The good, the bad, the concerning and the downright freaky

Good news first: got a call from the credit card division of my bank, my card’s arrived (now if only I could find the time during their inconveniently short hours to go collect it!)

And the overwhelmingly bad news: I got a call from SARS. Has the mere word induced a cold sweat in you? Now, I’ve never had any trouble with the folk (in fact, no dealings either – all forms are deftly handled by my Dad’s tax dude) so when the lady announced herself as one of Satan’s henchmen, I suspected nothing amiss. Until she stated that I am a creditor of the State, to the tune of a hefty R17,700. I start telling her how bloody ridiculous that claim is, the tax comes straight off my salary, I never get any rebates back, I have no allowances for petrol or telephones, so there must be something seriously wrong with their forms and/calculators and/or brains. She advises me to “go to the Germiston branch to sort it out.” I instead call my Dad’s tax dude who only just received my assessment form (or whatever the damn thing’s called) last week, and he does a quick calculation and unfortunately takes the devil’s side. Although it’s not finitely concluded yet, it appears my employer has been deducting too little tax from my salary each month, and a whopping 5-digit figure has been raked up as a result. Which also means I’m going to be paying a potentially far heftier fine for tax year 2007, too. Strangely, it’s just me from my company that’s been affected. Sigh…

Downright freaky: unwillingly, the Gilb and I attended a charity ball in the Poenda on Friday night – when a friend’s organising a ‘do’ for a cause, it’s kind of hard to say ‘fuck off’ – but this, of course, is nothing like the balls Joburgers are accustomed to. For starters, tickets were R200 each (I’m thinking, how are they going to make any money for the cause after expenses are deducted?). Then, they have a magician as entertainment. A 70-year old endearing man, who at the beginning of the evening, while trying to climb onto the stage, falls back and concusses himself while inflicting a deep blood-spurting gash into his noggin on a table top. Minor pandemonium ensues, the guy is aroused and a serviette pressed to his wound to stem the blood flow, and the MC announces: “Ladies and gentlemen, there has been a minor setback to the entertainment. While we’re trying to stop Alfred’s head from bleeding, please go and help yourselves to food in the entrance hall.” Unsurprisingly, there is no sudden stampede for the pap queue. But the weirdness does not end there. Further entertainment followed in the form of fire dancers (bloody hell it’s a ball, not the hippie hall at Woodstock) and a freaky teenage dj who looked like a cross between Alex Jay (and every bit as old as Alex Jay) and that Swiss genetic aberration, DJ Bobo (if you don’t know, don’t ask). He also used a tambourine to some of the music, and commanded about half of the dancefloor’s space doing his Ricky Martin / Michael Jackson / primary schoolgirl’s modern dance class routine. One of Gilb’s friends leaned across to me and said with dazed admiration: “Wow, look how well Manny dances, don’t you think he’s amazing?” What on earth do you reply to that??? Despite the otherworldliness of it all, I enjoyed the sokkie-ing – for a change Gilb and I didn’t have an outright fight about who leads and who follows, I sort of managed to read his half-baked lead, and neither of us suffered a stray elbow in the eye socket (quite a feat, given the way a good sokkie lends itself to having them flailing about at high speed).

The concerning: I guess we all subconsciously know, but deny it (unless you have worked as a waiter before – a torture I’ve happily never had to endure) because it makes our lives easier and our meals more palatable… last night, while having jam jars with Jen-Jen at Primi in Rivonia, the waiters were packing up for the night and had shamelessly brought out large plastic containers, into which they were scraping each of the contents of all the little chopped garlic and chilli saucers they hand out at each table. I can only pray that no-one is as childish as I used to be in high-school, mixing sugar or tomato sauce or saliva into the little sauce bowls. Aaaaaaaargh!