As I said when starting out this 'blogging' business - just an aside, I have an intense dislike for the word, a dislike which shares relative intensity with my dislike for female cricket commentators and inter-spouse Facebook wall posts – I mentioned how I write more when I have pressing issues at hand rather than when I have free time. My absence from the keyboard is due part to a lack of the afore-mentioned pressing issues and part to the fact that my previous laptop keyboard is somewhat stuffed after spilling a carefully calculated combination of coffee and Oros on it on one too many separate occasions. Admittedly, as I sit on my sparkly new laptop keyboard there are waves crashing not 100m behind me with any issues as far from my mind as the hopeless Eskom workers armed with rolls of insulation tape are from restoring electricity to our holiday house for the 4th time in 3 days. So despite not having a desperate need to write something in order to create a much needed distraction for my ever-wandering mind, there is only so much crap running through my mind and out of my mouth that my family can bare before I have to resort to my computer – yes, that shiny, new one – as my last remaining confidant.
Without a distinct topic in mind, I don’t want to disrupt the momentum gained from the second Castle Lite sliding down my throat, so I’m going to keep smashing away at my keys – brand, spanking new keys – in the hope something legible comes out the other end!
Given that I am in what is arguably my favourite place in the world it seems an all too appropriate point to start from. Haga Haga is a small seaside village in the Eastern Cape situated on the Wild coast, between the old Ciskei and Transkei where land ownership is subject to numerous government restrictions, this according to the owner of the local pub. In the same conversation he spent about 20 minutes verbally illustrating the indispensable life lesson that ‘any hole is a goal’. His example of being blindfolded and lining up 10 naked women was, admittedly, very persuasive. Fortunately, the roads in and to this seaside haven are adequately horrendous to keep the snazzy GP number plates at bay and close enough to East London to scare off a significant portion of the remainder of the country. There are few places remaining in our beautiful country (I say that with complete disregard to the fact that East London, PE and Jo’burg are cities within our borders) that are sufficiently tranquil and undeveloped to attract those in search of a true Eastern Cape style holiday: Haga is definitely one of these few, another being Kasouga .
Kasouga continues to be the farming community’s favourite family getaway and hosts the only New Year’s party worth going to (If you don’t know where Kasouga is, it’s somewhere between Cape Town and Durban). It is truly a tribute to the Eastern Cape way of life, where, for a small entrance fee you gain entrance to an old town hall where the sounds of Creedence Clearwater, Billy Joel and Bryan Adams reverberate around the dry walls and wooden floors upon which pretty ladies are being flung around as part of ‘sokkie’ –we need an English word for this dance - routines that your average Stellenbosch rugby oaf would be proud of! On top of this there is a ‘bring your own booze’ policy and cooler-boxes sit against the walls of the hall like grade 8 boys at their first social: unattended and untouched. I dare you to try that in any place other than the Republic of the Eastern Cape!
There goes the electricity again...
With the beach so close and the view across the road from us consisting of nothing but the bluest blue ocean crashing into the rocks, the television set – provided it’s working, the electricity is on and someone remembered the DSTV card – is barely used apart from airing the bare necessities such as Test Match cricket, English Premiership football and Keeping up with the Kardashians. Time is spent instead playing Ultimate Frisbee on the beach - OK, so the ‘Ultimate’ club at UCT mingle primarily with the chess club but it is the only sport chicks can play without looking like a mentally disabled Paralympic competitor on the one hand or Serena Williams on the other -, reading during the day and playing cards and board games at night. A definite favourite amongst the board games is, and always will be, 30 Seconds.
There are a ton of prescribed compatibility tests to trial the durability of relationships, from long distance driving to weekends spent with the in-laws, but just as potent and a helluva lot quicker is a simple game of 30 Seconds on the same side as your spouse. When the ginger from Mythbusters says you shouldn’t try something at home, he’s teasing. I’m being dead serious when I say don’t try this at home. Girls manage to get through an entire game of 30 Seconds without dropping one line of general knowledge and then shit on you for not knowing Richard Gere’s squeeze in his 52nd romantic comedy where the funniest part is when the first person in the room is faggish enough to shed a tear.
My most recent annual road trip from Cape Town through Kenton to Haga Haga served up the most entertaining game I’ve ever been lucky enough to partake in. Rather than simply stating “the capital of Finland”, one of the female crew (OK fine, my sister) decided it would be far easier to describe the city as [said rapidly with loud breathing rendering half the words inaudible]: “It’s a place, opposite of heaven, if you drown, what you wash dishes in, the cute version of that word”. Think about it... Helsinki indeed. This method of explanation – the only one I can think of that may be able to get Paris Hilton off the start block – sometimes gets replaced by your normal general knowledge method with disastrous results: “Our galaxy? - Earth” and “Capital of Japan?–Korea” were two of the best. Often the talking precedes the thinking in ‘the quick thinking, fast talking game’. “The reason we go onto the internet? – porn!” and in an attempt to describe Eskom: “the thing we never get”, was met by a quiet and equally revealing answer: “action”.
There are many ways to spend a holiday, a lot of them significantly more sophisticated and exciting than this, but as I write this piece a mere 13 year old girl’s stone throw away from the sea with a candle flickering on the left of my brand new laptop and empty beer bottles grouped together on the right, I can safely say that there is absolutely no place I’d rather be. Beer me!
