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Heading Backwards Going Forwards

Maybe our grandparents/great-grandparents were onto something. My maternal grandmother was weird.    She would get up at around 4am every morning and zoom into a frenzy fetching coal for her stove, cleaning her house, cooking, baking, feeding the chickens etc.   By 6am you could eat your breakfast off her floor it was so clean. And I thought “Dude, you’re a pensioner.   At least sleep until 7am.” … No, I seriously did NOT think “Dude”.   She would have probably klapped me.   She was known to all as “Ma”.   Just “Ma”.   As to whether it was short for “Ouma”, because essentially she WAS my Ouma or whether it was just that she was quite a strong, stubborn woman and her children called her “Ma”, so everyone called her “Ma”, I will never know. Anyhow, I digress. Farm folk are usually up well before the sparrows to accomplish their many chores and early to bed because (1) it’s dark and there wasn’t – in the old days – much else to do; and (2) well, because they were flipping exhauste
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Talk About Stress

  Hands up who is tired of the extra stress caused by Covid?   We had more than enough stress to deal with before but then along came Covid and taught us that firstly, we didn’t have a clue how stressful life could be and secondly, we were actually more capable than we gave ourselves credit for.   But I digress, this is old news.   Here is the real question. Do you know how your children are?  I mean, how they really are? Life at the moment is as tight as a trip wire and it simply takes one small movement in the wrong direction to create a huge explosion. And while we’re trying to negotiate this minefield whilst keeping our own sanity as intact as is humanly possible it’s easy to forget about the young folk in our worlds.   They usually just follow along. They’ll be okay. Wrong! Our children are encountering stress as horrid as any adult can encounter and the difference is that they aren’t built to cope – they haven’t had life teach them, over time, how to deal with it.   Yes, I hear
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Highway Sport

  Every morning and every evening I participate in a little adventure I like to call “Highway Sport”.   I call it sport because it takes quite a lot of skill to not only enter and exit the highway but to negotiate the twenty-odd kilometres and arrive safely on the other side.   The object of the “game” is to slide onto the highway at whatever speed the vehicle in front of you is traveling at and bully your way into one of the four available lanes.   The lanes are entirely preference ranked and it would be futile to assume that the fast lane is on the extreme right and the slow lane is on the extreme left.   In fact, to the contrary, the “fast” lane is the one lane that everyone zooms into only to sit (with a smug expression on their faces at having arrived in the “fast” lane) going at about 70km/h because this lane is the fullest of the lot.   The lane that is the most difficult to negotiate is the second lane from the left.   Where this should be used exclusively for passing ver
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Life, Love and Exercise

We’ve been trying, since late last year, to get back on track with gym etc.   Jerry, because she would like to participate in the athletics and cross-country running at school and me, because I’d like to be a little healthier.   Have you SEEN the price of chronic medicines?? But, as you know, life happens and gets in the way of our plans a little.   We’ve had a lot more success in the nutrition department – our meals are a lot healthier now that we waved a sad good-bye to the MacDonalds staff and made more time to plan and prepare real food.   But the exercise thing?   Not so much. However, one has to start somewhere.   So Sunday saw us heading into gym like big shots.   There was a slight admin glitch getting into the gym.   Apparently now you need your admin disc, a biometric fingerprint and the soul of a small endangered mammal in order to get past the hostile metal turnstiles.   I discovered, though, that a filthy look and an audible snarl in the general direction of the
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Creepy Crawly Fun

Some folk are very welcome in my home.   Others, not so much. For example, I recently wanted to run a bath but found two spiders in the tub.   One was a wobbly daddy-long-legs spider (he only had five legs) and the other was a lot smaller but known by me to give a particularly nasty bite.   So before I turned the tap on I gently removed the daddy-long-legs and set him down behind the cupboard, where I know he will find plenty of food.   Then I turned the tap on and washed the other dude down the plug hole. “Discrimination!!” I hear you shouting.   Well I don’t care.   I have been up close and personal with and chased and bitten by a large variety of South African spiders in and around our home (yes, I know they’re South African by their accents) and I have learnt which I can trust, or not as the case may be. I LOVE the beautiful orb spiders that patiently build their hefty webs each night, from the rafters to the ground, only to have them blown down, rained down or run do
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Journey

It had been a very long, very dark valley that she had travelled through.   Sometimes the path was smooth, sometimes narrow, often steep.   Littered with all manner of obstacles from loose pebbles and sharp rocks to gargantuan boulders with slippery sides.   And the branches that slapped against her always seemed wet.   From time to time she was required to climb over massive obstructions or leap down into unknown darkness.   Each step or leap required some form of confrontation either of her previous self or of her current self.   There were times when she had to allow her future self to push her gently from her comfortable ledge.   The valley had been lined with pictures and photos.   Some were pleasant and helped to keep her going forwards, some threw guilt in her face, others projected hatred.   Worse than these, were the mirrors.   A few of the mirrors were smoky and not clear requiring her to peer, squinting her eyes, to see the reflection.   Some of the mirrors w
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Coffee at it's Worst

After having decided to treat myself with a post-payday-Friday indulgence I attended one of the coffee shops in Sandton City.  My experience was nasty and this is the letter I've just written to the head office.  If I don't receive an appropriate response I shall be blazoning their name all over social media. " I had a very unpleasant experience at your Sandton City branch this morning and thought I should bring it to your attention in order to hopefully prevent other customers from experiencing similar situations. Upon arriving at the counter there were four staff in attendance.  The one lady, the cashier, looked at me and then walked away and started talking to the other lady.  After a while she walked back but seemed to be very involved with the cash till.  Eventually she looked straight past me and asked me how I was.  I am still waiting for a smile or an appropriate “good morning”. I placed my order: a cappuccino and a muffin.  I had to ask twice what type of
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