End-Of-Year Tomfoolery

        It’s been a while, pielings, (Hmmm, that sounds like the same of an Asian bond girl from the 70’s, and also slightly delicious) and I must apologise for my laxness in updating, but it has been festive in more than one flavour here in Casa Birkenstock over the last month. Allow me to allow myself to be allowed to explain. A ha ha. *Wipes away tear of mirth* Oh, how I do amuse myself.

We had Sister Estelle’s Wedding on the 18^th of this very December, a gay occasion of much frivolity and mirth of the aforementioned style. I had been the beneficiary of a splendid little (read: HUGE.) instant Polaroid-typecamera for my birthday a month prior, so I was to prance around in my decidedly un-trossie flat sandals, getting in the way of all and sundry and especially the sundry that was the official photographer and the sundry that was the seventeen or eighteen unofficial paparazzi. 

This is not it. This is one of the ones I made out of Coke can, forever altering my fingerprints with cuts and scratches so deep I doubt they'll ever even out.

I am enjoying the ever-love out of this camera, as you well know, you yummy little pieling (“Nom nom, Meestah Bond.”), and hope to be able to post a cornucopia of wedding photos, both pie-tastic and official digital, soon. Estelle and Barend looked amazing, and the chapel was beautiful- although I will say this: the pastor who officiated the ceremony seems to be harbouring some kind of a unsung dream for the performing arts, ‘cause dude had props. And I don’t mean like “mad props”, I mean mad props, as in crazy insane illustrative devices. Balloons, one filled with water, another with air. A lighter. Little pieces of printer paper with Estelle and Barends’ names on them, and geometry. More paper, some words, slightly different geometry.

And the man had Stamina so hard it was almost like an anthropomorphised figure in the room with us. Of course, if she’s called Stamina, she’s probably an exotic dancer or a high-class escort of some sort, so she was probably already sitting somewhere on our side of the chapel. What I’m saying here is: endurance. A wedding ceremony as a marathon, most certainly not a sprint, no matter how loving or appropriate and succinct. Every time he came to what sounded like a lyrical and content-indicative logical conclusion to his lovely, lovely sermon, he would start anew with a slightly louder bark to wake up the poor souls who had deigned to fall asleep in the back pews. This continued for some time, whilst I contemplated how the hell I was going to deal with the wedgie situation that was busy developing once it actually came time to stand up. You’ll be glad to know I managed to avail myself of Monseigneur wedgie with grace and minimal intrusion to the proceedings, despite being clad in red and being seated at the very front of the chapel like a large red thing seated at the front of the chapel.

At the reception, the tables were covered in red glitter that I managed to find in crevices days after the event itself, and that I think is no understatement to say lodged itself into my very soul. I would very much like the opportunity to thank the bright spark whose particular idea the metric shit-tonnes of glitter was- if Jack McFarland had been there we might have had to go through a very dramatic scene to avoid a glitter-related injury. I believe I, and everyone I hold some affection for, managed to eat more than the gross product a McDonalds puts out in a year, as it is our wont to do. It was all in all most enjoyable, and I got myself a brother-in-law into the bargain. One who could, and most certainly would take great pleasure in, breaking heads any time I should need him to. You know me, and therefore have no doubt that at some point me and my camera will assuredly need him to.

 

            Not long after, in fact I’d wager about a week post, I had my own little adventure all over this lovely province of ours. A friend of mine, Mac, invited my along to a braai (that’s barbeque for my friends abroad) at his friend’s house. His friend lives in a place called Midrand, I live in a place called Valhalla. These two places are not far from each other, and are in fact separated by something called the N1 highway, which enjoys the honorific as the number one highway in South Africa. Easy to find, easy to follow, and will almost directly take you from my place, to the place where the braai was.

Getting there, not a problem. A lovely time was in fact had by all. Many a dirty joke was made, and since these were Mac’s work colleagues, they were I think slightly taken aback and then semi-impressed by how many times I managed to say “fuck” in a three hour time period. Someone- upon realising fairly early on that I was rather game and had probably thought of every double entendre before they had even had time to lace up their metaphorical shoes- bet me twenty bucks that I wouldn’t call the host of the braai a bitch. I did this with great relish and if I remember correctly managed to get a bastard in there as well. I only realised a great many hours later that I forgot my hard earned money on the table, which I shall curse myself for until 2012. I wasted a perfectly good utterance of a dirty word, which by all counts is unforgivable.

 

Mac is the blurry one on the right. Arshaad is the bitchy one on the left.

People got drunk- not my ride, luckily, very good man- but certainly one of the attendants. This man, good lord. Every so often he would pipe in a word after a long silence. It would often be “goats”, or “tits”. Whatever would come out of his mouth would be so insurmountably random, that it would reduce everyone in the vicinity to tears of laughter, and by the end of the night his friend Lucky would have to excuse himself each time he said anything, I believe for fear of breaking a rib. He shared with us a dream he had had, about ice-cream that turned into a mouth, which naturally he then pleasured. This ice-cream/mouth melted, signalling some kind of climax to his particularly odd wet dream. My god, how this man’s head did not explode all the fuck over his linen the next day I do not know; I have never seen another human being so drunk.

Anyway, goodbyes said, ice-cream (of a non-sexual or Freudian nature) consumed, bitches designated, we departed. Sober, driver and passenger both. We left Midrand at almost exactly 10 PM.

We got to Valhalla at 3:30 AM.

How, you ask, is this mother-human-fuckingly possible? Well, I answer you with all the earnesty of a young Sarah Brightman starring as Christine, we went the scenic route. We passed by Sandton, Randburg, Eldoraigne, we were on the Krugerdorp highway, the Zwartkop racing track waved at us as we passed it twice. We saw Montecasino, but only the first time we were in Sandton. We tried to stop for coffee the second time we were there, but by that time everything was closed. It was… yes, I believe I used the word adventure, I shall adjectivise it now. Adventurous it was. When we finally got home, I gave Mac a small piece of cheese, as I said we both deserved some, having come out the other end of the maze unscathed. Poor soul, he really is the sweetest guy, he was much more worried about it than I was at any point- I kept telling him statistically speaking it was rather unlikely that we would be doomed to wander the canals of Gauteng for actually ever, and much more plausible that we would find home eventually. We did, when we swung through Midrand the second time and found the N1; it was almost laughably easy, almost as if to taunt us. He wouldn’t believe me that I really wasn’t worried- well Mac, I really wasn’t worried. You bought me coffee, I couldn’t really ask for more out of a night.

Plus I got to call Arshaad a bitch. That kinda shit’s priceless.

After this excitement, we naturally had Christmas as I have yet to figure out how to circumvent the natural flow of time. Crackers were cracked, more food was consumed, and goodies unwrapped. We had a family 30 Seconds tournament, during which my favourite question or description or what-have-you came courtesy of Barend:

“Um, it’s a movie, where a guy has a sword, and gets hit by lightning.”

“What?!”

“Highlander.”

        Genius. Me and Cousin Carla won the grand trophy, which I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn came out of one of the earlier crackers. I was kind enough to let Carla take it home, but it was a combined victory.

After we ate, we went through the customary round of complaints about being overfed, each of us taking turns to groan and/or roll ourselves around in mock agony. Perhaps an hour later, we managed somehow to find space in our individual universes for dessert. This, as it turns out, was cheesecake and ice-cream.I shan't deny that only mere hours after that, once the guests had departed and we had started up the ol' DVD player for a movie, did we go back for midnight snacks and seconds and thirds.

My dad is an odd duck. He’s got the biggest sweet tooth in the world, which is probably the largest contributing factor as to why he has so few left. The sweeter it is, the better, and then you can probably still heap a few teaspoons of sugar on there. A little more. What, are you afraid you’re going to run out? Cut me a real piece! Sorry, I tend to segue into Friends quotes these days as an automatic response to any kind of stimuli. What was I saying? Oh yes, my dad. Sweet anything, but something like cheesecake is unholy. It’s got the word “cheese” right in the name! Cheese is not something that goes into a dessert! But, you might argue, it’s still sweet. In fact, depending on the particular species of cheesecake you’ve managed to track and kill, it might actually be overly sweet. Yet no. Cheese.

But my aunt, this very father’s sister, had brought along a homemade fridge cheesecake (sublime, I might add), and as this was the option we had for dessert, he seemed game. Actually, to be honest, I think he might have misunderstood it to be simply a “tart” of some description until I actually made it a point to emphasise the “cheese”, at which point he- having been enjoying it thou’rly- lifted his head.

“But it’s not like, a real cheesecake, right? That’s just something you call it? It’s just a tart?”

“No, it’s an actual cheesecake.”

“But there’s no cheese in it?”

“Cream cheese, yes.”

Cue the sour face. He contemplates for a moment, and I could actually see him decide that he was choosing to call it a “tart” in his mind and to pretend that I had never said the word “cheese”. He cleaned his plate.

Happy New Year’s Eve to everyone, I suspect I shall be entirely boring tonight and do something as exciting as watching The Goonies. Well at least we know we have the removal of my wisdom teeth to look forward to early next year, which I’m sure at the very least Brenda will treasure greatly. I know this because I sent her a picture about a week ago of my root canal smile and she laughed so hard I think her bowels prolapsed.

Till next year, I wish everyone much pie of excellent to awesome quality, with dollops and dollops of sweetened whipped cream. That’s how much I love ya.