The Spider Wars

 Last night, I picked up a spider-related injury.

It is not what you think it is.

As you may or may not know by now, I am severely arachnophobic. I mean, I am scared of many things in life, but I can typically ignore those fears and continue with my life despite them. But spiders, they paralyze me. Or make me move faster than I have ever moved. Or both, in some instances.

I have been alone at home for the last week while my husband takes care of a family matter. It has been a nightmare. It started on Monday, when I started packing the dishes into the dishwasher from the kitchen basin, and, as I moved the last item, and a big hairy spider was sitting in the basin. Needless to say I could no longer use the basin.

There have been a few encounters with them during the week, from the dead spider carcass that blew across my desk to the small spider crawling out of the bushel of apples I was sorting.

But the final straw happened last night. I went outside for a last smoke (yes, I know, go away) and when I was ready to back inside, there is the eight legged monster sitting on the door, just above the door handle.

So, now I was trapped outside.

I tried throwing a few plant materials at it, but this had no effect, especially since it was all leaves and lightweight. I tried to throw my shoe at it several times, and missed each time.

By this time, I was frantic, and texting my husband. He’s sitting on the other side of the planet, watching me through the camera covering our back garden, probably laughing his ass off, and trying very hard to be supportive.

Finally he suggested that I should use the torch on my phone, light up the area around the hosepipe, and just use the hose to blast the bastard off the door.

It took me about ten minutes to work up the courage to do this, but finally, I managed to wrangle loose the hose pipe, turn on the tap and then blast the doors.

And the bastard slid himself in between the two doors, snug as a bug in a rug, avoiding the arctic blast of water coming his way.

Fuck.

But I persisted, and eventually managed to wash him out of there, and then he disappeared.

Ok, so I couldn’t see him anymore. Felt safe to return inside.

So carefully returned the hose to the web-covered hanging space on the wall, closed the tap while quietly dying inside and returned to the door, torch still on.

Yanked the door open and stepped back quickly, torch still my guiding light, no sign of the asshole on the inside of the doorframe. Ok. Scan around the door, and there is the little fucker, at the bottom of the door frame, right where I would enter.

Deep breaths.

I can do this.

So I haul myself in over the little step and into the house in a very swift movement, avoiding touching the ground around where the monster is hiding.

And as I step inside, I twisted my ankle.

Ignoring the pain, I yanked closed the door, locked it, and ran upstairs.

And so it came to be that I had a spider-related injury without ever touching one.

Starting again again

via GIPHY

 

So, it has certainly been a while. The last two years have been… a lot…

I’ve said goodbye to my grandfather, father and grandmother. My mother’s currently being treated for cancer.

We’ve moved house, and moved again. And I keep writing blog posts in my head that never quite make it here.

But, it is a new year, and I have things. Maybe even words.

We bought a house last year, another fixer-upper, and the garden is a blank canvas. So soon, I will start with my seedling, and try and fill up the life-spaced gaps with green friends.

untethered

Untethered

Unbound 

Rootless 

The path ahead dark

No markers, no pointers

No star to chase or 

Home to return to

Unknown 

Uncertain

The crystal ball is murky

Floundering confounded

At the mercy of the Fates

Pulling strings unknown 

Time unwound

Leaving me unbound

   

night

I find a quiet solace in the dark of the night. The distant sounds of cars driving by, the soft breeze gently blowing between the trees. Alone with my thoughts, in the dark, quiet night. 

Music has always been a constant in my life, from when I was a very young human. My taste in music may have expanded over the years, and it changes according to my mood, but there are some constants throughout.

Every now and again on social media there will be some kind of music challenge – 10 songs that changed your life, 20 albums that influenced you, etc – and I will always participate, because it is so absolutely core to me. Even when I do not listen to music for weeks on end because, well, life gets in the way.

I bought my first walkman when I was 9 years old. It was a cheap piece of shit, but it was a start.

When I was 10, I saved my pocket money for months until I had enough to go and buy a good walkman. This one was much better.

When I was 12, I again saved my pocket money and finally bought myself a boombox – except I would never have called it a boombox. It was a deluxe double tape deck FM/AM radio. The double tape deck was the important thing, because it was the time of mix tapes.

And taping your favourite songs from the radio.

That was an art in itself. You had to time it perfectly. You had to know the first few beats of the song, and hit the button just as the DJ stopped talking, and then hit the pause button – never stop, always pause – as the song approaches the last few beats, just before the ad for got knows what ruins the ending completely.

And this is why you needed a double tape deck.So you can edit out these little annoyances. And compile the songs in an order that tells a story – mostly that you are making googly eyes at some guy :)

My walkman and I went everywhere. There was no greater freedom than me, my bicycle, long summer days and my walkman. I would cycle around the neighbourhood aimlessly, just so I could listen to music. It was glorious.

These days, my phone is my walkman, and I have Spotify – so there is no need to wait next to the radio to hear my favourite song to make a compilation, and I have the world’s music at my finger tips, for the most part. There are still a few favourite bands that are not on Spotify, but I can savour them at the right moments.

So I’ve been making a bit of a mixtape again. A mixtape with no limits. And every song I love. It is a work in progress, a labour of love.

It is the uncertainty

It is the uncertainty that keeps me awake at night.

In a few short days I will celebrate the third anniversary of me getting onto a plane and leaving the country of my birth behind to start a new life. And as each anniversary passes, the big end date gets closer. The expiry of the visa.
It is terrible that such a small piece of plastic can have such a big influence on our lives.

Because not only is it the end of our stay in the UK, but it also marks the end of our unity as a family. Our kid will be moving on with their own life, probably in Norway, just a few weeks or months before the husband and myself move on to our new home, possibly Ireland.

Despite the turbulence of the current political climate in the UK, we have had the best life here so far, and the thought of leaving it behind is very hard. All our long term friends live here, and we've made so many new ones too. We've seen so much and done so much in the three years since we've been here, much more than we could have imagined.

There are options, but they are out of my control. And so I am in limbo, unable to make plans about the future, stuck in a pudding of uncertainty.

And it is the uncertainty that keeps me awake at night.

And here I am again…

And here I am again, aimlessly scrolling through post after post on social media, a visitor in the lives of many I haven’t really spoken to in years. Some are from a previous life. And yet, we cling to each other in a desperate hope to feel human, like we have this vast audience of others, that we are important.

And while I scroll, I lament the minutes, hours, I could have spent doing other things.

And I promise myself that tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow is the day where I ditch social media to return to the things that made me happy before.

But tomorrow, I will sit and look at pictures of books rather than reading them. Again.

Things that go ping at two midnight

Because so little makes sense some times.

Because I am still struggling to extract the last of our money out of South Africa, and dealing with South African bureaucracy is actually causing me physical pain.

And in my head, I imagine this continuing for years to come. And I am starting to plan our next move, because, thank you Theresa, we need to leave the UK in just over two years from now. Yes, we will indeed be performing our very own Brexit. Because, fuck us, we are on the wrong visa. Just three little letters make such a big difference. ITC. Not general. ITC means we have to leave. Oh, we can come back a year later, but quite honestly, I don’t think I have more than one more international move left in me. Because moving countries is traumatic and stressful and expensive. The last one wiped out the bulk of our savings, and we are not getting younger and we need to think about our futures.

So I can just imagine that in a few years from now I am still going to struggle to get our money out of South Africa, but I am also going to have to try and get our money out of the UK. And who knows, maybe Ireland is not our forever home, and we end up doing this shit again, and eventually, I’m going to have to be a short-order cook at a chippy to be able to pay for a spot where the husband and I pitch our tent, because all our money is tied up in various countries, and even then it is not enough to live on, and we are 90 years old and the only thing I can do is deep fry shit.

I may or may not be having a small meltdown.

And I am still unable to post pictures to my blog. Which is why I am not blogging much at the moment.

On empty nesting and spring madness in autumn

My child, my one and only offspring, fruit of my body, is twenty one years old. Twenty one. I have produced and managed to aid a full human to grow to this ripe age and everything. And, strangely, one gets rather attached to a human living in your space like this. So it is with some dismay that I have recently realised that this human will not remain in our space forever.

It has been even more pronounced recently as they have been travelling to Norway fairly frequently to visit their partner. The last trip was the one that really drove home this realisation. And so I have started preparing myself for the empty nest syndrome.

The husband and I luckily enjoy each others company, and have spent a fair bit of time together so we won’t find ourselves suddenly living with a stranger as so many do, but our house always feels a little emptier when the young one is away and the emptiness will take some time to get used to. I am sure it, as all other feelings, will eventually fade.

I will just need to plan my travels carefully, to ensure we can continue the one real tradition we have, which is me waking them up at 5:45am on the morning of their birthday with pancakes (or crepes as the rest of the world apparently calls them).

Growing up in South Africa, September was always the month of spring. It may not always be warm, but the signs of spring would be everywhere – sun rising earlier, trees in full bloom, air full of promise. September also meant I had a lot more energy and a head full of ideas, which I later realised was a cyclical bout of hypomania.

When we moved to the northern hemisphere, I believed this would end, as September is the beginning of autumn, and I expected I would see a slight downturn in mood.

And last year, my first September here, I didn’t really notice a mood swing either way.

But, this year, the mood I associate with September is back. Less sleep, more excitement, more exuberance, more energy. And thanks to my lovely friend Mandy’s research skills, I have now learnt that this is expected behaviour. And with some additional research, it turns out this is expected two weeks on either side of both the Autumn and Spring equinox. I must be honest, I have not really tracked my mood that actively for the last few years, and I have become a little complacent. I can feel the hypo coming on, and try and manage as much as possible with diet, sleep, exercise and sheer stubborness, but this means I am probably overdue a full episode and should keep track of things slightly better again.

On building cities

I am quite a fan of city building games. From Caesar III to SimCity, I have been playing city builders for the past 20 years, but it has always been PC-based. Over the last few years I have migrated to console gaming, where the city builders have been sparse, until recently.

Because, recently, I discovered the joys of Cities: Skylines. It means hours and hours in front of my console, which has given me a wonderful break from the current political and human climate of ugliness. I worked through all the scenarios and started building some really lovely cities, until I watched some community videos, like this one:

And while this city was created with the PC version of the game, which gives you a lot more tools, I thought I would attempt something similar, especially with the new road tools that came with the Mass Transit DLC.

I used one of the flattest maps I could find, and did this in sandbox mode – there is no way you can do this in a standard for achievements city, considering the costs of the highways.

I expanded the map to all 9 tiles, proving a lovely large canvas. I then cleared the map, leaving the highway connections at the edge of the map, and used the 6 lane highway to connect corner to corner and then cross section the map. This allowed me to easily create the first circles.

I took some time to plan out the highway connections, trams and busses, and then got to work.I forgot to do some captures before I started populating the zones, unfortunately, and I am not quite happy with the rounding of the highway around the tower in the middle of the city, but it is a fair first attempt.

I did build a few industrial areas outside of the circle area towards the edge of the map, as well as the supporting utilities and lots of garbage incineration stations. I’ve also now stated on a second, smaller circle off to the side of the big one.

The smaller circle suburbs turned out a lot better, I learned a few things about the road building tools that I will apply in the next attempt in doing something like this.

So far, the city has a population of 60k, with little visible traffic issues and a very low unemployment rate.And the city is now, finally, stating to run with a green balance – about 3 years in.So definitely not something you can do with a achievements city, unless you build it up with a fabulous bank balance and then annihilate it to rebuild, but I estimate it probably cost in the region of 4 million to get started, if not more. Six lane roads are expensive

But it has provided me with some lovely views, and escape from a world filled with Nazis.

On protests and rich white dudes

Because, of course, the two are a little related
I caught the end of the anti-Orange One protests in London on Friday. It was great to see so many people turn out to raise their voices against racism and other kinds of isms, but it was also clear to me that the protest was against more than the big Cheeto.

It was against the entire system that allowed the Fart to raise to power in the first place. Against old rich white dudes in power.
The last protest I attended was the Zuma must fall march in South Africa, and remembering this, I was struck by some differences. But it is not what my racist fellow Saffers assume it to be.

Protests in South Africa are a lot more violent, but it is because the people have been angry for a lot longer, and have more reason to be. As they have been affected by this system of old white rich men for a lot longer. So it is easy to make comments about the violent nature of the protests if you’ve not been affected by oppression or on the receiving end of racism.
Protestors in South Africa are also, legitimately, afraid of the police. They do not get to pose for selfies with the police, or ask them for directions. Police in SA come to protests with rubber bullets and tear gas.
It is important to understand the difference before passing judgement.

But speaking of rich white dudes…
Rich white dudes have a few role-models that they can look up to, and strive to emulate. But I like to think that, mostly, they have a choice of becoming either Tony Stark or Lex Luthor.
Both come from rich families, both start off as spoilt brats, both are amazingly smart humans and have great technologies at their disposal. Tony Stark, however, does become a better person and tries to protect the world. Lex Luthor, on the other hand, remains a spoilt entitled brat and tries to destroy the world.
I can think of a few rich white dudes that have pursued the Tony Stark path, but it seems most of them end up on the Lex Luthor path, while thinking they’re Tony Stark. I know it is hard to be a rich white dude these days, because, you know, the world is against you and stuff, but damnit, E***, you should try harder. Be more Tony.

On growth and make-believe

I’ve been doing a lot of introspection recently. And, by recently, I actually mean the last six months or so. I have felt some perceived pressure to change direction, and it really is perceived because, for some reason, I have made myself believe it is there, even though it isn’t.

And while thinking about this in great depth, I have noticed how easy it is to lull oneself into a false sense of growth, just because one is ticking all the boxes. And doing things simply because it checks all the boxes does not really allow for growth.

And looking back over the last few months, I have wasted a lot of time anguishing about this perceived pressure, rather than doing things as I would have in the past. And by doing this, I have killed off a bit of my mojo.

Time to return to that space outside my comfort zone, where I create things rather than consume and chase dragons rather than cuddle kittens.

Just one question: where did I hide the gummy berry juice?

An interlude

I miss the simplicity
Of happy moments and
Shared joys

It has become
So uncool
To enjoy things

I miss the time when
It was okay to
Have simple fun

On sunshine

This week, the sun came out in full swing, and there was much rejoicing in the land.

I took some holiday days this week, which I spent with my youngling out in the garden soaking up the rays. Sometimes, we just need some downtime. My next holidays will be spent in Paris, hopefully, as the youngling and I are planning a quick week-end trip to Paris for Lollapalooza in July.

I have had many thoughts this week that I planned on blogging, but I am still working through them and structuring them in my head. But it is all about best moments and nostalgia. We so often look back and glorify the past that we forget to live now, but I feel like this right here is the best moments of my life so far.

And I leave you with this lovely picture of our neighbour’s cat, Jazzy, who visits on sunny days and allows us to pet him and love him and give him belly rubs. Almost all of the benefits of being a cat slave without the responsibility.

On social media

Most people who know me well know how much I absolutely hate having to use the telephone. As in, phone a human and speak to them. I struggle to read queues as it is, and without being able to see the person’s face, I am completely befuddled by telephone conversations. Having to make a telephone call fills me with a dread only matched by finding a spider somewhere near my person. As a socially awkward introvert, I have really loved living in the age of social media. It has meant that I could keep in touch with family, friends, acquaintances, and colleagues from all over the world without having to directly interact.

The downside of the social media age, however, is that we, and our information, have become products. Not too long ago, you only had to take care what you share if you were a public figure of sorts, but in the last few years this has shifted tremendously when companies and politicians realised that public opinion could be swayed by analytics and injection of half-truths into the public narrative. And while I have nothing to hide, I am certainly not comfortable with just anyone having access to my information, or that of my family and friends.

And so I have been considering slowly extracting myself from certain social media sites, especially Facebook.

I tried it briefly this week, but realised that one of the ways they keep you hooked into the matrix is by allowing you to use your Facebook account to sign into to many other sites. So I need to work through each of the other sites, change my log-in method first and then I can disable my Facebook account again.

It does leave me with a vacuum, as there is currently nothing really to replace it. And, when divorcing Facebook, it also means leaving WhatsApp and Instagram behind, because, well, they’re both members of the Facebook family.

In the mean time, I have locked down my Facebook account as much as possible. Which only goes so far in, especially since some of my connections on Facebook are to people who insist on completing every single quiz under the sun – quizzes being one of the main methods of harvesting information without our permission, and not just our own information, but information about every single person we are connected to.

I am grateful that I grew up in a time when we did not need to consider these things, and avoiding stranger danger was something we only had to worry about in person. I am constantly aware of how difficult it must be to be a young person growing up in this time, where they not only have to deal with the general anxieties of growing up, but also with the ability for dangerous situations to infiltrate their lives in a way we cannot even imagine.

I am not sure how to move forward, because I have enjoyed staying in touch, but I know I no longer feel safe on Facebook, and so will probably continue with the divorce proceedings without finding a new social space for a while.

On doing nothing and procrastination

Today is Mother’s day in the UK, which means I get to do even less today than I normally do on a Sunday

Sometimes, doing nothing is very hard work. You have to keep yourself from doing something active, which means you need to find things that you can do passively. This often involves consuming visual media (movies and TV Shows), but even that can’t always keep me from doing things. I mean, I am sitting here with my laptop open writing a blog post, aren’t I?

I have been dreaming recently about building a bed and breakfast establishment that is also a library. I think I may just want to live in a library. I have also been thinking a lot about writing again. I have the need to finish one or two of the novels in progress, and really get someone other than me to read it. But the power of procrastination has been very strong recently, even stronger than my inability to do nothing, and so I am stuck in this place where I don’t want to do nothing, but I also cannot bring myself to do the things I really want to do.

But, since I have scheduled these regular blog writing sessions, I am getting more into a good mind space around writing and creating a welcoming space for the words. If I can sustain this for a few more months I will be able to schedule regular writing time for fictions. In the mean time, I will keep filling up the well.

I travelled to Leicester again this week, where the world was wrapped in fog for a day. This picture was taken outside the hotel I stayed at, and is an actual Pokestop, because I am a nerd and two years behind the rest of the world.

On Snow and other Marvels

I have been avoiding the news for the past week again, because I am feeling a bit of outrage fatigue again. But, if unless you have been living under a rock, you may have noticed that the UK had a little snow storm this week.

I was lucky enough to be working with a customer in London on Tuesday when the snow started, and found myself constantly distracted. Growing up in the Southern Hemisphere, my exposure to the white stuff has been very limited, and I have never really experienced a full blown snow storm.

We woke up on Wednesday morning to a scene from Narnia.

I travelled up north for a customer visit on Wednesday evening, much against advice from others and common sense. And while I was a little worried about being stranded in the middle of nowhere, I really enjoyed the adventure of travelling against the odds. The journey felt like one of those going home for x holiday movies, and I did provide me with the opportunity to take some more great photos

By Friday, it had been snowing for a few days and our housing estate was an absolute wonderland with enough snow for a little snowball fight.

We really enjoyed playing the snow, but were grateful when the snow stopped falling and melted away by Saturday afternoon. It has been a great distraction from everything else at the right time for me.

I’ve made a point of watching each of the Marvel movies in the cinemas as they were released, but unfortunately missed Thor: Ragnarok last year. Which is a pity, because it was directed by one of my favourites, Taika Waititi, who was responsible for one of my favourite movies, What We Do in the Shadows (if you haven’t watched it yet, what’re you waiting for – it is absolute gold!).

The latest installment in the Thor series was nothing short of magnificent. I loved the relationship between Thor and Hulk, and all the Loki karma. And well, Jeff Goldblum.

We’ve also been working our way through Marvel: Agents of SHIELD recently, as I discovered we can watch it on Amazon, and it has been really good to get immersed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, especially with Avengers: Infinity Wars just around the corner. And it has really cemented me as a Marvel fangirl.

Glimpses of wealth and colour

It is quite a thing, this blogging regularly again. Because I have specifically made it a goal this year, and booked time in my calendar for it, my brain has kicked back into gear and I start thinking about content for my next blog post halfway through the week already.

Because I travel a fair bit for work, I get to stay in hotels fairly often, and, because I have learned the value of loyalty points, I try and stay with the same chain wherever I go. As a result, I recently hit gold status with this hotel chain. The result is that I now get breakfast for free, access to the executive lounge where I can eat and drink for free and loads of other benefits.

And I realised that this is a small glimpse into the world of the wealthy, and this is just how it works. When you have and do not need, you get. The wealthy receive free gifts and food and many things they do not need, simply because they are wealthy. And those who really need rarely receive. I know this is a simplistic take on it, and I may expand on it in future in a more eloquent way.

I travelled to Leeds for work this week, which is one of my favourite places to travel to in England. I also like the journey because I travel via London King’s Cross, which is one of my favourite stations in London, and it is quite photogenic.

On beginnings and endings

I attended a work-related training course this week with some colleagues I knew from South Africa, as well as ones I haven’t met before, and it has been a great week of learning and introspection. I’ve been thinking for some time about changing the direction of my career a little, and this week has contributed to that feeling. Not quite sure where we will end up, but looking forward to the journey.

It is with great sadness that I say goodbye to my beloved Windows Phone this week. Since the platform is end of life and has been put to sleep, I have no option but to switch platforms. I have been looking at different options for some time now, because I knew this was coming, but finally decided to go with a One+ 5T, which I picked up yesterday. My last dance with Android was not too successful, but that was a few years ago. This time, we are not stepping on each other’s toes as much, but I think a big contributor to this is the fact that Microsoft has released a large stack of applications for Android, including Cortana and a launcher that gives a similar feel to Windows Phone, so the environment does not feel as alien to me.

I am quite happy with the camera though, so this makes up for the weirdness of the platform.

Of Dragons and Puddings

It is perhaps no secret that the husband and I really love castles, and one of my favourite documentary series to watch is Dan Jones’ Secrets of Great British Castles. I watched the second season in December, and decided that, since we now live on the island, we have the ability to visit these marvelous castles, and our first visit was to be Cardiff Castle.

As I travel a fair bit for work, I have managed to accumulate some loyalty points with a hotel chain, and decided to haul us off to Cardiff for a quick getaway with a night in a hotel paid for by said loyalty points, as a way of celebrating my birthday at the beginning of the week. We were fortunate enough to be upgraded to an executive room with a fantastic view of Cardiff Castle and it was simply breathtaking.

We spent some time on Monday walking around Cathays Park and surrounding areas, and had lunch at the wonderful The Owain Glyndwr.

We woke up on Tuesday morning to a very rainy Cardiff, so we postponed our castle exploration until later the day, and went to the movies instead to watch The Last Jedi again.

Luckily the weather cleared up while we were in the movies, and we got to explore the magnificent Cardiff Castle.

It is well worth a visit, even if you just visit the house for its spectacular interiors, especially in the Arab room.

I visited the lovely town of Knutsford this week for work purposes, where I unfortunately did not take any pictures, but, as I will be visiting again several times over the next few months, I will surely have some more opportunities for photos.

We ended the week off with an outing to St Albans yesterday with our friends, where we had some pudding for breakfast at The Pudding Stop and then stopped for drinks at Ye Olde Fighting Cocks (which claims to be one of the oldest pubs in England) while walking around Verulamium Park to look at the ruins of the city walls and gate which can be found in this park.

I end this week feeling incredibly grateful and wonderfully loved. I’ve had the best birthday I’ve had in years, and feel truly blessed to have so many friends who are willing to spend a day with us. It is these moments that make it easy to get through the darkness.