Country of My Skull

Legend has it that when the victorious Roman generals returned from their campaigns of war and covered themselves with glory in grand parades on the streets of Rome, they would be followed by a small voice warning them of the fickleness of fame and fortune.

I’m totally mesmerised by the meltdown in financial markets. I know that the banks employ a lot of good people, a lot of smart people. I know that the banks are a great place to work for a few years - you can learn a lot and you get well paid for it. But I want to say something about the kill or be killed culture that prevailed in these places. It wasn’t that long ago when investment banks were recruiting the best graduates with promises of big pay cheques and massive bonuses. Banks attracted people motivated by money. To get a job in an investment bank was an easy road to riches, to have their names on your resume was a passport to success.

I've been a bit of a slacker on the blog front. There is a lot I want to say, particularly about the meltdown in the financial markets. A friend of mine who works for one of the affected banks sent me this note:

"It's been very interesting, but a lot of people hurting: having to move out of their homes, upsticks with children and leave the country (sponsored visas), lose their lifetimes worth of company stock that was going to be their retirement etc. ....."

I’ve been writing a lot of poetry lately. I like nothing better than sitting down at night and writing poems. I find it so relaxing. You’d better believe it. I read an interview by the writer Margaret Atwood where she said that if you want to write a good poem, write lots of them (the theory being some of them will be good). This is going to be my strategy from here on out. I do regret not taking one of the many excellent creative writing courses in London while I was over there. Once I’m a little more settled I’ll try getting myself onto one in Cape Town.

I was browsing the internet looking for some new poetry and I had to read a lot of dross before I stumbled across this amazing poem written by the writer Robert Warrington.

Nailed to the Sky

If only I had any idea what you did

on hot blue Saturdays

If I knew where you were likely to be

I could create the conditions

to run in to you by accident

Not knowing


I thought I was finally over this topic but the other night I heard our ersatz president Thabo Mbeki refer to Robert Mugabe as “President” Robert Mugabe. I don’t know if I’m missing something but Robert Mugabe is not the president of Zimbabwe under the laws of the SADC, the AU or the UN so how the hell did this happen??

Even by the SADC’s extremely lax standards, the presidential elections in Zimbabwe were ruled not to be free or fair. What makes the situation so hilarious is that even though the SADC ruled the elections to be a sham, the illegitimate Zimbabwean government suffered not a single sanction or punishment within the SADC community, which renders this whole process meaningless. I know I should really stop caring about this, or the fact that our failed president Thabo Mbeki remains the principal life support system for Mugabe’s tyranny, but here is a rather amusing poem I wrote about the situation.

I’ve been tagged by Brian. I’ve done this blog before way back when I first joined AboutLife so this time I’ll do it a little differently.

I keep a diary. Not a gushing diary but just a short note of what I did that day just to jolt my memory.

So today I ate the tastiest boerewors roll ever.

Below are the entries for the 13th August (or the nearest date with an entry) in ……

2007 – Went to meet Brian at the pub near Oxford street [how cool is that? This was AboutLife Brian who just tagged me on this here blog. The date was actually Thursday the 16th August but I had no entry for the 13th, 14th or 15th so they must have been run of the mill work days]

I spent last week sorting out what remains of my London life. I’m flying out on Friday night and I must say I’m looking forward to returning to Cape Town. Mentally I’ve moved on from this place and it’s no longer home. I think now that I’ve spent a couple months in Cape Town I thought I would list some things I really like about being back home.

1. I am 10 minutes drive from about half a dozen beaches. I go to the beach almost everyday. You have no idea how much I appreciate this and I get to go surfing. Woohoo.

Hi, I’m back in the UK to visit my dentist (again) and to help my sister move to Edinburgh and hopefully catch one or two shows at the Edinburgh festival. Yeah.

The last time I was back in the UK I was able to go to the Kris Morris gig in Soho, which was really cool. I heard Kris live for the first time at the living-room sessions in someone’s house in Ealing. Afterwards, I chatted to him for a while and I can confirm that not only is he a great singer but he’s also very friendly, down-to-earth and laidback. I had a front row seat and was able to film him singing his awesome song Someone Sometimes on my camera. Enjoy!

The other night I watched a documentary on a pyramid investment scheme that wormed its way into some South African churches fleecing hundreds of people out of tons of money. It was pretty depressing stuff.

For those of you who don’t know, a pyramid scheme is akin to a game of pass the parcel with everyone passing money up the food chain till eventually the recruitment of new members to the scheme becomes unsustainable upon which everything collapses and the people last to join loose out.