Two very different Christmas Eve's...

Christmas Eve, and at 4:03pm, the sky is the bruised colour somewhere between lilac and grey. Complete darkness will be here in just moments. Not so in Cape Town, where my folks (their wedding anniversary!) are probably parking on the road lining the boisterous Bantry Bay sea - above which is a little amble up some sunbleached stairs to the renovated post-war apartment where my sister, Julie and her husband James live their glamourous Cape Town lives (of which I am obviously and unashamedly jealous!) where a typical evening can include sundowners on Clifton beach, or a long, languid evening out at one of many divine Cape Town restaurants where their laughter is coloured in shades of merlot, shiraz and ruby pinotage. Julie has her studio at home - she is undoubtedly one of South Africa's up and coming jewellers: owner and designer for her own range/brand : see www.collectjewellery.co.za
In recent months her work has been featured in fashion in no less than the likes of Marie Claire! Most recently, she herself was showcased alongside a few other jewellers - but she definitely is the shining star among them all with her incredibly unique style and creative vision -- and you can see for yourself that I'm not just a baised older sister when you look at her work! And darling James, my brother-in-law from Hull, has his own architectural firm in town - doing fancy, avant-garde work for glamourous German clients with his mad Swiss business partner, Jan. Anyway - I'm blabbing.
Their plans for tonight's Christmas Eve celebration include, like we did last year, chilled champagne and bowls of olives, while on the braai/BBQ fresh king prawns and sizzling rectangles of halloumi sizzle to the sound of James and my dad yacking away like two old women. Inside, Julie will be ensuring the bubbly is constantly topped up, inbetween getting a big pot of shining, black mussels ready for cooking. Last year, she did them Thai-style... Undoubtedly the music will be laid-back Miles Davis or vintage Irakere!
Here, Gary and Craig are sharing the sofa watching absolute crap on TV, and I'm still in my pyjamas having suffered all day long from some sort of pregnancy induced ennui... Supper is Gary's version of their mom's divine, lasagna-like pasta - and more mulled wine. We've had a serious discussion about tomorrow's plans: the unanimous decision is to cook and drink all day long, finally eating at about 4pm. (At least we'll have enough Christmas pudding: After I moaned at Craig's measly purchase of the piddliest little Christmas cake I've ever seen, we now have THREE of them awaiting indiscriminate consumption - along with three tubs of cream!) Gary's spoiling us with a juicy leg of lamb stuffed with brandy-bathed dates, rosemary and garlic! Ooh la la! I'll rustle up modern versions of carrots and the very British brusselsprouts - as well as peeling a couple of potatoes for roasting.

A glass of mulled wine, and I'm now ready to settle into an evening that will no doubt be like the rest of the week's evenings: mindless TV, some quilting, a long bath and probably another early night for me and the growing little lady in my tum.

Winter Wonderland!

Being pregnant has it's benefits, granted: such as waking up at 10.30am, rolling languidly over and spotting a pack of chocolate digestive biscuits, much the way a lioness will spot an unawares little bokkie in the distance - and going in for the kill, not an eyebrow is raised because it is 'natural'. (Craig did laugh a little incredulously, though, at the apparently serious look of intent as I shimmied free another biscuit from the pack!) Three chocolate McVities later, and a smallish bowl of fruit salad, it's time to begin the day with some painfully ached-for writing!

With Christmas round the corner, I feel I should write about how it feels to be a Soutie away from that Christmas braai, lazy afternoon swim and your precious family - but there's so much else that's happened while I've been 'away' working, that I simply have to keep you fully up to date!

The first thing relates to (please don't yawn - I promise it's exciting!) The Weather, while the second is about Putting In Petrol.

Our dear little Fiat Punto, in it's faded red, somewhat dinged glory, remains a faithful car in most weather conditions, though it's given us a little bit of grief these last few weeks when the temperatures have plummeted to the Minus Zone. In a desperate rush one morning on our way to work, BOTH our doors were frozen shut!! No amount of jostling or jiggling could budge the door apart from it's icy clasp! Beginning to feel the ice eating through the soles of my little leather pumps (ignorantly minus stockings or pantihose) I couldn't keep the whine out of my voice as I told Craig to try the boot! It popped open without a fuss, and Craig climbed through the back, kicking the doors open like a madman - reminding me simultaneously of a Rescue 911 hero and a giant trapped spider, all legs, arms and elbows in his smart, dark suit! Needless to say, I made a determined detour on the way home that evening past Tesco to buy that marvellous, though toxic, British invention: de-icing spray. Quite cheap at under 2 quid for each item in the range, I opted for the more powerful looking aerosol can (sorry, Mr Ozone), imagining the bliss of aiming a powerful squirt between the car door and it's clinging frame - instead of having to witness the dramatics of Craig cursing and kicking again!

It seems as if the main roads and highways get salted/gritted much more efficiently than these quiet back roads that wend their serpentine way between villages - i.e. the roads we travel on between home, the village of Spratton where Craig's school is and Kettering - where my school is. Generally, by the time we're on the roads, there's been enough traffic for the ice to have been melted (tyre friction). BUT: the particular little-used byway that snakes off to the side of the main road through Spratton is a nasty little trap of higgeldy-piggeldy parked cars and ice in all it's frightening forms: from smooth, shiny black ice that pretends to be a puddle to the caked-up white frosting that is hideously perilous despite the fact that it looks so, so beguilingly pretty: like icing sugar on a chocolate cake. Craig safely deposited at Spratton Hall, Radio 1 pumping through tinny speakers, lipgloss reapplied after the goodbye kisses, I mentally prepared myself to get to school a) on time and b) in one piece. However, when this pretty cake-frosting decides to nail you, you forget everything you know you should do - like pump your brakes in and out etc etc etc etc etc...................... Driving a little absently round the corner, I spotted the warm glow of approaching headlights on the white, fluffy (NOT) duvet of the road - and, as I always do (such a conscientious South African driver!) I begin to slow down so I can pull behind the car parked not so much on the side of the road, as almost in middle of it! HOWEVER. It doesn't go AT ALL to plan, and the pretty white frosting carries me like a skater on ice faaaaar too close to this badly parked car than I'd have liked. The Fiat's unsure bum does a tango across the ice, ignoring the fact that my foot is on the brake and my heart is pleadingly pumping out a hundred prayers for mercy! Thankfully, I glide to an ungraceful stop a metre or so from the backside of said badly parked car - and the oncoming car flashes their lights compassionately at me - that they will wait for me! (Fact: English drivers are generally a fantastically polite and sensible bunch - excluding 90% of lorry drivers and the young yobs in their souped up little jalopies.)

When I lived in West Berkshire and Hampshire, the winters were noticeably much more mild than the weather we've experienced up here in the East Midlands. Even the wind patterns are different up here - it is wild and obstreperous, beating the trees and moaning like a ravenous wolf (yip - been spending too much time teaching the kids personification and metaphors at school maybe?!) But the biggest surprise was driving past the always beautiful, open expanse of Pitsford the other morning, where the rolling farms and bristling hedges shimmered the purest, softest white (taking my breath away) - and the lake was almost entirely frozen over. A comparison escapes me - it is only something I've seen in the movies, or imagined what a true Northern Hemisphere winter must be like. But where the fragile sheets of ice lay flat and matte upon the waters, time seemed to stand still. Rippling and glossy water broke the heavy hush of the ice in large, liquid fingers - as though it were playing with it, trying to dismantle it, piece by tenuous piece. A winter jigsaw puzzle. (I could never forget this.)

Phew. Lastly - on a more amusing note, I'd like to begin a mini-discussion about our South African Culture of Petrol Attendants & Grocery Packers. Whenever I pack my groceries, it is sure to slip out that in South Africa, we have 'people' to do it for us as 'it creates employment'. The response? A look of 'you lazy white, racist South African' expelled in varying degrees of malice, from the most mild glint in the English eye to the bulging shock of horror! Maybe I should have already learned my lesson by now - and should keep it to myself? But a wicked little part of me enjoys the reaction - because, I think, it reminds me that I could never really NOT be a South African; that the talking about home as often as it slips out is what keeps me connected, there. The same can be said for our lack of experience in putting in petrol. Before I venture into this little story, please leave your own stories in the COMMENTS section below -- and hopefully it won't be another long week before I can tell you my story.

OK, so I lied. But REALLY, I didn't mean to! HONEST! It's just that I was swept away (again) on a tidal wave of exhaustion. Conclusion: when they say you should go on maternity leave from 11 weeks before your due date: do it. Do not even bother to dither about the issue. It is not even worth a minute's contemplation. And if the idea does happen to pop into your hormone befuddled head, drop me a line - and I shall remind you of exactly why you should rather be at home resting, daydreaming about your little one, and getting their nursery (and your house!) ready instead. Comprende?

School this week has been no less traumatic and frightening than the week before... I witnessed a teacher being kicked, and I, myself, was violently sworn at, shouted at, screamed at and threatened physically. On a brighter note, yesterday I was showered in little tokens of love and gratitude - a choc-chip biscuit at lunchtime, a packet of Doritos, a handmade pink plastic beaded bangle of stars, butterflies and hearts, a letter signed by a bunch of little 10 year old girls, and - at the end of the day, a Siberian tiger keyring.
All the kids had rushed out to their weekend in the darkening Friday frost, while I gathered my coat, scarf and other general 'stuff' together, dreaming about getting home before it was completely pitch black outside (i.e. before 5pm), a long bath --- the classroom door suddenly exploded open, with little redheaded Phillip breathless and pink cheeked, pale green eyes glittering.

"Hey Phil, shouldn't you be on your way home?"

"Miss Roberts, look here!" And from his pockets which I know from many prior warnings and idle threats contain various pens, football cards and grimy red rubber bands gleaned from the street where a careless postman has left them in his hurried wake, he proudly extracts a keyring. A square, perspex-encased photo of a blue-eyed, white Siberian tiger...

"Oh wow, Phillip! What an incredible tiger! It's a Siberian tiger - it comes from a very cold, snowy place. Not like the yellow tigers you get in India where it's really hot." He's persistently silent, saying nothing at all while I run out of things to say about it.

"Is it for me, Phillip?" (I don't know what else to say.)

"Yes! It was two for 1.50 - and I got myself this Man U one!" I try to give him a big cuddle of a hug (something we're not actually allowed to do at all at school - but which we all do anyway!) He doesn't so much fall into my arms as stand like a stiff little embarrassed soldier - and yet I can almost hear his precious little heart almost explode with joy at being so appreciated. You see, he comes from SUCH a rough home where he is one of many children - most of them not even sharing the same father, a hard, gaunt mother who looks as though no-one has ever said a kind word to her and hangs her head in heavy, perpetual hopelessness.
I release Phillip from my maybe claustrophobic hug, and he darts away for a second so that I'm about to say goodbye to him for the second time - but then he hovers a little closer and says, "Miss Roberts, the reason I bought this for you is because you are the best teacher I have ever had. And because you are always kind and nice to me." His little pale, freckled face works hard to get all of this out of his heart which I sense usually stays fiercely locked up. If any other teacher shouts at him (he is a naughty little bugger - but mostly because he's bored, I think) he reacts extremely violently, shouting, glowing red-hot - chairs get flung across the room, cupboards get kicked. All it takes from me is one raised eyebrow and he's back in his seat, trying to refocus. And I think this is the key to working with these broken children: they're craving the right kind of attention. That is, consistent, loving, firm and mutually respectful... But so often it seems a futile mission trying to turn these hearts from broken to fixed. (And I realise I suffer quite badly from the Saviour Complex...)

I think Phillip's about to leave, but as his hand reaches the door, he turns around - and again I see how internally his heart is churning like an intricate machine, about to overheat. I say nothing - wait for him to speak.

"I've decided, Miss Roberts."

"What about, Phillip?"

"I've decided I'm going to become a designer. A designer of pictures."

And now I want to run up to him, and hold him forever - take him home with me and give him everything he might ever need. But I know this is not right - that I need to step back from my own overworking heart even though it feels like I'm squeezing all the blood out of it so that it gasps from pain and surprised anguish. (Melodramatic but more true than most things I've ever felt.)
A few days ago, I'd spent an entire morning treating the class to a big art class in which we explored trees - their shapes, personalities, textures and colours. I laid out all the graphite, charcoal, pastels and paint I could find - demonstrating all the exciting possibilities and variations inherent in these simple materials. Every child responded as a child should - even another problematic redhead I've managed to forge a relationship with -- except for Phillip, which astounded me because he is ALWAYS drawing - in Maths, in English, during breaktime. His copper mop shone from above the cave of his arms he'd buried his face in - and nothing I said could coax him out of what looked like terrible fright.
I took him outside with me, making sure he had his beloved blue rollerball pen and his sheet of paper, on which hid two abandoned attempts at trees. On the itchy, nylon carpet, our back to the pink wall padded with a hundred puffy winter coats, I asked him about the trees he'd begun to draw. Repeatedly, he moaned and grumbled, "I just can't draw trees!"

"But, Phillip, you can draw huge galactic wars between monsters and men! You can draw intricate machines for your monster armies! If you can draw THAT you can draw a tree!" His body language said he didn't believe me.

Grabbing his piece of paper, I asked if I could borrow his pen and began to draw a very designed, geometric tree, replete with compartments for birds instead of the usual nest. Next to it, the typical tree I draw looked downright boring and predictable in comparison.

"Which one is your favourite tree, Phillip?" A grubby little finger immediately shot out towards the designed tree. "Tell me why you like it the most."

"Because it's cool."

"But why is it 'cool'?"

"The shapes you used. And that line of dots. That little machine-bird you drew."

We chatted about the difference between artists who work in a realistic way, copying directly from life - and artists who have a whole universe tucked away inside their heads from which they draw. How miraculous and amazing it is if you have an imagination and don't have to copy what's out there! I also explained the difference between designers and artists who draw from life. After thinking about this for awhile, he blurted, "But I can only draw monsters!"

"Well then, why don't you design a monster tree?" He just looked at me, his jaw unstuck and his eyes not quite sure if I was being serious or sarcastic. At last it dawned on him that I was being very serious indeed - and straightaway he bent down over his piece of paper and began doodling and sketching what turned out to be a brilliantly conceptualised and executed piece of art!
The very BEST part about it all, was that what had happened between us had made such a deep impression on him, that he'd actually had a huge ideological shift and made a brand new life-decision - where before he'd assumed he'd simply become a builder like all of his school buddies and their dads...

So, in the end, not a very 'Soutpiel' issue, but I sometimes can't help allowing myself to be seduced by tangents and sidetracks! Originally I was going to write about my experience at the local petrol station - maybe later today or tomorrow? At least now I know not to make any empty promises ;)

Gestational-Occupational Hazards

More than two weeks have passed since I was last able to indulge my fetish for opinionising and storytelling - and oh, what a MINDBLOWING two weeks it has been... If I hadn't been broken by the exhaustion that comes with working full-time when 6 months pregnant, there would have been reams and reams of stories for you to read, but instead, I've been coming home from work with only one thing on my mind: sleep.
Getting up every hour or so to pee (the good Lord's way of preparing you for the ultimate post-birth shock of deliriously sleepless nights)is already not a very good way to ensure optimum rest for a long day at work. In the later hours of the morning - the icy, black night air clamped around me in our draughty little loo, I somehow manage to feel grateful delight that my baby girl is alive and well in my belly (then my selfish need to be warm again overtakes this motherly altruism, and I remember to turn the heating on again so we don't have shiver and shudder getting dressed in the 6am cold.) Between our quick showering, getting dressed and leaving the house at 7.30am, Max is given the quickest of runarounds and a top-up of bunny muesli, Craig glugs back a strong cup of coffee while he catches up with the latest news on the Guns 'n Roses site and I spoon ungraceful mouthfuls of muesli into my mouth while trying to apply eyeliner, mascara and blusher in double-time.
It's a wonderful thing for one scatterbrain to live with another sufferer of this disease: I don't have to feel too guilty if I forget my cellphone -- and I don't mind too much when the reverse happens and Craig forgets something of his. Between us, though, we are never ever late: a point of great pride for both of us! The drive between Spratton (where Craig's school is) and all the way back past our village to Kettering takes about 45 minutes - but it's a picturesque and peaceful drive along winding country roads with sprawling views of the farms and villages - where every day is different to the one before: sometimes veiled in a luxuriously thick mist, sometimes everything is asparkle with dew and immaculate sunshine...

I so badly wanted to write about all the things that've happened in the last two weeks, but now, unavoidably, the groceries need doing. And so, I must say goodbye - but with a promise to write a little every day instead of never writing because I'm waiting for a fat chunk of time to suddenly pop along out of the blue!

Until tomorrow, adios.

The Kraut, the strippers and all the little children

A week of work - and indeed, WHAT a week! Getting out this lonely house and cramped little village has given me so much food for thought (and writing) that I feel I might explode with all the stories that've bombarded me every moment of my last 5 working days! Where on earth would I begin?!

Having hungered to write every evening, today was D-Day for letting my post-work exhaustion get the better of me. And so, here I am, back at the keyboard and blissfully happy! (A chubby glass of red wine would, however, make me ecstatically happy!!) Today's BlogPatrol statistics showed that one of today's six readers found my blog by typing: "names of strippers at teazers durbanville" into Google! Eish! This is what they discovered http://contemplating-my-navel.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html - but whether someone looking for the the names of strippers at a specific Northern Suburbs titty-bar would be inclined to read the actual blog entry is utterly dubious, let alone understand the 3+ syllable words!! A slightly twisted German found one of my other blog entries after searching for 'medical fetish'!! This reminds me of a Swiss-Italian colleague of mine at university - a giant and burly, bizarre sculptor who specialised in sculpting from stone and marble. One sultry windless night, on the slopes of Vredehoek in Cape Town, he regaled a handful of us with a sickening but somehow (I'm ashamed to admit) still intriguing story of a surgeon friend of his who just couldn't get it off, or get it up (ahem!) without his pretty nurse slicing open his poor, innocent scrotum - and then delicately stitching it back up again.
Gosh - and now I have a German hunting for medical fetishes on the Net on my blog!! Hopefully (and with a prayer attached) it was not the sort of information he ached for... (he -- or she! -- found my entry about 'Foodie Fetishes' that South Africans suffer from when living away. Wonder what he thought? Anyway, I'd far rather be a food-obsessed South African than a medical fetishist Kraut!!)

My eyelids are struggling to defy the inevitable law of gravity, my muscles are whining, like nagging, over-tired children: please, take us to bed... NOW!!!! But before I succumb to this delicious and long awaited eventuality, let me tell you a little about my week of work at a primary school in Kettering that first employed me for just a week of 'cover' - but have now asked me to please stay as long as I possibly can(proud wink)!
Branded a 'special measures' school, I had absolutely no idea WHAT I was letting myself in for when I emailed my agency straight back agreeing to take up the post - seeing only, kaching-kaching, money in the bank. Day one was manageable - the staff impressed me with their welcoming, co-operative team spirit (a wonderful surprise after my very chilly one day in another state-run primary school a few months ago!) The kids seemed ok - until the Monday, Day 2, when I found myself in a storm of pre-pubescent clawing and biting! Another incident had one writhing, twisting boy being physically restrained by the headmaster and another teacher while he screamed, red faced and fuming frantically, "I'll kill you! I'm gonna kill you!!"
Besides this constant threat of violent verbal and physical behaviour, there's the children who make your heart break for their lack of love and care at home. A little girl was caught stealing the others' lunches, after weeks of it disappearing - the school is going to press charges against the mother for neglect. She doesn't feed her child. Another little one is so stressed that she broke down in class saying, when pressed by my questioning, "But I've got so many problems, Miss Roberts... I don't know where to start."

Hmmm... as usual there is just so, so much I need to say. But I simply have to cut myself short here - I will have to write more on the weekend...
The long and the short of it, is that the two headmasters heard about how I was working with these more troubled children from the rest of the staff, and that they want me to run specialised, therapeutic art classes for these particularly 'special' children. Eight of them. I'll be able to design how the classes will be run - gives me an excuse to buy the art therapy textbooks I've been itching to buy for the last 10 years! So at long, long last I have found a very special spot which feels as if it was opened up just for me! BLESSED!!

Sorry this was such a short, squat bit of story - but I will be back on the weekend with a vengeance!

A Week of Work!

YIPPEEEEE!!! YAHOOOO!!! HURRAY!! At long, long last I have some work from Protocol Education!! From tomorrow till the next Friday I'll be a teacher's assistant at Avondale Junior School in Kettering - and why exectly I'm telling you is because I'll probably be too tired to write in the evenings -- my blog will be stuck in limbo for awhile. Though, who knows, I may just have a story I'll be bursting to tell you!

Until then, keep the comments and stories rollin' in, folks! And, while you have some time, why not explore my other blog listed just here to the right? See it?

Four spoons of sugar, please!

Though there have been some very exciting and rather distracting things I would love to have written about instead - including a trip with another 2 South Africans to an Indian takeaway hidden in the dark bowels of a ghostly industrial estate. But, I had promised to write more about our family's 'domestic worker'...

Eunice Thenjiwe Nozulu. (Though I think, in all likelihood, it's probably Thenjiwe Eunice Nozulu - the issue of carrying both a Xhosa name as well as an English name is a whole nother matter: it could be psychoanalysed and deconstructed and stripped 'moer-toe', but at the end of the day it is about two things: fitting in / belonging outside of their Xhosa culture and the general white laziness to pronounce the clicks and curls of Xhosa names.) I can hardly remember back to being three years old and Eunie's first day at work - but there are beautiful, richly coloured memories of Eunie arriving at our pre-primary school to take Melissa and I home, a short walk in the swelteringly perfect summer afternoon, babbling and giggling as if we were all three years old - Eunie telling us she'd made us strawberry jelly for after our lunch! I mean - what more could two little girls want? It was only as we got a little older that the roles reversed a little and we were the ones who made her hot, cheesy toasted sarmies for lunch - and, it would be hopeless to try count the cups of dark, scaldingly hot tea saturated with at least FOUR heaped spoons of sugar! It was round about this time too that Eunie began to scold us, albeit playfully, for our messy bedrooms or leaving crumbs on the kitchen counter.
She gave birth to identical twin girls - Ayanda and Siyanda - when I was about 5 or 6. I decided then and there that black babies were definitely the most gorgeous and adorable in the world! And oh, how deliciously they smelled: like hot, crumbling spice cookies just out the oven! We used to beg Eunie to bring the babies to work so we could tickle them, tease them and carry them tied tightly to our backs with their baby blankets! And as we got older, we watched the twins grow from plump dumplings to shy schoolgirls. (But you see, as I'm writing, I'm editing and heavily censoring myself to the point where there must be a thousand intertwined stories that deserve telling - and here I am giving it all to you in cutesy-pie, neatly wrapped up sentences. Whatever shall we do about this? Perhaps I should devote the rest of the week to telling Eunice's story in full? Actually, it is not so much a story, as stories: hey,it could be the basis for my first ever novel! So maybe I shouldn't spill the beans here in this blog - maybe I should keep it all under wraps till it is a published novel? Let's take a vote!! Let me know your vote in the COMMENTS option below!)