When Killers Cry

So having been on this planet for some time now, I am at last making headway in understanding how all the systems work, and have finally found an outlet for my creative juices. Yes, fellow travellers, a tome set in the Southernmost Colony is now available for all to buy, read, ponder and hopefully enjoy. All comments are welcome, as long as they are helpful and constructive and do not attack me, my body, my family, my cat or anyone else that knows me, personally. It is a daunting task to release one's first baby into the galaxy, and as any proud mother, I do hope it will be found, if not beautiful, at least entertaining and a little bit informative. It is not intended to be the definitive guide to all things 'apartheid', or even to compare in any way to Tolstoy or Grisham or Agatha Christie, although I do hope that some time in the future Charlize Theron and Arnold Vosloo will star in the Spielberg film, because at least they'll get the accents right. I'd settle for Leo of course, whose accent wasn't bad at all....or Damon...I digress...

Now, it does include some events from a dark time in the Colony's history, when I was but an undeveloped being, and these events are sometimes hard to read, especially if one grew up in the Southernmost Colony and did not know that the Colony had a vast army of beings flitting around disposing of enemies of the state. And it contains some 'colourful' language, which does not in any way reflect my own language or behaviour. For this is a work of fiction and the characters are creations of my over-active mind, and do not in any way resemble me or anyone that knows me. Really, they don't and if you think you see yourself in any of the characters, believe me when I tell you this...it's not YOU!

That said, I really hope you'll take the time to visit the vast cyber-shopping mall known as Amazon and will go to the section named after the stuff you make fires from, Kindle, and search therein for When Killers Cry, and will download it to whatever technological device you have in your possession. And if you do not own such devices and perhaps still live in the Colony, where it appears these small devices cost a veritable 'eish' amount of rands, then it can be purchased from here:


May the Force be with you all. Now get buying and tell all your friends to tell their friends to tell their friends...I need to make a trip to the Colony to catch up with those I left behind and have not seen for far too long!

Memories

Despite having crossed the galaxy to a new planet, there happily still remain beings from the Southernmost Colony that have remained stuck in my heart and that will stay there until I am but a speck of dust in a distant place.

As a child how could I ever have imagined that when I joined hands with another trembling six year old to lead a procession of 'Silent Night' singing school children down a long passage and into the school hall for the carol service, that I was embarking on a friendship that would survive for the rest of my life? And yet now that we are both slightly saggier and hopefully a lot wiser, we can pick up our friendship as if we are still two little blondes with scraped knees performing concerts for her long suffering mother in the back garden. And with the delights of cross galaxy travel, and was it easier to afford space craft fees and the new Interplanetary Access Visa for those from the Southernmost Colony, we would surely spend a lot more time together visiting castles and sipping tea.

And then something else from the mists of my past that warms the cockles of my heart, is when one of the little undeveloped beings that was in my care when I was a lowly pedagogue, contacts me via the Visage Book and tells me that he was not traumatised by songs about dirty socks and flatulent duchesses and that I did not leave him irreparably scarred when I dressed him up as an Indian brave or cannibal or pirate or even crawling crustacean, as I sometimes feared. And to my delight, a number of these undeveloped beings, now fully developed with spouses and undeveloped beings of their own, have contacted me, and though in my head they are still only 6 or 7 years old, it is a special treasure to know that I am remembered fondly...although there are surely some out there, you know who you are, that do not remember me fondly at all.

So many memories to comfort and entertain me on this planet I now call home....although I must confess to still having moments when I feel particularly alien, like when someone remarks on my accent, although in the dentist's chair or doctor's office it is a great conversation starter. Perhaps the accent has softened with time as have I, but the memories remain sharp and clear in my mind and I eagerly await more contact from the Southernmost Colony and life 'back in the day'.

Cycles of the Sun

Somehow the year 2011 has sped by without any reference to my life on the New Planet. I can't explain this except to admit to having fallen once more into the clutches of the assorted bugs and nasties that still take such pleasure in attacking my alien body. Oh how I long for the day when they will retreat and leave me alone.

But today I find myself reflecting on the passing of eleven cycles of the sun since arriving here, it feels like an eternity and yet like only yesterday, and somehow I am filled with a sense of melancholy once more at everything and everyone I left behind.

Of course, it's not that I regret leaving everything in the Southernmost Colony, it's simply that I miss the faces and skin of those I love. My remaining parent has shuffled off his mortal coil and waits for me in fields of Glory, the little boy I left is now grown into a strapping young man with a mind and humour all of his own, while the little girl with skinned knees is now tall and beautiful with legs to the armpits and a line of boys waiting to wine and dine her. Life in the Southernmost Colony has moved on without me and I can't help but wish that I'd been there to see it all change and that it had taken me with it. For somehow, despite the wonders of cyberspace and the constant ability to connect with my loved ones every minute of the day and night, there will always be changes I've not seen 'in progress' and that I will regret missing forever.

But the things that I remember of life there are still set in my mind and even though I know the political landscape has shifted, that day to day life is perhaps not quite as difficult and violence-filled as it was eleven years ago, I can't shake off the feeling of relief at being on a planet where I can walk down leafy lanes and drive at night without fear of attack. I'm sure there are those that still live there that will disagree with me and my thoughts of life in the Colony, but one thing I have discovered is that it is only in being away from it, far from the burglar bars and security gates and walls with machine gun mounts (!) and signs at the traffic lights (not robots because those are things that go beedy beep) warning me that I am in a hijacking hotspot, and the affirmative action that took two wonderful jobs from me, and toyi toyi-ing in the streets, and taxi drivers who use their vehicles as weapons of mass destruction, that it truly sinks in what it is to live in constant trepidation and how wonderful it is to live without it.

And yet, life here, on this planet, no longer so new after all, has been good for me, although there are days I wonder what the hell I'm doing here. I know though, that I have grown in ways I would never have done back in the Colony (and no, I don't mean the additional lumps and bumps attached to my hips and thighs and stomach),I mean the essence of myself, those hidden parts inside that have been stretched and challenged and forced to adapt to a new way of life and being. I have had to dig deep to places I never suspected I owned, to mine the recesses of my soul and summon up the strength that was hidden there and without which I fear I may have leaped off the nearest suspension bridge.

The dark days of the start are behind me now, but memories of them stay with me and resurface each year at the 15th May draws near. It seems odd to count down the years passing as I do, but somehow in doing that I ground myself once more and realise again how much strength I have gained while living here and how changed I am. It's hard to separate the golden memories of childhood from the not so rosy experiences of adulthood, and of course I will always think of the Southernmost Colony with fondness but I am finally now thinking of the New Planet as Home, and can no longer conceive of returning to the Colony to live, for how can one go back when so much within has changed? It is true that you can never go back...do holidays count as going back? Whatever life holds for me on the Home Planet now, it would not have been possible without a good start in the Southernmost Colony, where a little piece of my heart will always remain.

Garlic and commandos part deux

So at the the risk of my explorations of the garlic and baguette planet fading rapidly from my memory, I now continue my epistle.

Thuir, the tiny village we stayed in, is home to Cusenier, who make Cinzano, Dubonnet and other alcoholic beverages, so it seemed fitting to do a tour of the factory to see the world's largest oak vat, and my word, it was worth seeing, as was the warehouse filled with bags of sugar that are dumped into said oak vat, which holds 1000 200 litres. Now, I'm not much of a drinker myself, so the smell alone was enough to have me weaving about like a drunken sailor...or maybe it was the vertigo...but whatever, I'd imagine that falling into one of these enormous vats would be a very happy way to go, if you like that kind of thing. And I did taste everything, so perhaps it was the ten little glasses chucked down my throat in rapid succession...

There is an abundance of vineyards and baguettes on this planet, and mingled with the doughy smell of freshly baked bread and fermenting grapes, a lovely scent of chocolates and pastry wafted down the little cobbled streets, like a gourmet Pied Piper, calling to me to follow. While I can resist the urge to drink my body weight in wine, I am usually far less able to resist the rows and rows of truffles, pecan pies and e-normous eclairs that are displayed artistically in the windows of the local chocolatiers and patisseries. Fortunately for my waistline, my bank account imposed severe limitations on the number of truffles I could purchase and scoff. But the garlic planet is stuffed to the gills with gorgeous food and shopping Auchan, the huge supermarket in nearby Perpignan, had me in raptures of delight.

Only the French can do food like this. A cavernous shop, the size of an aeroplane hanger and filled to overflowing with the most divine, succulent, pungent, delectable (you get the picture) jars and bottles of pates and pastes, fromages and fruit, mussels, crayfish,oysters freshly plucked from the rocks, crabs still smelling of sea water, a veritable crustacean cornucopia of delight. I'm salivating at the memory. And not just ordinary old cheddar cheese either, you understand. No, fancy creamy, smelly, stinky, old-sock-flavoured cheeses that were begging to be purchased and polluted the fridge for days to come. Wonderful! I think there's something about eating these cheeses with a piece of baguette ripped off a fresh loaf, on the side of the road in a picnic spot in the Pyrenees, that makes it all the more special and delicious. And I haven't even mentioned the local market yet.I'll let the picture do the talking shall I?
Food featured prominently in the trip, for me anyway, because it is all so wonderfully presented and what we on the New Planet consider exotic, to the baguette eaters is simply every day fare, and I say this with a Gallic shrug of my shoulders. Even pottering around ancient Carcasonne with its fairytale towers , crenelated battlements and the obligatory winding, cobbled streets, it was impossible to escape the chocolaty, fudgey, coffee-scented smells wafting towards me like an exotic dancer weaving her magic spell around her awe-struck audience. A trip to La belle France, would not be complete without a sugar covered crepe accompanied by a cup of molten hot chocolate (and nougat), that sticks to the top of your mouth and drips down your throat with a typically French attitude. Yum, and to hell with the diet!

I can honestly say that I fell in love; with the tree-lined streets, the old crumbling monasteries and churches, the villages perched like mountain goats on impossibly steep mountain sides, the people with their shrugging and lip-pursing and wonderfully melodic language, the exotic and foreign foods and the sense of being stuck in the past at every bend in the road. What more can I say? Vive La France. (And very happy to have finally uploaded photos...)

Reminiscing

Back in the Southernmost Colony, during my undeveloped years, I attended a Pedagogical Institution run along the lines of a fascist penal colony. At a time when hormones raged rampant and passions exploded without warning, we were subjected to the whims and draconian views of a purple-haired pedagogue, who seemed to think that the undeveloped beings in her care were there to be moulded into a being without instinct or creative thought of her own. Pity the poor girl that dared to disagree with anything that she was taught was 'fact'. Christian National Education did not encourage 'free spirits' and neither did my girls-only penal institution.

Dressed in apple green, we were warned of the dangers of 'under-wired brassieres',which, our purple-haired pedagogue was convinced, would lead the 'young Sir Galahad's across the railway line' into temptation. I often wondered exactly how these young Sir Galahads would know we were wearing such undergarments without removing our outer garments first, surely the very thing she was worried about in the first place. We were forced to wear 'sensible' knickers - navy or apple green and nothing else at all would do, and I seem to recall pantie checks to ensure we were in fact stuffed into these thick nylon instruments of torture. Wearing trousers was considered a sure sign that you 'batted for the other side' and that they at the very least 'encouraged' such inclinations.Huh? We were prohibited from draping ourselves over anything dressed in khaki (those famous sir Galahads-our brother school- across the railway line) and were banned from taking part in athletics as this was considered 'unladylike', never mind that we could run around the hockey field in short skirts whacking one another on the shins with a stick and somehow, that was not considered unladylike! And though were could not wear under-wired brassieres, we could however wander around in skin tight, wet Speedos in full view of the public and Sir Galahads and somehow that did not lead them into temptation.

Now, this may sound like fun to you, but I found it oppressive and they were the most miserable five years of my life and the day I left I swore blind that I would never return, that my shadow would never again darken the hallowed halls, never mind the 'middle stairs' of the Institution. And then the invites to the reunions began arriving. WHY? I ask myself. Why would I want to go back there?

Of course there's always the lure of reuniting with old friends and perhaps an even older pedagogue who has not yet shuffled off her mortal coil, but even these are hardly persuasive. But, after a decade, on the insistence of my mater, I did indeed attend one of these events in the hope that I could exorcise the ghosts and heal the wounds that had been inflicted. And yes, I met up with some old friends, which was lovely, but what I also found was that, no matter how successful, happy and fulfilled we were now, we instinctively slipped back into the roles that had been created for us while being held prisoner there.

The bossy prefect types, STILL seemed to think they're prefects and that we should obey them without question, the teachers STILL spoke to us as if we were either a)the brilliant scientist/hockey player and therefore perfect scholar/person who could do no wrong, or b) the nerdy, swot who won the Maths Olympiad but had no social life to speak of (who then went on to crash out of University because of all the pressure), or c) the 'non-girl', who did subjects that weren't considered academic enough or who didn't play in the 'first team' and was therefore 'not good enough'. Included in this group were those who didn't join in with anything for the entire five years of servitude, kept their heads down and got out of there relatively unscathed, and d) the late bloomers; the artists and writers and designers, who at the time were labelled rebellious and underachieving, but came into their own once the shackles had been removed and have flourished outside the confines of the penal colony. And yet these girls were STILL treated like they weren't quite up to par and I know that no amount of protesting or evidence to the contrary, would ever convince those bossy prefects or disapproving over-achievers or bitter pedagogues that life has moved on and that we are no longer those same 18 year old girls who trembled in awe at the horned purple-haired dictator. Who needs this, I ask myself?

And so when the next invites arrived, apart from the fact that I've migrated across the galaxies and settled on the New Planet, I really have no desire to revisit those awful years. Why do people insist on trying to get us all together every decade or so? What purpose does it really serve except to bring up old memories? Maybe there are some that still have good memories, perhaps those years were the glory years for them and hence they feel the need to relive them over and over. I have very few good memories of the penal colony and finally I'm not too ashamed to say it out loud. So many years have now passed, so much water has flowed under the bridge, why should five miserable years be held up as so iconic, as the best years of our lives? It would be very sad if those years were the best we could do.

Thanks to the interweb, I am still in touch with those I WANT to be in touch with,and have sought them out on that website, you know the one, but sorry, there are some that I don't miss, don't care about and don't really want to see again. And why do the girls that I know hated me at school, that whispered nastily about me behind my back, NOW suddenly want to 'be my friend'. They should put an 'I don't Care' button on that website!

Garlic and baguettes

One of the best things about the new Planet, I have discovered, is now that I am in possession of a lovely maroon Interplanetary Wayfarer Permit, I am allowed to cross the small stretch of water between this planet and those on the other side of 'Le Channel', with nary a sniffy look or very-costly-long-waited-for-ridiculously-expensive visa in sight.

Imagine my delight at sailing through the Portation Gateway on the other side with only a polite 'Bonjour' at the border control man who barely even glanced at me or my Permit. I could have been a traveller with murderous intent, for all he knew, but the maroon document gave me instant access...or perhaps I simply don't look like an international terrorist bent on carnage and mayhem. I allowed myself a small smile (smirk?) at the holder of a blue Permit (I'm not sure what planet this poor soul arrived from)and the barrage of questions, not to mention the queue, that greeted him. And no sooner had I arrived in the great Baggage Claim Hall than my black and grey striped suitcase came trundling out of the black hole that had earlier consumed it on the other planet, and I was on my way into a glorious land of garlic and baguettes.

And what a beautiful place it is to be sure. From the tiny medieval villages perched on hilltops, the ancient, crumbling monasteries and churches, to the the tree lined roads and fluffy sheep grazing on mountain sides (obviously the legs on their left side are shorter than on the right otherwise they would roll down the mountain and land up in a mouton stew), to the vast expanses of golden sands and Blackpoolish tourist areas. It amazed me how no matter what planet you are on, a seaside town remains a seaside town, and apart from the language and the currency, they are all the same...rows of postcards, tacky hats, plastic 'crocs', hand-crafted shell ornaments (!) and plastic-tasting hamburgers. Why? Why, I ask myself, does this happen? Is there some vast warehouse in a distant galaxy that dispenses grotty stuff to be flogged on the seafront of every planet with a coastline?

And just as I was about to despair at the sight of tattooed, beer-swilling, socks-with-sandals-wearing tourists from the New Planet (so instantly recognisable it makes the stomach churn), I discovered a small fishing village uncorrupted by 'les Anglais', where the coffee was thick and pungent, where the food had been caught merely hours earlier, and where not a soul spoke the language of the New Planet. Here I was forced to speak in la langue I was certain I'd forgotten. But, to my delight, the natives on the planet understood me and, if they spoke slowly and didn't switch to Catalan, which sounds like Greek to me, they understood me too and I was able to navigate my way around the village and the menu with very few nasty surprises. Okay, maybe I did end up eating horse or cat, but if I did, I didn't know it. The sheer joy of discovering I had not lost 'it', cannot be adequately expressed, but has certainly resulted in a surge of desire to speak la langue a whole lot better.

Imagine the joy of my companion and I when we found ourself in Collioure, the charming coastal town where the planet's commandos train. Not only did we get to see the magnificent fort where they are stationed, but we also got to watch handsome men in skin-tight wet suits with very large guns slung across their chests, practising their canoeing and swimming skills. What more could two girls on their holiday ask for? And once we had wrenched our eyes away from their well honed and taut bodies, I discovered that this was where the first ever commando unit was trained during WW2 and where the term 'shock and awe' originated. Wandering through the cobbled streets with its coloured houses and wooden shutters in pastel shades I found myself transported and enthralled. All those people that live and work there and I didn't know a single one and will most likely never see any of them again, although I'd quite like to meet up with one of the commandos on a dark night....


My friend and I stayed in a medieval town with tiny winding streets where we got lost every night while trying to get home, going round and round trying to find the actual street that led to our gite, hysterical with fatigue and fury at constantly finding ourselves going the wrong way up a one way alley that is only wide enough for a horse and cart. Fortunately the natives were friendly and shook their heads and waggled their fingers at us, saying 'non, non,' before ushering us backwards towards the right street, except in the middle of the night when we simply went round and round before giving up in frustration and going the wrong way up a one way road because we needed to get to bed...and the loo. And by day seven of our ten day holiday, we finally cracked the code and figured out the route.

I did not however, get used to the clock in the 16th century church two metres away from us tolling every 15 minutes, all day and through the night. Four dongs before the hour, then the dongs to signal the hour. And then, just as I was falling asleep dong, one dong on the quarter hour, which woke me in a fright with my whole body quivering in dread. And back to sleep only for dong, dong on the half hour. Once again the body jerked awake, but drifted off until dong, dong, dong, on the forty five minute mark, followed by four dongs just before the hour and then 10, 11, 12, 1, 2, 3,dongs...you get the picture. I won't even mention the dustbin men who trundled the bins down the streets at 4am, every morning. Have you ever heard a wheelie bin being dragged down a cobbled street in the middle of the night? The first night I was certain it was the Anschluss.

By the fifth night or so I could pretty much cope with the donging and no longer woke in fright, until one early morning, a siren began wailing at about 3pm. I woke in panic, dived under the bed, convinced we were being attacked, that it was an air raid, that the Germans were coming, but then it stopped and I took a breath only for the wailing, like a cat inside a washing machine, to suddenly start up again five minutes later, by which stage I was wide awake and convinced the Gestapo was about to arrive and carry me off to be tortured. The next day while at the boulangerie purchasing the daily delicious baguette (WHY can they not make decent baguettes on the New Planet?) the air was rent once more by the siren, which everyone else ignored, and I wondered if I was losing my mind and hearing things. So I asked the boulanger, to be told it was only the 'pompiers'. Obviously a local volunteer fire brigade being summoned to duty. What a relief....until it went of at 4am once more!

There's so much more to tell, I think I will curtail this epistle and leave the rest for another time...

Chivalrous or chauvinist?

Many moons ago, when I embarked on an expeditionary trip to the New Planet, I encountered something I'd not seen much of on the Southernmost Colony. I'm not talking about the mountains of steps leading out of the underground, although there are none of those on the Southernmost Colony, but the men that helped me lug my over-packed suitcase with wonky wheels up said steps, without so much as a, "Jeez, you wouldn't look very good in a bikini,' look on their faces.

Now to explain. I was friends with a beautiful woman back on the Southernmost Colony. The man-walks-into-a-lamp-post kind of beautiful. The kind of beautiful where every other woman within a five mile radius of her becomes invisible, because her beauty is not only skin deep but extends into her soul. And I was quite accustomed to being invisible. 'Ag shame!' I hear you cry, but no, that's not the point. The point is we all feel invisible from time to time, and we all know what it's like to be ignored by strangers who are so busy gawping at your friend that you don't even factor into the conversation.

And then I came to reconnoitre the New Planet, without my beloved friend. It must be something to do with the type of man I encountered here that made the difference. For there seemed to be a chivalrous streak within them that I personally found sadly lacking in the males on my home planet, who were more concerned about the size of my bra than the size of my intellect....or that's how it seemed to me. I can honestly say that not one man there (who wasn't a friend) ever offered to help me out in a jam. My beautiful friend, on the other hand, had men falling over their own feet to help her out. Attention that I don't think was always welcome. But when I and my suitcase fell out of the tube at Paddington Station, more than one gentleman helped me up and assisted me in carrying the offending case up the stairs. It happened more than once, actually and so the memory of this chivalry stayed with me for a long time.

Then I came to reside on the New Planet, and imagine my dismay when I discovered that men who behaved in a chivalrous manner were now accused of being chauvinists for daring to open a door or pull out a chair or allow a woman to enter a room first. Well, I confess, that having a man behave in this way does NOT make me feel like a second-rate citizen. Yes, I am perfectly capable of opening a door myself, but I rather like it when a gentleman does so for me. I can hear the feminists out there shrieking in dismay. Tough. I like it.

And more annoying than the feminists who object to mere men daring to assist them or behave politely, is the fact that I have observed it is mainly the old men, those older than sixty, who still think it is their duty to behave like a knight in shining armour, whereas the younger men seem to have descended the evolutionary ladder and become pushing, grunting beasts with no care about the 'weaker sex', not that I in any way consider myself weak. A very dear octogenarian friend, was telling me last week how he recently opened a door for a young woman struggling with shopping bags and a toddler,and she turned to him in a fury and remarked, 'I am perfectly capable of opening a door on my own, thank you!' to which he replied, 'And I am perfectly incapable of not opening it for you.'

Another thing I have observed of late, is that now, when I go out with another friend who is approaching eighty (I do have an awful number of very old friends I confess) I have noticed that now it is her who is invisible. When we are in a restaurant or pub or the garage, younger men tend to talk directly to me, avoid looking at her and act as if she's not there. I wonder if she notices? It is something I suddenly realised last week when we took her tyre in to the garage and the 'man' spoke to me, telling me what he would do, how much it would cost etc, and pretty much acted like she was a senile old dear that couldn't possibly understand what he was on about.

No doubt the time will come when I once more become invisible, but for now, I quite like being spoken to as if I'm not an idiot, or treated like I don't exist because I am not endowed with physical beauty or have a creased face and crooked back. I do wish there were more chivalrous men out there, just to balance the inordinate number of chauvinists that lurch about in pubs and shopping centres ignoring those that are precious, just because they do not live up to some unachievable standard of beauty or have skin that doesn't quite fit any more and walk with a stick. Come on, you men! It's time to remount your white steed (or white Skoda) and rescue a few damsels, even if they don't want to be rescued.