Elegsabiff

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Weddings and Seven Eight and chewing nails.

The wedding was great, such fun, and daughter and son-in-law are now getting thoroughly sunburned in South Africa, presuming they survived the dive with Great great whitesWhites which she’d set her heart on. I’m being very optimistic and assuming I’d have heard by now if they didn’t. They were going to be in a cage, after all, what could go wrong? (And yes, I saw Jaws too. Hush.)

So, once the excitement of the wedding weekend was over, and the hangover had finally subsided, I wasted a few days getting used to the silence and a few more listlessly doing some bits and pieces and have suddenly realized that my latest book launches in days and needs at least some help from me, eek. Apart from anything else, it had to go from the returned Edit-my-book version into Jutoh format, so the weekend has been spent doing that, and reading the Kindle simulation, and making changes, and re-reading, and making more changes, and today is the final final read-through and it gets loaded on Amazon tomorrow. How scary is that? Frankly, terrifying. I’d recruited more beta readers than ever before and two of them fell by the wayside. That’s not a good start! The ones who finished it, liked it and think it’s the best so far. Really? Five Six will always be my favourite, but then right at the moment Seven Eight is so familiar to me I have to do all the editing tricks in the book (reading it backwards, changing the font size, putting it in columns) just to prevent my jaded eyes from saying yeah, yeah, we’ve read this before, can we move swiftly on?

seven eight finalI do love the Festival, and the book is partly a celebration of the Festival. And Fiona Bentwood swears and smokes and is bitchy, she’s the antagonist but I sneakily rather like her. I really did enjoy writing the final third of the book more than any of the others, but I broke some writing rules with the opening scene and I nervously suspect that will come back to bite me. Keep it simple, the experts say, and quite rightly. The Festival is crowded, and lively, and the opening scene is crowded and lively, and those two beta readers faded on me (just never responded at all) and my nerves are shot. I’ve included the opening on its own tab in this website, and if you read it, and have some useful advice (other than, you know, ‘scrap the whole scene’ because it sets up most of the activity in the book so I can’t) you should definitely feel free to let me know. Preferably before I load it tomorrow night.

I’m doing a soft launch at a lower price up to the official launch, in the eternally optimistic hope of getting a couple of reviews on there, and will soon be twisting beta reader arms to post reviews, but the rest of the pre-launch promotion has pretty much been torpedoed by the wedding. Five Six got a proper planned detailed launch and outsold both the previous books in their respective first weeks so I have no-one to blame but myself if poor Seven Eight falls flat on its colourful little face. It is a book born in my first (and last!) NaNoWriMo, but most of the fifty thousand words written then had to be stripped away ruthlessly, scrubbed, and slotted back in new ways; if not discarded altogether. Writing under a deadline was absolutely horrifying and lends itself far too much to quantity over quality, the editing was a nightmare. It is still the longest book in the series so far and definitely rambles a bit too much in the Exposition but that’s to lull the reader into an easy doze as they are ushered gently past clues and red herrings. I want alert readers to spot the murderer, of course I do.  That makes the traps more exciting. But it can’t be too easy. Moving swiftly on . . .

(Ah, just seen the good news on Facebook—they survived the shark dive. Phew.)

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Non-surgical cosmetic surgery nips a bit

Every now and then I go into the kitchen, get a pack of frozen veg out the freezer, and press it to my mouth for 10 to 15 seconds. The dog is definitely puzzled.

Hands up any reader who remembers the completely agonizing shock of the first time you tried to pluck your eyebrows? (or, worse, had a ruthless friend behind the tweezers) – the frozen disbelief that one tiny hair could have been wired to the mains of your brain, and routed via your deepest pain centres? Well, I found a worse shocker today. No, seriously.

Quick background. In the last three months, I have lost two and a half stone (35 pounds or approximately 15 kgs) (work-related stress, long story) dummywhich I was pretty pleased about as there’s this little wedding event coming up which I may have mentioned, oh, only 20 or 30 times since last year. Apart from the fact that I keep having to change my mother-of-the-bride outfit, I’ve been quite chuffed about it. However, I noticed a few days ago that the new creases from my mouth to my chin make me look like a cross between Deputy Dawg and Charlie McArthy.  The pretty name given to these is Marionette creases. Aw. That’s sweet. Not. THEY HAVE TO GO.

So I went to Twitter—as one does—and shrieked for help and lovely Jacqui said just stay animated and nobody will notice (it is a twelve hour wedding. I doubt the bride will manage to stay animated for twelve hours, but her feeble old mum sure as hell won’t) and lovely Charlie suggested Juvederm. As a joke.

So, here’s what happens with dermal fillers. You register your phone number and a clinic calls you back and gives you a nice low appealing quote for which price you will be turned into Cinderella for 6 to 9 months. Then you go in and the Marchioness de Sade who is about to do the work triples that quote. You need, she says, cheek plumpers (£700) and lip filler (£180) and marionette crease fillers (£370) You haggle. You end up paying more than you wanted for an effect that will last for a shorter time – 3 to 6 months. Then the sadist giggles fiendishly and says ‘this may nip a bit.’

I’m no stoic. My shrieks and howls for mercy probably reached Australia. I still have nail-shaped crescents in the palms of my hands, three hours later.  I told her she could stop but she said I’d paid for the whole injection so I might as well have it.

No, no, let me inject the rest into you. Please.

There’s that nasty moment or two when she looks startled, gets cotton wool, puts it to your face and says ‘just press on that for a minute or two’, that was also fun.

Okay, wild exaggerations aside, it does indeed nip a bit. It nips a lot, and you don’t get used to it. Despite anaesthetic cream, and a mild anaesthetic built into the product, it stings like buggery. That dentist jag that stings for a second or two? More. For longer.

Then you get up to look at yourself in the mirror and all is instantly forgiven. The skin may be red and fetchingly dotted with the occasional spot of blood, but Deputy Dawg has been told to voetsek and Charlie McArthy is no more.

Those mild anaesthetics wear off as you drive home and right now I’m not smiling, talking or eating. No makeup allowed before tomorrow. The redness, bruising and swelling, despite all the frozen vegetable smooching, is ongoing although I sneakingly rather like the trout mouth, I think it suits me. But in a week, two at the most, I will be looking exactly the way I did before, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, just a bit more rested. And that’s fine. If I just look the way I did in the mirror straight after the procedure I’ll be ecstatic, it took 10 years off and is worth every penny. I recognized the woman in the mirror as an old friend I haven’t seen in a good while.

She said at the end that the next time we should try the £700 cheek plumpers. NEXT time? Aye, right. They could pay me £400, or £700 or up to £1000, I won’t be doing it again.

(Okay, over £1000, I’m probably listening.)

Respectfully submitted
Your guinea-pig
Elegsabiff

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NYR. Get a life.

I haven’t done an IWSG post for quite a while but wanted to pass on a bit of gentle advice from my cousin, who said she’d been set a story theme at school which their teacher told them was life advice as well. She’d come to realize it, and she thought it was time to remind me. The theme was ‘The Machine That Ran Away With Its Driver’.

I joked that it was too late for that, but was typing away furiously at 03h00 this morning when it suddenly clicked into focus. Oh. Right. Maybe I was becoming just a little obsessive, yes? Blame the new year, if you kelpies 009will, because I published my first book on January 1st 2013 and wanted to put out a birthday omnibus (which by the way I did, at 02h00, and there’s a clickable link in the side bar), and I also wanted to start pulling all sorts of plans learned from ALLi into place for 2014. So there were more deadlines than there would usually be, on top of finding time for the job that pays the bills, and I’ve been writing until 2 or 3 in the morning for the last couple of weeks. I could have spent Christmas with my family but cried off because of the killer drive, and worked through, only stopping briefly on Boxing Day to see some friends who had flown to Scotland to see the amazing Kelpies.

Was my machine, is my machine, running away with me? The friends were on a tight deadline and hadn’t originally been coming to mine, but we had to come here after all to cut the padlock off their suitcase. It made me realize, as I hadn’t before, how much of a pigsty the house was becoming. Five half-empty coffee cups around the computer, for starters. Thank goodness the unopened Christmas presents weren’t in the lounge—no Christmas decorations up at all, for that matter. Who had time for Christmas decorations? Or opening presents? Or eating? I lost four pounds over the Christmas break (not complaining, you understand. Just saying.)

Yes time is short, and running out at a terrifying rate, and yes I’m happiest when I’m writing. But it’s supposed to be my bliss, not my controller, so my new year resolution is to chill, just a little. Walk the dog more than once a day. Get a life, if I can find time for it between working and writing. Scratch that, make the time.

Happy New Year, and may 2014 find you always in full control of your machine.

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On hats and age and future reviews, (and shoes and ships and sealing wax etc. Okay, not them).

I read a quote a while back that wholly resonated.  I don’t recall the exact wording but the essential message was ‘Inside every old person there’s a puzzled kid wondering what the heck happened’

Maybe your internal and external ages are still in synch. I hate being asked my age, and I really hate being asked for a photograph, because both classify me instantly as OLD. And I’m not, not on a good day, honestly truly cross-my-heart. I’ve put a few years on the clock, true enough, and not that many more will have me on eBay looking for good purple hats; I like being the age I am; but I hate the automatic label that goes with it. So when I was asked for a photograph for an author interview I rebelled andE J Lamprey sent a composite. Which was such fun that I shall dig out some of my older photos and make a few more.

Anyway, that’s just the morning’s mutter. I recently joined the Alliance of Independent Authors, (which is the best move I’ve made since I joined this crazy world with the publication of my first book in January) and that will lead to a slight change in focus on this blog.

As all writers reading this already know, Amazon is decidedly beady-eyed about authors reviewing each other, and there’s no denying it could lead to abuses because the world seems to be filled with people determined to foul up ideal situations. ALLi have a private group on Goodreads and has just floated a new discussion re members reading and honestly reviewing each other’s books on Goodreads. The suggestion was also mooted that we add reviews to our blogs (those who aren’t already doing it) so just as soon as I’ve worked out how to do (well, archive) that effectively, you can expect a few reviews to start appearing here.  Many of the members are already very successful (and alarmingly talented) and I am really looking forward to my reading (two books already heading my way).

And last update on the progress of printing my first book, I changed the cover yet again (now it is beautiful, no?) and it is once again back in review. Fingers crossed.

1 2 Createspace preview

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Nothing succeeds like excess. (May include flesh-eating aliens)

I heard about NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) for the first time last year. This year I tried it. So did 302 THOUSAND others.  Writing 50K words, for the NANO 2013-Winner-Square-Buttonsake of writing 50K words, was an odd experience, but I knocked out the basics of my 4th whodunit in the process and feel obscurely uneasy about writing my first ever potboiler. When I had written my quota I went to the relevant forum on NaNoWriMo to record it. I was – surprised – to see how many books had met that target on the first day of November. One day, to write 50K words.  Gosh, those must be good books.

It got me thinking about how we overdo, well, everything. Every good idea becomes a fad, then the norm, and then excessive. Doing something the original traditional elitist way – oh, take the above example, pouring heart and soul into a book over months and even years, polishing it lovingly, and finally, after setbacks and rejections and re-writes, getting it published – becomes the exception to the rule.

I’m as guilty as anyone, no mistake. No finger pointing here. But it did start me thinking about what defines excess.  In my childhood, best beloved, as a family we sent and received up to thirty Christmas cards, because we were at the other end of the world to most of the large and scattered clan, and if you couldn’t spend family time together, you at least wanted to be in touch. Last year, I received I don’t remember how many, but over a hundred, most from people I didn’t know. Quite interesting, mind you.  Fancy Mary’s husband being called Urgen, and who would have guessed she had daughters called Bliss and Supreme?

typistWhen does more become too much?  Christmas cards, how many is too many? Will I make eight – no, nine – cards by hand, write long chatty letters and enclose photographs?  Unfollow all the people on Twitter who interest me not at all and hope that my favourite few will do the same and we can go back to the fun chats we had a few years ago, you remember, when getting a 50th follower was genuinely exciting ? Reduce my Facebook to people that I know?  Grow my own vegetables, go fishing, set snares, slaughter my own livestock, or even just cook every meal from scratch instead of a few times a week? Ask my daughter to reconsider planning children because there are too many people already? Delete my own books and start a campaign for everyone to delete theirs? Er, no.

Instead, my predictions for the future.

Christmas card scanners will become the next gimmick, and people will scan and email their card(s) to everyone they know. The cards received will play in a constant loop across your choice of computer screen, TV screen, or a viewer mounted next to the holographic Christmas tree. There will be several hundred of them. Really expensive holographic cards will project3D images of family waving and smiling, and the youngest members of said families playing in the snow or on the beach (delete as applicable) / performing on musical instruments / singing or telling jokes.

A new social media called Chatter will allow you to select the categories in which you have an interest, and will automatically join you to everyone else in that category. This will instantly give everyone several million interest-sharing friends.

GM food patties of high nutritious content, available in nine exciting flavours and four distinct colours, will be delivered to every household on a weekly basis. Luxury foods will be available, at a huge price, from select outlets. They will inevitably be dried, frozen, pickled, preserved or tinned (canned). Youngsters reading old books will feel slightly queasy reading descriptions of raw food, while their parents will feel a momentary pang of nostalgia. Those who insist on keeping hens, or growing their own fruit or vegetables, will be considered slightly alarming eccentrics, and newspapers will run frequent stories on how many of them die of salmonella or eColi poisoning.

Books, magazines and newspapers will no longer be printed at all and readers will be encouraged to hand in the books on their shelves for recycling. All electronic books will be assigned to categories, where accredited reference books, including school books, have the highest rating.  The lowest category of books will be the cheapest and largest, but books that earn above a set amount will move to a higher and more expensive category. Readers have to complete a detailed registration form and will then be offered a selection, starting with the most expensive, in their favourite genre. They will be expected to complete a response before they can buy the next; (a) could they finish the book just taken, (b) was it fit for purpose, (c) was it correctly categorized, (d) would they recommend it. Their answers will shift the books up or further down the popularity lists.

Many more people will be born. In about twenty years time flesh-eating aliens will start gathering hungrily around the planet.  People with money or connections will be concealed for the duration of the emergency, with a good supply of GM patties and dried, pickled, preserved and tinned food. When they emerge there will be a few million at most, and their health will be permanently affected. It will take a thousand years for the human race to recover, along with new religions and new political structures, possibly overlapping.

There could be a book in this. last straw

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Painting my brother’s girlfriend green – another from the archives

 

Long ago, best beloved, I had the world’s most fun job, organizing top-end catering events. A random tweet on Twitter brought back one of the FUN ones and I’m capturing it before my erratic memory loses it for another fifteen or so years. To be honest, I don’t remember what the event was for (picture me blushing) but I do vividly remember our side of it.

 

The organizers wanted an additional five waitresses to work the  inner VIP tent in special makeup, pretty girls please, excellent figures, prepared to wear body makeup. As persuasive as I was, the event crept ever closer and I had only found four regulars who qualified and were willing to give up their Saturday plans, even for double rates. Pretty girls with excellent figures just don’t sign up as event waitresses as often as you’d think. Three days to go, and I was having a therapeutic rant to my brother.

 

Actually, he said, it sounds fun. Do you want us to help out?  Did I! His girlfriend of the time was something of a pocket-sized miniature, but no denying she was pretty, in a Billie Piper sort of way, so of course I jumped at the chance.

 

top star treesThe organizers had rented the Top Star drive in, which is built on top of one of Johannesburg’s older mine dumps and is therefore part of the city, and features – of course – a giant film screen, an area large enough for around a thousand cars, and an amazing view of Johannesburg at night. The theme was UFOs, and episodes from the X Files played on a permanent loop over our heads. Gigantic Scully and Mulder kept poking around eerily lit places. No sound track survived the party music, although they kept hearing things and exchanging meaningful startled glances.  Meanwhile we scurried below like ants. There were four giant marquees for guests, and a kitchen tent tucked away behind the screen for us. We also had twenty lambs turning lazily on twenty spits, and the flickering glow made our quadrant look more like an inner circle of hell than an alien spaceport; five serving points; and twenty aliens as waiters. (No real change there, then.)  The waiters were in silver waistcoats and fright wigs, and hard at work serving canapés and cocktails to around a thousand guests as the event warmed up.

 

The organizers were thrilled, luckily, with their five ‘specials’, who were painted green, put into silver sarongs and silver wigs which brushed to the ground (in the girlfriend’s case, trailed on the ground behind her) , driven down to a waiting helicopter decked out to look remarkably like a UFO, and flown in. Flashing lights, deafening musical cues, all very Close Encounters, it was an absolute riot.

 

Now I edit manuscripts some of the time, and work for a bank trying to help people disentangle their disastrous finances some of the time, and try to write best-selling books in between.   I want to be abducted by aliens.

 

 

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Nose to nose with the SA police – another from the archives

I had been lucky with the South African police, it must be said – my first encounter was at 3 one morning, I had just ordered a whisky at Bara G when I realised how late it was, downed it, said my goodbyes and hurried out for the 20 km drive home. Of course I had the motorway to myself and amused myself seeing how long I could take a straight line across the curving lanes of the M1, crossing and recrossing lanes until – whoops – blue light. Knowing full well I reeked of whisky I cranked the window open a bare centimetre; the policeman asked if I was aware one of my front lights wasn’t working properly. He made me do alternate indicators, and then step on my brakes. Ah, he said, one of my brake lights wasn’t working. I was astonished. I was indignant. I sprang from the car and, keeping my shoulder against the car so I wouldn’t stagger and betray myself, I joined him at the back. Ooh, I said owlishly, neither of them is working! Very nicely he told me to drive home carefully and sleep it off. (How did he KNOW?) (Yes, that was a very long time ago. Can you imagine, nowadays?)

The second time I was driving through De Deur with a long-awaited letter from my London cousin open against the steering wheel, trying to decipher her scrawl in quick glances from road to letter to road. Oops. Man in blue stepped out rather suddenly (luckily during a road, rather than letter, stage) and stopped me. I dropped the letter hastily and looked innocent. As he walked round the car he reached through the open window and patted my unbelted shoulder. ‘Ek se niks, hoer?’’ (I’m saying nothing) Sheepishly I buckled up and was waved on my way.

Despite the above I really am a careful driver so there was a long period of no encounters at all. Old South Africa – where all cops were white, and spoke Afrikaans – was in the fullness of time replaced by the New South Africa, where cops were recruited from both sexes and all races and English was the general language, although senior officers were still predominantly male and Afrikaans in the early days. Made no difference to law-abiding me, although when my daughter was accused of stealing things in grade school, and simply couldn’t understand why it was okay that people stole her stuff, but not okay when she took something, I did take her to the local police station where a rather embarrassed, very kind black policeman explained the law pertaining to personal property – in English. I was dead impressed.

Then one morning I was on my way to work when the M1 came to a grinding halt. There had obviously been an accident, damn damn, but the 11th Avenue turnoff was oh so slowly approaching and I could cut through the back roads to Sandton – a taxi pulled into the yellow lane and I followed it instantly, two or three other cars following as quickly (1). Damn! Police car parked just before the off-ramp! We all edged our way back into the crawl but I could see a large policeman walking between the lanes. He slapped the taxi’s windscreen, and strode on towards me, slapped my screen, and went on past. What was that about? The traffic crawled past the police car and there was the off-ramp – to get back in the yellow lane and whip up the off ramp was the work of a moment and I started up 11th Avenue, one eye on the time (2). A glance in the rear view mirror, though, showed flashing blue lights. For me? Crap. Just to be sure, I turned onto a side road. The lights followed. Crap, CRAP. I pulled to the side of the road and opened my window, smiling ingratiatingly. The same large policeman marched to my car, leaned in, turned off my ignition and took my keys as he strode back to his car. Say what? Hey! I jumped out and followed as, still completely ignoring me, he started talking on his radio. “What the hell?” I tried to interrupt him, and wagged my finger under his nose for emphasis (3) “you don’t just bloody take someone’s bloody keys, okay?” (4) He turned his back on me and carried on talking and short of pulling him round (which would obviously have been stupid even if he hadn’t been very large, and like all SA police armed) there was nothing I could do but stalk crossly back to lean against my car, have a cigarette, and sulk. Another police car pulled up in minutes and the driver marched up to me, toe to toe, nose to nose (I’m tall, he was quite short) and shouted “we’re sick and fuckin’ tired of you pipple and your racist attitudes, you unnerstand me?”I should say the first one was black and this one was white. Give the first guy his due, he did say hastily, ”she hasn’t been racist.“ The new guy didn’t miss a beat. “We’ve got new powers” he bellowed, “so there’ll be no more taking crep from you pipple who think you can do what you want. You’re unner arrest.”

I wiped spittle from my face with a pained look. “Okay, can I at least have my keys back to lock my car? Or are you just going to drag me off?”(5) The two cops went into a huddle, there was more radio talking, and another wait. A third police car arrived, with two cops, one of them female. She drove my car up to Norwood police station with me in the passenger seat, escorted by a police car in front and one close behind. The cavalcade drew some very startled looks but I was starting to feel uneasy. This was a lot of trouble they were going to, for what? Maybe being cheeky had been a really bad move –

At the station I was allowed one call, so phoned work to say I was at Norwood police station and would be late. Then I was charged:(1) reckless and dangerous driving (2) leaving the scene of an accident (3) assault on a police officer (4) crimen injuria and (5) resisting arrest. I didn’t even know what crimen injuria was (swearing) and very indignant about the assault charge. Turns out, did you know, that threatening someone is assault? Actually touching them is GBH. Or so those berks assured me. By now I was finally really scared, was I really going to be thrown into a cell just for trying to get to work on time? In fact they left me alone in the detectives sitting room and I was standing in the doorway, glumly having another cigarette, when I saw our (Afrikaans, very pregnant) sales director hurrying up the stairs with her (Afrikaans, very pretty) secretary. The company had phoned the police station back to check I was okay (having assumed I was reporting a burglary, or similar) and been told I’d been locked up as a public danger, so Pregnant and Pretty had been sent to the rescue to talk me out on bail. (R500! The Cape Town Strangler was released on R1000 bail!)

My court appearance booked for the next day, and if you think I slept well that night, your nerves are stronger than mine. My mother went with me for moral support and we waited, and waited, and waited, and finally went to the court official to find out when my hearing was to be. “Ag,” she said “we threw thet out. Bluddy rubbish.”

There was a post on Facebook today about the UK police getting new powers, which really opened the floodgates on this twenty five year old memory. Ah, nostalgia….

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Querulous today

I read this somewhere, a while back, don’t know who wrote it –

From birth to 18, to live life to the fullest, a girl needs good parents.

From 18 to 30 she needs good looks

From 30 to 50 she needs good luck

After 50, she needs good cash.

And STILL my Premium Bonds aren’t spitting out that increasingly essential million pound payout.  In the not too distant past, one planned to fund life up to 70. Now life expectancy is over 80 and rising, and that’s downright scary. A couple of blogs ago I mooted a tontine but no-one seems yet to have forwarded it to the Chancellor. Tchah. I really don’t want to live to a great age if it involves being infirm, reliant on others, and / or poor. In fact between thee and me I don’t want to live to a great age at all. 10 or 20 extra years between 30 and 40, absolutely, but tacking them on at the end, eek, no. When vigour and agility and joy in living starts to diminish, who wants to still have a 20 year sentence to complete?

My daughter gets married next March and may produce a grandchild or two – she’s not promising anything. Maybe then I’d feel differently and want to stick around for as long as possible. Right now if the great cosmic bell rang in my ear and a voice intoned ‘we’ll get you to the wedding, but after that you’d better tidy the house every night before you go to bed because time’s nearly up’ I’d be pretty shaken but not devastated. In fact, sneakingly relieved. The definition of middle-aged keeps stretching, and I do both admire and wonder at people of 70-plus who call themselves middle aged. I’ve heard it said that middle age starts with the first mortgage. Does it end when that’s paid off? There’s another old saw – forties are the old age of youth. The fifties are the youth of old age.

Am I old? I worry about my finances, socialising gives me a headache, and I can’t run up a flight of stairs any more. I’ve never been great with names, but now I’m having occasional problems with faces, too. Sprinting for the train leaves dancing spots in front of my eyes. I’ve started getting ailments I never heard of, that I have to look up on the internet. Well, okay, just one, but it’s the thin end of the wedge. There are increasing streaks of silver in my hair – pretty soon I must choose between streaking or dyeing it, or just letting it pick its own colour. I’m seriously considering writing post-it notes to myself, to carry them from room to room, because it is so bloody irritating to forget what I was going for.  Any day now someone will offer me their seat on the train and I won’t know whether to simper gratefully or be resentful. (Who am I kidding? Both.) It doesn’t help that as a weathered South African living amid the superb Scottish skins I already look ten years older than my contemporaries.

Bette Davis is quoted saying, at 70 plus, ‘old age isn’t for sissies’. At 10, I’d have dared anything rather than be called a sissy. Now, I’m wondering whether I’m up for the challenge. You’re as old as you feel. Today that makes me about 97. Tomorrow – who knows. How’s your day going?

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Random memories – me being a threat to US security –

Top US security guards are surprisingly large. I mean surprisingly large. It was like being hemmed in by two suspicious Hummers – but I am getting ahead of myself.

A long, long time ago in a country far, far away, I worked for an elite catering company, co-ordinating events. One of our most prestigious regulars was the US Embassy and the owner of the company was very chuffed when we were booked for a particularly high-profile cocktail party at the Embassy. It would be huge – 600 guests – and security was even tighter than usual. Dinner would also be required in an upstairs room for a small party of VIVIPs. We were to submit ID numbers for all 25 participating staff for security checks and a few of us – the owner, the chef, two serving staff, me – would need top level clearance.

Two weeks before the event the owner was whisked into hospital for major brain surgery. There was no way he’d be back in the saddle in time, but after an emergency meeting the Embassy decided they would go ahead anyway rather than start the whole security thing again with another caterer.

A frisson of excitement ran through the entire company when we realized President Bill Clinton was visiting SA at the same time. So that was why the security was so much stricter! The Embassy cagily confirmed the President’s party would be the dinner guests and our Austrian chef Albert threw himself into an orgy of preparation. I even booked my daughter, then 14, as one of the general waitresses looking after the cocktail party – come on, the President of the USA? She’d worked functions before, would never have forgiven me if I hadn’t included her, and at least I knew she wasn’t a security risk.

It was a roaring success. With the main rush over Albert and I retreated for a brief celebratory smoke break. He wanted to shake hands, but I’d been caught that way before – the man was a handshake sadist with a grip like a mangle – so we settled for high-fives, then noticed a security guard pointing us out to a worried-looking man. Uh-oh. He came over to say the President was also to meet a group of 60 prominent American businesspeople, but the caterers had let them down. The President, he said, would take it as a personal favour if we could help out.

We said promptly that we’d be delighted, when was it?  The worried man looked even more worried. The party, he said, was starting now –

For security reasons no-one is allowed to leave any event before the Presidential party does, so you may imagine the looks the tiny task team got as we were escorted out by by security guards. My daughter looked particularly dumbfounded and said afterwards she assumed we’d been caught doing something horrendous and she’d never see me again.

We raced back to the kitchen and while Albert and Thandi started performing miracles assembling canapés and finger snacks from anything they could find in a kitchen all but stripped for the big event, Bheka the driver and I put together the most basic bar in the world from stock left over from previous functions – half a bottle of gin here, a third of whisky there, anything measuring more than four fingers went into the crates. I’d take my own car so I could stop to buy ice and bags of crisps and peanuts en route, and we had a fair assortment of wines, beers and mixers. Last to be packed into the van went the glasses, still steaming from the glass washer.  From the time of the request at the Embassy to the van’s arrival in Market Street was an hour and fourteen minutes – probably record-breaking for us, a very long wait indeed for 60 hungry, thirsty and extremely disgruntled guests.  I arrived first, in the car, and opted to wait outside until the van arrived rather than walk into that angry room carrying only three big bags of ice and some crisps ….

Our welcome was, you can imagine, ferocious.  Finger sandwiches and hastily-garnished crackers were grabbed by the fistful by the starving guests, still-warm egg halves were wolfed down. Olives, cocktail sausages, ham cornets, crisps with dips, even the crudité went as fast as we could put trays out. Thandi got mobbed every time she started out to circulate with a tray of snacks and settled for rushing them out to scattered tables, hotly pursued, then running back to get the next, looking scared. With only two bottle-openers we simply couldn’t open bottles fast enough, but I knew I had more openers in the car – I always carried a Boy Scout backup kit – so left mine with Albert and slipped out to get another. I didn’t bother to dig for it, just grabbed the whole bag. As I rushed back in two huge security guards stopped me and wanted to go through the bag. They agreed to let the bottle openers be handed through to Thandi, who was hopping from foot to foot just inside the door, but wanted to know exactly why I was trying to smuggle in carving and boning knives? Before I could explain, the Presidential cavalcade arrived and I was pushed up against the outside wall by those human Hummers while the party went through. Only when they left again, twenty minutes later – and I could see by the way Bill Clinton was massaging his fingers that he’d shaken hands with Albert and the others – was I released.

The owner said afterwards, quite rightly, we should have refused rather than risk a sub-standard performance, but I’m pretty sure if he’d been there he wouldn’t have refused the US President a personal favour.

I’m not as sure that the President personally rubber-stamped the letters of thanks sent to Albert and me, but I’m still pretty proud of mine.

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Home again

In my last blog I was dreading driving a total 800 + miles to spend a few days down South with a ‘crazy dug’ (sic) (Scots say dug) and you know what? She was great. Oh, she groaned a lot, and shifted around a lot, and it was four hours (no, seriously, FOUR HOURS) before she sat down for the first time – but no barking, yelping, or trying to attack passing cars through the windscreen, side windows, and back window.

On the way back she sat down for the first time only two hours into the journey and by the time we bypassed Glasgow she had started taking two-to-three-minute catnaps, so she’s really becoming quite the traveller.  Dear me, though, she is very glad to be home, as you can see in the photo.

wedding dress 020

 

The catnaps were wonderful because she stopped panting and this dog can pant louder and for longer than any dog in the history of travel. Not just hah hah hah hah, either. She manages to add bulldog sounds to it.  Sort of gnhHAH gnhHAH-HAH gnnnggnnnnhhahHAHgnn.  She particularly liked to sit next to the Satnav and pant at it, steaming up the screen, until The Voice icily asked her to desist.  Oh yes. I distinctly heard it.

Turn around, it told her firmly, when possible. So she did.