Love Thy Neighbour...or don't

I’m not one for planning much. This made the arrival of a recommended timetable for GDA (postgrad Accounts) prescribing 5 and a half hours of tut and lecture preparation every weekday and 15 hours extra on weekends and evenings as welcome in my house as Julius Malema at a Maths convention. Despite planning playing a negligent role in the selection, or random appearance, of topics in my series of writing – still trying to find a better word for blog -, I’ve always set out to avoid the slightly controversial topics of politics and religion. There’s definitely a saying full of rhyming – no, I cannot just ‘Bust a rhyme’ on the spot - and alliteration out there that goes on about not talking or commenting on things you know nothing about. Abe Lincoln’s: “It is better to say nothing and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt” works pretty well. However, seeing that a former bodybuilder and ‘star’ of a movie called Kindergarten Cop hailing from The Netherlands who describes the feeling he gets from pumping iron to an orgasm (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMjG2s6UOaw) can successfully run for governor of a U.S. state and that Julius Malema and Paris Hilton talk at all, I don’t feel completely unqualified about mentioning either of the topics in passing.

Going to Sunday school regularly for a good portion of my childhood has got me through a fair share of 30 Seconds games and, from what I can immediately recall, there are a few biblical guidelines that make bugger-all sense to me. Without delving into the most controversial of these and painting little red horns on my head, I can’t see the sense in not eating bacon, getting slapped twice when you can settle with one, and doing nothing on Sundays. I’d understand if Saturday was the day of rest but I guess that when Sunday was chosen the Jews of the day must have jolled lank on Saturday nights and the majority of sport was probably televised on Sundays.

Another of these inexplicable guidelines is the ‘love thy neighbour’ one. In theory I guess it’s understandable: the post-nap walk of shame is a helluva lot shorter. However, this theory gets put to a serious test when you get served up the variety of neighbours the Southern Suburbs of Cape Town has to offer. After 18 years on a farm and likeable enough res neighbours, the digs I lived in for two years proceeding my comparably quiet 1^st year in Rochester House landed me a reputation as a prized prick and made my presence in the neighbourhood as welcome as a Justin Bieber song at a Metallica concert– although I actually can’t see why anyone wouldn’t love a good JB track!

My arch-nemesis came in the form of an overweight 50-odd-year old man who had the dress sense of a plumber and the apparent hygiene levels of a hippie camping in a tree. The first time my digs mates and I were fortunate enough to meet him we were so under the weather that we couldn’t recall his name. After his umpteenth tirade about his daughter’s disrupted studies – every time he mentioned his beloved daughter I couldn’t focus on the rest of his rant as my mind became utterly perplexed with how any woman bar a pre-fame and makeover Susan Boyle would agree to sleep with him – we gave up completely and labelled him KC – the first word being King and the second rhyming with ‘punt’. KC’s sidekick identified herself when I drove past an elderly woman one particular afternoon and my friendly wave was returned with a middle finger and a mouthing off, the content of which was inaudible from within my car.

My 2 digs mates managed to stay unidentified by the neighbours for the entirety of our two year stay at our digs on the bottom of Woolsack drive. Between my folks owning the house and my Mother writing ‘Buster’ on my doorbell, right in between ‘unit 4’ and ‘unit 6’, it didn’t take long before I was looked at as the spawn of Satan and solely blamed for the noise emanating from any house in the complex – admittedly, in the first year, all of it was coming from our apartment. Being hated is never particularly pleasant unless you’re despised for winning. However, seeing that my school hasn’t won our rugby derby for more than 15 years - I’ve lost count - and UCT are yet to beat the maroon baboons in a Varsity Cup Final -our time will come and it will be glorious- the hatred toward me was most definitely not jealousy-inspired.

A move to a house close to the Rondebosch common managed to halt the flow of hate mail and cops at our front door and offered an insight into the truly diverse specimen that is the neighbour. I was never fortunate enough to meet the neighbours living a mere metre away from my bedroom window but after a year I do know that they have three little children, two of which speak English and really love singing nursery rhymes and another that cries like a chick watching a Hugh Grant movie marathon. The timing of these noisy and highly annoying outbursts couldn’t possibly be more precisely timed to coincide with my attempted study sessions. The children speaking English remains a mystery to me as I never heard a word of English uttered from an adult in the house, despite the fact that masses of adults pass through the place in a fashion that suggests the house is the home to Congolese drug lords, a centre for human trafficking or an employment office for aspiring car guards. Either way, they managed to mask all the dodgy - or not so dodgy if you think I’m being a bit judgemental - stuff that went on inside by cranking up their music to full blast from 7a.m sharp every morning and blessing my bedroom with the same CD of African reggae to make sure I thought twice before ever trying to sleep off a hangover or have a nice late morning lie-in.

Another digs change means another set of neighbours. With GDA requiring work to be a priority, house parties will have to be well planned and allow me to send around carbon copies of the noise warnings I sent to my neighbours from last year. I’ll also be sure not to label my house, retaliate to unnecessary old lady tirades by emptying pot plants on cars, give my father’s contact details to disgruntled neighbours – nothing pisses off a dairy farmer more than being woken up with a complaint about his son  two hours into his sleep, even if it is only 9:30pm – or allegedly force a grade 11 girl into boarding school because she can’t study – it’s a pleasure Grade 11 Girl, I’m sure life away from that miserable piece of wife-dependant waste of space was far more pleasant. Now to think of a good theme for the digs warming...

Writing Relapse

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 4^th 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 52^nd 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!