Tea with the Queen

Inspired by my tag in my last post, I remembered how much a great wish of mine it is to have tea with the Queen of Britain. Why, you ask? When you could be bedding the (in)famous Robbie Williams, sharing the stage with the White Stripes, partying it up with Paris/Lindsay/Kimberley/Nicole, reading out history-changing speeches from Capitol Hill? Why would you rather choose to have a comparatively mundane cuppa with the monarch of a once-great empire?

A number of reasons, really:

1) You love Earl Grey tea. You REALLY love Earl Grey tea.

2) You love being in the company of those who also really love Earl Grey. Although I’ve not personally asked the Queen about her feelings for England’s best export (and neither have I seen it documented anywhere) she simply HAS TO love Earl Grey tea. It’s in her contract somewhere, I’m pretty sure. I hope she won’t blanch at the sight of me drinking it like a pleb, though… (Shock! Horror! A dash of sugar plus milk!)

3) Buckingham Palace is not that far from Twinings’ head office so there is a greater chance you will bump into someone influential from Twinings (perhaps even coincidentally a joint guest at our little tea party) who you can brown-nose to the point of earning yourself a lifetime supply of free Earl Grey (alright, throw in a few crates of Darjeeling and Irish Breakfast too, please)

4) Another random punter you might bump into is Prince William, that delicious little blue-blood who’s just begging for a bit of corruption to his untarnished image. Yummy! (and famous and wealthy and smart – quite a catch, I should think)

5) Nice silverware and fine bone china lying about for prestidigitators such as myself to nick – I’m not the immoral kind of person who’d swipe these to sell for a fortune on eBay, mind you, I just like the occasional memento.

6) The opportunity to talk hoity-toity with someone who (literally) speaks the Queen’s English. We’d be all:

TWA: Dear Elizabeth! This scone transcends all scones that ever preceded it! How utterly scrumptious!

QEII: *blushing* Why thank you, kind TWA. I am most humbled to be in your presence. (okay, that one’s a stretch)

TWA: Oh, don’t be silly, Lizzie, there is no other place on this planet that I could even comprehend of being right now… say, could I have another cuppa?

QEII: Certainly dear. Hubert, Maximillion? Where the devil have they got to? The help is not quite what it used to be, you understand.

TWA: *exaggerated sigh* Ah, yes, the help. No matter, I’ll go pour for the both of us. [and zap! prestidigitation! Cake fork up the left hand sleeve, sugar spoon up the right)]

QEII: Yes, you simply can’t trust them these days…

TWA: *brief grimace at the stab of remorse running through my left knee* Well, uh, yes. Now tell me all about your thoughts on pension reform in pseudocapitalist former colonial outposts…

[let’s hope some Twinings guy reads this huge product endorsement and sends me that lifetime supply, and let’s hope too that the Queen doesn’t read this. She doesn’t blog, does she?]

On the matter of tea parties, a while ago I mentioned that I was reading Martin Gardner’s The Annotated Alice, which goes into great detail on every possible topic that could be discussed relating to Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. I plan to tell you about the immense geekiness of some of our fellow Earth inhabitants and the anal-ytical lengths they will go to to interpret fantastical things in literature. But that’s for next time. I will leave you with the Mad Hatter’s famous unanswered riddle from the mad tea-party of Chapter 7: why is a raven like a writing-desk? Of course, the annotated book attempts to answer the riddle, but I’ll give you a sleepless night or five to ponder it…

Tagged!

Peas tagged me on Friday, requesting a list of ten waitrons I would want to serve her guests at a fantasy dinner (she claims she tagged me to do my own fantasy dinner list, but that’s not what I understood from reading her request)

What kind of fantasy dinner doesn’t go down without some kind of skandaal? Some lust to get the juices flowing, some bile to aid the digestion process.


So, for the fantasy dinner from hell/heaven (up to you to decide which), the guest/waitron combinations are:


1) Peas – Paris Hilton. Because it’d be glorious to watch the heiress having to serve on anyone. (A great episode for The Simple Life, perhaps?) And because Peas loathes her every inch of flesh, so some spitting commentary is bound to pass between them
2) Alicia Keyes – Scarlett Johannson. While Peas can drool over her lesbian fantasy, I can lust after mine. Can you imagine how delectable she’ll look in a French maid’s outfit? Mmmm-mmmmm…
3) Jake Gyllenhaal – Me. While not actually as much a fan as Peas is, it’ll make her green with envy! I’ll wear my lucky underwear just in case… Plus, I have to be there for reasons stated in #2. Menage?
4) The Queen – actually my favourite personality in Peas’ list, largely because she’ll sure as hell enjoy a good cup o’ Earl Grey. Peas, please ensure there’s some damn good china lying about to serve it in, mkay? But who to serve her… I know! Our favourite neighbour, Bob Mugabe! “Slave of the colonial empire, would you be a dear and pour me a second cuppa?” “Take your England and shove it, old hag!” “Oh I already have, my dear, right up where your sun don’t shine! Now hop to it, with a quarter teaspoon of sugar!”
5) Eddie Izzard – Billy Connolly, obviously. The professional rivalry would result in some fine, fine quips, and the dear Queen chuckling so hard she’ll spill hot tea all over Bob, whose third-degree burns he’ll find hard to have attended to in Zim.
3) Tchaikovsky – Hitler. Because the thought of waiting on a gay communist would absolutely infuriate him. Plus, his funny soldier march routine will be quite entertaining while he’s trying to balance a tray of champagne flutes in one hand.
7) Michael Bolton – a real toughie, this one. So I’m going to say Jenna Jameson, and hope that will bring some entertainment factor out of this dull dinner choice (sorry Peas!)
8) Chris Rock – as though this party couldn’t get any more inflammatory: Kramer from Seinfeld, who was recently accused of making racist comments in public, to which Mr Rock replied in a statement that if the two were ever to meet, the situation would result in fisticuffs. Hmmmm… we might need a doctor on the scene?
9) Michael Naicker – there are too many funny people at this infernal fantasy dinner, so let’s dampen the mood a bit. We’ve got a mix of men and women, blacks and whites, gays and straights, sexies and unsexies… but no-one astoundingly intelligent or physically disabled. So let’s roll these two attributes into one package, in the form of Stephen Hawking (if I were going to be un-PC about the affair, I’d make a joke about how funny it would be to see him carrying in a tray on his wheelchair, but I’ll leave that hot potato to Mike Naick)
10) Twakkie/Corne – Corne/Twakkie. Because this duo would be only half as funny if it was only half represented.

(Jam and Rev, wanna have a go at listing ten hot topics of conversation that will go down at this sordid party?)

Finally… the holiday pics

First up, a moment to brag: I’ve just been promoted at work! Hopefully, along with the huge load of additional responsibility, comes a big fat pay increase (I’ve yet to see the offer).

Secondly, the holiday photos. I was hoping to get hold of everyone else’s before putting things up here because there’s bound to be far better pics than mine floating around, but it seems that’s going to be far too long a wait. So here’s a brief Ant tour of Mozambique (bloody blogger won't let me put up more photo's than these):

Maputo is much like a run-down Joburg CBD by the sea…



The towns have colourful markets (mercado) where you get to haggle with the locals over their opportunistically inflated prices (“Quanto custa? Caro! Caro!”) and gag on the smell of rotting fish.



For R160 a night (Baobab Lodge, Vilanculos), you get to sleep in a chalet that boasts views like this every morning…



The Mozambican government is making the islands off Vilanculos (like this one, Bazaruto) an exclusive holiday getaway with only upmarket accommodation available. Thankfully, transport by dhow to these islands is so dodgy (and hence cheap) that riff-raff like us could still afford day visits to these beautiful islands with their sublime views.



In Barra, the coconut palm-riddled playground of Gautengers fed up with Christmas in Cape Town, the sky was having another orgasm.

Small things amuse numb (and yes, probably small) minds

In the midst of ludicrous deadlines and my brain working on autopilot, I have spared my grey matter any unnecessary effort in dreaming up a thought-provoking post for today, and have opted more for a trivial anecdote – although one that kept me smiling for a good portion of the five-hour workshop session I sat in on with a client yesterday.

You see, the top management from the client was assembled in one room, discussing all manner of ambitious plans for the future, and yet my mind’s primary focus was… her shoes. To aid in your visualisation of the scene, I present you with my crude diagram:





The choice of purple for the depiction of the leather uppers is not accidental, I must add. But it was not this that drew my attention – no, it was the rubber elastic bands (yellow on the right foot, red on the left) which inexplicably – yet obviously deliberately – each foot-clad shoe had squeezed itself into.

Why?

Did she not like the clickety-clackety noise they made? Then don’t buy slip-in high heels, for that is part of the reason for their existence!

Did she forget to wash her feet yesterday morning and was embarrassed a slip-on would dangle from her foot, exposing a sordidly filthy sole to the other managers? Then wear closed shoes! (or just wash your feet)

Maybe her feet smell badly in those shoes, so she didn’t want a whiff of stinky to get out – again, don’t wear the shoes, lady!

And let’s not get started on the choice of 2 differently-coloured elastic bands – and those colours being red and yellow against lurid purple shoes – to solve the mysterious problem… I simply can’t wait to see her next ensemble!

Mud pies

After years of threatening to do so, I finally hauled my ass (and dragged the Gilb’s too, of course) to the Ficksburg Cherry Festival – thanks to my sis and Mom’s hiking club, which arranged the trip.

We met up with the rest of the tour group at 9pm on Friday (my Mom’s friend drove us there at a painstakingly slow average speed of 90 km/h. “In England no-one drives like these hooligans!” was her reply to our pleas to accelerate to the speed limit). We awoke to a miserably drizzly Saturday morning, drove out to a Fouriesberg cherry farm (quaintly named Loskop), where we determinedly marched out onto the farm and tried to get our entrance fee’s worth of (wet) cherry picking/eating, then drove into Ficksburg for the (soggy) festivities. Not armed with umbrellas or raincoats, the Gilb and I made a nifty solution: we emptied out the white promo packets they gave us at the entrance, and used them as hats to keep our expensive Joburg hairstyles intact (we looked alarmingly KKK, but all in the name of frizz-free hairdays, I say). The day’s memorability was greatly enhanced by having to slodge and shluck through ankle-deep mud – half of the visitors abandoned their shoes, the other half bought those yukky plastic crocs thingies that were on sale at a few of the stalls.

Now, call me a born-and-bred Gauteng-a-leng, but I expected much more from the festival in terms of taking advantage of the economic opportunities afforded by such an event. For one, there were no umbrellas being sold at the entrance (in Jozi, on the first day of summer rains, the traffic intersection salesmen are all fully stocked – and I would have paid virtually anything at that point for a brolly), but more importantly, there was no cherry pie, cherry strudel, cherry cheesecake, cherry sorbet, cherry hot chocolate, cherry syrup, glacéd cherries etc in sight. One thing there was in reasonable quantities (and varieties) was cherry alcohol.

So I made the most of the limited diversity of cherry products and bought what forms I could. The spoils of my spree include:

Cherries (the simplest and arguably best form)
Cherry rolls (sweetened dried boiled cherry pulp flattened into sheets and rolled for a snack)
Cherry jam
Cherry sweets
Cherry liqueur
Cherry wine
Normal wine (sigh! Bought MORE wine! Couldn’t resist – there was a wine-tasting tent and I found some bargains)
Cherry cider (they ran out of cups, so we bought a 2lt bottle full, and they warned us “keep opening the top to let out the carbon dioxide – the cider’s still fermenting! It’ll get stronger and stronger if you keep it for a while!” We didn’t – very thirsty, you understand
Cherry vinegar (got the last bottle!)

Highlights of the festival included solving the mystery of what happened to tv star from my childhood Amanda Forrow, who we spotted doing a Pick ‘n Pay cooking demonstration; and a blind kid singing kak boeremusiek choons dreadfully on stage (some dude commented in passing on how admirable his performance was, to which my tactless yet hilarious boyfriend responded “not only is he blind, but completely tone-deaf, too”).

On Sunday we did a hike in some breathtakingly beautiful Fouriesburg mountains, then stopped off in Clarens on our way back to Jozi (again, our return journey took us an inexplicable 5 hours)… and here we are again at the start of what promises to be a hectic work week. Gimme mud any day.

Big mouth, small brain

There is one lesson I just seem not to be able to drum into my head. And it’s an important lesson, which from time to time it burns me because of my big fat mouth.

Like today. Suffice to say I’m ashamed of myself, and it serves me right.

The lesson? Never repeat anything anyone tells you to any person that you would hate the original storyteller to find out you told. Complicated? Not really. So why can’t I follow this simple principle? Why do I feel the need to tell people things, knowing that there’s a risk the person who originally entrusted me with the information could find out and be disappointed in my need to gossip?

Arrgh. Bad, bad (and stupid) Ant.

Bye-bye Mozambique!

Hello blogosphere, did you miss me at all? Whew – what a holiday. I can’t think how it could have in any way been improved upon (other than being a longer holiday of course). We did Maputo, Coconut Bay, Vilankulo (along with 2 islands, Margaruque and Bazaruto) and Ponta da Barra, in 2 Land Rovers (Fat Lizzie and the Blue Bunny, or Team A and Team B as our Landie rechristened them), with 5 Saffa’s (the usual: rude, crass, cocky) and 3 Kanooks a.k.a. Canadians (friendly, polite, obliging).

To summarise, a list of the low- and highlights of the trip:

1. Horas. Directly translated from Portuguese, this innocent word means nothing more than ‘hours’. But juvenility dictated that this word be used to mean ‘whores’, so it was with immense glee that we frequently saw ’24 horas’, ‘super horas’ and ‘ultima horas’ signs plastered all over the shopfronts of little stores in every town. Of course, on a night excursion to a popular pub/dance club/strip club street in Maputo, we saw real horas aplenty – they groped the men’s crotches unashamedly and expectantly joined them at the bar, demanding drinks be bought for them. Every venue we went into had mirrors plastered on every possible surface, which the locals danced in front of in hypnotic reverie. And the strip club we went to had a full-on naked lap dance on the stage – I think that more than sufficiently covers the Gilb’s strip club allowance for life!

2. Corrupt cops (oink piggy piggy!) I offered to drive the Landie on a particularly potholed stretch of road, and was duly rewarded by being pulled over for ‘speeding’ by a cop who claimed I was going 71km/h in a 60kmh zone. “No bloody way I was!” I screeched, “the reason I know I was definitely going under 60 was because all the oncoming cars were flashing me to warn me you were ahead!” Realising that I wasn’t about to give in as easily as he’d imagined, he made me leave a friend (and my driver’s licence) with him, drive back up the road and come back to him so he could re-measure my speed and prove his equipment wasn’t faulty. I was so nervous carrying out this ridiculous task that I stalled twice while turning around to come back to him, and when I returned, he showed me the new speed the meter had recorded, which was not far off being accurate. I persisted in my protests, and he grew tired of his game, so he released me, my friend and my driver’s licence, telling my friend “Wow! Your friend is a very argumentative woman!” Suck on that, piggies!

3. Cerebos (‘see how it runs’). Our codename for diarrhoea, which we experienced aplenty. ‘nuff said.

4. Stickiness. If it wasn’t sweat from the 30-plus degree temperatures, then it was sunblock, Tabard or sea water. I’ve never showered so much in my life!

5. Speaking to the locals in Portuguese. I borrowed a friend’s ‘Learn (Brazilian) Portguese in 60 Days’ book, and we had great fun stringing conversations together from the bizarre sentences it chose to teach us. We managed to wangle some of these sentences into our conversations with Mozambicans, much to their bewilderment. Here’s a sample conversation:

Perigo! Ele siaou sem pecheu!
A escola este aberta? Diga-me a verdade!
Onde este cervao e lenha per fogo?
Por favour, camarao e lulas e peixe e pao e batatas frites! Obrigado!
Levar isto ixo!

This useful banter translates to:

Danger! He left without his hat!
Is the school open? Tell me the truth!
Where is charcoal and wood for fire?
Prawns and calamari and fish and bread and French fries please! Thanks!
Carry this rubbish!

Interestingly, we noticed that all the advertising billboards are in Portuguese – none in the local African languages spoken in Mozambique.

6. The cheap local beer – Laurentina and 2M (no idea how to spell it but presumably ‘Dois M’ meaning 2 m’s in Portuguese). We found cheap shops/stalls selling cases of the stuff, and returned to these on an almost daily basis to buy 3 more crates each time. I have developed a mini beer boep, which will hopefully vanish in the next few weeks. I also bought a 5 lt bottle of imported Portuguese ‘table wine’ which the Kanooks tucked into too eagerly one evening, only to discover its malignant after effects the following morning – suffice to say I had to finish the bottle myself over the course of the next few evenings.

7. Fish fish fish! (actually, peixe, peixe, peixe!) During our 5-day Ponta da Barra stay, enterprising locals correctly guessed we’d want to eat seafood, and so caught the things in the morning and brought them to us to haggle suitable prices for. We got barracuda (4kg), prawns, crayfish, calamari fresh each morning (of course, our haggling down the prices had little effect – the bastards still managed to shnaai us each time on the weight of the fish by using inaccurate scales, hiding ice between the fish in the bags etc etc).

8. Local art. Somehow, you never buy as much in your own country as you do in others, but heck, I like to think I’m doing my bit for the SADC by supporting the Mozambican economy. I bought tons of bangles, batiks, an oil painting, and two beautiful yet infernally delicate long, thin wooden bird sculptures that we had to go to great effort to pack safely every time we loaded and drove the Landie.

9. Suntan! Being the freak Italian that I am, my complexion more closely resembles an ‘English rose’ than an olive-skinned Mediterranean. Except at the moment, because I’ve managed to pick up a remarkable tan – it’s miniskirts and strappy tops all the way until it disappears!

10. Muffled sex. And plenty of it. Because our accommodation never allowed for the Gilb and I to be very casual about it, we had to be sneaky and quiet – unfortunately the furniture usually wasn’t as obliging!


And that was that. I’ll put up a picture or two as soon as I’ve had a chance to look through them and pick out the goodies.

For now though, it’s back to the daily slog in the office. Sigh! And happy Monday to all of you!