It's always nice to open a magazine and see three of your stories published in one issue. The latest WWD Fast, a biannual publication of WWD which focuses on jeans, sportswear and youth culture, carries three pieces by me - one on Eairth, the organic line by Filipino designer Melissa Dizon, one on Metropolitain Cosmetics, just about the best beauty and fragrance shop in Johannesburg, and one on my favorite African city, Cape Town.
Read them after the break.
I've been waking up to some amazing views lately. This morning, in Cape Town, from the patio of my fabulous room at The Dock House - a sublimely chic six-room villa-type boutique hotel in what used to be the Residence of the Harbour Engineer in the mid-1800s - I woke up to this:
Went to Switzerland and didn't ski but came back with a tan. So tanned that my children didn't recognize me when I picked them up from school. And so tanned that my older daughter cheekily pulled down my top to ascertain whether the sudden and uncharacteristic tan was an epidermal phenomenon limited to my face, chest and arms, or all over my body.
So there I was at an airport terminal, somewhere in the Middle East, en route to Europe to see the man. I scanned the coffee shop, staffed naturally by Filipinos, hoping to park myself at a table and keep myself awake for the next three hours with a cup of java. I heard an accent that was unmistakably - for want of a better description - Manila-NuVo-Embassy-by way of Boston University.
For the next 10 days...
Lugging along to read:
- On Beauty by Zadie Smith
- Walking Into the Night by Olaf Olafsson
- Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
- The Nautical Chart by Arturo Perez-Reverte
The place we're going to is quite remote, on the south coast of Durban. Lots of cooking, lots of eating, lots of sunning, lots of reading, but not much blogging!
On the drive back from Swaziland, I belatedly realized that there were at least two books set in Swaziland - Richard E Grant's Wah-Wah Diaries (based on the movie), and, of course, King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard. We'd driven past a pub called Quatermain, which reminded me of Allan Quatermain, which reminded me of the movie King Solomon's Mines...
After we'd crossed the Swazi border post of Ngwenya, we went into the SA border post, Oshoek - greyer and grubbier than Ngwenya. Luckily, we got to the Immigration counter before the lunchtime travellers arrived. A big black woman (BBW) regarded me across the glass partition.
BBW: Where is your permit?
Me: It's in my other passport, which has expired. Here. (I hand over the passport. My visa's linked to a retired person's permit.)
BBW: Are you retired?
Me: (smiling) Do I look retired? No, it's from the spouse - the soon-to-be-ex spouse.
BBW: Why, you getting a divorce?
Me: Yup, for the last three years?
BBW: Why you want to get divorce? It's better to stay with him. Hard to find a man, just stay with him.
Me: (silently: Ok, you're an immigration officer, not a marriage counsellor. And there's a queue growing right behind me. Trust me, you don't want to hear my saga) Men aren't necessary.
BBW: (makes a gesture with her hand) Eesh, how can you say that? Where you going to get this?
Me: (thinking she means money) I work.
BBW: (making gesture again) No, what about this? Where you get this?
Me: (realizing she's made a fist with her thumb protruding between her index and middle fingers) Oh my god! (now mortified at having provided free entertainment to a growing audience) Well, life is like a gas station. Sometimes you have to go for self-service.
BBW: (clearly not impressed) Hmmmm! Is not enough.
Now my friend, stunning, dusky, dewy and exotic - very much the epitome of morena Filipina beauty - let's call her MFB - is waiting with increasing yet good-natured impatience behind me with her kids and maid.
MFB: No one has to stay in a bad marriage.
BBW: Aieeee, but you still need a man. For this (again the rather crude fist)
MFB: In our country men don't beat women!
Me: Yeah, in our country the women beat the men!
BBW laughs and lets us all go.
In the meantime, MFB's maid has fainted on the concrete floor.
By the way, I have no clue how self-service works at the gas station. And that's NOT a metaphor.
Halfway into my brief Swaziland sojourn - apart from verdant, rolling hills and grazing cows which brought to mind Gruyère, Switzerland in the summer, it was pretty much a South African colony, and a reluctant one at that, I could sense - it finally dawned on me who the Swazi king reminded me of:
Yup, Bernie Mac.
In December Swaziland celebrates Eat the Pickings of the Teeth Month. Just in case you're interested.
All I know about Swaziland is that the country is ruled by a king who marries a new wife every year. Or something like that. There must be a dedicated automated phone service in Swaziland just for his divorces:
"Welcome to the Divorce Express Service.
Please select service.
Press 1 if you are seeking a divorce for the first time.
Press 2 if this is not your first divorce.
Press 3 if you are the king. Your divorce is granted. No explanation necessary.
However, please select service for your most recent ex-wife.
Press 1 to throw her in prison.
Press 2 to exile her to another country.
Press 3 to exchange her for her younger sister.
The King's you-must-marry-me-and-be-my-number-(insert number here)-bride face, via BBC.
Just kidding.
Anyway... Swaziland is tiny so a road trip around the country will probably take 30 minutes. Which leaves a lot of time to catch up on some reading.
Books I'm taking with me:
The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold
Skinner's Drift by Lisa Fugard
Amazing Disgrace by James Hamilton-Paterson
Not sure which one I'll start with, but so far I'm feeling the pull of the ghost of Manila, James Hamilton-Patterson. Amazing Disgrace sounds hilariously absurd. My friend Trish, a newspaper editor and book reviewer who recommended the book, was telling me about a scene where the main character is visiting this famous conductor whose memoirs he wants to ghostwrite. At one point, apparently, he excuses himself from the dinner table and mistakes a cupboard for the toilet... It reminded me of that scene in William Boyd's Stars and Bars, where the guy from the auction house makes faces at the daughter of a prospective client, thinking she's blind because she's always wearing dark glasses, but it turns out she's not.
I love absurd. I'm from flipland, as Ninfa calls it. It's the original Absurdistan.
