Threats, invocations and hairy Greeks

A very keen reader has threatened to send a hairy Greek after me if I don't write something.... anything... even what I'm wearing will apparently suffice, so here is some random stuff for you all to read.
I'm wearing black pants and a black and melange twofer with a pretend white shirt under it. And black socks from Woolies and black ballet pumps. And a black stretch velvet jacket. A red glass bead necklace with silver stripes in the beads and a pewter, silver and lampwork bead bracelet. The jewellery is made by me and is very beyoootiful!
I'm working my little tochas off at my new job and my brain is so deeply occupied with the complicated stuff that makes up my job and answering the questions of my assistant and dealing with the phone and the clients and ....etc that I haven't had time to really focus on the blog. Also what with not wanting to offend any sensitive readers I've been a little hesitant to be my usual acerbic self.
Oh yes, I'm also really happy at work so my mood is too good to think of anything to grouch about.
Ah well, maybe just a few things:
Taxis! Yep you have heard all you want to hear about taxis, but I have to have a teensy little moan here about the spawn of Satan. See, I park in a parking structure in one of the main streets in the city (paid for by the employers lucky me hey?) and every morning I have to screech to a halt as the bloody taxis stop dead without warning in the lane I need to be in to get to my parking garage. Then as I collect all my clothing that fell off with the sudden stop, the bastards stop in the entrance to the garage and offload twenty-seven passengers, while I sit behind them, indicator flicking away like an '80's disco and wait till they unblock the way and I can get up the ramp. Natch behind me is a collection of red-faced motorists who are all hooting at me like it's my fault! Sheesh!
Then there's the smokers! The entire city of Cape Town stinks like an ashtray! When I walk to my office I'm the only person in the road without a cigarette in my hand - at 7.15 a.m. ugh the smell is enough to make me puke. Every doorway has 5 smokers huddled there like a bunch of junkies and the smoke hangs over them like something in a forties film noir. Also there's always at least 4 or 5 good folk who walk with their cigarettes poking out at their sides and when I get home I find all these holes burned into my clothes from the flying cinders.
The upside is - it takes me about 10 minutes to get to work and I can buy excellent coffee on the way down the road to work - although our tea lady would be most upset - she hovers over me with an anxious look anytime she sees my coffee cup is empty and is only happy when she can fill it again - so I oblige - my liver is on it's last legs.
Also there is a Woolies in spitting distance from the office and I don't have to find parking to go shopping anywhere any more. And a Pick 'n Pay in the parking garage building - oh bliss.
And I'm still using the same tank of petrol I put in my car on the 18th of August !!!!!!!!! There is still a half a tank left. And the employers pay for my petrol so I'm going to have to jol further from home these days.
I am reeelly looking forward to the 19th of September because La Lue, Beach Girl, Boat Boy, Frequent Shopper, Billy the Kid and I are going to Diaz Tavern for supper and to listen to Ernesto! Oh wonderful, Portuguese food, and a Paraguayan singing in Italian, La Lue chattering in Greek and Beach Girl talking Afrikaans and Billy the Kid talking to every woman in the whole place, red wine, dancing and general debauchery - I can't wait. Btw La Lue says Ernesto is absolutely gorgeous looking and predicts I'm going to fall in love with him....good I could use a new interest in life. Joburg hunk has gone back to the ex-girlfriend so he's off the stalker list.

Betenoir took portrait pics of me a couple of weeks ago. I had to feed her and Panic Embryo roast chicken, roast potatoes and veggies (they brought the pud) as a bribe. She tells me I look like Stevie Nicks (before the drugs says Bete) with my new curly hair style, but I wouldn't know. She HASN'T LET ME SEE THEM YET!!!! Keep an eye on her Flickr site (convenient link here on my blog) and soon you will all have an idea what the Charmy looks like - hmmm... stalkers to follow shortly I guess?

Well, it's ten minutes to home time so I'm going to pack up and leave shortly. But before I go I want to state here and now that if I have offended anyone with this post. Tough luck.

On gifts, red wine, chivalry (that's dead for sure)

Well, Swiss National Day has come and gone and it was fun. My birthday gift list went largely unnoticed (or studiously ignored) so I unpacked the suitcase which I had readied for the trip to Japan, called Bonni and told her Italy was off the agenda yet again for the two of us and in the absence of the butler, laundry maid and chauffeur I answered my front door and let Betenoir and Panic Embryo in for Sunday tea, dropped my dirty washing in the laundry basket for the laundry fairy to deal with and drove myself to work (something I am forced to do in the absence of the unlimited credit platinum card) on Monday with a heavy heart and a lingering headache - Swiss national day was well celebrated on Friday night with La Lue and Blondie and a cast of hundreds at the Italian Club in Rugby and there was a lot of red wine consumed with the veal limone. Incidentally, the Club was packed with birthday celebrants and there was a party in the hall for the Swiss community - am I the only one who thinks it odd that the Swiss celebrated their National Day at the Italian Club.

I will admit that I did have one enquiry as to whether I really did want the GHD flatiron - jeez louise only dead people don't want one of those! I live in hopes tho' har har de har.

So what's this about chivalry you ask? I thought I'd tell you a story that Principessa (who is madly in love at the moment so not all that present in the corporeal sense) loves. It's not a new story. In fact it happened about 7 years ago - which is just about a lifetime............

Picture this, Sea Point, sun, (wintery) and me looking quite fine tho I say so myself. I was all dressed in black; black jeans, black blazer, black suede shoes, black sweater, waist-length blonde hair newly-washed and gleaming and I was on a mission. Not a really important mission, not even worth discussing here, but I was carrying out this mission on foot. At this point I should have turned around and gone home because Sea Point pavements are treacherously full of potholes, tree roots, badly-laid brick paving etc but I am an adventurous spirit and my eyesight for the nearby is not all that hot so I don't see the ugly, just the pretty trees, and the pale sunshine and I love to walk.....

So, I strode briskly downhill (it's always downhill in Sea Point except when you are tired or injured - then it's uphill all the way) towards my dressmaker and later on coffee and kaboom! I put my dainty size 5 into a pothole, lost my balance and went sprawling face first into the gravel pavement. And there I lay....totally winded, bleeding from hands, knees and boompsy daisies and with a suspicious feeling that my right foot wasn't where it outta be. I tried to get up but nothing wanted to work. I noticed a steady stream of blood flowing from my hands onto the gravel. There was a large patch of red forming around my shin area and both knees too (I know, I know, it was a wet patch but it had to be blood, so the red part is me using some sort of literary device ok?) I gratefully noticed a group of workmen in painters overalls loading tools into a van right next to me. In fact two of them had to step over my body (literally over my waist) to get to the van without having to make a detour. "I guess they are still shocked at the violence of my crash landing" I reasoned. I tried to sit up but with the bleeding hands and lack of oxygen in my lungs (which were at this point still deflated from the heavy landing) I remained face first on the gravel. Another gentleman came down the stairs from the building in front of which I was gravel surfing. He stepped over my head and said loudly "you guys must please fill that hole! That's the second person whose fallen in it today!!!" I grunted in agreement, gazed at the blood on my broken fingers and whimpered a bit. At this point one of the workmen asked "can you get up?" He seemed genuinely interested, but his interest was entirely of a scientific nature because when I answered "sob, sob, sob no" he said "Oh, ok" and carried on packing his tools in the van. I maneuvered myself to my bum and tried to stand up, all the while dripping blood from various torn and partially dismembered body parts only to discover that my right ankle was pretty much the size of my thigh and wasn't going anywhere unaccompanied. I cried a little more and the guys at the van all chorused "Shame hey she really fell badly that girl". Just then from out a window in the flat above, the rest of the maintenance crew called out "hey lady, can you stand on your foot?" I gathered all my strength and managed to bleat a teensy little "nooooh......". "Jislaaik hey that must be badly hurt...when you get home you must get someone to rub that for you".

At this point I simply refused to spend another minute on my butt on the pavement waiting for the emergency services to answer their phone, so I dragged myself up using a wall and my superpowers (which tend to let me down in times of public humiliation), phoned my mommy who came to fetch me and took me to the hospital. The doctor was most kind and the nurse barely hurt me with that syringe.

See, that's the day I came to believe that chivalry is dead.

p.s. It did lift it's head in a last ditch attempt to survive when a 90-year old man in Japan offered to help me haul my suitcase up a flight of stairs from the tube station in Tokyo. I tried to take him home with me but he was on his way home from a 16-hour work day and couldn't stop.