Jane and the incredible secret world of the annual L Wechsler & Co. sale

The number of cars lining the side of the road and choking up the improvised parking lot, was the first portent that Jane was about to become part of something rather important.

When she saw the horde of people emerge from the side of the tent pushing trolleys, each one labouring under the weight of multiple cardboard boxes, her heart missed a diastole. "Ooh, what could there be in those boxes," she thought.

And when she noticed how each them wore that same blend of triumph and satisfaction on their faces, Jane was jolly glad she remembered to put on panty-liners that morning.

"This is it," she whispered fervidly to her sister-in-law. "I can't wait to see what's inside. I've heard stories about things like these..."she broke off, almost in reverence, as they approached the tent's entrance. "Oh my, do you think one trolley will be enough?"
"Ha! I like that question!" said a random woman grabbing her own steel basket. No doubt she'd already been inside and was privy to things arcane and mysterious.
With a very deep breath, Jane clamped her fingers around the steel of the trolley and passed through the white plastic flap of the entrance.

She'd never seen anything like it.
Before her lay shelves and shelves of stacked brown boxes. But it was not the boxes that mesmerised her. It was the items on display next to them, the ones that hinted at what was inside each box.

There were dinner services, serving plates, charger plates, casserole dishes, sauce pans, goblets, tumblers, salad dressing bottles, colanders, egg poachers, apple corers, shiny silver things that could skin an avocado and harness the energy of a hundred suns. So many things of magic and delight, and oodles and oodles of cutlery. And it was all on sale. Jane wept.

She felt the ground beneath her give a little. It was not from the sheer excitement suffusing her insides, but the thrum of a million trolley wheels coursing down the aisles.
Families, couples, singles, every type of family unit crawled over and around each other in a mad shimmering dance.

She saw wives throwing themselves onto the cutlery piles, staking claims on steak knives going at a steal, while their husbands edged away slowly, perhaps out of fear that they might be emasculated by an overzealous grandmother with a sharp potato peeler.
An arthritic woman on borrowed and now overdue time, barely escaped being crushed by a middle-aged woman missioning to claim thirty teaspoons priced at R5 each.

What struck Jane the most was the amount of newly-weds at the sale. "How did they find out about this place?" Jane wondered. She was brought here by her sister-in-law who got wind of it through her other sister-in-law who heard from her sister-in-law via that colossal grapevine that now weaved through Jane's life and tripped her up with its branches.

It really was a whole new world opening it's core to her. She understood the thrill of fingering Jenni Button Melton jackets and boots from San Marina, and now, to have that same feeling extend to olive spoons and honey-drippers, Jane felt she'd emerged from a chrysalis.

Jane was jolted out of her fugue by someone so captivated by the R25 salad forks, that everything in her path towards the display would just have to be obliterated.

Jane rubbed her smarting elbow and immediately oohed at the yellow flan pan on the shelf before her. "Must have..." she murmured, just a little drool sketching a line towards her chin. All thought of pain poofed away when she happened upon the egg cups that came with a cute little salt shaker and an equally adorable little spoon.
"Must have..."
Jane saw pink ponies and babies playing the theme from Desperado on their violins, her mind was so lost between the bright red saucepans and the citrus juicer.

Time passed the way it does when one's under the influence of something delightfully narcotic, and she soon emerged from the tent with her own big brown box in a trolley.

"The lady at the till said they unpack new stuff everyday!" Jane enthused to her sister-in-law. She really needed a good potato-masher and the L Wechsler & Co sale ran until the first of May. With one look at the cardboard box containing her now prized cake lifter, Jane knew she'd be back.

-- Somewhere lyrics spilled out of a car radio, "You can step out any time you like, but you can never leave..." --

Light this candle

A nine-year old girl was killed after a hit-and-run incident on Jan Smuts Avenue in Johannesburg this morning.
The child, on her way to school, was waiting for a taxi when the accident occurred.
The only passenger in the minibus said she felt the taxi hit something just before the driver stopped. "He demanded I leave the taxi right then and gave me my R7.50 back. I didn't understand what was happening. It was only when I got off the taxi and he reversed and then drove off, that I saw," she said.
The passenger could not recall the license plate number of the taxi. The driver remains unidentified.
--

That's what the news story would read like, perhaps including other details like the eye-witnesses who were on the street at the time and the name of the passenger if she did not want to remain anonymous. There would even be a quote from the victims distraught father, her schoolteacher, the police, an outraged city official even. Her school would've been identified by the embroidery on her uniform. Her name would be on the schoolbooks in her bag.

I don't know if anyone has written the story about what happened to that nine-year-old schoolgirl this morning. My colleague was the passenger in the taxi. That's how I know.

And this is all I know.
And now you know.
Please remember her and her family in your prayers.

--update (April 25)-- The story was covered by The Times

Bunny suits and rocket rides!!!

Duritz and the boys will be hitting our atmosphere on June 06 in Jozi!!!
Yayness!!!
I heart the Counting Crows!!!
I'm so there!!!

I'm over-doing the exclamation marks.
Anyhoo, they're an awesome band and you should go see them if you can.

Guess That Typo! Round 1 and 2 roundup

Entries are now closed for Round 1 and 2.

The solutions follow:

Round One
Typo - Rocky Horror Picture Sow
Intended - Rocky Horror Picture Show

Round Two
Typo - Gordon Blue
Intended - Cordon Bleu

Here are the rankings as they stand (included are the bonus points awarded for potential puzzle submissions):

queen_Lestat 15
Naqiyah 10
Mohammed Ziyaad Hassen 10
Sara 7
Waseem 7
Hamza 7

Three more rounds to go before we tally up final scores and determine the winner of the R200 book voucher.

Thank you everyone for playing and look out for more Guess That Typo!

Guess That Typo! Round two

Round one of Guess That Typo! is still open, so keep those questions and guesses coming in!

Remember the aim of the game is to guess the mistake (typo) that was made in a sentence or phrase.
The graphic is the literal visual representation of that mistake.
The graphic will help you guess what word/words were incorrect in the original phrase or sentence.

Round two is slightly tougher and requires you to think with your stomach.
"It tastes like chicken and other stuff."
An additional clue is contained in the graphic's file name.

The typo in this case is two words that make up a title.

Introducing: Guess That Typo!

Allow me to introduce you to a new series we'll be running from time to time; "Guess That Typo!".

Each game will consist of a picture depicting a "literal" visual representation of a typo made in a sentence or phrase. The typos illustrated are actual use-able words in their own right and will never include words that do not exist in modern lexicons (so no abbreviations or swopped vowels etc).

A clue to help with the association between the typo and intended meaning, is given in the uploaded graphic's filename.

In order to claim smart-ass points for the correct answer, send me an email that includes:
a) the typo and
b) the intended meaning of the original sentence or phrase.

Ten smart-ass points will be given to respondents with the correct answer and five smart-ass points will be awarded for half-answers.

The person with the highest tally of smart-ass points after five games will win a book voucher (value to be determined).

If you have a visual idea for 'Guess That Typo!', email me and if it's blogged, you'll get two smart-ass points (for obvious reasons, a successful submission forfeits your chance to play in that session).

Got it?
Good.
Let's play Guess That Typo!

As this is the first in the series, I'll give you extra clue to kick this off and make a cake-walk out of it.
"Dr Frank-N-Furter is a featured character here."

well, 'one' of the reasons.

image source

On our way home

We are
creased commuters, squashed between mama and the silent man with the itch in his side. After-robot! Now we can nurse life back into a tingly leg.

We are
drivers with our windows open and the radio up, we'll chance metal against our temples because the air con's broke and it's a long wait at a dead robot at 5.30pm on a weekday.

We are
the man selling sunglasses at the corner. And the one selling mangoes. And the one selling clothes hangers. And the one selling a massive neon bouncing ball.

We are
the lady selling chances to numb your guilt.

We are
the one giving her money, thinking her child seems too old to be carried. "Look, his legs dangle past her knee," we mutter while fishing in the ashtray for the car-guard's change.

We are
taxi drivers, battered emperors of the tacky tarmac. Don't be so insolent as to believe you have any right of way over us.

We are
12 year olds at the roadside, wielding spark plugs for just one shot for glass to rain. Just one chance. One cellphone. This is the difference between today and tomorrow for me.

We are
the people who shoot them. Thieving bastards deserve it. Damn, he looked older when he smashed my windscreen.

----

You may have heard/read this in the news. Crime has made something ugly of us all, the victims and the perpetrators. See how the lines are blurring.

and it begins...

It's quite surreal how one just slips into domesticity and all-round wifey-ness. It feels like I've been here all my life.

I'm still in that eager-to-please mode, bombarding The Other with msn missives; "Was your breakfast still warm? Were the eggs fine? Was lunch ok or did I overdo the tomato sauce? Are the leftovers from your mum fine for supper? etc etc etc".

No worries, that kak will soon end;)

I thought getting married meant suddenly acquiring an adult-mindset. I'm still playing house, and it is great fun.