering like two Jack Russell’s fighting over a bone in a bag.  She made us climb an imaginary hill with no end.  She didn’t stop for water, hell no; the woman must be part camel.  She urged us on with cries of ‘Woza’ (come), ‘Gijima’ (run) and ‘Hhayi-bo’ (no/definitely not) if she didn’t feel we were up to muster.

I confess I had to sit down, reduce my resistance and take a little water break.  Lafwanda caught my eye and raised her eyebrows, the look she shot me said, ‘C’mon Twigbitch, I know what you were thinking, I can do this all day’.  At this point the girl next to me fell back into her seat with a loud cry of “WOOH, EH-EH!” Which as you know is my favourite African expression, but there was no time to laugh because Lafwanda wanted to know if we could ‘feel the bern’.  Oh, we could feel it, somebody from the back of the class ululated a confirmation, but still Lafwanda in her spandexed, bronzed fury was unrelenting.

By the end I was shattered and remembered that ever-important saying; never judge a book by its cover, or a spinning instructress by the circumference of her thighs. 

Lafwanda, in the immortal words of Aretha, R.E.S.P.E.C.T, you made me your spinning twigbitch. Oh-eh-eh. 

Another Saturday Night

I don't know who these people are but they come up if you google 'Tower of beer glasses' and this amused me.

It is a strange thing that since turning A) turning 30 and B) losing my husband to the Northern Hemisphere I’m spending an increasing amount of time in bars.  I say bars, but it is really bar (singular) The Pot & Barrel.  For some reason that den of iniquity just keeps calling me back.  On Saturday night I took my sister there.

Here were the main points of the evening:

1)   We were asked if ‘we’ i.e. my sister and I were a couple.  Note to self do not wear a blazer out in PMB, it may be stylish in London, here it is perceived as ‘handsome’.

2)   Two very skinny individuals had a barney on the dance floor.  The aggressor threw his drink down defiantly on the floor (with a Rumplestiltskin like stamp of the foot) and then rugby tackled his opponent into the roaring fireplace, which is A) stupidly placed in the centre of the dance floor and B) luckily surrounded by glass.  After they singed their foreheads on molten hot fire-glass the two rolled around over broken glass before being separated.  Despite their svelte racing snake figures both lads took 5 onlookers apiece to separate them.

3)   An amusing Capetonian called Andy tried to build a tower of beer bottles on the bar and then rested a tin plate filled with beer on them.  This was going well until he tried to drink out of tin plate and stuck his chin in it causing the tower to come crashing down.  Andy, it transpired, was in town to play a social double’s tennis tournament with a friend the following day.  As he had A) not played tennis since age 8 and B) was very drunk, the outlook was not good.  However he did buy us a fortifying Jagermeister and pose as my ‘Professional Tennis Player’ husband later on when a very sad, strange, drunk little man called Patrick cast the Glad eye upon me.

4)   Random strangers will call on you for High-5’s and boosts.  These should be applied with caution lest you unintentionally split open someone’s finger.  A case in point - Simon the Farmer and Raymond Reynolds (Raymond had been living in Holland for 10 years and so introduced himself with his full name, which as he rightly pointed out would allow us to connect later in a professional manner on Linked-In).  Anyway I high-5’d Raymond Reynolds will the full force of my Michelle Obama arms and then Simon the Farmer High-5’d Mr. Reynolds.  It was a case of power too much as Simon managed to split open Raymond’s finger (an existing wound, covered by a very small plaster).  From this I learnt that Simon the Farmer and I are equally scared of blood (we both shot each other a look that said Oh-my-fuck-what-about-Aids).  We also learnt that:

5)    South African barkeeps do not keep plasters behind the bar.  I find this deeply negligent considering just how much broken glass a bar can produce.

So to surmise my evening out comprised of being mistaken for a lesbian, witnessing a punch-up on the dance floor, dodging a tower of falling glass/beer, adopting a tennis-playing quasi-husband, High-5ing strangers and avoiding bloodshed.

All in all a regular night out in the Burrah. 

Fowl Play

Queenie (barely visible) in the Pineapple box, Leghorn & Fat Elvis in the other.

7am: “COOO-COOO-COOO-COOOOK.” “COOO-COOO-COOO-COOOOK.”

I am wont to wake my neighbours with what I like to call my chicken summoning voice.  Like a Sunday-school mother intoning her children to wake for Jesus, I like to call my chicken children for breakfast.  It is a rather high-pitched, and I have it on good authority from the Husband, ‘shrill and annoying’ call, accompanied by a rhythmic shaking of the corn cup, which I percuss like a rattle in time to the ‘COOOKS’ of my poultry wailing.

Leghorn was the first of my flock to spy the rhythmic corn cup in my hand.  She duly bolted towards me, then in a split-second of chicken brained indecision she braked, flapping and squawking past me in a particularly ungainly manner. [She reminds me of Vern from John van der Ruit’s ‘Spud’ books i.e. totally gormless and a dare I say a spot simple.]

“COOO-COOO-COOO-COOOOK’, shake-shake.

I found Fat Elvis and Near-Death sitting broodily on their nesting boxes.  Both bristled and eyed me with a beady eye, sharp beaks poised should I attempt to steal their eggs.  Which I would have done had their been any eggs, but alas both ladies have become terribly broody and stopped laying.  Instead they sit about endlessly for days on end, hoping that their unfertilized eggs will hatch into darling chicks.  Sabotaged by their baby boxes they have turned into feathered-balls of pecking fury.  Hoping for some new eggs I lift them off their nests, using my protective oven-gloves (Please don’t mock me, chickens have very sharp beaks and I have only just gotten over my fear of their 'large talons'). Nothing.  

“COOOO-COOOO-COOOO-COOOK”, shakedy-shake-shake.

I look around for Queenie (the chicken, not the niece) my favourite bird (don’t tell the others) she is usually the tamest and keenest for a bit of grub.  This morning she is noticeably absent.

“COOOO-COOOO-COOOO-COOOK”, shakedy-shake-shake. "AAAARGGGH! QUEEENIE, NOOOOOOO!"

She’s gone.  Taken by the tinkers who were after the Husband or something more sinister, wild cat? Lion? Monkeys.  I bet it was those damned monkeys who chased her round the garden a few weeks ago.  My poor beloved bird reduced to the contents of a feather pillow.

“Queenie,” I say, casting my teary-eyes skyward, I can almost see her in the big old bird box in the sky, scratching up grubs, free from earthly pain and monkeys.  My vision of heaven is so good that I can see her silhouette against the clouds, framed by the leaves of the Avo-tree. Oh, wait...that is Queenie...in the avo-tree.  She’s ALIVE. She’s alive.

But sweet mother, those bloody monkeys have plucked the old girl’s back end somewhat…I would post a picture, but it's all too foul. It seems a spot perverse to parade her near naked bottom to this cruel world and I'm not up for that sort of monkey-business.

Don't Call me Ma'am

Forgot your skirt, love?

I did it again.  Despite my protestations that I am getting too old for nights out, last night I ventured forth to the ‘Pot & Barrel’ to meet The Pant, an old school chum, for a drink (singular).

To avoid hypothermia we were forced to take a perch near a cheering outdoor log fire.  Unfortunately this covetable spot was amidst a group of school children.  I know they were school children because when one of the man-children, in a low white V-neck T-shirt (despite the Arctic conditions) accidentally elbowed me in the head he apologized thus:

Man-child:  [Spins around] Oooh, sorry [catches my gaze, my crows feet squinting up at 

                   him]  Ma’am.

The Pant: Did you just call her ‘Ma’am’? [Looks upon our youngster with incredulity]

Man-child: Yes, Ma’am.

The Pant: Did you just call me ‘Ma’am’? [Look of complete disgust on visage]

Man-child: Sorry, Ma’am.  I’m at a school that instills it in us.

The Pant: NEVER.  I repeat NEVER call a lady Ma’am in a bar, or when you are out drinking.

Man-child: I’m not old enough to drink.  I don’t drink, Ma’am.

And that was the tone for the evening.  The Pant and I sat about in pure wonderment at the fashions sported by the youth.  As she noted it would seem that it’s okay if you don’t have any clean jeans at home, simply pull on your stockings, sans skirt, and come out anyway.  One delightful young lady had a pair of leopard print stockings/leggings so tight that she was suffering from reverse camel-toe.  Her bottom appeared to be eating her leggings.  What made this more unnerving was despite her svelte physique her entire leg/rear end undulated spasmodically with every step.  Clearly she had never partaken of any muscle building exercise in her young life.  Worse still is she had paired the undulating leopard print leggings with a sort-of anaconda print very tight, ripped, T-shirt and leatherette jacket.  It was quite something to behold.

The young, I discovered, are like Martians, completely foreign to me.  During the course of the evening I attempted to give one youngster some advise.  He kept prattling on about sex, in the manner of the virginal/very inexperienced.  Growing tired of his tirade, I informed him that believe it our not there will come a time in his life when sex is not the most important thing.  He looked at me like I was an insane person.  At this point The Pant wandered over.  He looked at her, then back to me and said “Dude, your friend,” gestures to me, “just tried to give me a life lesson.  She is craaaaa-aaazy.”  I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I have married friends, who have not had sex in years, but it felt a bit like shooting Bambi and I couldn’t do it.

 I very am grateful that I am 30 rather than a spotty, vacant teenager, but Don’t. Call. Me. Ma’am.

Ooooh-Eh-Eh. Stop the Funbus.

I know this is getting a little tedious, but I am really missing the Husband. 

My major problem with living alone is the lack of laughter.  When the Husband is around I find myself in states of extreme school-girl hysteria quite often, the sort that involves 10 minutes of me laughing at something, then laughing at myself laughing at something, then laughing at the bemused look on the Husband’s face while I laugh at myself laughing at something.  I just can’t reach this level of amusement on my own. I’ve tried but laughing at/to yourself in an empty room is a whole new bag of crazy.

That’s not to say I’ve slipped into the slough of despond in his absence.  Hell no, I have been making friends and going places.  I have been partying like it was 1999.  But after 3 weekends in a row I’ve been ruined by the sad reality that my liver no longer parties in a pre-millennial manner.  After a particularly festive Saturday night at the ‘Pot and Barrel’ (official new drinking hole complete with Afrikaaners, bikers, students, farmers and other delightful randoms) drinking strawberry milkshake tequila shots, Sunday was like a whole new vision of hell.  Luckily I was not alone; I had Avi and Symo (the birthday boy), two survivors of the night, to share my extreme torture.  We lay on the couch/floor/any upholstered surfaces and died slowly with minimal conversation.  The power was out so we had to settle for ‘Blade’ on a tiny laptop screen perched on a coffee table. We all fell asleep.

In my youth I could shake off a hangover in the blink of an eye.  Now they stick to me like shit to a blanket.  At one point I’m sure I felt my liver twitch, probably some sort of death spasm.  In the midst of this self-induced trip to Hades I really missed the Husband, for as a Scotsman and thus alcoholic by birthright he will never mock the hung-over and he is very kind and patient when dealing with the intricacies of ‘Loser complex’ i.e. the Horrors about anything untoward you might have done the night before.

I understand now why people have children A) the tick-tock of ye olde biological clock starts shadowing you like Hook’s Neverland crocodile and B) you get too old for alcoholic beverage imbibition and it’s unfortunate side-effects so you need something besides a hangover to nurture of an early Sunday morn.

It goes without saying that I am never drinking again.  Now if I just had a Husband handy…

(P.S Oooh-eh-eh, is my new favourite expression which must be attributed to my dearest friend Klong.)