Life unfolds at it's own pace, which at times is far too leisurely for me. I'm the 'make a decision and dash off at 100 miles an hour to get it done' sort of person and yes, that crazy woman in the supermarket, parking her trolley at the end of the aisle 3 then zooming across to aisle 27 to pick up the next item on her list is me.
Him Outdoors refers to my grocery excursions as gym time, he swears I walk at least 4x more than needed. I think of my shopping trail as a sort of honey bee waggle dance. Just not in a figure 8 or, truth be told, in any sort of coherent manner at all. Perhaps the sort of post-fermented marula fruit waggle dance that a bee would perform if a bee's mind was as absent as mine. Nonetheless, our pantry is always stocked so does the gathering mileage really matter?
We've been wanting to head back to Kenya for months now but things keep cropping up. HO's contract has been (admittedly thankfully) extended time after time as new projects are thrown at him but eventually, in a spousal headlock, he agreed to draw a line under 31st August and bid Altsa 'adieu'. Which he did.
Perhaps not as effectively as envisaged, though, as now we are both living in the communal company house in Durban while our fur babies and home are under the care of a dear friend and I have clothes and belongings scattered in 6 places, including the boot of my car parked at Oliver Tambo. Who knew that Madam Chief Nest-er could live a gypsy lifestyle at all, let alone for 10 months?I've had a crash course of lessons in patience, acceptance and relinquishment of control, not to mention having to let go of a perfectionist's standards of, well, pretty much everything. It's been a tussle, I must admit.
While we wait for the contractors to provide HO with accurate and believable figures of the stock required to finish the installations so that the sites can be delivered and signed off, we are sharing a rather cute Victorian house with two work colleagues of HO. A sparsely furnished, absolutely no frills, under renovation Victorian house, and did I mention that the cottage at the bottom of the garden houses a tenant, as well?
The housemates are lovely guys and lots of fun but my word, they haven't a clue about making a space the teeniest bit homely and as to how easily the XY chromosome bearers slipped into leaving cooking, tidying and washing up to the woman....grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. They also rate as probably the untidiest people I've ever had the misfortune to share a roof with, including the one I married who has reverted to some kind of bachelor oblivion about cleaning and standards of hygiene.
It took me a few days to down tools and resolutely REFUSE to continue tidying the kitchen because I can't bear the odious mess, but neither am I prepared to be 'house girl'. However, the shambles irks me intensely while they are completely oblivious to the mess. I'm taking so many deep breaths, oxygen overload is my middle name.
I've had a bit of experience sharing digs with a few men this year. In April I homed with No 2 son and his 3 mates for a few days over graduation. What a pleasure! No 2 had dictated a huge clean up prior to my arrival, apparently, but over the 3 days I was there the guys cooked and cleaned up after themselves. The bathrooms were always spotless and as for the company, it was a hoot. 4 bright post grad scientists who couldn't do enough or be more polite or considerate of their house guest and numerous debates and discussions about the world at large made for a memorable and very enjoyable stay with them.
I guess the tidy mentality can be laid neatly at the feet of the mother, in which case I need to have a few words with my darling mother-in-law. Or perhaps it's a generation thing - my sprogs were expected to clean up after themselves and ensure the house was tidy, there was none of that 'girls clean, boys reside on a pedestal' thinking in my house and looking at No 2's digs mates it seems he has found kindred spirits of his age.
As for the old geezers I currently share with, zounds. And because the subbies keep finding random rooms and corridors previously not accounted for on site, we are going to be here far longer than anticipated. Zen and the art of domestic disorder, I'm breathing. Deeply.
Monday, 11 September 2017
Tuesday, 29 August 2017
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia
Prize of the day goes to readers who can identify this phobia without resorting to a search engine.
Hippo - Horse (Greek)
Potamos - River (Greek)
Monstro - Monstrous being, or something huge and terrifying (Latin)
Sesquippedalio - Adaptation from Latin meaning 'over a foot and a half high'.
I bet you got phobia, well done! (If not, it means morbid fear)
So what is Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia when it's at home? Fear of a hippopotamus perhaps? You'd be right to respect them, their reputation as Africa's most dangerous large land animal is well deserved. Cuddly and pink, in this case, does not mean, well, cuddly and friendly. At all.
Nah, our word inventors have gone way out there on this one. Which Mensa candidate designated a phobia about long words with a name 38 letters long?
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is a very real phobia, leaving suffers to sweat and tremble in a full blown anxiety attack when confronting a very long word.
How to pronounce it:
Hippo
Poto
Monstro
Sesqui
Pedalio
Phobia
If in doubt, resort to Mary Poppins and sing it out -
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious was a popular song from the musical Mary Poppins and we've all bellowed it out at some time or the other. Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-i. Songwriters Richard and Robert Sherman clearly didn't suffer from Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia and it's a good thing neither Dick van Dyck nor Julie Andrews did, as the 4 Oscars swept up by the film enhanced their movie careers no end.
It's downright cruel to give sufferers of this phobia such a mouthful to read and pronounce. I wonder if they can even bear to take the prescription from the Doctor, let alone hand it over to a Pharmacist and answer his friendly enquiry about how the Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is today?
To tie your tongue in monstrous knots, listen to the
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia song on the link below. It's really chipper and annoyingly, you'll be leaping from humming this to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious for the next 24 hours. Sorry!
Hippo - Horse (Greek)
Potamos - River (Greek)
Monstro - Monstrous being, or something huge and terrifying (Latin)
Sesquippedalio - Adaptation from Latin meaning 'over a foot and a half high'.
I bet you got phobia, well done! (If not, it means morbid fear)
So what is Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia when it's at home? Fear of a hippopotamus perhaps? You'd be right to respect them, their reputation as Africa's most dangerous large land animal is well deserved. Cuddly and pink, in this case, does not mean, well, cuddly and friendly. At all.
Nah, our word inventors have gone way out there on this one. Which Mensa candidate designated a phobia about long words with a name 38 letters long?
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is a very real phobia, leaving suffers to sweat and tremble in a full blown anxiety attack when confronting a very long word.
How to pronounce it:
Hippo
Poto
Monstro
Sesqui
Pedalio
Phobia
If in doubt, resort to Mary Poppins and sing it out -
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious was a popular song from the musical Mary Poppins and we've all bellowed it out at some time or the other. Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-i. Songwriters Richard and Robert Sherman clearly didn't suffer from Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia and it's a good thing neither Dick van Dyck nor Julie Andrews did, as the 4 Oscars swept up by the film enhanced their movie careers no end.
It's downright cruel to give sufferers of this phobia such a mouthful to read and pronounce. I wonder if they can even bear to take the prescription from the Doctor, let alone hand it over to a Pharmacist and answer his friendly enquiry about how the Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is today?
To tie your tongue in monstrous knots, listen to the
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia song on the link below. It's really chipper and annoyingly, you'll be leaping from humming this to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious for the next 24 hours. Sorry!
Thursday, 24 August 2017
My Mother is an Xperia and Dad a Samsung
My lovely Nikon D5200 gives me, someone not gifted with an artistic hand, the chance to create a beautiful picture. It's the very devil to get it right, and the rare successes are usually unplanned accidents but I feel like van Gogh as I fiddle with settings and seek the best angle to photograph something that caught my eye. The disappointment when viewing the end results is often very deep but ups the determination to find out why and to get it right next time. Taking pictures with my mobile phone, on the other hand, is convenient (especially for insurance claims) but feels rather lame.
I'm in the minority, I fear, as a picture paints a 1000 words and this cartoon speaks millenniums to me.
That device in your hand which you refer to as a phone is used for almost anything but speaking on. Sure, it's a reasonable evolutionary leap from phone to messaging to internet access, email and social media (all forms of communication) but our faithful telephone has now crossed a species boundary and become camera of choice to billions.
Nikon, Leica and Olympus must be feeling the pinch, because I'm not sure they can fall back on a broader range of products to make up the lost turnover like some of the competition can.
For on-tap convenience and availability the mobile phone as a camera has absolutely no equal. Not only is it pretty much always at hand but with a few swipes the image is instantaneously shared widely. This, of course, is a double edged sword. Who hasn't pushed 'send' too hastily and winged an inappropriate email or message they'd rather not have sent? And now we have the added facility of capturing and sending pictures that really shouldn't have been caught at all, and those photographs, once seen, are indelibly etched on spooked minds.
Would those naughty photographs of various dangly bits have been taken if the erstwhile photographer had to set up a tripod of sorts and set the timer on his Canon Sureshot? More importantly, wouldn't the world be better off without those photographic gems? How do you feel about countless photographs on social media of (usually) young women stretching their pouty lips into hideous duck impressions - and what is it about fitting rooms that has women photographing their reflection and sharing it with their world? Again, if they had to haul out their Nikon D3200, would they bother?
Ready availability and ridiculous ease has created a scenario where we've all become photography addicts, with very little interest in learning more about this fascinating and wonderful field. Point, shoot, load onto Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp and move on. Composition? Light? Capturing the everyday in a creative way? What's that? My lunch is on Facebook and that's all that counts. Photography is easy, anyone can do it.
Ja, well, no fine (love that South African expression).
So if your child draws your likeness as a Sony Xperia, and your furbaby pauses to pose in his version of cute mode when he sees your phone, you should take a moment yourself and step out from behind your teeny camera. Put it down for a bit and have some real Face Time creating moments that are captured solely in your mind's eye and that of your companion.
That's a picture uniquely and forever yours and theirs.
Tuesday, 15 August 2017
Einstein Says...
Far be it from me to argue with a genius, particularly when his signature equation, E=MC2 doesn't raise a hair on my woolly head as it whizzes way above my 5'8" body.
I googled what the equation means (e = a unit of energy, m = units of mass and c2 is the speed of light squared) to save some readers from having to do the same and hopefully I'm not alone in being none the wiser - physics, numbers, equations, formulas fuzzle my head and make my eyes spin.
However, I can totally relate to this Einstein quote, difficult as it is for a Cancerian, genetically engineered by the planets at birth, to leave the cosy rut she wraps snugly around her like a cuddly duvet.
What is life but a road trip with one single, absolute and common destination for everyone, magnificently captured in the infamous Monty Python Dead Parrot sketch? "E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! ....'is metabolic processes are now 'istory!...This is an ex-parrot!!"
We have to keep moving. Evolution is simply changing and adapting to an environment in a constant state of flux. It's not only our surroundings that change; we, as people change. Parents continually remark how their offspring resemble one side of the family or other, how Johnny inherited dad's rugby skills and Jane has her granny's love of music, Thembi has her father's eyes while Sbu, sadly, is as short as his mother. We seem to stop the comparisions as they grow to teenagehood, but a penetrating look in a mirror will show you that in middle age you appear to look more like one parent than you ever did before. It's not only wrinkles and skin folds that emerge, our appearance is changing with the years as well.
Likewise our interests progress and develop in different directions with time. Our world contracts and expands according to our interaction with it and I, for one, love the easy accessibility of technology and Google. Reading a book or watching a movie with my phone in one hand, ready to check a fact or new word. This usually leads to some interesting new nugget of knowledge and no one could fault that.
We grow as we stretch our boundaries, both physical and mental. In the rapidly narrowing gap between where I am now and my final destination lie new experiences and adventures. The choice to pick them and leave behind the familiar and comfortable is mine. We can fear falls and dead ends, but simply sitting in one spot marking time is not enough. Scrapes and bruises will heal, things going wrong will be blog fodder and for heavens sake, when I'm rocking on the porch, strawberry daiquiri in one hand and a walking stick useful for poking passing whippersnappers in the other, I need something to talk about and relive.
One life, end date unknown. Live it fully and with joy. Then fall off your perch and pass on.
Sunday, 6 August 2017
Shackled in Spanish - For Better or Worse
Much to my regret, a polyglot I'm not. Schoolgirl French confused the hell out of me - how could common everyday objects have a gender? Trying to pick up Portuguese to aid communication in Mozambique brought the same problem - the gender of an object changed EVERYTHING in the sentence and flummoxed my uniglot brain.
Fortunately, No 2 Son, who consistently walked the failure line with Afrikaans at school, appears to have a natural linguistic ear and tongue for indigenous African languages and has taught himself some basic isiZulu, SiSwati and isiXhosa. He happily chats away to appreciative locals in their own tongue and I'm both proud of and envy him for this skill.
Not, it must be said, that English is easy for people to learn. Which is totally amazing to a native English speaker, absolutely oblivious to the wily traps of our language. We don't give a thought to the trickeries of homonyms, for instance.
Huh?
Yup, those tricky words both spelt and pronounced the same, with completely different meanings. A selection:
Address Back Bank Board Cast Check Duck Exact Fair Fine Fly
Grave Groom Hood Iron Jam Line Plane Skirt Wave Yard
Getting the picture? And that's before we tackle Eight and Ate, Nay and Neigh, Fare and Fair, Knife, Five and Fifth...
Spanish, I think, takes the cake for having a homonym which has a rather startling juxtaposition of meanings.
Esposas. Wife. And Handcuffs. Female readers keep breathing. Male - pick yourselves off the floor and stop laughing. This can be unpacked in a less than flattering view of the husband, as well.
Picture the scene back in Spanish Stone Age. Reluctant bride dragged by the hair to the altar. (I always think of an altar as a slab upon which sacrifices are made. It's an interesting choice of name for the spot on which couples are forever bound, swearing to forsake all others, care, obey (?!) and so on).
Once delivered to the altar, poor Cavewoman is handcuffed / bound to the excited groom. Maybe they had to tie them together before she legged it back to her peaceful berry-gathering. Smart woman knew what awaited - skinning and cooking the woolly mammoth he brought home, washing his bearskin skivvies...
However it happened, Spanish speakers are stuck with a word whose double meaning is quite derogatory. Although, get a group of English speaking husbands together and in no time at all they are speaking about their 'ball and chain', 'trouble and strife' and 'handbrake'. Notice how they are awfully brave in a group and out of earshot...
Misogyny has no language barrier, it seems.
Fortunately, No 2 Son, who consistently walked the failure line with Afrikaans at school, appears to have a natural linguistic ear and tongue for indigenous African languages and has taught himself some basic isiZulu, SiSwati and isiXhosa. He happily chats away to appreciative locals in their own tongue and I'm both proud of and envy him for this skill.
Not, it must be said, that English is easy for people to learn. Which is totally amazing to a native English speaker, absolutely oblivious to the wily traps of our language. We don't give a thought to the trickeries of homonyms, for instance.
Huh?
Yup, those tricky words both spelt and pronounced the same, with completely different meanings. A selection:
Address Back Bank Board Cast Check Duck Exact Fair Fine Fly
Grave Groom Hood Iron Jam Line Plane Skirt Wave Yard
Getting the picture? And that's before we tackle Eight and Ate, Nay and Neigh, Fare and Fair, Knife, Five and Fifth...
Spanish, I think, takes the cake for having a homonym which has a rather startling juxtaposition of meanings.
Esposas. Wife. And Handcuffs. Female readers keep breathing. Male - pick yourselves off the floor and stop laughing. This can be unpacked in a less than flattering view of the husband, as well.
Picture the scene back in Spanish Stone Age. Reluctant bride dragged by the hair to the altar. (I always think of an altar as a slab upon which sacrifices are made. It's an interesting choice of name for the spot on which couples are forever bound, swearing to forsake all others, care, obey (?!) and so on).
Once delivered to the altar, poor Cavewoman is handcuffed / bound to the excited groom. Maybe they had to tie them together before she legged it back to her peaceful berry-gathering. Smart woman knew what awaited - skinning and cooking the woolly mammoth he brought home, washing his bearskin skivvies...
However it happened, Spanish speakers are stuck with a word whose double meaning is quite derogatory. Although, get a group of English speaking husbands together and in no time at all they are speaking about their 'ball and chain', 'trouble and strife' and 'handbrake'. Notice how they are awfully brave in a group and out of earshot...
Misogyny has no language barrier, it seems.
Monday, 31 July 2017
Determining the Value of Skills
It was interesting to read an employment agency's summary of skills currently in demand and the accompanying salaries. I dare not show this to Him Outdoors; the archetypal Martian who regularly, on my behalf, with the Martian's natural instinct to solve a problem the Venusian hasn't even raised, expresses his deep annoyance at the pittance freelance writers earn.
He knows more than anyone the hours I spend hunched over my computer, hastening my failing eyesight and creating crevices in my brow that would challenge Botox's best efforts. If I cared enough to go that route (or could afford it!). Weekends and holidays flash by unnoticed in commitment to deadlines and delivery and the laptop is fired up before the first morning cuppa is brewed.
Engineering, it appears, is top of the pops in terms of demand. With finance, IT and medical in hot pursuit. Monthly salaries range from R61 000 to R70 000, eye-watering sums indeed. Policemen, nurses, teachers and social workers clock in between R9 700 to R14 000 a month, musicians average R15 000 and graphic artists around R13 000.
The highest earning Member of Parliament in South Africa earned R226 400 per month in 2016. I'll leave this right here to fester.
The SAFREA rate for freelance writers is R3.50 a word. Let me tell you from experience what that means.
You see something interesting that you'd like to write about, so craft a letter to the editor about the topic, angle, who you are likely to feature, when it'll be ready and so on. Success! You'v been commissioned to write a 1000 word article. With photographs which the mag doesn't pay for but you must provide. Oh, and this publisher pays R1 per word below the suggested freelance rates - do you have a problem with that? You spend hours researching and sourcing people to interview. Your head buzzes as you search for the opening 'hook', and the vital conclusion. After almost a week of work, you deliver exactly 1000 words, with six photographs, precisely to brief.
"Um, we'll publish this in 3 months time." OK, I'll have to wait four months for payment but am delighted to find a home for this piece. Four months pass and the ed drops you a note - 'please invoice for 853 words, we had to cut the piece.'
And that's as good as it gets - I'm registered on an international Freelancers site and let me tell you, with writers from across the globe competing for work, rates of 1 US cent per word are quite common.
It's ironic that the creative arts are so poorly paid, unless you are a Hollywood star or a musical global phenomenon. Can you imagine your life without music, looking at a beautiful sculpture or painting, or reading for knowledge or pleasure? I certainly can't yet those essentials don't drop out of thin air - they were produced with time, effort and God given talent. And justifying poorly paid, vital workers such as teachers, social workers, cops, nurses and so on as 'vocational' makes me want to vomit. These are skills EVERYONE, at some point in their life, depends on. These are the carers, life savers and life changers society cannot do without. It takes a special kind of person to enter these careers so why, oh why, do they not carry the salary scale of an engineer or an IT geek?
He knows more than anyone the hours I spend hunched over my computer, hastening my failing eyesight and creating crevices in my brow that would challenge Botox's best efforts. If I cared enough to go that route (or could afford it!). Weekends and holidays flash by unnoticed in commitment to deadlines and delivery and the laptop is fired up before the first morning cuppa is brewed.
Engineering, it appears, is top of the pops in terms of demand. With finance, IT and medical in hot pursuit. Monthly salaries range from R61 000 to R70 000, eye-watering sums indeed. Policemen, nurses, teachers and social workers clock in between R9 700 to R14 000 a month, musicians average R15 000 and graphic artists around R13 000.
The highest earning Member of Parliament in South Africa earned R226 400 per month in 2016. I'll leave this right here to fester.
The SAFREA rate for freelance writers is R3.50 a word. Let me tell you from experience what that means.
You see something interesting that you'd like to write about, so craft a letter to the editor about the topic, angle, who you are likely to feature, when it'll be ready and so on. Success! You'v been commissioned to write a 1000 word article. With photographs which the mag doesn't pay for but you must provide. Oh, and this publisher pays R1 per word below the suggested freelance rates - do you have a problem with that? You spend hours researching and sourcing people to interview. Your head buzzes as you search for the opening 'hook', and the vital conclusion. After almost a week of work, you deliver exactly 1000 words, with six photographs, precisely to brief.
And that's as good as it gets - I'm registered on an international Freelancers site and let me tell you, with writers from across the globe competing for work, rates of 1 US cent per word are quite common.
It's ironic that the creative arts are so poorly paid, unless you are a Hollywood star or a musical global phenomenon. Can you imagine your life without music, looking at a beautiful sculpture or painting, or reading for knowledge or pleasure? I certainly can't yet those essentials don't drop out of thin air - they were produced with time, effort and God given talent. And justifying poorly paid, vital workers such as teachers, social workers, cops, nurses and so on as 'vocational' makes me want to vomit. These are skills EVERYONE, at some point in their life, depends on. These are the carers, life savers and life changers society cannot do without. It takes a special kind of person to enter these careers so why, oh why, do they not carry the salary scale of an engineer or an IT geek?
Please don't feel sorry for me, I love writing more than anything I've ever done. Naturally, as with all jobs, it often palls under the pressure to produce for a living but the expanse of knowledge gained, the people I've met, the experiences I've had are priceless and worth everything.
It seems that as I get older, a communist salary system becomes more appealing. Equal pay for equal work isn't only about the sexes. If a nurse, a writer and an engineer each work long hours and give it all they have, why should the financial rewards be so radically disparate?
Who determines the worth of a person's skills? I'm a believer in effort and results. If both are fully given, then 100% value has been delivered and the job description and title should surely slide down the value scale?
Thursday, 20 July 2017
The Head Spinning Antics of Hysteria Lane Bathed in the Glow of Community Love
Welcome to my little corner of the universe. We have a postal code and our rooftops are seen on Google Earth but by most standards we live in a parallel universe which today delivered a corker that I simply have to share.
I'm jumping the schedule story list but hell, it's my list and I'll treat it with the disdain it deserves. After all, I'm working hard on 'loosening up' and 'being in the moment' (how overworked are those phrases?) and this is me shaking loose.
So, I'm enduring a few days downtime this week while these old bones host Star Wars 98, or GoT 10 as Immunity System, with it's ally Drugs, fights Infection to the death, with my body being the battlefield. Judging by the aches and pains, the battle is a hard fought one but IS and D are emerging top of the heap. Yay!
Returning from the shower this morning to a flashing collection of missed calls from a medley of folk, including Him Outdoors, I felt Armageddon approaching. What could be so urgent at this time of day?
Apparently, HO couldn't get hold of me, (my phone's been on silent for days) so he called in reinforcements from the 'hood. In a nutshell, the line stretched from HO in Durban to Hilton in White River, then went to Kate enroute to Joburg, who sent it to Belinda in White River who in turn deftly forwarded the message to Sherreen, my neighbour across the road.
Who wasn't at home. She was hard at work in her office as any self respecting business woman would be on a Thursday morning. (With the exception of Bookclub Day, but that's only one Thursday a month.)
The message was 'HO can't get hold of Tracy. Deep concern, is she OK?' and Hysteria Lane were treating their mission conscientiously. But Sherreen is not your flapping type and sensibly dashed from her office to the local music school downstairs where she knew Junior Son was hanging out. The perk went right out of her stride when she was told he was on his way back to varsity. So, what was happening to her neighbour?
Plan B - call her daughter and send her over the road to gently knock on the door and check. But what if the knock isn't heard? Maybe give the patient a quick call first. Voila!
Did we laugh as she related the cat's cradle of phone calls, which turned into a right cackle of glee when Junior sent a message later from Joburg saying that Sherreen was trying to get hold of me. Apparently her daughter took the instructions to 'Get hold of him any how you can' seriously and good old social media joined the fray.
In the meantime, of course, I'd got hold of HO and all was sorted so time for my next nap. It was a delightful surprise to awake a few hours later and find him in the doorway - the miracle of flight!
My brain was processing this vision before me when another friend called. I was expecting to receive a message about HO but no, this friend is a meteorite gadding gleefully around our mini galaxy and she was on the phone with an invitation to join her on an evening walk. Her invite declined, she went into detail about her kidney infection which cleared up overnight after she drank litres of water. She didn't need bed rest and drugs. I earnestly assured her that the doctor had done the necessary tests with more in process and the doctor was very certain of her diagnosis.
"Oh," exclaimed Meteorite. "I think I had a very mild case of that then." Yes dear.
To the very dear friends and neighbours who created an emergency telephone message service, to the 2nd generation who connected on FaceBook and especially to Meteorite who had me in fits of laughter over the, well, randomness of individual trains of thought, love and light to you.
We are White River blessed.
I'm jumping the schedule story list but hell, it's my list and I'll treat it with the disdain it deserves. After all, I'm working hard on 'loosening up' and 'being in the moment' (how overworked are those phrases?) and this is me shaking loose.
So, I'm enduring a few days downtime this week while these old bones host Star Wars 98, or GoT 10 as Immunity System, with it's ally Drugs, fights Infection to the death, with my body being the battlefield. Judging by the aches and pains, the battle is a hard fought one but IS and D are emerging top of the heap. Yay!
Returning from the shower this morning to a flashing collection of missed calls from a medley of folk, including Him Outdoors, I felt Armageddon approaching. What could be so urgent at this time of day?
Apparently, HO couldn't get hold of me, (my phone's been on silent for days) so he called in reinforcements from the 'hood. In a nutshell, the line stretched from HO in Durban to Hilton in White River, then went to Kate enroute to Joburg, who sent it to Belinda in White River who in turn deftly forwarded the message to Sherreen, my neighbour across the road.
Who wasn't at home. She was hard at work in her office as any self respecting business woman would be on a Thursday morning. (With the exception of Bookclub Day, but that's only one Thursday a month.)
The message was 'HO can't get hold of Tracy. Deep concern, is she OK?' and Hysteria Lane were treating their mission conscientiously. But Sherreen is not your flapping type and sensibly dashed from her office to the local music school downstairs where she knew Junior Son was hanging out. The perk went right out of her stride when she was told he was on his way back to varsity. So, what was happening to her neighbour?
Plan B - call her daughter and send her over the road to gently knock on the door and check. But what if the knock isn't heard? Maybe give the patient a quick call first. Voila!
Did we laugh as she related the cat's cradle of phone calls, which turned into a right cackle of glee when Junior sent a message later from Joburg saying that Sherreen was trying to get hold of me. Apparently her daughter took the instructions to 'Get hold of him any how you can' seriously and good old social media joined the fray.
In the meantime, of course, I'd got hold of HO and all was sorted so time for my next nap. It was a delightful surprise to awake a few hours later and find him in the doorway - the miracle of flight!
My brain was processing this vision before me when another friend called. I was expecting to receive a message about HO but no, this friend is a meteorite gadding gleefully around our mini galaxy and she was on the phone with an invitation to join her on an evening walk. Her invite declined, she went into detail about her kidney infection which cleared up overnight after she drank litres of water. She didn't need bed rest and drugs. I earnestly assured her that the doctor had done the necessary tests with more in process and the doctor was very certain of her diagnosis.
"Oh," exclaimed Meteorite. "I think I had a very mild case of that then." Yes dear.
To the very dear friends and neighbours who created an emergency telephone message service, to the 2nd generation who connected on FaceBook and especially to Meteorite who had me in fits of laughter over the, well, randomness of individual trains of thought, love and light to you.
We are White River blessed.
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