Examining Navel, Thanks to Blog Award

Thanks to the very lovely Zoesmom and the equally lovely Featherduster for a blogging award and a meme. Here is the award:

To claim this beauty, I have to list seven personality traits, and then nominate seven others. I am always happy to navel-gaze, so here goes:

1. I have a Facebook habit. I like reading people’s updates and looking at the photos. I don’t send gifts and nor do I poke, prod or offer lollies for people to suck, but I enjoy the somewhat conspiratorial aspect of keeping an eye on things and making contact with people I knew 20 years ago. I am also recently addicted to the new version of FB Scrabble (non-US and Canada), so if anyone wants a game, let me know. My present opponents are being rather tardy.

2. I get a sick feeling in my stomach if I am late, so I make every effort not to be. This means I am often early, and I sit around waiting for others.

3. I am not thorough and tend to go for big sweeping overall impressions. I can only be detailed in short bursts. Writing a novel is shaking me to the core of my being, because it is all about details, with one layer being placed on top of another. It’s a kind of architectural thinking and planning that I last used at university and it is a challenge to be doing so again.

4. I love tidiness but can be very messy. My own mess is tolerable, that of others less so.

5. I am extremely sociable, have a lot of friends and love being around people, but I also desperately need time alone. If I don’t find that time to be alone in my head without anyone chatting to me, requiring things from me or wanting me to do stuff, I get snappy and ill-tempered.

6. I am impatient with people who have no interest in others and who use other people as sounding-boards to bounce back their own fascinating words. Really, if you want to bore me with the tedious details of your life without showing any interest in mine, get a blog.

7. I am not good at confrontation, but believe two things – a) that is is important to be my own representative, since who else is going to be, and b) that I need my children to learn that confrontation doesn’t mean the world is going to fall apart – so am trying to be better at it. I find that humour works.

Now I tag:

DoctorDi

Couch trip

Dad Who Writes

Kit

Angela

Gumbomum

The Adventuress

Breaking the Silence

One of South Africa’s most senior and eminent businesspeople, Clem Sunter, writes movingly of the AIDS crisis in News24:

We recently witnessed the huge coverage given to the Air France Airbus that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. Two hundred and twenty-eight people perished in that disaster. Putting our Aids statistics into perspective, the equivalent is four airliners full of mostly young South Africans plunging into the sea every day of every month of every year. And yet silence accompanies their death because they die individually and the majority are from deprived backgrounds.

We should be ashamed and we should do everything to break the sound of silence. We should talk openly about ways to change sexual behaviour to minimise transmission of the virus. We should get the advertising agencies involved since it is their speciality to change behaviour. We should encourage people to get themselves tested and if they test positive seek the appropriate medical treatment. We should focus on compliance with the pill regimen and the fact that even when you feel better you can’t stop taking the pills.

Finally we should openly praise all those heroes and heroines who have dedicated their lives to caring for the victims of the epidemic. They deserve national medals for their bravery and compassion.

(My emphasis.)

Four planes a day crashing into the sea, four planes a day, filled with young people who should be economically active, taking care of their children and their parents and living life. It’s hard to stomach, which is why people don’t talk about it, but it is a tragedy on a giant scale – and one which will come to haunt the South African politicians who messed about for too long toying with dissident science and refusing to commit to providing people with the drugs.

It is easier to mourn one plane than many, as we harden ourselves to horror and stop hearing it. One of the things I’m trying to do in the book I’m writing is to show how AIDS has become a fact of life in South Africa, but how, at the same time, it is a deeply personal and excruciating tragedy for those who die and those who are left behind. Each story is worth telling.

The First Meme

Stolen from Queen Emily, who is mining a rich source of memes in that wonderful place we like to call Facebook, here is the meme of Firsts. The rules are simple and since it is 05.34am, I need simple:

…. 25 Firsts …. Share

1. Who was your first prom date? Growing up in South Africa = no proms. However, I did take a rather lovely young naval officer called Lance to my Matric ball. We had a very romantic relationship that lasted, oh, about three weeks.

2. Do you still talk to your first love? You mean the one I dumped so that I could take Lance to the ball? Er, no.

3. What was your first alcoholic drink? I can’t remember. It’s a bit of a haze. Possibly a very sweet and cheap white wine.

4. What was your first job? Voters’ roll registration in a local shopping mall.

5. What was your first car? A blue Toyota bakkie that my father allowed me to take to Cape Town with my learner’s license on condition that I would always take care to have a licensed driver in the car. Did I? Hell no. Cue lots of illegal driving. On reflection, I really don’t think that was a wise parenting decision on his part, but then, he trusted me.

6. Who was the first person to text you today? Someone who doesn’t know me, because everyone who does, knows email is my friend and SMS is my enemy.

7. Who is the first person you thought of this morning? I woke at 04.55 feeling very sorry for myself, having had asthma and short breath all night.

8. Who was your first grade teacher? Mrs Ross, elderly, sweet and cuddly.

9. Where did you go on your first flight in a plane? Cape Town.

10. Who was your first best friend and do you still talk? Dani, and you bet we talk. Good morning, honey!

11. Where was your first sleepover? At Dani’s house. Her parents were very open and welcoming, and over the 12 years of our schooling, there were periods when I practically moved in. They provided a wonderful, stable home environment for me when my own home was falling apart.

12. Who was the first person you talked to today? Two of my darling children.

13. Whose wedding were you in for the first time? I had a starring role in my uncle Chris’s wedding at the age of three.

14. What was the first thing you did this morning? Got up and had a toke of my asthma pump.

15. What was the first concert you went to? Johnny Clegg and Savuka.

16. First tattoo? Ain’t got none.

17. First piercing? Ears only. I’m not the piercing generation.

18. First foreign country you went to? I landed in Rome and spent the day there en route to England.

19. First movie you remember seeing? Lassie, where I started a long history of bawling my eyes out during films.

20. What state did you first live in? The then South African province of Natal, now known as KwaZulu-Natal.

21. Who was your first room-mate? At my university residence, which we fondly called Fuller Hell, we had single rooms, but I was next-door to Isa, who is my dear friend to this day.

22. When was your first detention? I don’t remember. It clearly wasn’t a trauma.

23. If you had one wish what would it be? Right now, it would be to be able breathe properly. However, on a grander scale, I’d like to see the end of automatic male privilege. What an interesting world that would be.

24. What is one thing you would learn, given the chance? How to dance.

25. Who will be the next person to post this? No idea, but have fun doing it.

Carrot Cake Muffins

Here, by popular demand, is the carrot cake muffin recipe I mentioned last week. It comes from a book called Muffins und Törtchen, Einfach und Schnell by Susanna Tee, and this recipe is both simple and fast. It also happens to be delicious, and the marscapone frosting is a new level of heavenly. I far prefer it to the traditional cream cheese frosting used for carrot cakes – it’s more subtle and flavoursome. It’s the cream cheese frosting’s grown-up sister, who’s moved away to university and come home with a new sheen of sophistication. And in the German style, neither the frosting nor the muffins are overly sweet. It calls for brown sugar, which is great if you have it, but I have used plain white caster sugar to no noticeable ill-effect. If you don’t live in Germany and can’t get gingerbread spices, use a mixture of ground cinnamon and ground ginger.

Ingredients:

125g softened butter

125g brown sugar

Zest and juice of one unwaxed orange

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

175g of grated carrot

5 tablespoons of walnuts, chopped

125g flour

1 teaspoon of gingerbread spices

1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder

For the frosting:

280g marscapone

4 tablespoons icing-sugar

Zest of one unwaxed orange

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees, and put muffin cases in a muffin tray.

Cream the butter, sugar and orange zest. Add the beaten egg bit by bit, and stir well. Dry the grated carrot on a kitchen towel and then add to the mixture along with the walnuts and the orange juice. Stir well. Fold in the flour, baking powder and spices with a metal spoon. Divide between the muffin cases.

Bake the muffins for 25 minutes until they are golden brown and feel springy to the touch. Cool on a baking tray.

Stir the marscapone, icing-sugar and orange zest.

When the muffins have cooled, ice them.

Decorate with marzipan fruits or whole walnuts or a smattering of orange zest or leave plain.

Enjoy!

A Suitable Girl

I’ve just read in the Independent Online that Vikram Seth is busy writing the sequel to his giant novel A Suitable Boy. The new book is, of course, going to be called A Suitable Girl. Seth has been paid an advance of 1.7 million pounds, and the new novel will be published in 2013. My God, I’ll be 45 years old, but it will be worth waiting for.

Seth is my favourite kind of novelist: he is lavish with words, he paints a huge canvas and he is political. He faces the issues head-on, tackles the problems of a continent without fear. As a writer, I admire the vastness, the breadth, the daring. As a reader, I can’t wait to dive in and be lost in that world. Go Vikram! And if you feel like finishing it a little earlier, there is one reader here who won’t complain.

As for the advance, I love it when novelists get treated like superstars.

Welcome to the Tea Party

I’ve decided that if I don’t crack it as a novelist, I’m going to offer my services as a professional tea party organiser. I love it all: the baking of delicious goodies, choosing and arranging flowers, sourcing decorations, using objects I already own to prettify the room and table. It’s a silly lot of fluff really, but a ridiculous amount of fun. The Headmistress of the young ladies’ college I once attended would have been proud that I am finally putting my skills to good use. (I actually considered creating a category called “Entertaining” to describe this post, but managed to restrain myself for fear of sounding too much like a Fifties housewife.)

So this weekend, I hosted a baby shower for a friend who happens to be having a baby boy. I once attended a baby shower where the mother-to-be had to “apple-dip” for a chocolate bar floating in a child’s potty full of orange juice while her arms were tied behind her back. With that horror in mind, I did some research as to the kinds of things people do at baby showers, and these were three suggestions that cropped up:

* Squash different kinds of chocolate bars into disposable nappies and then pass around the room for people to sniff and guess which nappy holds which chocolate bar. The winner is the one with the most correct answers.

* Each person gets a jar of baby food and a plastic spoon. The winner is the person who can eat their jar the fastest.

* Divide into two teams and equip each team with a roll of loo paper. See which team can construct a nappy on one lucky individual without using glue, tape or pins.

Having digested these, I decided a tea party was in order. Something dignified, pleasant, with good things to eat, champagne for those who could, punch for those who couldn’t, lots of tea and coffee. No apple dipping or chocolate bars in sight.

Instead, there was bunting:

I am hysterical about bunting. I love it. I was quite sad when after a few days my family requested that I took the bunting down because it was “embarrassing”. I looked on Etsy and there are a few people making bunting, but there’s a big gap in the market for lots more of it. I would prefer to use it for children’s parties than the plastic rubbish I buy at the supermarket and then throw away after three hours.

Want a close-up? Here it is again:

There was cake:

Victoria sponge with lemon curd

Lots of it:

Lemon cake

My personal favourite, carrot cake muffins with marscapone icing:

Rose-scented macaroons:

And champagne:

There were also some savoury snacks brought by friends, because I like to focus on the sugar. However, when I have my fantasy tea-party company, there will also be cucumber sandwiches and very fine slices of rare roast beef.

Need any catering done?

Unplugging

I’m switching off the internet and going downstairs to my office – where my modem conveniently does not work – to write. Just thought you should know that. While I am away, please entertain yourselves with two minutes of madness from the Conchord boys. The line, “Friends laugh together ha ha ha, friends make graphs together la la la” is genius. Watch for the “Ping” – it cracks me up every time.

The Joy of Being Older

I have been spending time with a friend who has an adorable nine-month-old baby. I love this baby for her cleverness and charm, and the sweetness of watching her discover the world. Being with them has brought home to me how my childrens’ baby time is over, and, while I loved it, how grateful I am to have moved on to the next stage. I am 40 and my youngest is four. I’ve just traveled with him to South Africa and Greece, and didn’t need to pack any special equipment – no prams, no special food, no nappies. He pulled his little roll-on suitcase and walked with his sisters the length and breadth of many airports.

I have spent the last ten years in dedicated service to small children. I adore my kids, and now I especially love their growing independence from me. I am no longer essential to their physical survival – any other kind adult could do my job. As they grow and shed their extreme neediness, I feel as if I have also emerged from a chrysalis. Their independence is perfectly matched to mine.

I spent all of last year in preparation for turning 40 in December, and then spent the next six months celebrating that birthday. It was a huge psychological turning point. I turned my mind to fitness, healthy eating and writing – doing things for me, my body and my psyche. At the risk of sounding smug, I feel as if I have arrived. I am not becoming, but being. And the best thing is, I have got at least 40 more years ahead of me to feel this way.

Today’s Observer has a brilliant focus on old age. The people they report on are extraordinary – a 98-year-old marathon runner, a 71-year-old yoga teacher, an 85-year-old sculptor – and what comes across is the fun they have in living. Of course, what  they share is the luck of good health, the fortune of living in the privileged West, but even so they have survived world wars, epidemics and economic disasters.

Here are some quotes:

For Mary, aspects of growing old are met with relief, even joy. “In a way, emotionally, you change back. I am freer now to feel intense excitement like I used to as an adolescent – being out of doors, for example, or listening to music. I somehow didn’t have time for that when I was bringing up my children and working full-time. I have been able to spend much more time with my youngest grandchild than with the older ones, and that’s been wonderful, too.” Jean Crossley, grandmother, 100

“Yoga can have a tremendous effect on you, whatever age you start,” she says, “but I find I don’t need to do much practice to keep supple, as my awareness of my body posture has become second nature over the years.” She reveals that yoga has a more meaningful message, too. “I’m aware of the fragility of health and that it can change without warning. So I always retain a sense of detachment – I’m not pleased with myself if I do a complicated yoga pose, I’m pleased for myself. You’ve never got life cracked. Yoga teaches you that.” Pam Horton, yoga teacher, 71

The key to a healthy old age, he says, is continuing to work and “doing something you like doing. You’re so much more likely to go on living if you’re happy, and making art makes us both happy.” London, where he has lived since he married Sheila 60 years ago, has been another important factor. “Old people are really a pain in the neck and one of the joys of living in London is that you see young people. You could isolate yourself and be less stressed, but one of the pleasures is seeing what’s going on.” Sir Anthony Caro, sculptor, 85

And for Fauja age isn’t even a consideration: “I do not consider myself to be old. From the moment I do that, I would lose everything, because age is a state of mind – as long as you’re positive you can do anything.” Fauja Singh, runner, 98

Apart from luck, the common denominator amongst these amazing people is joy. I’d risk saying that their wisdom, joy and pleasure in life has been partially responsible for their health and longevity. Their stories increase my belief that I have every chance of being a joyful 85-year-old yoga-practising writer.

15 Books in 15 Minutes

Emily tagged me to do this on Facebook, but I can’t have two places in my life for memes, so, having seen Natalia do it on her blog today, I’m doing it here – the Facebook 15 Books in 15 Minutes Meme.

Instructions: Don’t take too long to think about it. List 15 books you’ve read that will always stick with you — the first 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Copy the instructions into your own note, and be sure to tag the person who tagged you. (Like Natalia, I listed the books first and then went back and wrote descriptions.)

1. The Narnia series by CS Lewis Books I read over and over again as a child, which served as an escape from then-unpleasant reality and simultaneously offered hope. I have since read them with delight to my children.

2. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott My first vision of the sisterhood – and what a good one it was! Also, I believed I was born to be Jo, with a smattering of Meg thrown in for good measure.

3. Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery I was sold on the romance of the little orphan girl who makes a place for herself in the world by being garrulous, funny and frank, and still am. I’ve read this to my children and watched them laugh and cry as I did.

4. The Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter The first book that brought me an awareness of how good writing can capture the natural world. Her descriptions of the forest, the moths, the lunch-pail made me want to swoon. Also, it brought me the friendship of my dear G, who now lives far too far away from me.

5. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver A triumph of imaginative and honest writing. For me, the best of Shriver’s many excellent books. It sticks with me despite the horror of its content and because of the brilliance of her writing.

6. Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh This sticks with me as I’ve just read it, but also because it is written in the most glorious, riotous and dazzling language. As one reviewer said, if the next two books in the series are as good as this one, it is going to be one of the first classics of the twenty-first century.

7. Saturday by Ian McEwan The writer in me loves how he sustains the conceit of a single day in someone’s life throughout this long novel. The reader in me loves it for its immediacy and the brilliant building of suspense.

8. The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger A perfect love story. It will stick with me for the genuine, sincere love that the time traveller and his wife had for each other, and how Niffenegger sustained her challenging conceit from beginning to end.

9. Carrie by Stephen King I met the uncanny and fell in love. This book was my first introduction to how a writer can brilliantly work a theme and make your stomach churn at the same time.

10. Master Harold and the Boys by Athol Fugard This writer, above all other South African authors, wrote my political education and opened my eyes to the inequities of the land where I lived. Master Harold is a play, not a novel, and perhaps it was the immediacy of first the words and later seeing the play itself helped wake me from dreaming into reality.

11. The Group by Mary McCarthy This was written in the Fifties, and will stick with me for its excellent writing and its vision of the sisterhood, but particularly for an incredibly graphic scene in a gynaecologist’s office. I’ve never read anything like it.

12. The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer I studied this in my final year of school and adored it for the vivid characterisations that brought another age to life. That Chaucer was quite a storyteller.

13. What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt I love this beautiful book of Hustvedt’s. It contains one of the most gut-wrenching, acute descriptions of grief that I have ever read. I don’t know if I will ever have the courage to re-read it.

14. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie I have said that this will be a classic, and I stick by my guns. It’s a superb novel, that manages to combine political exegesis and humane characterisations without losing the latter to the former. An object lesson on how to bring history and politics to vivid life.

15. A Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver This is not the Kingsolver book that you find most people talking about, but I love it for its suppressed eroticism and lush descriptions of nature. It will always stick with me for the sex scene that never happens.

Zen and the Art of Switching Off Your Phone

Yesterday in my yoga class, someone took a call on their mobile phone. Not a “I’m at yoga; will call you back” call either, but a prolonged two-way conversation that involved a lot of listening, some suggesting and proferring of ideas that we all got to hear, since the yoga studio is small. My yoga teacher said, “Let’s just have a pause in the child pose while Isabel takes her call”, and then after a while, “It’s taking longer than I thought. Let’s move on then.”

The mere fact that her phone was on during yoga class is astonishingly rude. The fact that she answered it and then went on to have a four-minute conversation is staggering. The fact that she returned to the class and DIDN’T APOLOGISE is mind-blowing. I think it’s the self-importance that enrages me more than the rudeness – if you are having a crisis in your life that requires you to be available 24/7, DON’T COME TO YOGA. Otherwise, switch off your bloody phone, take a message and call back afterwards. The class only lasts an hour.

Today’s Times Online has a great article on how technology, particularly mobile phones and those relationship-threateners, BlackBerrys and iPhones, is promoting a new level of distractedness not only from the moment but from those most important to us. Couples are having to lay down ground rules as to when BlackBerry use is acceptable and when not – during an anniversary dinner, not acceptable; on the beach while on holiday with your family, NOT acceptable. The article says:

However, the only way a new etiquette can really work is through increased self-awareness on the part of the user. For starters, users have to realise how their behaviour can affect others. As Lloyd-Elliot says: “There is something arrogant about the mindset that goes with this trend — the sense of always thinking that what you’ve got to say is so important it can’t wait. There’s also an absence of thoughtful empathy; how you are making those around you feel.”

Dr Emma Short, a senior lecturer in psychology, agrees. “It’s about being mindful about the choices you make. Whenever you take a call or reply to a message in front of someone, you are prioritising what is an absent presence.” In terms of your relationship and how your partner feels, she says, think about who you are promoting above whom when you hear that beep or see that flashing light.

I remember when mobile phone use first became ubiquitous sitting around and waiting in social situations for people to complete their very important phone conversation so that they could get back to conversing with me. I resolved never to have one. Since having children, I’ve caved in and I have to admit it is a useful tool – on holiday in Greece, my kids were able to chat to their dad in Germany and I could abuse the cheap car company when yet another of their crap vehicles broke down. But a mobile is nothing more than that, a tool, and one of which we should be in charge and to which we should not allow ourselves to become victim.

Isabel’s vague shrug as she returned to the yoga class yesterday was just that, the shrug of a victim. Her shrug said, “Don’t blame me, blame my phone.”

I think what overreliance on mobile technology most underscores is the inability to be in the moment. If you have to pick up the phone to tell someone what a great time you’re having WHILE YOU’RE HAVING IT, then how much fun are you actually having? And if you can’t switch off from your life for a one-hour yoga class – a place where more than anywhere you are practising the art of being in the moment – then PERHAPS YOU SHOULDN’T ATTEND.