I have been angry for pretty much my entire life. I was a livid teen, a raging young adult and furious in my thirties. I calmed down to a mild provocation in my early forties, but have found the wrath has returned recently.
I am annoyed by anti-vaxxers, who place other people’s lives at risk for their own misplaced beliefs that vaccines cause damage, even though this has been disproved.
I am irate with people who use dictator run countries as examples of why socialism is terrible, especially when countries like Sweden, Finland, Norway, Canada, and the Netherlands are shining examples of it working.
I am furious at people who still believe Trump is a better option. And don’t get me started on Brexiters.
I am fucking fuming at people who want to use constitutions to protect their own beliefs, but will cry foul when people with opposing beliefs want to do the same.
I am exasperated by those who spread othering, and unfounded fear of others. And fuck those who want to take away our freedoms, especially under the guise of ‘security’.
But mostly, I am angry at the fact that our previously left-leaning parents, who fought against Apartheid and raised us to believe in freedom, justice and equality, have now joined the ranks of the Trump-loving, fake-news spreading growing nebulous cloud of doom. And I feel completely powerless, because there is no way to fix this, because of the division that has been created in our societies. Because if I address it, I will be accused of shouting down a valid opinion, and opinions trump (ha!) facts these days.
It has been a bit of a quest for us as a family for a few years to approach zero – zero carbon footprint. Each year, we target one aspect of our life, and see how we can change it to reduce our negative impact on the world around us.
This year, we have joined the war on plastic waste and our aim is to reduce the number of single-use plastics in our life.
I think it is important to make the distinction. There are good uses for plastics, such as longer-term storage (Tupperware, etc), plastic toys (Lego, figurines) and so on. It would be impossible to live in 2019 and not have plastic in your life at all - unless you are lucky enough to live on an island paradise where you can construct everything yourself from the materials around you and grow all your own foods.
Unfortunately, we live an urban life and need to have jobs to sustain those lives, so some sacrifices have to be made. And while we sort our waste and put things into the recycling bin, the big issue with plastic is the overwhelming amount of single-use plastics that do not get recycled (even if you sort your waste) and then end up in all the wrong places.
We realised the bulk of our single-use plastics come from food packaging, and so this is the first thing we are targeting this year.
We found a lovely service that delivers milk and fresh fruit juice in glass bottles right to your front door. They also happen to deliver to one of our neighbours, so it is a single stop for the delivery vehicle, we get farm-fresh milk in glass bottles, and they also have lovely fresh produce that they deliver in card board boxes. This has already made a huge dent in our weekly plastic disposal.
We’ve also realised that a part of this is reducing the number of chemicals we use around the house, especially ones that enter the water system, so we are phasing out store-bought cleaning products for both the home and the body, and replacing them with more natural product – home made as much as possible, but we will also be supporting brands like Lush for the products we cannot make ourselves.
This will be a big focus this year, so I will try and keep track of our progress here. I kind of wish I took a ‘before’ picture of our week’s trash pile of plastic, or at least some way to know what our start state was, but we will keep track of it nonetheless and find ways to measure our progress as we go long.
There has been great excitement in our household this week, for several reasons. Firstly, the husband started working on Monday, in a real job at a real company with a real salary.
This is important for so many reasons. Of course, the money is going to help tremendously. It will remove the pressure from me, as we can now easily afford not only paying for university, but also to save up money to travel and attend festivals and concerts and feed our hobbies. But, almost more importantly, it means the husband will feel like a productive human being again and get out and about. As glamourous as executive house husband sounds, I know it has also been a frustrating year for him at home with not much to do other than clean house and play games. For his own sanity and sense of self-worth, I am grateful this has come along.
Unfortunately, the husband’s bicycle was stolen at the station on Monday while he was at work, which did put a bit of a down spin on the mood in the house, but we quickly ordered him a replacement bicycle (thank you Amazon) and by Friday, he was independently mobile again
I also discovered this week that I have been putting away £50 a month into a savings benefit through work since I joined the team here in the UK, and it had accumulated into quite a nice little bundle. And, instead of being a fiscally responsible human and just leaving it alone, I decided to spend a chunk of it on a new Xbox One X for the house. In reality, what this has meant is that the husband, who plays predominantly in the sitting room, has been upgraded to the Xbox One X, and our original Xbox One that was there has moved up into the bedroom to replace my Xbox 360. The new beast arrived yesterday afternoon, so we are both grateful for the snowy weather outside forcing us indoors to play with new toys.
The kid and I are also looking at attending one day of Lollapalooza Paris this year. Neither of us have been to Paris before, and so we have decided to make a bit of a trip of this. As an art student, the kid is very interested in seeing the Louvre, and I really just want to go take a picture of the Eiffel Tower and have a pastry walking along the Seine. We are, of course, very aware of the fact that this is quite a thing, being able to plan a week-end away in Paris. It is certainly not something that was part of our world two years ago, and is one of the main reasons we chose the UK over Australia, New Zealand and the US for our new home country.
We are also planning a visit to South Africa later this year for my mother’s birthday. I am looking forward to seeing my mother again, as well as a few friends we have left behind.
As I mentioned, it is a little snowy outside again, which is simply glorious and beautiful to look at. This is a picture taken from our front door this morning:
I am still a little flabbergasted by the fact that I am alive in a year that sounds like a SciFi date. And, of course, if one reads the news, we are actually living in a dystopian novel at the moment.
I tried to participate in NaNoWriMo this year, and got to write quite a bit of a story that, when I started sounded like an alternate future, but 10 days in started to resemble the current reality too much that I simply could not continue. I am still not ready for a world where Trump is president, the 1% is blatant about their distaste for the 99% and Putin is fast on his way to becoming world emperor.
But, some good things happened this year too, and I think I am going to focus on those things instead.
The Big Move
While we started our very own Great Trek in October 2016, we only really settled this year. We had some touch and go moments this year, as we were not sure if our offspring would be able to join us (as they were not covered by my visa), but it worked out in the end. They received an unconditional offer from Reading University to study Art and were granted a Tier 4 student visa for the duration of the course. This means our youngling can stay with us for the next 4 years, at least.
My husband’s father has had to return to South Africa though due to some family complications, but we found him a lovely place to stay and he seems much happier there – he did not do to well with the UK winter.
We have now been in the UK for more than a year, and finally feel like we live here. Some things were super easy to get used to, while other things took a while longer.
The move would have been a lot harder if we did not have friends who lived here and we are incredibly grateful for them. They are now all family.
Sights
In between settling and sorting out family things, we have managed to see a few sights this year.
We have had a few visits to London, but have also visited Bodiam Castle, Stonehenge and Brighton.
Music
This is one of the main reasons we chose Europe, and the UK, as our new home – it makes it so much easier to attend concerts. And, in my first year here, I have managed to see two of my all time favourites live: Einsturzende Neubauten and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
We also travelled to Germany for Wacken, and we got to see so many amazing bands, including Apocalyptica, Amon Amarth, Powerwolf and Saltatio Mortis.
And were in the fortunate position to take our youngling to see one of their favourites, the Gorillaz.
I’ve discovered the joys of Spotify this year, and we now have a family subscription which allows me to listen to music more frequently than I have in the last few years. Spotify also allows me to scrobble to Last.fm, which means I have some stats of my last year’s listening habits. No real surprises with my top tracks or top artists, really
Favourite new find for the year:
Because, apparently, I really love history and music involving history
Books, Movies and TV
Thank goodness for Goodreads and giving me the ability to track what I read.
So I have only completed 13 books so far this year, I am pretty happy with having read a little wider. I started re-reading the Terry Pratchetts last year already, and that theme has continued this year, including Good Omens in preparation for the upcoming television series. I started reading the Skulduggery Pleasant series last year, and managed to squeeze in a few more this year. I also read the Handmaid’s Tale finally, and then started watching the series on Channel 4. So many articles have been written about how appropriately timed this show is, much better articulated than I can even attempt.
But the biggest new find for me this year has been the Expanse series. I watched Season 1 of the series on Netflix towards the end of last year, and was hooked instantly. I rewatched the season twice in a very short span of time and then got sidetracked into other things, until Season 2 was released on Netflix towards the middle of this year. I binged season 2, and then decided to give the books a try. Despite some limited reading time, I practically inhaled the first book of the series, Leviathan Wakes, and have since purchased the second and third books in the series. I am just about finished reading the second book, and hope to have both book 2 & 3 completed before the end of the year (I have 10 days to go, so no pressure). To say that I am a little obsessed with this series at the moment is a slight understatement.
There have been a few other interesting TV series this year, most notably Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. I was looking forward to the new Star Trek series, but I just could not connect to it, no matter how much I tried. I will probably give it another try at some point in the future, but for now, it is shelved.
The husband and I rewatched Suits, That 70s Show and The Good Wife. We also really enjoyed the Marvel offerings, especially the Defenders.
I haven’t really been to movies as much as I would have liked this year, and unfortunately missed seeing Thor: Ragnarok at the cinema, but did thoroughly enjoy The Last Jedi and Guardians of the Galaxy 2. I am really so happy to live in a time when we are getting new Star Wars stories.
Phew, what a year. I am sure I have forgotten many things, and will try and be a little better at keeping track next year.
It has been such a long time since I’ve blogged here. I am not promising a revival either.
I didn’t even complete my own 52 week challenge, because, you know, shit happens. And I suck at challenges. Sometimes, writing in public spaces puts pressure on for a certain kind of content, and, once one starts gaining readers, the pressure to continuously deliver content is hard. It also, for me, removes the ability to write freely. To work around this, I simply blogged, albeit sporadically, somewhere else. I’d like to reclaim this space again, but, no promises.
The last post I made here cryptically referred to it being my last trip to Cape Town. I left my best ever employer at the end of November after a series of decisions made in possibly the wrong frame of mind. I returned to best ever employer at the beginning of January after a series of apologies and possibly better decisions. This means I am travelling again, but not quite as frequently as before. Since returning, I have been to Cape Town three times, Lisbon (Portugal) once, Abuja (Nigeria) once, and I am currently in Seattle. I am feeling a lot more positive about everything, even though I kick myself on occasion for making the decision to leave in the first place. Sometimes, we need to make bad decisions to appreciate the good moments.
Our best friends left us at the end of last year for different shores. This changed a couple of things in our lives. For starters, it meant our friends were no longer a couple of blocks away, and time with them have moved into a virtual space. I am forever grateful for Skype and WhatsApp.
My bestie left South Africa a long time ago, but it was manageable, because we were already interacting more online than in person before she left. So while I miss her terribly, I could deal with it. Our other best friends we saw weekly in person, so their departure has been hard for both my husband and myself. It has reopened discussions about possible relocation to European shores, and I think we have pretty much decided that we will be pursuing this actively in the near future.
My beautiful boy, Frank, left me for the big catnip patch in the sky a few months ago. My heart is still hurting every day.
I think this is one of the reasons it has been so hard getting back into blogging, especially photo blogging. Because at least 70% of my photos are of him, and I ache every time I browse my photos.
I had another lovely week in Cape Town, and again, the scenery played along.
As much as I love the travelling, it can also be very challenging, especially when travelling three weeks in a row. It also gets quite lonely, as you are really removed from your ‘normal’ life, and don’t really have a point of normal during that time.
The husband and I celebrated our twentieth anniversary this week. Twenty years is a very, very long time, and yet, it doesn’t feel like it has been such a long time, really. We’ve been through so much in this time, and yet, here we are, twenty years later, still happy together and still best friends.
Of course, such a milestone always makes one think about relationships. It seems to be a rare things, these days, for a relationship to last this long. I feel so blessed.
Here’s to the next twenty
The picture was taken in our front garden, at sunset, while waiting for our cab on our way to our anniversary dinner.
Our daughter spent time yesterday and today doing the school-compulsory community service at the REEA foundation. On our way after dropping her off this morning we passed by the other side of Delta park. Our house is somewhere on the hill in the distance.
I’m still here. Things are just quite busy at the moment. We’ve been engaging with a (our) builder, and this past week interviewing kitchen companies, because the great facelift of the new house is imminent. This is kind of scary, so many grown up decisions to make. But the picture in our head is beautiful, and so we will put on our grownup shoes for a bit and do this. Because it will be worth it.
In less than two weeks’ time we are hopping on a plane again to visit my mother for her birthday. I think it is going to be great fun, and I am looking forward to some beach sand between my toes.
I’ve been trying to take a photo of the sunrise every morning. Maybe it is time for a picture a day month again. I think I will do that instead of NaNoWriMo this year, because I do not think I have the energy to even attempt thinking about NaNo this year. Nope. I will do 30 pictures of November instead.
I plan out our meals for the week every Sunday morning, and write it down on a notepad on the side of the fridge. This helps massively with ensuring that we do actually eat a meal every day and relieves the stress of ‘what to cook’. Sometimes we swap the days out and we sometimes veer off the menu, but since I have started doing this regularly, we’ve eaten a lot more healthily and stopped getting so much take-out.
Funny old thing, this life thing. It keeps happening, regardless of what you do. So, it has ripped the carpet from under my feet a little again, but I guess that's to be expected. I was way too comfortable anyway with my overseas holidays and tech purchases and investments and things.
So we start over. And maybe this is the opportunity we needed to make a big change. The Big Change.
I am ever so cryptic again. It is to protect the innocent. But, in a nutshell, without spilling too much, the husband is going through what I went through earlier this year, with a slight twist. And while we will easily survive this, it changes some stuff. And these events, and the person who caused the situation has provided some good material for the story I am not writing.
I really hate stating the obvious, but it is cold outside. In fact, my weather gadget thingy tells me it is -1 outside, with a realfeel of -10 (centigrade). This means it is colder today, here, in 'sunny' S.A. than it was in Salzburg earlier this year when we visited. It was a balmy -2 there that day, with the Alps clad in snow. And, I am sorry to say, our houses simply do not protect us from this weather. Yes, I know, first world problems.
I think today I will go buy some blankets to donate.
