Echo

The possibility of getting through a dinner party without someone referring to someone else as a narcissist does not seem to exist anymore. Forks and knives are still out for the more self-absorbed among us, dinner table psychologists confidently and stridently flinging out their diagnoses. Pointlessly really, or perhaps In Vain. For the more self-absorbed are just never listening. They are bored, or dreaming omnipotent dreams, or just regarding what anyone else says as stupid. Or they are staring into the French Onion soup starter. Deciding their own recipe is much better. Finding their distorted reflection among the bits of vegetable much, much more fascinating than any conversation thus far. 

I have lost friends for months, who in the pursuit of recovery from time spent with the ‘narcissist’, have lost all eagerness to go into the world at all. Understandably perhaps, they would rather stay in and watch Terri Cole and Sam Vaknin explain how to deal with the zietgeist on youtube. There seem to be many people who now only read self-help books, or who have joined exclusive whatsapp groups reserved for ‘lightworkers’ and ‘empaths’. Labels for beings, who are uniquely imbued with gifts of intuition, sensitivity, insight and levels of compassion and understanding of invisible forces so rare, as to be miles and miles above most ordinary folks simply walking the streets of Umbilo. Well-meaning perhaps, but with ideas about being special as grandiose as those of the counterpart they so wholly despise.

Like a starving wolf*, I myself, have wasted hours trying once again to properly understand Melanie Klein and Object-Relations theory, and how it happened that envious, petulant, spoilt, controlling, blaming, competitive toddler-adults who yell in restaurants, are accountable to no one, and stamp their way up the ladder of life without so much as an understanding that anyone else worthy exists, rule the world. In vain. 

And so perhaps it is better to leave Narcissus drowning in his own magnificence, and to direct one’s attention to what is on offer. Birds currently singing in the trees, or a happy dog, or an available, caring friend. Who loves you back. Perhaps to turn back to literature and the Greeks. I think a smaller, humbler figure from the classics deserves our attention. 

Narcissus does, it turns out, have an opposite. A lesser nymph, Of Course. Sometimes quite irritating, not much to look at, equally tragic. Needless to say, few people remember about her. Because along the way she lost her own story. She quite simply, became, a reflection of another’s. A reverberation, or a useful amplification, sometimes. The one who tells the news but is not the news. PA to her husband, or married to an heiress, or engaged to a VIP philanthropist. An Echo to something much more grand. If Echo is a writer, and it would be a good choice of career for her, she is a biographer. Narcissus, an autobiographer, or in trouble with the editor for hyperbole. 

Echo started off life okay. Like all babies. A mimic. You smile, the baby smiles. You say something, she says it. You mirror, she reflects. The way we all learn to be humans, I guess, or that I know of, at least. She is annoying sometimes: You say something you shouldn’t, and don’t necessarily want repeated; Echo repeats it. 

According to Ovid, Echo’s tendency to answer back and all of her chatter angers the mightier gods and goddesses. Jealous wives don’t want nymphs talking about their philandering husbands. Hera, particularly, does not like how Zeus’s antics reflect back on her. And she doesn’t want to hear about it over and over again. So, instead of actually just ditching her husband, typically, she shoots the messenger, punishing Echo instead. She banishes her to the mountains, and curses her to only be able to repeat the last words anyone else says. Echo gets the tail-end. 

And then when Narcissus, fed up with all company apart from his own, wanders into the mountains, lonely Echo sees him. She loves him, and she wants to talk to him, but she can’t. She follows him, but she stays invisible. She replies to him. Sitting by the water, gazing at himself he says: “I love you.” Echo repeats “I love you.”

His heart soars, thinking it is his reflection replying; his love requited. 

And then just to check he says, “Where are you? I’m here.” And Echo repeats, “I’m here.” Proof once more, he thinks, that the beautiful image he sees, loves him back. He leans in for the kiss, and then he drowns. 

And what becomes of Echo? Stripped of agency and grieving for a being who cannot love her back (even more so now that he is fact dead) she fades away. Until she withers to nothing, Ovid says. But I think, if we pay her some attention, she is still there. Not hiding and waiting anymore, just trying to work out how to break the spell. 

*This is how Ted Hughes describes Echo, in Tales from Ovid.

**There are many versions of the myths. This is my own confabulation, mostly borrowed from Ovid and Hughes.

Say the right thing

“Mostly Anna wanted to say something. No, not something – she wanted to say the right thing. The exact words that could console and empathize, that acknowledged his pain without belittling it, that apologized genuinely and completely for her intolerable ineloquence. Instead she was quiet.”
Jessica Nicholson, Say The Right Thing, Everest Magazine, 2013

Not very long ago I received a surprising and important email. It went like this:

I expect you'll find this strange, but I read some stories in this magazine years ago by an author of your name. I found these stories remarkable. Recently I've come across your essays on your site, and they are even more remarkable ("Do You Have Any Vodka For My Friends Fishtanks?" is a particular delight), and happen to have somewhat similar prose - crisp, varied sentences, apparent near-tangents that are anything but, etc. The similarity got me wondering, is all. 

I've only a stranger’s selfish curiosity, and I'm sorry if this is only an uncalled for bother.

I wish you the best in the banal horror we live in.

Brandi Flickinger

I wrote back

Thank you for your email and your kind words. I am so glad you enjoy the essays and it is always so encouraging to have someone say so. A remarkable coincidence… but sadly I am not the Jessica Nicholson of whom you speak. I would love to read some of the pieces my doppelgänger has written. So please send a link. Best back in banal horror.

And Brandi replied

Of my honest words, you are welcome. I am glad you also find them kind…. Remarkable coincidences are such a curious thing, sufficiently abundant in life, but if given in the same supply to fiction the fiction is made ridiculous.

I would have supplied a link immediately, but I feared the website lost. Happily, the Internet Archive has stored the first issue for us…

And there they were. Exceptional, beautiful, haunting words. Me, perhaps on a particularly good day. Me, if I had more courage. If I could only stop worrying about what everyone else thought. Me, If I could say the right thing. Comforting, knowing she is there, somewhere. If only I could actually find her.

I thanked Brandi and asked that they let me know if they ever had any luck working out where she was. They replied:

I will absolutely let you know, if ever I discover who it is…. I confess it's meaningful someone else read them and found value in them.

That anything can so easily drift into not only obscurity, but near oblivion, is one that haunts me. It is a notion I think is obviously true in the general, but is sharply realised in specificity, however cruelly subjective such specificity can be. 

***** Not the end *****

I have put pictures of the stories here, because they are difficult to access on the Internet. To access the full publication go to https://web.archive.org/web/20130826035035/http://www.everest-magazine.com/currentissue.html and download the pdf.

The Red Cats part 2: Prime Evil (or what happens when you look at a good photograph)

Before we had the two red cats I wrote about before, we had also two other cats. My father named them Marx and Lenin. Because, he said, one had marks on him. And the other, well when we went away, we could lenin to the neighbours. My sister and I thought these were jolly good names and we loved our cats very much. Lenin was a bit friendlier than Marx, but he died sooner. The vet said it might have been from eating dog food.

These cats were born to a cat that lived in a house in Bellair, Durban. It belonged to a man called Rick and his wife Foszia. The house was done out in a quite a different style to our house. There were long, dangly, rattling grass curtains that you could burst through. And there were lots of photographs of beloved people on the walls of the kitchen. In this kitchen there was always food cooking. Quite different to English comfort food. I was ashamed to say out loud that I found the food too hot. Even though I was only like about four. And it was Apartheid. So we weren’t meant to be used to eating the meals that Other People cooked. Rick and Foszia were not meant to be living in Bellair together. None of us were meant to be together at all.

My parents used to talk about philosophical and political issues for hours with Rick and Foszia and the other people at the house. I found this incredibly boring. Mostly I didn’t understand what they were talking about, though I did listen. But there were often other children to play with, sometimes Rick’s daughters, Jann and Kim would be there. Sometimes Medina and Bruno would be there. Sometimes Medina’s dad would take us all to the circus, and he was very understanding when I became terrified of the crocodile scene, and then we would just abandon the circus and go home. And apart from the adults and the children that we were not meant to be with, and the cats and kittens, there was also a sunny garden at this house in Bellair, with rabbits in it. There were vegetables and fruit you could pick and eat straight-away.

Then one night, when I was six, my father went to the house in Bellair. Not to have a dinner party. He went because Rick had been killed. Rick had read his daughters a bedtime story and said goodnight. He had heard a noise, he had gone to the window. He was shot in the chest. Jann rushed to him and cuddled him while he died. He was 57. She was 13.

After that I spent much of my childhood awake until my dad came home at night. Jann has spent much of her adult life looking for the man who killed her father. She still doesn’t know.

It is believed that Martin Dolincheck, a former Bureau of State Security operative (BOSS) was involved. BOSS was responsible for countless hits on activists, torture, burglaries of Anti-Apartheid and Amnesty offices, spreaders of disinformation. In 1981 Dolincheck was also part of mercenary-led coup attempt against the Seychelles' socialist government. Led by Mike Hoare, a former mercenary, living in Hilton at the time, working as a stockbroker. Some of Hoare’s team disguised as rugby players and claiming to be members of The Ancient Order of Froth-Blowers drinking club chartered a plane to the Seychelles. They filled their baggage with golf-clubs and toys to supposedly distribute to orphanages, but really just to hide their AK47s. They were caught at customs, had a great big gun fight in the airport and took everyone hostage. Then they hijacked an Air India flight to take them back to Durban. (For more you can check wikipedia, but that is what I can remember.)

And then there is Eugene De Kock, otherwise known as Prime Evil. A photograph by George Hallett of Jann and Prime Evil posted a few days ago, in honour of Hallett’s death is the reason for this story. Because since then, I have not been able to think about anything else. Such is the power of Art. To elicit, on viewing the photograph, a six-year-old’s perspective, forty years on. Hallett was well known for his photographs of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

At the TRC hearings Prime Evil admitted to hundreds of acts of torture, extortion and murder. in 1996 he was tried and convicted on 87 charges, sentenced to two life sentences plus 212 years in prison, for crimes against humanity. He was released after 20 ‘in the interests of nation-building’. There is debate among psychologists as to whether he has ever shown remorse. But in all accounts I have read, many say he never lost any sleep.

There were more suspects. “In the decades after Turner’s assassination, a sad story unfolds of the attitude of South Africans to the murder of those who paid the ultimate price in the struggle for a free, democratic country - Biko, Neil Aggett, Matthew Goniwe, Sparrow Mkhonto, Ashley Kriel, Turner and many others. Quite simply, far too many people didn’t give a damn. In Turner’s case, it was Jann who did the digging, asked all of the questions and travelled thousands of kilometres following up tip-offs. But all to no avail.” (Sunday Tribune, January 7, 2018).

I don’t remember Rick well, just flashes. For me, he was the man who gave us the kittens and was kind to rabbits and vegetables, and took photographs. And whom my parents loved immensely. And as Jann wrote about the night he died, “a man who was thinking about going for a walk on the beach tomorrow with his daughters, if only the rain would let up.”

You can find out all about his work on the internet if you want to, and I recommend you do. Because now that George Floyd has reminded us that the world is still as shit as it was during Apartheid, despite being white, Rick would have done what we need to do.

“We are born into a society, and we adopt its behaviours and values; we come to be the person that makes sense within that context,” he wrote. “But at the same time, we are not doomed to accept the world view we developed through our upbringing. We have the capacity to decide who we are, what values we believe and the structure of relationships that we want to be part of.” 

But perhaps most prescient, given the South Africa of today, was his observation that “freedom is not something which can simply be guaranteed by a declaration of human rights”. (Sunday Tribune, January 7, 2018).

Thanks for the photographs, George Hallett. RIP.

Do you have any vodka for my friend's fishtanks?

At the start of lockdown, a message came: “Hi Jess, I have an unusual request. A friend of mine has a lot of marine fishtanks. He uses vodka to clean them with but with the lockdown he has run out. Do you happen to have any?”

“I’m very sorry for your fish”, I said, “But I drank my last bottle of vodka half an hour ago”.

I do actually know where to get vodka. And cigarettes. And a rad haircut. I know at which police station you can buy whiskey, and how to get an essential workers’ permit. I have both. I also know that Christian bootleg wine sellers feel bad about selling Two Oceans for R200. So you can still get a very good deal. Jesus also liked wine. And he wanted everyone to have some. Mr Delivery will bring you dope cookies. Drug dealers are in clover. I can find you any narcotic.

I could pretend I know this because I am researching a story on bootlegging and the psychological effects of prohibition. But I can’t really be arsed to finish it. With hundreds of other freshly furloughed journalists chucking opinion pieces at The Daily Maverick, i’m better off selling my information, going back to laying out academic reports in Russian, and playing Minecraft.

In fairness to noble intentions I did start, re-reading Fitzgerald and trying to force fit the roaring twenties into these twenties. For a while I was all war trauma, the rise of the underbelly, the nouveau riche, history repeating, moonshine and bathtub gin, but it quickly sunk to unfollowing half of facebook and crapping on white South Africa for being such stupid, spoilt, entitled dicks. All the fucking moans. Nothing roaring, just boring.

Oh Jess is such a rebel they say, or else, laughing but gripping tightly onto their husband’s elbow and keeping their children tucked under their skirts, ‘such a free spirit’ And I have retorted, sadly not. Not at all free. Just someone who used to run in the evenings to fill the void, who misses people so much, that now when the pit is bottomless, drowns in contraband instead. Some say I am as bad as the surfers I lashed out at, but unlike the surfers, I don’t feel entitled, I don't think i’m Nelson Mandela. I know I am an asshole. So they said, okay Jess, then you are worse. Supporting the government and then going behind it’s back.

So let us turn to the psychologists to see what they say about ‘rebels’. And then let me explain what psychologists say about trauma. Or you could click on any psychology-we-can-all-understand website.

On the happy side there is an enjoyable creativity about the rebel. A knack for problem-solving. Passionate, enthusiastic, critical and courageous with nimble, compelling and intelligent justification for disobedience. Sometimes the rules are plainly hurtful, cruel and stupid. And they are brave enough to say so.

Or there can be those that simply don’t like doing what they are told. Or not used to not doing exactly whatever they want to do. Not being used to anyone saying no, sweetheart you can’t go canoeing, until everyone can go canoeing. You can’t go swimming with sharks, until everyone can.

‘Coaches’ will say something like 'typically rebels are driven by a false sense of superiority and a wounded sense of powerlessness stemming from their early childhood experiences. Their rebelliousness, a compensation mechanism.” Yes we know.

And then there is trauma. Read about trauma. Understand it. Tell your friends about it. Ask your pal to direct you to youtube videos. Ask me. My friend Margaret sent me some information about this, and I can send it on to you. In one podcast, a man called Dan Allender speaks gently and kindly about what trauma does to us. Trauma being when something happens that we weren’t meant to experience – were we still in Eden. An accident, an ending, a loss, a war, a pandemic, Covid-19. A violation of the life we loved. Separation from the people we love.

Left with uncertainty and powerlessness, we fragment. We can’t remember what we’ve done that day. Parts of our brain shut down. We think we have ADHD. Out goes planning, assessing, concentrating and getting things done. In comes lucid dreaming. In comes distraction: eating, boozing, addiction. When viral or economic anxiety surges into our bloodstreams we need to quickly deal with it, re-establish a sense of control. Who’s fault is this, we ask? The government, the Chinese, the scientists, the alt-right, the Internet, my maskless neighour, my husband’s mistress, the taxi driver, my domestic worker’s aunt.

If we can find someone to blame then maybe there is a cure because there is a cause. If there is a cause and someone is behind that, then I can be angry with them, I can attack them and then I have my power back. And then we hurt people. And then they hurt people. And then there are many many casualties. And we call it the new normal. Find your inner asshole. Forgive her. Happy Friday!

Run like a girl

This has been building up I am afraid. If the gun was already pointing into my temple, a message from my friend Mags was what triggered the shot. She wrote to me about her response to a WhatsApp Group. An inbox full of messages shaming a boys cricket team for playing like girls. In response she sent the group this video Run like a Girl.

Of course the retort from The Group: silence. No doubt they formed another Group without the dissenting voice. Stand up to the bully and you’ll get punished. Cut off usually. But as I read on a napkin in a padstal just outside Paul Roux: ‘“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.

And so for Mags, and all the wonderful soft gentle women I know, who run despite what everyone says, or who just try to get through the day in whatever way they can, the gun went off, and this splattered out.

We can start with the feet, but choose any body part really and don't worry we’ll move up quickly. Some people don’t have any feet because maybe they got chopped off or they had polio, or their feet just didn’t grow nicely. Some people only have one foot. Anyway, I have two feet. Which is very useful. I can use them to walk and run with. When I was about 11, a close relative once told me my feet were the only attractive part of me. I hadn’t asked him the question: “how attractive or unattractive do you believe me or my feet to be?” or “if I was on the internet which bit would you click on?” He just decided to tell me.

When I was growing up I had to wear built up shoes because of my high arches. But luckily high arches are fine for ballet. Pink shoes with ribbons crossing at the ankles look beautiful even on feet with high arches. I pirouetted around the house watched Swan Lake and Coppelia and my dad played me the music. Then when I was 13 I stopped. Apparently I have knock knees. Apparently my bum started to stick out too much. I didn’t ask if this was the case. Someone just decided to tell me.

Now I use my feet to walk and run with. I do this not because I am an athlete or even for one second believe myself to be an athlete. I don’t win races – although Mags does – run like a girl and see if you can catch her. I am always near the back. But running makes me feel better. It is how I survive life on earth. One foot, next foot. Over and over again. Breathe in breathe out. Sweat a lot and get very very tired. Then fall asleep and start again tomorrow.

But every time I put on my running shoes I steel myself. Because every time I go running, someone comments or whistles or hoots or shouts, faster Auntie.

In the same way as I have never asked anyone whether they think I have attractive feet, neither have I asked a person the question: Do I look beautiful while running? Once at a large dinner party a man I knew looked directly at my chest, and said the problem with running is it makes your boobs saggy. I had not asked him what he thought about running, nor its effects upon a body. Nor was I interested. Once someone said I looked like an awkward giraffe when I ran. Once someone said I looked like a penguin. Once at another party a man described to a rapt audience how seeing me slope along the streets of Glenwood had dramatically altered the vision he had of what running was, forever more. Everyone laughed. I felt like crap. But someone said I was being over-sensitive and had I forgotten about having a sense of humour.

Why is so much shaming necessary? When will it stop? It makes people feel like shit. Why, when people see soft non-athletes running do they not say, well how wonderful? Even OMFG I saw Mags and Jess running around the park and if they can do it, anyone can do it, would be fine.

What if all those women shamed to their couches got onto their feet and stepped out? If the streets were booming with the thud or even the shuffle of tender bodies with red faces breathing and sweating. Feeling better. Feeling supported.

Because unless something more than silence happens in the face of all this outright nastiness, our daughters will stop doing what they love. My 11-year-old daughter and your 11-year-old daughter will soon get a lot sadder and a lot quieter. Google it if you think anything has changed. Between the age of 10 and 12 girls’ confidence plummets. They will stop trying to be in the cricket team, they will stop eating and they will feel like crap. As all the shaming messages they have had to bat off (like a girl) all their lives start to sink in. And then every day will become about about doing what they do, despite it all. Just stop it. It is really not that hard.

Part 2: The magician puts on a show

It turns out, Real Magicians don’t lie. Also, it turns out, it is difficult to lie to a magician. To say “No, I did not draw that cat”. When you actually did. I found myself failing to deny my own cat, when towards the end of an otherwise flat December, a message came: “Hi Jess, I’d like to send you tickets for a magic show I am promoting. Are you keen?” Of course, of course, of course, I am. 

As we arrived – before the drawing of any cats – we were asked to write down a secret. Something the magician couldn’t possibly know. I followed the instructions precisely. Folded the paper strictly into quarters and put it into a big glass jar on the stage. There my secret stayed, waiting. Along with the other secrets. 

The show begins. The magician reaches into nowhere and finds a coin. “I don’t know where they come from,” he says “but they never stay.” Oh yes. It is the same with writing. 

“Why are you here? If you know it is a trick?”

He shuffles a new deck of cards and says these bits of paper are the poetry of conjuring. Stories to be read, incidentally. Or just shapes and numbers. Always in the middle of an unopened pack, two kings kiss, bringing 52 cards into perfect order. Seven shuffles and the kingdom is in anarchy. Shuffle them again, chaos, and again and the chance of picking the same card twice almost disappears. Although he cuts to an Ace for the third time. He explains standard card mechanic tactics: painting, palming, stacking, marking. The simplest tricks are the most difficult – like the Dead Cut. And neatly opens the deck onto the last Ace – of Hearts, leading us deeper into betrayal.

“The cheat. Seems a nice fellow. He will smile. And wink. And leave you with nothing.” But, he says, it takes a long time to become an Expert Cheat. A lot of practise, until it seems like there is absolutely nothing going on. Fifteen years at least to get an inkling of what might cut it. And even then, it is rare to find a mucker who perfects more than one technique. And with just one technique you are done once you get found out. You need more tricks. And each must be invisible. To be a really good liar, you must be a Master. Mastery may not be Art, but it is something.

Words to live by. But this person up on the stage, is not a liar, nor card sharp, trickster, nor cheat. He is a Magician. Much much rarer. 

Not unlike his dishonest relatives, he moves on effortlessly. On to Cheryl, a woman he chooses at random. They play. She tries to keep her cards a secret. But he finds them. Stored covertly in her head. And sometimes in his shirt pocket. The audience reel between disbelief and amazement. And Thea whispers: “I think I know how he does it.” I say she must Never Tell. Or the Magic will be gone.  

He moves on again. To another five strangers. And then he chooses me. He says: “I want you all to draw a picture. Anything. Do it quite fast, in about a minute. I won’t watch. Once you have finished I will tell you who has done which picture.” In fact that is not all he will tell us. We draw and pass our pictures to the man furthest from the magician, and then he hands them over. 

The magician holds up my drawing of a cat. I try not to smile, perhaps I glance at the floor and then up. A perfidious look to the right, or to the left? Unfaithful standing, frowning, smiling, speaking. Just easy psychology I think. But the magician isn’t looking at me. And anyway all the others on the stage are doing it too. Smiling, or deliberately not smiling, blinking or not blinking. A pause and you could be lying, a lack of pause. 

“This is a very cute cat,” says the magician, “It has lovely big eyes and wonderful triangular ears. I wonder who drew this cat? Let’s see. It is the kind of cat a child might draw, with one circle for the body and then one circle for the head.” Yikes. I have been called a child more than once in my forties. And now from a man I do not know.

“Two circles on top of each other. Kind of like an eight. Kind of like an infinity symbol? A magic symbol. A symbol of the limitless potential of human thought. I think the person who drew this cat, has come to this show more than once.” Guilty, once again. But I didn’t know he knew I’d come back. “Perhaps the magic has influenced this person, more than say a person who might only come to a Magic Show once. And that is why she drew this cat.”

Really no use pretending. With all this invisible knowing passing between us. Me to him and back again. He sees the unseen and matches up each drawing to its creator and says: “The magic is where we meet. It can’t be possible if it is me alone and you alone”. 

Then he walks over to the big jar of secrets. 

But I think I’ll leave this one, this the most enchanting, for you to enjoy for yourself. Although there is a Part 3 coming soon. Because since writing this, I’ve been out and had dinner with the magician. I took him my theories about Children and Liars and Psychics and Magicians and realised I hadn’t even scratched the surface. But I understand a little bit more. Go and see for yourself. Write down a secret for the magician. Go very soon, as soon as he puts on another show. 

The show’s very last trick is one we have all seen. “Is it still magical if you know how it is done?” he says again. 

And leads us into a new reality, and a new story. Which is how Magic gets in. “The linking rings trick is very old. A classic. We all know it. Three solid rings passing through one another, like shadows. How they pass is beyond secrets. How they pass is very beautiful. Pure Magic.”

Russell Comrie is a Magician. He lives in Durban, South Africa. He is inspired by the world’s greatest magicians: Lavand, Vernon, Tamariz, Williamson, and others. Russell has multiple degrees ranging from modern physics to medieval literature. HIs work and performances aim to explore and perfect magic as art. He says he wants to draw people into the strange and marvellous world he prefers to inhabit: a world in which magic and reality blur and beauty is revealed behind the mundane. 

Go to https://russellcomrie.com

Sharks' eggs

These are mermaids’ purses. I found them on a beach in the Eastern Cape. I was very very excited. And gathered them up to photograph. Because they are so beautiful I wanted everyone to see them. And in honour of Sarah Anne Bright, a woman whose photograph of A Mermaid’s Purse is one of the earliest.

When I up to the house I said to Great Aunt Phoebe: “Are these mermaids’ purses, otherwise known as sharks’ eggs?” and she said “Actually they are sharks’ eggs’ cases or sacs." Because she is a Biologist. And she checked to see if any of these little wombs had mini sharks still inside them. Phoebe has only ever found three still containing mini sharks in her whole life. That is once every 28 years, Jack told me.

Then she got out a big book with pictures of all the different sharks’ eggs’ cases and we saw we had found some belonging to sand sharks and some to rays, and some to stripey sharks and some to bigger sharks. Before the baby sharks burst out and then the mermaids took them to put their silver bits and and their shells into.  

I recently learned a lot about sharks because I did a story about them. It had to be factual. And the facts were to be checked. So I went to the aquarium and to the sharks’ board. I interviewed shark scientists and some marine conservationists. Many of the shark experts were too busy and important to talk to me. Or else told me at length about how amazing they were for devoting their lives to saving sharks. Rather than anything about the marine type of shark. Despite my attempts to carefully guide them back to the topic, and what is actually interesting.

So then I went swimming in the sea to directly find sharks and interview them. You can because, like us, sharks are very good at body language. Some humans are better at this than others, picking up subtext in milliseconds and coming to rely on behaviour rather than words, if they are interested in the truth. But sharks are better. They are the Best. They have extra senses, we humans don’t possess, all along their bodies. Empathy is available to all sharks: built in. They can Feel other hearts beating. Not just their own. Also they have noses as sensitive and complex as vaginas and brilliant rotating teeth. Even their skin, velvety smooth when rubbed in one direction, is made of teeth. They are the full package.

I also turned to biology text books and the internet, and listened to The Old Man and the Sea read by Donald Sutherland, and I watched Jaws again. I spoke to surfers and swimmers and found out what happens when you accidentally stand on a sand shark, or when you catch a wave and the shark was there first. I read my friend Melissa’s book called Sharks, Death, Surfers, again and I listened to her on the radio. And it was here I learned the most. Like what happens if a shark goes to the movies. What if they watch A Clockwork Orange. What do they see and what do we miss when we watch it. I learned that sharks have helped us solve turbulence problems in physics and are helping us make artificial wombs. And I learned some more about human sharks, like Ted Kennedy.

In one episode, on Resonance 104.4FM https://www.mixcloud.com/Resonance/the-view-from-a-shark-ep4/ Melissa spoke sharks and photography. Harold Edgerton, together with ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, built a camera that could withstand salt and waves and pressure and depth. And that was activated when a bio-luminescent creature (producing light from its own body such as a Lantern Shark) swam passed. The creature’s own inner glow would click the shutter release, 6000 metres down. Sharks taking selfies.

And another link to sharks and photography takes us back to the very beginning. The beginning of photography, of learning to take pictures, the beginning of sharks, and new life, and the beginning of this piece of writing. Back to my excitement and the beautiful egg cases.

“A Mermaid’s Purse is the subject of one very early example of photography,” Melissa says. “it is an image from around 1840 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Just a pale rectangular shape on a dark background. With lines twirling away at each corner. These are the tendrils that help the case attach to the sea floor keeping it steady… The photograph is most recently attributed to Sarah Anne Bright, who belonged to a group of photographic pioneers.” At first it is attributed to Anonymous, of course.

Bright’s picture is actually a photogram, where you place a mermaid’s purse onto paper, and expose it to light. Where the light reaches the paper, it darkens. Where the object blocks the light, it stays white. It is a slow process. In McCarthy’s words “What the early methods had in common was that they were slow: It took a relatively long time for the chemicals in the material to register and retain the effects of light on them.

Developing my photograph of a mermaid’s purse was not slow, photography nowadays is quick and digital. But it has taken a least a year or two, and at least another of dabbling for me to produce, even one or two, Worthy pictures. The process is still slow in that sense. As Melissa continues, “It’s fitting that photography is concerned with the under water and sharks and wombs. There is something in photography that is inherently about patience, development, gestation, waiting in the dark liquid, for the image, the new life to emerge.”

Out come the sassy new sharks into the dark sea, leaving us and the mermaids their cases to make into pictures.

• To listen to Melissa’s podcasts go to Resonance 104.4FM https://www.mixcloud.com/Resonance/the-view-from-a-shark-ep4/ 

• Go to my writing page to read more about sharks

Part one about Magic

The other night I was at a dinner party, reeling between boredom and pain (Schopenhauer’s pendulum) when at last I sat down next to a very big man who had had many very interesting times with animals. I was telling him the stuff I knew about sharks and then we were talking about how sometimes it was easy to get out into the sea, but then hard to get back to the beach, and how sometimes on the South Coast, you can get repeatedly lacerated by rocks, especially ones with oysters and mussels also clinging on to them.

Then he told me about how once, early one morning, he was just innocently walking on the beach and a huge huge eagle swooped down and tried to lift him up by his head – from behind. Blood was dripping down his neck from the scrapey talons and so he went to the hospital. There they first asked if he had medical aid, and then said what happened to you and he had to say an eagle had tried to capture him. And the doctors could see it was true from the marks. And they shook their heads and said sorry for their initial disbelief, but they were used to getting knives out of people’s necks rather than treating them for eagle wounds.

And so I was just thinking I should tell my friend Ben, who I haven’t heard from for about two years, about this, when he in fact texted me to say, Hi Jess I was thinking of you because people kept talking about South Africa at work. And so I said, that is really remarkable because I was thinking about you at the very same time, because I met a man who was attacked by an eagle from behind.

The first night I met Ben we told each other about all the bad accidents we had gotten into out of stupidity. Like that we had both tried to make Plaster of Paris masks of our own faces at art school and not paid attention to how hot it gets in there. And how once Ben had tied a piece of rope to his own ankle and then thrown the rope over the high branch on a tree and then pulled very hard in an attempt to hoist himself upside-down. And once, riding his bicycle in the calm quiet of evening, a bat flew into his face by mistake. And once a scared kitten ran up his body and just stayed on his head, gripping on with its claws. And I told him about how a parrot that was walking around on the floor attached itself to a long grey woollen dress I was wearing and climbed up to my throat and then just pecked me again and again. Without my having agitated it at all that I knew of.

So of course Ben and I became very good friends and I used to sleep on his sofa and then we lived together for quite a few years. And once when I came back from Heathrow after saying goodbye to my mum, he was waiting for me because he said he thought I might be sad. So he decided not to go to the pub. Sometimes when I was particularly poor and needed a new dress for example, he would get me extra work at Bonhams on a Sunday. I would have to wear a neat white buttoned shirt, and a black skirt and brush my hair. Then when the people came to look at what was about to be auctioned, I would have the key to the big cases and unlock them and let the people look at them. And then lock them away again.

Once there was a sale of war memorabilia and people were coming in with like only one eye and their legs shot off and spending ages looking at medals and old guns. It was very interesting. Then Ben became the head of contemporary ceramics and I learned so much about pots that later on I tried to make some myself. And that also made me very calm and happy. And when I do stories about artists I can phone Ben and he tells me what is going on in London and Tokyo.

Anyway, then Ben texted to say, so what are you doing, and I said I had been looking on google to see if swallows ever fly upside down, because of a story I am researching about magical thinking. And about how on the very same day, yesterday, I had been sent two tickets to Mysteries: a magic show, which I am very excited about going to see tonight. For the second time. Because there were some things I missed the first time. The magician said it was mainly about cards. But with 52 cards in a pack it is also about which ones Turn Up, given there are more combinations possible than stars we can see in the night sky (cloudy). And it is about cheating. And about liars and tricksters: when the Joker meets the Queen of Hearts. Whether there is more beauty in chaos and randomness or more beauty in order. And that the King of Clubs and the King of Diamonds always kiss in the middle of a newly opened pack. Called the Kissing Kings.

The swimmer, the man who died twice, and me

It was poor impulse control, ignorance perhaps faith, and a valoid suppository that got me onto the boat. Possibly a slightly faulty recklessness valve, but not thrill-seeking. More just fascination. And love. Who ever are these incredible people and what are they doing? A world-record holder swimming from Durban to Umtunzini, her second, a masseuse, a photographer, a world-class surfer, a shark expert, Emil the skipper, and me. There was also a hulky man at the ski-boat club with entirely rotten teeth. But I couldn’t understand anything he said.

That morning driving to Blythedale, I chose not look at the huge rough sea. I did not look at the trees bent with wind. When I got there, I didn’t read the good conditions to launch and bad conditions to launch sign. I just saw it was there. Gracelessly – when the time came – I jumped and then slid upwards from the sea onto the boat. Someone said, Hold on and look at Emil.

Within minutes I was back in the sea. Like a car crash. But softer. And everything went white. This time it was only foam. In those seconds of being flung backwards off a launching rubber duck I had a lot of time. To wonder where the propellors were. To think of everyone. My children, my sister, my niece; my estranged best friend.

And then I popped up, out of the spray. And then another head popped up: the shark expert. And another: the surfer. At first I thought we were all On The Other Side Together. Then humiliation – they had jumped out to save me. Then relief when I realised they’d been forcefully ejected too. Gracelessly once more I slid back on. I looked at the beach longingly, I looked at the ocean. I turned to the photographer and said: I hope you got that because we could be youtube zillionaires.

Once out, rocking between two-storey swells and 40 knot winds, the more experienced among us began to change into warm clothes. I just sat there. Letting go to put on a jacket was not an option I was considering. Even when the surfer told me I would die of hypothermia, I couldn’t. I said of all the ways of dying this day presented, death by cold was the way I would prefer. Emil kept walking about the boat never spilling his coffee and laughing about how every time he came near me we went through a wave. I was begging him to therefore not. So he put a massive green oilskin on me. As compensation.

We found the swimmer in the swells. The second got on the boat, the surfer got on the kayak. The swimmer whooped with joy. I said man up Jess, she is in the actual water. And unclutched myself from the boat for one millisecond to eat a naartjie so as to not vomit. The swimmer ate every 30 minutes. She looked at me and beamed. She heard a whale singing. She heard a dolphin dialogue. She got stung on the face by a bluebottle, then on the shoulder. She smiled and took an antihistamine.

What got me through was watching her being a happy, wondrous, delighted ultra human. And looking at the land. And knowing I had swum kilometres in this sea. That if I didn’t panic it would take me back to the where the world was steadier. What got me through was deciding not to ask the second whether these were wildest seas she’d ever been in. Because the answer once we were on the beach was yes.

What got me through was her saying: We are safe with Emil, he has been on the ocean since he was six. And so once we were back I said: Thank you Emil. He said, The only other people I’ve ever tipped off the boat were famous people. And so I said, thank you again, because this was a story I could indeed use to get my own self a lot of attention. And then he said, What Sarah didn’t tell you on the boat, is the I’ve actually died twice. And I said How? and he said Drowning.

And then I turned to the masseuse and said, How did you not fall off the boat? And she very calmly said. I think horse riding.

Sarah Ferguson (half fish) holds the world-record for being the first person to swim around Easter Island (63.5km in 19 hours). Her Durban to Umtunzini swim (the Philocaly trail) will take seven days (132km). Along with many endurance swims, Sarah is the first South African to swim the Kaiwi Channel. She founded Breathe Conservation in 2012, an non-profit organisation dedicated to ridding the ocean of plastic. You can find her on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/breatheocean1/, this trip https://www.instagram.com/philocaly_trail/ and read about how she handles sharks in January’s HighLife magazine.

Dear Dan

Dear Dan,

I decided to write you a letter to say thank you for having me to stay in your house in Cape Town. I decided to put it on Social Media because I know that right now, what you have probably done is say to your mum: “Mum I really need to do some very important research about Katydids and what they like to eat.” Or some other dubious insect. And you will say: “You have to give me your phone.” Then you will find out a little bit about Katydids but then you will think, it will help me to concentrate if I listen to Panic! at the Disco at the same time, and then somehow that will make you start looking at very ugly rocks that people have drawn faces onto and think I wish Jess was here to show me how to use Photoshop to put that rock face onto Thomas the Tank Engine. And then you will think, I wonder what Jess is doing right now? No doubt something like that. And then you will go to Instagram and find me thinking about you and writing this letter. How wonderful.

Some people find concentrating on one thing quite hard and that’s totally fine. Like today I was doing some research. Not about Katydids, but about Calder Mobiles. This is for a very important design job I am doing. So I went to #caldermobiles on Instagram and amazingly Wentworth Miller had posted a very nice picture of a Calder Mobile that he likes and so then I started looking at his account, which is called wentworthmillerselfcarequotes. And I remembered just exactly why I was so in love with him in the first Season of Prison Break and so that was a very nice part of my day. And then I remembered that when my friend Richard died, I sent the first season of Prison Break to his sister Helen who was very very sad and she said, it was a very useful way of forgetting for a few hours. So Wentworth helped her too. And I remembered that Wentworth himself was a bit sad and spoke about suicide sometimes so I felt glad that he was hash tagging self-care and sharing it for us all to look at and feel better.

Of course you have to be a little be wary of going down too many rabbit-holes on Facebook and you must guard against narcissism. If you feel surges of envy as you scroll through the pages of other people’s lives, stop straight away and go directly to a psychologist. Because envy will quickly turn you into an asshole and then you won’t have any friends. And friends are what makes life worth living.

If you find yourself looking at someone’s photo of themselves and their cute family at the top of a mountain, and you think, look at them showing off about climbing a mountain. Take yourself back to the psychologist and say please teach me how to not be envious and also to not make assumptions. Because perhaps they are all enormously sad because the mum and dad are about to get divorced or maybe the dad is sick or the dog has just died and they were posting the picture to remind themselves of a day when everyone was happy. It really does work to stick your chin up and smile at yourself in the mirror in the mornings, or for the camera on top of a mountain. There is a distinct move back to a Behaviourist model to help people get through the day.

But I don’t think there is too much danger of you becoming an asshole, because the first thing I noticed when I got to your house was that on the door of my room was a sign that said: Dan’s Massages R100. And so I immediately knew you had empathy. That you know how hard it is for people who come to stay and are trying to work but the mountain is just there shining in from every window. And the Common with all the pretty flowers and the people walking poodles is just round the corner. And trying to take your dog Coco for a walk is pretty taxing too, because as you know she refuses to turn right, only left. And so you might find yourself walking for hours and never being able to get home and then you might miss your deadline because you were actually commissioned to draw a picture of Medusa, but instead you were walking in circles.

And speaking of Medusa I wasn’t really upset when you said if I had snakes for hair it would be an improvement. Because I had been teasing you about how Dawn the waitress loved you so much she gave us all that free cheese and quite a lot of extra wine. So I probably deserved it. And I was even thinking of saying to my hairdresser, “Snakes please” next time I go there. I must say I don't know another nine-year-old who knows all the myths so well. Even the difference between the ancient version of Medusa versus the Ovid version, versus Fry, versus Jackson. And you helped me position the sword in the picture correctly into her heart, because of that lustful dickhead Poseidon and jealous Athena, not because she was born a monster.

So don’t let your grumpy old teacher say, Dan you will fail the year, if you don’t do this or that. Because I can see that you know which stories in life are important. I suppose it depends where your sympathies lie really, with the Gods, or with the mortals. Because having a classical education won’t necessarily guard you against turning into an asshole. I think it actually can make your a worse one, like Boris Johnson.

Anyway, I miss you buddy and I can’t wait for you to come and visit me in Durban. I really hope your teacher liked your Katydid poster. Because I know she can be a bit mean. if she says: “Dan why have you done the background of your project on Katydids in Rainbow colours? Because that is not strictly the environment that Katydids live in.” Then just say politely something like: “Well it looks amazing or that’s what their environment looks like to me, or have you forgotten to put on your glasses?”

The Red Cats

When I was growing up there were always a lot of people coming to our house for supper or staying in our outside cottage. Most of them were very important and clever and were ‘heroes of the struggle’ as people like to say. I was terrified of most of these people. Like the man who taught me to swim, by saying he would eat me if I didn’t go faster. I like him now, but I didn’t like him then.

Many of these people turned out to be okay, but not all. Some even revealed themselves to be Epsteins and Trumps and Mays and Gandhis. And then I wanted to shout out: I tried to tell you, but you were not listening. And to this day I very rarely trust anyone who thinks they are very very important and good. Or if they have messiah issues.

But there were some I really really liked. There was one couple in particular who came to stay with us from England. She was warm and buxom and comforting, and he was funny. During this time they were staying with us we were getting a lot of threatening phone calls. From a man who called himself Red Cats or Rooi Kat. Sometimes Red Fox. And sometimes other things. He said that he was going to kill us. Particularly he wanted to kill my dad. I had always been taught to answer the telephone very politely by saying “Hello, this is Jess speaking”, but after this happened, my mother said I could just put the phone down when Red Cats called. Or even tell him to Fuck Off.

Anyway this went on for rather a long time despite having our number unlisted and complaining to the police and the post office. I wanted to answer the phone because sometimes it wasn’t Mr Red Cats, but my friend saying, let’s go to the beach. Or sometimes it would be Aron van Staden who I really loved, phoning to say, shall we go and ride our bikes around the streets. Because we were only 14. Anyway the couple were always very empathetic and would say, ‘Don’t worry dear, he is just a coward and he will get bored soon. Just put the phone down.’

Then one day we went on holiday. And the couple stayed to look after our house and our animals. We had one dog called Tosca and two cats. The cats were both ginger. And we loved them very much. One of the cats was so chilled and so loving that in the winter you could wear her as a scarf. We also asked the neighbour, called Mick Ballard, to check on things, even though he hated the cats because he loved birds. And our dog used to dig up his roses.

And when we got back home everything seemed fine and normal. But then we noticed that the door to the study was broken and the paintwork was all scratched. And then the neighbour told my dad that he hadn’t seen the red cats around trying to catch his birds so he had come to investigate and found that they had been locked up in the study, without any food or any water. For quite a few days. So he bashed the door down. The couple had left. Perhaps my parents put two and two together then, but they didn’t say anything.

Years later my mother told me they had found out that the couple were spies. And by then so many other things had happened I was only slightly surprised. And then I forgot all about it. But just last week, I saw that Jonathan Acer has written Betrayal: The Secret Lives of Apartheid Spies. And I remembered about it again. And I thought about how much I had liked the couple and how completely and utterly wrong I had been about them.

.

What have you done with the flying hyena?

Just this week I was sitting quietly drinking my coffee and trying to work out how to do live cross-referencing in Indesign and my friend came to me and said: “Can I ask you two very important questions?” I said Yes he could, although I was a bit nervous because he asked permission.

And then he said. “Firstly what have you done with the flying hyena? and secondly “Do you have a Weber?” It was useful that these questions came together, because I could focus my answer upon the second. And say that I have very little to do with Webers in life. This is because even though the Weber might cook chicken very well, it is a symbol of Patriarchy. And of course therefore only my husband knows if we have a Weber and how to cook on one, and where it is. So you better ask him instead. And other such non-nonsense.

Because when he mentioned the hyena belonging to the first question, I was seized with regret, that I had ever shown anyone the drawing I was trying to resolve. It was too soon. I hadn’t taken good advice. And my friend was perplexed by the lone hyena in the sky floating above a paw-paw tree.

The problem all started with a phone call from the best editor in the world asking me to do a story and to do the illustrations for the story. Both to go together. For money this time. Not just for Exposure. Which is more the currency I am used to being paid in. And these drawings and this story are very very important to me. And I want the drawings to be the most beautiful ever in the universe. So I have been drawing and drawing for weeks. And running and walking around in circles and only eating marmite toast and not being able to sleep. Because the drawings have not been working out. And there is a deadline.

And I have been getting up at 3 in the morning suddenly awake and suddenly knowing perfectly well how to fix up all the problems with the drawings. And then they have been getting better until about 5, but then by 6, they have become shit again. And I have been chewing my fingers and my friends have been nodding and saying “It means too much to you. You are trying to hard. You must try less hard.” And giving me lots of other similarly useful advice.

And so I did try less hard. I just blithely went to the Spar and made macaroni cheese and cut my fringe and tried not very hard to work out cross-referencing for another piece of work I was doing.

And then one day, true to the process, we all know and hate which I am trying to explain in case you think drawing is either easy or hard, I miraculously did something. I put one shape on top of another, and I drew a hyena. And then I knew it might be okay. That the cacophony of bad initial trees and agapanthus and construction sites and all the other mistakes might finally come together in a loving symphony of glorious aesthetic and conceptual union.

I told my friend who is a very good, experienced and famous artist about this. About how I had realised that however talented or talentless one was, the most important thing is just to keep going. Keep going, but don’t try to hard. A difficult and delicate balance to master at precisely the same time. And my editor said, ALUTA.

And then my wise friend said more. She said: "Even more important. There is someone you are doing this for. Your Muse. The secret person you do all your Best Things for. It is only when you feel sure your Muse will like them, that You will like them. And then nothing else will matter. Don’t show anyone else the drawings until they are done. Until the Muse, secret, absent and invisible to all of us, presently occupying all that space in your head, is pleased.

Because if you show too many people, then someone else will say: Cool in that ambiguous way, while you stare at them for some sort of truth in their body language. Or something like. “I don’t like that fire, or the polar bear. Or why is there a floating hyena in the sky. And you won't be ready to shrug it off and know what belongs to them and what to you. What is flattery and whether it is actually a bad drawing in their view and what is envy and what matters and what does not.

And you won’t necessarily be ready or have the precise words to explain to them just how scared you are of Gerard Bonneville. Of the way he was whacking his three-legged hyena daemon against the wall in La Belle Sauvage, and so that is probably why you had to include him in the picture. And you might not be ready to say confidently: hyenas are terrifying laughing scavengers so they must always be visible, not secretly under the table licking their severed bloody wounded legs. Like the terrible tortured hyena soul that belongs to Gerard Bonneville. So once I’d grovelled around in the muck with him, I had to draw him.

Don’t show anyone until your Muse is happy, you have faced the hyena, and he is correctly positioned in the sky. She said these are just some of the rules of drawing. When you have grown up a bit and stopped being so attention-seeking, I will tell you some more.

Gifts you find hard to receive Part 1: Eddie and the cuckoo

Last Christmas, a very good friend of mine came round with a present. For me. It was in a cardboard box. Not wrapped up. He said “I thought you would like this. It is a baby bird”.

And I can understand why he thought I would like a baby bird, because I have two children, two dogs, one cat, at one point 24 rabbits but many escaped or were eaten by eagles or went to live in Pigeon Valley, one Russian hamster, one Siamese fighter fish, a bottom feeder (the aquatic type) and 2000 yellow and purple guppies.

And I didn’t assertively say: “Actually I do not want a baby bird. Because of the above mentioned dependents. And I am scared of birds. Because they can peck you. And I don’t like their claws. Also, even though it is Christmas, at the moment, my usually bleeding heart full of kindness and empathy is as empty as the bottles of wine I am having for supper. And I am so tired and so generally cross that I am even driving in an aggressively unforgiving way, and not letting anyone in. In fact at the moment I am accelerating towards jaywalkers, even people in wheelchairs and children. Never mind small birds.”

I didn’t say any of that. Instead I said. “Thank you. How kind of you to bring me this present. But I’m afraid I don’t know how to look after baby birds. In fact I don’t know anything about birds at all. Apart from Vultures, because I had to do a story about them.”

And he said, “Don’t be silly Jess. it is easy. Caterpillars. ProNutro. This bird will change your life.” And then he rushed off to a very important work event.

So Thea and I made the bird a nest out of something and found some worms in the earth, but the bird didn’t like them. So I went to the Spar to buy ProNutro. But I didn’t know which flavour baby birds might like and what the consistency of the ProNutro should be and whether it should be warmed up and mixed with milk or water. And do you need to give it to the bird with a spoon or a syringe? And the box had no information at all about RDA for baby birds, only children and puppies. And I was getting quite stressed. But then I saw Eddie. Also in the cereal aisle.

I am sure absolutely no one reading this interesting story will know who Eddie is. Because he never usually comes to Glenwood. Even though he lives nearby. And he never ever comes into the glorious constellation of shops known as the Glenwood Village, which is where we were now.

He doesn’t do this because he used work in a pub in the Glenwood Village called Villains, where he was always accidentally and sometimes intentionally getting whacked on the head with pool cues while trying to stop angry drunk people fighting. Anyway he said he found it too post-traumatic to come to even the Spar at the Glenwood Village, because of all the Villains’ bad memories. He said it was in fact a miracle that he was there. But he had run out of milk.

And of course you might be thinking, this has absolutely nothing to do with ProNutro and baby birds, but the thing is that after Eddie left Villains after a few too many blows to the head, he went to work in a PET SHOP in Durban North. Which is where we first met. When I was buying hay for the rabbits.

And so the miracle of Eddie, finding the courage to go to the Spar the very hour that I went to the Spar, meant he was able to tell me exactly step-by-step how to look after the baby bird. And I was able to honestly say to Eddie that he was the best person I had ever bumped into at the Spar. And that I was so extremely glad he had run out of milk.

And that conversation seemed to make him very very happy, and in fact, he said that me being so excited about seeing him, helped him to feel better. And realise that he was actually a very useful and worthwhile person. He even said that perhaps he might start coming back to Glenwood more often.

And so we both went happily off with our ProNutro and Milk, with hearts less empty and less fearful. Feeling that the universe had conspired in our and the bird’s favour. And I was sure that this remarkable coincidence meant that me and the bird were destined to have a long and happy life together.

But the truth is that by the time I got home, the baby bird was dead. It had been eaten by the cat. And me and Thea were quite upset. Because we had made space for it. Despite never really wanting it at all in the first place.

Anyway a few days later Eddie texted me to find out how it was going. And so I sent him a picture of the bird when in first arrived in my friend’s hand and said sadly the bird had not lived for very long. Not because I’d fucked up in the feeding of ProNutro, but because of the cat.

And then, in a final very important plot twist, Eddie wrote back. He said: did I know that the Baby Bird was a baby Cuckoo. And he said Cuckoos are really not very nice. At all. Not that they deserve to be eaten by cats. But that I needn’t be too too sad about the whole thing being over so soon. Because it was a story that could only ever have ended in heartbreak, especially if over the weeks and months I had become even more attached to the Cuckoo.

And incomprehensibly, there is actually a part 2 and possible a part 3 to this incredible story, and the theme of ‘gifts you cannot receive, nor comprehend the significance of” but I’ll save that for next week…

Making stuff

I really like making stuff. And I really like making stuff with people. Ages ago I did some drawings of indigenous flowers and birds and Nicky Savage of Savage Jewellery made them into necklaces. Then they ran out so now she has made some more necklaces and now there are also bracelets! I watched her for some of the process and it was beautiful, so I did a photo essay so you can see some of the steps too. And if you want one, let me know and I will put you in touch with her.

All of my Margarets

Just last week I was on the phone to my friend Elda, saying I was sorry I couldn’t come to their house for supper on Saturday, because my friend Margaret was here from London for only just that night. And she said, “is that the Margaret with the chopped fringe?” And surprisingly there was not an easy answer to this.

And I said, “Three of my Margarets currently have chopped fringes, so I’m not sure.” And then together we tried to work out exactly which Margaret I was seeing on Saturday night. And then Elda said, “Is Mags one of the Margarets with a chopped fringe?” and I walked over to where Mags was and she actually had her fringe clipped back in a new way. But she is in fact one of the most prominent Margarets about which I shall go into some detail below, even though everyone calls her Mags. She has a cat called Jess. FYI.

I have seven Margarets in my phone and eight altogether, although one is no longer on Earth. All of these Margarets are beacons of light and hope in a dark and perilous world. Over the years I have slept on six of these Margaret’s couches, actually lived with three of them, worked for five of them; but am only the exact same size as two of them, who I have often borrowed dresses from. One of these that I have often worn the clothes of is called Magali, which is French for Margaret. Also I definitely have given them all a lot of homemade presents. On this Saturday night in question Margaret said to me, “Jess you should see my bedroom, it is just full of all your things”.

And then I tried to remember all the gifts I have foisted upon her and the others over the years: lights, bookends, weird little plaques, necklaces, tiles, a zillion pottery vases, candles, origami mobiles, home-made postcards and crocheted stuff. Is merely what I can remember. And my heart just filled right up thinking she had kept them. Because some people say you shouldn’t give people anything homemade. Only biscuits. Because otherwise it is Too Much. It is called Over Giving. But none of my Margarets have ever said anything like this to me. Also, none of them are known for much snark, or manipulative digs, like “Okay if you say so, Jess” in that way.

Also all of my Margarets are very inventive. Six work for themselves. As you can see from the postcard, most do very very interesting things, like recording people under bridges and also making films about cuckoo clocks. This makes me feel more like I belong in the world and for this I am utterly grateful, almost every day. I have got into the most trouble with three of the Margarets, but have in fact been out all night with six, wearing very short sometimes luminous dresses with four and recovering from car accidents with two. Mostly however, the Margarets and I are trying to be more mature now. We have all had broken hearts and bones, we are a bit calmer, we have learned a lot about our mistakes, and have given up many of our bad habits.

Although, one of the habits that is sticking to me and many of the Margarets is that of being kind to strangers too often. Definitely five of my Margarets used to say to just about anyone who looks lost and sad or lonely, “Why don’t you come along with me and let us skip through this meadow together or go for a swim? And let us be friends.”

But we don’t really do it too often anymore. Roughly, if you add all the being kind to strangers or people who are new in town (say average age of 45 x 5 Margarets plus me thats 6 = 270 years of being kind, perhaps not every day. Maybe once a week, so that is 270 x 52 = 14 040 of rescuing stranger units) it is frankly I think quite a lot. It has taken us quite some time to learn that many people sitting quietly by themselves in coffee shops do not want to talk to us, or want us to help them escape from their presumedly empty heart and screaming loneliness. Many of these people were just enjoying the sunshine or the rain on their own, for once. But also, and this is what lines the faces of the ‘fixers’ among us, sadly there is usually an enormously good reason why people have no friends. Like maybe they are psychopaths.

And on Saturday night as we reminisced about the highs and lows of friendship and Over Giving, I got up to go to the loo, and Margaret reminded me that the one thing we know for sure, that we can hold on to, is that there is a secret passage from the toilets of Cafe 99 all the way around the back to Unity.

We know this because once, at this very table, at this very restaurant, Margaret invited a person alone at a nearby table to join their party. Apparently the manager tried to say, I wouldn’t, the waitresses were trying to motion Don’t Do It but she ignored them. It is hard for rescuers to believe that their ernest compassion will not necessarily turn out for the best. Of course the stranger just endlessly drank all the wine and talked and talked and talked without stopping even for one mouthful or even one alternative opinion about her terrible husband and getting divorced over and over again. No one else could say one word.

And so one by one, each of Margaret’s original companions went to the toilet just to have a break. And from there the waiters showed them the way out. The secret passage from the toilets of Cafe 99 to Unity. Now and then one would pop back to check on Margaret, who was by this time just having to say. “I’m so sorry I think you really need to stop talking about this and move on”. In a firm and polite way. Until she also found the way out. And then taught it to me.

And I could go on and on about all the things I’ve done and learned with my Margarets, but I’ll get sentimental. Already I’m starting to say to myself When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries … I can actually say the whole poem and it is beautiful … And look upon myself and curse my fate … on and on all the way through… For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings. Five of my Margarets at least would be able to say this poem all the way through without stopping.

Foxes full of fleas

Impossible not to commend Phoebe Waller-Bridge on her excellent decision to allow FOXES into Season 2 of Fleabag. 

Of course now she has also given us the bloody face of loving properly and not being chosen back. And she is much less of an asshole now. But this has all been written about extensively and very well since the beginning of time and in the New Statesman https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/tv-radio/2019/04/fleabag-final-episode-series-phoebe-waller-bridge-priest-comedy.

“The priest, being an extreme version of all the unattainable blokes she has ever adored: those ratbags (and even non-ratbags) who loved someone, or something, far more than her.” 

So I don’t need to tell you about that. 

But FOXES. The critics have not given her sublime casting skills their full due. If I had any power whatsoever, I’d give the fox in the final scene at least Best Supporting Actor. Or Best Animal oscar. Best Daemon. Best Tragi-Comic Timing on Behalf of a Spirit Animal. 

Of course not everyone has such a soft spot for foxes, the priest particularly and that is fine. Often people say they don’t like them because they have fleas or are too scroungy and scruffy and all raggedy. And they are clever tricksters; and sly and cunning. And so people say, I don’t like them, because of course I am not like that at all.

And these are true things to say. And useful therefore, because you don’t have to say actually I’m very scared of foxes. You don’t have to say what if they have a life-threatening animal disease. That I might catch. And then start frothing at the mouth and become terribly afraid of water. And then just die in the worst way. Or explode. And you don’t have to honestly say, in fact I’m pretty scared of all untame animals, and actually also dogs and cats and mice. And many other animals, both big and small. And in fact I’m pretty much afraid of everything. Like the priest.

When I lived in London Bridge, I made friends with a fox. We were especially friends on a Tuesday. That was the night I always had to work until very late. For reasons probably best explained by a psychologist in a cameo role (paid in birthday vouchers) I was the one who agreed to wait until we had sent the last pages of the magazine I worked on to JJs: the Repro house. (Repro houses are now redundant like cassette tapes). 

And then JJs would do what they had to do and fax (I know) me back what the page would look like when it was printed IRL. And then a man called Duncan would phone me and say is everything alright love, and I would say yes and I would lock up the office and walk home. Down from Islington through the City to London Bridge in the middle of the night. 

Sometimes I would find my fox at Moorgate. I would say hi and he would say hi back in fox body language. Sometimes he would wink at me and I would wink back. Sometimes he would be in the streets around Old Street, and the bars near Hoxton. And I might say, you shouldn’t be here, and he say right back at ya, sister. 

Usually though he would be in the alleys near the river. And I would say, this is not a place you belong either, and he would look back and say with his foxy eyes, neither do you, either. At all. And sometimes I would have slightly longer conversations with the fox. Like I can see that you also did not finish reading that self-help book they all recommend called From Surviving to Thriving. I bet you never even got passed the first few chapters. Or I would see the fox, in the shadows, being the underbelly, scrummaging through the rubbish looking for something sustaining. And I would say: that is not a good way to live. And then I would go into the 24 hour cake shop at Guys’ Hospital and only eat a little bit of cake and leave the rest in the bin for him. 

And so, like the clever fox she is, this is what Waller-Bridge gives us too. She shifts through all the shit belonging to other people, chipping away at the bits they think they have hidden in the bin. She finds the rotten bits, and that is what makes everyone nervous and run away; but she also finds the small bits of beautiful cake that haven’t been spoiled. So thank-you, not just for the foxes; but for all of it: fear and grief and badass mirth and especially for when at a dinner party when we are brought down with a snarky comment that is like knife to the knee, now we can find companionship. 

Will the last bookend maker standing please turn out the lights

As all good and sensible journalists know, in order to feed your family, you have to do other stuff to make money. And for a while I chose pots. Everyone, I decided, would always need something to eat their breakfast out of while reading fake news on the internet. No one can drink a cup of tea out of nothing. They can post about drinking a cup of tea but they cannot actually drink it, into their actual stomachs.

So in-between listicles and editing maths text books and the occasional travel piece, I made things. During this heady time playing midwife to new vessels it became difficult to operate my mouse because the surface of my desk was bumpy with left over bits of plaster of paris, stuck to it. The kitchen and parts of the garden became permanently stained with cement, resin and slip as these substances leaked out of faulty moulds belonging to the process that is understanding how to make them successfully.

I became even more ambitious. I discovered silicon, and the challenge that is making a 3D mould out of sticky toxic bright pink stuff. And then a case. With no leaks, and locks and air vents. Making this was like climbing El Capitan with only four fingers. For me. My hands were burned and calloused. I already knew I was blessed with no real sense of inside-out or which way is which and therefore hopeless at many essential life skills, including walking in the right direction, sewing and mould-making. And it took me longer than I dare confess to perfect the mould which would contain and then birth these bookends. It was a feat of the utmost perseverance and determination. Half the time I was in kind of a trance, working against my genetic misfortunes, the creative spirit of designing soon-to-be-redundant objects pulsing through my soul. I was missing print deadlines, contributing to my own other-worldly demise and frankly annoying everyone.

But once these figures announced their arrival on Earth with fewer missing limbs and intact hands, and I started spraying them with fashionable gold interior-decorating colours, those who still had books to be held upright began to take notice. Children wanted them and adults wanted them. I was swapping them for haircuts and boxes of fruit. They were booked on international flights every week and happy owners were sending me photos of my men propping up the design magazines they were being featured in. Capetonians were buying them faster than I could make them. I bought a new pair of jeans because for one or two days I was richer than in my wildest imaginings.

But of course I knew these fellows wouldn’t be flying off the shelves forever. Of course deep down I knew that they were not useful for holding up three kindles per household. As we all entered more firmly the historical era now unfondly known as the death of quailty print media, my lego guys kept me company. All good creatives must constantly reinvent themselves.

And yesterday, after time spent at a new coffee shop to mark the next phase, finally biting the bullet that is joining linkedIn and looking for a real job, I arrived home to these special creatures, painted black, drying in the sun. These are the last, good people. They are the end of my supply of Material One, the substance I now understand so well. So if you still have books that look better upright, come and get ‘em.

Loving green grass is okay

I know it is a bold and unpopular thing to say, but I do really like grass. Of course I also like vegetables and I think they should be planted in more public places. Grass definately shouldn’t have such an utterly entrenched position alongside pavements and in parks. Vegetables should feature more. So if you are walking along and feel a little peckish, you can simply pick yourself a bean or maybe dig up and dust off a carrot and have a snack. And everyone would be less hungry. That would be so awesome.

And I know everything should always be indigenous, but it can get a bit fascist being so strict about where things were originally from. And I know people will say oh Jess you are so middle class and also they will say I am bourgeois to like grass. And it is true, I am. But I do really just like its beautiful greenness and how soft and lovely it is. Although it does make some people itchy if they roll around in it. But not me.

My grandparents were very posh and they had the most pristine lawn ever in the history of the world. I have never ever seen such a lawn again in my life. Not even in England. Not even on golf courses or bowling greens. Having this very precise lawn was not easy. Keeping that grass to aesthetic and sensory satisfaction was difficult. Every morning in the winter a whole team of gardeners had to sweep it. Especially if there was frost, or even dew. And I tell my children about how the gardeners cut the edges with nail clippers to get it exactly straight, but they don’t believe me.

But I don’t necessarily love lawns per se, more just flowy greenness on hills. I don’t love blobby angry men without their shirts on mowing the lawn on a Saturday in suburbia either. Even though I totally am bourgeois, this is not a scene I think of with any fondness.

But I do confess to having working class envy, which is deluded and wrong. When I was little and walking to school I was always anxious. And I walked passed houses with grass verges and I would look at the gardeners who would of course be eating mixed fruit jam sandwiches on tin plates because during Apartheid that was what white people always fed gardeners. No one seemed to ask each other if they liked mixed fruit jam. But I guess just presumed it is a good mixture of fruit. Cancelling out any offensive fruit with another. I would look at the gardeners drinking tea in tin cups and see them weeding and eyeing the unruly grass, and simply wish I was them, dealing with grass all day rather than going to school. In my defence I really didn’t understand what a terrible time they were having or about the social and political issues surrounding mixed fruit jam in South Africa in the 1970s. Because I was only seven.

But the thing is, especially at the moment, I still actually wish I was a gardener. I could possibly get away with promoting repetitive weeding from a Buddhist point of view. Or I could from a ultra-upper class superior position of I have understood life. But otherwise, no. If you are rich and have been to university you are expected to at least wish to be horticulturalist or a landscaper. Not just watering and cutting back bushes in a team. You at least have to be the leader of the team. Just like you have to wish to be an architect not a bricklayer, even though I think about bricklaying almost every day. And I know not to romanticise the life of the guy who walks the dogs around Glenwood. Even though on many days I also really wish that was my job. I just can’t believe I didn’t think of it first. Now he has a monopoly and he seems like a better runner than me. Even though I probably love dogs and running with dogs as much as he does.

My friend Ryan is also a very good runner, and I was relieved when he told me he was also struck down by middle class problems related to grass, when he was young. He said that although he was a very fast sprinter he hated the races. And when he was in the ‘on your marks’ position he would look down at the grass and look at the ants on the grass, and just wish he was actually an ant. In that moment he would have preferred to be an ant on a blade of grass. Even though apart from being able to run very fast, he was a South African high jumper.

Anyway there is a lot more to be said about grass – like about walking around on a crunchy hill when it has been burned. An activity available to all echelons. And it seems like all the grass is dead. But it isn’t. Little spikes of green are poking out. This aspect of grass can be very reassuring. But I will save those musings for the next time. For right now I need to look for a job and stop pissing about. If anyone knows anyone who needs a gardener or a dog-walker, please let me know.

Theme hotels Pt 2: Won over in Bloemfontein. A retraction.

Sometimes you are just working away on an average Wednesday and then your friend sends you a text. A text that makes you very happy. Or sometimes a text that makes you realise you have to retract everything you categorically said last time. Sometimes both these emotions are elicited simultaneously, within a few short words. That may seem oxymoronic but it is in fact a facet of any strong and proper friendship. Take for example this text I got this week from my friend Greg: “I am in a Tolkien themed hotel in Bloemfontein called Hobbit Hotel.” And then some lovely pictures. “It is making me nostalgic”. And “It is a story of hope and friendship”. 

So I read up about this Hobbit Hotel, but I already knew in my very soul that I wanted to go there. Despite what I had previously decided about Theme Hotels. I knew I would have to issue a retraction, or at least an exception. 

This is the place where his majesty JRR Tolkien was born. David Smith (The Guardian) described it thus: “Although each of the 12 rooms draws on the Tolkien universe, don't expect Gandalf and Gollum salt and pepper pots. The chandelier, blue and white crockery, fireplaces with bellows, framed illustrations of butterflies and flowers, pendulum clocks, wood cabinets and mantelpiece decorated with golden angels are quaint but not necessarily Middle-earth. "I'd almost say we're borderline Elizabethan," said the manager, Obakeng Marintlhwane.”

At this hotel you could stay in Arwen’s room, or Galadriel’s even. Greg says he would prefer Gimli: we all have our favourites. Perhaps best to just stick with the hobbits. Hobbits are great. As most people know their favourite colours are green and yellow; and they have hairy feet and slightly pointy ears; are a little bit taller than a table; they like farming and they love eating –especially plain food like potatoes. But there is so much more to hobbits. They, like Snow White from the last instalment, have to come of age (when they turn 33), and dwarves are among those who help them.

So if you are in a Hobbit Theme Hotel, it is not necessarily going to be all shire, shire, shire. Perhaps Shagrat is the Butler. Perhaps Sauron is the night manager. I said to Greg “are there any Orcs or Belrog Demons at the hobbit hotel? He said, “Not yet”. So you are still in danger of thinking about scary things. One of Greg’s friends was put in Gollum’s room. Psycho-terror. You might stop thinking bucolic thoughts if you were in Gollum’s room. You might start instead thinking about Mount Doom or even Mordor. Then you will have to face the Black Riders. These guys are the worst. They never look you in the eye because they actually have no faces. And they wear capes. And they have such terrible breath you just die if you get within metres of them. And if the second-hand halitosis doesn’t get you, they can pierce you with a morgul-blade that will inflict a wound that will never properly heal. You will meet these guys IRL and it will be difficult to recover.

Then there are Orcs. And we all know what it is like to face a creature so so ugly and mean. With basically not one redeeming feature. And scary poppy out eyes. Always angry. Deeply hateful of everyone and everything. Hobbits don’t like to kill things and yet they have to face Orcs. Hobbits are compassionate and fun-loving. They would much rather be in the shire growing things. But they have to learn. They can’t think to themselves, as they would like to, “Oh shame, poor Orc, what a burden having no lips and such dramatically rough and also sensitive skin. And the horrible way you were born, with no loving parents. No wonder you are so cross and full of unforgiving vengeance. But you can’t feel sorry for Orcs. Even though they have to basically stay underground, living in shadow, where there is no sun and yet it is so hot. Where it is just work work work and obey these Black Riders all day. 

Because if you even hesitate for one second to feel sorry for Orcs, your head will soon be separated from your body and wobbling on a stick. And your bleeding heart will have been cut out of your chest and eaten up for breakfast. 

That will definitely happen. And these are only a few of the terrible and frightening lessons for hobbits to learn on their way to Mordor and back.  

But then there are the lovely bits. The bits that make it all worth it. When, in life, Galadriel gives you the Light of Eårendil, the brightest of stars to carry with you. Then you can fend off any spiders. And, she gives you a cloak to hide in. Or when someone as beautiful as Arwen, picks you up and puts you on her horse and then says to anyone giving you any trouble “If you want him, come and get him”. And then she washes away all your terrifying troubles in a pouring river. She, who in fact might love you so much that she gives you a pendant containing the Light of the Sun. And then later on, on top of that, gives up her immortality! Amazing! And Sam, no words of mine could describe the kind of devoted friend we have in Sam. 

I could go on and on and on about these beautiful stories. About Aragorn and Gandalf and about friendship and hope. And getting to Valinor in the end, but you know them all as well as I do. But on an average Wednesday and more generally in the day-to-day, we do forget. So go to Bloemfontein and stay at Hobbit House. A very good idea for a Theme Hotel.