Hello!

Posted on by nyamazela

“Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever.”

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

There’s a sentimental ditty by Neil Diamond, called ‘Hello’:

“Hello, my friend, hello
Just called to let you know
I think about you every night
And I know it’s late but I could’t wait
Hello”

It makes me a little tearful because my Dad loved Neil Diamond, and he’s gone too far away to make contact with. But also because I’m a sucker for an old ballad.

You know when you have an old friend or relative that you get on very well with, but you hardly ever see? Continue reading Hello!

Eating with your fingers

Posted on by nyamazela

“Natalie was nervous because I had explained that she would be treated differently because she was white, that she would have to work harder than other girls to gain my parents’ trust. And so they devised a plan: We agreed that on the first meeting my wife would not accept tea, she would instead make tea in the home of my parents. With that gesture, she showed that she did not have a superiority complex, that she was willing to make a gesture, however small, to gain acceptance.”

MMUSI MAIMANE Prophet or Puppet? by S’Thembiso Msomi

Ethiopian restaurantThere is a story that I’ve not been able to verify unequivocally, but which seems to be accepted as a fact:

On a visit to America some time in the 1800’s, Queen Victoria changed etiquette rules forevermore, by picking up a chicken wing with her fingers and eating it thus. Whether she saw this as a more efficient way to handle a chicken wing, or that it was preferable in the name of diplomacy to do as the Americans did, we will never know. Continue reading Eating with your fingers

Hopes, dreams, prayers and the people you meet on the way

Posted on by nyamazela

“How many of us begin a new record with each day of our lives? To me it seems only yesterday that my whole life ended with my new hope, and that truly I began a new record. So it shall be until the Great Recorder sums me up and closes my ledger account with a balance to profit and loss.”

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Hopes and dreamsI have had many hopes and dreams in my short life, some of which have weighed heavily on me and have haunted me – hopes I’ve shelved, hopes I’ve not dared to voice, hopes I’ve boldly proclaimed – hopes upon hopes.

Hopes are flighty things, like butterflies, they are beautiful and colourful and hard to pin down. Sometimes they flit into our lives in surprising ways and then flit right out again. Sometimes we keep getting a glance at them, that ‘butterfly’ feeling rises up inside, and then it passes out of reach so that we wonder if it was even there at all.

Continue reading Hopes, dreams, prayers and the people you meet on the way