Here is some free advice for those planning to participate in nuptials of any kind. Why anyone wants this life in 2025 is a symptom of societal mass derangement.
The statistics tell a story that the spinsters and bachelors — such as auntie Thelma from my neighbourhood when I was growing up in the 1980s — were significantly less brain-damaged than married folks.
Her companions were about a dozen cats and she’d sit in her garden enjoying a bowl of Whiskas while listening to the Radio Zulu programme Amahlaya Alala Insila. Much better companions than a sociopath who might have used her face as target practice to deal with his erectile dysfunction.
Anyway, the advice is this: if your insanity forces you to go down this path, you probably want to stay away from marrying a writer or any other kind of creative type. Writing is actually a form of mental disorder. It is not unheard of for these loonies to wake up at 0.30am and drive to Emperors Palace to observe folks gamble their families’ future; these gamblers then offer said writers their BMW X3 in exchange for R20,000 and fellatio in the parking lot. That’s the kind of content that gives writers nipple stands in anticipation of writing about it in their Sunday columns.
The woman who walked down the aisle with this particular scribe ... has watched me peel soft-boiled eggs, toss the eggs in the bin and come to bed with a plate of egg shells because I was getting brain orgasms reading Wole Soyinka’s 'You Must Set Forth at Dawn'
The woman who walked down the aisle with this particular scribe is finding this out the hard way. She has watched me peel soft-boiled eggs, toss the eggs in the bin and come to bed with a plate of egg shells because I was getting brain orgasms reading Wole Soyinka’s You Must Set Forth at Dawn.
I have stopped talking in mid-sentence because I was suddenly attacked by an idea for the novel I’ve been writing since around the time Gwede and Blade were agitating for Mbeki’s ejection from Mahlamba Ndlopfu.
She’s heard me say gibberish such as the time she remarked, “Oh damn, we’re out of milk,” and my response was, “Oh well, at least we have Sunlight soap.” This past Thursday she was booked off from work. Just fatigue and the stress of juggling work and worrying about our brood.
And living with a red wine guzzling, stark raving madman, of course. She was still in bed when I returned from taking the last-born to school and hallucinating all the way there. Anyway, I offer to make her breakfast, an offer that delighted her. All she wanted was eggs. Now, a normal individual would have heated up some oil in the pan, broken two eggs and fried them. Oh no, not this Gordon Ramsay. Inside, I went, “challenge accepted”. About 35 minutes later, curiosity got the better of her and she wandered into the kitchen to see what was taking so long. She was met with a spectacle.
When I decided to quit making margarine and soup in 2006 and become a full-time author, I lost the one hobby I had: writing.
So I needed another creative outlet — and found cooking. And I’m not too shabby at it, if I say so myself. I’ve cooked about 90% of the meals in my house for about 10 years now and I’ve kept visits to casualty for food poisoning to a bare minimum.
There was that episode when I tried my hand at chǎofàn but that was a case of a bad egg. Anyway, my wife found a chubby man in an apron beating eggs in a bowl with chopped onion, garlic, ginger, spinach, carrots, tomatoes, red pepper and green pepper. I was adding pinches of origanum, mother-in-law masala, turmeric, thyme, sage, chilli and chicken spice. I was Helen Mirren in The Hundred-Foot Journey.
The kitchen was a mess. I was waiting for my Checkers Sixty60 delivery of fresh parsley because, in my head, I was on Come Dine With Me and I didn’t want Dave Lamb to rip into me for a substandard performance. All the poor woman wanted was eggs! And she needed to eat because it was time for her medication. Look, in the end, the omelette was delightful. Just extra.
This is all to say that on Mrs N’s tombstone the inscription will be: “Here lies a silly woman who was killed by the exasperation of living with a lunatic who was driven to madness by the pursuit of the perfect sentence.”
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