Tag: celebration

Incredible Anniversary

Today is the missus and my wedding anniversary. The grandparents are in town, taking care of the niece and nephew while the in-laws are scuba diving in Mozambique, so we dropped the Minion off with them so we could go and watch The Incredibles 2.

Yes. The irony of dropping our toddler off at her grandparents so we can go see a kids movie is not lost on me.

There are a lot of things I liked about The Incredibles 2: Jack-Jack, The Incredibile, Jack-Jack, raccoon-wrestling, Jack-Jack, Auntie Edna, Jack-Jack, pew-pew laser eyes, Jack-Jack… What? There are five of him at one point!

Today marks nine years the wife has been putting up with me…or have I been putting up with her? Depends who you ask, I guess…

I’m lucky to have her; to have someone who likes Pixar films, Doctor Who and Harry Dresden as much as I do; who thinks it’s fun to stroll through toy stores, hardware stores, and pawn shops with me; who buys me Lego for my birthday, and actually thinks my weird sense of humour is funny.

Here’s hoping we manage to put up with each other for another nine years.

A Tale of Two Funerals

It was a beautiful day, it was a terrible day.  It was a day of celebration, it was a day of mourning.  It was a day of great joy, it was a day of deepest grief.

There were two funerals in South Africa on Tuesday.  One was for a great man who had touched the lives of millions.  He had passed away at a ripe old age, having achieved in his lifetime what he had set out to do.  He died peacefully in his bed, surrounded by his loved ones.  And while we are all sad that he is now gone, Tuesday was marked by a spirit of celebration as we remembered a man the like of which comes around perhaps once in a generation, if we’re lucky.

The other funeral was for a mother and daughter who were violently ripped from this earth in a senseless accident on the highway.  Their deaths were sudden and unexpected, their lives incomplete.  There was no celebration at their funeral.  Instead, there was wailing and sobbing, and the daughter’s former colleagues singing hymns as the coffin descended into the Earth to remind her loved ones and themselves that God was there, even if it didn’t feel like He was.

I attended the other funeral.   Continue reading “A Tale of Two Funerals” →

On Ageing (not Maya Angelou’s poem)

On Ageing (not Maya Angelou’s poem)

Woe is me.  I am finished, done for, kaput, klaar!  It seems like only a month ago that I was celebrating life and revelling in my youthful vigour, even as I watched my Beloved descend into the vale of years, but alas, no more.  Time has finally caught up with me, has sunk its claws into my flesh and will not let go, as today I join my Dearest at the ripe old age of thirty-two.

Even as I sit writing this I can feel the strength being sapped from my limbs and my senses growing dull.  My faculties are slipping and my…what’s the word…mer…men…mem…memory is no longer what it used to be.  I’ve already discovered one grey hair and I just want to nap all the time.

Continue reading “On Ageing (not Maya Angelou’s poem)” →

On enjoying one’s youth

Today is a big day in The Flat Overlooking The Vals River.  It is the wife’s birthday today, ushering the twenty-nine days of the year where she gets to say that she is older than me.  For the next month I have to lay down my mantle of patriarchal authority and defer to her in all things because, you know, we have to respect our elders and all that.  (For reasons of health and safety (mine) I can’t tell you how old she is (she actually reads this rag), but I can tell you that I am thirty-one.)

As I watch my dearly beloved advance in years I sit back and once more appreciate the fact of my youth.  Some embittered old person once said that youth is wasted on the young.  I have decided to stop wasting mine.  I am going to follow the wisdom of the book of Ecclesiastes which says, “Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes…” (Eccl 11v9, KJV). Continue reading “On enjoying one’s youth” →