It’s all Health & Safety’s fault!
My mum-in-law has a bad cold. She’s sneezing and coughing… and touching things! Wherever her hands go they leave blue stains.
On every cup of tea. On the door handles. All over the cat’s fur as she pats him on the head.
At first I think she’s had a bum pen and it’s leaked ink all over her hands. I ask Lucy if she’s not worried about the ink on her favourite blouse.
My wife pops the cap on my pill bottle. Apparently, it’s only me who can see the infection being plastered all over the show.
You see, starting a new job ‘n all (and being just another Third World immigrant) it was necessary for me to watch the standard Health & Safety dvd teaching me how to wash my hands and informing me that things like rubber bands and product packaging should not be cooked along with the veg.
To send the message home, they get some guy to touch a pair of pork chops and then a lettuce head, and then shine a UV light onto all of it to show you where all the germs have spread.
I watched the movie, signed the form, and discussed my favourite bits with colleagues.
I didn’t expect, one week later, to be seeing Smurf-cum everywhere.
I know it’s all in my head. And I know that, to be washing my hands every ten minutes, is maybe a bit OCD and maybe a bit hypochondriacal. But I’m not scared of getting sick as much as I’m afraid of being afraid of getting sick.
In school some of my classmates often accused me of being “hypo-active”. I knew what they meant and never corrected them because, well, I figured I read more books in a year than they probably would their entire lives. The problem with being surrounded by idiots is they don’t know they’re idiots… and they all stick together.
The thing is, I never really did think I was sick. I just hated school so much I’d pretend to be ill to get some time off.
But now, thanks to Health & Safety, there is a part of my brain that IS turning me into a hypochondriac! And if thinking you’re sick all the time is hypochondria, what’s the word for thinking you’re being a hypochondriac?
And if Frankie Roosevelt is right and “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” then I’m more frightened than ever!
And it’s all Health & Safety’s fault.
A S'Efrican's Culture Surprise
After a while you stop noticing the accents… and then you realise that you’re the one with the funny accent when a punter at the place you work smiles in that awkward way because they didn’t understand a word you just said but are politely humouring you.
Another barfly, after arguing vehemently that England have a better Rugby World Cup track record, change from aggravated to jolly when they realise that you’re actually not from New Zealand but South Africa.
Then they ask if you’re a “kaffir lover”.
You frown and tell them (as though you’re talking to a naughty child) how derogatory that word is, and about how much the Apartheid government fucked up your country, and most of the time they apologise or at least look incredibly sheepish.
I don’t think it’s a racist thing when they say it. Or at least not in any vindictive, aggressive way. It’s more like them trying to find some kind of connection. I can only imagine – because of the terrible attempt at an Afrikaans accent – that they watched Lethal Weapon 2 a few too many times and it’s all they really know about us.
What I’ve learned about people is that no matter how good they’ve got it they’ll find something to moan about. If it’s not the weather or the busses, it’s (believe it or not, fellow Saffers) taxi drivers.
Like the “poverty stricken” rioters in London (who organised their hijinks via Blackberry!!!) people just don’t know how great they’ve got it. It’s all well and good to show starving African orphans on a tellybox Oxfam ad, but unless you’ve seen dishevelled streetkids and landmine-crippled beggars firsthand I don’t think you can appreciate the luck you’ve been saddled with.
For me Plymouth seems like Cape Town in the Winter, but minus not only the crime but also the underlying aggression that seems to sit just beneath the surface of everyone’s consciousness.
Of course, it’s only a bit wet and windy now (much milder than good ‘ol CT) and I’m sure when Winter really gets going I’ll eventually get annoyed with the kids in the park throwing snowballs at me when I’m walking the cat.
But up until then, it’s been less of a culture shock and more of a… well, let’s call it a pleasant ‘culture surprise’.
Another barfly, after arguing vehemently that England have a better Rugby World Cup track record, change from aggravated to jolly when they realise that you’re actually not from New Zealand but South Africa.
Then they ask if you’re a “kaffir lover”.
You frown and tell them (as though you’re talking to a naughty child) how derogatory that word is, and about how much the Apartheid government fucked up your country, and most of the time they apologise or at least look incredibly sheepish.
I don’t think it’s a racist thing when they say it. Or at least not in any vindictive, aggressive way. It’s more like them trying to find some kind of connection. I can only imagine – because of the terrible attempt at an Afrikaans accent – that they watched Lethal Weapon 2 a few too many times and it’s all they really know about us.
What I’ve learned about people is that no matter how good they’ve got it they’ll find something to moan about. If it’s not the weather or the busses, it’s (believe it or not, fellow Saffers) taxi drivers.
Like the “poverty stricken” rioters in London (who organised their hijinks via Blackberry!!!) people just don’t know how great they’ve got it. It’s all well and good to show starving African orphans on a tellybox Oxfam ad, but unless you’ve seen dishevelled streetkids and landmine-crippled beggars firsthand I don’t think you can appreciate the luck you’ve been saddled with.
For me Plymouth seems like Cape Town in the Winter, but minus not only the crime but also the underlying aggression that seems to sit just beneath the surface of everyone’s consciousness.
Of course, it’s only a bit wet and windy now (much milder than good ‘ol CT) and I’m sure when Winter really gets going I’ll eventually get annoyed with the kids in the park throwing snowballs at me when I’m walking the cat.
But up until then, it’s been less of a culture shock and more of a… well, let’s call it a pleasant ‘culture surprise’.
No More Stormers
I’ve always felt lucky that, by pure accident of birth, I’ve had decent sport’s teams to support. Western Province and Stormers rugby. Cape Cobras cricket.
Even Cape Town Ajax is quite good – not that I really follow football, but anyway.
It’s always seemed bizarre to me when people from South Africa stoically support a team like Chelsea or Manchester United; and even more bizarre when someone from the UK supports a team from another city or county.
I could never support the Sharks, because I wasn’t born in Durban. And now residing in Plymouth I feel if I’m to follow any team it’d have to be a one from my newly adopted city.
Doing a bit of research on the Plymouth Albion rugby website in a stopover at Abu Dhabi, I read that their weekend home game was played to “a crowd of almost 3000 people” – smaller in scale than, say, Newlands rugby ground that often hosts around fifty thousand fans.
And it appears they’re not so hot when it comes to the game either, being third from the bottom of the Championship log the last time I checked. Although this was possibly because two of their players had been away playing for the Canadian squad sent to the World Cup.
If I were so inclined I could imagine myself as the newest member of this team. And I might be convinced to firmly believe that it’s not just tries and penalties that win rugby games, but screaming and shouting and flag waving too.
If not, I could at least believe that the more bums on stadium seats means more money to buy (or rent, really) better players, thereby improving performance.
It was a bit of a culture shock when I posited to Lucy that maybe we could pop down to our local and watch the next Albion game on the tellybox. She smiled warmly at my naïveté and said, “They don’t televise Albion matches.”
In South Africa they put even schoolboy games on Supersport.
So it seems I’ll have to burst my comfort bubble and venture into the wild. Go there, do that, get the t-shirt.
But with a Plymouth Albion jersey at a whopping fifty quid I’ll just have to make do with reports in the Herald.
Even Cape Town Ajax is quite good – not that I really follow football, but anyway.
It’s always seemed bizarre to me when people from South Africa stoically support a team like Chelsea or Manchester United; and even more bizarre when someone from the UK supports a team from another city or county.
I could never support the Sharks, because I wasn’t born in Durban. And now residing in Plymouth I feel if I’m to follow any team it’d have to be a one from my newly adopted city.
Doing a bit of research on the Plymouth Albion rugby website in a stopover at Abu Dhabi, I read that their weekend home game was played to “a crowd of almost 3000 people” – smaller in scale than, say, Newlands rugby ground that often hosts around fifty thousand fans.
And it appears they’re not so hot when it comes to the game either, being third from the bottom of the Championship log the last time I checked. Although this was possibly because two of their players had been away playing for the Canadian squad sent to the World Cup.
If I were so inclined I could imagine myself as the newest member of this team. And I might be convinced to firmly believe that it’s not just tries and penalties that win rugby games, but screaming and shouting and flag waving too.
If not, I could at least believe that the more bums on stadium seats means more money to buy (or rent, really) better players, thereby improving performance.
It was a bit of a culture shock when I posited to Lucy that maybe we could pop down to our local and watch the next Albion game on the tellybox. She smiled warmly at my naïveté and said, “They don’t televise Albion matches.”
In South Africa they put even schoolboy games on Supersport.
So it seems I’ll have to burst my comfort bubble and venture into the wild. Go there, do that, get the t-shirt.
But with a Plymouth Albion jersey at a whopping fifty quid I’ll just have to make do with reports in the Herald.
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