Category: humor

For Auld Lang Syne

I wrote about Scotsman, Andy Murray, yesterday and then I went to do a Pilates class with the most enthusiastic, chatty Scotsman since William Wallace. Today I thought I would introduce to you some more of my husband’s Scottish family: meet Mac and Lily*.

*I have given them false names, as you probably wouldn’t believe the names by which we knew them. I thought about calling them Mac and Cheese. Nah.

I can’t tell you what a blessing it is to have married into a Scottish family. Mac was my late mother-in-law’s brother. He would have been about 87 now, and Lily would have been about 84. They both passed away in Scotland within the past eight years. They had no children of their own, and adored their nephews (my husband and his brother) as if they were their own. My husband is named after Mac.

Let me tell you what I know about Scottish names. My husband has three first names and is known by his third name. He likes his first name, and when he asked his parents why they didn’t call him by his first name, they said it was because they didn’t like it. Right. They had named him after his uncle, and clearly his parents hadn’t liked his first name either, because he was always known by his second name. We knew him by an entirely different nickname all together. And to add further confusion into the mix, the name my husband is known by is the same as his father’s. And his father was known by the first of his three names, even though he was given an entirely different name at birth (see Not Just Another Winter’s Tale).  And his brother is known by his second – of three – names. You’re confused?

So back to Mac and Lily: I first met Mac when he flew out to Zimbabwe for our wedding in 1984. He arrived unannounced and threw the entire family into frenzied excitement, leaving my garrulous mother-in-law speechless. He was a true Scotsman: he’d insult you then hug you, he’d laugh at you and with you, and tears and laughter gurgled in equal measure. Love of family, humour, generosity, love and kindness ever lurked behind his thinly brittle exterior. I loved him immediately.

I first met Lily when my husband and I travelled to the UK in 1986 and we stayed with Mac and Lily in their wee croft in Perthshire. Lily was about knee-high to a grasshopper and was teased mercilessly by Mac for being so wee. She was a hairdresser and her stories of colleagues and clients and running a salon in Zimbabwe (as she had done for a number of years) are stuff of my husband’s family legend.

Returning to Scotland, she worked at the old folks’ homes, doing the hair of the “old biddies”, as she called them. She never fussed too much about whether her work was good or not, as she chose to live by her belief that the difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut was about three weeks. Possibly longer for the old biddies. She was gentle, kind, quick to laugh, generous and loving: I loved her immediately too.

We saw them every couple of years after that; when they travelled to Zimbabwe and then South Africa for holidays, and when we visited the UK on holiday. Just as they had taken my husband and his brother as sons, they took our boys into their hearts as grandsons. Mac taught them stories and language that, shall we say, broadened their education.

Our boys were little when Mac and Lily first came to Cape Town. We’d told the boys how funny Uncle Mac was and they couldn’t wait to meet them. Our older son, who was about four at the time, laughed loudly and unconvincingly the first time Mac said something, and then looked at us and asked,

“When’s he going to be funny?”

I think he’d imagined a clown.

Our younger son, aged about two, sat on my husband’s lap and watched Mac with interest. After a while, my son grabbed his dad’s face between his hands, pulled his face towards him and, gesturing towards Mac, said,

“Him’s got a big nose. Hey, Daddy?”

One day my older son had a friend coming over to play, when Mac and Lily were with us in Cape Town a few years later. I heard my son say to his friend,

“My uncle and aunt will be there. I’m really sorry but my uncle swears a lot.”

His friend, ever the gracious trooper, said,

“Ooh, that’s okay. I think that will be rather fun.”

Mac was fun. He’d run and play soccer with the boys in the garden, until his smoke-ridden lungs would cause him to gasp and return to the sidelines. As he lit a cigarette, he’d say,

“Bleep bleep! Those bleep bleep kids sure take the bleep bleep bleep out of you! I’m not as young as I bleeping-well used to be.”

He’d wrestle with the boys and then send them on their way. He’d watch them play sport and boast about them to his friends. He laughed at their jokes and regaled them with stories.

We had a wonderful time staying with them in Scotland in 2000. They took us all over their native Perthshire, showing us the beautiful countryside and introducing the four of us – with enormous familial pride – to everyone they met. They took us to the Highland Games in Pitlochry and Mac went to tell the organisers that “B’s son” was there (my mother-in-law grew up and went to school in Pitlochry). Family was everything to Mac and Lily, and we knew we meant the world to them.

Lily would cook wonderful meals for us all, and our best times were when we sat and chatted over coffee and chocolate biscuits in their lounge in the weak mid-morning sun. She and Mac were always interested in our lives and what we had to say, and asked us questions constantly.

One evening, we sat in their little lounge, next to the ever- glowing fire, as Mac relaxed into his favourite pastime: reminiscing. He told us of a Hogmanay party at their house a few years before, where Mac pretended he was a soldier. He put a bucket on his head, and with a broom as a rifle he marched back and forth through their small lounge. It wasn’t long before he smashed the light fitting with the broom and caused the party guests to collapse into hysterical laughter.

He then went further back, to recount tales of his inordinately naughty childhood. He told us of all he and his brother and friends got up to at school, including putting one teacher’s car up on to bricks and waiting to watch as the teacher tried to drive off at the end of the day. Mac and his mates lurked in the bushes, and as they watched the teacher they rolled over and laughed like drains.

He was constantly in trouble. That naughty streak glinted in his eyes through his whole life. Not even the unspoken-of horrors of his wartime service could quench that spirit.

His school-day nostalgia then reminded him of his favourite poet: Robbie Burns. He told us he had once recited Burns at a formal occasion. He ran upstairs to haul out his notes and proceeded to recite the elaborately un-understandable words of Burns to an audience of us. To our African ears, it sounded like,

“Heenel honnel, heenel honnel, heenel honnel, aft the glen.”

His sudden move into serious poetry was at odds with the evening’s levity. The absurdness of the poetry, the absurdness of this sudden turn of events and then, spotting their mother fixing to burst with laughter, caused my sons – and then all four of us – to explode into childish laughter till we cried. Mac was taken aback:

“What the bleeping-bleep you lot laughin’ at? This is Rabbie Burns! Don’t ye like him?”

We tried, we really tried to pull ourselves together but the words of Robbie Burns will forever be etched in our memories in the schoolboy style of Mac’s recital and our childish inability to stop giggling.

I miss Mac and Lily. All of our family does. And I understand why Mac loved to reminisce. It keeps the memories alive.

Sunshine signing off for today!

Please Don’t Do THAT in Public

Yesterday I saw a woman at the bus stop. She was dressed like a model. Fluffy, faux fur hat. Designer coat. Boots up to her thighs. Sitting on the bench. And yes, folks, she was cutting her fingernails. All ten of them. With nail clippers.

I would love to have seen any CCTV footage of myself as I realised what she was doing. I would have seen a very thinly disguised expression of displeasure. Even with a frozen face, I managed to frown and let my lips frill. Surely her day wasn’t so busy that she couldn’t do that at home? Come on, lady.

Travelling on public transport in London, I have seen and heard things that no-one should have to see or hear in public. I’ll spare you the graphics of what I have heard. But I have seen someone cleaning out his ears on the bus. I have also seen a woman pluck her eyebrows on the bus. Seriously? That couldn’t wait? I know I’ve had long waits to get on the bus, but not that long that my eyebrows needed plucking by the time I boarded.

I have seen women doing their make-up on the tube, the whole business from foundation to eyeliner. I haven’t seen anyone wax their legs on their daily commute, but I’ve no doubt that’s a forthcoming attraction in the spring. Or maybe I just haven’t travelled the right tube lines for that.

I have watched people eat their breakfast, lunch, supper, snacks, elevenses, on the buses and tubes. Some people eat surreptitiously, sneaking morsels of food into their mouths and then darting their eyes around to see if anyone’s watching. I always seem to catch their eyes. Others stuff their faces like they’ve just finished a diet.

I once watched a young woman sitting opposite me on the tube lick her fingers – all ten of them – and smack her lips for a good five minutes after she’d finished eating whatever it was she’d just tucked into. After that little performance, she applied layer after layer of BRIGHT RED lipstick (caps to emphasise how red it was) on to her lips. She pouted and pouted as she checked in the mirror that her lips looked just right. She then put all her accoutrements back into her handbag, sat back and within two minutes, she had slumped sideways into an ugly, dribbling sleep.

Probably the most gross public display of toiletry (PDTs, as I call them) was a few years ago in Cape Town, when I was at a conference. As the afternoon session began, a woman came and sat next to me. She fidgeted and fidgeted. Now, I’m not a difficult person, but I hate it when people fidget next to me when I’m trying to stay awake concentrate on a graveyard shift at a conference. She dug in her handbag, she rustled sweet papers, she chewed sweets loudly and she sobbed and sighed as she dug further into her handbag for more hidden treasures. She chewed and fidgeted and chewed and fidgeted. I did my trademark shielding of my eyes … what the eye doesn’t see the heart can’t grieve over. However, it didn’t block out the sounds.

After an epic fiddling in her handbag (now you can tell how much I was concentrating on the conference subject matter), she sat still for a few minutes. And flossed her teeth. Seriously. She flossed her teeth. Don’t get me started here, but I don’t even like to be anywhere near the bathroom when my husband flosses his teeth – that’s just private. That’s a one-on-one affair. Him and the mirror. Nobody else’s business. Ever.

And this dear woman was flossing her teeth. At a conference, in a huge theatre, in Cape Town. Get a bathroom, already.

That PDT truly took the biscuit. I really don’t want to encounter anyone trying to top that. Thank you.

Sunshine signing off for today.

Clear as Mud

It’s snowing in London today. I went out in the snow for a while this morning, but for now I can watch the snow falling, from the warmth and dryness of our flat. It’s been a bleak late-autumn week for the UK, with many parts of the country experiencing thigh-deep snow and temperatures around -16 degrees C. Traffic chaos is inevitable.

We had traffic chaos of another kind around the time of my elder son’s birth. He was born in the summer in Zimbabwe, in the season of wonderful, dramatic, electric thunder storms. The heat becomes unbearable as the storm clouds build and, as you smell the rain coming, the huge drops fall loudly on the red soil, bringing relief and life to the earth.

My son and I had come home in the humid mid-day to a rousing welcome from the women in our neighbourhood. They all sang to us in their native Shona, ululating and thanking my husband and me for the beautiful baby boy and, as is their custom, assured me that the baby looked like my husband. That, apparently, was an important reassurance.

My parents had come to stay with us, to meet their new grandson. They were such a joy and a treasure, bringing just what we needed in unconditional love and grandparently doting.  I remember my Dad holding my baby son in his arms, turning the tiny-baby fingers over in his big hands, and saying to me, “You know, God never forgets anything.” My Mom made me feel like I was the best mother in the world, and that all my decisions were exactly right. She was by my side for the midnight feeds, cheering me on as only she can. Bless their cotton socks.

We also had a dear friend from the UK visiting us at that time. Another bonus.

The first Friday night we were home, we had invited my brother and his family to come and have supper with us and meet the new baby. A few hours ahead of their scheduled arrival, the heavens opened and the rain tumbled down in torrents. A knock on our back door alerted us to their arrival, but also to the news – from my completely sopping wet brother who looked like someone had just emptied a bowser of water over his head – that their car had got stuck in the mud on our driveway.

We rented a house on a smallholding, with a long, winding, dirt-road driveway up to our house. In the rain, the dirt became thick mud. My husband and his friend donned raincoats and went to help rescue the vehicle from the mud. My brother sat at the steering wheel while my husband and his friend tried to push the vehicle out of the mud. As the wheels spun, the vehicle went nowhere. About twenty minutes later, three men arrived at the back door – two were drenched in mud from head to toe, and one was still just sopping wet. The car was still stuck.

Sympathy was in short supply as hysterical laughter overtook us all. The three men went and scrubbed up.

Our friend was about to go out for the evening and he called a taxi to come and take him into town. My brother called a car breakdown service to come and tow his vehicle out of the mud. The tow-truck arrived about half an hour later, and it too got stuck in the mud. Our friend’s taxi seemed like it was never coming so he called to find out its whereabouts, only to be told it had turned back down our driveway as it couldn’t get past the tow-truck and the other vehicle.

At this stage, we were all crying with laughter. The tow-truck had to call in another tow-truck to rescue it from the driveway, and, given that it was a stormy night, tow-trucks were in short supply. We invited my brother and his family to stay the night, as we imagined tow-truck after tow-truck getting lodged in the mud along the entire length of our driveway.

Our friend ended up walking into town for his evening’s entertainment; the second tow-truck arrived at about midnight and managed to rescue both the other tow-truck and my brother’s car; and our new baby boy had a wonderful night’s sleep, oblivious to the chaos that unfolded around him and snug in the joyful arms of family.

So as the London snow continues to fall on the frozen dock in front of me, I smile and warm my hands on these precious memories.

Sunshine signing off for today.

Let it Snow

I’m feeling a little out of sorts today. I have an annoying cold. It’s stopped me from doing what I had planned to do today, and, with snow forecast for tonight and the rest of the weekend, it had better not stop me from honing my snowman-building skills.

Well, maybe honing is too strong a word.  And it presupposes a skill. Learning would perhaps fit the bill. Meet Snowman Ray.

Snowman Ray. The snowman with a kind heart.

Ok, so he was our first and only attempt last winter. I’m sure he has a very kind heart and a sweet singing voice. Neat handwriting too. And yes, he is a Manchester United fan.

We didn’t have a lot of snow to work with, as you can see, and, well, our hands got cold. The insults that flew through the Facebook world, when we posted photos of Snowman Ray for all to see, were quite voluminous. Poor Ray. I am hoping there won’t be too many less-than-kind-comments in the comments section here.

Before we arrived in London last year, I’d only ever seen snow once before. And that was atop the Alps, in the middle of summer in the mid-1980s. We had taken a cable-car ride up to Mount Titlis and, while the rest of the tourists languished in a heated coffee shop, enjoying hot chocolate and decadent pastries, my husband and I played in the snow. And kept running to thaw out our hands under the hand-driers in the bathroom.

So last December, when the snow fell in London (does it fall or float or both?), I was as excited as a puppy at meal time. The snow continued through January and February. I was working at that time, and I would get so excited when I noticed that snow was falling. I would jump around and say to my colleagues, “Look, look! It’s SNOWING!”

I usually got an indifferent look, an expression of “Whatever,” and was asked if I wanted to lie down until the hysteria passed. It’s a huge novelty for me, you know. Snow, that is. Not hysteria. Although hysteria is too.

So you’re hearing this first: I’m setting myself a challenge  of learning to build a decent-looking snowman. The kind that could feature on a greeting card, rather than be mistaken for a Cape Town taxi guard. Photographs of works in progress coming to a blog near you soon.

Bring on the snow.

Sunshine signing off for today!

I’ll be there now now

It’s Friday and time for a bit more forrin! I’ve been having fun gathering ideas from friends and thinking of new things that we Saffas say funny, and things that I hear here that make me laugh, frown, or nod in ignorant bliss!

My husband saw a status update on his Facebook page this morning from a university colleague. It said, “… is feeling so baffed!” We have yet to discover whether this is a good or a bad thing, but where I come from, that word is more likely to be used like this: “Have you just baffed?” you might ask a family member (usually male), usually with your nose crinkled, waving your hand back and forth in front of your nose.

As soon as I know the meaning of the word in the UK, I’ll let you know. I must say, we both looked at each other and laughed when we saw that this morning. Then I said to my husband, “Have you just ….?” (Not really!)

So here goes:

  1. Chuffed: I think this is common to SA and the UK, but I’m not so sure my friends across the pond know this word – it means pleased, self-satisfied. “I am really chuffed that you are reading my blog.”
  2. Round the houses: this is something I’ve heard quite often here. It means to take a circuitous route, to take a while to get to the point. A bit like my blog.
  3. Mine/yours: here, you might receive an invitation like this: “Would you like to come round to mine for coffee, or would you rather I came to yours?” I am used to saying “my place” or “my house”, so this takes a bit of getting used to.
  4. It does what it says on the tin: I heard this often at my temporary job earlier this year, and also on the news here. It means “say what you mean” and “as simply as possible”.
  5. Yobbo: I realise I’ve used this word quite often in my blogs, and again, I’m not sure that my US and Canadian friends are familiar with the word. It is in common use in the UK, and quite a bit in SA, and, according to Wikipedia (who knows EVERYTHING!) it means “uncouth or thuggish working-class person”. Apparently it is derived from the back slang of the word “boy” = “yob”. Now I didn’t know that part either!
  6. For crying in a bucket: This is something my mom says regularly, and I just love it! (And her.) It means, “Oh, for goodness sake.” Or “Good grief!”
  7. Oh my sack: an SA version of OMG, or Oh my word! Don’t ask me its origins, I don’t want to know!
  8. Larney: this SA word means posh, smart, rich. Depending on where you come from in SA, and your accent, it might also be laahney.
  9. Make a plan: this is a fabulously SA expression. I don’t know if it reflects the SA laid-back way of life (read: slackness) but it means, “I’d love you to come and have a meal with us some time. But I have no idea when we will do that. But it will happen. Some time. Just don’t hold your breath.” An example of this would be two people bumping into each other at the shopping mall (or, as some people in SA say, two people who got each other by the mall) and, after exchanging small talk, one saying, “Lovely to see you. We must get together soon. Let’s have a braai!” (pronounced bry and it means barbecue) And the other will say, “Ja, that sounds good. Let’s make a plan.” And that, usually, is that.
  10. Make a turn/pull in: this is very SA, and not everyone uses these expressions, especially not those who are larney. For example: “Where you going now?” 
    “No, man, I’m just on my way home.”
    “Why don’t you make a turn/pull in by us?” (that means come and visit us on your way).
  11. By us: this means at our home, at our place. Or, if you’re British, ours.
  12. Now/now now/just now: this is Saffa at its enigmatic best. These words can be used interchangeably; all of them mean “now” but “now” can mean ANY time, like: this very minute, in five minutes time, tomorrow, next week, or it could even mean five minutes ago. I’m now there is something my sons say, which means “I’m on my way.”

Saffas also say no when they mean yes. If you ask a Saffa how he is, he might reply: “No, I’m fine thanks. Can’t complain.” Or you might say, “So, will you be able to do that, do you think?” and the reply might be, “No, that should be fine. No problem. I can’t see why not.”

A few months ago we were invited to have lunch with some friends of ours from church. They had other guests there that day, and one young woman was particularly fascinated by our accents. She had known other Saffas and she giggled when she heard us say certain words. After lunch our host offered us coffee and asked if we had our coffee black or white. We both responded, “White,” which to other ears probably sounds like whart. Our new young friend couldn’t contain herself, and asked me if I would say that into her phone so she could record it and send it to her friend. I had to say, “Would you like your coffee black or white.” and I overdid the accent. She duly sent it off, and was well chuffed with herself!

I could well have said to her, as my mom says, “I’m not a performing flea.” But being an obliging Saffa, I said to her, “Sure, no problem. I can’t see why not.” You see, we Saffas always make a plan.

Sunshine signing off for the weekend! See you next week, friends!