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I made two outstanding discoveries this morning. One - I should not be allowed out on school nights and two - drinking copious amounts of alcohol will get you drunk resulting in an obscene hangover. The Single Sidekick and I went out for a romantic dinner last night which turned into a mix-a-drink party. Why I felt the need to drink sherry, then wine, then some sort of metholated spirits is beyond me. Apparently I arrived home and was trying to put on a sexy show for the Wine Merchant which ended up with me tripping over my own feet and hitting my head on the side of the couch. Nothing says passion killer like a drunk person lying on the floor shouting 'I need medical attention STAT!'

My new cleaner started today and it became quite clear within five minutes of her arriving that she's completely unstable. I had asked her to come at 7:30 and at 6:30 the buzzer went. The Wine Merchant kicked me and mumbled 'the buzzer' to which I replied 'Hello Buzzer'. Ten minutes later we realised there was someone pushing the buzzer and it was Miriam. Letting her in I went back to bed and five minutes later the door swung open to reveal Miriam in all her cleaning uniform glory. This was clearly a person with no concept of privacy.

When she left to go into the garden to look for fairies, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to get to know the real Mental Miriam, what makes this bundle of unstable joy tick.

So Miriam, do you have children?

She thought about this for a while which made me think she was separating fairies from children and got a very excited look on her face and shouted,

Two! A boy and a girl!

Happy she didn't say a cactus and a fern, I probed deeper.

How old are they?

91 and 85.

A quick calculation meant that Mental Miriam was roughly a hundred and ten. I was about to ask her what anti wrinkle cream she used when she hit me with:

What's for breakfast?

And then fell about laughing for ten minutes. I was clearly in danger and needed to take control of the situation.

Me: Any other questions you have, breakfast or otherwise, ask the Wine Merchant.

I shouted goodbye and headed out the door only to look back to see that Miriam had taken my suggestion quite literally and was heading towards the bathroom door. Since the Wine Merchant was in the shower, I waited until I heard 'What the f*Ck!?' and made myself scarce. If I come and find her dancing around with a plunger stuck on her head, I won't be suprised.

...well Cape Town has since turned into a tropical paradigm since I was last here. Have jetted down for a meeting today, and hell, is it not a scorcher.

Could not sleep last night at all. Crisis.

baldyza: sudden urge to listen to Tom Petty.

If I were allowed to move, to England that is, I’ve become particularly and astutely aware of what will terrify me and what I’d love about the place. If I get to go there, I want to be prepared; rose-coloured shades are pants.

I’m terrified at the prospect of being torn from a comfort zone, but also desperately yearning for the challenge of a new place.

Here’s my list. If I ever get there, it’ll be interesting to see if any of my predictions are right.
This said, I never said immigrating would be easy. Adapting takes months, if not years.

I’ve spent enough time on Blighty over the last two years to make estimated decisions on what to expect. I fly to London on Friday for two weeks again. For a lot of hard work.

Things Guaranteed To Piss Me Off At Some Time Or Another (In descending order of annoyance):

1) The darkness.

The cold, the grey, the rain = all irritating. But bearable. British Winters are notoriously shite. The fact that in winter it gets dark – not twilight dark, midnight inky black dark – at 2pm, is going to be rough to deal with.
In December I made a pub announcement in the office at 3pm because I thought it was 7pm. My colleagues there may think I’m a functioning alcoholic, but really, the truth is that I thought it was almost bed time. Fuck.

2) Tubes during rush hour.

Won’t be able to sing long loudly to myself like I do in my car; in my own bubble. People don’t look at each other on trains, nevermind talk. So singing out loud will be considered Freak O’ Nature. Sharing armpit space with sweaty chavs and/or bankers will take some adapting to. Also lugging my Sainsbury's groceries bags around, up stairs, escalators, platforms, standing with them.

3) Wind with rain.

The horizontal rain that hits you at 90 degrees in your face, and your brolly has turned inside out, and you’re far away from home and a hot shower. That might be a bit miserable.

4) Living with someone again.

I’ve got very used to my own space over the last 2 years. I come home and my little castle is as exactly as I left it. No rotting dishes, total control of the remote, walking around naked, my own toilet. This will take adapting to – because in London, you can’t afford to live on your own unless you’re farking coining it.

5) Dare I say it….Rugby jersey-wearing South Africans in London.

The types who braai in the rain, visit the Puzzle/Walkabout/White Horse/Slut & Legless and talk constantly about how great home is, while waving a flag about.

The Top 5 Things That I’d Love About London

1) It’s London.

One of the world’s great cities, with mounds of cultural and fun shit to do, amazing architecture, general grandness, high streets, The Queen. Red buses. Selfridges. Parks, pints, curries, cobbles.

2) The crisp air.

No seriously, for some reason, my skin glows in cold climates. The place is also prepared for cold climates. Indoor heating, 8000 types of coats to choose from at Top Shop, cozy pubs.

3) The feeling that I’m a small fish in a big pond.

I feel like I know everyone in Johannesburg. Not that it’s bad, but I wouldn’t mind starting a new chapter, finding some new interesting friends, being anonymous, and being normal. Normal in that at almost 30, I’m not married or expecting childbirth. In London it’s normal to be like that. Thank God.

4) The Brits.

Unless I’m attacked – verbally or otherwise – by a chav, I tend to find them fucking amusing. Chavs aside even, I love the Brits. Their humour, their cheery yet very dry and plain-talking approach to life, their eccentricities. Their lingo. I find many of them wildly eccentric, not to mention extremely funny.

5) Nothing is really far away.

On a general scale, it’s a small island. And Europe is a hop, skip jump away. Did I mention that I have a two year Schengen visa? And that I cried tears of joy when it was handed to me? It’s meant to BE. I can go to….Sweden. And, and, Estonia. Or ‘Hey guys, let’s go to…Latvia for the weekend.’ Generally, getting around is not a problem. What with all that fantastic public transport.

Things I Won’t Miss About Home

1) The expense and time I spend on weddings. Other people’s.

I’m a sucker for love, and I am honoured to be involved in their joy. In their commitment. I just don’t feel like I fit in with all the change going on around me; mainly because I don’t.

2) Taxis.

Hiace, Toyota brand of death. I don’t think I need to elaborate. Or else I’ll get road rage just typing this.

3) Scared every time a guy walks up to my car.

Similarly, beggars on every corner. Like everyone, I’m tired of being paranoidly aware, on edge and feeling guilty and shit every time I stop at a robot. Being scared of crime in general.

4) General incompetence.

This is generalised – but Home Affairs, people printing fake passports and therefore fucking up our chances to get visas overseas, that slow sort of approach and uncaring attitude in any service industry. That said, I have to expect it’s probably like this in all bureaucratic offices across the globe. Right?

5) Feeling bored with surroundings.

I am. I don’t even bother to explore or date anymore. Haven’t in years. Hugely unbalanced. I see it as work, the concept itself is exhausting. So taht's mostly what I do: work. That’s not really living, is it.

Things I Will Miss About Home

1) Sun and reasonable daylight hours.

See ‘Darkness’ in first London list. Will invest in a Vitamin D lamp like people in Seattle use, and possibly sleep under it. I fear seasonal depression.

2) My family and friends.

Of course I’ll miss them terribly. And hope I get to see them at least once a year.

3) Biltong.

Yes, even if there are Saffa shops there, I won’t make an out-of-the-way trip to go and buy biltong. Dad used to send me biltong when I lived in France. Maybe I’ll get him to send packages this time too.

4) The Rand/our cost of living versus London cost of living.

I’ll be spending half my salary on rent, for a place half the size of what I have now. And will have to share with someone else. I’ll miss the space we have here. Besides the rent, I’ll also be paying for council tax, indoor heating and public transport. It’s not cheap.

5) The friendliness of South Africans.

We are a very friendly, open nation, in general. I find we’re more rambunctious than Brits on the odd occasion. (I’m not including football fans after 8000 pints at a Man U/Arsenal match in this benchmark). Saffas are sunny people, at least in sunny countries.

baldyza: a coffee shop with internet access is not productive for me to write code in.

baldyza: just tanned a packed of fig rolls (biscuits not fruit).

baldyza: coffee at black medicine coffee company in Edinburgh. Then even have decent soya milk, its a winner.

baldyza: trying to impose a structure on this silly java course that has no structure. Beware of CS related courses from non CS departments.

Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans is a joke. And I don’t mean that necessarily in a bad way. I mean, that’s the only way to explain it. It’s not a comedy – not exactly – but it’s Herzog’s joke at the expense of Hollywood. It must be.

Herzog, of course, is mad. Not mad in the same way that Lars von Trier is mad – not bad mad. He’s just a wild and crazy guy who rails against Bonanza and eats shoes. And now he’s remade one of the most disturbing films of the nineties as a Hollywood pisstake.

Unsurprisingly, Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant has very little to do with Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant. It has a corrupt, drug-addled cop at the centre of it, but that aside, it's more like a wildly distorted echo than a direct remake.

Ferrara’s film is genuinely shocking – still shocking, almost 20 years on. In it a nun is raped by two men. They also use a crucifix. Harvey Keitel’s lieutenant meanwhile is genuinely disturbed. Aside from the drugs, the sex and the gambling, the cursing of Christ and the standing around naked whilst whining like a wounded dog, there is also the infamous masturbation scene, which brings a whole new meaning to the term 'carjacking'. The man is a moral train-wreck and the film as a whole is uncomfortable and difficult.

Herzog’s film, by comparison, has more in common with a made-for-TV film, piling cliché upon cliché, plot-hole upon nonsense, and topping it all off with a caricature of a happy ending.

The drugs in Ferrara’s film are grimy and hideous. The script was written by Ferrara and Zoe Lund, who died of an overdose in 1999. The shooting-up scene is as realistic as any you’ll see and lasts forever.

The drugs in Herzog’s film are silly. When Nicholas Cage smokes crack he tends to turn into a buffoon, laughing hysterically, overacting enormously.

Keitel’s lieutenant takes drugs because he is a moral latrine.

Cage’s lieutenant takes drugs because he has a bad back.

Keitel’s lieutenant hallucinates a bloodied, freshly-crucified Christ.

Cage’s lieutenant hallucinates singing iguanas.

The one scene in which Cage’s bad lieutenant gets anywhere close to the badness of Harvey Keitel’s bad lieutenant is when he shoves a gun in a sick old lady’s face, cuts off her oxygen supply and calls her a ‘selfish cunt’. But even that got big laughs at the screening I was at. And rightly so. It was played for laughs. In fact, the tone is set at the beginning of that same scene when Cage picks up a giant teddy bear and throws it on the floor. Yes, sir, that’s how bad he is.

Ferrara’s film ends with Keitel smoking crack with the nun-rapists, giving them a box of money and putting them on the a bus out of town. The nun they raped forgave them and so must he. Then he’s gunned down for his gambling debts.

Herzog’s film ends when each of Cage's three serious problems is resolved in very quick succession, literally one after the other while he sits at his desk. Then the very last scene of the film has Cage looking at the camera and laughing. I imagine Herzog’s direction was: ‘OK, keep staring into the movie camera and then slowly, you realise – as the audience must realise – that the whole film has been an elaborate joke. You start to laugh. That’s it. Keep laughing! It’s ludicrous. Hollywood is ludicrous! With this film I can finally destroy it!’

Unfortunately, no one else seems to have realised it’s a joke and it actually garnered good straight reviews on its US release.

Herzog must be depressed. Hollywood's in worse shape than he thought. He's probably throwing himself into a cactus again as we speak.

There is of course the possibility that I have got entirely the wrong end of the stick and the film is not actually a joke at all. In which case, um... it's bollocks.

The iguanas are fun though.

The Cool One and I were sitting on the couch on Saturday night discussing poignant topics. Topics such as whether my mirror was a fat one or a thin one. The Cool One was adamant is was a thin one when I was convinced it was a normal one. The fact that the reflection made us look like we were 6 feet tall with legs the width of toothpicks was besides the point. We were in mid mirror change when the phone rang telling me it was The Single Sidekick.

SS: Hi Tart
Me: Hi Slutbag. What you doing?
SS: I’ve just finished my 95th glass of wine and would like to go out.
Me: Can’t right now, I’m working.
SS: On what?
Me: My self confidence.
SS: It’s too late for that. Let’s go shake a shoe somewhere.
Me: I have new shoes!
SS: Great! Pick me up in ten. My car is too drunk to drive.

The rest of the evening was spent with the Single Sidekick and The Cool One going from club to club. When I was hit on by a twenty year old and an 18-year-old almost vomited on my new shoes, I pulled everyone off the dance floor and headed to the bar.

Me: Do you guys feel old?
TCO: I just want to sit down and have a conversation.
SS: Is it rude if I take my shoes off and put my feet up?

After forcing ourselves to stay out till 5am we went home. I walked in to find the Wine Merchant watching a DVD with his mates.

Me: What time did you get back?
WM: 1 o’clock.
Me: Why so early?
Wine Merchant’s mate: I started talking to this girl who turned out to be 17. I felt like a paedophile so we left. Why are you back so late?
Me: We wanted to prove to ourselves we could still manage to be the last ones to leave a place. Night guys, wake me up on Tuesday.

I’ve decided I’ve let myself go in terms of partying and am going to go out on week nights. No one wants to join me but my 18-year-old cousin is keen. It’s going to be sad, but it’s necessary to cling onto my youth.

baldyza: New post: Groupies http://tinyurl.com/yfwcka9

baldyza: managed to get breakfast all over my white tshirt.

Was watching – amidst a hangover so dire, it made donkey’s balls seem elevated - from a massive night on Friday, an apocalyptic documentary on The History Channel.

So there is stuff to watch on dsTV after all.

It was mindblowing. About what would happen when humans disappear.
Along a time line of 1 day to 10 000 years.

(Scientists say that on the 10 000 year mark, any traces of our existence would be gone. Save debris that have somehow been submerged below the rock or seabed, therefore fossilised and trapped in time).

Despite the doomsday soundtrack in the background, engineers, historians, and the likes predicted what would happen to some of the world’s biggest man-made structures, if we just disappeared. The computer graphics were somewhat terrifying.

I was glued. Glued.

Life After People doesn't show the actual apocalypse, but rather the natural disintegration of things in a rather Oh My Fuck manner.

Basically, although we hammer the Earth with our methane gas and bad bad eco ways, without the constant maintenance of our structures, and assuming the entire Earth didn’t disappear when we did (by way of meteor or the theories around 2012 being The End; supposing everything inanimate was still left.)

Funny enough, the Sistine Chapel ceiling was estimated to only fall/crumble/die after 500 years of no people. Was surprised by this.

Towers would be the first to go, for obvious reasons.

After 200 years, the Statue of Liberty’s arm would fall off, closely followed by her face. Embedding itself deep in the ocean sand, later fossilising.

Most buildings and roads would, after 5 years, be completely overgrown by wild vines and weeds; domestic animals would die after just 10 days, while wild animals would re-emerge into the cities.

Bridges would collapse after 50, and obviously cities that lie on a seaboard would disintegrate quicker – salt is the biggest natural corrosive.

Already, this has happened. In 1974, an island off Japan, in the Nagasaki precinct, lies completely skeletal, abandoned and it downright freaked me out. Coal stopped being mined here and everyone was evacuated. Leaving – 50 years after humans:
And Chernobyl, Ukraine, of course:

The ominous background track really left me concerned. And what for? We’d all be dead anyway.

Still: From Day 1 to 10 000 years ‘Tis a little cataclysmic…

baldyza: awake, its shocking.

baldyza: Lovely day today. Off to manchester tomorrow.

baldyza: discovered donk.

baldyza: Did not take my winter jacket today, little bit crazy I know. Spring might be here.

baldyza: owned!

baldyza: Oz visa guy has forgot about our call today, I am going for a nap.