Travelling write along…

Writing again

1. This week I sat down and began to write. My project that has been a mass of ideas is now becoming. It feels great. Well, mostly. A bit hampered by this whole 'body falling apart' thing. But there we go. 3010 words. It is a start. I am pleased.

2. I always get asked how long a book should be. I have no idea. But the question had me searching out some stats for fun. This blog post is very informative: Great Novels and Word Counts.

3. This week I read Carol Shields book Unless. If you have not read it, please do. I keep picking up and rereading parts because I cannot let it go. A beautiful story that is seemingly about ordinary life, while being extraordinary profound.

4. One of the undercurrents of the story is a frustration with the subtle sexism that permates society. How it allows women to be overlooked, unseen, while sitting there in front of your face. The main character's rant stems with her inability to protect her daughters from these tiny little slights, take on their own may seem inconsequential, no big deal - but massed together are a very large force.

5. My mother would love this book.

6. Shortly after I finished the book an article via FB popped up. Institutional sexism of books world needs new girls' network.

7. I liked this line very much: Women aren't socialised to brag or boast about our abilities, or to go to an editor and insist, "I'm the best person you could hire for this job".

8. To which I replied, 'Guilty as charged.'

9. The thread on the above article led to a commentator teaching me a new word: wankidoodle.

10. I look forward to it popping up on one my son's future spelling tests.

 

Marketing to the rainbow nation

My daughter was given a Disney backpack for Christmas from her American relatives. It was covered in fairies. She liked it very much. Alas, this Thursday, another little friend mistook it for her own and in the tussle the zipper broke.

I have no skills to fix zippers. The cost to buy zipper then pay to have fixed is more than a new backpack. So I sent the original bag off with a lady who knew a mummy that cannot afford such a nice American backpack for her daughter, but has the knowledge how to mend it.

As fate would have it, I came upon a similar one in the local grocery store Friday afternoon. Disney had clearly adjusted the bag to suit the cheaper market: eliminating the oh so useful large front pocket. But there was one other very notable change, this time to the picture:

The African-American fairy was gone.

A bit here and there

1. I recently read Barbara Ehrenreich's book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Postive Thinking has Underminded America.

2. I recommend.

3. I embraced the spirit of Barbara when I wrote Kathleen Norris, Sisyphus and Me.

4. Complaining, rather than be a martyr about it all, led to some useful advice. Now using a pool owned by a Biokineticist. He liaises with my physio. I now swim longer (just over an hour) but all the exercises specifically target my needs and are supervised, rather than me doing my best on my own. Best bit: I start my routine around 5am. I got my work time back.

5. Husband is rather baffled that anybody can be excited about having to do anything at 5am.

6. I was going to point out to him that he has to work at 5am from time to time. In fact, he may be working some very wacky hours in the next few weeks. Then I remembered that while he may have to work at 5am from time to time, he doesn't ever like working at 5am.

7. My son's school has unofficially created a neutral playing space where boys and girls can play together. I say unofficially, since they never officially announced they were separating the kids either. Hopefully they are officially teaching them, too, but even that is a toss up. The focus on all those notes (and the assembly I attended this morning) seems to be on paying fees, donating money, paying for little extras, manners, which uniform to wear, the uniform being neat, the shoes polished and the badge stitched on just so.

8. I suppose the importance of money and superfcial manners and looks are an education of a sorts. Hey, it is okay to bully as long as you do so with a pressed shirt and a smile.

9. But my son is cheering up, so we now positively have that smile along with the pressed shirt.

10. As an escape from the madness (or as a way to vent) I have been on FB a wee bit more than the norm. This has provided me with the opportunity to be passed on some links that you may enjoy as well:

Why Don't Writers Buy More Books?

William Petrocelli: What if a book. . .

 

A rose by any other name...

But in this case, stinks.

I have spent the last two weeks listening to a lot of flimsy excuses from local school officials as to why, despite running a co-ed school, it is impossible (unmanageable, too dangerous, too much work) for girls and boys to play together on the playground.

The majority of their reasons do not bear repeating. Nor their concerns for my son's welfare, since he apparently doesn't fit their definition of what a seven year old boy should be. Yes, this would be the same kid that fights MMA. But not on the playground, obviously. Or not obviously, since part of their complaint (aside from playing with girls) is that he needs to become more aggressive in order to enjoy boy games (the ones they've deemed appropriate for boys, of course). Ahem.

Sometimes it is best to leave that Pandora's box closed. Or at least I think so. Wouldn't you, if you were a teacher, be grateful that the boy that shows up to school is sweet, kind, friendly and thoughtful, rather than the one that can nail you to the ground and deliver a knock out punch? Well, that is just me. As they pointed out, I'm not a qualified educator and am in no position to judge.

If I were not so emotionally involved in it all, this situation would be extremely interesting. Like the fact that racism, sexism, homophobia, or religious intolerance are rarely carried out by people who call themselves racist, sexist, homophobic, or religiously intolerant. Oh no. It is not these things. It cannot be possibly be these things. The policy and action is not racist, sexist, homophobic or religiously intolerant - it simply may look this way because....

Well, in truth, because a rose is a rose no matter what you call it (and according to Shakespeare, would still smell just as sweet).

But my son's school has many people who speak just as they. Like the Romance Writers Ink Contest which no longer allows submissions where the love story is between couples of the same gender.

This isn't because they are displaying homophobic and bigoted behaviour. Nope. It is because the majority of the chapter felt uncomfortable.

I think I'm with Shakespeare on this one.

Or the person who said, 'If it looks like shit, smells like shit, then it probably is shit.' (Is it Iggy Pop?)

I concede Shakespeare's words were a wee bit more eloquent.

██ ██ ██ █ positive ██ █ ███ thinking

████ ██ █ ████ everything ███ ███ is███████ ████ fine ████ ███ love, ███████ ███ your █████ ████ government

I went back to martial arts practice last night and oooooooooooooh my goodness did it feel gooooooooooooooood to be moving. Yes, I'm on a load of drugs which have finally started to work. Yippee! Because last week I couldn't even contemplate jogging, the jarring action just made right arm ache too, too much.

Rest is good, but life needs balance. So I went to practice and it was mostly a sparing night. I need to fight somebody about as much as I need my wrist twisted. So me and the punching bag became good friends. I had a great time, worked off a ton of stress while mostly keeping my right arm clamped to my side (because it is still a wee bit sore AND just because the drugs make one feel better does not mean one IS better - see, figured all that out before my 34th birthday. Hope for me yet).

So what does the above have to do with the title of my post? Well, my dojo wears black on Monday nights. And today is Tuesday; South African peeps are supposed to be wearing black this Tuesday. (Not to be confused with the USofA's Black Friday.) I simply like to be ahead of a trend.

Yes, we are back to the censorship, Secrecy Bill and privacy debate. There was a big ol' upset last week over an issue that is far from cut and dry. But given RSA's past with censorship people are very jumpy. (Yes, the black out blocks above are exactly how newspaper articles and cartoons used to be censored during the apartheid government.) AND, the fact that today is the day that the government votes on the Secrecy Bill.

I know, you thought they withdrew the Secrecy Bill.

They did.

And now they are voting on it.

Do keep up.

Trees produce oxygen, ya know

1. We are headed off to spend two nights in a treehouse.

2. This was Husband's doing. On the way back The Mud Run he saw a sign and said, 'I've heard good things about that.'

3. When he got home he began to describe it to me. What I heard was: 'No need to pack tent, sleeping bags, and there is indoor plumbing.'

4. When booking the accomodation Husband noted that they come with safety ratings. Recalling Thing 2's spectacular fall off a loft ladder which resulted in a cracked skull,  he selected the one they recommended for insane toddlers. This may mean that rather than staying in a treehouse, we are actually on a platform amongst the trees.

5. I'm okay with that.

6. Speaking of trees, we are having those palm trees taken down, along with some trimming and pruning.

7. It is going slowly due to the great quantity of never-ending-wind we have been experiencing.

8. The tree cutters seem like a nice bunch of people.

9. However, in the spirit of Mossel Bay's 'No hurry, no worries,' they just pitch up with no warning and without a ring of the doorbell or an sms to the phone, begin to do things. The first time they came by I thought it was next door causing all the racked until my house shook. Then I looked outside to see 2/3rds of a palm tree down.

10. Let us all be grateful it was the correct one, as there are more than two out there.

11. Not that I'd have actually been that upset. But I may have pretended to be so if it made not having to pay for the oops.

12. Not sure I should have told you that.

13. However, I think this is the perfect opportunity to inform you that palm trees are not actually trees. So really, we are not actually having trees cut down, but having somebody mow them with a chain saw. (It's true! Google it.)

14. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

15. I shall leave you with a quote from a George Monbiot article that has been all over FB and various parts of the world wide web:

If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire.

 

Since I have no privacy

I may as well write it out on the blog.

Seriously. M&G has revealed that the RSA goverment spies on us. Not that this is exactly a revelation. The apartheid government was infamous for this. The issue is: people were under the impression that this was something the bad government did rather than a South African tradition. Or perhaps it has something to do with the South African government's reverence of China.

Either way, I can't claim to be horrified. Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't like it. I think it is shameful. But if rumours are to be believed, the United States Government, under the wise leadership of George W., has been allowed to read all my emails and drop in on my international phone calls.

Thus, since everybody knows everything about me, it will come to no surprise to you to hear that I have recently discovered myself swooning over Ben Goldacre,  he of the book (and articles) Bad Science.

Wait, I may have lost you. Let me back up. Every so often Husband reads a book and decides I must read it too. (I do this as well, but he is much less likely to actually act on my suggestion.) This is why I know more ways to die on Mt Everest than I ever wanted to know (along with the ethics surrounding cutting the rope). This is also why I know that Mt Everest, while being the tallest mountain in the world, is not actually the most impressive or technically challenging climb (yet, you can still die, so there's that). And so on...

The latest book to cross bedside tables is Bad Science. My working theory on why Husband bought this is that he did so in order to harass certain loved ones about their devotion to homeopathy. But it is just a theory. In the meantime we've had conversations that kind of go like this:

H - Do we have any homeopathic remedies in the house?

Me - I don't know. Maybe. What's this?

H - Well, 123 comes in two forms, there is the real stuff and the homeopathic version. . . hey, why doesn't this bottle say how much is in it?

Me - Probably not a good sign, then.

H- Why did you buy it?

Me - Because X told me it might help with those bruises and we had that party to go to. I was doing everything else (like ice) and thought, oh heck, why not?

H - Did it help?

Me - No idea. But I couldn't wear shoes, remember? So perhaps not.

H - You don't have to do everything X tells you.

Me - I was trying to be nice. X is your ...

H - See, that's probably why it didn't work. You have to trust for The Placebo Effect to work.

Me - I never said I didn't trust...

Ah, marriage.

Anyway, I mentioned to my physio that Husband was reading the book and she told me, 'Oh, that is a brilliant book. You must read it.'

So there you are, I am.

Then the other day I flipped to the back cover and saw Ben Goldacre's photo and went, 'Ahhhh.'

Husband asked what the heck was going on. I explained.

Husband was gobsmacked.

1 - Husband was not even aware the man's photo was on the back cover, despite having read the entire book.

2 - Husband found it puzzling that I found Ben at all attractive.

Frankly, I can't explain it myself. (Sorry Ben, but there is a lot of eye candy out there and, well...you just don't come off as the average pin-up model.) The only explanation I can come up with that combined with decent looks the man is also intelligent. A person's intelligence was a big factor when I was dating. Like Husband for example. Husband is physically attractive, but I really, really love that he has a BRAIN, and (do not underestimate the significance of this next point) he READS BOOKS, and he understands my Monty Python jokes. (Actually he was flabbergasted that an American had actually heard of Monty Python. I told him he needed to get out more. He has.)

Back to the reason I bring this up (other than allowing you all to laugh at me for swooning over Ben Goldacre for no good reason) is that it made me think of all the debates over whether the attractiveness of women writers matters. Or writers in general. Husband didn't even know what Ben looked like. Wasn't even aware there was a photo. But still, rather nice for The Guardian that Ben takes a decent head shot, yes? (Not that this had anything to do with why The Guardian hired him. I have no idea why they hired him. Perhaps because he is a doctor?)

Anyway, there really isn't a point to this post. However, if Po is reading this, I would love to hear if you read Bad Science, and if you have,  what your thoughts were on the book. (You do not have to give your opinion on Ben's attractiveness. Unless you want to give the BFG a laugh. Think Husband is still laughing.) Of course, all of you are welcome to chime in as well. In fact, that would be lovely.

Dear Home Affairs,

I'd like to bring to your attention that according to the law of The United Kingdom that I have been legally hitched to the South African citizen - Husband Beautement - for eleven years.

Now in the interest of transparency, I will fully admit that the only reason I considered marrying your loyal citizen - Husband Beautement - on the 13th of October, 2000 (which just so happened to be Friday the 13th complete with a full moon) was to work out some legal issues. But in my defence I'd like to raise two points:

1. The United Kingdom had advised me to do so. They said this would make things easier for them and us. A win-win, if you will. 

2. I was scheduled to marry the man anyway. We took classes. With a priest. And let the records show, we kept our promise and still showed up to that wedding too.

I would also like to submit the following evidence:

Thing 1

and

Thing 2

These Things arrived in the normal course of our marriage. Thus, I think you, the Home Office, can safely conclude that we do actually share a marital bed. Well, at least twice.

You have had my application for residency of your fine land since the 15th of December, 2009. Since that time I have witnessed friends and acquaintances gain their legal residency in less than a nine month span. One of these couples doesn't even have one member of their family as a South African citizen. I have three: Husband Beautement, Thing 1 Beautement and Thing 2 Beautement.

And while I have no wish to insult, may I point out that I went the recommended route by your office: to file directly. The branch in George inspected all our paper work, checked the documents, interviewed us and said we were fine. However, everyone else went through an agency. Rumour has it that these places send a little something extra to Pretoria to smooth the way. I am sure this is incorrect. But do you not see that perhaps this only adds to people's suspicions and conspiracy theories when I, who did it the supposedly correct way, am delayed while others...others who took more creative routes had their issues resolved promptly.

Not that your institution would ever accept bribes or be a part of any other funny business. I am sure those agencies are also above reproach. They simply fill out paperwork. Of course.

Ahem.

Given that this is my eleventh legal anniversary and I am still married to the man while we raise the two children we produced, I would like to suggest that perhaps I'm a sure bet. That perhaps your suspicions and hesitancy over my status is uncalled for. That perhaps you can, in good faith, just approve the bloody thing and hand it over.

Eleven years.

I think we've stuck it out long enough to prove that we did, in fact, marry for reasons other than the visa. And, not to be rude about it, but it wasn't a visa for your country - it was for The United Kingdom. They got over it. In fact, they eventually granted me citizenship.

Yes. I see your point. I could live in The United Kingdom or The United States of America. And fine countries they are too. But my husband, your loyal citizen - Husband Beautement - really, really, really loves living in his homeland. I think you could understand that. After all, you enjoy living in your homeland too. (Don't you?)

So we're here. We got married twice. I honestly don't see what more you could want. So I ask, with the utmost respect, please approve my residency application.

Best Wishes,

Tiah Marie Beautement

Today is brought to you by the letter 'S'

Goodish news: Secrecy Bill withdrawn for now

(Hey, positive news, even slightly positive news, these days deserves to be celebrated!)

And the next item is because my Sensei(s) told us we have to help promote:

No, I'm not fighting in this. Don't be ridiculous. But I might go and watch.

As to what the Secrecy Bill and my Sensei(s) have in common in order to be featured in the same post...

Well, ask Sesame Street.