brit arrives

My Brit arrives this morning! Fresh off the boat, and immediately whisked to the Free State for Poen's nuptials.

He may be the only Brit to have visited Viljoenskroon since, say, the Anglo Boer War.

It's been a fun few days here in Joburg. Visiting old haunts, seeing old faces. It's been great to catch up with friends. I've been bouncing around all of them, and staying over at a new house every night. They've all been so hospitable.

Off to fetch my Brit, and then Free State and bridesmaidly duties.

Then Cape Town.

PS: I'm still battling in this heat...

joburg summer

Dude. I'm back in the land of sun.

Thrust into a world of thirty degree temperatures. Which I'm quite happy in retrospect that I waited almost 2 years for.

And I have the red shoulders to prove it. If my skin had it's own set of vocal chords, it would be saying something like: Dude. I feel kind of jazzy. There's this amazingly warm, crazy shit enveloping itself around me, and all I wanna do is dance..

But first thing's first before we get into the sun thing. It's really wonderful to be back. Things have definitely changed; specifically the buildings around Johannesburg.

What do you mean there are pyramids in Sandton?

I arrived alongside L, feeling pasty and mingy. Looking pasty and mingy, to the point where the dress fitter for our bridesmaid dresses was like, "Hmmm. You have that London look. You need to get some sun into your life before the wedding."

Straight back into it, seeing my mates, chatting like old times, catching up, and driving my mum's car everywhere. We had such a fabulous hen's party for Poen.

How freaking festive was the party? We started off with a kitchen tea, where waiter's with bare bums served us champagne. Then headed to Bella (?) in Illovo for a boozy lunch and games, and then to San Bar. This huge deck on top of one of the Sandton hotels, with an incredible, eye-gawking view of Joburg.

I temporarily forgot how lush and tree-filled this place is. Probably because it's snowy and stark back home right now. And the sunset took my breath away. L and I had to remind ourselves that we are on holiday. This isn't reality. This is fun times. And that while it seems amazeballs, London is also amazeballs. For different reasons.

We got trashed like it was 2006. It was so good to see so many mates in one room. We ended up dancing about the deck and being embarrassing. Like we always were. We cabbed around Jozi, stopping in at various watering holes. Some were completely shit.
I don't know what people do on a Saturday night in Joburg anymore, but they're not going to the Baron in Sandton. Jesus, hi there 50-year old pervs hanging off the bar counter.

We all past out on Poen's couches and awoke with that familiarly nostalgic feeling: what was it? Ah. Waking up hanging in Joburg.
Caught up with The one and only Dove for breakfast. I have really missed my mates.

Just a few initial observations:

This place is fucking warm
Dude. I've sweated more in the first two hours of arriving here than all the days of 2011 put together. I. Am. Beading. Out.
So I'm walking around in my mother's house in my doondies. It's fabulous.

I am so impressed by the Gautrain
Dude. It's exactly the same train - design-wise inside - that I take to work everyday in London. I've taken it from the airport and to Hatfield. I'm so impressed; and it's just such a pity it's taken so long to get here.

The clothes in the shops...
...I'm a leetle disappointed. My tastes and wardrobe have changed. And I didn't expect London to be in South Africa by any token. Id' have to say that Country Road at Woolworths is where I'll make any holiday purchases. And The Space. I loved that place. But perhaps I'll see it differently now.

South Africa is SO friendly
I winter in London, you don't smile. The weather dictates that you'll be grumpy for at least 90% of your day. But people here ARE seriously friendly. They'd better be; the sun shines, they have no excuse. They ask questions, they smile. And it's great for tourists. Like me!

It's not as cheap as I envisioned
I earn pounds, so I'm not talking about for me. Perhaps it's the psychological thing of having an extra zero on the end of all the prices, but I don't reckon this place is that cheap for middle class citizens called Craig who work in IT. Say.

Right. I'm off to tan my white rump on my mum's deck. And eat biltong.

saffabound

Oh my gosh. I'm flying home today! Home home.

I have a new straw hat, and plan to smash a few champagne's in my face at Heathrow before boarding my flight.

Might buy a new bikini. Airport shopping has become quite a nasty little habit of late.

My suitcase is heavy as fuck. Turns out I have a lot of stuff to bring with me.
Including fresh Earl Grey leaves, for my tea-inclined mates.

Ooh I am excited, I don't think I'm going to be sober for a while.

Byeeee! Until I reach the other side. Obvs.

almost there

In 24 hours I'll be boarding the flight home.

Besides the strain the family and I are taking from my aunt's passing, a holiday is needed for other reasosns too.

I've just finished a four page handover document. I'm pretty excited to get my ass home, pack my suitcase and get out of London for a few weeks. Our differential is -5 to 35, I'm told. A thirty degree difference. I'm going to be sweating before 9:00am.

The Brit joins me in a week, and I can't wait! to have him there too. Watching him try to braai boerewors and wear his sunnies all day long because his retinas aren't used to full sunlight, is really endearing.

He's not a complete troglodyte, but you get what I mean. I love it when he's in full 'Africa' mode, like a kid learning how to navigate the jungle.

He can even say 'Viljoenskroon' now. It's taken a while, but he now knows how to answer when South Africans ask him where Poen's wedding will be.

Peas: So babe you can't wear flip flops at Peon's farm.

Brit: Oh why? It's going to be like...40 degrees.

Peas" Yeah, I forgot to remind you. There's a snake epidemic on Poen's farm.

Brit: Babe.

Peas: Don't worry. it's not as bad as previous years. And they'll give you your own broom to bash around in front of you as you walk. To chase them away.

Brit: What.

Peas: You just have to be vigilant. No walking without bashing the broom around in front of you first. And bring your football socks.

Brit: You'd better be fucking joking.

I am of course. And have assured him it's fine, and the worst he might see is a cane rat running through the mielies, which yes, are the size of small Greyhounds, but whatever.

My mates are delivering him to me on the farm next Friday morning. He's precious cargo that needs protecting. I don't want him roaming around unsupervised around the Free State, he could be eaten, or worse, be forced to take refuge in a Dutch Reformed Church.

My mates are delivering him to me, while I attend the wedding rehearsal.

Quite excited stop working for 3 weeks. Dude. I'm broken, I've done enough long nights and juggling multiple projects. It's time to switch off sync on my phone and spend some time with the people I love the most.

PS: Phew! There's green tea in SA! (And ATM machines and highways!)

PPS: This actually did me break open the sad face and laugh:

is there green tea in the shops

The tears have stopped, and now I'm just feeling a bit angry.

Tomorrow I might be in denial. The next day acceptance. Whatever it is, I'm going through the motions.

And now started to stress. Fuck. Do I remember how to get to Sandton from Pretoria?
Oh my God. I have to drive on the N1. Is it full of hijackers who want to eat me alive?

Well, I'm not thatbad, but it does cross your mind.

Also organising my calendar. So I can see everyone I have to see. It's filling up, it won't be chilled times.
And getting into gear for Poen's festive wedding.

I land and go to a dress fitting. Let's hope this pale, pasty ass isn't completely Anglofied.

Dude. I've never taken the Gautrain. It wasn't ready when I left. So it's really weird to be able to say, "Don;t worry, you can just drop me at the station and I'll train it to Pretoria."

WTF? Really?

Dude. Do they have green tea in the shops. <----that is the sort of bullshit babblewock I'm coming out with right now. Maybe my brain's tired with grief, or something's gone awry but What the fuck? I drank green tea in South Africa for 29 years, so why am I asking such stupid questions?

Mate. I need a holiday.

heartbroken

Right, I don't really know how to put this into words, but I'll try my best to do justice to one of the most surreal, painful weekends of my life.

My precious aunt passed away at around 4:30am on Sunday morning. The hole she has left within me, and others that were close to her, is almost tangible. And deeper than I ever imagined.

I knew this period would be tough - seeing someone deteriorate so quickly in front of your eyes over a matter of weeks, and seeing the effects of a brain tumour literally suck away at the life in her body, was one of the most harrowing things I've ever experienced.

Many people are touched by cancer at least indirectly at some point in their lives. But I can say I didn't understand the feelings that death brings in terms of grief before now. How it truly it feels like to see someone you are extremely close to die like that.

Where you're directly involved, you're one of the last standing by their bedside, one of the last able to see her before it's the end. My uncle - her brother - was out for these past few weeks, and my heart breaks for him and my father. They've been all through it too, as well as my aunt's husband.

And even then, 'The End' doesn't seem final, but it does.

I had flu, so was inside on Saturday evening. When it started snowing. Huge, flakes dumped down. The first snow this winter. Very calm and peaceful, just like she was before she slipped away. It was at that moment I knew that would be it. She wouldn't last the night. I lit a candle, called my uncle to give her a final message from me (that was an incredibly hard phone call) and that was it. The next morning I heard.

The snow was symbolic - she had left the world with flair, as she only would, and this was her way of showing it.

Jesus. I can't stop crying. It just never ends.

I am absolutely devastated. I can't say I've cried like this in a while, but everything reminds me of her. The wisdom she's imparted to me. How we've laughed together (only days ago. How can she really be gone?) How we've shared such parallel lives. She was very special to me. My closest relative in recent times, especially as she lived in London. I don't even know where to begin.

I wouldn't know what to say to do it justice; she was such a strong woman. Unfaltering, stubborn as hell, sometimes even scary. Always putting everyone else first before herself, bothering that I had a fresh cup of tea when I saw her at the hospital. I can't even begin to explain why my sadness and tears are endless.

Mostly, I miss her. I miss her terribly. My aunt was like a big sister to me. She understood how my family worked, she got me. She was so cool. When I was 5, during a family holiday to the UK, I'd run around in her red heels and play dress up in her awesome cupboard.

We were very alike. We had similar life paths, the very least being we both moved to London when we were 29 and fell in love with an Englishman.

Going over to her house yesterday to be with the family there, and driving through Wimbledon, I felt so empty. Trying to understand it all. how she's been sick for years and managed to sustain a smile, a positive outlook, maintenance of the actual disease. Until it all just started to slide downhill, and really quickly.

Trying to confine everything about her into one eulogy, which I can hopefully say without crying, once in South Africa for the memorial there.

Mostly, wondering where she is now. Can she see us? Does she understand everything, is she with others, at peace? Does she even know what has happened?

London feels so empty without her.

She still had so much wisdom to teach me! This isn't fair!

Basically, really strange questions that I am guessing anyone who has been close to someone who has died, asks.

Going home to be with my family on Thursday, has never been more timely or apt. Strange how things work out. How life goes on, is also really odd. How I attend meetings at work today, in a sort of jaded distraction. How I have to buy soup for dinner. The soup she always liked.

Bless you my long-suffering aunt. I miss you more than you'd ever know.

run down

I fucking jinxed myself.

I have 'flu. My skin is still in tact, but my face feels like it's falling off.

Burning candle at both ends, big nights, and Blatic temperatures. Plus grief and stress.
Standing in bus shelters when it's -8 outside, flitting between hospital and the office to see my aunt and hold her hand.

The excitement of knowing that this time next week I'll be in South Africa. Then immediately jaded by the concept that I'll need to say goodbye to my aunt. Forever.

Few weeks have been so bittersweet.

And flu-riddled. Again.

Those cute looking yellow things will do some damage.

Like I needed another excuse not to touch public handrails. Or mingle with commoners under the Earth's crust.

Mingling with flu-fraught sneezers above the Earth's crust is a painful experience, nevermind underneath the actual city.

Dude. There's a flesh-eating virus doing the rounds on the Underground.

Did you read that? Not flu revolving around farm animals like chickens and pigs, but [New! Improved!] flu viros that starts eating away at your flesh.

Christ Almighty, what levels of depravity can't the flu virus sink to? Fucking humans, sneezing, dripping, touching things - oh my GOD, I need a bio-hazard suit for my daily commute.

(Could there be a song in that? Drop a beat, I need a fuckin' bio-hazard suit, yeah yeah baby, for my daily commute, dog....)

Not that the Metro doesn't sensationalise any of their shit, but when you're standing on a train reading this article, you're going to take precautions.

Especially if you're an OCD 'I don't fondle stuff outside of my house' - person like me.

Anyway. So if I can try and avoid taking a tube for the next week (then I fly to South Africa, where all I have to be weary of is AIDS and in extremely rare cases, malaria).

The problem is, when I return from my jolly jaunt down south, our office is moving. We are moving to our other London site in Soho.

Great location, shit commute. I have to take a tube to work from March onwards.

Not a train, with windows and air and stuff, a fucking tube.

Right. So now that I'm fully having a panic attack at my desk, I'm going to step away and not imagine hand railings pocked with a flesh-eating virus.

train commentators and karaokegate

It's amazing what a sprightly train driver can do for a journey.

There I was, last train home after visiting my aunt in hospital, followed by more drinking in Belgravia with my European colleagues, (posh gin and tonics. With grapefruit slices in them, in case you're wondering).

Not completely shitfaced this time, more Sensible Drunk. (Which is kind of right on target for the sweet spot. Drunk but not stupid. This is what you should aim for at 31.)For the first time this week, I actually got it right.

Anyway two things happened, worthy of description.

The first was mortifying. The second was just funny.

The Europeans are over for a conference this week, and so mass binge drinking ensued. As I've become known as the bitch who sings Usher's Love In This Club and this unfortunate infamy is now turning into tradition, I eventually took up the offer of the mic (again, was Sensible Drunk, so I [uncharacteristically] needed a lot of coercion).

So, office karaoke. Not a good springboard for one's career, sure. Except if you're singing in a whole group, everyone's festive - from the MD down to the trainee assistant - everyone's voices blend together and it's all a bit of comaraderie and fun.

Then there's what happened to me. I was singing away in the group, alongside She Who Loves Tweed, giving it some real horns. You know, really accentuating the magical words, I wanna make love in dis club..in dis club,, while putting on my best RnB gangsta voice for prize lines like, I wanna bag you like some groceries...on the floor, on the couch...on the table...I'm watcha you want, whatcha need....

I was singing into this yellow microphone, Tweedy next to me was singing into a red one.

After the song was finished, high fived and started strolling to the bar.

When, "Dude. Do you realise that your voice was coming through the rest of the building."

Peas: No, what are you talking about?

Group of people: "Dude. That microphone you were signing on? Is tuned so that your voice gets relayed to speakers beyond this room. So down there, reception area, the meeting rooms..."

Peas: I don't think I quite understand. My voice, singing by itself? Across the entire building? [squeaking]...while singing about shagging in a club?

Group: Yup. Your lines making love song, interrupted an important conversation all the exces were having down there.

Peas:...And no-one else's were heard?! Could they hear the music or just my voice?!

Group: Just your voice.

So yeah. That was fucking mortifying.

Had a drown my embarrassment somewhat, and then headed home on the last train, where I think the train driver was drunk.

Luckily, rails force the wheels to literally stay on track, but it was his awesome approach to the announcements that I loved. And he was very posh.

"Lllllllllladies and gentlemen. Welcome aboard my train! Hurry up and get inside, stop jamming up the platform. Get inside and come with me to....East Croydon! Via....Norbury!"

He kept going throughout the duration of my journey:

"Llllladies and gentlemen! We are approaching...Battersea Park! Home to the dogs and cats home and ....Battersea Park! If you get off, mind the platform. Or don't Because I don't care!"

"Lllllladies and gentlemen! Let's get going and get to East Croydon! Stop scooting, or is that skating? On the platform! It's unsightly and dangerous! But mostly unsightly!"


When I got out, I went to his window and gave him a thumbs up. He looked like he was 18. So clearly practicing for his career in the West End.

Now to deal with Bridget Jones Karaoke Fuck Upgate.

on white wine

"Mommy" being Aunty Peas..

Dude.

I haven't really been drunk drunk - drunk like I was 25 - since New Year's eve. And even then, I wasn't seeing double and I do vaguely remember how we got home.

Friday changed that. There comes a point, where your workload and propensity for tolerance start to form their own Pythagoras.

I'd draw the graph, but I can't be fucked.
It's a triangle, based on axes x and y, and they invariably meet.

Getting to grips with how sick my aunt is at the moment, and how quickly she's suddenly turned, coupled with the thoughts around what happens next, and visits to the hospital every other day, is all very devastating to me and the rest of the family.

If there's one window of opportunity to block out these thoughts - even for a few hours - as well as thoughts around how I'll get all my work done before going to South Africa - I'll take it.

So I went out with the team on Friday. Devoured a bottle of white white with She Who Loves Tweed, and then continued to consume a string of gin and tonics at a place called "The Sapphire Lounge," which had a bar counter stickier than the tip of Russell Brand's dick.

It was superb. To be so thoroughly shitfaced, that I don't remember which train (or was it even a train?) took me home, or how I got from the station to the front door.

I don't really get drunk these days. Caveat, I don't really get drunk-drunk these days. 'These days' being the last 6 months or so. Unless the situation really calls for it, most of the time I aim for the sweet spot.

The sweet spot is that point between three glasses of champagne and four. You're teetering, but you know the next glass will make you want a cigarette, and you know that the fourth glass is the fine line between a hangover and just Monday morning.

It's part of being 31. Being strategic about who you get drunk with, and how you get drunk.

Anyway, so on Friday I got drunk. It was absolutely fucking glorious. I couldn't feel my fingers I absolutely loved fucking everyone.

I made a new best gay friend. (This happens from time to time. I'm very 'gay fickle.')

The Brit luckily - and strategically - managed to merge his evening nicely so that we collided on hangover.

And spent the whole of Saturday - from start to fucking finish - lying in bed, necking paracetamol (and each other). The entire day was dedicated to Chez Duvet. Rendered useless, thanks to white wine hangover. (I'm a fuckstick for choosing such a stupid alcohol.)

Sunday was dedicated to my aunt. This is all very hard.