Africa, my Love.

Phew. It's been a while. A LONG while... My Layla is 6 months old now and this means I have suddenly got a little more time (and freedom) on my hands: I've started painting again, and at long last, I can spend more time writing too!
There have been so many Soutpiel issues in the last 6 months, and I just WISH I had jotted each of them down for a time like now, because with this porridge-brain that motherhood has induced, I CANNOT, for the life of me, remember more than a handful. (My standing joke is that when I gave birth to Layla, they didn't remove my placenta, but my brain! Funny? Not when you've misplaced your keys for the third time in as many hours!! There's even been a missed dentist appointment and double-booking coffee dates with friends... Upon leaving Cape Town to return to the UK, my mom said, with a grandmotherly frown, "I'm really worried that you're going to forget to feed Layla!" Thankfully, Layla knows exactly how to let me know if she's hungry - so at least Layla gets fed, bathed and changed with devoted punctuality!)

In my second year of my Fine Art degree at the University of Cape Town, I allowed myself to be robbed of my creative self-confidence by an aggressively 'cool' young lecturer only a few years my senior, but with such a threatened sense of self, that she lashed out at anyone who possessed some degree of what she so obviously and painfully lacked. She was one of those who carefully cultivated her rebellion, inside and out. Built like a scarecrow, she dressed her emaciated, boyish frame in black combat boots and bad attitude - her hair short, mousy and spiked into intentionally aggro spikes. So it was no wonder then, that I, with my long (pretty) hair, pearl earrings and dungarees posed a terrible slap in the face to everything she stood for. Volunteering (perhaps a little like a too-helpful teacher's pet) to run a photocopying errand for her, she accepted but with a humiliating glare that, typically, left my cheeks more than aglow.
Peggy Delport, another lecturer - but infinitely more mature as an artist and human being, and - incidentally, one of South Africa's top painters even in her 60s, had left me to my own devices the previous semester, saying, "Lisa, you know what you're doing! You have the most incredble sense of light in your work." The work I produced, my first experience with oil paints, is something I am still damn proud of - but the sense of self-confidence Peggy left me with at the end of the first semester was ravaged with brutal speed by this new young lecturer in only the first week of that second semester. After that first withering look on my way to the photocopy machine came only more disdain and drama. The result: an incomplete body of work which raised many eyebrows in the distinct lack of ability it presented. Weeks and weeks worth of her brooding, black moods and barbed comments wore me down, down, down - all I was left with were paintings that had me apologising to the examining lecturers, and blushing a sad crimson with shame. (I threw the paintings away.) By the far the most damaging of all her afternoon critiques was when she kicked my paintings just enough for them to fall over, jabbing her finger at them, telling me, "You don't know how to paint!!!"
Her mean bitch of a ghost has haunted me for years. Eleven years to be exact. Even seeing her on the cover of a local decor magazine made me physically flinch! I guess it's the mark of a young sensibility that I didn't have the wisdom to take her with a pinch of salt, and only taking into my heart what the truly talented and renowned art lecturers said of my work. Too late now, but better late than never.
Anyway (sigh), when I was in South Africa for the most incredible 2.5 month holiday, I started painting again! GONE was all of that accumulated artistic baggage I'd started hoarding in my Michaelis days - WHAM BAM BOOM! Just like that! I think it was giving birth to the child I have longed for ever since I can remember... Quite why I think she's been the cure I can't quite say, but there has definitely been a huge, HUGE shift inside me since she arrived. Amazing little miracle that she is ;)
And so the crux of this Soutpiel entry is finally about to be made evident: I'd been promising to paint something for my mom for years, but having to perform as a bizarre, cerebralised Michaelisite meant there was never anything truly beautiful that wasn't just a touch horrific (i.e. watercolours of kidneys etc.) This holiday, I resolved, would be used to paint something for my mom at long blerry last.
In the matter of a few days, a small but richly coloured painting of 'The Barefoot Diva' emerged - as well as a new way of painting that I can only say came from somewhere deep in my subconsious. It felt like heaven painting again - such joy and a sense of satisfaction after so many barren years of unnecessary angst. Yippeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh yes - the Soutpiel slant on all of this? Africa. I have fallen in love with Africa as only one who has lived in (self-imposed) exile can be! Driving through the Port Elizabeth township of Motherwell, I wanted to hop out with my camera to photograph the big-boude'd mamas gracefully balancing a sack of potatoes on their heads, a baby tied to their backs ... reminding me of when our domestic used to tie my baby doll to mine. And the Nguni cattle roaming free amongst the rainbow of proudly painted shacks. (Why didn't I get out the car to take the photos then? That's another day's worth of writing.) But the long and the short of it is that before I would have literally fainted with kitsch embarrassment at the thought of painting anything remotely African. Now, it's a different story. Every single image I can lay my hands on that reminds me of home makes me burn to paint it!

(Attached is a photo of my painting of Cesaria Evora. In acrylic.)

HEADLINE: "Stiff Upper Lip" Proven Pure Fallacy!

You know, it's quite incredible how almost any situation can be twisted to comply with my Soutpiel perspective - whether it's the snow, the current contents of my fridge or my little walk to the village post office this morning! Sometimes, though, I wonder if I sound a little pedantic? But then again, what would be the point of this particularly themed blog if not for its South Africanisms?
Often during the day I think of things I want to write about here - but then it gets swept under the carpet for another day when I think I may have more energy, only - by then - it's completely lost its relevance. Perhaps a solution would be to jot these thoughts down as they happen instead of waiting for some miraculously tantalising topic (which as yet has still never happened upon me.) Hmmm...

Unbelievably the snow swept down upon us last night in another magical but now slightly pain-in-the-arse-ish blanket of icy, dysfunctional whiteness. Joy, my midwife, sms'd me to say we should stay home --- driving in the snow is like wearing two snowdomes for goggles: stupid and dangerous. (We were missing out on the class about pain relief. Figured this isn't too much of a problem: just give it to me, dammit!!) This morning, lovely yellow sunshine really managed to break the coldness that's been keeping this dangerous ice on the roads. So it was in my pink wellies and coat that I ventured outside for a short walk to the village post office. No longer so soft and fluffy, the snow now lay in clumpy, clumsy mounds - looking more like a stale dirt-flavoured Slush Puppy accident - and there were no rock hard, icy bits to slip 'n slide on.
My walk was filled, there and back, with visibly grateful horses being ridden for the first time since the snows began more than a week ago. All women riders, and all with that cultivated English air of tea and cucumber sandwiches, looked down upon me with gracious, elegant smiles, making me feel like nothing more than a waddling belly, desperately camouflaged in a threadbare brown tent of a dress and pink wellies - even drawing a compliment from one lady, "Oh, I just love your wellies!" I glumly threw a reply over my shoulder - "Well, they're the only shoes that fit me these days!"
The post office is usually populated by 2 to 3 pension-aged people, picking up their medication, a card or two, or simply posting letters. And today was no exception. Brenda passed over my medication (an arrangement made for us villagers who can't get to their surgery a few villages away - no bus), and I was hoping for a bit of a natter, as we've always done since I arrived in the village last year. But today, she didn't even ask how I was! Odd. And then she said, in a cold tone as bleak as the pointless, melting slush outside, "That'll be 30p, madam."
"But I've never had to pay before," I managed to squeak.
"Well, you should have been!"
(In my head, I tell her that she's always given me my medicine before and never, EVER asked for this before. My cheeks are red with shame - and immediately, I blame it on my hormones making me overly sensitive.)
"Could I bring it round on Monday?" - she must've heard the tears in my voice. Surely? And do you know what? She didn't even say goodbye. How strange...

Thankfully, shielding my eyes from the sunshiney brightness bouncing off the still pure white fields opposite our house, I bumped into my neighbour Maureen - and within 30 seconds we'd arranged a tea-date for later in the day.
She arrived at our front door, as eager to see the nursery as I was for her not to the see the general mess that comes with being utterly incapable of doing housework! After admiring it all, we ended up back at her house, sipping tea that was so strong and dark that it looked more like coffee: she had me put my swollen feet (look like fat little pig's trotters than feet actually!) up on cushions while the rest of me was draped across her leather sofa, nibbling biscuits and having a grand old conversation like we always do. Popping out the room to feed her cat, she returned with a white plastic packet, sort of rolled up. But inside, was the most gorgeous little pink and grey pullover she'd knitted just for Layla Rose - despite the agony of her visibly arthritic, gnarled hands. Beautiful, perfect.
And what is my Soutpiel thesis for today's story? It is this: we can so easily box people into national/cultural stereotypes - but my encounters with today's English folk prove that we are each unique: uniquely unpredictable, uniquely kind, uniquely spontaneous.

Zulu Dating Styles of the Royal Persuasion

My sore butt finally won in the battle to unplug myself from my little writing area! I've set everything up in this perfect little 'hokkie' where I am constantly plugged into music, electricity, the scanner/printer, the telephone. A happily functioning little office. But after 2.5 hours on a chair that curiously grows more and more uncomfortable till eventually you feel as if you're waiting in purgatory for a bus you know will never come and you are glued forever to the coldest, hardest concrete bench ever invented by the most sadistic, cruel busstop designer - where was I? I got lost in needing to describe my bum-pain!! Oh well - all I'm saying is that I have been forced to forego all the other comforts of my little office in lieu of easing the pain in my gluteus now-very-MAXIMUS!

Craig has been so good to me during these sometimes awful months of pregnancy, that I hardly cook dinner - but last night I concocted a creamy, garlic sauce of pesto, parmesan and buttery leeks to go with the shop-bought gnocchi I usually make by hand. With my bowl balanced on top my bump and between my boobs, I asked Craig to see if there was anything decent on TV. It was either a sickening show about Paris Hilton finding a British best friend - or yet another, bloodily gory* episode of 'Trawlermen' which we'd seen before - or... "Undercover Princes".

Three princes from abroad in Brighton - looking for a soulmate to take back to their kingdoms to rule beside them. Prince #1: Pseudonym 'Mani' from India. Painfully thin, moves like an old man who needs a walker but refuses in his ancient stubbornness. Oh yes - and very gay. Prince #2. From Sri Lanka. Currently exiled with entire family in Holland due to wars - but hoping to rebuild the monarchy and be a 'people's prince'. Is looking only for a woman 'of the blue blood' -- hardly likely when he was living in Brighton and spending his evenings speed-dating!

Prince #2: Pseudonym 'Africa'. From Africa. Original, huh? We tried to unlock all the clues of his accent, body language and other quirks to see just WHICH part of Africa he was a prince of. After just a few sentences, we decided, proudly, he must surely come from South Africa (in fact, he's a Zulu prince) -- but then: shock and horror! when asked what he was looking for in a future princess-bride, he says: "It is not the inside so much that is important to me but the outside. And, aah, she rrreally MUST be pretty. Her personality - we can work on that. But first, it is her looks." How EMBARRASSING!!! His manner and attitude of speaking to his dates was quite abrupt - and he certainly didn't know how to dance the delicate dance of flirtation! Instead he bumbled his way pompously and bombastically like a bull in a china shop. As an ambassador for South Africa, he was closed-minded, quite arrogant and didn't have ANY sort of royal bearing at all. Mind you, the producers of the show didn't do the royalty of these princes much justice. They had Prince Africa Zulu rowing a boat with an 18 year old lapdancer! Perhaps had he been introduced to a segment of the British female population more suited to his upbringing and expectations, things may have panned out differently! It was VERY interesting to see how not a single black woman was presented to him. Was he particularly looking for a white princess? Or was he presented with a racially varied group of girls and his choice included only the white ones in the end?
His final choice was an outdoorsy British brunette of which the Prince's Zulu mama said reminded her of Lady Di!

The Sri Lankan prince took his polite but not-at-all blue-blooded,office-worker blonde home to Amsterdam after revealing his true identity. The Indian prince found true love in his peroxided blonde shop assistant, Mike - returning with him to India to seek re-admittance to his family after being the first Indian royal to step out of the closet! (We can't wait for the final episode which shows how these potential 'brides' feel about becoming part of a foreign royal family!)

*that was for you, Dad ;)

WHAT Credit Crunch?

Craig had to ref a football match ('soccer' is tantamount to a swear word here: don't use it!) on Saturday somewhere in the nether regions of Milton Keynes with his under 9s roughing it out in the sub-zero afternoon against another larny private school --- while it was suggested I head off to IKEA to see what they had on my "Get That Nursery Finished!!" list.

Parking was a trial for me as I waited and waited for a parking space, my baby girl bouncing vindictively on my poor bladder and my blood sugar screaming out for an orange juice - ANYTHING!!! Rushing inside, I felt a bit Liliputian and lost -- so many people scrambling and hovering around, escalators chock-full, no trolleys, screaming kids, ice-cream eaters. Stepping behind another pregnant female, her eyes as glazed over as mine with nesting hormones, the escalator deposited me in a chaotic vestible where I had too many choices where to go. My stomach decided for me: an expensive but deliciously and incredibly dimuntive bottle of orange juice and an as dear fruit muffin later and I was as ready as I was going to be for a whizz round IKEA with 25GBP to spend on things for Layla Rose's little bedroom.

Through a process of elimination (more putting things back than putting things IN my temptingly spacious trolley) I was able to cross off enough things on my list to make me feel as though I'd achieved a minor miracle! But while I was contemplating the rattan storage boxes, muslin squares for burping and 5 bibs for 1 pound, I couldn't help but feel as if I was drowning in a selfish whirlpool of buy, buy, buy. Fellow customers pushed ahead without so much as a thought for the person trying to get past them in the narrow aisle - the body language like brainwashed automatons: 'buy this and you will feel better'. I had a little aeroplane flying a glaring red banner round and round my head, saying: 'WHAT Credit Crunch?!' It seems as if the gloom and anxiety created by this recession has had the very opposite effect on people's spending habits. Perhaps people aren't buying houses and cars - but they sure as heck don't seem to be curbing their other sorts of spending -- that desperate craving to fill their emptinesses with 'stuff'. (My friend, Andrea, had a post on her blog awhile back on 'BE MORE, DON'T BUY MORE'. I scribbled it on a now curling yellow Post-It to remind me when I sit on the loo (sad but true AND effective!) that it buying stuff is not the answer at all to filling that need for beauty and truth and peace and contentment...

Layla Rose's nursery is testament to this new commandment: there is NOTHING there that is not absolutely necessary. I ask myself: they had babies two hundred years ago without this - so do you really need it, or are you falling for First Time Mommy consumerist ploys? I just wish I had a camera so I could take photos for you to see the transformation from desolate guest room to cosy nursery! But my favourite things in it are the handmade quilt, the beech cot we bought second had for an absolute song - and the antique cupboard I've spent weeks laboriously but lovingly stripping now just needs a lick of pretty paint!

The Mother City

Homesickness. (Do I really feel like writing about it? I said I would the last time I wrote.) Oh bugger! I better. But just quickly, mind you.
What I've noticed about homesickness is its mutability: how it affects people to differing degrees and in different ways. And, radical generalisation: it affects women more profoundly than men; though perhaps men are more able to compartmentalise their homesickness: i.e. box it, tape it up, and shove it to the back for later contemplation. Whereas in women, it seems to bleed out into every part of daily life and consciousness, steeping everything with its relentless, heavy, dark stain.

When I lived in the UK before (2003 - 2006) my homesickness was caused by two things: my living situation was such that I was told we'd never return to South Africa, as well as the fact that I was so deeply hurting, lonely and unhappy that I became physically ill for years from this desperate hopelessness. (I cured it by booking a plane ticket to Cape Town and never looking back! Ha!)

But now, my homesickness cannot be blamed on an unhappy relationship, because I am treasured, adored and incredibly cherished: and I can't help but be amazed, day after day, by this kind, gentle, strong and patient man who I fall more deeply in love each day. So ya - cross that one out. However, I can definitely blame the acuteness of my homesickness on being pregnant. Since I was a little girl, I always imagined my pregnancy to be a sort of family affair, involving my sisters, my Mommy, endless cups of tea, hours of sentimentally sweet shopping for little white babygrows... The closest we've managed to get that fantasy to match my English reality is getting both parties set up with a webcam. e.g. my mom'll hold up a cute, stripey baby vest to the webcam or I'll fill the screen with my naked, swollen-with-baby belly! THANKFULLY, my darling mom has worked her poor backside off to be able to buy a ticket over here for the birth and to help with the initial stages of settling in with Layla Rose. (What would the world be without mothers?)

And despite the gorgeous house we rent (relatively cheaply) in a sought-after location in a pretty little village nestled among verdant, sheep-dotted farms -- I still long for the life I had in Cape Town where I had seemingly less financially. Walks along whichever stretch of beach I desired (a 5 minute drive from home or work), sundowners on the beach (toes buried deep in the cooling sand) or in a slightly seedy but wonderfully exotic little beachside bar... Craig would often arrive home with St Elmo's pizza, a bottle of wine and roses. AT LEAST once a week! Seeing Table Mountain (one of my favourite things in the world) in the blushing sunrise or at ANY time of the day, from my big bathroom window. Popping over to my parents for a braai whenever the fancy took us. Long, lazy evenings at Lemon Butta drinking too much red wine and succumbing to the earthly delights of the freshest, most artfully prepared sushi, sashimi and nigiri on the planet... Saturday morning rummagings around the seafront liquor depot for excellent bottles of red wine and paying only R16 a bottle... Sitting out on the little stoepie near midnight, sipping Jack-on-the-rocks, being utterly and receptively still to the velvety black night air, the tumbling, glittering stars, ... the South Easter! lol

You see - it is only when you are unable to experience these things that once you left unnamed, that you realise what 'home' means to you. And with the terrible, apocalyptic gloom over here in the UK blamed on The Credit Crunch tainting everyone's attitude, how bad then can what people call 'South Africa's crime and government' be? Truly, each country has its very own uglinesses and 'issues' - but I have come to the point where I would rather put up with my own country's rather than this one's. It's like tolerating a loved but annoying sister. Better the devil you know...

Hence why we are making serious, practical plans to get our African asses back home as soon as we can! Our biggest hurdle is - of course, money. But hey, money is something that putting your nose to the grindstone can readily guarantee -- so it's not an insurmountable hurdle. And until we can return home, we shall indulge in 2 months at home every year - and though we're 'missing the English summer' all I can say to that is: 'So I'm going to miss out on 3 days of windless perfection and 60 rainy, muddy days?' BIG ****ING DEAL (wink)


PS. Click on the pic to make it bigger!

The Telly and the Cow

Confession: I am one of those wretched, painful people who don't really like TV - and, this is the part I am most ashamed about: I don't actually approve of it. Admittedly, there are evenings when I'll plonk myself down in front of the TV and mindlessly let whatever's on wash over in a numbing wave of colour, movement, noise and questionable information. I'll watch things like 'America's Got Talent' and 'The X Factor' for the early rounds of auditions, but lose interest once things supposedly 'get serious'. Sometimes a documentary will catch my attention - but even then, it is so often a disappointment: it never delivers enough information to sink my teeth into! And then, of course, there's Jamie Oliver and that sweetly scraggly guy from the River Cottage which I enjoy for their almost perfect package of information, personalities, visuals.

But where is all this leading, Lisa? Well, in our house we have a disparity of opinion regarding television. Craig can watch TV from the minute he walks through the front door. It's his way of unwinding. Where I can watch maybe an hour's worth before needing to do something 'more constructive' (you can see my snotty bias, huh?), Craig can spend the entire evening soaking whatever may be on - even content to randomly switch between channels, mid-programme. THIS infuriates me beyond reason - usually throwing him a glare of such hot indignation very quickly has him hunting for the channel we were on before!

I want to know that a programme starts at 8pm -- then I'll settle in to watch it from beginning to end. Not so the man of our house! But, truth be told, I think it's really me who is the problem. I'm the one who's potentially anally retentive/ eccentric - where Craig is probably the most normal and well-balanced. And, to combat my need for TV that is stimulating and satisfying for me, Craig joined Lovefilm.com so I could at least get my weekly dosage of nourishing television!

Last night, we watched 'Atonement' and 'Brick Lane'. 'Atonement' was beautifully filmed and layered in meaning and iconography - speaking of love, mature and immature - as well as truth, betrayal, time lost, forgiveness and, naturally, atonement/penance. (My mom, a dress designer in Cape Town, had to make a replica of Keira Knightly's green silk dress for a client. Throughout the entire film, I found myself being distracted by how the dress managed to stay on --- did she need double-sided tape to keep the dress glued to her willowy, flat chest?!)

'Brick Lane', also mostly set in London, was filmed with the most exquisitely sensual attention to detail, and especially colour and light. The story reminded me so much of my friend, Pakshi, who was forced to marry an older, Indian man in London - exiled from her cherished sister and the land of her heart to live in the crowded grime of alien London. Slow-moving, like a languid poem, the story unfolds like a fading sari until the very end is reached... (of which I can say nothing about - but for Soutpiels living in the UK, it will surely surprise you!)

Our domestic television habits aside, I must also tell you that my homesickness reached such a devastating low, that it has taken weeks of building myself up again with hope and keeping busy. But this is a conversation for another day...

Did I kill my blog?

Did I kill my blog?

With working, I got so completely out of the swing of writing, that getting back into it feels quite overwhelming, as if I've forgotten how to write. For me, writing is a daily habit, which once immersed in, is like breathing - second-nature, essential! But, throw in a double skewball (like working fulltime when exhaustingly pregnant) and writing becomes only a mere memory, a distant longing. And now with baby Layla Rose on the way, I can only imagine how my writing will be affected... But I've tried to make a sort of promise to myself: that I won't lose my self in the role of motherhood - that the one thing I will cling to tenaciously will be my daily writing. Even if all I can manage is my long-hand journal writing... (Or is this all just wishful thinking?)

This is all for today. I'll write again tomorrow - and hopefully with more VOOMA!



PS. This is Layla at her 28 week scan but measuring like that of a 30 week old!!! Is she waving frantically to get out - or am I already beginning to project my own thoughts onto my daughter? Heh heh...