Life in the very fast lane...: I have a very simple morning routine. I leave hom...

Life in the very fast lane...: I have a very simple morning routine.  I leave hom...: I have a very simple morning routine.   I leave home at 6.30a.m. to do the school run; on the way, my daughter and I look at the Johannesb...

I have a very simple morning routine.  I leave home at 6.30a.m. to do the school run; on the way, my daughter and I look at the Johannesburg skies, we play music too loudly, we count birds in the sky, and dogs in the gardens we pass by.  Following school drop off, I head down to my favourite coffee shop, get a take-out café au lait, and drive the now mere two minutes to work – a job which I love.  I am lucky.

I try not to feel downtrodden that we live far away from school, but rather think thoughts like “the early bird catches the worm” as I look at the skyline and appreciate living in a great city, with great friends, with a healthy family – in other words, it is all good.

I heard the saying recently – “Terrific Tuesday”, so yesterday morning I awoke, and thought to myself “today is going to be a Terrific Tuesday”.  The early routine passed without incident, until it didn’t.

Driving along the road my work is in, at a fairly slow pace as I am an over cautious driver, out of nowhere, came the Wicked Witch of the East (as she was heading in an Easterly direction, of course) – a black car, traveling at pace, that went straight through a stop street.  The experience, I have to say, was surreal.  I saw the situation, I knew I was going to crash, I knew I had nowhere to go, I did not know what to expect next, but I did know that I had to stay focused.  My life flashed before me very quickly, but was replaced, equally as quickly, with a strange sense of calm.

I don’t recall at all swerving to avoid the oncoming Wicked, which must have been my instinct, but I recall very clearly seeing the stationary car I was going to hit, and I think I will forever remember the sound of the impact.  By then, I knew that I was not going to die, I knew I was in one of the safest cars on the road, but I knew too that my beautiful, albeit old, car, was about to be a crumpled wreck.  Astonishingly, every single item of the previous sentence is acutely correct.

The next few minutes are a blur, other than looking down at my white dress and realizing that the delicious coffee I had just picked up had left my center console and landed squarely on my lap.  A woman came running up to my car and told me to get out of it immediately as there was steam everywhere, and liquid everywhere else, and she was scared it was going to catch on fire.

I climbed out, I looked at the car I had hit; I looked at the Wicked Witch car, I looked to my right, and there was a tow truck, ready and waiting.

I have realized in the last thirty six hours that life really is a funny old thing.  I have been conditioned to believe that those tow truck drivers are scum bags, low lives and drug-taking hooligans.  I have to say, my experience could not have been more different.  Whilst they did indeed gather around this damsel in distress in record time, they called my insurance company for me, they moved my car out of a corner driveway for me, they called the police and the very lovely medic, in fact, they organized that accident scene with extreme precision. 

The next few hours are irrelevant, and are, I am sure, the same in any accident… but as we all know, I live my life looking for the message in everything, and I have spent every waking moment trying to work out what exactly it is.

After all this thought, the shock, the aftershock, the admin required to sort out the repair, and of course, the glasses of vino I simply had to have last evening to calm my battered nerves, I have come to my conclusion:  Judge not a tow truck by its signage; judge not a stop sign by its red and white painted façade; expect the unexpected; be thankful for friendly medics, but be thankful more so for safe German cars and the absolute knowing that as of yesterday, and indeed today, so far, my number is clearly not up.  Despite everything, in a strange way, it was still… a “Terrific Tuesday”.

P.S.  In case you were wondering… no-one was seriously injured in the accident, including the Wicked Witch of the East, last seen flying on her broomstick somewhere near Rosebank.

Life in the very fast lane...: I am an incurable romantic at heart. I love the s...

Life in the very fast lane...: I am an incurable romantic at heart.  I love the s...: I am an incurable romantic at heart.   I love the saddest, most gut-wrenching movies and books.   If there is lost love, forbidden love, i...

Life in the very fast lane...: I am an incurable romantic at heart. I love the s...

Life in the very fast lane...: I am an incurable romantic at heart.  I love the s...: I am an incurable romantic at heart.   I love the saddest, most gut-wrenching movies and books.   If there is lost love, forbidden love,...

I am an incurable romantic at heart.  I love the saddest, most gut-wrenching movies and books.  If there is lost love, forbidden love, insurmountable hardships in love, I am instantly fixated. 

As a teenager, I watched The Thorn Birds several times and sobbed each time I watched it; whilst going through my own hardships, I bought the DVD set at the local store and watched it again, and this time, sobbed so much that my eyes were red puff balls for two days.  When asked why I looked like I was near death due to the red eye syndrome, there was no way I was going to admit to watching a 1970’s sheep-infested mini-drama, so I made up some sad story which existed only in my mind.

One of my all-time favourite movies, which no-one seems to understand, is Autumn in New York.  I am not sure if it is Richard Gere, or the sadness that exists within the script, or the fact that it is set in my favourite city, at my favourite time of year, but that movie for me, is a heart stopper.  And now part of that story seems to be playing out here – it is Autumn, the leaves are turning and falling, the Johannesburg skies are crystal clear, the temperature has thankfully dropped a little, and the fact that there is no longer that unbearable heat on a daily basis means that finally, the make-up has stopped sliding off my face by 7am in the school parking lot.

But the point here, is, why does every good love story have to have a taste of sadness, tragedy, loss or longing in order to make it more readable or watchable?  It is sayings such as “it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”, and “the path of true love never does run smooth” that makes us go running faster to that book store or cinema.  It seems that if there is heartache or heartbreak to some great degree, the story sells. 

As a happily single middle aged maiden not in distress, it does make me wonder if I need to expect some sort of complication in my next relationship (this is assuming there IS a next relationship) in order to make it more real, more plausible, and more likely to last for longer than twelve weeks?  Do I need to love, then lose, then be pursued, then won back, and then, only then, enter into an “everlasting love” scenario? 

After much thought, the jury is still out on this debate for me, but I have to say, that if movie-like difficulties are the way of the world called love, I think I may stick to my microwave pop-corn and my triple DVD set called The Thorn Birds.

Life in the very fast lane...: For as long as I can remember, I have been away fr...

Life in the very fast lane...: For as long as I can remember, I have been away fr...: For as long as I can remember, I have been away from home over the Easter weekend.   It is normally beach walks, sea air, and pink gins by...

For as long as I can remember, I have been away from home over the Easter weekend.  It is normally beach walks, sea air, and pink gins by no later than eleven o’clock in the morning, lots of lemon, plenty of ice.  However, this year, with Easter falling at an awkward time in terms of the school calendar I now find myself bound by, my newly manicured feet were held firmly in the leafy suburbs of Johannesburg.

What is interesting about this holiday is that it is so often perceived as just a lovely few days away from the hustle and bustle of our ordinary lives, and yet, as I discovered yesterday, which was Easter Sunday, it is so much more than that.  Given that I was locally based, when my mum said she would meet me at church for the special Easter service, I knew I could run, but there was no way I could hide, so off I went obediently, and in fairly good spirits.

We tend to get to the end of the year and madly run around making our New Year’s Resolutions – this is something I am particularly good at as it involves making a list, and being a secretary at heart, lists and I like each other very much. 

And so it was particularly of interest to me yesterday morning, that Easter is more about new beginnings than the 1^st of January is.  I won’t go into the biblical analogy that was given, but if you think about it, it is indeed about new starts, new clean (Easter) eggs waiting to develop into brand new chicks, and the start of fresh things – in particular, a chance to remember our hopes, our wishes, our dreams.

Of course, this news was a huge relief to me, because if I look at my list of resolutions I diligently drew up at the beach in December, so far, not too much has been accomplished.  So now, this is like “take two” – a chance to start again, and try again, and hope again.

I have been criticised in the past, probably quite rightly, for tending to follow the adage “you get one bite of the cherry” – often quite anti second chances.  Yesterday morning, I thought to myself how wrong this actually is.  If the universal calendar gives us a second chance, are we not also supposed to pick a leaf off our autumn trees, and give each other, and ourselves, another try too?

After much thought, many Easter eggs, and a pink gin or four – I think the time has arrived to forget the Christmas tinsel, and look forward to all those things we thought had tarnished, but in fact, are shiny, bright, and new.