The Weekend Just Past

Ugh, schools are back today, so that means an end to quiet drives to work in the morning. Although, this said, SUV driving mothers and fathers weren’t to blame for the horrific, stressful traffic this morning. That honour goes to a truck that had broken down on the main road into Pinetown. Travelling a distance that normally doesn’t even take 5 minutes, this morning took what felt like a quarter of an hour.

Anyway, as for the weekend just past…

Friday

On Friday evening Warren and Robin came around to play Carcassonne, which has proven to be a very strategic game with lots of potential for malicious plan-ruining (as usual, Paul showed no mercy as we competed for points on one side of the board).



I can’t say I was in the best mood that evening as it was, having been wound up earlier about another territorial conflict… namely the Israel-Lebanon crisis in the Middle East. Nothing disgusts me more than the targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure on both sides simply to teach your opponent a lesson. All it becomes is an escalating and very destructive ‘Eye for an Eye’ situation where nations and people are unnecessarily crippled. We should just go back to the days of armies meeting in a field and hacking and shooting the shit out of each other.

Saturday

On Saturday I managed to game myself out without playing a single title. I spent most of my day working on my feature article for the September issue of GEAR (the deadline is this week), and enjoying Paul’s new ADSL as a research tool. It’s such a refreshing change to know that if I needed to check something I could just zip online quickly to find the information I needed… without having to wrestle with slow speeds and clock watching to keep the phone bill down. 56KB Dial-up is the devil!

Paul is getting braces this week, so we had a braai of ribs that afternoon so he could enjoy them for the last time in 6 months or so.

Afterwards, we headed to my place, where I was so exhausted I ended up falling asleep while watching A Bug’s Life on TV. In fact, Paul and I slept through most of Saturday evening, while ETV blared its usual softcore porn.

Sunday

On Sunday, while Paul was putting a shelf up in the study with his father, I lay out in the sun and finished Neil Gaiman’s Stardust. As soon as I have time this week (i.e. I have got my GEAR feature article out of the way), I’ll post a little review of the novel here.

In the early evening Paul and I went with his parents to a charity orchestral rock concert at the Durban City Hall organised by the Rotary Club of Kloof. Although a more suitable title would have been the Mini Pops- there’s no way Bette Midler’s Wind Beneath my Wings and Ricky Martin’s Living La Vida Loca are rock songs! – the music by the KZN philharmonic orchestra and vocal performances by South African Idols’ Veronique (Vee) Lalouette and musical veteran Joseph Clark (best known for his performances as Freddie Mercury and Buddie Holly), were excellent. I was particularly star struck by seeing Idol’s number 4 finisher Vee on stage- what a polished professional! You can’t tell me that Pop Idols is bad for singers when it comes to enhancing their live performance confidence.



We went for dinner afterwards at a very quiet UShaka Marine World. While the seafood is good, service has gone downhill at the Cape Union Fish Market there.

Paul and I are looking at going to Mozambique for a snorkelling-fishing-chilling holiday in the future (My sister just got back from there yesterday after a week away with 8 friends). The only problem is that we’re likely to be going with Paul’s parents, who I’m finding quite suffocating at the moment. It’s bad enough that at 24 we’re still living at home with parents… now we’re going on escapist once-in-a-lifetime adventures with them.

Ugh.

And I just know that going with Lionel means the entire holiday will be structured around his way and wants (with petty things like not going anywhere until the car has been packed a certain way). And of course I’m forgetting the plenty of stories we’ll be told about his earlier visits to Mozambique and how it was so much better in the Apartheid past (I’m so tired of the moaning).

Of course, I can’t talk about this to Paul without sounding like a royal bitch who is trying to wreck his relationship with his parents. I’m just so glad I have parents who give me space. Parents who don’t insist on supporting me into my late 20s…

Honestly I think right now my future with Paul is heavily dependent on the degree to which he can escape the demands of his smothering parents, and actually establish himself as an independent individual. Again, I can’t say anything without sounding like a critical bitch who’s getting on his case for not going anywhere. I just find my Capricorn admiration of independence and success is very frustrated at the moment. And it upsets me that I'm feeling this way. So much for love conquers all.

UK and away would be so fantastic for Paul in terms of getting him to grow up, and get away from his parents. By extension, it would be good for us!

So back to Mozambique… a huge problem is that I think we have maybe 3-4 friends who would be interested in a group road trip. The rest are either saving for other holidays, dislike the beach or complete workaholics…

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