D’oh! Eek! Oops! and Grrrr!

A number of bloopers / irritations to report to you from the past week:


Ageing gracelessly
It was a dark and stormy night… okay, actually it was about midday on Saturday at a table outside the Dros in Cresta, but the tale that follows is as scary as any Hitchcock thriller could be…

There we were, downing draughts at a swift pace, when the Gilb’s pal (coincidentally named after my previous car – but, irrelevant) screeches out at the top of his voice for all the three-eyed Cresta people to hear: “Ohmygod! That’s a grey hair right there, on your head!” I angrily shut him up, categorically denied the accusation, and drained my glass. The Gilb, bless him, immediately rose to my defence, saying that it must be a blonde hair and not a white one. Like monkeys grooming their offspring, they proceeded to pick through my tumbling chestnut locks (okay fine… my punky short ‘do) until they’d isolated the offending hair, then yanked it out, along with one from Max’s liberally-Clooneyed head for comparison. We’re undecided: it was much finer – and dare I say more golden – than Max’s exhibit, but it does beg the question: what is a lone golden hair doing in a mass that is not only decidedly brown in colour, but also regularly washed with Sunsilk Deeply Brunette shampoo (shampoo, lather, pray silently that my crowning glory avoids turning that lighter mousy brown colour, rinse, repeat as necessary)?


The only proof I have my boyfriend is a filthy man is sitting in some garbage dump
First: anyone who reads this and knows the person who gave me the gift, DO NOT tell him, please. I’m mortified. (N, you hear?)

So, in November last year when I went to Mozambique with a bunch of friends, we had a wild and crazy night out in Maputo, and a friend took a photo of a prostitute bumping and grinding against the Gilb in some club, much to our collective amusement. (A few seconds before the happy snap, she had her hands on his crotch – I’ve never seen him look so chuffed at such attention! But the camera came out too late for that…)

Anyhow, we got back to Jozi, and ever-faithful Murphy’s law – the one photo that was corrupted and couldn’t be enlarged beyond a thumbnail pic was Gilb and his lady of the night. Miraculously, a few months later my friend managed to enlarge the pic somehow, and after repetitive nagging from me, had a large copy printed. Unfortunately, he chose to give it to me on Saturday evening when we were out for dinner and drinking fairly heavily. For some reason, the notion of putting the photo in my bag eluded me, and I instead stuck it on the floor under my bag, which was somewhere under the large table. We drank, we shouted (this particular group’s preferred mode of communication), we drank some more, we haggled over the bill, we gathered our belongings from under the table (…can you see where this went wrong?) and happily stumbled to our vehicles (yes, I’ve been driving Ant under the influence recently. Shame on me, the concern has largely worn off already). Only back at the flat do I remember that the photo is still under the table, but when I call the following day (and the day after, just to be sure), it’s nowhere to be found.

The Gilb is devastated; I’m frustrated at losing the jewel in my emergency blackmail material collection for his folks. I’m also too sheepish to ask my friend for another copy immediately, after the way I went on nagging about it and managed to lose it within a few hours of obtaining it.

[Reminder, N, don’t tell him yet, please!]

White lies get you nowhere
This is such a daft story, I’m embarrassed to tell it. But, as always, I will. Picking up two grocery items at a P ‘n P on Monday evening, I was standing at a till to pay, um’ing and ah’ing about which of two adjacent queues was shorter. I was just about to move from the one till to the next, when I see a slightly older dude had joined this other queue fractionally before I moved into it. One of those awkward chivalry games ensued (“No you first”, “No, really, you first”) and to spare the battle of politeness, I lied and told him “No really, I was just stepping across for some chewing gum.” Of course, he could see the same brands of chewing gum displayed at my till’s counter, but he had the grace not to say anything. I fumbled through the chewing gum offering, picked two random types (I don’t chew the stuff, so it was purely an academic exercise) and stepped back into my queue. As it turns out, we both had trouble at our respective tills (my f$%^ing chewing gum packs wouldn’t scan!), but after eventually paying for everything, I put the chewing gum into my handbag and carried the other two items out without buying a plastic bag. Mr Chivalry walks out beside me (not-so-surreptitiously scanning my hand-held acquisitions for the chewing gum he knew I didn’t really want, and presumably came to the incorrect conclusion that I’d just dumped them at the till because I hadn’t really wanted to buy them after all) and says “Glad to see you’re done with your ordeal!” flashing coffee-stained teeth at me. Cringe! I felt like pulling the chewing gum out and offering him some just to show my earnest enjoyment of the product, but there’s never any knowing how much deeper a grave you can dig for yourself, is there?

Irritatingly smug journalism
Watching Carte Blanche on Sunday, I realised that the show frigging annoys me. Now I can’t speak with authority since I hardly ever watch the damn thing, but I have figured out what it is that bugs me about it so much. They only have two kinds of approach to any story: 1) a pure fact-finding interview where they ask the interviewee neutral questions and get neutral answers (I have no particular gripes with this approach, sometimes it’s interesting, sometimes it’s not), and 2) a sensationalist investigational story where one party is so obviously the victim and the other so obviously the heinous criminal that they might as well not have pursued the story at all – no-one changes their minds about the topic, and it’s clear that they entered the story with pre-meditated opinions which get justified along the way. For once, I’d like to see a Carte Blanche piece where they go in thinking one thing, and learn something from their ‘investigations’ that actually changes their opinions – and perhaps some of ours – along the way. Please, actually teach us something.


PS: I’m so excited, I’m heading out to the ‘Noni tonight for Pro-20 cricket to get a glimpse of the Gilb, who is trekking the 150km out of the Poenda in honour of his beloved game. Of course, the poor bastard doesn’t yet realise that this act provides ammunition in any future argument where he refuses to come to the ‘Burg at my request for an equally important mid-week event of my choosing. But that’s for another time.