Living for Disco

This morning I arose, bleary eyed, turned on Radio Wave (Namibia’s Number One Hit Station!) to listen to Jared and Mags, the Waking Crew, to whom I have become addicted, despite Jared’s clear and measured descent into insanity. Today, apropos of nothing, he conducted an apoplectic rant about people who attend polo matches.

Most of the time, the pair just bicker, or run embarrassingly long advertorials about tefal pans. The whole of December was dedicated to tefal pans, and to their credit, I’ve never heard two people sound so genuinely awed by kitchen ware. In addition to this nonsense, there’s an advert that gets played at least three times every half hour, which goes:

Woman, in honeyed tones: “Mmmmmm. Morning honey. What would you like for breakfast?”
Man, clearly far too used to the current status quo “Aaaaaah. I think I’ll have some eggs, and some Windhoek Schlachterei sausage.”
Woman once more, so sweetly, you can almost see her putting on her gingham apron: “Anything for my hugglebump. What kind of Windhoek Schlachterei sausage?”

They also play a bizarrely eclectic selection of music. Yesterday I left the house to the strains of Led Zeppelin, but other mornings it’s wall to wall Mariah Carey. They went through a stage where they played Alanis Morisette’s entire back catalogue so repeatedly that I thought I was going to have to change my allegiance to Radio Kudu, but thankfully they are now over it.

Anyway, at 6.45am I was easing myself into my morning in the company of this dependable duo, trying to avoid the pan full of wallpaper paste while I spread my marmalade on my toast, when I looked out of my patio doors to see Mrs Uncle Janni, who is about 70, stomping determinedly in circles around the driveway, in the rain, wearing a housecoat, a shower cap and a pair of brogues.

I sometimes wonder if I’m going to wake up, like Pammy Ewing, in my little room in Cambridge, having dreamed the last four months in their entirety.

When I was younger, I remember making papier maché things out of bits of newspaper and balloons. I don’t really remember what the things were. I just remember enjoyably, messily, sticking the bits of newspaper in wallpaper paste, and stroking them lovingly onto a balloon. I was creative. Oh yes.

I’m starting to realise that the reason I have no idea what I was making, is that the wallpaper paste took so bloody long to dry that my younger, shorter attention span had long moved on to something else. Like University.

My current project has been drying since Saturday. Globs of wallpaper paste have been making their slow, glacial way down the sides of the construction for days. I expected, by now, to have a nice bowl, which I could paint, and make pretty, and then put things in. But no. I just have a kitchen table covered with piles of paper strips and bowls full of gloop. I’m having to construct my meals in an arena of newsprint. Yesterday, I almost started eating my spaghetti with a spoon covered in non-toxic adhesive.

It’s soul destroying. I’ve known for some years that I am imaginatively and creatively challenged, but I thought that papier maché would not be beyond the limits of my ability.

What am I doing wrong?