The New Year 1997 Newsletter

Introduction

This newsletter will be in the form of a diary. Once again, I have left an issue way too late, so it can't be the kind of issue it is meant to be. It can't look forward into the month it represents because it is being done in that very month. It is the January 1997 issue, but it is being created in the last few days of January. Thus it will be in the format mentioned in line two. This may not be a brilliant idea, it may not even be rational, but it's what I have just decided, so if you don't like it, that's your problem. No one is forcing you to read this, no one is asking you to pay for it, and best of all: one of the nicest people in the world is writing it. And don't you forget it.

28 January 1997

This is difficult. I wish I was still used to doing my newsletters. They have become strangers, like so many old friends. The way it is easy to lose touch with most of one's friends, it is easy to lose touch with writing, or with any kind of communication you don't have to take part in all the time. It is not my job or duty to write. No one is paying me to do my newsletter or to write stories. But I am being paid to fulfill my two-year contract. And after a day of work, five days a week, it takes much motivation to write. Perhaps there should be motivation. After all, isn't it what I tell people I want to do? But it takes self-discipline, and nobody but me is going to get angry or upset or feel disappointed that I am not doing it. Well, they might, but they may not feel that they have the right to say it, and I may not feel that they have the right to say it. After all, I have a full-time job that pays (although not nearly as well as I would like), so what's it to anyone else if I am really slack when it comes to writing?

I talk everyday because I have to, in order to do my job. And we all know how important it is to keep one's job if one wants to have money (that is, unless one has rich friends who supply one with money, or if one obtains money through criminal activity). And I use a pen everyday and a computer and email everyday (or at least every week day, apart from exceptions, and we must never forget that there are exceptions), but I certainly don't find myself writing like this everyday. It is because I don't have to in order to make complete a necessary daily routine.

Although it doesn't need to be a daily routine, it should be. For me, anyway. Because if I possess any ambition at all (it's questionable sometimes, not that I think it's my greatest fault), it's to write. I mean, I find it humiliating, to an extent, that I write so little. Not so much because of what others expect, but because of what I expect from myself. And because I know that it's fulfilling. I do know that I lack the patience to perfect, so I have all these stories lying around that could be publishable if only I could get down to improving them. Then perhaps I would try to at least publish a book of short stories. Not that I would know how they would do.

It's a comfort, though, to know that so many novelists only had their first novel published after years and years of "other" work. Some may look at me and think: "If you say you really want to be a novelist, what the hell are you doing THAT job for? Why the hell didn't you make so much more of your degree? Or if you aren't really into journalism, why the hell did you study it? For three years. Bloody stupid, isn't it? It's all very well getting a degree, but how clever can you be if you're not even going to use it? They gave you a bursary so you could waste your time and their money? What a failure."

Perhaps this is mere paranoia on my part. At least I am partially being tongue-in-cheek, whatever that means. I do things like use words or phrases I am not entirely sure of the meaning of. (What kind of a writer is that?) At least I usually look them up afterwards. So maybe "tongue-in-cheek" isn't the best way I could have put that (I've got the dictionary next to me now and I've looked it up).

Perhaps I should have said that I was sort of poking fun at myself. Because I was. But I do feel that somehow what has happened to me since finishing high school hasn't been the smartest occurrence in history. Speaking of history, if history at school had been as interesting as my history, well I doubt I would have been very bored with it. Then again, if my history is so interesting, why do I remember so bloody little of it?

Defective memory, I suppose. I sometimes just think: I can't have had such a boring life if I know that if my friends I share the office with knew some things that have happened to me, they would be astounded. I still haven't shown any of them my newsletters. Perhaps it's because they are in such close proximity so much of the time, and they do know so little about my past.

I suppose my past's not that hectic. Stranger things have happened. But I find it difficult to talk about the internet-related happenings in my life to people who know virtually nothing about them at this stage. Especially the continent-hopping bits.

Um.

You know what? I've just had an idea. It could be stupid, but it's the kind of idea only I would come up with. I've got all these postcards on the lounge wall, but most of you have never seen them. I should take time out in each newsletter to tell you about them. I should scan them in and tell you their backgrounds. But the main problem is that this newsletter is black and white, apart from on the web, so the postcards will not be shown in full glory. But perhaps I could give it a go. Do three for each newsletter or something. I should tell you who I got them from and maybe tell you a story about that particular person. Is this boring? Please let me know - send in your answers on Spur straw wrappers or close facsimiles thereof.

A good smell is emanating from the kitchen. I hope the taste will echo the smell. See, while I'm sitting here feeding crap into this computer, Michael is slaving away in the kitchen making bangers and mash. It is eight pm and I think supper is virtually served. I think it's time for some TV too. I watch quite a bit these days, and unlike other people, I don't really have any complaints about what the SABC is showing. If there was always something great on, I'd go nuts because I'd have to miss a whole lot of it.

29 January 1997

It's overcast, although not cold. Not surprising in January in the Southern Hemisphere. Or at least, this part of the Southern Hemisphere. It's just after six-thirty pm (you'd be very wrong to think that I may be up writing at six-thirty am. So very wrong. Hey I may become more motivated, but that is madness. My very favourite sleep-times are between midnight and ten am. Pity I always miss out on those three last hours during the week, and even on lots of weekends). I don't know what we'll be doing for supper. I thought of mince curry, but we only have half an onion left, which isn't very good for curry, but I might go for the idea anyway, because we have everything else we need including butter beans, which we have discovered are very good in curry.

Michael isn't home yet because he's got a late night at work tonight. It's one of his turns to stay until 6pm. Also, he's stopping over at Newlands station to meet his dad. Rob is watching South Africa play Zimbabwe at the Newlands Cricket Grounds, unless I have my facts all muddled up, and six-thirty is some sort of tea-break there, so he's meeting Mike at Newlands station instead of coming over here at 11 tonight. He's in Cape Town on his monthly business trip down from Pretoria.

Tomorrow we pay the rent. It's payday for me, and hopefully Mike will have been paid by tomorrow too. At least he's getting a cost-of-living increase this month. It's something at least and they're adding it to his rent cheque to decrease the tax. Good call.

I'm reading "Flesh" by Richard Laymon. It's lying open next to me right now, on its face though. I got it at the library on Saturday, at which point I got told that I still owed them a book called "Scary Stories". I denied it, said we had definitely given it back. The next morning in the car on the way to work, I had a brainstorm and asked my mother and Wendy if they still had the book. Wendy had borrowed it at some stage, but I thought I had got it back and returned it to the library. Turned out they still had the book. So it's in my bag now waiting to go back. They must think I am a big-time thief. Maybe tomorrow I'll take it back, apologise and pay my dues.

I'm listening to Alanis on tape now. Oh yeah, I don't think it was in the last newsletter, and in case it wasn't, we have a new sound system and a TV now. Cool huh? And we have a desk! It's an old wooden office one that got thrown out at my maternal (sort of) grandfather's place of work. However he retrieved it for Michael. This was months ago. Anyway now my father and his father have made it look really excellent, all fixed and polished up. It is really posh. It's nice and big, so it's perfect for the computer, and it has three drawers on each side. I think my dad's fixing up an old office chair for it now. I don't know about a lounge suite, but we have two beanbags. And we're eventually going to find a decent coffee table that isn't many hundreds or thousands of rands. And oh we won't forget the bedroom suite. No, we won't forget that, but it bloodywell drives me nuts just thinking about finding a decent one that isn't thousands of rands.

30 January 1997

Nine-thirty pm. And here I am, attempting to write. Amazing. Perhaps I really will get this newsletter out before the year is through. I have this fantasy right now that I can organise it all this coming weekend, do the layout and even the web version at Kingsley Technologies. Of course, Michael still needs to add the pictures to the last newsletter's web version for me, but we'll get there someday. I at least hope to have that done by the end of this coming weekend, and have the January newsletter on the street by mid next week. And then if I'm lucky, or if I manage to bring out the determination in me, perhaps I will have the Feb newsletter sent out by the following middle-of-week (I forget which day that is... ;)

Today at work was exceptionally busy. It was payday at UCT and there were all sorts of calls, and I had to go running around trying to get people paid as soon as possible because they weren't paid today when they should have been due to administrative and managerial hitches, delays and general mess-ups. And then there are people who claim that they were not paid all because money went directly into their bank account and they did not receive payslips indicating that such and such amounts of money had been deposited into their bank accounts. The worst part is when someone doesn't even notice that additional money has found its way into his/her account, so it doesn't feel worth it to him/her.

After work my mother dropped me outside the Maynard Mall so that I could draw money for rent. After I drew many notes, I went shopping because I was fully aware that we needed a few things and I wasn't sure that Michael would get them on the way home. After all, he had to get here early so that we could pay Ruth. When I got to the flat, I packed away the goods and started cleaning up the place. Gotta impress the landperson and all that. I couldn't really hide the red spot on the carpet without making it obvious though. The thing was uncovered on my birthday when we lifted the mattress to wipe up some spilt Coke. For some reason some red ink had found its way onto the carpet. It's appearance remains a mystery, for we do not have red fineliner type runny pens.

But I vacuumed and I made the bed and I generally tidied up a bit. And Michael only pitched up at the door as Ruth was parking down below. He'd done some shopping. We'd both bought milk and we'd both bought sugar. When Ruth arrived she requested some black, unsweetened tea, so I made that for her and gave her the last two biscuits. Last weekend we bought two boxes and they haven't even lasted a week. Not long after that we were talking about her smoking habits, and after she claimed to smoke forty a day, she asked if we minded if she smoked just then. I told her it was alright. I mean, I wasn't expecting her to stay for hours or anything. And she didn't. Luckily she decided to leave before "The Simpsons" came on. I watched that, of course. And then I watched "My So-called Life" which I really like very, very much. It's a pity I haven't seen it right from when it started, which was when? I dunno. But I hope it never ends.

Fat chance. All good things are said to come to an end.

Enjoy your February.

Mel