Long Time No See!

Jeez, I don't even go here anymore... 

Let's put it down to an end-of-year slump and be thick as thieves all over again, kay?

This photo is from around about this time last year. Tommy took me on a mini-break for my birthday (I probably, definitely blogged about it), and for a weekend and a bit the world was just as it should be. A universe of two. The best part was eating breakfast together in "our kitchen". I felt like a child playing a hyper-real version of adult-adult. Things like that weekend away kinda eat me up inside (in a good way). 

Nostalgia is one helluva drug. 

The reason being, growing up I never imagined being 20-something. Actually I didn't really imagine being any-something. I was too knotted to my everyday concerns, I didn't honestly see the bigger picture. Also, I feel like I'm between 12-16 years old on most days.

If you read this blog, you probably already know I'm very feels-y. In other words, I feel things, fucking too much I'd say. So doing things like a weekend away is pretty wild to me. Like, how amazing? I have a real boyfriend who does nice things?! Say what?! Insert an existential crisis, giggling and heady dose of impostor syndrome and you've got my average thought pattern. 

A peephole into my mind:

Oh-my-fuuuck + I'm so happy/nervous/excited/scared/pissed and/or terrified + laughing at my own useless jokes + how old am I again? + I should totally just get a dvd and take up daytime drinking

Not being able to imagine myself at this stage has meant that my adult life has really been one big surprise after another. It is like a poorly planned surprise party everyday. Sometimes fun, sometimes exciting, sometimes the-worst-thing-ever. 

Things I have learnt thus far (an incomplete list):

1. Haters don't hate everything. 

They (I mean, me) just know that pretty much everything sucks majorly. BUT! The things in life that don't suck at all are so great, so delicious and beautiful that it makes up for the nonsense. 

Things that don't suck: love, sushi and most fish-based meals, driving fast on the highway at night specifically on a Friday, getting better, friends of mind, doing work that blurs the line between playing and working, cold sheets in summer, making the world as small as just you and the page you're on in the book you're reading. 

2. I can just do stuff.

When I was in school I used to think that life was a bit like a video game. My personal favourite was Crash Bandicoot. So, you had to break boxes, munch apples and climb levels to get what you want. 

Fast-forward to today and I still kinda believe that for certain things but there's also this whole bunch of other things that don't require a regimented approach. Like life in general, for one. You can just do things, like, just nje. No permission required.

3. Literally no one cares about the things that you want more than you do.

And that's how it should be. Act accordingly. 

But hell, this is all just a roundabout way of saying that it's my birthday on Sunday!
Gift ideas for my generous internet friends:

1. Pug
2. Money
3. Mochachos vouchers

I've got a good feeling about this. 

My future family portrait:

Screw You, Marie Claire!

So there was a time, not too long ago when I really wanted to write, badly. 

But, here's the zinger - I didn't want to tell anyone. I was scared and embarrassed, I mean shouldn't I have already published a novel or something? Also, what if I sucked balls? 

So my usual M.O. was to secretly submit things that I had written to any publication with open submissions. I submitted this boo-hoo fest to Marie Claire in the hopes of exorcising my demons and finding a 6-figure book deal. Alas, not a word from MC (I am still holding out for the book deal), but hooey, here I am, I'm gonna self-publish this biatch because it hurt and it is important, albeit cringey to me. 

I think I wrote this last year in winter.

When my father died I was nineteen. My aunt told me what had happened and without strength I wept into her shoulder. All language mutes in the presence of grief. Well, that’s somewhat true, as I later learnt the simultaneous futility and satisfaction of a multitude of four-letter words. 

I remember the bizarreness of that first day that I had found out. How it hadn’t really sunk in, so I could still joke, albeit meekly, and smile as though my very own Atlas who had stoically held my world together hadn’t shrugged off and left me. I often think that my occasional smile must have seemed cruel and perverse, but it was all that I could muster, stupefied by the audacity of the universe. You see, I had always thought that my dad’s presence was a non-negotiable. My mother had died before I could remember her and I naively thought that the universe was a strict score-keeper meaning that I would be exempt from any future pain. Oh ha-ha, how that theory has been proven wrong. Seriously Universe, you are fucked up!

In the beginning, when I had just found out, the only time that his death really punched me in the stomach, quite literally, was in the bathroom. Alone with only the mirror to remind me of my feeble mask, I tried to understand that my daddy, my darling daddy was dead. When my mother had died, I didn’t have to think about how to deal with it, I was two years old and I don’t remember anything about her or her death. The rivers of pain that were to follow soaked my childhood with tears and loneliness, but I was just a child so I didn’t consciously navigate the grief or pain. I just felt the pain and let it colour my tentative picture of the world. 

However, as a nineteen year-old I was at a total loss. I had lost my dad, my compass, my home and I didn’t know how to deal with it. Technically, I stress, purely technically, I was an adult and as an adult, sadly, you are meant to lose your parents, so why did it feel so four-letter word, four-letter word, unfair?

The pain I felt was overwhelming and confusing. It screamed for attention like a bludgeoned wound. Yet, a part of me felt that I wasn’t allowed to feel so bad. I was a big girl now, I better act like it, right? So I tried to mourn with faux dignity, to only cry enough to lightly moisten the tissues in my purse. I now laugh resentfully at all of this. What to mock first? When I was a child I would always stubbornly say that my mother had died, she didn’t pass away or worse, I didn’t lose her. She died. I half-heartedly invited the awkward silence that inevitably followed my blunt statement as proof that the pain that I felt wasn’t insignificant. I found the whole dilly-dallying of words insulting. Why should I dress up death? It only looks good in black anyway.  

The days following the passing of my dad were some of the worst days that I have known. The person that I would have turned to in a crisis or even for a quick gossip was the very person that I was mourning. I stumbled around with my pain as though it were a septic limb that I couldn’t get rid of. I pathetically tried to be ‘normal’ with my friends and I attended lectures. I was genuinely surprised when I was granted an extension on all of my examinations, prior to that the world had cruelly continued to function as though nothing had happened. I found this all infuriating and I wanted to tell anyone who would listen that my world was falling apart, yet in reality I couldn’t say much and I reserved my feelings for quiet moments alone in my flat or as I’m now embarrassed to admit, while walking the busy streets of Cape Town. 

I remember the first time that it happened. I was walking down Long Street, a place that I had first discovered with my dad, and overcome with anger and sadness, I cried and cried, my collarbones collecting my tears. Looking back, I think that I felt so alone in the sea of faces and I knew that no matter how many people I saw, my dad would never again be one of those people.

Now five years later, I think of those early days without my father as a turning point in my life. As I slowly and stubbornly realised that I could be happy in spite of his absence, I became braver and more decisive; after all, what could the world possibly throw at me that could be any worse? I still miss him every day and I desperately wish that I could just hear his voice or see his sad blue eyes, but I now know that I am luckier than most. 

My father, John Clancy, loved my brother and I so intensely and doggedly that even five years following his death I still feel his love swimming in my being as though I had just spoken to him. I once read that real love is like fluoride in the water, it makes us stronger without our knowledge, this is certainly true. I know that all those years in the sunshine of my father’s love have given me more than enough strength to face the beautiful, terrible and wonderful world without him. I wish I could have told the nineteen year-old me sobbing in the street that although I won’t see him again in person, if I looked, not even very hard, I could see his love everywhere and sometimes that will be enough.

Travels, Dancing Babies & Stuff!

Tommy and I have returned from our sojourn in the Eastern Cape. 

Seeing a bit more of our country has made me very appreciative of my birthplace. Joburg really is the best place ever (most of the time). Travelling invariably causes two feelings for me, I feel like I want to travel more and at the same time I just really want to go home. 

In other news, how great is this illustration by Mel Stringer:

Recently, Instagram and movies have created a major NYC-shaped hole in my heart that can only be filled by a summer trip to The Big Apple. Tommy and I have seen many great cities together but Noo Yawk remains the great unknown-known frontier. Movies and series have made us believe  that we know New York, (c'mon, I've watched nearly every Woody Allen movie) but we still haven't gone. So I'm putting it out there, 2015 NYC is ours! 

I haven't been updating FOFTHEH recently because I kinda die on the internet every single day so I feel like I've read everything, seen everything, laughed at everything and nothing is really exciting. This is a terrible outlook, I know, it is mostly fatigue related to the fact that I recently upgraded from a Blackberry (lol for days) to an iPhone. So in essence, this is my internet baptism by fire. 

This week I need to wean myself of the internet and just reclaim the kingdom of my skull without the opinion of every New Yorker columnist swimming in my head. 

Even though I just said that nothing is really exciting on the interwebs, I still LOVE this:

Chocolate!

I used to think that the great love of chocolate was a part of the human condition. We laugh, we want to kiss those that we love and we want to eat chocolate. Then people like Tumelo started tutting about the blah-ness of chocolate and all kinds of nonsense...

Then in India I saw how chocolate isn't all that easy to find, it hides, it shrinks in size because people don't buy it... Snickers became like crack to me, I literally ate one (sometimes two) everyday... What?! It was hot, I needed sugar and salty peanuts enrobed in chocolate...

Then Holly dearest returned from Switzerland with a bunch of these classy specimens... I was a goner. This chocolate is amazing, terrible name aside, it's like a party in my mouth. 

Basically I love chocolate, not in that annoying all-women-love-cats-and-chocolate fridge magnet kinda way though. 

What's Your Two Hundred Year Plan?

The month of January was named in honour of Janus, the god of beginnings and transitions.

For me, January is one long Monday morning. All is fresh and possible and with that comes the pressure to be better, much better than before.

I have tried to set some goals for this year and beyond and even seeing them illegibly scribbled on paper is enough to induce a mild panic attack.

This video provides a pleasant alternative to the new year's resolution pressure and I'm quite tickled by the whole idea. 

End Already!

Christmas time just aint my thang.

2013, staap playing hard to get! I-am-a-quarter-to-crazy. 

P.S. my dearest Tebagel and I were channeling our hatred of colonialism. 

India!

Six weeks of India! September, I didn't even see you fly by! Is that November I see?! 

I can't believe that I've ticked that one off list.  

It was everything that I hoped that it would be and so much more. India managed to overwhelm, excite, frustrate and amuse me all at the same time.

I have included some of my favourite photos, this was a hard task given the fact that we took an Asian tourist worthy-450 photos, with countless photos of me being ridiculously unphotogenic being deleted and scorned. I would like to point out that I have neglected to include any pictures of my aforementioned boyfriend as he gets incredibly sour when he finds his handsome mug on my blog. So there. 

I missed blogging way too much to admit. But I'm glad to say that me and my bloggywog will be getting nice and cozy as Tommy and I get ready to jet off to the Emerald Isle.

2012 is turning out to be a cracker of a year and I can't wait to see the finale! 

Udaipur!

Tomorrow we will be in Udaipur, the so-called Venice of Rajastan (I'll believe it when I see it).

So far we have been pulled (sometimes forcefully) in all directions; from the ceaseless engine of Delhi to the moon-like surroundings of Leh where The Himalayas wave hello. We have ticked off the majestic Taj Mahal and skimmed the cool, unforgettable waters of the Ganges. We have seen that the Pink City of Jaipur is in fact more accurately described as the Orange-y City.

We've been amazed, vexed, amused, awed and enlightened.

We have tasted countless curries and drank highly questionable cups of 'milk tea'.

We have loved, learnt and fought and I wouldn't change a thing.

Here's to the next month of India! Namaste!

P.S. Askies for the poor photo selection, all pics will be revealed when we return.

Helen Lasichanh!

Pharrell is engaged. 


Now is the time to feign happiness and put those teenage dreams to rest. No, sadly he was not singing "Beautiful" directly to you (me). Hard to believe, I know...


Well, I'm all for love and marriage, the true adventures of life. So cheers to the almost twin-like couple. You make more of those cute babies now. Thanks. 


P.S. Helen is a model/designer (aren't we all) and their son's name is Rocket. 

Roald Dahl!

I have always loved Roald Dahl. The Giraffe, Pelly and Me was one of my favourites. 

I also love Quentin Blake's illustrations, I only wish that I could draw like that. 

I don't even know how many times I've read The Roald Dahl Treasury, but I still love it.

His adult novel, My Uncle Oswald is one of my favourites too. 

P.S. Roald Dahl Day is celebrated on the 13th of September. 

"I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. He taught me that if you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it at full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be." My Uncle Oswald. 

Brekkie!

I absolutely love breakfast. All meals following breakfast are just distractions. Yes, even that Big Mac I wolfed down without blinking. 

I think my deep love for breakfast stems from the fact that when I was growing up, the kind of breakfast my dad would make for me was indicative of the times.

We would go out for dinner to celebrate birthdays and whatnot, but you would know you had done something really special if you were treated to a delicious breakfast. 

This blog is amazing because it is solely dedicated to my favourite thing about my 7am wake up. 

This morning I had All-Bran and honey... Yum! 

Wanderlust!

I cannot wait to go travelling!

2012, you beauty! 

"The wanderlust has got to me, by the belly aching fire." Robert W. Service

Monday Wisdom!

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." 

Abraham Lincoln. 

Monday!



You gotta start somewhere...

Knickerbocker Glory!

I love pretty underwear.

I have the amazing ability to justify the purchase of a lacy number at any time.

Even the seemingly mundane task of grocery shopping at Woolies can suddenly transform into an expensive exercise illustrating why I should never, ever get a credit card.

My grocery list says Bulgarian yogurt, but my heart says new panties, and I've always believed that you should follow your heart.

P.S. In 1913, a New York socialite named Mary Phelps Jacob changed women's fashion forever when she created the first brassiere by tying two handkerchiefs together with ribbon. 

The Vogue Diaries

I recently found The Vogue Diaries and admittedly I love it.

The joy of seeing celebs looking somewhat mortal is too much. No soft focus lens, no photoshop.

The above are close-up snaps of Blake Lively and Jennifer Hudson's legs. The joy!

Why Don't You...

Learn all the words to your favourite song. You never know when you might need to belt them out.

I was cruelly reminded how lame I really am when Tommy asked me to sing him a song and the only song that I could remember all the lyrics to was Usher's "You Got it Bad".

In my high school days I was dedicated to Usher Raymond. 8701 was not just an album but a way of life. I could even say that I (kinda) risked my life for Usher that time he performed at The Dome and there were some Ellis Park moments that I now fondly recall.

That said, now that I'm older I should really diversify my repertoire.

Champagne For My Real Friends!



Water cooler conversation would be a lot more interesting if there was Moet on tap.

"Come quickly, I am tasting the stars!" Dom Perignon, at the moment he discovered champagne.

Why Don't You...

Buy someone flowers.

No matter what, no matter who, everyone loves a sweet smelling bunch of something pretty.

Or hey, buy some beautiful flowers just for you, just because. 

Develop a pornographic obsession with coffee.

A steamy cuppa is full of antioxidants and snaps like the above just do something for me.

Strangely, the first people to notice the effects of caffeine were Ethiopian shepherds who claimed that their goats got frisky and appeared to "dance" after snacking on coffee berries.

Friday Be Kind to Me!



I have been neglecting the blog this week since I've been feeling ill, but I've finally made a doctor's appointment as my usual cure-all of shameless self-pity and Glee has yielded no improvements.

It really sucks being sick. Befriending the tissue box is just plain overrated.

And the dizzying high of berry-flavoured cough syrup is just sad when you're actually sick and not stunting like Weezy.