Category: Daily Life

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We can all retire now

My lovely man realised he hadn’t received his Zimbabwe pension for a time, so said that he wanted to look into it.

A Zimbabwe pension is not really worth too much fuss. It and another $2 can buy you a cup of coffee really.

But still, something to sort out.

My lovely man’s way of sorting things out is to get in his car and find someone to speak to.

Ridiculous hey?

We’ll write to them I said, try and find a whatsapp number or an email address.

He came back victorious with an email address and so we compiled an enquiry and sent it off.

The pension fund is called the NSSA.

We received a very prompt reply. Amazing.

We are a little confused, they replied, and wondered if you could supply a little bit more information on your lovely man because we don’t have him in our database. Was he an astronaut, an astro physicist or a systems engineer?

I’m sure if we keep the pressure on by name dropping Buzz Lightyear, Neil Armstrong and perhaps ‘one giant step.. ‘ shit we can persuade NASA to fork out a pension for my lovely man.

He deserves it!

I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

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Buzz off already

My lovely man and I are both bee appreciators. He is a big fan of Bee Vectoring actually. Very interesting stuff. Bees and bats. He loves them. And birds. The birds and the bees with the old bat (did you see what I did there?).

Anyway, we got some fellow (The Bee Man, most originally), to make us a hive. Immediately we realised we were out of our depth, because he kept on telling us the extra things we needed and when we received it, it all looked quite complicated.

Slightly daunted, but nevertheless optimistic that we were single handedly going to save the planet and really, how difficult could it be, we persevered. We put it in the bottom of the garden and started going with a little pot to collect our honey every morning. The Bee Man (lying bastard), had told us they would just ‘come’.

They did not. We paid another fellow to relocate a swarm to our hive. They left.

Location, location… we were not it.

We need a Queen my lovely man lamented, do we know if our swarm had a queen? We knew nothing and also, is there really room for another queen in this household?

Then… a couple of things happened. I read that Jodi Picoult book and realised just how ignorant we were on bee-keeping (and transgenders for that matter). And then, there were at least two horrific incidents that I heard of where dogs were attacked by bees.

I looked at my dear little Alfie pup and with a sinking heart acknowledged that he could irritate anything into a killing frenzy.

Give the hive away I ordered my lovely man… we can’t have bees.

We’ll sell it he said. We are not sellers of anything really. We are givers away or hoarders. He is the latter.

So, the hive has sat in the garage, on top of the bat box (we never attracted bats either). Once again, is there really room for another bat in this household?

And then, a year later, the bees arrived and made their home in the hive, in the garage.

I am not sure how we are suddenly the location of choice, but there you go.

So, we have moved the hive to a safe location nearby, out of the reach of my little Alfie and we are tending, in an ignorant way really, to bees.

The bees have chosen us. What a blessing.

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Listen properly now

My lovely man and I recently made arrangements to meet my parents at Tshipise, Forever Resorts for a few days. You know, the hot springs place in SA. Worth a visit.

My father phoned to let us know they had arrived and checked in. We were still on our way, enduring a shit show of a journey. I won’t bore you… Or I may in another blog, but I’m beginning to suspect our GPS lady is a day time drinker.

Rosie, my dad warned me on the phone, this place is full of Mother Fu…. s.

What did your father just say, my lovely man asked.

I was surprised once by a monkey in Umdloti I informed him. This may be what I called it… It’s become a family joke.

(Just as an aside, we’d only been in Tshipise five minutes and the MF’s stole all our padkos as we were unpacking).

Sadly, I am never able to leave my work behind, so I diligently found a little corner to set up my mobile office (and my Starlink, bless that Elon fellow).

A few days into our break I asked my lovely man to please go down to the resort shop and buy me some surgical spirits to clean my mouse.

My father opted to take a stroll with my lovely man.

What does she need my father asked him. She needs to clean her mouth he replied. What’s wrong with her mouth? Is it because she’s got a potty mouth? Probably, I don’t really ask my lovely man replied, but I think she’s got blisters.

(I am not making this up).

They arrived back with a small bottle of savlon. We couldn’t find mouth wash they advised, we thought about soap, but the lady said if you dilute this, it will help.

So, I cleaned my mouse… and my mouth with savlon. Because… if life hands you lemons…

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You have something in your tooth

The other day we were at a boozy lunch. Surprising stuff hey?

Anyway, one of the lovely ladies that was there, told us a story I thought worth repeating.

She was at (another), boozy lunch with some girls. These are sometimes called Book Club meetings for the posher amongst us. The sad demise of Lucinda Riley is often mentioned and then there is drinking and giggling.

As she was leaving with a few of the other girls, they noticed someone they all knew sitting in a car in the car park. They went over to say hi. As they approached, they noticed that this other lady was bent down as if looking for something on the car floor (or reading Lucinda Riley perhaps).

They greeted her politely and waited, and after a few moments she wrenched her head up with some force.

What the actual….. they all thought as one.

Oh, the lady explained, I was just trying to get something out of my tooth. With what they enquired? With the rubber on the car window she explained. (The window, at the time, was rolled down of course).

They had not really had enough to drink to make sense of this, so they all said goodbye and staggered off.

But, of course, I realise that this is groundbreaking stuff.

My lovely man and I are flossers. Neither of us are really blessed with gaps in our teeth and you know…. it’s a thing. He is a toothpick man, and I carry some sort of denta mate thingie in my purse along with some toothpicks for him.

Generally we don’t do the teeth picking in public. I read once of grounds for divorce because of tooth flossing and toenail cutting in bed. I agree, neither should be allowed in bed.

But! I realise I have been weighing my handbag down quite unnecessarily all these years. Because there are tooth picks everywhere you look!

I am evolved. Use what is around you people. We can all learn.

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Yes, there’s someone in here

I needed to use the restroom at a restaurant the other day.

The only free stall had, of course, a faulty lock.

So, not only did I have to do my business hovering three inches above the seat… Because you know, public toilets… I had to do it with one leg stretched out straight to keep the door shut.

I must mention this acrobatic accomplishment whenever anyone accuses me of being sedentary.

It was at the Spur if you must know, so there was 💯 chance a toddler was going to barge in otherwise and leave the door wide open in their wake.

Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, my buttock developed a cramp.

I may have wailed loudly. I may also have missed the bowl.

Not my best experience.

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That’s not what we want to hear

Take a Lot, bless them, are relentless in their quest to get reviews on products you order from them.

I am seldom lost for words, but I do struggle to express an opinion when posed with questions like ‘how did you FIND the cotton wool cosmetic pads you recently purchased?’

So, I have fretted about my lack of feedback to them when they are so dogged in getting my valuable input.

I suspect my lovely man feels the same about Google Maps enquiring about his experiences. There is seldom a link my lovely man is scared to follow.

I did notice, however, they have slowed down the requests for his feedback since his last few replies of ‘shit’ and ‘noisy’.

Anyway, I was recently delighted to be able to review a product from Take a Lot.

I advised them that a box of six garden solar lights I purchased were missing the spikes to help you embed them in the soil and that one light was a dud and doesn’t work at all.

My review was rejected and I was told, in simple words so that I could do better next time, that they were looking to find out what my product experience was please.

Duh.

Silly me.

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Feeling OK there?

I play wordle every day. We are in a bit of a group managed by my dear old dad.

It’s great fun.

Fortunately I am not particularly competitive because I really suck at it. Loiter at the bottom of the ratings mostly.

I can, of course, blame my lovely man for my poor performance, because he gives me my start word usually.

To be fair, I wake up first mostly and so am asking him for a 5 letter word when he’s at least half asleep.

He went through a stage when he produced ‘stroke’ repeatedly as my start word.

Every morning I would remind him that was 6 letters, and I need a word with 5 letters.

After 3 days of this I thought to ask…

Do you feel alright?

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Feeling OK there?

I play wordle every day. We are in a bit of a group managed by my dear old dad.

It’s great fun.

Fortunately I am not particularly competitive because I really suck at it. Loiter at the bottom of the ratings mostly.

I can, of course, blame my lovely man for my poor performance, because he gives me my start word usually.

To be fair, I wake up first mostly and so am asking him for a 5 letter word when he’s at least half asleep.

He went through a stage when he produced ‘stroke’ repeatedly as my start word.

Every morning I would remind him that was 6 letters, and I need a word with 5 letters.

After 3 days of this I thought to ask…

Do you feel alright?

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Is it relevant?

Do you get requests to complete surveys?

I get quite a lot. Today’s was from Multichoice / DSTV.

R50 they promised me if I completed this survey. Only 20 minutes.

Twenty minutes is quite a bit of time. I didn’t have 20 minutes to spare. But, their request (took 5 minutes to read), was quite compelling.

I could make a real difference!

Actually, I wanted to tell them that they could improve their sub titles. Other subscriptions do better don’t they?

Good sub titles save quite a lot of ‘turn it up, what did they say?’

So, I took a deep breath and opened up the survey.

What is your age and race we started with.

Immediately I entered this, they shut me down.

Thank you for trying, we’ve got enough whingy feedback from 55 year old white woman.

So, if you are not in this demographic, and they allow YOU to proceed past the first question, please ask them to improve their sub titles.

I am, it seems, irrelevant.

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Stick to the script

Generally, I consider myself quite compliant. I’m not much of a rebel or rule breaker.

Occasionally I go off the rails. With some spectacular results.

An example…

Some years ago I decided that I could leave one country on one passport and enter the next on a different passport. Who knew this is not allowed? Actually everyone… Including me.

My actions in this regard may or may not have had something to do with not wanting to pay visa costs.

Perfectly legal of course.

I got away with this three times and then I was hauled into the back office for interrogation.

The fellow was delighted to lecture me at length. Despite my sincere apologies and explanation. I had to, of course, produce my second passport because he asked me if I had been loitering on the bridge between the two countries for some months. I had not.

He felt it necessary to go through every page of each passport and examine each stamp. It became tiresome.

What do we need to do, I asked, to be able to move on from this and get on with life?

This irked him surprisingly.

Are you travelling alone he asked?

No, I said my husband and dogs are in the car wondering where the hell I am.

You, he informed me, are too British, let me talk to your husband.

Darling, I said, I lied and told that man you are my husband, also he said he’ll sort this matter that I’ve now been caught out on, with you, because I’m too British.

What does that mean even he asked? I think it means get this cheeky bitch out of my face.

My lovely man has never really let me forget this and now considers himself the better negotiator.

Whenever we have a situation to negotiate however, we discuss the plan. This is Africa. One has to be prepared.

We go in, I always think, on the same page, with the plan clearly laid out.

Inevitably, he goes off script half way through and says something gobsmacking.

We scramble through somehow. A fair amount of sweat rolling down my face considering the unexpected overshare of information.

And then he looks at me smugly… Just as well I was with you to help, he reminds me, they probably thought you were too British.

Love him.