So the Philosophe and I took an afternoon walk yesterday to go collect his car after being serviced. Which means it was before 5pm, and the roads were full of people eager to get home, or to the beach, or wherever grumpy people go after work on the day before a public holiday in Cape Town (today the world has shut down in observance of “Day of Reconciliation”, whatever that is).
Soon, on our narrow pavement next to said cars, we were (not unusually) accosted by someone asking for money. But (unusually, thankfully), said beggar/gangster/dirty person threatened to be hiding a big knife in his sleeve pocket, and refused all the usual refusals of money (“no, not today”; “sorry, we can’t help you”, etc). As grumpy/complacent/pussy people drove by in their cars and watched the show, b/g/dp managed to threaten us into a state of fear and submission thick enough to walk away with all the money in the Philosophe’s wallet – R100 in this case, surely a bounty for b/g/dp with his maybe-maybe-not imaginary knife, and a small price to pay for our safety.
It’s a sobering kind of experience. Mostly because in the 15 years or so that I have lived in this country notorious for its high crime-rate and “unsaftey index”, this is the very first time that I have been that fearful. It doesn’t happen every day, and it’s very unlikely that it will happen again to me or to us again in the near future. (Besides, that stuff only happens to tourists, those easy targets!).
Still, now I don’t want to walk anywhere anymore. I know that life must go on as usual – and yesterday we faced that challenge valiently, it being the cocktail hour and all, soon to be followed by the dinner hour (which consisted of ostrich burgers laced with gin, juniper and dried apricots – not to mention a salad dressed with horseradish and caramelised celery. Yum).
Statistically, yes, life should go on as usual. But is that really the most efficient way to go about life? We listened to someone call into the radio today – the program featured some sort of laughing expert – it was a preacher calling to hear how he could teach himself to laugh after losing both his wife and his daughter. That’s fair and well, a laugh might be a good form of catharsis, but wanting to laugh in the face of tragedy also diminishes the value grief and (if applicable) remorse. I don’t think I’ve experienced a freakier thing than a Baptist memorial where NO ONE cried – all song and dance in “celebration” the deceased’s life. It was actually scary.
And if a friend betrays or hurts you? Should life go on as usual? If the friendship is over, then probably yes. But if not, it must be the duty of anyone who cares about that friendship to say something, and to do what they can to prevent life-as-usual, which can only be artificial from then on.
“Get over it” may sound like the harshest and most difficult of sentences, but being in it is actually the greater challenge. It takes courage to face that which truly sucks, whether it’s random or predictable.
In a parallel universe, I suppose we could have been killed or seriously injured, senselessly, yesterday. We didn’t, and life will go on. But it’s also worth paying attention to the fact that it feels really good that none of that happened. Life can be quite shit, but it can also be very worth living, if only to reminded of the urgency, once in a while, of knowing that you always did the best that you could.
(There’s nothing to see here but duck legs boiling in their own fat. Ah, but the smell!!)
on the scale and asking me if that “is garlic, right?”
.
If Gollum were a popstar…
I think he would look something like Michael Jackson in This Is It. We finally watched this fascinating and bizarre film, and when I wasn’t happily grooving along to the beat (I loved this man as a teenager, and still think Billie Jean is one of the best songs EVAH), I was struck by how slimy it was for this 50 yr old man to be pretending to be Michael Jackson. The Philosophe’s description of him was, aptly, alien.
This was the only picture I could find (=poach) of this jacket he wears quite often. Unfortunately it doesn’t do justice to how truly weird it makes him look. But I guess we all knew that about him already. And also that he did have some serious groove.
(Un)relatedly, the Sunday Times today published a picture of Queen Elizabeth getting onto a train. The caption reads: “Disguised as a little old lady, Queen Elizabeth II boards a passenger train at King’s Cross Station in London from where she travelled to Norfolk for Christmas.” Disguised indeed. (See for yourself).
Well, we all like pretending, I suppose. Just a few nights ago we enjoyed an afternoon of creating, and then an evening of eating, smushi. (Danish open-faced sandwiches pretending to be sushi. Obviously).
On the left, rye bread with herring and quail egg (plus piece of Katjes herring liquorice), a little salmon rose with caviar, and the highlight: shrimp cocktail (the crisp is the clue).
Top left, quail confit (bound with some delicious hoisin sauce) with a litte egg and a little lollipop drumstick, starry bread with salami, remoulade and crispy onions, choux bun “hotdog” with chipolatas and most of “det hele“, and finally pariserbøf (genius really: a burger pattie fried with a slice of bread) – the radish slice is a good indication of the preparation implications of this stuff. An hour in the kitchen, a minute on the lips (as they say).
There was a cheese plate too, and a dessert plate, each of which was delicious – as was the copious good wine, which made for copious merriment. In fact I’d say we were all as full and happy as this lump of marzipan pretending to be a pig.
(The pig was the prize for finding a whole almond in a spoonful of Danish rice pudding, so it is no longer in my care. I do not know if it still exists in its present form. But I can tell you that it had a good life, and produced very little methane.)