Merry Middle-Class Christmas

4 days till Christmas everybody!  Gosh the excitement! The anticipation! Who can resist the lure of a morbidly obese, elderly man nipping down your chimney to top up his alcohol levels with a schnifter of brandy and stuff one more mince pie down the hatch (will this be the one that pushes him into a diabetic coma?) before depositing plastic trinkets of an Asiatic origin under a plastic/balding Christmas tree drowning in tinsel and likely to go up in flames at any second due to badly wired cheap fairy lights.  Could there be a more exciting time of year?

I think not.

Here in Church Road, Myvanwy and I are abuzz with festive anticipation.  I have developed carpal tunnel syndrome from wrapping the numerous presents procured for her 13 great/grandchildren.  The back room looks like Santa’s grotto every surface covered by festive gifts. 

Well, I say we’re abuzz with festive anticipation but really Vanny is a bit concerned that we might not get through the week without running out of a) food and b) light bulbs.  This is a strange siege mentality as a no other time of the year would one worry that you might be unable to purchase a 60w bayonet bulb should the need arise.  To ease any festive worry we have purchased a light bulb multipack, which should see us through the darkness of the Christmas week even if every bulb in the house should inexplicably combust. 

As for food I have failed to waylay her festive fears after recounting that when I got to the veg market this morning, as I/we do every Saturday morning, the veg man (who is a genuine London barrow boy ‘O’ight there darlin’ character) had been completely cleaned out of carrots, parsnips and potatoes! Poor Vanny is a tad concerned that we might be unable to lay our hands on a root vegetable until after the festive season despite my protestations that supermarkets will continue to trade during the following week. 

I find Vanny’s Christmas anxiety quite strange, as she is usually a pretty chilled character.  However she did share with me the tale of how her mother used to come for a little day out with a pack of candles and box of matches in her handbag in case of an emergency.  She concedes that, in this her 94^th year, her festive fear has finally turned her into her mother!

For our festive treat we are off to her lovely daughter’s for Christmas lunch, where we will be joined by some of her great/grandchildren.  Vanny has already warned me that her grandson will inevitably get completely morosely drunk at the end of the table and the great-grandchildren will work themselves into a teary-frenzy over too many presents/too much sugar.  Her deaf son-in-law will refuse to wear his hearing aid, which may cause his irritated wife to stab him with the carving knife midway through Christmas lunch.  Vanny has declared that she won’t be able to hear a thing with all the background noise during lunch and will invariably find the dining room chairs so arse-breakingly hard that she will want to come home the minute it is politely acceptable to do so.

Any who I am off to represent the household at the neigbour’s Christmas drinks party.  Such fun darlings!  With champas in hand I will discuss important middle-class issues like the banning of tracksuits as leisurewear and compulsory prison time for anyone with a tattoo.

Merry Middle-Class Christmas Everyone!

xxx

Remember children your Christmas tree really can be a fire hazard.  Do decorate responsibly.

Stop the clocks

The day that I wrote about with dread 5 long months ago finally came to pass, Madiba has died.  I was waiting to catch a night bus from London to Edinburgh when I heard the news.  Strangely it was via twitter that the news broke and I hastily tweeted others for confirmation, yes it was true.  Zuma was addressing the nation.

Sitting on a cold bench in a cold country surrounded by foreigners I felt horribly far from home.  I looked around me and no one seemed to know.  Nelson Mandela had died but nobody around me seemed to care.  The line that kept repeating through my head was ‘stop the clocks, cut off the telephone’ from W. H Auden’s poem of the same name:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

I messaged a friend back home.  He cared.  He was a grown man crying tears last seen when his own grandfather died.  And then I checked my twitter feed and realized that I was wrong not that no one cared, everyone did. Out of all the thousands of people I follow on twitter – politicians, journalists, pop stars, actors, companies and regular Joes - everyone was talking about Madiba.  When the occasional vacuous tweet did escape through the wall of humanity it made me roar with anger. I felt so many emotions; trepidation, grief, relief but mostly I felt proudly South African.  I wanted to turn to my neighbour and hug away my bursting heart.

Scrolling through a microcosmic twittersphere I marveled at the power of this one elderly man to unify the hearts of thousands of strangers in this bitter-sweet moment.

There were epic words:

Barack Obama ‏‪@BarackObama

5 Dec

President Obama remembers Nelson Mandela: "A man who took history in his hands and bent the arc of the moral universe towards justice."

            


And simpler truths:

Keenan Kyle Harduth ‏‪@KeenyKeenz

5 Dec

South Africa needs a hug. RT: ‪@MsLeloB: I need a hug

And poignant reminders of the giant, gentle space left unfilled:

'Thank you Tata' cartoon by the talented @mynameisjerm

There I was sitting on a cold hard bench waiting for a bus, I didn’t want to stop the clocks and cut off the phone.  I wanted to grab a vuvuleza or ululate. I wanted to walk outside and feel the breath of the universe on my face.  I wanted to look up at the stars and thank God for the beautiful people.

I am reminded why I can’t settle in Britain, because I am African.  I was lucky enough to grow up in a beautiful, complex and challenging place.  I was blessed to expend my teenage years with Nelson Mandela The Educated Man as the head of my country, not Nelson Mandela The Terrorist or Nelson Mandela The Prisoner.  I never felt anything but optimism for my beautiful country and I refuse to stop believing in it now.  I didn’t plan to leave South Africa for so long.  I have spent 7 long years coming home.  As a wise-cracking journalist with a jaundiced eye remarked ' … whenever people assess Africa, they underestimate the nuttily fanatical believers, like you.’

I do believe, nuttily and fanatically because people like Nelson Mandela have lived to show us how.

It always seems impossible until it’s done

-Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)