Of topless tanning, red dresses and penis desensitising cream

"A wedding is a funeral where you smell your own flowers."
-- Eddie Cantor

Not that I want a grave but if I had one the epitaph should be ‘Three weddings and one funeral’. There has been three weddings and no funeral so far. The first started and ended on Mauritius. He was a Boer from Bloemfontein and I was an impressionable 19 year old from Greytown.

I was not too impressed when he on the night of the honeymoon pulled out a tube of penis desensitising cream from his beauty box. It was still the early days of my sexual sophistication and it freaked me out a bit.

The next day it was time for him to freak out over me tanning topless on the white beaches of Club Med. A clash of the titans started. Then there was the incident of the red mini dress. He wouldn’t let me wear it and subsequently carried me to the bathroom where he threw me in the bathtub to wet the dress so that I could’t wear it. The dress was of course even more sexy after that. Water does that to dresses.The honeymoon went down the drain together with the bath water.

Back in South Africa I started to make plans to end the alliance. I hated his flat which was furnished in all the shades of brown known to mankind and I couldn’t wait to get out of there. When I fetched my lipstick, a shade of pink, and a few other last possessions, my sister stuck the penis cream on the outside of his front door.

The last time I saw husband number one was when he gave me and Valerie, a fellow student and my best friend from Addington Hospital, a lift to Greytown. He was moving to Bloemfontein where he was going to live happily ever after with his mother. We said goodbye and I cried crocodile tears. Finally we saw the tail lights of his Mazda 323 disappearing around the street corner and Valerie, my sister and I held hands and danced with joy. I was the happiest 19 year old divorcee on earth. Then I turned into the most embarrassed 19 year old on earth when we saw the front of his Mazda 323 appearing again. We froze like the proverbial deer in front of headlights. He had forgotten the wedding ring which he was going to give to his mother. I never saw him again. The engagement ring was sold to Valerie and I used the money to finance a philosophy course at UNISA. Blood money.

Still wearing red mini dresses

Of rattling bones, mice and golden drops

Tolstoy, in his book ‘A Confession’ tells a Russian fable about a man who jumps into a well because he is chased by a monster. Whilst jumping he happens to notice a furious dragon at the bottom. Luckily there is a branch sticking out of the wall and he grabs it, dangling out of reach from both the dragon and the monster. But now he sees another problem. Two mice are enjoying their evening supper and the main course is the branch. Soon they will eat through the branch, and the man will fall. Suddenly things get better, he notices something else. At the end of the branch he sees a few golden drops of honey. The man licks the honey. According to Tolstoy this is our predicament. We are the man hanging from the branch. Death threatens from all sides. We can not escape, but we can lick whatever honey we can reach.

As we know in life, all golden drops are not honey. Years ago I had the unfortunate urge to run the Comrades Marathon (90km) which I managed to complete by the skin of my teeth. Not many women were into that sort of recreation in those years and I found myself surrounded by thousands of men, which I liked and no ladies room, which I didn’t like. After the start of the race it became time for desperate measures. I the early morning mist I suddenly saw paradise. The Pietermaritzburg grave yard. I ran behind the biggest grave stone I could find and deposited something that was not honey. My co-runner, Neil Hinrichsen asked: “Was it a man’s grave? That would put some rattling in the old bones.” It was in the wee hours of the race and Neil could still talk.

I know of some more rattling bones, but not quite for the same reason. My father had a charismatic friend in Greytown who sadly lived and died as an alcoholic. Much to his joy his mother in law finally passed away. It was near the end of the month and money matters were in dire straits. When he received cash from his sister to buy flowers for the grave, he and my father did a beeline for the nearest pub. Hours later and broke again, they drove to her grave where he delivered the wreath in foamy liquid form. Those golden drops were neither honey nor tears.

Of Danes, cat’s asses and golden teeth

This week I’m working at the hospital in Lund which is a small university town on the southern shores of Sweden. On the other side of the sea one may wave to happy Danish people. It is a well known fact that Danes have more fun than Swedes. Or is it blondes? Danish blondes? The sea separating the happy and less happy people is called Kattegat. (Wat daardie kat geeët het om 'n see na hom te laat vernoem sal ek graag wil weet.)

On my way to work I have to pass through the Lund grave yard, where the overflow from the hospital ends up. I work civilized hours so my journey to and fro is in broad day light and I see many graves but luckily no ghosts except the ones from the past.

My great grandmother was obsessed with graves. She kept our family graveyard in pristine condition. Her grave and stone was prepared long before she died. It had cost her more than my grave. Which is impressing because a bottle of gin bought in Sweden costs more than a small African country. My father has no fear for the devil or the dead and he buried her in the neatly prepared grave but never bothered to engrave the date of her departure. If she knew this she would be turning over in her grave like the leaves of a book.

The family farm has now been claimed by the Zulus and the graves are now a playground of weeds, erosion and decay. The worms are probably keeping better order six feet under. The last I heard was that my great grandmothers grave had been dug up by vagrants looking for golden teeth or wedding rings. She probably interfered from beneath or above because something scared them away before the job was done. Maybe they were kicked by a donkey. Now she is only three feet under with teeth still intact.
Who wants to join me to bury her again? Champagne on the house?

                         My great grandmother inspecting her grave with one of her six servants.

Of donkeys, gin and stiffness.

If I die in Sweden my son will smuggle my ashes to South Africa and strew them on the Salt Rock Beach. How he will manage that is still unclear but I imagine that I will fit very snugly in a bottle of gin. Preferably Bombay Sapphire; The colour blue will set off my ashes beautifully.

I do not wish to be buried in a frozen grave. I froze enough during life. In after life I will probably be reincarnated as a donkey. The donkey will like the Kingdom of Sweden even less than me. Donkeys are not my favourite animal, rabbits are, but I think some of my friends will certainly wake up as donkeys. Some have done that already and not all them because of their anatomy.

Having said that about death, the present is finding me as stiff as a corpse but still very much alive and kicking. That would be because of my close encounters with a girja, which is Russian for kettle bell, which is English for torture. My one weighs 4kg and is round and cold and hard. I would have preferred pink, but couldn’t wait for the Laura Ashly edition. This kettle bell is presumably going to make me muscular, fit and steaming hot. I know that because I watched the mother of all kettle bells on YouTube, Pavel Tsatsouline and he is muscular, fit and steaming hot.

The reason why I am suddenly into kettle bells, is that I washed and polished my car for 3 hours the other day and realized that my arms are as weak as over cooked spaghetti. That stiffness had to be rectified by a Thai massage. In retrospect it would have been cheaper to pay a machine to wash my car. Much cheaper than a massage and a kettle bell.

The girja