The Write Stuff (*snigger-worthy pun*)

Princess Goofy-Ballerina : 30 months old already!

MUCH has been consuming my midnight, noon, morning and every-other-time-of-day oil - from greenly snotty noses, phlegmy coughs (my personal favourite) and crochetty toddlers to writing, writing and more writing! Of course I am  having an absolute ball - but I ache for the day when Layla can go to playschool. (113 days of aching to go, koeksister. Vasbyt en sterkte!)

A very efficient new website for soon-to-be expats, Just Landed, caught my attention on Twitter. Though the editor is keen for me to be a features writer for them, focusing on the South African's experience of living in the UK, I am more busy with writing and guest-blogging than I ever thought I could be! Hopefully we can reach a happy compromise?! Despite the fact that I know I will never be an expat every again (unless kidnapped by force -- and then hopefully by a devilishly handsome Italian who would feed me only dark chocolate, red wine and romance by candlelight in his Tuscan villa) my mission of passion for the expat phenomenon deepens with each home-soil month. Perhaps a book is waiting in the wings?

There are so many of us expatters and ex-expatters (the ones in the UK are the cowpatters!) writing about our journeys and joltings that it proves just how life-changing, mind-opening, heart-growing and trajectory-altering the expat experience is, whether permanent or temporary.

English Snowscape by Uber-African, Dave Rieger

A friend of mine, Dave Rieger, a South African expat in the UK's East Midlands, has also begun writing (at last - and what a treat!) His style? He is expertly cynical satirist with such sophisticated (dry!) humour that it often takes me a mini-eon to catch his quips - but he also pushes my thinking-boundaries. His most recent blog post details a business-related adventure through the mango plantations of Brazil. Being quite the photographer as well, his blog is definitely worth subscribing to! Here is the link to his blog: A Ramble From Mpondondo .

Here are links to my most recent articles (and always juiced up with lots of eye-candy!

My first two blog posts as a writer for Boutique Mademoiselle Vintage (a Canadian e-magazine that specialises in all things vintage)

*Blame It On Chanel
*Two Teaspoons of Wishful Thinking (where I nepotistically but still genuinely celebrated my sister's jewellery business-boutique!)

There have a couple of updates to my own 3 blogs:

*A Self Indulgent Little Yarn
*Expats & Eskimo Kisses
*Sublime, Sublime Simplicity  (farmhouse zen: a recipe with eggs in tomatoes!)

Also recently published at an SA magazine reviewing e-mag, Hy-Se-Sy-Se
headed up by poet&wordsmith, Elsibe Loubser.
*The Metaphysics of Knitting (my story is below the first one!)

As always, I THRIVE on feedback and comments (however cheeky!) So - leave
your thoughts, or even a simple 'x'  as an encouraging kiss!

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!