It’s Friday night and I’m looking at a girl in hot pants and a padded bra gyrating on a pedestal.

No it’s not a strip joint. This is a northern suburbs club that borrows its name from Buddha but is about a million miles from anything spiritual.

It’s girls’ night out and even I can abandon my satellite dish for a night and get my high-heeled dancing shoes on. High heels because it’s a club with a dress code and more lip gloss and push-up bras than even Tannie Evita would know what to do with.

This is another celebration night for my newly single (happily) gal-pal, C, who’s already on about her fourth pink drink by the time I get past the N1 traffic to join the group of girls. The theme of the night is going to be Drink Pink I quickly realise, but I’ll certainly raise a glass to her freedom!

The bar is packed as the countdown for the 11pm dance floor opening draws closer.  We group of gals squeeze around a tiny table joining the crush of bodies. You can only hear the person next you, the doof doof music is already starting up. M’s next to me. She stares down at her outfit. “I feel really under-dressed,” she says with a bit of an irritated snarl. I look at her and she’s got sequins on her top!

In my clubbing days you only had to lace up your Docs properly and make sure you didn’t lose your friends in the mosh pit!

“I hate this, it’s so pretentious and this place is not very Thai is it?” she says, taking in the light fittings she says are more Morocco than Far East, the back-lit oversized Buddha as ornament and the rounds and rounds of shooters making their exit from the bar.

I smile and down one of the shooters – “chocolate or caramel” my single gal-pal has shouted from her end of the table, she’s pausing inbetween the pink drinks. I just smile, show her a thumbs up and drink up.

In my best anthropologist voice I say to M: “Well you know it’s all about a presentation of sex”.

M raises an eyebrow, she snarls a little again.

“Think about it. A place like this, and all of us in it, are playing a role. It’s about saying we’re are buying into the heterosexual need to breed – from the girl who’s laughing too loudly as she flicks her hair back to the guy whose shirt needs more buttoning up, the bartender who’s hoping a tip includes nookie on the side and yes even the girl in the hot pants doing the shadow dancing on the pedestal. Bodies squeezed closely together, eye contact with loaded meaning and booze to quiet your better judgement.”

M nods. We’re all actors on a stage.

“Yeah I guess you’re right,” she clinks her shooter glass against mine and downs her drink too.

If you can’t beat them join them – at least the booze make the music sound better!

I met Natalie Watermeyer from Classic Feel magazine a few weeks ago.

Over cappuccinos at 44 Stanley and gazing out at a hypnotic water feature we talked about how Paper Sons and Daughters came to being. One genesis point was an anthropology assignment I was asked to do when I went back to study further a couple of years ago.

It was an assignment about mapping your family trees as a entry point into kinship structures.

As a journalist I’ve written about so many people’s stories (and I love it) but with the assignment I was writing my own story into being. It truly felt like all the ghosts of the people who have come before me were milling around the room as I typed out my assignment on my clunky old PC.

But their voices would not be silenced I guess …

Check out Classic Feel (April edition) and read a bit of teaser at http://www.classicfeel.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=636&catid=636

Zoo’s aren’t my favourite places exactly, animals in enclosures is a sad sight mostly. But you’ve got to hand it to the Joburg Zoo for getting more progressive and responsive.  And Sunday Zoo Trots, well they get the heart rate going and they’re good for day-to-day funnies too, clearly. Here’s the Little Spot I wrote for THE STAR earlier this month. This one’s for the animals!

A sign of the times ...

UFRIEDA HO

JUST as well animals don’t speak human.

If they could, the first words they’d probably say to us would be: “dumb ass”.  We’d deserve it too – think people who paint their dogs’ claws, those who bling up their pooches and lug them around in handbags as accessories or the geniuses whose idea of cute is dressing a chimp in nappies and a tuxedo.

We may be at the apex of the food chain but there are times it’s difficult to argue humans have more brain cells than a fruit fly. And if you need more convincing that even as top dogs we can be harebrained, this is what was overhead at the zoo outside the Barbary sheep enclosure. A toddler and his father are looking through the fencing. The boy points at the sheep and mouths: “lion”, “lion”.

The father pats his son’s head and says: “No my boy that’s not a lion, it’s a buck”. If that doesn’t hit high enough on the dim-ometer then look no further than the sign outside the zoo’s crocodile enclosure. The necessity of the sign in the first place speaks volume, but the wording sums up perfectly the reality the gene pool is not kind to everyone. The sign reads: “Do not throw anything at the crocodiles … or you’ll have to retrieve it”.

Makes you wonder why it’s the animals that are locked up.

——————————————-ends

Remember when you were a student and the clothing stores paid other students to roam around res and campus offering you your first form of credit?

I grew up with the cash is king mantra, I guess I still believe this- if you can’t afford it, don’t buy it till you’ve saved enough to get your grubby paws on it!

But the clever students had a cleverer hook for my teenage self. ”As a student you have no credit record and this account will help you if you ever need to apply for credit”.  Sounded fair enough and I signed on.

I’ve kept my same card for years … and years. The grey clothes store shopping card had through the years become faded and the embossed account numbers were worn smooth. A few years ago the store offered me a card swop.  I shook my head: “Nah, it’s still fine, it works, I’ll stick to this old card,” I’d say every time, swiping it and sticking my old grey faithful back into my wallet.

But the corporates like their changes, they say it’s about propping up bottom lines, streamlining this or that, and they say it’s to improve our shopping experience. I had to change they said. They time had come. And that’s how I came to part ways with the my first ever form of credit and to say hello to something new and fancy.

Here is my FANTASTIC PLASTIC Little Spot that appeared in THE STAR at the end of Feb

UFRIEDA HO

My consumerist heart skips a beat, I cry a little – this is the day I part ways with my first-ever form of plastic credit.

“Have you received a letter telling you we’re changing our store cards?” the department store cashier asks as I hand over a faded grey card to pay for my purchase.

“But I’ve had this card since I was a student; I can remember when people came round to res getting us to open accounts. It was the first credit I was given,” I protest.

“I know, but you have to do this, everyone has to change over,” the cashier says.

She pushes a pair of scissors in my direction. “Here, you cut your card.”

“What, I can’t keep the old one as a memento?”

Other cashiers laugh at me now and “ag-shame” my corny sentimentality. I’m looking at my teenage handwriting on the card’s slender signature strip. I think of all the times I’ve produced my card with a reply of “account” when asked “cash or account?” and all the times I’ve thought six months interest-free shopping equalled a bargain.  

I pick up the scissors, I kiss my card, I cut it in half.

The cashier smiles, she passes me my new card. It’s got a fancy transparent logo and a “Thank U” printed on it. I take the card – no, thank you fantastic plastic!    

——————-ends

Marmite, Wallis and Bacardi … just three of the cool kitties I got to meet in what seems like cat-crazed Dullstroom – (yip the flyfishing town in Mpumalanga).  ”Cool Cats of Dullstroom” appeared in THE COUNTRY LIFE February 2012 editon.

By UFREDA HO

You’d think Dullstroom is about the fish – but you’d have to clear that with the cats first.

This Mpumalanga highveld town is trout country and it’s where fly-fishers descend to tame the cool, deep pools and quiet streams in the hope of landing a Rainbow, or a Brown.

                                A bit of river, a bit of blue sky … enough said!

A closer look though reveals it’s really the cats that rule this town. A first giveaway is that a favourite fishing spot, Jansen’s Dam, boasts a bird hide crowned with a weather vane of the owl and the pussy cat. Another hint that cats are, well, top dogs here is the bright yellow warning sign off the main drag of the town. “Slow” it shouts first then continues with “Wallis Crossing”. The silhouetted outline of a cat is the obvious clue you’re slowing down for a feline.

Slow! This is Wallis's walkway!

And Wallis would expect nothing less. In fact if she had her way she’d prefer you roll out a red carpet for her pampered paws. But no one minds too much about doling out royal treatment because Wallis IS the drama queen of Dullstroom. Wallis is named after that famous American divorcee who changed the course of British history. And she is the Wallis of the Mrs Simpson’s restaurant.

Wallis’s human is Bryan Wolmarans, chef and co-owner with Stephen de Meyer of the restaurant that’s been voted among South Africa’s top 100. It’s a must-visit for its malva pudding, its divinely outrageous donated shoe collection as decor and of course Wallis, the pavement special who’s a dead ringer for a Norwegian Forest cat.

Wallis with her human Bryan Wolmarans, from the fabulous Mrs Simpson Restaurant,

“Wallis arrived here one day during a hailstorm. She was actually found a few years earlier when she was hit by a car and taken to our local vet. She eventually became the vet’s cat but then vanished for a year.

“A few weeks after she turned up here we took her to the vet to be fixed and that’s when the vet recognised Wallis as her cat that vanished. Since then she’s lived here at Mrs Simpson’s,” says Bryan.

It’s no surprise because Bryan admits that in the early days of her arrival Wallis had a steady diet of prawns and fillet steak.

“We have a lady who shares her crème brulee with Wallis on her lap. We can’t do that now though because Wallis’s teeth can’t take it anymore.”

But even if with no more tidbits Wallis won’t surrender her spot in front of the fireplace. It’s the best spot in the house and she still upstages the Manolo Blahniks and the Jimmy Choos on display.

Cats waltzing through restaurants are a reminder that you’re in a village. That’s what Andy Falk says of his restaurant and Marmite, the black cat he “inherited” when he bought Plat du Jour. This is a town where tar roads run up pretty quickly and where kids still have to get sent away to school.

Marmite with Andy Falk of Plat du Jour ... order something with Andy's porcini mushrooms.

A restaurant in a village means someone’s cows wonder around your parking lot and menus are seasonal. Seasonal at Andy’s includes porcini mushrooms when he’s found the fungi gems on his top-secret digs in Belfast.

“Kids especially come in and ask ‘Where’s Marmite?’ even before they’ve had a look at the menu,” says Andy.

Expect Marmite to make an appearance if sardines come up on an order slip!

“With Marmite here it’s like you’ve been invited into my home, which is also Marmite’s home. This is not a restaurant in Sandton,” says Andy.

And while you may fight for a table in Sandton, you quickly learn to give up your seat for cats in Dullstroom. At the Duck and Trout it’s Bacardi who gets the respect. She strutted into the pub about 12 years ago and is now an institution.

“I’m really not a cat person, and I never grew up with cats, but Bacardi sort of found me,” says Wayne Hampson who bought the pub 15 years ago. It’s a pub that started life as the town’s milk depot.

Today Wayne – who’s really, really not a cat person – has five cats. He laughs that he and wife Angela simply can’t walk away from strays and abandoned kittens. Bacardi is their joint-custody case.

“In fact she’s really Sue Meiring’s cat from Tram Antiques next door. Bacardi is there in the day and at night she’s here in the pub,” says Wayne.

Daytime at Sue’s means she’s sleeping among her favourite things of brass cots, vintage hats and typewriters from the day when metal keys beat out messages on ink-soaked ribbons. It’s also here where Bacardi sneaks in meals of Sue’s home-baked pies.

The antique shop triples up as coffee shop and bookstore. It’s also where Sue’s pies cool on the counter overnight.

The cat with her own barstool and her who prefers Thai chicken as a pie filling. Here she is with Sue Meiring.

“At closing time we start looking for Bacardi and sometimes we think she’s already headed for the pub. But if she’s snuggled up somewhere and won’t come out, then she gets locked in with the pies,” says Sue.

Sandy Amiradaki, who works at Trams, disappears behind the counter and produces two golden egg-washed pies. They perfect bar paw stabs in each. Proof – Bacardi was here!

“Her favourites are Thai chicken and mushroom and chicken. She doesn’t go for anything else,” laughs Sandy.

A timeshare cat is perfectly typical of a country town like Dullstroom. If you’re not fishing, moaning about GP number-plated cars failing to stop at the handful of four-way stops then you’re stopping round to neighbours for tea or spending a good part of your day waving to people you know.

Elma and Tjaart Eloff laugh at how true this is. The Eloffs have been in Dullstroom for 18 years ago. They’ve watched property agents and franchises arrive, flex their big city muscle then get levelled out by the country way of doing things.

Bo Beep owner and cat lover Elma Eloff with one of her furry friends.

Tjaart says country life means you lean on your neighbours, you know each others’ stories, and you even know each others cats. They have three actual cats and are caretakers to hundreds of others you’ll find in their curios store called Bo Beep. With a name like that you’d expect a mascot of a shepherdess in a fluff of blue skirt, or maybe a woolly sheep. But no, on top of their store is a 1.8m wooden cat with titled head and almond eyes beaming across the clutch of galleries and curio stores along the main road.

“We love cats,” says Elma, giggling when reminded at just how much the felines feature in her home and store. From the comical to the Egyptian-styled, from the regally poised to the ones curled up like fluffy balls, the Eloffs have them all.

“There’s something about a cat. It’s the lines, the shape and the variation of their poses that people respond to. Even people who don’t really like cats, buy a cat ornament to take home with them,” she says.

Her trio of real cats are not ornaments though, even though they drape themselves across the furniture, stretch across the heated bathroom floor and annex sunlit windowsills.

They’re doing what cats do best – showing the village who’s boss. After all it may a fishing town, it may be a dog’s life, but Dullstroom is a bloody meouwellous place to be a cat.

The flyfishing town where the cats rock!

———————————ends

For about four months worth of weekends at the end of last year my life changed completely. I  gave up my precious Saturday and Sunday sleep-ins to to make my hardware store rich with the promise that my stoep would undergo architectural re-incarnation.

What started out as a aim to finally tick off the must-do of giving a simple fresh lick of paint to our house turned into a full-scale renovation project. The garden turned into a construction site within days. The gnomes got kicked out of their grassy patch to make way for scaffolding, jack hammers and piles and piles of never-ending rubble.

I got increasingly nervous each weekend when my brother, Kelvin, “the Fantastic Foreman” would inspect what always seemed like slow progress.  Standing akimbo, nodding and shaking his head simultaneously he would prod at damp-seals and paintwork. I’d almost expect him to say: ”Really guys, I think you should consider building up an extra storey”.

But with the help of the crew, the family and of course our beloved foreman the construction did come to an end, the grass grew back, the roof didn’t leak and we now have a truly rocking “Kelvin Wing” as a add-on has been christened.

What’s more the fantastic foreman passed on some of this DIY skills to me. I’ve learnt to use a jigsaw, to debate the merits of damp-seal over the use of waterproof membrane and of course I got to speak about flashing (used for roofing) without anyone taking off their clothes …

READ more about my DIY adventures in the “Little Spot” in THE STAR newspaper (Check out the My Work section on this blog)!

It’s always interesting for me to see where “Paper Sons and Daughters” finds itself in different bookstores. Some stores like to put my book in their Africana section and others  like the Biography section.

This one spotted at Eastgate was too fab not to share – It’s under biography. Talk about Keeping up with the Kardashians!

My family from Oz phoned this Chinese New Year morning with happy wishes for the Year of the Water Dragon. They also told me about how big Chinese New Year is where they are – flags and lanterns everywhere, food and feasting, load and loads of people on the Sydney Streets. They even spotted Alvin from Masterchef cooking up a meal amidst all the buzz.

Growing up in Joburg, Chinese New Year was always a subdued event. Chinese New Year was more a family gathering than about the big celebrations that spill out into the streets with sequined dragons and lions twisting and turning to the beat of drums and cymbals. Our neighbours would hardly have known that we were celebrating the Spring Festival, even though it’s regarded as the most significant holiday on the Chinese lunar calendar.

But even though it’s never made it only a red-ringed date on a South African calendar, Chinese New Year is still the important time of the year to sit down to reunite family and friends and to spread the well wishes for another 365 days.

Preparations for New Year start with cleaning house, sweeping out what accumulated bad luck or bad energy may have been lurking in dusty corners and readying the home for fresh starts with new abundance. My mom had, and still has, a lot of superstitions. New Year’s Eve would heighten her sense of all these folkloric customs. “Don’t break a cup today all you’ll be breaking things all year long in the new year” was a favourite one. She also said we shouldn’t wash our hair on the first day of the new year – washing out all the good luck, she’d say as hair in Cantonese hair is “tou fat” and “fat” is to prosper.

Cleaning done it would be down to putting up the fai cheun, the four-letter lucky sayings and then it was the food and lighting incense and candles at the alters in the home.

For food the menu would always be symbolic of prosperity, good fortune and celebration. In our home there would be dishes like prawns, for their joyful sounding Cantonese name of “har” (as in hee hee ha, ha) also silky fine black strands of seaweed that looks like a tangle of  uncombed hair. It’s delicious though and as it’s called “fat choi”, it’s perfect in phonetic similarity to the greetings for prosperity for the new year. Also on the menu would be fresh fruits to symbolise all things alive and rejuvenated and something sweet to bring that deliciousness into your life.

Everything destined for our feasting table would be offered up at the alters first. The ancestors and the gods are remembered and invited to be part of the celebrations and to give their blessing for a good year.

These are typical red packets of luckiness. The lei see have a monetary gift. The one of the right is a lei see from a birthday. It’s from my mom and has my name on it, Ah Ngaan, and says Happy Birthday!

Of course there would be lucky red money packets, lei see (in doubles) symbolising the union of my parents. My grandparents too would hand them up to my sisters, brother and me and we would be happy to says Kung Hei Fat Choi as the arrived at the front door to receive a pat on our heads and our lucky lei see packets.

Today the community has changed and evolved with more “old community” Chinese making up new diaspora – the Chinese South Africans now living in all corners of the world. At the same time there are new Chinese nationals, arriving from the expanse of the Chinese mainland and Taiwan and making South Africa their home.

Now there are more celebrations that make on to the streets and this year there are at least four big events, split over two Chinatowns and involving all the extravaganza of fireworks and glitzy balls. It another bit of the evolution of a community and a country’s people, it’s also all about new heritage to add to what’s come before. Always it should be about what connects us and what we have to celebrate.

So here’s to a Happy New Year to everyone, those in South Africa, those spread all of the world … and of course to Alvin too, doing his cheffy things Down Under.

For those of you who missed the pieces in “Die Burger” and “NaweekBeeld” this weekend, take a look at this URL.

http://www.dieburger.com/By/Nuus/Wat-die-kind-in-die-broodrak-als-gesien-het-20120113-2

Thanks Kirkby van der Merwe.

Love the headline too. It’s about me the bread cupboard child. In “Paper Sons and Daughters” I talk about spending time at my the “eating house” in downtown Jozi where my mom and dad worked. I was the child who got to spend the work day with my parents being too small to go to school and not so little that I had to stay home with my granny.

The cupboard where the kept bread for sale included a bottom section that was painted over in blue and lined with a thick slice of foam. It’s where I took naps and watch the world go by and it’s how I came to be the bread cupboard child.

Happy reading!

Time to brush up on your Afrikaans. I’m in today’s “Beeld”, chatting about “Paper Sons and Daughters”.

Kirkby van der Merwe and I made a journey back to my old family home in Judith’s Paarl. It was the starting point for our interview (read more about my reflections of going back after many years in one of previous blog posts on this site) about communities in these “grey” areas – the Hos, Isaacs, Padayachees and Colleen, the single mom who lived next door and worked for Cosatu. It’s also tales of fahfee as a transaction of survival and just riding bikes into the Millbourn Road night, waiting for my dad, the fahfee man to get back from his rounds.

Kirby and I made our way from the house to the new Chinatown on Derrick Avenue, Cyrildene. It’s the mushrooming Chinatown of the hundreds of new Chinese nationals, not the tiny, Commissioner Street Chinatown of my childhood. We ordered up some chok (congee) and the little restaurant managed to find some instant coffee to serve up a cup for Kirkby.

I don’t think I’ve ever ordered or drunk a cup of coffee in a Chinese restaurant! But with his caffeine fix Kirkby was brave and game enough to try the black and grey hundred-year old eggs in the delicious rice-based soup. An acquired taste he said!

But still it was great to sit, chat and break bread … or to slurp up some soup as was the case!