Wolwedans

An old school friend posted a photo of me in high school... pigtails 'n all. This sent me down memory lane, so I dug up an old blog, "Did you know...?"  I was reading the blog and comments when Jurgis spotted the Chappies bubble gum in the picture, which led, in turn, to many more memories - funny how that works.

Hm.... I can smell the Chappies now. I believe they now have all sorts of flavours, but, to me, there's only one Chappies flavour. Of course, eating bubble gum, be it Chappies or Wacky Wicks, was absolutely verboten, which, of course, meant we ate them whenever humanly possible.

The conversation drifted aimlessly among childhood memories... Dagwoods, the corner café where I'd stock up on Chappies, TV programmes like Knersus and Haas Das se Nuuskas. Knersus was a particularly dumb programme, but leaves me wanting to name my next dog Knersus just for fun. He was a pterodactyl whose sole aim in life was to catch a bunny for supper. He shared luckless plotting with his 3 pairs of false teeth.


Of course, no meander down memory lane would be complete without spending an afternoon or evening in front of the radio, listening to Springbok Radio, with a comforting cup of coffee. I used to keep my ears open for the illicitly-enjoyed "Wolwedans in die Skemer" - 'Wolf dance at dusk'. I definitely was not meant to be listening and, to this day, I don't know why I compulsively listened, as I avoid thrillers like the plague. It was a series about an axe murderer. I was a kid. What was I thinking? Jurgis would listen to Squad Cars, a series about real crimes solved by the South African police, jam packed with action and screeching tyres - typical boy fare. Actually, I did listen to a snippet online and found myself disappointed that the show wasn't complete. I think I should have listened to Squad Cars instead of Wolwedans back then. I don't know... I think it was the compelling voices and acting. It's one thing acting on television, but voice acting takes special talent. To be able to allow the listener to picture the emotions and actions just with sound is incredible.

I found a very rare clip of Wolwedans in die Skemer online. This is just a snippet.

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Voodoo

My apologies to the squeamish for this photo. It's a good thing we don't have scratch 'n sniff technology. Trust me, it smelt a lot worse than it looks!


For about a week, wherever I walked, there were macumba 'artefacts' lying around - candles in one place, random chickens in another, but none to rival my one walk. Every second block had an entire row of chickens. Is that desperate macumba?

No, it wasn't the prolific macumba that influenced my disappearance... though you never know, right? I got very busy. My weeks were taken up with teaching - with brief stops at home to change clothes or pick up materials, dinner at 9pm and falling into bed. Saturday afternoons were filled with laundry and housekeeping and Sunday found me under a pile of papers preparing for the next week. I think I lost myself somewhere in there.

I've been pretty under the weather, topped, this weekend, by a cold - kindly contributed by the sniffing cashier, I'm sure. I threatened to disinfect my bank card when I got home and forgot. I should sue them for Vit. C tablets... or her. Her... uh... nasal hygiene left a lot to be desired.

I really, really want to write again, but I tend to write 3 lines before my mind wanders and the pen lies idle. I have at least 6 draft posts here that will probably never see the light of day. Their impetus is quite gone.

So, in short, beyond tripping over chicken remains in the road, a very bad diet of snatched snacks at odd hours, blearily looking at my over-full mailbox in the evenings, I have nothing to report. Life, as it is, is continuing at a steady (and, today, noisy) pace. The sun is shining and the neighbours are vying with each other to see who can play the worst music the loudest. Their attempts at barbecues aren't very successful either. I strongly suspect that I'm going to work smelling of wood-smoke this week. I suppose I should take that laundry down before it's totally cured...