If you can’t change your mind, what can you change?

I’m on my way to Greece, to the island of Lesbos, and more specifically, the hillside town of Eressos.

OK, I’m leaving seven weeks early … a spur of the moment thing … why wait?

Air France changed the departure and return dates on my ticket: May 11-August 10

Today is April 23. Phew!

There is barely time to breathe let alone sort out the visa stuff; and all manner of travel protocol.

And my tax return; where are the receipts and notes?

There’s nothing like a change of plan to intensify the task at hand; to rattle your comfort zone.

It makes you think: Crumbs, am I nuts?

Then you remember … there is no script.

 All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.

Henry Miller

The hurry and flurry feed your racing heart, they fan your explicit ardour. You’re ready to leap onto the springboard, you jump with gusto.

The thrill you trust will spill into a soft spot landing, outside the glare of expectations and preconceived ideas.

You travel, because you must; you dream. Movement hastens inevitability, or so it seems.

 

(ends)

The story so far:

There’s a lot of crying in the chair and Dan and Isaac do their bit, but will Sally recover?

DAN reached for another serviette.

Sally’s already snotted and cried two of them into soggy, limp lappies.

Number three.

Okay, Sally, get out of that chair. I’m taking you into the garden.

Sally sighs, and throws her head back.

In a while, her sobs quieten, but her eyes look like saucers of pain, swimming in a sea of grief.

Dan links arms with the woman, who’s slightly shorter than her 5ft 9.

And leads her off the verandah.

The fragrance of the jasmine soothes Sally.

Dan’s presence becomes real. She’s a pillar for the broken woman.

What’ve I started here, she asks herself.

Her eyes are drawn to Sally’s breasts, well, it’s that big stone that captures her attention, and then it’s umm, downhill from there.

Dan can see the pulses in her neck. They throb with life. They quicken when Dan draws her closer.

You’ll be ok with me, she says, looking into her swollen, sad face.

We’ll do things, like 10-pin bowling, and white-water rafting. It’s hard to cry when you’re doing things!

Sally’s smile is as bleak as a cold grey morning.

Her sadness is ash, the passion burnt to a blob of grey.

Isaac watches them walk back to the table that he’s cleared and reset.

He’s fluffed up the cushions (holding his breath: the mites!) and replaced the tablecloth.

The women sit down.

Dan raises her eyebrows and her right index finger.

Isaac is already on his way. And Sally’s stopped crying.

(to be continued)

 

 

 

 

The story so far: There’s weeping in the chair, but Dan wants to go for a walk.

THE woman’s shoulders jerk. Her sobs morph into gasps of despair.

Boy, if she could see her mascara mapping her misery.

Dan thinks it’s a sorry sight, and the waiter does too.

He’s got chamomile tea on a tray, and a bottle of water.

The woman looks up and gives an almighty trumpet sound of a nose blow on the tear-soaked serviette..

She dabs her eyes, smudges the mascara and folds herself into one last quivering cry.

Thank you Isaac, Dan says. Just leave the tray on the table please.

Issac, as discreet as ever, lowers his eyes and places the tray on the round rattan table.

It’s seen better days, has that table, but then, so has Isaac.

He remembers the new furniture, the carpets wall to wall.

But he’s never seen anyone cry like that.

Dan pours the tea while twirling a spiral of honey into the cup.

Sally, yes, her name’s Sally, Sally Thompson, is checking her phone.

Bitch, she says.

BITCH.

Dan see’s the woman’s neck veins throb, pulse.

Here, have some tea, she says, looking into Sally’s face.

I’ve put a few drops of rescue remedy in it too. Sip on it. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Sally smiles. Sort of.

Dan sees her lips tremble, a little, then iron out to show some teeth.

It’s awful how the woman’s chin quakes, and bubbles and breaks.

Through it all.

(to be continued)

 

Once upon a time, like five minutes ago, Dan’s attention was focussed on a shoulder supported by a striking clavicle.

At the throat, in the gap between the two clavicles, hung a brilliant stone; no, it’s of a translucent, hypnotic lustre, and it’s nestled there, on a thong.

The woman was on her own, and leaning back in the cane stoep chair.

Her dark eyes matched the stone.

Dan popped her cigs in the little clutch, swept her hair back, and strode over.

The woman had a tear bubbling in her eye, a great well of a tear, ready to drop.

But first, a slow slide down a flawless cheek. A snail’s trail of what?

Dan couldn’t imagine.

She cleared her throat.

Um, seems as if you could do with a tissue. Here’s a serviette. But I guess they call them napkins here in this posh spot.

What’s the matter.

The woman reached for the serviette, and held it in her left hand. She took her glasses off with the other, and put them on the table, squashing the arms in all at once. Her right hand quickly joined the left and they filled with serviette.

Her hot torrid tears hit the cloth before her face did.

The woman sobbed, a searing silent sickening rising, falling.

Sally grabbed a shot of single malt.

Here doll, take a sip of this.

If you don’t want that, here’s some rescue remedy.

Let’s go for  a walk now. 

It’s a beautiful spring day.

(to be continued)

 

.

. 

 

 

 

THE Women’s World Cup kicked off in fine style in Berlin on Sunday.

There were some terrific saves, some pulsating goals scored and, generally, the match between defending champions Germany and Canada was played at pace.

But, girls, your HAIRSTYLES!

Last year, the men chartered a special Boeing to fly in their gel and stylists.

And, when the plane touched down at OR Tambo, their crates of hair treatment bounced to the roof of the hold. The big bird wobbled, but the booty was safe.

The game was on!

We saw matches played in rain, wind, sleet where carefully, no obsessively tended coifs withstood the hurly burly of the contact sport, and the ravages of the weather.

Short, bleached, cornrows, Afros, those spiky-on-top ones; they all held their own under trying conditions, and the boys looked fabulous when the final whistle blew.

Nicely trimmed eyebrows and coloured lashes too, and not a blemish on all those pretty, well-managed faces.

The visages in Berlin were, well, to put it kindly, clamped into bland by business-like hairdos.

Ok, there were some flying locks – later — whipping this way and that – but generally, the girls were as one: flat, scraped-off-face hair tortured into tight ponytails rolled into golf-ball size nothings.

The short-haired blonde stuck out; maybe because she’s as pretty as a boy.

(ends)

 

Moleskin slippers, and a nice cigar

 

THE AIR turns blue, in a white-haze kinda way.

Clouds waft, winding into mists, from puff to puff.

Heads back, lips wrinkle, purse into billowing funnels.

I smell it from 20, 30 paces. Outside. Even through the sinus.

The room’s wood-panelled, there’s leather. Cognac. And wine, where the men examine the label and twirl the bottle.

Mr Wesley huddles over some cigars. Mrs Wesley’s eyebrows arch, and she says something to him, looking over the room.

I sit at the table; which will be to Mr Wesley’s right.

I like feng shui, so my back’s to the wall.

A man takes a seat, then two more.

They shake hands and chat, and light up cigars.

Rudyard Kipling made his feelings clear, in the Betrothed: “And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a Smoke.”

Clearly not much has changed since the 1700s…

Just as well Mrs Wesley says “move up”.

 

Paul Rae tells me I must leave the cigar in the ashtray, to burn out.

“There’s a terrible stink if you don’t; and a mess, if you know, you stub it out like a cigarette.”

He nods his head, underlining this essential fact. He blinks the smoke away.

We stare at the ashtray…

I meet Cigar Cutter Torch, that dandy (with gravitas, mind). He’s all things to all men — and women, given half the chance.

He’s wrapped in cloth, a masculine cloth of luxury; single malts and hour-long smokes. He contemplates the contemplatable, a flavoursome, hand-rolled cigar.

Cigar Cutter Torch, for all his flamboyance, likes the way cigars assert his confidence.

He likes the way he’s got the time to choose cigars.

No touching.

Only sight and smell.

Ah, the smell. The good ones age into a heady fragrance, in the humidor of course.

They’re a long way from home, from their terroir, the terroir that means so much to tobacco leaves, and grapes.

It gives every leaf its distinctive purpose — its flavour and function.

Precise, it has to be, cigars are the sum of their leaves: the filler (picked from top of the bush, ligero); the binder (seco) and the wrapper (volado).

The roller has got it right if you can smoke evenly, and the ash drops off at 1cm, or a little longer.

The ligero must be oily and fresh, and long enough to reveal an elegant cone-like little hump.

The binder, jolly chap, holds it all together while the volado, the wrapper … that’s the bit that seduces.

It’s on your lips. It musn’t unravel. The colour, the shape and aroma, must appeal to you.

The leaves, they must persuade you to set them alight. They beg to be burnt.

The master makers, the mavens of the blend and twirl, are wrinkled old men with as many folds on their skins as they’ve rolled cigars. The closest cigars get to a virgin’s (inner) thigh is on a tray when she’s sorting and cutting.

“Otherwise they’d lacerate their legs,” Mrs Wesley notes, getting rid of a tiresome piece of toast:

The women might hitch up their skirts, for it is outdoor work, in hot places — but that cigar aint going nowhere.

 

Paul’s on diet and he’s allowed only mushrooms for starters, he says, brandishing a lighter.

“This is a cigar torch.”

He tries to cough a gurgling brook into a pudgy clenched fist, but alas, he can’t dislodge it.

“Your toast the foot,” he says pressing “the torch” into a spectacular flame.

“They’re good, especially for big cigars. You need a good cutter or cigar scissors.

“Surgical stainless steel,” he says, deftly, carefully snipping off the cap that secures the head of the cigar, the side you put into your mouth.

A guillotine can’t cut cleaner.

Whoosh. He twirls the rolled tobacco.

“Be careful not to scorch the foot. Just turn it till it turns grey.”

Mr Wesley pipes up: “Dominican cigars have white ash. It’s the nitrate in the soil.”

He’s reaching for a refresher.

It’s tough work this, this cigar tasting dinner.

We smoke the appropriate (unmarked) cigars for each stage of the evening. And note their appeal.

We talk about things like holes in cigars, thanks to the appetite of the beetle bug.

Mrs Wesley’s very matter of fact: “They’re bloodless. All you get is shell. They crack when you squeeze them.”

Paul laughs. “I just stick toothpicks in my cigars if they get holes in them. And if it’s tight I massage it until I can stick in a knitting needle or something.”

Mrs Wesley waves away the subject of bloom (read mould).

“Oh, it s a sign of maturity,” she smiles. “Just brush it off.”

And, if you’ve got to nip a cigar, god forbid, cut off the foot, and pop the rest into a bank bag.

It’ll be there for the next chilled smoke.

“Take deep breaths. Relax,” Mr Wesley says.

“All of a sudden you’re feeling good. It’s not a high. You just feel better.”

Who wouldn’t, with their lips reaching for that body, the hand-made body of the cigar.

(ends)

Phew. Got to this stage at last.
Let’s see what happens next time I get to spend some time sitting here, in this monstrosity of a chair, tilted. And as bone-jarring as an arse in third class.
There’s merit in a decent seat.

M

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