Let's Get Physical

Gravity is a force to be reckoned with. Everything is moving south like those bloody swallows in spring. (Except for my boobs – thank you Dr. Price.) This calls for desperate measures. I’ll have to do Jim…sorry… gym.

I call Fernando.
“Darling, you are doing such a wonderful job with my sister Neelsie. Please do me!
Gonna do my very best and it ain’t no lie
If you put me to the test, if you let me try
Take a chance on me.”

“Are you quoting ABBA?”

Getting ready for my first session with my personal trainer, Fernando (can you hear the drums?) posed a bit of a problem. What to wear? Images of Jane Fonda in a leotard and matching leg-warmers flashed through my mind. So I did my nails, put lotion on my legs, teased my hair and put on a sweat band. Hmmmm. Too eighties? After an hour and about fifteen costume changes I settled on a sports bra and a cute pair of floral shorts.

Fernando arrived at the gym with his sculpted body, Colgate smile and a sports bag full of interesting exercise thingies. A physique like this should be mounted and framed. His muscles flex spontaneously even though he is standing still!

“Get onto the treadmill for a few minutes to warm up. Slow walk.”
“Be gentle, darling. This is my first time. Why don’t you take your shirt off and show me what to do. I’ll just sit on this little bench over here and watch you.”
“Boefie, you are paying by the hour. Get on the treadmill. No, that’s not the treadmill. Other one. No, left. My left. This one, over here.”

Ah, at last. I found it. All these gadgets look the same. I get on the TREADMILL. He switches it on and I start walking. This was easy. I was going nowhere slowly while Fernando unpacked his bag of tricks.
“Are we there yet?” I asked hesitantly a few minutes later as a small drop of sweat trickled down the side of my face.
“You’ve only been walking for two minutes.”
“It feels like I’ve been on this thing forever. Look! Sweat!” I pointed to my face.
“Let’s pick up the pace a little.” He came over and I watched a muscle ripple in his arm as he pushed a button on the panel in front of me. The machine started to speed up and my little legs were trying to keep up. This was not fun anymore. I held on to my bouncing boobs. I was sweating make-up. Waterloo – couldn’t escape if I wanted to!

At last it was over. “You can get off now.” Easier said than done, Adonis. I tried to take command of my legs, but they were out of control. They buckled and I collapsed in a heap on the floor.
“I’m paralyzed! Call the paramedics!” I caught a glimpse of my pathetic self in the mirror. “Call a make-up artist!”
Fernando picked what was left of me off the floor and handed me a pair of boxing gloves. Oooh, let the games begin! He put pads on his hands.
“Now, hit me.” So I hit him in the stomach. He flinched and gasped for air.
“No..ugh…hit… the…(gasp)…PADS!”
“Oh, sorry, but I can’t.”
“Sure you can. You can do this. This will get your arms toned in no time.”
“No, I can’t. When I hit you just now I broke three acrylic nails.”

Fernando tried to keep a brave face, while attempting to give me other exercises that will sculpt and remodel my body to that of a supermodel. With my amputated nails and shaking legs I tried my best. (“Every hour every minute seemed to last eternally,
I was so afraid…Fernando…”)

I accidentally dropped a weight on his foot; lost control of the rubber band while doing some arm exercise and snapped him in the face; and kicked him in the groin during a leg lift. When he asked me to lie down on a little mat for abdominal crunches, I went into the foetal position and started to suck my thumb.

After an hour of hard labour and excruciating pain, I stumbled to my car and threw myself on the bonnet. Incapable of driving home just yet, I took a few minutes to compose myself and waited for my hands to stop shaking so that I could get the key into the ignition. I felt and looked like I was out all night partying and had too many champagne cocktails.

I’m convinced Jane Fonda said: “Now that we’ve evolved into a more intelligent and humane society we no longer believe in torture as an accepted practice, though it is still necessary from time to time to pay homage to our forefathers by inflicting physical damage onto ourselves for the good of our own ego and for acceptance into the socio-cultural infrastructure.”?

Or maybe it went something like: “No pain. No gain.”

The Terminal

The devil himself had probably redesigned hell in the light of information he had gained from observing airport layouts.
Anthony Price


I get off the plane at Heathrow airport for a connecting flight from Cape Town to Chicago. I decide to walk around a bit and look at all the shops selling duty free stuff to people who want to get rid of their foreign currency. I’m not going to spend any money as I have to hold on to my foreign currency in order to spend it on my daughter in Chicago.

After about hour of covetous window shopping, I sit down at a coffee shop, order a choccochino and take out my itinerary to check my flight details. Flight number: check. Terminal: check. Departure time: What? No! This can’t be right. According to this I have to wait sixteen hours before my flight takes off. Sixteen! I feel myself aging rapidly. I call the waiter. “Please hold my table. I’ll be back in a second!”

I rush off to Information. “Darling, please help. According to this, (wave itinerary frantically in front of Information Man’s face), I have to wait for sixteen hours before my connecting flight to Chicago. Sixteen! Can you put me on standby for an earlier flight?” Information man looks at my itinerary. “Sixteen!” I repeat desperately. He punches in something on his computer. I try again, “Sixteen! I am so excited about seeing my daughter again that I misread the bloody time. I thought it was six, but it’s sixteen.”
“There is an earlier flight, but it’s fully booked. I can put you on standby but then you are not allowed to leave the terminal.”
“Yes! Thank you! I won’t go anywhere. Thank you!”

When I get back to the coffee shop my choccochino is cold but I drink it anyway. Things can only get better. Right? I decide to retrace my steps and visit all the shops again. What else is there to do in terminal hell? Images of impending death flashes through my mind. At the bookshop I buy a Vogue and a compendium of Sudoku puzzles. I try on designer clothing from the boutiques. I test eye shadow, lipstick, eye liner and blusher at the make-up counters. I buy a CD and a DVD. I buy a “Heathrow” postcard. And last but not least I buy a carton of cigarettes. So much for saving my dollars…

I go back to Information Man. “Any news?” He gives me a blank look. “Sixteen? Chicago?” I attempt in jogging his memory. He punches away on his computer again and without looking at me shakes his head. Disconcertingly I walk away from the counter. I have been here nearly four hours and have spent a fortune on shit I don’t need. My stilettos are killing me and my skinny jeans are cutting off the circulation in my legs.

I spot a small beauty salon sandwiched between Harrods and a car display and decide to go for a manicure. The manicurist is from Russia, and while she’s doing my nails we have a very nice chat about geography. By the time she’s applying my top coat I know everything about her and I can say Да, Нет, Спасибо and Мои гвозди симпатичны. (Yes. No. Thank you. My nails are pretty.)


As I walk past the make-up counters the shop assistants wave and smile. Yes, I’m still here. I go into the bookshop again and the cashier greets me like we are best friends. I feel like Tom Hanks. I go back to the coffee shop. “Another choccochino?” The waiter asks, as I sit down plonking the multitude of shopping bags on the floor. I’m exhausted. “Hit me with more caffeine please darling.” As he bends down to put the cup in front of me, I smell IT. The scent of a smoker. “You smoke!” He nods embarrassingly. “Where? I need to know! Where can I smoke in a smoke-free airport? Tell me now!”
“You have to go outside.”

Okay, this is a problem. I have been smoke-free now for about nine hours and not even the caffeine high is helping. I need to get out. I’m already stir crazy, screaming at waiters and considering learning Russian. So I try to find the exit. I think it was Douglas Adams that said: It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase “As pretty as an airport’ appear.

Heathrow is big. I get lost about five times and eventually end up in a line with about a hundred Japanese tourists who are about to venture into London armed to the teeth with cameras. After about an hour of slowly inching forward towards the counter and smiling at the extremely cordial Japanese tourists, I reach the Passport Check Man.
“Business or pleasure?” He asks, professionally bored.
“Oh no, I’m just going for a smoke break.”
He looks up at me with a ‘don’t-mess-with-me’ expression on his face.
“Passport.”
“I’m waiting for a connecting flight. Sixteen hours! I just want a cigarette.”
“If you leave the terminal, you will be in London. I need to stamp your passport.”
“But I don’t want to be in London. I want to be in Chicago.”
I’m close to tears, but I keep my pose. I’ve touched up my make-up about seven times already and I do not feel like doing it again. I give him my passport. He stamps it. “Have a nice stay.”
“No, I’m not staying. I’m just going outside for a…”
“Next!”

I take my stamped passport, pick up my shopping bags and enter London. As the fresh English air washes the smell of stale airport away, I tiredly wonder if one carton of Camels will be enough.

Youth is wasted on the young

A lady never reveals her age. As Oscar Wilde wrote in A Woman of No Importance: “One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who tells one that, would tell one anything.”

So, lie darlings! But then again, women have been lying about their ages for ages. Teenagers add years to get into clubs and middle-age women subtract years to feel younger in order to justify that they’re still clubbing. I don’t trust anybody who says “You look great for your age”. What does that mean? I go deaf when I hear “great” and only hear “your age”. Does it mean that I’m old? Does it mean: For an old hag at least you had your hair done?

I went for a costume fitting for a TV-series I was doing, and as I entered the production company’s reception area, the place was swarming with people. They were casting for something-or-other and I had to fight my way through pubescent male bodies to the costume department. The wardrobe queen was in a flat spin.
“Boefie! Good! You’re here! But you have to wait, because my assistants are on lunch, you know, union rules and all that shit, and I’m on my own and running late!”

So I headed back to the reception and proceeded to wait. There were lots of young men sitting and standing around with numbers and audition sheets, waiting their turn to be rejected. A man, older than the auditionees, came to sit next to me and attempted a conversation.
“What are you here for?”
“I came for a costume fitting. And you?” I replied respectably, because clearly he was not here for the casting. He pointed to a twenty year old with matted hair and oversized jeans hanging halfway down his butt, his underwear fashionably peeking out from underneath.
“I brought my son to the casting and it’s been a long wait. There are so many of them.”

The son sidled over, introduced himself and went back to join the others. Then both of us just sat there in silence looking at the crowd of hopefuls, but his son kept staring in our direction. What is this guy looking at? I turned around to see what he was looking at, but there was nothing behind me except a wall. Does he think I’m flirting with his dad? I pulled my skirt down over my knees, recrossed my legs, and pretended not to look uncomfortable. Luckily, about half an hour later, I was summoned to the wardrobe department and could escape this increasingly awkward situation.

“Carlos”, I said as I was trying on my costume, “am I showing too much cleavage today? Is my skirt too short? Do I have something on my face? Do I have a chipped nail? Because a young guy kept staring at me.”
Carlos, being completely overwhelmed, just rolled his eyes and kept mumbling obscenities under his breath, and sent me on my way.

I walked through the reception when The Older Man (TOM) approached me. Shit! They are still here!

“My son wants to ask you something.”
“Oh…okay…”
“Go on, Jason, ask her.” But Jason just stood there mutely still staring at me.
“Ask her!” He pushed his son towards me.

Not a sound from Jason.

“I have to go…?” I endeavoured nervously and started to move away. Who are these people? What do they want from me?

“My son wants to ask you out!” TOM blurted out.
“Excuse me?” I was completely taken aback. They just stood there expectantly waiting for my reply.
“My son wants to ask you on a date.”
Dumbfounded I looked at the smiling youth.

“Darling young man, I am flattered, but I think I am older than your mother, and if I have to lie about my age it will make my daughter illegitimate. It’s a general rule of thumb that I never date someone I could have given birth to. So, dear boy, few people have the imagination for reality, and the reality is: I am fifty. Fabulous, but fifty.”

They both looked at me as if I was from another planet.
Then the boy spoke for the first time: “So I guess it’s a ‘no’?”

I high-fived the secretary on my way out.

Mommy Dearest

Motherhood and Planet Gorgeous. Bit of an oxymoron, where I am the moron, but it happened. My poor daughter’s childhood was spent on film sets, dubbing studios and backstage, assisting me with costume changes, learning lines and reminding me which husband I am divorcing at what time. The two of us created a hobohemian lifestyle resembling a Hollywood Musical where dancing, an original score, elaborate interior decorating, extravagant costumes and make-up became prerequisites to our vicissitude.

Blommie (everybody calls her ‘Bee’) left home at seventeen to explore other planets, but with weekly phone calls and e-mails ten years later, she still reprimands me on my smoking, gives me dating advice, scolds me for swearing and often encourages me to replace chocolate and champagne with another food group, while my job has been reminding her that the world is her oyster, that she is amazing and talented and that I love her more than life itself. At least one of us grew up.

So, after years as a successful dancer in America, my wunderkind came home to visit Planet Gorgeous for six months. She immediately found a part time job, connected with all her friends, got a motorcycle, enrolled in dance classes, took up Poi, got a gym membership and crocheted in her spare time. Where did my baby go?

I tried waiting up for her when she went out at night (“Mom, you need your beauty sleep.”), tried to tuck her in when she went to bed (“Goodnight Smother Dearest.”), waited in the car to pick her up from her job or dance classes, attempted in brushing her hair in the mornings (“I can actually do this on my own now, Mother.”), stood in the driveway and waved goodbye when she drove off on her bike and made up songs, which I sang to her, obnoxiously and purposefully out-of-tune, in front of her hipster friends.

Attempting to be attentive and caring, I sent her to the dentist for a check-up, a chiropractor (she’s a dancer, she needs alignment), a gynaecologist (she’s a single twenty seven year old woman), a beautician (facial), a hairdresser (upkeep of uber-hip, asymmetrical hairstyle) and a psychologist (God bless her, but she needs it).

One Sunday at the weekly family luncheon my parents were cooing over their G & T granddaughter (no, not gin and tonic – gifted and talented), asking her questions about her life overseas, about her job, her dance shows and her friends.
Grandfather: “Are you considering moving back?”
Bee: “I still…”
Boefie: “There is so much for her to do still in the States and the opportunities there….”
Grandmother: “Have you acclimatized yet?”
Bee: “It took a…”
Boefie: “Yes, she is doing great! And the therapy really helps.”
Grandmother: “Why would you need therapy?”
Boefie: “It will help her deal with all her childhood issues. You know, all the step-fathers…”
Bee: “Mother, please, this is not about you. I might be vaguely sane, but you, dearest Mother, are sagely vain.”

Out of the mouths of babes…..