THINGS THAT GO "POP" IN THE NIGHT

27 January 2010

Last night was Night #4 in the Emmarentia house. At the best of times, I always have a slight un-ease at living here in Joburg. We have a nightime ritual of checking all the windows, locks & security gates and before getting into bed we close the “rape gate” (yep, that ‘s what it’s called) & arm the alarm system for the bedroom wing of the house. We have been working so hard on this place that we fell into a deep deep sleep immediately. At about 1:30 am, there was a huge pop in the bedroom, a flash & that acrid electrical burning smell. Simultaneously, the floodlight that illuminates the yard (which neither of us know how to turn on) came on. We nearly jumped out of our skins. Glen, in true South African mode, was out of bed in a nano-second with the maxi mag light he keeps next to our bed—looking out into the yard to see what was going on. Moments later, our tenant phoned to say he’d had a large pop and flash too. The source of it seems to have been the power box or transformer for the house security system which we have just had upgraded at great expense. The security company was called and arrived in seconds just to inspect the property. The security guard knows the place and remarked on how much improved the place was because of all the work on the garden. It appears to have been some electrical, not burglar, problem. This morning we are without power and Glen is trying to get this sorted with the insurance company. As Glen admits, it’s that damn spirit of Eileen haunting us--- as I write, he is contacting a sangoma (traditional African healer) to clear out those evil spirits…….

THE BIG MOVE

25 January 2010

This past weekend we moved into Glen, my partner’s house in the leafy older Johannesburg neighbourhood called Emmarentia. Honestly, it is the last place I would choose to live in a city I would rather not live in. However, due to the circumstances of our lives, it is where we must be for the moment at least. The house was vacated only a few weeks ago by Glen’s ex-wife. Yes! After four and a half years, she has finally signed the divorce. The final proclamation will be on February 5^th and the Moet is already chilling. Talk about a new era in our relationship—the entire time I have known Glen, he has been trying to get divorced and now in this post-divorce era, we start a life in the house just vacated by his ex-wife and who left it in a completely uninhabitable state. Eileen, I hope I never meet you, so I will write here what I want to say, “Thank your daughter, Eve, who hauled out 9 huge boxes of your stuff left strewn on the floors in this house including used pantyhose and discarded bras. On my first visit here, I thought the place had been occupied by squatters! Eve brought in a team of cleaners to scrub the place top to bottom—a necessity as our regular cleaner (who had worked at this house once) had refused to come here saying ‘That house is so filthy that I promised myself would never return!’ And, Eileen, when you want to get rid of items that no longer work such as a Cuisinart, popcorn popper, dustbuster as well as broken furniture, please put them in the garbage rather than dumping them in the yard. Also, expensive garden clippers and items like shop vacs no longer work after having been left out in the rain. And if you’re looking for that croc pot, the one that sat out so long on the back deck that we found it filled with green slime, I threw it out. And if you want to get revenge on your husband, just chuck stuff he left in the house into the trash. Those carousels of slides of his that you put out in the back garden have been out there so long the boxes have dissolved. Mrs. F, how can anyone live like this? Every contractor I had come in to quote on repairs has asked, ‘How long has this house been abandoned?’ They, nor I, can believe that someone can live like this! You are the biggest slob I have ever come across and I resent that we were left to clean out the detritus of your filthy fucked up depressed life!”

Whew. I feel better now.

Check this blog for further adventures of the Emmarentia house including rats in the attic, turning the yard (our own little nature reserve) back in to a pleasant garden and pumping out the swimming pool-cum-swamp that makes me believe we should be taking anti-malarials!