Category: Daily Life

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Change is a coming…

Mozambique recently enjoyed Municipal elections. 

The run up to this day is quite festive. A reason to play loud music and drive around waving flags really. 

The party that leads in our province has a chicken as their emblem. The other parties seem to have more ‘call to arms’ emblems, but we have a quite noble looking chook. 

The guy who started the party must have had a particularly memorable KFC dinner maybe. An historian, I ain’t. 

If you are planning to resurrect as a chicken, my advice would be not to do it in Mozambique. Not a fun place for chickens. Most of their time is spent hanging upside down and being offered for sale. And then slowly roasted over a long suffering truck driver’s fire while he spends the better part of a week trying to cross some border or the other. Not really sure who should get the most sympathy really. Not an easy life for either I suspect.

We foreigners, of course, do not get a vote. So our vote, on the imposed holiday, goes to a boozy lunch. It’s a win for sure, and worth waving a flag for.

Of course there is unhappiness with the vote outcome in some provinces. I’m not quite sure why they bother with elections in Africa. Aaah yes, it’s a democracy. 

But, I can report there is positive change… I slipped a guy a ‘spot fine’ for the speeding he insisted I was doing and he said it was too much and gave me change. 

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Hello, hello, what’s this now?

The other morning my lovely man approached my side of the bed as I was drinking my morning cuppa and writing in my journal.

What does he want I thought, looking up adoringly… Surely not sex? I haven’t even finished my choccie biccie, and neither of us had taken our morning vitamins.

But no, he produced the tweezers and asked me to pluck an extraordinarily long hair growing from the top of his ear.

And this is quite normal actually. We ask this of each other regularly it seems.

I suspect this is what a middle aged relationship looks like. This is why they warn you to not grow old alone.

We need each other to pluck, prune and preen.

Should we be setting up support groups to offer this to our single friends?

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No, I don’t believe in Santa anymore

Can you believe we are in October? Where has this year gone?

Christmas is almost upon us. And soon it will be time to force my lovely man to watch Elf. Again. Because I like to hear him mutter ‘What’s this sh*t?’

Also coming up, of course, is get togethers where one is encouraged to bring a non-binary gift.

Yip, it’s Secret Santa season.

Not a fan. For a few reasons.

I have always been involved with lousy gift givers. Seems to be my curse. I’m talking romantically. I don’t bring out the romance in a partner. I’m better at bringing out the irritation.

I can’t really complain because I too am a lousy gift giver. So really, let’s just buy ourselves what we need.

I don’t like the swapping out of gifts that comes with Secret Santa. So me, I keep what I select and oooh and aaah about it, coz otherwise it’s mean isn’t it?

I know that my feelings are hurt when someone rejects my thoughtful soap on a rope that I spent ten minutes of my busy day selecting at the nearest chemist, or service station.

Dagger to the heart stuff.

Every now and again I hit the luck on something brilliant I really like…. And then the inevitable happens…

I see some little kid whispering in their mom’s ear and pointing.. And I just know..

Aunty Rosie, do you mind swapping your gift with little Lucy here… She really likes your gift.

Of course she does. And really, what is little Lucy bringing to the party… Oh, another decorated toilet roll inner. I have a shelf full.

Baah humbug 😁.

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Be better

We had a handyman come in recently to help with a few things.

Didn’t you find him slow to grasp the problem and provide a solution I commented to my lovely man after he’d left.

No, he said, he was fine, you were impossible. When you are very busy with a million tasks on your mind you are impatient and don’t express yourself clearly. Nobody can read your mind, he continued. (Probably just as well I swear he muttered).

This must be wrong, I am, of course, sweetness and light.

And also, why aren’t people more intuitive for the love of…?

So, I sent an apology to the fellow for being ratty, rude and impatient.

No problem he replied, I didn’t notice you were any different.

Great, this is my resting personality.

Eventually my torrid day ended and I settled down with my lovely man and lovely wine.

Looked at the TV and it had a screen saver displaying. Looked at my lovely man.

Can you help me change the channel he said, I’m not sure what I did.

When did this happen? This morning. Why did you not ask me for help? Not today he replied.

I can do better people. I can be better.

Also, does anyone have cannabis?

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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.