Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Sensible stuff

Play Date: Hailey, Georgie & William in full make-up

OK, enough of the teenage stuff and on with the serious business of life, like the BVI Poker Run. That's about as serious as it gets here.

Great photo from the Peggy Sue II Facebook site, care of Google Images
Now I wasn't actually on this infamous Sunday interlude (WATCH OUT 2012!) but did stop for a break (from cleaning the fridge, I kid you not) to watch over 100 power boats go zooming down the Channel like a swarm of bees. Picture this: gazillions of  very powerful speed boats racing between 6 islands to pick up and play a poker hand (and a few drinks) at each place and then racing for the finish. The prize is completely inconsequential to the amount of fun which is had along the way. As the first stop was Scrub Island, guess who was working! Many (read most) of our friends did it, along with their kids - and all lived to tell the tale. Our Local papers are rather quaint, and this article is classic island-style journalism. It encourages locals to participate, as you dont have to "wear any make-up or stuff".

The rest of the weekend was relaxing. Tyler and I had 'Burgers in Paradise' on a Friday "date night"  and James & Georgie went out sailing (and crayfish hunting, but sadly no luck) with their mates for the day on Saturday. That evening we all went along to watch Avatar outdoors at the Long Bay Resort, next to the pool. Now that the tourist season is starting to wind down here, all the hotels turn their attention back to us locals and we are 'allowed' to start using all the facilities again. We get really good rates & specials, and little extra's - like the free movies on Saturday evenings.  Being a cheap bunch, we all flock.

We're starting to fall in now with the ebb and flow of island life.  The summer is really starting to kick in again: fans are on all the time, AC full blast in the car and shorts,vests & slops  are de rigeur wear. The pace of life slows down and many people leave the island for both July & August, seeking cooler pastures. The schools break up for the year in four weeks time (for nearly 3 months holiday!) and Hurricane Season officially starts tomorrow, so it's back to radar-watching.



The Lesser Spotted Orange-Clawed Domestos Goddess
in GLOVES she was given for her birthday, because they
reminded someone of Martha Stewart. Do I look like MARTHA?


Wednesday, May 25, 2011

A 70's Girl Hall of Fame


As a follow-on to the last blog post - I'm having far too much fun with my What do my Seventies Teenage Pin-ups Look Like Now research, which has been kicked off by my rather pathetic realisation that we are all getting older and looking our age.

Bear with me whilst I work through this. I also can't promise it's going to end here either. It really is very absorbing. Even funnier, when my Mother-in-law emailed me today after the blog with a 'hands off Sean" mail, which made me laugh out loud.  I'm not quite at the "it's cool to be old" stage yet - but this is all very positive for the wrinkled brow (pre Botox, that is).

The research methodology is simple. Crude, in fact.  I've had a rather fabulous time thinking back on who was on my wall and then typing in their name into Google Images (2011) and then either being horrified or delighted.  I was at High School from 1975 to 1979 (my research parameters) and I prided myself on being a little 'alternative' a la PFP-Surfer-Hippy kind of thing...so definetly no Donny Osmond.

The results - we now see here on the page - are both good for our recently depleted hormones and other idle moments (huh? I wrote that?). Anyway, they all look great and good on them for that.
JOHN MacENROE


ROBERT REDFORD

Just as interesting as who looks good now - is who dosn't. I would post them - but this is a pretty blog - and it's also too depressing. So very quickly, those who didn't make the cut were Bjorn Borg (eeeeek), Jan Michael Vincent (What Happened?!) Tony Alva (you are not Anthony Kiedis, you are a 70's skateboarder) Kenny Roberts (always slightly dodgy) and Jean Claude Killy (looks like a European Commissioner - in fact, worse).

Ayrton Senna is sadly dead, so he still looks good.


BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

DAVID BOWIE


Monday, May 23, 2011

Enraptured


Shot in the Bahamas by Annie Liebowitz
Well, we’re all still here. No-one (we know) was raptured off. Of course there was an 'End of the World' Braai on Saturday evening, where we ate lots of delicious potjie and boerewors, whilst humming Abigail's brilliant End of the World playlist including REM ("it's the end of the world as we know it") and Blondie (Rapture) . Any excuse for a party, not that you need one here.

The Facebook fascination has already waned a bit since I’ve realized that my rather waspish sense of humour probably doesn’t translate too well onto jaunty Facebookland – so I’m switching myself off, and will resist the urge to make witty remarks, especially after a few Rum & Tings.
  
Shaun Tomson  at 55
The other shock of FB is the age thing. I’ve managed to delude myself for quite a long time that I’m not actually looking my age yet and that on Bad Days when I look about a 100, it’s blamed on the angle/the light/the children/lack of sleep or whatever I can think of really and consider it a passing thing. The reality of course is brought home when you see your peers and how they look now - which is, um, ur, well ......older.  Oy Gewildt (as my favourite and now re-connected house mate, living in Sydney, would say) my delusions have vanished and I'm off for Botox at Christmas (not that my friends arn't beautiful, just a little bit greyer!).

felt I needed to cheer myself up with some glamorous images of gorgeous Wrinklies – like this super-divine one of Sean Connery at 78 years.  I'm not usually one for pin-ups, but isn’t this seriously good Older Girls crumpet?

Older Girls Crumpet #2 has to be Shaun Tomson, all-round Surfing Hero and Fabulous Fella. A Saffa too. (it was Laird Hamilton, but I reconsidered this. Sorry Laird!). I had this huge poster of Shaun on  my teenage wall, shining down on me. Once a surfer-girl...

Laird, however, is now a SUP hero and  I did like what he had to say (click here) about how people (like me) can SUP, so Laird, you inspired me to get up - without my Zimmer frame - onto a surfboard again, so thank you!

OK that’s enough perving for one day, though I was just starting to enjoy myself here.  I might have to carry on with this ‘research’ – it has definitely cheered me up!!

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Mark Zuckerberg slightly worries me

I feel like I may have recently cracked the human genome secret or something. I now know what everyone else is doing with their lives – they’re spending it on Facebook!

As a sad latecomer to the wonders of social-networking, I’ve done the equivalent of the 0 to 100 in 60 seconds type conversion and even forgot to feed the children lunch on Sunday I was so absorbed looking at everyone else’s friends.

It’s the ultimate 21st century toy, isn’t it? It’s pleasantly voyeuristic in it’s ability to keep an eye on the cosy Global Village (the twitching net curtains aspect). It has the ability to adopt a rather carefree - dare I say it vaguely teenage laizez faire attitude to everything (“OMG you have hairy arms!!!!!!!!”) and it has the wonderful ability to allow you to edit your life as you would like it to be. Have to say, I’m completely hooked.

I do find this whole “do you want to be my friend” thing rather nerve-wracking and am left wondering who said “definitely not, stupid cow”. I’m also intrigued that there is only a ‘Like’ button and not a ‘Don’t Like’ one for the sake of keeping everything upbeat. I’m also now slightly freaked out that people are going to post hideous pictures of me, particularly ones where your face is sliding off after 25 Painkillers and have filed a new memo to self not to get drunk in public anymore (not that I ever do, of course).

The age-democracy thing, in that ones friends teenage children can read all the stuff you normally only talk about when they have left the room, also slightly unnerves me and what's with the Greta Garbo ones where it says So and So only shares some information with certain people – is that the equivalent to the  Facebook VIP Lounge or something?

Best of all however, is the mercenary ability to manage friendships where you can just Unfriend’ (is this a new verb?) someone and literally switch them off. So easy, so mess-free - oh for that to translate to the real world!

But who needs the real world when you’ve got FB hey?

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Start-ups

The past two days has seen three new things happen:
  1. We got our new car yesterday, finally. It's the closest I could get to my old car in Joburg and it must be the only car on the island in gun-metal grey! It's a super-duper Ford Freestyle, which is a cross-over SUV/station wagon. It's got so many features - including a DVD for the kids, that we're going to need a training workshop.
  2. I finally conquered my mental block over Facebook and realised you didn't need a password. I've now spent a nerve-wracking few hours asking people to "be my friend". If you dont hear back from them, does that mean 'no'?!
  3. Most importantly, Tyler baked his first batch of bread here on the island early this morning and I sold them (he was working) at the school car boot sale. Everything was sold out in just over an hour, which was rather positive market research!
We shared our table with George, who had to do a business project for Grade 2.
We are now starting to look at our new business venture seriously, and hope to be up and running by Christmas. We're actively looking for premises and T is starting to look for equipment, and I'm starting to source suppliers and the like. We will start a small line of 'goodies' such as preserves, oils, rubs and truffles over the next few months - just to get going. Luckily for us, we've already had an offer to stock them.

It's all really, really exciting. A dream long-term in the making.

Friday, May 6, 2011

A Luta Continua*

All of us looking a bit frazzled after Scrub Island

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that one of the key reasons for us moving halfway around the world was so that I could scale down and spend more time with the boys. Up until very recently, ‘mothering’ used to be something that I did when I wasn’t working. Now, it seems that working is something that I do when I’m not being a mother. The mindshift which this has required, plus the matching skillset, has made moving to a tropical island look like a complete cupcake, by comparison.

Although I spent the weekends and long holidays with the kids in South Africa (and considered myself a “hands-on” mother, as one SAHM* rather pompously informed me she was) Tyler and the nannies were their day-to-day ‘carers’ – the people who sorted out their socks, did dentist appointments, poured a million juices, clipped 80 toe & finger nails and did all the things that children require a hundred times a day, 365 days a year. I just felt like I swooped in for the glamorous stuff.

The kids don’t appear to have suffered as a result of my absences but I always felt like I did. I didn’t want the increasing list of missed birthdays, school nativity plays and other rites of passage to grow – and I was increasingly haunted by that old chestnut about how one reflects on one’s death bed about how one spent one’s time in life.

So armed with my Cath Kitson MBA kind of view on life, I jumped in, nine months ago to being (a) full time mom (b) full time housewife and (c) semi part-time worker in a trust company. I honestly thought New-York-Times-reading- Martha-Stewart- channelling- Domestic-Goddess Yummy Mummy.

Oh hahahahahahahahahha. Oh hahahahahhahaha. Ha ha ha ha. Nothing can prepare one for the endless humility and sheer selfishness which is required to do this, not to mention the torrid amount of mess that 3 little boys can generate. That kids lose their shoes ALL THE TIME, never pick up their Lego and never put the lids back on the felt-tip pens EVER! Nobody mentioned the industrial quantities of Spaghetti Bolognese which has to be cooked, the three PE schedules which have to be remembered and the 60 birthday parties per annum to be endured.

And this is all before any ‘parenting’ as such happens - the guiding of three little souls and the imparting of wisdom and knowledge which we must do as responsible, middle class parents. Most of the time one is just too exhausted for this bit. It mainly seems to boil down to “have you finished your homework/practised your scales/found your library book?” Good, goodnight then.

Mostly it’s a blur from the minute I get up (currently 5am) till I fall into bed. I'm definitely not one of those 'bright & breezy' moms who uncomplainingly makes endless peanut butter sandwiches (“there’s the bread, there’s the butter, do it yourself”) and I seem to spend a lot of time ranting at the children and often can be found muttering darkly about the cavalier qualities of a five year old, an eight year old and a 10 year old.

Like every other mother, I suspect, on the planet.

Being a bit of a novice about all of this - I try and take it as it comes and enjoy it all whilst pondering where a million socks go to die. I have to remind myself to keep my sense of humour, swear less, wait until at least 6:30pm until I have that first glass of wine and dig more sandcastles. I wouldn’t change this for anything in the world and deep in my heart I secretly enjoy being a bit of a martyr – so I clearly have the makings of a matriarch.

So here's to all the real and wonderful mothers that I know – Viva Mothers day, Viva! A luta continua!

* 'A Luta Continua' means 'The Struggle Continues' - for all you post-Eighties babes who dont know your Che Guevaro's from your Sandanistas!
*SAHM = Stay at Home Mother. Also see WAHM – Work at Home Mother

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Superstar!


James being held high by the Mocco Jumbies at the rugby yesterday afternoon. Sadly BVI lost to Barbados, but no real injuries were sustained, although there will be a few bruised Council and others on Monday morning!