Rambles from World's End

Growing up as the only sister to three brothers has been both a blessing and a curse. One day I felt like “the rose among the thorns” but other times I was that lonely “little petunia in an onion patch.” The first twelve years of my life were torture; my “big brothers” were mean! I have a few memories of happy fun times shared with them both, but I have loads of memories of their meanness and their relentless teasing. Funny thing is I also recall that most of these horrid tricks they played on me were when my parents were out. My older brothers were not nice baby sitters! I looked forward to the day they would both finish high school and head off into the big wide world and I would get to have the house and my parents to myself! But then my baby brother came along and spoilt all my plans! Being the only sister to three brothers, especially with the age gaps as they are, was sometimes very lonely. My older brothers had each other for company all the time and I was often left alone with...

I had a rather tear filled “Facebook” conversation with someone very special just recently and it got me thinking about when we first arrived at the end of the world and how we coped. I also realised that the Mauritian and I had never really talked about those “early” days and our coping mechanisms so over a good bottle of Nederberg and excellent lamb roast on what is the twelfth anniversary of our marriage I broached the subject. This is what we discovered... Most people we knew said that I would really battle being separated from my family, that being so far away from my parents would be extremely hard for me. These same people also predicted that the Mauritian would find the move a lot easier and certainly would not miss his dad much at all. To those of you out there that are nodding your heads in agreement I have only this to say... Wrong! Even though leaving my family was the hardest thing I have ever done I have coped very well with the home sickness and the challenge of star...

So our twelfth anniversary has rolled around and we have planned a splendid day of celebration. As has become our custom we grab a few bottles of good red wine, the Mauritian cooks a roast and we spend the day at home with each other reminiscing and discussing. Our weekend started off with a bang on Saturday morning, literally! I was going to bake a batch of muffins with breakfast and asked the Mauritian to turn on the oven to warm it up. Suddenly there is this rather strange bang like popping noise coming from the kitchen. On investigation we find that the glass on the inside of the over door has shattered! Guess I won’t be making those muffins now! The Mauritian, of course, has become irritated and restless and is cursing everyone and their dog for breaking the oven and interfering with his plans to make his superb lamb roast on Sunday. I really do think sometimes that if he could he would growl! So after eventually realising that what happened was really nobody’s fault he called t...

After the bone chilling cold of winter and the wet colourless spring, summer has dawned blue and bright. I am beginning to understand why the summers here at the end of the world are so full of activity. People, like bears, hibernate in the winters here, some days it’s too cold to move! But come the spring and people start to emerge and venture out into the fresh air only to run back inside out of the spring rains. Last year, our first here at the end of the world, was magical! My drab lifeless garden did just about “spring” into life over night and I spent my days wondering around the garden marvelling at all the colour. This year it has been more gradual and very, very wet, no magic there at all. But now the summer has finally woken up and we have had a cloudless week to bask in the sun. With the summer comes energy and desire to absorb the warmth of the sun. It’s also a time when every house on our street has washing lines packed with washing day after cloudless day. People are cle...

A few blogs ago I was strutting like a proud peacock and boosting about how well behaved and disciple my little Butterfly is. I really must learn to keep my big mouth shut! She all but gave me the finger today and today has gone down as the worst day of my life. I think today she has made up for three years of good behaviour and earned her nick name “Terror-Marie.” I never want another day like today, ever! It started this morning with a tantrum because she wanted to watch television. On Sunday mornings while her favourite parent cooks breakfast the television stays off and the music is on. To his credit and for the first time ever the Mauritian did not give into her and she earned her first smack from him when she threw her moon chair out the back door. Breakfast consisted of a refusal to eat anything except her bacon and trying to steal my bacon off my plate. So I sent her to her room, to which she screamed “I’m not going to my room!” and slammed her fist on the table. Well, not th...

There was a comment made on my recent post “It’s a Question of Faith” from one of my many “cousin’s-in-law.” Her comment disagreed with my opinion that we all worship the same God. This blog is not, I repeat, not a rebuttal of her comment! I will save that for when we are sitting across from each other at the dinner table with a bottle of wine or two between us. What her comment did do was remind me of a prose piece which I would like to share with you all here. Some of you know it, most of you I have told about it, all of you will benefit from reading it! It is called “There Are Too Many Saviours on my Cross” It was written and performed by Richard Harris on his album, "Slides". It was written about the conflict in Northern Ireland around the time of the Bogside Massacre known also as “Bloody Sunday” at a time when it seemed to matter how one worshipped. I believe, however, that these words are as appropriate today as they were almost forty years ago. “There are too m...

Grap a beverage this is a long one, with absolutely no point to it at all. So I’m a stay at home mum of one with what should be a lot of time on my hands to pursue the things I enjoy doing, namely writing! Wrong! Making the time to sit quietly at my computer and write my blogs or my poetry is hard. When I do get the chance I often give up something else like quality time in the evenings with the Mauritian after the Butterfly is in bed or sleep when I wake up extra early to take advantage of the dark and quiet. I am, after many a false start, now rather well organised and my day runs pretty much to plan and I do try to put some time aside for my writing, I seldom get to use that time for what it was meant for. My day should start around 5.30am, with a stumble out of bed and into the kitchen to prepare the Mauritian’s lunch and his breakfast. Those of you who know the Mauritian also know how much he loves his food and that to him cereal in the morning is not breakfast. Knowing that ...

So the morning of the last Saturday of the month’s rolls around, the Mauritian is off at gym working the past week out of his system and the butterfly is charging about the house naked when there is the expected knock at the door. It is time for the monthly visit from the local Jehovah’s Witness who goes by the name of Jeff. Jeff is a “landscaper” by trade, an intelligent man with an open and honest face and a friendly and respectful manner. He is also a lapsed Catholic who has dedicated himself to the “Jehovah's Witness” sect and it determined to convert me. I admire his determination, his debating skills and his knowledge of the bible and look forward to a debate I can sink my teeth into for half an hour once a month. I started out just listening to what he had to say as I had absolutely no knowledge of what a “JW” believes or does not, I even started reading the little pamphlets they give out. Then I started to compare the bible quotes in these pamphlets to that of my own bible ...

Just over a month ago, here at the end of the world, the earth moved! Stop smirking I mean that literally, the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates shifted and the earth literally moved. The Rictor Scale measured a 7.1 earthquake with the epicentre just south of Christchurch along a fault line that nobody knew existed. According to one report the last time this particular fault line is thought to have moved was about sixteen thousand years ago and it made up for this lack of movement by condensing it all into about two minutes and shifted up to five kilometres in places instead of a slow four millimetres a year. A month later and the aftershocks just keep coming with reports of up to one hundred aftershocks in one day. But the most miraculous fact about this is that to date there has not been a single fatality. There is a poem by William Congreve which ends “...Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd.” The earths temperature is rising the polar ice caps are melting faster. The h...

I had a bitter exchange with a woman at the supermarket a few weeks ago. The Butterfly was having one of her very rare disobedient moments and completely ignoring my requests or instructions. So after three warnings I smacked her butt, where upon this woman berated me for being so cruel and abusive and embarrassing my child like that in public! I was rather taken aback and retaliated with a rather bitchy “Would you rather I put her in a time out and gave her a lolly for misbehaving?” In hindsight I should have just acted dumb, smiled sweetly and nodded as I walked away. But as I generally leap before I look I plunged feet first into a very heated debate with a very hot headed stubborn and not so intelligent individual. Now don’t misunderstand me, I do not advocate smacking as the only form of discipline and I do agree that in some cases it can be abusive. I also do not discount using the “timeout” method. For both me and the Butterfly using a combination of smacks and timeouts works ...

The Butterfly was spending her “calm down time” before bed sitting next to her favourite parent and listening to a “Celtic Women” CD and I was struck by how clearly she sang along with the music, even those songs in Gaelic. I realised then what an amazing command of English she has, even the extent of her vocabulary seems impressive. People often remark about how alert and intelligent she is for her age, and so many people seem genuinely impressed by how well she speaks. Now I am her mother and by nature am biased, I also have no clue what she should or shouldn’t understand or know at her age and am therefore often blown away by my child. The Butterfly finds most foods “delicious,” my clown collection “gorgeous,” playing hop scotch with mum “delightful” and wine “superb.” I have no idea if she really knows what these words mean but she has never used them out of context. She has worked out how to swop CD’s and DVD’s and how to make them work she also now knows how to navigate around ...

I had an interesting conversation over Sunday roast with a friend about the “Creation vs. Evolution” debate. Most people have a basic understanding about “Darwin’s Theory of Evolution” and the “missing link” and most people are aware of the teachings of Christianity. I have listened to the view of the “creationist” and the “evolutionist” and I have marvelled at how blind to a compromise these people are. “Evolutionists” seem to think all Christians are “creationist” and therefore gullible and unaware and all so called “creationists” seem to label “evolutionists” as atheist. I think people have gotten so caught up in the debate and desperate to prove themselves right they have lost the ability to be “open minded.” I wonder how many of these people realise that Darwin was a devout Christian and that these theories he developed went against everything he believed and rocked the very foundations of his faith. Yet as a scientist he could not dispute the facts and proof that seemed to p...

I had made a comment on my “Facebook” page about the Mauritian, saying something along the lines of his “compulsion” for perfection was bordering on “obsessive.” This sparked a “conversation” between me, my Angel and my new friend about “OCD.” I have always wondered at the Mauritian’s insistence that anything he cooks or builds must be absolutely perfect and the smallest, unnoticeable mistake will infuriate and annoy him to a point where he will not enjoy the food or whatever it is he has done. I think he goes a little overboard and when he rants and raves I just roll my eyes, mutter under my breath and walk away from him. I like how his food tastes I don’t care what it looks like and the woodwork or drawings he has done look brilliant as far as I’m concerned, he disagrees a lot of the time. My Angel and my new friend between them seem to have a rather long list of compulsions. According to them, there is only one way the toilet roll should go on to the dispenser. Towels, sheets and...

The Butterfly’s third birthday has come and gone in a whirl of wrapping paper, balloons and smiles. Again the Mauritian and I were faced with the problem of what not to buy for her birthday. We were very proud of the fact that we only walked out the shop with two books, a cordless microphone, a small tub of “Play Dough” and of course the next addition to her collection of “In the Night Garden” toys. It seems almost unreal now that only three years ago, after a sleepless night the Mauritian and I were heading off to the hospital to finally welcome our daughter into this crazy messed up world. But three years ago it was that this stubborn, bright and beautiful bundle came into my life screaming, red faced and indignant. For the past three and a bit years now she has done or said something every day that has had some sort of effect on me. For the past three and a bit years I have been floating on a bubble of pride about this little miracle, who is a part of me. Every day I look at her ...

One of the blogs I follow is written by the enchanting wife of one of my many charming cousins, I enjoy reading them because they are so real and it does in some way keep me connected to a small part of my family. This morning as usual I followed my normal daily routine rounded off with a quick blog update. Her blog this morning spoke of those rare moments between a husband and wife when one simple comment from him makes her speechless with indecision. Should she laugh, scream or cry? Should she hit him or hug him? For just that split second of silence the world holds its breath waiting for the wife to realise that there was not only insightfulness and some truth in what the husband said but also humour and love. As I said, a rare moment! So it was one of those moments that my fellow “blogette” shared and while it made me laugh delightfully it reminded me of a moment this wife shared with her husband. To tell the story with any affect, however, I do need to give you some background!...

I discovered a completed yet unposted blog in among my files this evening. I was rather bemused at how I had forgotten about it and put it down to a recurrence of “porridge brain” one of the last remaining afflictions left over from pregnancy. It is a few months out of date, but still worth sharing, I think. So grab yourselves a beverage and settle in for a ramble. This blog started on a Friday morning in mid May at around 2am with the Butterfly climbing over me elbow to rib cage, knee to breast bone so she could “sleep” between her favourite parent and her Mum. Two hours later I banished her back to her own bed and threatened her with a life time of no nakedness if she made the slightest sound for the next four hours. To my delight and surprise, it worked, and with the Mauritian on a day’s leave we were able to sleep in past the sunrise. Breakfast was an unrushed feast complimented with oodles of coffee and conversation, rounded off with a trip to the local “zoo” and a run about the...

The Mauritian had a rare nostalgic moment one Saturday morning, put on my “Colesky” CD, played the song “Share My Life” and asked me to dance. So there we were, in our pyjamas slow dancing in our teeny tiny kitchen. Not to be out done the Butterfly joined in with a “Hey guys, what you doing?” and wrapped her arms around my leg and swayed in the completely wrong direction to us. My Mauritian is not a romantic, nor does he get sentimental very often so I treasure those times when he comes home with a chocolate or some other small present that he thought I might like. He is not someone who buys birthday and Christmas presents on time without a lot of prompting and reminding, but he has no issue with just giving a gift for no reason other than he thought I’d like it. Though I will admit that the day he comes home with flowers I will want to know what it is he has done wrong. I can count on one hand the number of times he has brought me flowers in the 20 years I have known him, in fact I c...

A man died today, he was not famous, influential or rich, he did not win any “Nobel” prizes or leave his mark in the history books, but he sure made an impact on the lives of those who knew him. He was a father, a grandfather, a husband, an ex husband, a son, a brother, a cousin and an old family friend. He laughed with enthusiasm, reminisced with a smile and told the nastiest jokes he could think of. He was the inspiration behind the old adages: “He drinks like a fish and smokes like a chimney!” I am sure he has nursed thousands of hangovers. He was unashamedly racist and didn’t care that what he said was offensive to some, me included. In fact, I believe he said some things precisely because they were offensive. He was most certainly not a religious man, though he was by no means “Godless,” he was a hooligan, not a heathen. He enjoyed the company of not just his generation but also that of a younger generation, a generation that enjoyed his company immensely. I am sure there are man...

My lifelong friend packed her bags and headed back to South Africa for a visit yesterday. My immediate reaction to the news that she was going was how lucky she was to be going home for a visit so soon after moving to the end of the world. The reality is she has dipped into their savings and gone without her family for the express purpose of visiting her ailing father. He had a rather bad reaction to a hip operation and as he has to undergo more major surgery she has headed home to spend time with him, just in case. The Mauritian has just recovered from an anxious few month after hearing that my grumpy father-in-law was involved in a rather serious motor bike accident. It seems that there were a lot of complications brought on by the accident and he was in and out of hospital since January. The Mauritian is by nature a worrywart and in these past months he has almost driven both of us into insanity. We had to make an arrangement to pay off our large phone bill because the poor Maurit...

I was talking to my very talented mum this morning via that marvellous invention called “SKYPE” and telling her about the antics of my rather entertaining Butterfly and it occurred to me how much more time I spend laughing at her antics then I do scowling. Every fortnight we all bundle into our trusty $200 Nissan and head off to do a grocery shop. Every fortnight I arrive home with not only groceries but also a Butterfly story or two. The Butterfly refuses point blank to sit in the chair part of the shopping cart and as shops here do not allow you to put a child in the main part of the cart, Butterfly gets to stroll around on foot. Come to think of it though, I doubt I would ever have put the Butterfly in the cart anyway as I am sure she would have tried to eat just about everything we put in the cart, packaging and all. The Mauritian stresses uncontrollably when our Butterfly behave instinctively like a child and runs off down the shopping aisle and I find it extremely irritating tryi...