Vuvu...what?

It might have escaped the notice of some, although they would have to be on an abandoned planet in the depths of nowhere with no electricity or contact with the rest of the universe, (or in the United States of America) that the Southernmost Colony is hosting a massive sporting event from today onwards, an event that will be beamed across the galaxies and into the homes of gazilllions of people, fans of ball kicking or not.

And if one thing is sure, it is that beer swilling will increase exponentially, but in the Southernmost Colony only hops-juice from a certain 'we're not really interested in saa-cker' nation, may be consumed at stadia, in stadia, near stadia or within reach of stadia, much to the disgust and dismay of the makers of said beverage who actually make a better brew than that sponsored by 'you know-who'. And so I won't mention Castle or Lion Lager...or the hundreds of ice-cream sellers, biltong sellers, koeksuster sellers, cool-drink sellers and flag sellers who are, for the duration of the great event, banned from making a living by 'you-know-who', who have a monopoly on all goods and services offered at stadia, in stadia, near....you get the picture.

So the Southernmost Colony has burst forth into a cacophony of sound and colour and national pride, and long may it last, I say. Despite the pretty poor odds of the national team doing anything other than going out in the early stages, to a collective groan and blaring of trumpet thingies, at least they'll all have a stonking good time while it lasts. Not only that, they will forever be the team that scored the first goal at this event, even if all they could manage was a draw...not bad at all Bafana.

I wonder if the waving of multi-hued emblems and flags and the fluttering that abounds along every road, highway, dirt track and pathway will indeed do something to repair the fractures that exist in the Colony, or if it will simply fade away into memory like the glory days of Invictus.

Once the last whistle has blown, the final ball has been kicked and fans from the New Planet have returned in despair or jubilation, depending on how many more players fall over, break a metatarsal or an ankle or tear a ligament, what happens to the Rainbow Colony then? I fear that the rich will be richer and the poor will be exactly where they are today, but in possession of a vuvuzela and for a moment the thrill of possibility...but maybe I'm wrong. I hope so.

Undeveloped beings...

This week we reached that time on the New Planet when undeveloped beings are released from their shackles for a while, and allowed to run amok...I mean free...in the malls, shops, High streets and parks. Yes, half-term!

Now, it's not that I don't like undeveloped beings, I do, especially those to whom I am related. It's just that there are others who seem to have little or no respect for those of us that are well developed and grumpy and who like their peace and quiet and don't appreciate having chips and beans flung at them while trying to have a gentile cuppa in a coffee shop. And even more annoying, is the parents of said delinquents who sit there with a silly grin thinking that their darling pouring the tomato sauce onto the table and drawing pictures in it with a snotty finger, is awfully cute, innit?

The thing is, there are happily, a number of little darlings who smile politely and respond to my feeble middle-aged jokes without taking offence and trying to impale me on the end of their i-pod, and I don't mind them. In fact, I've even been known to strike up a conversation of sorts with one or two while in the pool, which segues nicely into my next point. Why, I ask myself, do they, the others, have to leap and splash and smack me on the head with their pool noodle (known on the New Planet as a woggle) and get in the way of my 'serious attempts to get fit' while their mother sits in the hot tub oblivious to the watery mayhem ensuing around her? And before you go thinking I'm just horribly unreasonable, I'm not the only flabby one that has finally taken themselves back to the changing room/sauna/steam room in a huff to wait until the undeveloped ones have run out of puff and departed, often wailing loudly because they 'don't wanna go home', leaving our pool in the serene splendour that we (the well developed beings that go every day and not only during the holidays) enjoy and expect.

Of course, having once been a pedagogue, I do understand a bit about undeveloped beings and I know that's what they do, leap about with unbridled passion and enthusiasm for life, and no doubt I did the same, although that time is now shrouded in the mists of time and I can barely remember it...or my own name half the time. It's simply that I object to them being unsupervised and unruly and often downright rude. Or am I just getting old?

Ah, but it's only for a brief period and next week they'll all go back to torture their pedagogues once more, the streets will be quiet, no more will I be in danger of being run over by an out of control skate-board or have the back of my heels irreparably damaged by a supermarket trolley being driven by a Louis Hamilton wannabe. Until the next half-term or looonnnngggg Summer holiday....at which time I shall remain cloistered indoors or take myself off to some exotic place where undeveloped beings are banned.

Sunshine on my shoulder...

There's special something about a new season on the New Planet. After months and months of whinging and complaining about the cold, the snow, the rain, the foggy roads on a freezing night and the lack of salt to spread on said roads, suddenly it all changes.

The buds begin appearing, the rape bursts into flower and now we get to complain about the hay fever, the heat and the million to one chance that the next Bank Holiday will arrive amidst a late flurry of snow and gale force winds. But then the sun finally shines and we are able to go out into the sun like lizards, to slough off our Winter scales and stock up on that all important Vitamin D.

Now I have observed over time, that when the sun does shine, it sets off some kind of abandoned glee within the breasts of the New Planetarians. Bursting free from the well maintained environments of office blocks and pubs, they find a patch of grass, remove their clothing and lie exposed like pale slices of bacon on a griddle pan. But not those of us from the Southernmost Colony, who already have enough skin damage after childhoods spent in the pool, with no sunscreen on at all because we never knew about such things as skin cancer and melanoma back in the olden days.

As the pasty faced New Planetarians ignore all advice about sunburn and skin cancer, they lie sprawled in parks and village greens, their flesh exposed for all to see and admire (!) and allow themselves to slowly cook, changing from flabby white to puffy pink to lobster blistered red,because 'it's much better to have at least a bit of colour than none at all'. Isn't it?

Sensible dressing also becomes a thing of the past, and at last we get to admire the middle aged men in their colourful long shorts, their vests and most intriguing of all, the socks... with sandals. This is a unique fashion found on this planet, one I have yet to understand, because surely the point of wearing sandals is so that your feet can breathe, so what's the thinking behind wearing them with SOCKS!

Happily, there also seems to be no such thing as what we called 'skaam', as females of the species, no matter what size or shape or colour, feel that a bit of sunshine is just the opportunity to display their arms; sleeveless tops/dresses with bra straps showing, legs; short shorts or mini's that are shorter at the back than the front due to the size of the posterior, and my personal favourite, the stomachs, which cascade over waistbands like the Augrabies Falls, flopping about at will, unrestrained and unashamed. Even the soon-to-be-mums, display their swollen bellies with pride hoping to get a bit of a tan before the big event...or perhaps it's just that they're wearing the wrong size t-shirt?

Would that we all had the confidence to appear in public like this with no care about the sniggering that I know from personal experience goes on behind the hands of sun bed tanned nymphets who wear headbands as skirts and display slender shining legs squeezed into lethally high heels as they totter down the High Street looking down on those of us that keep our batwings and hail damaged thighs well hidden behind flowing skirts and dresses with sleeves.

And we get to exchange comments with strangers like 'it's a gorgeous day, innit?' or 'cor, it's proper sultry like today, eh?'. And we all know that the glorious weather isn't going to last very long, no matter how enthusiastically the weather forecasters predict 'scorching temperatures', and the 'hottest day of the year' and that we will have an Indian Summer, where we will spend our evenings strolling down country lanes picking blackberries or barbecuing (not to be confused with braaing, because somehow pork sausages and beef burgers aren't quite the same as proper wors and sosaties) and anyway, we all know it's going to chuck down rain on the very day we planned our BBQ.

I do miss being able to run out to the pool and plopping into the cool water whenever the heat becomes too oppressive though. Sadly, that can't happen here, mainly because most pools are all indoors and any sort of 'plopping' or 'bombing' or 'splashing' is frowned upon...I mean, what on earth would Health and Safety think about such frivolity?

But the lovely long evenings and the soft pink sunsets are indeed wonderful, and sitting outside on a balmy evening is rather special, even if you do have a bunged up nose, a fit of sneezing every five minutes and scratchy, red-rimmed eyes.

Ah Summer, don't you love it?

Oh what a circus...

The Big Top has been erected, the clowns are giving their final performances and soon we will all flock like willing sheep to the nearest school or church or town hall to make our little cross. I have never in all my life seen such shenanigans as those that I have witnessed recently as the New Planet begins its search for a new leader and change of governance.

The one thing I am assured of however, is that here, voting will be based on critical analysis by the voters and will not take place along tribal lines as it does in the Southernmost Colony, where, no matter how good, bad or indifferent the ruling tribe actually is, the voters seem incapable of placing their cross next to the name (or picture as most of them are illiterate) of a worthy person for fear of the 'eye in the sky' seeing who they have voted for and violent retribution being meted out. Or maybe not...

Watching the live debates (obviously not the entire thing or I might have gone completely off my head and taken to drink) and the manic walkabouts by the hopeful candidates, it strikes me that beneath the civilised facades, there beats in fact a primal, primitive heart in the well-covered chests of the voters. One has only to witness the pushing and the heckling and jeering and downright nastiness of some to wonder if they actually care about hearing what the poor chap has to say, or if they are more intent on grabbing their fifteen minutes of fame. Anyway, despite the rhetoric and name calling, they all seem inclined to vote for the very same tribe they voted for last time, the same one their parents and grand-parents and great-great grandparents voted for. You get the picture.

Now I suppose no politician is to be trusted, or so I am frequently told, but there is something a little bit unsettling when a man makes a comment in the privacy of his car (or so he thinks) and finds himself reviled, ridiculed, and lambasted from a dizzy height by the sanctimonious and mean spirited who have themselves never made a rude comment or proffered an opinion about someone they have met and who rubbed them up the wrong way. Is the man not entitled to his own views or to get annoyed upon occasion? Is he not human? Why is it that every Tom, Dick and Muhammed now has the right to savage and tear apart the mans' character, and that of his wife/partner/child as if perfection is the norm and not the exception? And don't even get me started on how they've been trotting out the wives with all the razzmatazz of a great spinning firework, while commenting cruelly on their fashion sense or smile or unguarded gesture...I said don't get me started!

So, one of our possible Prime Ministers appeared on telly, where he wooed the public, slew the females of the species with his good looks and dazzling smile and became more popular than Winston, and for an entire day was lauded and congratulated in the national press, spoken of as if he'd just walked on water and fawned upon by all and sundry. And then the very next day, his character was attacked when 'irregular payments' in his personal bank account were brought to the notice of the millions of voters who had fallen for his charming manner and eloquent speech. And it makes me wonder....how the hell did 'they' get hold of his private bank statements? What ever happened to privacy I ask myself?

So with only a week to go, let's hope no one says anything else that will reveal that they are not in fact pod people programmed and operated by a giant head on a distant star in a far off galaxy, but are simply human beings with the same failings, idiosyncrasies and emotions as the rest of us.

The sky is closed

For the last couple of weeks the skies of the New Planet have been closed to all incoming and outgoing craft due to a plume of ash from an erupting island you'd think was too far away to have any effect on us (apart from the banks of course).

Travellers have thus resorted to ingenious ways of returning to the home planet via trains, buses, hire cars and minivans, small craft, the Royal Navy, an extremely expensive taxi ride by one celebrity and one chap buying an old rusted car to drive across the 'continent'. Just think of the adventures that will be regaled over the Christmas roast for decades to come.

When ferries began refusing foot passengers,some clever sorts (who of course come from the New Planet) toddled off to the nearest supermarket to purchase a bike that they could then cycle triumphantly aboard. I wonder if expressive hand gestures were produced for the benefit of les bureaucrats. Most inventive and once again that good old 'Dunkirk spirit' raised its head with one intrepid historian rounding up an armada of small craft, sailing them across Le Channel, only to be stopped by French police who feared he was was planning on smuggling illegal immigrants back to Blighty. You'd think the maroon passports, the piles of dirty luggage, the tearful, exhausted children, newly acquired tans and television cameras might have been a clue that it was in fact a rescue, but non, he was allowed to rescue but a select few...mainly attractive females with taut little bodies I might add. Sacre bleu!

And now another great tradition raises its head on this small planet. Blame. Whose fault was it that hundreds of thousands of voyagers were stuck abroad on other volcanic islands, in heaving ports and deserted airports? The clamouring voices and finger pointing has begun. 'They' over-reacted, 'they' were irresponsible and ridiculously panic-stricken, cost the country and airlines millions, failed to anticipate for such eventualities and on and on, trying to find a scapegoat.

And yet I wonder what those same judgemental people would be saying had a plane been allowed to fly, become clogged with volcanic ash and crashed causing hundred of deaths. Then who would they blame? God?

This constant need to find someone to punish for an event that could never have been predicted much less controlled once it happened, is very tiresome, to me anyway. And it has certainly highlighted the reliance we now have on air travel. Let's hope then that no more 'natural events' occur that will inconvenience and disrupt our perfectly ordered little lives, but at least if we do get flooded or blown over or if our street erupts or the village green collapses or our town slides into the sea, we can then then spend the next few weeks and months finding someone to blame and hold accountable and 'demand' compensation and maybe that will make us all feel better...until the next time.

But let us not forget what lies ahead for the planet in the next month or so....and the debates and character assassinations have only just begun...

At the end of the week

One of the delights of living on the New Planet, is participating in the little rituals that take place in every small market town at the end of the week.

In my small town, a market is held every Saturday in one of the car parks and it is there that one can buy such delightful things as roast pork rolls, home made dog food, extra extra extra large flowery cotton knickers, jumpers knitted in just the wrong shade of pink and CD's of yodelling cowboys. One can also purchase nuts, bolts, out of date calenders, soggy pot plants and assorted hand made jewellery (the kind with cheap beads, wonky wire and unmatched colours). Now lest you consider this an event only to be participated in while under the influence of elderflower wine, let me elaborate.

On such occasions, there is much more than the smell of roasting pork and candy floss in little plastic buckets. There is the social interaction that takes place. For no matter how long you've lived here, you are certain to bump into at least ten people you know, or who your friend knows, or who went to school with your nephew's sister's father. And even if you're still a relative newcomer, there are plenty of folks with whom you can have a discussion about the weather.

It is one of the social conventions on the New Planet this. While studying the pleated tartan skirts and neon yellow builder's vests, it is practically compulsory to make such comments as 'Nice day, isn't it?' or 'Weather's pretty rubbish today, isn't it?' or 'Isn't it glorious sunshine?' or even 'How have you coped with all the snow?' And this of course can lead to all manner of further discussions about the quality of the roads, the latest sex scandal or the state of the nation.

And then, just as you move off with a friendly smile and a warm fuzzy feeling, you bump into an actual friend, with whom you can gossip and chat and sometimes, if time allows, pop into the local coffee shop (which incidentally is run by a man from the Southernmost Colony) for a 'cup of chino' (according to one waiter from the previously mentioned colony), or a delicious treacle flavoured latte.

Wandering through the little streets and precincts of the town, past the second hand book sellers, the gypsy penny whistle player and the friendly dogs in woolly coats tied up to the lamp post outside the supermarket, once the chores are completed and the shopping bags are full, one is certain to bump into at least five other people that you know or sort of know. And once again you can vent about the sogginess of the snow, the lethal ice, the budding daffodils...there are endless topics to discuss on a sunny/snowy morning in the market town.

So, to my relief I have discovered that there is never a need to feel lonely on the New Planet if you don't have any real friends yet, you simply take yourself off to market and you are certain to find someone to chat to.

Into the blue

One of the many delights on the new planet, has been the friends I have made and with whom I have shared many an adventure. The last being a recent trip aboard a large craft that travelled across the great waters to other places unknown and exotic.

The craft itself is due some comment. Large-ish, carrying up to 900 passengers, it was sleek and beautiful, but to my mind, dated in its appearance and more particularly in the entertainment it provided. But then, considering that the average age of my fellow travellers, most octogenarians and many I suspect reaching for their century, I am not surprised. Now, fun though it might be to these grey-haired creaky-limbed travellers, afternoon tea dances and lectures by fading stars of stage and screen could have been deathly and I feared the worst.

To my surprise however, I found that listening to an ex-detective inspector who was one of the original investigating officers of The Great Train Robbery was in fact fascinating. But though I sat through a few of his rambling anecdotes, I did draw the line at watching second-rate dancing girls trying to stay upright as the ship tossed and rolled upon the rough waters. There's nothing graceful about a long-limbed dancer lurching out of control across the stage while trying to prevent her ample breasts from popping out of the top of her costume. Such events are guaranteed to get the giggles going and how could I do this to the poor girl? I could also not bring myself to chuckle at the stale jokes and out-dated comedy styling of the resident comedian...but that is all of little significance in the great scheme.

It sounds as if the adventure was dire, and yes, it could have been, especially as 75% of the travellers, including my friend, succumbed to a nasty bug that the vigorous cleaning and hand washing at every possible opportunity was unable to prevent. I escaped the horrors for some reason and spent time instead standing on the decks gazing out to sea, hoping for a sight of dolphins. No luck. I also encountered some beings from the Southernmost Colony, which helped enliven a few minutes. But truly, a highlight was getting to chat to the ancient and decrepit co-adventurers I chanced upon sitting in the sun or in one of the many lounges scattered about the craft. So easy to slip into a conversation over a cream bun and a nice cuppa, even if I did hope to spend some time in solitude reading my book. I eventually gave up this hope, and surrendered to the long, involved, repetitive and unbelievably fascinating tales of my fellow voyagers.

From the twinkly-eyed missionary to the one-legged Welshman with a hamster called Blondie, I have realised that this is the reason one takes a watercraft and cruises off to worlds unexplored. For it is in listening to their stories of daring-do during First and Second world wars, and the wealth of experience that they are so willing to share (often more than once or twice in the space of ten minutes) that I understood that there is so much more to life than worrying about whether or not my apparel was suitable for dinner. These wonderful well-developed beings, are stuffed to the eyebrows with wisdom and wit and seem completely oblivious to the petty little things that seem to occupy so much of our time. For these men and women have survived two global conflicts in which they lost friends and family members, have seen technology accelerate at frightening speed, and have watched as today's youth repeat the errors they too made in their own early years. Yet they remain calm and focused and have moved beyond the cares of childhood and middle-age-hood into their twilight years.

It was with shame that I consider how often these genuine gems of humanity are shuffled off to cold places where they are forgotten, as if they have always been old. But they are so much more than this, they are more than the wrinkled skin and the rheumy eyes. They are more than a burden to state and family, they retain their wit and intelligence (sometime a bit addled it must be said) and they deserve respect and awe.

To be so at ease in one's skin that appearing in front of 800 other diners in high heels, ankle-high socks, short shorts showing of the saggy legs in all their splendour and a skimpy vest allowing more than a peak at the drooping mammaries, without batting an over mascaraed eye, is surely a wondrous thing to behold. As is an 80 year old fake-tanned body shoe-horned into a sequinned lycra evening dress with no sleeves and plunging neckline and let me not neglect to mention the leopard-skin Speedo worn confidently by the overweight, antique Lothario who strutted about the pool deck leering at the 'younger' damsels -younger than 70 that is. Aah, that is a picture to summon up when in need of some light relief.

I count myself privileged to have met some of the wonderful old men and women on board, and had I not embarked upon the craft and given myself over to its old-fashioned charms, my life would be infinitely the poorer.

And this all before even stepping ashore on moon-like landscapes...