After three months of living in a house we’d planned to buy, we’re moving again. I don’t really want to go into the reasons, suffice to say we’re just not happy here.
This means another upheaval: packing, arranging the transfer of utilities… but it will be worth it in the end. Even if I have to go almost two months without internet again. Hopefully, though, that will not be the case this time.
That’s also an explanation for why I’ve been so tardy with new posts: we decided on 19 October to move, I gave notice here on 20 October. I started house hunting right away, and found us a place in Blackrock, Louth. However, last week Thursday I discovered that the owner intended to put the house back on the market after a year. We really don’t want to deal with living in ahouse that’s being shown, and we also very definitely don’t want to have to move again any time in the foreseeable future.
That meant a mad rush to find another place, as we’d arranged to move on 7 November. I was frantic and depressed, as it’s not easy to find a house to rent when you’re a family of nine (five people, four cats). I was just starting to despair when on Friday afternoon, I was showed a lovely four bedroom house with a landlord who is, according to the agent, a very nice guy. He doesn’t mind the cats and is prepared to give us a long lease – he works and lives on the continent (that is, somewhere on mainland Europe) and the house is a rental property with no foreseeable prospect of becoming anything else.
So. I’m packing. And cleaning and stuff – thank the gods we were only in here a short while, there’s some stuff I haven’t even unpacked from the previous move yet.
It’s strange that in a country where religion was king until a very short while ago, I feel there is greater religious freedom than I perceive Americans experience. True, the schools are still heavily influenced by the Catholic church. Mother Mary stares me in the face when I walk in the front door. Religious pictures grace the halls. There are religious lessons in class.
But religion doesn’t get stuffed down my throat. My kids read story books during religious lessons, at our request. Nobody looked askance at us for this, and the school staff are friendly to me and treat my kids no differently for our views on God. I often get the feeling most modern Irish people are Catholic the way I’m a Boer – they were born into a society that revered it, grew up with it, but as adults it’s more an afterthought than something they embrace.
From entries in blogs I follow written by Americans, I get the feeling that for all their secularism, they have a much higher percentage of people who identify as Christians and are really serious about it. Fox News is a glaring example of this demographic’s strength: it would have died a quiet death if it didn’t have support. People watch this shit.
And shit it is, I’ve concluded from numerous clips I’ve seen on YouTube.
I come from a country where racism is a problem. I suppose I don’t need to say more than: “South Africa has eleven official languages” to give an idea of the cultural diversity and related mess they’re sitting with there. Because of the Apartheid disaster, a lot of people are super-duper sensitive about racism. It gets ridiculous sometimes.
One example of where I shook my head and rolled my eyes, was when cricketer Brian McMillan loudly urged an Indian bowler to toss him a “Coolie Creeper”. The brouhaha surrounding that was unbelievable. Yes, he’d messed up, but I couldn’t help but think the guy was so ‘colour blind’ that he forgot he was playing with an Indian and used a ‘we’re all buddies’ term that was insensitive in the circumstances. The whole mindset is not to discourage racism, but to make people over-aware of the race of whatever person they’re dealing with.
I also resented the way the incident was handled. Wouldn’t a quiet word with Brian, explaining that his old-school terminology was hurtful, have been much more productive than an official complaint and a national scandal? That said, only those directly involved would know the spirit behind the incident, whether it was the final straw in an attitude that was generally insensitive and derogatory, or a one-off where he was so unconscious of race and colour that he didn’t watch every word.
I often get the feeling there are some black people who are constantly on the lookout for insults. They’re always poised to be offended, and therefore the smallest little thing can set them off.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to take a walk in their shoes.
I’m sure I was one of the more annoying kids in school. I wasn’t a rebel, and I wasn’t a nerd. I was something in between, probably more self-absorbed than most, and with more kinks in my soul than I realised at the time. I tended to ask questions, to point stuff out when I thought it was wrong. This habit was not bad in itself, but I had no consideration for diplomacy or tact. I look back with regret on the way I handled a lot of stuff as I grew up.
I can’t really think of any other reason why Mr Fick hated me so much, but he did. He must have despised me from the moment I walked into his class the first time at the age of ten. I was entering Standard 3, the school year in the system used in South Africa at the time when the subject ‘Hygiene’ turned into the subjects ‘Science’ and ‘Biology’. Same teacher, but separate periods in which each was taught. And we got a more specifically qualified teacher to impart the delights of these subjects to our fresh young minds.
We were given the task of copying a sketch of a germinating bean plant into our copy books from the textbook. Later developments in my life showed me that I’m pretty good at drawing. I therefore have no doubt that the sketches I produced were accurate and well done. When Mr Fick saw them, though, he had a serious problem with them.
You might hate me for this later, but here is a link to the 2008 results of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction contest. In which people get rewarded for writing terrible prose. My favourite out of all of them is among the honourable mentions:
Behind his pearly white smile lay a Bible black heart, not like the Psalms with its, “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord,” but like Revelations where God just smites people.
Go check it out, but make sure you have a good while. There’s a lot to chuckle about.
When you want someone to do something, offering a carrot – an incentive – always works better than hanging a threat over their heads. Never have I seen this better illustrated than in this video.
It also is a striking reminder that we need to bring fun into our lives in whatever way we can. What an awesome and blatant demonstration of how easy it can be.
Apparently, a document from the Ministry of Defence in Britain advising staff on how to stop documents leaking onto the internet has been leaked onto the internet. Hahahahahahahahahaha!
And I hate it. But let’s make the best we can of it, shall we, and let lolcats help us through the ordeal:
That’s about how I look at the moment, and how I feel, too. Micky had this last week, and though he’s still not quite over it, he’s volunteered to let me stay in bed while he went to fetch the kids. What a man.
Time to lie down again. Hopefully I’ll be better tomorrow!
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