Wild, Wild Wailing Wanting!

Eish. No blogging in over 2 months of wordlessness. So - where to begin? Hmmm....
Perhaps a few little jottings about the Mother City? Cape Town, the cradle of all that I am, the archive of all my most precious, magical memories.
After two months back in Cape Town, it seems surreal and preposterous that I ever actually chose to live away from it. England for 4, and then another 2 years (reneging on my vow to never return to the muddiest of isles!) A year and a half in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape -- dry, a little too rustic and quaint for this Capetonian and distinctly and painfully lacking in friends and family. (Sjoe - it feels soooooo good to be writing again.)
'Bananas in Pyjamas' is on the TV, babysitting Layla in her new granny-made buzzy-bee 'tutu' --- so I'll make hay-words while the TV-sun shines!

A lekkerly special adventure I took Layla on, was to meet up with my sisters and Layla's little cousin, at Mouille Point's lighthouse, and walk across to the Blue Train - where I remember being joggled and boggled around inside it, around and around the simple little play-park, the turquoise sea glittering a little way off. HELL of a noisy - to the point of near-pain and temporary tinnitus - Layla adored every minute of it, especially the pitch darkness of the tunnel. Nate, her little cuz (2 months younger than her) wasn't quite as excited about it all - not surprisingly with all that cacophonic rumbling! He had a similar sort of reticence when Layla called him into that yellow sound-pod at the Iziko Museum (remember from all those school outings? the glass submariney thing under the gargantuan whale skeleton?) Layla fell immediately in love with the symphony of whale-song that fills the pod - but Nate would only venture in once, gingerly, with a Marie biscuit for Madame MarineBiologist! Conversely, he is such a rough-and-tumbler - frighteningly fearless - where Layla is hyper-cautious, whining for my hand to climb down even the lowest little step. Amazing, the little people!

After that, it was the V&A Waterfront for lunch and two exhausting tantrums from an overtired prima donna. (No, not me!!) Tantrum #1: That 'Build A Bear' shop. (*groan*) Layla spotted a pink surfboard. And 'wanted' is the most extreme understatement of the century. And Nate just watched his cousin, worried about her and absolutely angelic in his not-wantingness! Tantrum #2: The ferris-wheel. Damnit!! Layla's current l'il passion is the fun-fair. And her sighting of the ferris-wheel ignited another state of 'want' that caused me to hunt through my wallet in frenzied desperation for R40 for the ticket, instantly slapping a silencing smile on her tear-wet face. And then... that crushing claustrophobia of parental realisation that: there was not enough money in my wallet to pay for the ticket, and not enough con-artistry in my arsenal to talk her out of her VERY bitter disappointment. Yebo. Fun at the fair, eh?
Last week, however, I was able to make good on my promise to take her for a ride on the ferris-wheel. (The ticket was R80, by the way. Under 3's go for free.) And - the views from our little spot of circling tourist-heaven left my heart hammering in 'And I live here!' bliss, awe and gratitude.

No more animated (in every sense of the word) bananas bouncing around on the TV, so time to do the 'adios' thing!
Love,
Lisa

The "Soutpiel" Phenomenon

I think it was Bryce Courteney in "The Power of One" who described the unique human condition of being a 'soutpiel'. One foot in South Africa and one in England (and your 'piel' hangs in the separating seas, making it salty!)
Between 2003 and 2006, I found myself in this rather awkward position and vowed I would never do it again. But now, I am back here in sunny England, my 'piel' dangling precariously and inexplicably between Cape Town and Heathrow.
Being a South African, whether from Benoni, Bloem or Bellville, in England is a remarkably unique experience which deserves some sort of investigative analysis as a phenomenon and diaspora-of-sorts.

Outside the sky is deathly still and the particular grey only an African can recognise as being so damningly English. Always mutable, today it is cranked up to ‘luminous’ – managing at once to be both darkly overcast and glaringly bright. When I left England almost exactly two years ago, I was deeply convinced I would never live here again. But here I am once again, confronted by the daily-ness of living in a world I feel I cannot call my own. In the past I used words like alienation, isolation and exile to describe my existence away from home. But now my reason for being here is so utterly different that now I look at those words and think they sound a little dramatic – but perhaps there is some hint of truth to them still.
Living in the UK is very different to popping over here on a mere holiday. In fact, when one is here as a South African on holiday, one is pleasantly comforted by the cosy English pubs and the red buses of Piccadilly Circus – it is just like in the movies and sitcoms which are the staple diet of South African television. But when you have lived here for awhile, the persistence of pubs and the glaring lack of restaurants becomes a source of cultural irritation and gastronomic frustration and all you wish for is a swish Italian café which doesn’t serve chips with all their pasta dishes! This and various other idiosyncrasies of the South African/English experience fascinate me now in a way which didn’t before. And though each South African’s experience of living in the UK is unique, we all have shared many of the same dreams, frustrations and asked the same questions. And so I hope you will enjoy this collection of bitingly true stories and frank interviews as much as I have enjoyed writing about them!