Only in South Africa

Is it just me, or is there something a little disturbing about the fact that on the experiential gifts stand at CNA, "Shotgun training" is classified as "family fun" (see bottom left)? It would be an interesting family indeed that thought it a wholesome alternative to the Zoo to introduce little Johnny or Phumzile to the thrill of a powerful recoil. Admittedly, I've never fired a weapon. Maybe it is fun. In fact, there are some members of my family whom I've fantasised about introducing to a rifle, but I don't think that sort of satisfaction is included at a mere R499.00.

It can't be far off now when the marketers of these gifts look at their catalogue and see that the obvious progression of their work is to combine adventure and family fun and start offering an Advanced driving and Shooting adventure where the insatiable South African family get to race around Kyalami, Dad drunk at the wheel and Mom riding shotgun (literally) while the children fight over the grenade launcher.

Tempting, but I think I'll take the Moonlight Night Spa for One all the same.

You don't have to be Jewish to shop in Rosebank

This little gem was spotted at the African market in Johannesburg somewhere between the Indian head massages and the "tasteful nudes". The cover looks like a portrait from an early United Nations diplomatic social. I first thought that this would turn out to be some crackly recording of sulky Organ music but of course the joke was on me... It's a slick irreverent comedy recorded in the 1960s in New York and not at all out of place in Rosebank. Before I realised this, though, I thought it would be fun to imagine all the wonderful ways that you might finish that sentence... Go on, you know you want to.

Too Cool for Crack

Louise Bourgeois must have some seriously freaky dreams. If this building sized arachnid sculpture is anything to go by, I suspect David Lynch would pay handsomely to surf the sub-conscious of the diminutive artist.

We recently went to the Tate Modern to see "the crack", which (warning, excruciating pun ahead) is not all it's cracked up to be. I can muster a healthy respect for the architectural challenges the artist must have overcome to be able to introduce a massive fault into the foundations of one of London's most iconic buildings, but as an artistic device I think it falls somewhat short of it's alleged purpose.

The artist's intention, according the pamphlet we received at the door, was to describe the divide between wealthy and poor, the affluent West and the blighted post-colonial third world. In the turbine hall of the Tate Modern though, there is nothing to indicate that your experience of the world is at all different depending on which side of the crack you inhabit.

The differences between the first and third worlds are stark and they certainly merit public attention, so why present it in a manner so abstract as to make no attempt to describe the difference? Perhaps it was for the ironic enjoyment of the artist. After all, there I was, a warmly-dressed white middle class Westerner feeling that I didn't quite understand what to do about this chasm, or myself... a sentiment I feel whenever I read about the very distant but very real suffering of people in poorer parts of the world.

Either way, I failed to find a way to photograph the crack that didn't reduce it to an uninteresting documentation of the texture of concrete, so I concentrated on the massive and much more visceral experience just outside the entrance, Louise Bourgeois' Spider. This cold, metal monster speaks much more clearly of the dark side of the human experience.

Sitges and Barcelona, May 2007

I cheekily created this blog entry without any actual content because I wanted it to appear as being written in May when I did eventually get around to it. In the meantime, the pictures are here.

"Professionally cleaned"

Monday, 23 April 2007

On Saturday, we packed our wordly belongings and headed North, crossing the Thames with a twinge of nostalgia. For Kei, this was a homecoming, a return to the safety and comfort of charted territory. For myself, it was an adventure, my second permanent address in London and a tentative step towards a more suburban existence.

Whatever our various expectations of our future home, neither of us were quite prepared for the comical and trying array of mishaps that littered our path to homeliness. Less than twenty four hours before moving in, literally as the ink dried on our contract, we overheard a conversation at the rear of the letting agent's office describing our boiler as broken and leaking. This in fact turned out to be two separate problems, one in the boiler, one in the plumbing beneath the bathtub which was leaking into our neighbours apartment.

The remote control for the underground parking was taken by the previous tenant and so after three days of haranguing the letting agent, the landlord purchased a new one and then insisted that we pay a deposit for it. The telephone line has not been used since the early nineties and requires an engineer to activate it. The electricity meter was in debt when we arrived and so we had to pay the previous tenants owings just to switch the lights on. The fridge smelled like something had died in it, and then been ressurected to do the work of Satan, and then died again. The duplicate keys we had cut didn't work and the key cutter seems to have left town. The electricity panel for the boiler is literally hanging out of the wall, exposed live wires dangling inches from a fifty litre water reservoir.

While moving furniture around we discovered that each piece had been carefully placed to hide a pointillist artwork no doubt rendered with smouldering discarded cigarettes (which explains why all the furniture the landlord purchased claims in large bold letters to be FLAME RESISTANT). I had been assured by the agent that the apartment would be "professionally cleaned" before we moved in and unless by professional he meant a blind, armless toddler with attention deficit disorder and a feather duster would be left alone in the flat for an hour, he might have been stretching the truth a little. The stove was invisible for the congealed Korean cooking oils which I now know are resistent even to industrial grade solvents. If they're enriching uranium, it might well be for the peaceful purpose of cleaning the nation's hobs and ovens. The carpet, when vacuumed, went from smoker's lung to smoker's teeth on the Pantone color chart.

The final straw came when I returned the hire vehicle we had used, only to be told that the spare tyre was missing. I had not checked for it before taking possession and so was legally liable for the cost of replacement. Thank goodness for the security guard who discovered that several spare tyres were missing besides my own ("It's them bleeding kids wot nick 'em") otherwise the manager may well have been the next victim of our Indesit fridge/freezer from Hades.

By now we are more or less settled in. Various bits of the apartment are starting to look inhabitable and I'm particularly proud of the IKEA bookcase (assembled by myself with only one minor injury) which will some day double as a television stand.

Very sick notes

I was recently reminiscing about how towards the end of my days at the yuppie-factory called Pretoria Boys High School I didn't care very much about the consequences of my actions. I had already plotted my escape to a near-by private college for people who never quite adjusted to conventional schooling and one of the ways that I expressed my new found freedom from persecution was to write fake sick notes for whomever asked me.

I prided myself on being able to simulate the perfunctory, half-heartedly officious tone that an overworked mother-of-three might use when composing such a note but looking back it would have been so much more fun to give a twisted voice to the bizarre and tragic reality of suburban life in the conservative capital. Imagine:

"Edward will need to leave school early today for a doctor's appointment - his brother George, by far our favourite child has a rare form of Leukemia and we're hoping to harvest little Eddie's bone marrow before he's old enough to get a restraining order. He's already all up in arms about his human rights thanks to that communist-sympathiser of a history teacher your governing body chose to employ. Edward will probably be off school until we can transport him to school without getting the seats of the Volvo all bloody."

"Please excuse Cuthbert from class this afternoon - he has an enormous sebaceous cyst which needs lancing. The last time we left it too late and it exploded spontaneously at Jimmy Goldberg's birthday party, spraying this cottage cheese like pus all over the cake which was a terrible embarrassment (although it could probably only have improved the flavour knowing Gloria's cooking). It was especially trying as it happened just days after the poor boy's biological mother was arrested at the border again. Thanks so much!"

How hot is hot enough?

Stop Global Warming!, originally uploaded by Abri_Beluga.

My partner and I rarely agree on an ideal temperature. I'm sure that if nuclear proliferation turned nasty and we saw the incandescent wave of flesh-melting fission rolling towards us his last words would be something like "... at last! Where's my speedo?"

I'm partial to more temperate climes and so the global warming issue is one that I try to keep abreast of. A colleague of mine has been trying to convince me that upstanding members of the scientific community have debunked the 'myth' of global warming and that what we're experiencing is a temporary anomaly - the global equivalent of stepping out in a sweater when in fact a vest would have done nicely. This sort of contrariness resembles the infamous medical wisdom of Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, amongst others.

I'm inclined to believe that human beings are at fault - we are impatient innovators. So many ideas take hold before the consequences can be perceived. Lead pipes witnessed the birth of modern plumbing and poisoned it. Chlorofluorocarbons kept our food cold and germ-free as it dissolved our fragile atmospheric sunblock. There are more of us than ever before, more of us with cars, computers and our ungainly, contemptible 'carbon footprints'.

It may just be my Baptist upbringing speaking, but I think it's more convenient to assume that you screwed up, intentionally or not, pay your tithes (now called 'green tax') for absolution and then make a doomed but noble attempt at self rehabiliation. The worst that could happen is that a few excess trees are planted. Oh, the horror.