Arr-ee-es-pee-ee-see-tee...

(Original image via www.allday.com)

Dear Reader, or as Elizabeth Gilbert would say: Dear Ones,

Well, it’s been quite a busy week since we last spoke. I went to a 3 year olds party, which proved to be one of the most fun parties I’ve ever attended. I was served pink gin and who knew toddler tutus could be worn in such innovative ways? I’m also in the early stages of growing out my hair and all I can say is thank heavens we’re headed for beanie season.

On a more sombre note, I’ve recently been at the sharp end of some barbed parental criticism. This, I confess, has not been fun. It’s been the opposite. Quite unfun, actually. Although the critique was general, rather than personal, I took it upon myself to feel personally attacked. As one does. As a parent, you know.

Anyhow, it got me thinking: Just who. THE fuck. Do people think they are to point fingers?

This isn’t the first time I’ve contemplated this. In fact, not long after Mr Chilled was born I started writing a little handbook called “The A-Z of Motherly Madness.” Whilst you might think that this is a book that’s filled with stories of sleepless nights, poopey nappies and how your breast pads leaked, it isn’t. It’s mostly filled with stories about how utterly painful it is having to deal with other adults, other parents and know-it-all society members in general.

From the moment you’re pregnant it’s as if you’re wearing a huge neon sign on your forehead that says “ARSEHOLE COMMENTARY WELCOME”. I had everyone, from grannies wagging their fingers at me saying, “Just wait until you see what’s coming” to single, childless men reminding me that “Boys don’t wear pink”.

But if I thought that unwelcome comments and wanky advice was a pain in the arse back then, you can only imagine my horror, when, upon the advent of Facebook, people saw fit to adopt their very own virtual soapboxes and spout enough advisory and judgmental rhetoric to sink a ship. Don't they know that in order to have a real virtual soapbox you need a blog?

Once you become a parent, you’re directly in the line of fire of the opposite of Facebook likes. The unlike end, if you will. If Facebook had icons for finger-wagging and pointing fingers, they would surely be the most used. “Pam checked in at Sanctimoniousville and is feeling finger-waggy”, “Simon checked in at Holier-than-thou-Hoek and is feeling “finger-pointy”, and “Dave checked in at I’mTooAmazingVlei and is feeling self-righteous”. You get the picture. I feel it’s a tragic oversight that Facebook hasn’t made an icon for the middle finger.

But I think we need to look at this dishing-out-of-parenting-advice from two angles. First, from the angle of childless people, and then from the angle of people who actually have children.

Childless people. What. The. Fuck? Just shut up, truly. You’re making a git of yourself. If you’re struggling with this concept let me explain it to you in simple terms, by means of an analogy. Let’s pretend that I’m the kind of person who watches a lot of tennis and, because I watch tennis, I start believing that I know how to play tennis. I become so convinced of my tennis abilities that I start commenting on how other people should be playing tennis. However, I’ve never actually played tennis myself. In fact, I don’t even know how to hold a racquet. I start chatting with other tennis enthusiasts who also watch tennis but don’t know how to play it either. Between ourselves we decide that there’s lots of room for improvement as far as tennis playing is concerned and so we decide to tell those, who actually ARE playing tennis, how to play tennis.

Do you see the problem here? Whereas I might be an expert at observing tennis and may even have done some reading up on “How to be the PERFECT Tennis Player”, my interest in tennis doesn’t make me invested in tennis. And how do you become invested in tennis? There’s only one way: play tennis yourself. Until then, just know that whatever knowledge you think you have about tennis is irrelevant until such time that you yourself get onto the court. #word.

Now for parents. Seriously? WTF? You should know better.

I recently got invited to a parenting group on Facebook. Being invited to a Facebook group is like being asked to Like, Share, and type AMEN. You don’t really want to do it, but you feel pressured into it, lest other people thing that you don’t really care about the issue at hand.  The thing is, though, belonging to a parenting forum is the parental equivalent of reading a beauty magazine: you just feel inadequate. Via a barrage of articles, you get the feeling that your child is on the verge of getting scurvy due to poor diet, that they spend too much time on their iPads, that they eat too much sugar, that you’re the spawn of Satan for vaccinating, and that, in short, your offspring are doomed to become psychopaths.

But what’s even worse than the timeline on a parenting forum, is taking a scroll down your Facebook feed. Here you will find people liking and sharing all manner of crappy advice on parenting. Posters showing cute yellow minions saying things like “If you got respect spanked into you, like and share”. (As a complete aside, I’m quite, quite certain that minions would not subscribe to that philosophy.)

Bit the thing that has me foxed about these kind of memes is the person posting it doesn’t make it clear to whom it’s directed. The thought has crossed my mind that they’ve in fact shared it as a reminder to themselves - as one might pin up your favourite sayings on your pin-board at home – rather than as a comment that’s directed towards others. But if it indeed is directed towards other parents, I have to wonder: is it directed towards me? Or is it directed towards you? Just who exactly is responsible for raising these belligerent, disrespectful, precocious children? Do they walk amongst us, or are they in some other distant land where disrespect, belligerence and precociousness are the norm? It’s all very exhausting to figure out.

I really have to hope it’s not directed at me. Coz, you know, fuck you and all your preachy wankishness. Unless you have a tattoo on your forehead stating “PERFECT PARENT, ALL MY KIDS ARE A SUCCESS STORY”, I just don’t think you should be bandying around memes about other people’s parenting abilities.

Of couse, you also get the intellectual types who won’t recycle playful memes, but instead will draw from an incredibly reliable knowledge base that has been entirely gleaned from the archives of Facebook. Using recycled sensationalist columns that were only ever intended to drive traffic to websites bearing the names of “Lentil soup for your soul” and “Intuition for Conscious Enlightened Perfectpants People” as ammunition, they tout themselves as “well read” and, without employing any critical thinking, will take these “articles” as the gospel. It would be funny if it weren’t so un-fucking-funny.

Some parents are sneaky and use boasting as a way to wag their fingers at other parents. They’ll say things like “I’m so glad my Sarah loves to read”. Subtext: Your kid’s a reprobate because they don’t. Or, one of my favourites “I’m so lucky that Lou-Lou knows how to play and use her imagination”. Subtext: what kind of parent are you that you let your kids watch TV? Hashtag ARSEHOLEPARENT.

The thing is, most parents I know think that, most of the time, they’re fucking up royally with this parenting thing. Still, they’re doing their best and, as the saying goes, if you don’t have something positive to say, perhaps don’t say anything at all. And for those people who are winning at parenting, as my dad would say, Bravo!~ Bully for you! But there’s no need to be such a dick about it (he never said the last bit, that’s all mine).

And on that note I think I’m going to go and devise more ways that I can be the worst parent possible and completely stuff up my children’s lives. I’m thinking Ritalin might be the way to go. But that, dear ones, is a story for another day.

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Amandlalaland...

(Original Image Via Kat Ross on Pintrest)

On Friday last week, like many other South Africans, I took part in what BK un-affectionately termed “a whitey protest”. He, like many others, said he would not participate because “Where were we during apartheid?” and “Where were we when people like him were sent to the army and posted at the border?” I suggested to him that as far as apartheid and the army are concerned, I was way beneath voting age and besides, protesting and marching wasn’t really a thing in my hometown. It was just a small town and would have been more of a small gathering than a protest march.

And while BK was wrangling with guilt and the ghosts of the past, I was wrangling with some pressing issues of my own.

The first issue I was faced with was that I was white. Am white. While this may not seem like an obvious concern, I’d read so many articles in the lead up to the protest about how white people didn’t have the right to march, protest or beg solidarity. I felt like quite the imposter even entertaining the prospect of protesting. Like BK, the prevailing sentiment for many people – many journalists at least - seemed to be that, just like the #ZUMAMUSTFALL protest, white people were only prepared to protest when it affected their capitalist privilege. Fair comment.

Still, I wanted to protest, and the only way I could justify doing so was to apply the same reasoning when I have to explain why I became a vegetarian. It goes something like this:  Yes, in the past I’ve eaten meat but now I don’t want to anymore. Yes, I did wrong by those sheep and cattle and lambs but now, I would like to take up the their cause.

If we use the same line of reasoning you can see how it doesn’t work to say “Well I ate meat then so I’m not allowed to give up eating meat now.” Same-same with protesting and marching. Just because I didn’t do anything back then to fight for the right of animals doesn’t mean that I’m not allowed to do anything now. Surely?

Much like deciding to join in protesting, deciding to become vegetarian didn’t happen immediately but rather over many years and via many messages. The first message was the movie Babe. After all, you can’t eat animals once you know that they can talk. I must confess, however, that the final nail in the coffin for me giving up meat came about when it became personally relevant. You see we got dogs and I just couldn’t eat meat any more because I just knew they were looking at me and thinking, “If she runs out of beef, will she eat us?”

Of course, there are many people who say things like “Oooh, you don’t eat meat but you eat eggs. Have you ever seen how laying hens are treated?” And all I can answer is that for now my cause is for meat and soon, when I have the inclination, I may take up the cause for eggs and milk. And who

knows, I may even wave a banner for the bees. I’m sure you see where I’m going with this. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, and then damned all over again if you do.

Another issue was that I didn’t know what to wear. There should be some kind of Protest101 manual. I did “attend” the other #WHITE #ZUMAMUSTFALL march that took place in Cape Town’s city centre but I certainly couldn’t use that occasion as a guide. Why, I saw more brand names, hipsters and neatly trimmed beards than what one might see at Fashion Week.

I told myself that this protest would be different but all the same, I cursed the arctic gale that was blowing in true Cape Town style because this meant I had to wear some kind of warm jacket or coat. And while I did have a Uniqlo jacket, I simply could not bring myself to wear it. After all, nothing says privilege like a Uniqlo jacket, right?

I also knew it would be just wrong to play dress-up and try to look like a freedom fighter. After all, we know how appropriation has landed people like Justin Timberlake and Taylor Swift in hot water. So no, no dressing up and no dancing like any other culture but my own would do. Dancing and clapping out of time. That’s the way it had to be.

To add to my outfitorial worry, there was some confusion in social media as to whether protesters should all wear white, or all wear black. This, I feel, should have been made clear. I also think that it would have saved us a whole lot of trouble if we’d stayed well away from both black and white. When in doubt, Reggae colours are the safest. Peace and love bru, peace and love.

I should point out that TFTF, albeit unintentionally, went full guerrilla in his choice of outfit; he wore a hoodie with a red buff pulled over his nose and looked like he was a seasoned rabble-rouser, poised to throw a petrol bomb or at least get tear gassed. I can’t help but feel he was slightly disappointed at the calmness of it all. That’s ADHD for you folks.

Another salient issue was around which Font I should use for my sign. I’m quite a girly-girl when it comes to typography so in an ideal world I would’ve liked my HAMBA ZUMA sign to be fun and attractive. Still, I knew that “Blomster” or “Hippie Gypsy Regular” would be difficult to read and would just look too arty. Obviously “Comic Sans” was a no-go, so I opted for “Helvetica”. I feel I could’ve done more to decorate it though. A few flags maybe.

To make matters worse, the only cardboard I had lying around was from the inside of the fitted sheet I’d bought at Mr Price Home. You know how they kind of wrap the fitted sheets around an A4 piece of cardboard to that they can easily insert it into the plastic sleeve? It was one of those. I had my doubts that it would withstand the rigours of picketing and wind as they are quite bendy. Talk about being unprepared.

Of course, there were other dilemmas. Do we take the kids? Do we take the dogs? (They looked very disappointed when we left without them. The dogs that is, not the kids.) Do we pack snacks? Should we stand somewhere near a loo? Would it be like the Argus and would there be water stations and free mini Bar One’s? Would there be big amplifiers playing songs like “Give me hope, Joanna” and “Redemption Song”.

As if on cue, on arriving at our protest destination, Mr Chilled asked in his deep teenage voice “Um, how long do you think we’ll be here for?” and TFTF announced “I’m cold. I’m thirsty. Did you bring juice?” I’m not sure they understood the gravity of the situation.

Perhaps the last, but not least, critical issue surfaced when we were well on our protest way, so to speak. We noticed that passing cars were hooting and that their drivers were cheering. We knew we had acknowledge them somehow and signal our appreciation for their support. What we ended up with was a kind of mashup of the Black Power hand sign, a thumbs-up, and a wave. It was rather awkward. It would have been really useful if we could have clarified some universal type of hand signal for the day. It felt dreadfully imposter-ish and appropriation-ish using the Black Power sign as a white person. Just saying.

In the end, as in the beginning, I was glad I went along. Who knows what kind of difference will make but one thing is for sure, next time I will be more prepared. My outfit will involve comfortable footwear and my font of choice will almost certainly be “Bleeding Cowboys”.

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just do...what?

(Original image via: Vintage Everyday http://www.vintag.es)

It’s not yet 10am and already I’ve had quite a morning. I’ve read an article on perimenopause (this is very #GroundhogDay for me), an article on the crooked Minister of Social Development (also a little #GroundhogDayish)  and a piece about how evangelists have been termed “America’s Taliban”. I’ve also read why celebrities wear heels that are too big for them (to be fair, this was more a “look” than a “read”) and last but not least, I’ve increased the zoom to 125% on Word and have had to put my spectacles on.

Sigh. As my mum always says, getting old isn’t for sissies.

She’s right, you know. My mum. But I’d like to add to her statement and say that evidently, getting old is about revealing to you, via elimination, all the things you aren’t destined to become. These revelations are delivered with equal measures of tragedy and hilarity, depending on your hormone cycle.

For those of you who have known since childhood what you wanted to be, good for you. For the rest of us, even as we skirt menopause, life is one long battle to discover what we are meant to “be” one day when we’re grown up.

For example, when I was in high school, I thought (for about 24 hours) about becoming a theatre performer. My oldest sister is fabulous on stage and I hoped it was perhaps a genetic thing that just needed to “kick in” under the right conditions. Accordingly, I decided to audition for the part of Miss Hannigan in Annie. Auditions took place at lunchtime in the team teaching room and we all had to stand in a line, side by side, as the teacher stood facing us. She then asked us, one person at a time, to sing.

As I heard all the other hopeful Miss Hannigans sing, I convinced myself “You can do this”. I assumed that a racing heart and dry mouth was normal – stagefright, you understand – and that these maladies would clear up the minute I was put on the spot, so to speak. The teacher stood in front of me and signalled for me to begin and…nothing. Not a squeak came out of my mouth. It was as though I was lip-syncing to invisible music. I think I feigned a sore throat to try and hide the embarrassment of my non-performance.

Then, if my Standard 4 autobiography is to be believed, I’ve also had aspirations in the past of becoming a “sheep farmer’s wife” and moving onto a farm in the Karoo. For anyone who thinks children’s ambitions aren’t informed by the media, you are wrong. I remember specifically where this “sheep farm in the Karoo” idea came from. There was a Lux advertisement in the 80’s that was endorsed by a model, who may have even been an ex-Miss Something - someone like Vera Johns or Margaret Gardiner. I believe the script went something like this…

Model:        When I decided to move to a sheep farm in the Karoo, everyone said to me “But, Vera, what about your beautiful skin?” But I told them my skin would be fine because I use Lux.

I have no idea what was so appealing about this concept other than I may have thought that by moving onto a sheep farm I stood the possibility of being crowned the next Miss South Africa? To be fair, the model was snuggling a lamb so maybe this was the hook? Anyway, there were obvious flaws with this pipedream. Specifically, I loathe semi-desertious environments and I don’t use Lux.

Furthermore, seems unreasonable dreams and aspirations don’t stop at career choices. An element of improbability has permeated my self-belief regarding leisure activities and sporting challenges too.

Why, it was as recent as college, just after school, when I met someone who did Sky Diving. She did a presentation on it in the hall and by the time she was finished, I’d already had various fantasies about jumping out of aeroplanes and walking around in my red jumpsuit, strutting adrenaline-junkie swag. Again, there were, and still are, a number of issues with this dream: they don’t make jumpsuits with bum room big enough for my body type and, I can’t even look down when I travel in the glass lifts at Cavendish Square, so heaven only knows how I imagined I was going to jump out of an aeroplane.

Of late, my “anything is possible” attitude has me considering a) taking up surfing and/or b) walking the Appalachian trail. I’ve gone so far as to do a ton of “surfing strengthening” exercises at the gym. Mr Chilled, in a way that only he can, recently implied that sooner or later I would have to graduate from the gym and actually get into the water. Teenage smartarse. I’m sure he just wants to film me getting into my wetsuit so he can post it on “Fail Army”.

As for the Appalachian trail – as with any trail really – the problem is… I don’t see anyone walking in leggings. They all seem to wear those beige chino-type hiking pants and, unless you have a serious thigh gap, leggings of some sort are essential for walking and running. In fact, regardless of having a thigh gap or not, I have no idea how people do any kind of exercise in pants that don’t stretch. The very thought of wearing stiff pants (or, as BK calls them, pants that “work against you”) makes me want to throw in the towel before I’ve even started.

Still. There’s no need to give up entirely on my dreams. My Standard 4 autobiography also stated that I’d like to become an airhostess. I think it’s fair to say I’m already reasonably qualified for this role in that my kids have helped me hone my “you-just-sit-there-while-I-wait-on-you” skills. All I need to work out is how to walk in a pencil skirt and court shoes.

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lounging around...

Christmas is a mean time of year for freelancers. We don’t get jobs, which means we don’t get paid. Unfortunately, the kids expect Santa, the festive little bugger, to still come calling.

Because of this, I committed to working (in not-well-thought-out haste, I must confess) as a hospitality-slash-property manager for the holiday season. The first warning bell lies in the mismatch between the title of the job and my personality type. I’m not really the managey type at all, mostly because I can’t be arsed with that kind of thing. For the most part, I lived up to my commitment swimmingly and truly put my back into this meet, greet and pretend to give a sheet business. It primarily involves a lot of smiling, acting like I give a damn when guests have complaints and doing a lot of mooching around waiting for guests to arrive and check out.

I hate it. Firstly, I find this first-meeting business nerve wracking and consequently, I tend to be overly chatty and sweat like a MOFO. I also tend to either make corny jokes or to laugh too loudly at the guest’s corny jokes. Secondly, what I most hate, in a deep and fearsome way, is when guests complain about the lack of sun loungers.

Whaaaaaaat the fuuuuuck is with sunloungers??!?!

I’m of the thinking that the world can be neatly divided into SUNLOUNGER TYPES and NON-SUNLOUNGER TYPES for it seems that certain tourists tend to be really obsessed with sun loungers. Like reeeaaally OB.SESSED. So much so, that in hotels and lodges, these tourists will wake up super early and “reserve” a sunlounger with their towel and will sometimes even place a book on TOP OF the towel (NOTE: this is often a “fake” book that they have no intention of reading at all). The book makes it look as if someone has been sitting there reading since 4am and has just stepped away from said lounger to swim a few laps in the pool or go for a quick pee.

In case you’re sitting there thinking that this isn’t as serious as cancer for some people, just Google “no booking sun lounger signs” and you will find a slew of articles and anecdotes about this very matter. (Side Note: many hotels are completely fed up with the furore created over sun loungers and have placed signs in strategic areas that state “No Booking Sunloungers”. True Story). I found an article, which states "A British tourist would be quite within their legal rights to ignore the reservation implied by the towels if there is nobody there," said Cologne-based Mr Höcker…”. Mr Höcker, by the way, is a German lawyer (oh the irony!) who also, incidentally, cautions against doing “anything undiplomatic with the offending German towel.”  Mmm, I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure what undiplomatic towel actions involve but I think it’s best to leave some things well enough alone.

Another video and accompanying editorial I stumbled upon exposes British guests “booking” their sun loungers as though this was surely to be the biggest challenge – and indeed triumph - of their day. The footage, shot in fast motion (though it needn’t have been), shows crowds of tourists at a Spanish resort, streaming like lemmings through the door to the pool deck, rushing to the stack of sunloungers and feverishly finding a spot where they could park their sunlounger for the day. In the editorial section, one holiday maker lamented  how they “only got a sun-bed on two days in the week that we stayed there” and added that “If you don't go and queue for 45 minutes and then run with the crowds you don't get one." It’s the heart-breaking holiday-romance love story you’ve heard a thousand times... Tourist goes on holiday. Lack of sun lounger breaks her heart. Tourist’s holiday is utterly ruined. The struggle is real, people.

Anyway, this week I very hospitably checked in guests who, within two hours, called to complain about the dust bunnies behind the couch (which immediately begs the question, what, exactly, were they doing behind the couch?!?!?) Then, almost as an afterthought, but with the tone suggesting otherwise, they also recommended that “there should be more sun loungers. At least one for every guest.”

There are various scenarios which might call for sun lounger fixation. Firstly, if you were, say, very old or infirm, I think you present a valid argument for sun lounger obsession. Another scenario would be if you were at some place which was utterly lacking in beach sand or lawn on which you could potentially rest your weary bones. In this instance, I can see how you would actually NEEEEED a sun lounger. However, given that most places have either lawn or beach sand – hell, sometimes both! - I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that you just, you know, put your towel on the grass and your arse on your towel. Voila!

But no, it’s all about the fucking sunloungers. I shit you not, my colleague and partner in crime was told by guests that she looked after that “their holiday was utterly ruined due to the lack of sun loungers” and that it was “creating stress” for them on their holiday. The place where I checked guests in has, despite the worst drought in a million years, pristine, lush green grass due to borehole water. It’s positively bouncy. The guests did not share my enthusiasm for this fact when I pointed it out to them. They simply could not connect the dots between green grass …and…arse.

No. WE NEED SUNLOUNGERS!!!! It doesn’t matter that the garden is draped in dappled sunlight and has gorgeous trees where birds’ nest and bees buzz. It looks like a bloody botanical garden for Pete’s sake. NOOOOO!!! All that goes unnoticed because every faaaaaaarking venue is judged by the abundance – or lack of – sun fucking loungers.

If you could have seen the urgency with which the guests in the main house abducted ALL the sun loungers from the poolside and relocated them to alongside their veranda, the first thought that would have come to mind is Gollum and his Precioussssss. The guests at the adjoining cottage had not even handed over the keys and checked out completely when the main houseguests had already claimed all the sun loungers for themselves. They obsessively pursued the sun loungers in the same way that Scrat pursues his acorn in the movie Ice Age.

It’s enough to make you weep. Truly. It just made me want to make a bonfire with our sun loungers at home just so that we’re not associated with that kind of shit. The sun lounger culture is truly mystifying. To begin with, it makes me wonder, what exactly do these folk do in real life that’s so exhausting that they need to spend an entire holiday lying on a sun lounger? And also, what do they think will happen to them if they lie on the lawn or beach sand?

I was once told - by an actual British person mind you -  that British people don’t go on holiday to explore, they go on holiday to lie in the sun and get drunk. Bearing this in mind, sun lounger mania makes total sense. Who, after a hard night’s drinking, has the mind to do anything but recline? The thing is, it seems that it’s not only the Greece Uncovered-type tourist who suffers from sun lounger neurosis. It seems to be totally widespread, across all demographics.

When I related my confusion regarding sun lounger preoccupation to a friend of mine, he suggested that all holidaymakers be handed a “holiday etiquette guide”. This would include things like not wearing socks and sandals, not tipping what is the equivalent of 20 pence in your home currency, and NOT sitting on a sun lounger. This guide, he suggested, could imply that any kind of sun lounger related behaviour is totally passé. Touristically taboo. Frowned on. Scoffed at.

Because when you think about how ridiculous it all is, it is definitely a little ridiculous. There’s no other way to put it.

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