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A
week in the life of a poet
John Eppel
March
29, 2005
Tuesday,
29 March 05
I’ve
given up on Green Valley wine, which should help cut down my aspirin
intake. I said I’d stop when it passed the $20 000 mark, went without
it for a day and then gave it another chance. I hesitated when it
passed the $25 000 mark, but a habit is a habit, and Green Valley
and I have been companions for many years; so I bought a bottle.
It went down sweetly with the lamb stew I had prepared from the
ribs of a communal goat. When it passed the $30 000 mark, I wrestled
briefly with my conscience, defeated that wavering inward monitor,
and bought a bottle. I drink it on the rocks.
Today, while
visiting the local supermarket to purchase bread, milk, and meaty
bones, I thought I’d take a little time to browse the liquor shelves.
Why not? Ogling is free. My eyes happened to light on a bottle of
Green Valley: price, $35 000! That’s it I said –out aloud – no more!
Bottles to the left of me (Nikolai Vodka, only $28 000); bottles
to the right of me (Chateau Brandy, only $20 000). No more, I hollered
and blundered, until a pretty assistant with the name PRETTY attached
to her green SPAR uniform, came to my assistance. She recommended
the brandy since it was cheaper and since it produced less babbelaas
than the vodka. So, as of today, my tipple is Chateau, extra
fine (five golden stars), strong suggestion of vanilla essence,
and a kick like a mule! I drink it with tap water.
Two days to
the elections. I wonder if I’m still on the voters’ roll. Welshman
Ncube and Joshua Malinga are representing our constituency. I guess
I’ll vote for the better looking of the two. The nearest polling
station is Hillside Primary School, just down the road from us,
where children of my generation once learned all about eating cake,
burning the toast, and singeing the King of Spain’s beard.
At last an excuse
to get my record player repaired. My daughter, Ruth, is studying
American History for her A-level exams, and she has become interested
in the Civil Rights Movement. She ain’t heard nothin’ yet. Wait
till I play her my Paul Robeson LP.
Darn it, I have
to get to the bank tomorrow. My rates and water bill this month
is just under $1 000 000 (last month it was just over $1 500 000).
The city council won’t allow me to pay by cheque because, seventeen
years ago, I sent them one that bounced. They will not forgive me.
They make no exception for poets, lovers, and madmen. Consequently
I have to join the Treasury queue (never shorter than forty strong)
with an enticingly bulging pocket of brownbacks.
Wednesday,
30 March, 05
What
makes me fume, standing in the bank queue, is the way people keep
places for each other. Today there were five or six slightly abashed
looking youngsters bunched at the head of the queue, waiting for
moms or dads or uncles or aunts or employers to relieve them. As
soon as I joined the queue (the indoors queue, that is),the man
in front of me muttered something about "being back",
and off he went. He returned an hour later, when I was three from
the head of the queue, gave me a brief look of recognition, and
pushed in front of me. To make matters worse, the bank seems to
be on a perpetual go-slow. I counted fifteen teller booths, yet
only four at any given time were in operation. This "international"
bank is getting more and more like a government department! There,
that’s off my chest!
While I was
standing in the rates queue reading Ted Hughes’ Birthday Letters
(seeing how it pans out against Sylvia Plath’s Journals and
secretly wanting it to pan out favourably) a security guard came
over to me and said I could join the Senior Citizens’ queue. How
mortifying! I am only 58 years old. Politely I declined, and waited
my turn with the other youngsters.
Pishon’s Electrical
phoned to say that my record player was ready. I set it up and called
my children to listen to the massive bass voice of Paul Robeson,
one of my very few icons (Billy Conolly is another). Before playing
the record I read them an extract from the eulogy for Robeson, which
appears on the record cover:
For more
than 20 years, he was a famous international and American Celebrity,
the most honoured black man in the country. Yet when he
spoke out against racism and repression he became the most ostracized
black man in America’s history. The door was shut on Robeson’s
public career. "The persecution of Paul Robeson by the government
and people of the United States has been one of the most contemptible
happenings in modern history." [W.E.B. Du Bois]
After we had
listened to several songs including "Deep River", "Water
Boy", and "Sometimes I feel like a Motherless Child",
my little boy, Joe said he thought that must be how God sounds,
if God exists.
Why is there
so much vanilla essence in this brandy? It makes me feel a little
nauseous. Or is it the tap water?
Last week I
put my neck out watching the "Mai Chisamba(eat your heart out
Oprah Winfrey) Show" on ZTV. I must make an appointment with
the chiropractor – if there are any chiropractors left in Bulawayo.
If not, I’ll lie down on the lounge floor and ask my children to
walk – not jump! on me. It sometimes works.
Election day
tomorrow. I must get there early. Bound to be long queues. I’ll
take a hat, sun block ointment (it’s not all roses being a white
man), and my shooting stick for umpiring cricket matches. I’ll also
take something to read – not Ted Hughes – I’m tired of domestic
squabbles.
Bed time, I
guess. There’s a pot of soup on the stove, for the kids, in case
I have to queue all day.
Thursday
31 March, 05
I
arrived at the polling station a good hour before it was due to
open. I took up my position in queue number one (A to L), which
turned out to be queue number three (S to Z). There were no more
than a dozen people ahead of me – the other queues were equally
short – consisting mainly of elderly white pensioners and elderly
black domestic workers. My own domestic worker, Soneni, gave me
a cheerful wave. She and her husband Christopher, also a domestic
worker, were in the very front of their queue. Soneni has been with
our family for over twenty years. Her rural home is in Esigodeni.
I didn’t need
my hat nor my sun block nor my shooting stick nor my The Falsification
of Afrikan [sic] Consciousness: Eurocentric History, Psychiatry
and the Politics of White Supremacy by Amos N. Wilson – the
voting procedure was that quick and efficient. Once the doors opened,
at ten past seven, the queue turned into a stream, and flowed. I
voted for the more handsome of the two.
Not much white
supremacy left in this gathering of the regularly burgled, regularly
cheated, regularly excoriated makiwas. My people. The Rhodesian
pout still lingers on the countenances of madams who have spent
a lifetime scolding maids; the Rhodesian flout still lingers on
the countenances of masters who have spent a working lifetime intimidating
labourers. The pout and the flout. I’m a poet and didn’t know it!
But, by and large, we are a broken people, staying on, for what?
The static white community of Bulawayo can now be measured not in
its thousands but it hundreds. And after this farcical election,
within a very short while, they will be counted in their dozens,
and I shall be there to witness it. The Last of the Rhodesians
by John "Fenimor" Eppel.
A colleague
of mine arrives, Tunie, the librarian at Christian Brothers College
where I teach. Last Thursday her car was stolen at gunpoint, by
three neatly dressed, well spoken young men. Tunie is in her sixties
and lives alone because her husband has to work in Botswana in order
for them to make ends meet. Her car was used in at least two heists
– one at the home of Bucky Buchanan, erstwhile Rhodesian rugby star,
who was severely beaten up, along with his guests, the Calders –
and then was found abandoned on a quiet suburban road. So lucky
Tunie got her car back! People break queue to listen to Tunie’s
story. Who’s next? We hear about the armed robbery, which took place
at Jaggers Wholesale, just down the road from where we now stand.
A security guard was shot dead and one comma four billion dollars
was stolen. Who’s next?
I got home so
early that the children were still asleep – it’s school holidays.
I checked my emails: one from Fred who now lives in New Zealand;
one from Liz who now lives in England; one from my sister, Pat,
who now lives in the United States; one from my oldest child, Ben
who now lives in South Africa; and one from my nephew, John, who
now lives in Poland.
The children
thoroughly enjoyed the soup. I must get down the recipe before I
forget it.
Vanilla essence
is fine in ice cream and coconut ice, but it should have no place
in a five-star brandy!
Friday, 1
April, 05
I
can be fooled any day of the year; why wait for today?
I took my stiff
neck to the chiropractor and came home with a stiff back, so stiff,
indeed, that I can hardly walk. I certainly can’t sit for very long,
which makes for shorter paragraphs.
This is an ideal
opportunity for me to re-read my very favourite novelist, Charles
John Huffam Dickens. I’ll star with Little Dorrit, which,
in the Penguin edition, is 900 pages long.
But before I
begin, here is my soup recipe:
- 250g
dhal (split pulses)
- 250g white
beans
- 1 onion
- 3 carrots
- I packet
mushroom soup powder
- 1 bay leaf
- sprig of
parsley
- sprig of
thyme
- one clove
- salt and
pepper
- 6 strips
of belly pork marinaded for a whole day in soy sauce, lemon juice,
- mustard seeds,
rosemary, pepper, dry white wine (if you can afford it!)
I’ll continue
after I’ve had a bit of a lie-down.
This Chateau
brandy is a jolly good pain killer. Now where was I? Oh yes, Method:
Slow cook
all ingredients except the pork until they homogenize. If you use
a blender, remember to take out the bay leaf. Add the marinaded
pork and cook until the meat falls away from any bone. Serve with
lightly "buttered" fingers of toast. For the real gourmet,
who wishes to "Sharpen with
cloyless sauce his appetite", I recommend liberal applications
of Ranch
House Curry Sauce, available at a supermarket near you.
The Pope is
dying. I admire him for the concern he has always shown for those
marginalised people Christ talks of in his Sermon on the Mount.
I teach at a Catholic school and although I am not a believer, I
respect and support the ethos that "Faith without works is
dead". By contrast I have absolutely no respect for those Born
Again Christians who preach the Doctrine of Prosperity. "Woe
unto the rich, for they have had their consolation". Ouch,
my back!
I don’t admire
him, however, for his ultra-conservative stand against women priests,
birth-control, and the use of condoms in an AIDS ravaged world.
Results of the
polls started coming in early. My son decided to record them. At
first it all went MDC’s way. They won about 25 of the first 30 results
announced. Then the rural areas kicked in, and a slow reversal took
place. Beautifully orchestrated. How is it, I ask, that such nasty
people like Ignatius Chombo, Sydney Sekaramaye, Joseph Made, Jonathan
Moyo, Didymus Mutasa, and Webster Shamu can be so popular as to
win by such huge majorities?
I’ll just add
a little more tap water to my drink, and then return to Little
Dorrit. I’m on page 147 – "The Circumlocution Office".
Dickens is one of the few authors who makes me laugh out aloud.
My children
are a little glum. I guess I am too.
Saturday
2 April 05
The
children are with their mother for the weekend, so I’ve got the
place to myself… well, not quite. There’s Harriet our pet hen who
bosses us all around; Louis and Matilda, the dogs; and Puff, the
cat. When I’m on my own they all gather around me and watch me.
Right now, for instance, Harriet is on my bed laying her daily egg;
Puff’s whiskers are pointing out from under the bed, and the dogs
are lying in the doorway of the adjacent room, with their muzzles
pointed at me.
Predictably,
ZANU PF have won the results – with a large enough majority to change
the constitution at will. A beautifully stage-managed affair.
The Pope is
getting worse; so are Mrs Flintwinch’s dreams as the plot of
Little Dorrit thickens. I am on page 387. My back is easing
a little.
I hobbled out
into the garden to check on my bulbs. Most of the freesias have
germinated; and the ranunculi. No sign yet of the daffodils and
the anemones, but two Cape hyacinths are peeping out of the ground.
The garden is clamorous with birds, the most clamorous of all being
the Heuglin’s robin, which shouts at me: "Can’t you read…can’t
you read…can’t you read…". Of course I can, stupid, I’m a schoolteacher!
Ruth takes her
driving test on Monday. I wonder how many times they’ll make her
fail? My older son, Ben, failed six times. I remember when I took
my test in Colleen Bawn. I knocked over one of the gate posts at
the police station, yet the inspector passed me! There wasn’t much
traffic to negotiate in those days: circa 1963.
Page 528 of
Little Dorrit. This conversation tickles me. Mr Dorrit and
Mrs General, typical Dickensian hypocrites, are trying to improve
Little Dorrit’s "surface", now that the Dorrit family
have become nouveau riche:
"Amy,"
said Mr Dorrit, "you have just now been the subject of some
conversation
between myself and Mrs General. We agree that you scarcely
seem at home here. Ha – how is this?"
A pause.
"I
think, father, I require a little time."
"Papa
is a preferable mode of address," observed Mrs General. "Father
is rather
vulgar, my dear. The word Papa, besides, gives a pretty form to
the lips. Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism are all very
good words
for the lips: especially prunes and prism. You will find it serviceable,
in the formation of a demeanour, if you sometimes say to yourself
in company – on entering a room, for instance – Papa, potatoes,
poultry,
prunes and prism, prunes and prism."
"Pray,
my child," said Mr Dorrit, "attend to the-hum-precepts
of Mrs General"
My hot water
bottle needs to be re-charged. So does my glass; but how I hate
vanilla essence!
Sunday 3
April 05
Pope
John Paul died last night. Requiescat in pace. He was the
only non-Italian Pope in 400 years. I wonder when the cardinals
will choose an African Pope? We do religion a lot more successfully
than we do commerce and industry.
ZTV is full
of smug, smirking ZANU PF faces, interspersed with tossing tits
and bouncing bums. When in doubt, dance. I wish my video machine
wasn’t broken.
I listened to
Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. It made me a bit weepy. Kyrie
eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison. I’ve got the Von Karajan
recording, with the Berlin Philharmonic. Gundula Janowitz is sublime.
Last night I
carried my bed outside to sleep under the stars, but the weather
turned, and I went back inside. Today is overcast and windy, the
"objective correlative" of my mood.
In a masochistic
fit I bought a copy of the Bulawayo Sunday News. Under the headline,
"ZANU-PF Garners Two Thirds Majority", the acting News
Editor, Herbert Zharare, has this to say:
Analysts
argued that Zanu-PF’s victory has proved to the world that Zimbabwe’s
electoral system has never been flawed and that the people have
always been accorded the opportunity to choose their leaders without
fear.
The "analysts"
are not named. Ho hum! I find the archaic metaphor "garners"
interesting, since it derives from the word "granary".
Will everybody get fed this winter?
At last I know
how to make cooked cabbage palatable to my children. I got the idea
from a very useful paperback, purchased at a flea market, entitled
Penguin Cordon Bleu Cookery by Rosemary Hume and Muriel Downes.
Boil the
shredded cabbage for only a minute! Dry it out and put it in a well-buttered
casserole dish. Add freshly ground black pepper, salt, and
a pinch of sugar. Add one small onion stuck with a clove! Cook with
the lid on in the bottom of a moderate oven (180 C). The cabbage
becomes tender and delicious after about one hour.
This book also
gave me a very good tip on mashing potatoes. Never add cold milk:
it makes the mash go tacky. Heat the milk, add a pinch of bicarb,
and you’ll get a fluffy surprise!
My children
are back, unexpectedly. Hooray! What shall we have for supper? Omelettes!
There are enough of Harriet’s fresh eggs in the fridge for a feast
Monday 4
April 05
Ruth
failed her driving test. She hit the drum trying to reverse. She
was going too fast because she was so nervous she couldn’t stop
her foot jiggling the accelerator. The crowd of onlookers found
it hilarious. Now we have to wait a week before she can apply for
another test, which means returning to that dreadful Vehicle Inspection
Department where you have to queue for an entire morning to make
your booking. The last time Ruth booked, she paid her $16 000 and
got a receipt for $700! O the mysteries of the clerical world.
The Pope’s illness
and death has had unprecedented coverage on the BBC World Service.
I’m starting to get listener burn-out. I’m convinced that England’s
greatest poet, Shakespeare, like his contemporary, John Donne, was
a Catholic at heart. He certainly didn’t like the Puritans, who
threatened his livelihood by wanting to shut down public theatres.
Puritans like Malvolio in Twelfth Night, who calls Feste
(surely Shakespeare’s spokesperson?) a "barren rascal".
This stings Feste, and he gets his revenge. But the reign of Oliver
Cromwell was not that far off in English history. Off-stage Malvolio
also gets his revenge. Indeed, his last words, before he exits for
good, are "I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you".
Just completed
a private lesson with some Convent students. A-Level Literature
in English. We dicussed the significance of the title of their poetry
anthology: Touched with Fire, which is a quotation from Stephen
Spender’s poem: "The Truly Great". Spender’s icon in this
poem is the British airforce pilot, barely out of his teens, who
goes to his death heroically:
Born of
the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun And
left the vivid air signed with their honour.
Fire is the
creative imagination, which can so quickly become the inflamed imagination.
The fire of St Augustine’s lust was purified by the fire of his
faith. Fire is born on earth but its destiny is heavenwards. I like
to think of myself, the poet in me, as being "touched"
(slightly penga) with fire.
I went to the
supermarket to purchase bread, milk, and bony meat; and while I
was there – you guessed it - I bought a bottle of Green Valley.
No more vanilla essence for this Son of the Soiled.
Goodness, look
at the time: 7:30. I’m off to bed.
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