Flashback: Childhood Addictions Part 1

Remember those things you used to eat so much of as a child that they sometimes even made you sick, but you didn't care cus they were so good that you just couldn't help yourself? And you know how years, even decades, pass and you forget about it and sometimes the addictive object even disappears from stores altogether - Milkybar Buttons being a case in point! -, but if you're lucky one will unexpectedly come across your path years later and you will be filled with that same feeling from your childhood, like not a day has passed from the last time you stuffed whatever it is into your face.

Allow me to (re) introduce you to something that I used to eat multiple bowls of at a time:

Moirs Instant Pudding - I LOVE YOU!

So simple. So good. Just a brown slop really, but it must have crack in it. Crack for children, and those who wish they still were. Look at Charlotte's face and tell me who is consuming who here.

The two of us just pounded a two bowls each, post-yoga. Cus we're worth it.

Kitchen Cool

Check out the new kitchen marble top and pot-storage-bench thingy. Making lunch on the new counter for the first time. Safehouse alterations are coming together nicely now. This weekend the artwork goes up and then I think we'll be ready for winter dinner parties.

Ps. The cold is making me miserable. A good thing I'm going to the beach for some late summer denial!

After the Egg-hunt

A charming day at the Safehouse slowly winds down with tea and cupcakes, Busi and Charls in attendance. We had an egg-hunt this morning and Charlotte ensured that the treasures - chocolate marshmallow eggs - were well-hidden. We had to make sure that Rashie was absent to avoid hysterics. Those hysterics ultimately proved to be unavoidable and came later as she pounded equal doses of sugar and braai meat as the morning unfolded. Buntu and Ben - from King Williams Town in the Eastern Cape - also dropped in, hungover as all hell, but game for a little garden sunshine soaking and recovery eating. They seemed jealous when i told them that i was going to be in that part of the world in less than two weeks - I have a long awaited trip to Bulungula planned for the 21st.

I'm now lying on the couch, looking at my favourite Banksy picture, trying my damdest to believe in it, imagining what my hope should look like. Tomorrow I will go and watch Fire In Babylon - the documentary currently playing at The Bioscope at Arts On Main - for the third and final time, with Charlotte. I think I'm also getting sick. A change of season indeed.

Teardrop by Massive Attack

Most faithful mirror

Kensington and The Portrait Homage

Just a little afternoon gig with Busi and Nastasya, hanging in Kensington, thinking about Ivan Vladislavic and his marvelous portrayal of Jozi borne out of his life just a couple of blocks away. #lovejozi

A Good Bash Begins

I have been thinking that I need to start writing again, or rather that I should make more of an effort to actually document certain parts of my life. Now I have not always enjoyed the word "document", mostly because of my negative association of the word with such horrors as corporate business analysis "deliverables", insufferable art-speak and academic excrement. That said, it still probably best describes the process of leaving a trail of written artifacts pertaining to some or other common thread or thought. I think that a space like Facebook, whilst on the one hand encouraging some level of documentation, can also make one lazy to really document in a way that attempts to add some substance to the subject matter that is being channeled through this platform.

I don't really think that any of these sentiments are particularly earth-shattering or revealing, but maybe they are able set the scene for something that does not pretend to be that. A great story often unfolds slowly and really makes a far larger impact when its development is apparent. Maybe I'll post a couple of things that could start to resemble a story of sorts. I hope so.

Good Friday Pretending

Charlotte and I went to the Rosebank Mall today to get our minds out of the toilet. The “change-of-season-and-its-just-so-emotionally-heavy-right-now” vibe had been getting us both down and so we decided to get out of the house. If all else failed – from the perspective of inserting mildly sincere shopping motives, that is - , we resolved to get into some freezochinos at Tashas as this treat could by itself have justified the trip for us. Turns out that we had to fall back on that to a large extent although I did walk away from the expedition with a pair of good-looking khakis from Woolies – not really important but maybe necessary under the circumstances.

So on the way back to the Safehouse I was moaning about truth, reality and other such morbid subjects when Charlotte interrupted me with a story: She said that when she was in grade 2 at Arcadia Primary – her final year before moving to another school – she was friends with a remarkable little girl called Nastasha. She described Nastasha as a petite little girl with long mousy-brown hair that reached down to the small of her back and sporting a harshly-chopped fringe. She also wore a pair of John Lennon-style spectacles that she had fastened around her head with a bright red string – you know those things that children and old people use to stop glasses from falling off their heads? - that was secured at the back with a plastic mouse-face. A visually striking little person by all accounts. But what stood out a lot more was her frighteningly sharp and creative mind. Charlotte recounted how, mostly under Nastasha's direction, the two of them would frequently make witch's brews and play intense games that seemed to belong almost in another place and time. Nastasha seemed way too much for the other children of her age to even vaguely fathom, and maybe Charlotte just didn't take enough notice of that, for she recalls how this powerful entity was often times out of her mind's reach too.

Charlotte says that on one particular morning they were waiting outside their class for their teacher to arrive when it emerged that the teacher was in fact late and it was unclear exactly when she would be making her appearance. My sister immediately decided that she would take charge by organizing the class into two lines of boys and girls, after which she would direct them into the classroom where they would remain quietly seated until the teacher appeared. She duly commenced with carrying out her self-proclaimed mission and had managed to get the lines filing past her in a most orderly fashion. She remembers almost smugly surveying the fruits of her labour when Nastasha walked up to her, stopped, peered up at her over the top of her spectacles with a look of seething anger and betrayal before slapping her so powerfully on the side of the head that it fairly burst Charlotte's hair from its neatly-maintained ponytail trappings. “Pretending hey?! Pretending!”, she hissed, and walked-off in a huff. Charlotte says that this single incident may have impacted more on her as a person than any other that she can recall from her young life, and that she wonders what she would have been like today if this had never taken place. Charlotte lost contact with Nastasha after moving to the new school, but I told her that it would be wonderful if she could somehow track her down to acknowledge the incident's impact.

See below for a grown-up version: