Living for Disco

Today, I am going to address some of the questions that people type into google, which then directs them to my blog. It seems a bit of a shame that people have such specific questions, and yet can find no succinct and helpful answer. I feel for them, and so I am going to try and help them out.

1. I am eating OMO washing powder. Is it good?

Dear Strange Detergent Eating Person,

Are you pregnant? If not, what on earth is wrong with you? If you really want to clean out your insides, go for colonic irrigation. To answer your question, I’m afraid that eating OMO washing powder is almost certainly not good for you, if the destructive effects it has on my clothing are anything to go by. In addition, many washing powders contain bleach, which is not known to agree with the human digestive system. I suggest you cease forthwith.

2. How much snot can a person produce?

Dear Bogey-person,

This is an interesting question, and one I have asked many times myself. Apparently, we produce nasal mucus all the time, and swallow most of it unconsciously, so really there is no need to be disgusted by people who eat their snot (no need, but every reason). Apparently, in cold weather, the cilia that keep the snot moving throatwards stop working, which is why we get bunged up. Also, fascinatingly, did you know that the creation of bogeys is a little like the way in which an oyster creates a pearl? The mucus gathers around bits of dust and debris that find their way into our noses, and then hardens. Bingo – a nose pearl. Which is what I will be calling them from now on.

Unfortunately, I can’t answer your question exactly, but still, that was interesting. Wasn’t it?

3. Why maggots living in boob?

Dear GOD! That is horrendous. What are you doing sitting at your computer? Go to hospital immediately.

4. What happens in a lapdancing club?

Dear Sir,

I have never frequented one of these establishments, but I do know people that have. As far as I am aware, people go in and then are charged five times the going rate for a drink. They are also expected to buy drinks (probably champagne) for scantily clad dancers. If you like, for an extra charge, the dancers will give you a ‘special dance’, which involves giving you a really close look at their g-string, and possibly grinding around about an inch above your lap for a while. You then leave, probably about 500 quid lighter. It’s a bit of a mystery to me really, but I’ve heard people like it.

5. How do I pronounce Namibia?

Dear Idiot,

Na as in banana, mi as in do-re-mi or as in me, bi as in let it be, a as in apple. It’s a simple four syllable word, not fucking rocket science. Why do people have such trouble with it?

6. Why do I put myself through this?

A question often asked by people who are either moving house, shopping on Oxford Street on a Saturday, or having to spend a protracted amount of time with lunatic extended family. Can’t help you I’m afraid – it’s a mystery to me too.

As for the two people who found me by typing “giant men and women size of a finger in cinema” and “whirl of reckless joy and impossible transports of fury and indignation”, you are clearly being too specific. And also random. Please try again.

I hope I have been of service!

Well, Mike’s Big Idea has come to fruition, and there is now a shiny new book ready to be snatched from the internet’s virtual shelves, and delivered to bathrooms all over the world.

Yes! Shaggy Blog Stories is now available – a collection of posts from very funny bloggers from the UK blogosphere. And I’m in it! I am! In a book! Me! I’m so excited I’m almost unable to speak.

So rush of and buy it, my friends, please. It’s for a very good cause, and all profits – every penny – go to Comic Relief, who do truly marvellous things. Also, did I mention that I’m in it?

Today’s looking good. It’s Friday. I’m in a book. I have Kate Bush singing Wuthering Heights on my ipod. I’m still celebrating the blog of the day award I won last Sunday. I’m in a book. Also I get paid on Monday so I will be able to afford to eat more than beans.

Hurrah!

We all went through Friday saying “I can’t wait to get on that bus”.  We were fools, but we knew it not.  I expect that’s usual for foolishness, really.

We didn’t sleep.  Not even a wink.  At the end of the twenty-six hour journey, we four intrepid travellers had clocked up:

1 case of cystitis

1 case of D & V (Diarrhea and vomiting to those in the biz)

1 case of extreme nausea

1 case of pathological irritability, brought on by exhaustion

Of course, we recovered in style by going to a birthday party in Johannesburg.  We sat in a sunny garden, surrounded by interesting and friendly people, eating braaied chicken and drinking much wine.  Our bus left at 10 that night, and we were rat-arsed by the time we got on it.  I apparently offended many of our fellow travellers to Maputo by enquiring loudly as to just why people need to import so many fucking onions to Mozambique.  I am still curious, incidentally.  Do onions not grow here?  I am yet to find out.

By the time we arrived, finally, mercifully, in Maputo, ten hours later, we’d clocked up:

1 severe bladder infection

1 case of uncontrollable vomiting

1 case of impetigo

4 hangovers

God, we’re getting old.

The dawn border crossing was an experience.  We stood sweating in a rubbish strewn warehouse while a large fat man wrote excruciatingly slowly, and as I was later to realise, illegibly, into our passports.  Meanwhile, a stream of semi-literate travellers were sent away to refil visa forms that they hadn’t understood in the first place, by a man whose sole purpose in life seemed to be to utter the words “No. Go away and fill it out properly” to bewildered visa-seekers.

I have to tell you though, it was worth it.  Maputo is wonderful. 

The bus left late from Windhoek, and so we drove south into the dusk.  It was dark long before we reached Rehoboth, although I’d seen the smoke from a good way away. Once darkness fell, the eerie glow on the horizon looked like a doppelganger sunset – the sign of a bushfire raging somewhere ahead.

Namibia is extraordinarily dry, and starting a fire is the matter of a mere second of carelessness.  Carelessness like this costs millions of dollars worth of damage, destroys animal life and livelihoods, and causes untold devastation.  I’ve seen the aftermath of fires before – telegraph poles hanging footless in the air, straining at the wires; acres of smouldering, stinking ash; stumps of acacia trees sitting forlorn in the charred emptiness.

We smelt the devastation before we saw it;  a heavy, dry and smoky smell that filled the bus.  As we drew nearer we saw where the fire had been.  Embers glowed in the hollowed out carcass of a huge tree; the bottom three feet of a telegraph pole burned prettily in the blackness; small fires still soldiered on in the cinders of what yesterday was cattle farming land, looking like the lights of a strange and dancing city.

When we caught up to the fire, it was devouring the brittle, dry grass up to the road. Flames rose to heights of ten or twelve feet, encouraged by the wind to hurry onwards.  We passed within two feet of the edge of the blaze – fire out of control is strangely exciting, yet appalling to watch.  The sight stayed in my mind’s eye for days.

When we reached Rehoboth, we got off the bus to buy water.  A hot wind blew dust into our eyes and hair, and as I blinked and rubbed the gritty dust into the sweat on my face, I watched an old man, his beard stained with nicotine, strike a match into the bowl of his pipe and flick it, unheeded, onto the forecourt of the petrol station. 

We are standing in the biting cold, waiting for the Namdeb bus to take us into the mine at Elizabeth Bay.  We have all been up since 5 am, and are feeling frayed around the edges, but am quite excited to see what a diamond mind looks like.  When we get on, we are told what our little tour will include, and given a pep talk by the bear-like, bearded head of security, who goes by the fantastically appropriate name of Skulk.

“OK.  When we are in the area, you must not touch anything, you must not pick anything off the ground.  If you pick something off the ground, and put it in your pocket there is no excuse.  We will put you away for 20 years, or fine you N$1,000,000.”  I am instantly terrified, in case I forget, and see something I want to pick up, like litter, or something.  I am very conscientious you know.  Fortunately, I manage to restrain myself.

The mine is grey and very exciting in an industrial kind of way.  It is dwarfed by an enormous man-made dune, formed of the sifted and rejected sand.  We are not allowed off the bus, and it isn’t long before captivity palls, and we are taken to an old mining town that is disintegrating in the rough, salty air.  The first thing I see is a mural on a wall depicting idyllic palm tree fronded beaches, and soft Pacific surf.  Wishful thinking indeed – this is the Atlantic, and it’s harsh and cold; the only vegetation is sparse, and hugs the ground as if in fear of the wind.  Coconuts were never on the menu.

For some reason, I am fascinated by the doors in the houses, by the thought that almost 100 years ago, people opened and closed these doors, went through them, used them to get in and out of rooms where now there is nothing and nobody.  I can almost see them, those old German families, living on the edge of the earth, with only the sand and the rocks and the sea for company, and marvel at how much they were prepared put up with for the promise of untold riches, back when the diamonds were simply lying on the ground for anyone to pick up.

We arrive back in to chilly Luderitz with hours to spare for doing educational things like visiting the museum, and looking at Shark Island – an old prisoner of war camp where conditions were rank and people died in their hundreds.

Naturally, we decide to spend those hours in a coffee shop, eating cake.