In July 2021, South Africa was shocked by an attempted insurrection which saw a weekend of violence, looting and malicious damage in the north east of the country.  Shopping malls were in flames.  Motorways blockaded.  Oil refineries attacked.  The country was on a knife edge.  Were we on the verge of civil war?  Were mobs about to rampage through the country?  Were we all doomed?

Panic-stricken, I browsed through FaceBook’s dog rescue pages (I know – I’ve always had a certain lack of focus) and found a heartrending plea for someone to foster, if not adopt, Peanut who was passionately unhappy with kennel life.

I messaged Annie, the rescue centre manager.  Yes, she confirmed, Peanut was traumatised by losing his human; he hated the kennels.  But she was sure he would settle down and be a Good Boy in a stable environment. 

I told my friends I was going to rescue Peanut.  Gloria didn’t skip a beat.  “I’ll come with you,” she said.  She not only came with me – she drove me there, saying the pooch might chuck up all the way home so I should be in the back to clean up as we went.

We lived in Cape Town, an hour’s drive to the Cape’s beautiful winelands where the rescue centre was.  Stunning though the western cape is, its surrounding high-density suburbs and squatter townships rank as the eighth most dangerous place in the world, and that’s on a quiet day.

As we planned our route, we realised we were going to have to skirt around a couple of dodgy areas in our mission to rescue Peanut.  There was no way of knowing if the weekend’s looting and mayhem had been contained or was about to spread.  We set off anyway.  Why be sensible when you can really piss off family and friends by driving into the teeth of a riot?

“We’ll be fine”, we assured one another as we headed around Kuils River, took a turn towards Khayelitsha and edged past squatter camps.

It was deepest winter and had rained for about a week.  We arrived at the rescue centre to find kennels in fields awash with water and mud.  Bedraggled dogs bounced, barked and bayed

Annie the manager escorted us to meet Peanut, who had been described as a medium sized dog, about three years old.  He was housed in a run on his own, with ‘quarantine area’ posted on the fence.  “He’s healthy,” Annie assured us. “He doesn’t like other dogs so we’ve put him into a quiet space.”

I ventured into his enclosure and offered him a treat.  He rolled his eyes.  I cautiously touched him.  He shuddered and scattered moulted hair everywhere – even I know that shedding hair in mid-winter is a sign of stress or illness.

“Take him out for a walk,” said Annie.  “Get to know him.”

He was bigger than I expected.  A stocky German Shepherd type and way stronger than me.  He didn’t want to be on that lead but didn’t know what he did want so he towed me around the rescue centre, jinking at passing cars and barking dogs and being spooked by shadows. 

All my focus was on staying upright and not shouting ‘fuuuuuuuck’.  

Gloria started a commentary that sounded like machine gun fire, beginning with a cautious “I don’t think he’s quite right for you.  Maybe a bit strong.  Maybe a bit neurotic.  Maybe a bit difficult to manage.

“Oh my god!  Don’t let him pull you over.  Watch out for that puddle.  Oh.  Oh dear.  Just let him go.  He’s out of control.” 

“I feel so sorry for him,” I yipped as I lurched past her at a slippery canter.

Gloria’s voice rose half a decibel, then rose some more. 

“That dog will destroy your house.  He’ll pull you off the side of a mountain.  He’ll fight every dog in the neighbourhood.  He’s a NIGHTMARE…”

As I ski-ed through the mud, drawn by the plunging canine, I had to admit Gloria was right.  I handed him back to Annie sadly and we left the quarantine area to the sound of wire tearing as Peanut ripped his run apart.

“Come and look at some other dogs,” said Annie brightly, carefully not looking at my mud splattered face.

So we went to see Nando, described as playful and energetic.  Nando was like a coked-up dog on a pogo stick, bouncing around his run with manic energy that had his kennelmates cowering against the fences.  Even I wasn’t going to give Nando the time of day.

Then Matilda.  Poor Matilda.  She was Africanis type, a muddy brown and black brindle, with a long thin face and long thin ears that swept back to her shoulder blades making her look like Dobby the House Elf in Harry Potter films.  Her puppies had just been weaned and she had the longest, flappiest breasts I have ever seen, with nipples around her ankles.  As I reached out to befriend Matilda, Gloria morphed into Cruella De Vil.

Gloria is a beautiful, stylish woman with big eyes and a lively, expressive voice.  Now her eyes were hugely disbelieving and her voice that had assumed the crispness of a mother talking to a particularly thick teenager. 

“That dog is ugly.  You want people to love your dog, not cross the road to avoid it.  And look at those teats.  She gave birth six weeks ago. For god’s sake.  What if she’s stored up gynae problems for your first vet bill?  You cannot have that dog.  What if the boobs don’t go back to normal? She’ll injure herself just walking.  Maddy … step away from that dog…”

I felt compelled to obey.  It isn’t wise to ignore women honed by willful children and wayward husbands.

We went on to meet Sam, an eight-year old labrador type.  I took the lead that Annie offered and bent to pat him.  He snarled. 

“He hasn’t got any teeth!” Gloria’s voice slid off the scale of lively and skidded into tones that usually say things like “are you fucking mad?”

“I could give him soft food,” I tried.  Sam snarled at me again, as did Gloria.  It was probably good that he didn’t have teeth; not so good that she did.

“If he hasn’t got teeth, that won’t be the only thing wrong with him.  Think of the vet bills.” Gloria had hauled her voice back on track and was attempting to be reasonable in the face of stupidity.

“He’s usually friendly,” said Annie, quickly taking the lead.  “He must be ill.  I’ll take him to the vet.”

We wandered around the centre looking at other dogs.  All 130 of them, all bouncing against the fences of their enclosures, looking for attention.  Then we passed an enclosure with four orangey Africanis type mutts, small to medium sized.  Three were playing a boisterous game, growling and nipping and chasing.  The fourth had tucked herself in a corner and was watching them wearily.  As I passed, she made eye contact.  Beautiful brown eyes with black eye liner appealed to me to get her out of the madhouse. 

“She looks sweet and quiet,” said Gloria.  So I took her for a walk and she was calm and well-behaved.  She didn’t have a name because she’d been born in the animal shelter, one of four in the Puddleduck litter.  She made it clear she was ready to love me forever and ever.  I panicked.  Was I ready for such adoration?

“I feel overloaded.  Let’s go for lunch and think about it,” I muttered, putting the Puddleduck pup back into her enclosure.

We drove towards town and Gloria spotted a sign to a wine farm that seemed familiar to her.  South Africa was in Lockdown Level 4, which meant the sale of alcohol was prohibited and its transport illegal.  Gloria had run out of wine and was bored with gin and tonic; I just wanted wine.  Lots of it.    

An ex boyfriend of hers who lived in the area had told her that some wine farms were selling under the counter so we decided to check it out.  Well, Gloria decided.  I was too busy picking off muddy splats that had dried like scabs on my face, and feebly trying to brush half of Peanut’s coat off my jeans.  Up a pretty country road we drove and a freshly exercised man with sweat gleaming on his muscles came into view.  Gloria exclaimed and stopped.  Gleaming man was none other than Gloria’s ex, returning home from a workout.  What were the chances…?

He bounded over to talk to us.  Gloria purred.  Gleaming Man adopted a manly pose and she purred some more.  Oh Gloria – now I know why your men love you forever! 

Gleaming Man was pleased to direct us to a wine farm that was selling illicit booze so we slipped down a lane and into a barn and, hey presto, wine by the case!

Two hours later, we headed home, delighted to have a car loaded with wine and an orange Puddleduck pup, now called Lizzie.  Now that’s what you call a successful girls’ day out. 

Days after moving into a retirement home, my Grandmama demanded to be moved to a single-person dining table that faced the wall.  Asked why, she said the sight of all the old people was putting her off her food.

Telling my Mother about it, the centre manager looked apologetic and said Grandmama just needed time to adapt to her new environment and would be back to her usual self in a week or two. 

Mother didn’t care to tell her that this was Grandmama’s ‘usual self’. She was the Beauty Police, still obsessively well-groomed and wearing killer heels at 90 years of age, and as quick as ever to impose her standards on others

She took it upon herself to instruct me on the importance of moisturising when I was about 10.  Apparently, unless a girl has a milkmaid complexion, she has no chance of catching a man.   

Well, what to make of that when you’re 10?  Milkmaids are somewhat uncommon in downtown Harare and I was a bit young to have read Tess of The D’Urbervilles so I thought she was talking about ice-lollies.   And my imagination went mad with “catch a man”.  Such a strange expression.  Do people still say that?  I had visions of hordes of women with cold milky faces invading rugby clubs armed with cattle prods and huge butterfly nets. 

Indoctrinated from an early age about the importance of being beautiful, Mother didn’t stop at moisturising.

I had a big shock going through her papers after she died a few years ago.  So many memories; some regrets; some laughs.  Then the Big Shock… an awful picture of her with black and bloodied eyes.  She looked as though she’d been beaten.  I shrieked.   Brother and Sister came running.

 ‘Look at this!  What happened?  Why didn’t I know?’ 

Brother and Sister looked at me pityingly. 

‘Looks like she had her eyes done,’ said Sister condescendingly.  ‘See these stitches – they’ve removed the bags under the eyes and lifted her eye lids to make them less hooded.’

I was consumed with envy. 

I’d been mildly rattled the previous Christmas.  Four pairs of siliconed boobies bristled in every happy family photo (one set of which were Mother’s); rhinoplasty had changed a distant cousin’s almost perfectly beautiful face into 100% spectacularly beautiful; and cousin-in-law smiled creaselessly at the camera, thanks to a dramatic face lift. 

I became increasingly aware of how my face was seeping slowly down towards my naval like glacial streams leaving deep grooves in their wake.  Every morning, my bathroom mirror highlighted further erosion and my ego silently shrieked:  ‘Do something …’

To make things worse, I had a Pilates client Zoe who was Grandmama’s spiritual heir.  She had done the works. Face lift, breast enhancement, tummy tuck, capped teeth…  At 67, she looked fabulous.  Forget about Botched Up Bodies.  As far as I can tell, you get what you pay for and she had paid a lot.  The best surgeons in the land had done a beautiful job in preserving the looks of a beautiful woman.

She started one of our sessions saying that the tops of her arms were getting loose and her husband had said she should do some extra exercises to tone them.  I started a routine of tricep extensions, bicep curls…  She stared at me in astonishment.

 “What are we doing?” she demanded. 

“Toning your arms.” 

“You weren’t listening.  My husband said I should do exercise to tone my arms … so we’ll leave it for three months, then I’ll go to my surgeon and he’ll sort it out in no time.”

One day she cast a critical look at my face.

“You’re a beautiful women, Maddy,” she said.  That surprised me.  Like Grandmama, Zoe wasn’t one for gratuitous compliments.  I thanked her.

After a few moments, she added: “…beautiful, for a woman who hasn’t had any work done.”

Here we go, I thought.  Women like Grandmama and Zoe don’t get the concept of body shaming.  They think they’re being helpful and caring when they tell you that you look like shit.

“Perhaps now is the time you thought about doing just a little work.  Nothing big.  Just freshen up a bit.”

“Can’t afford it right now,” I said.  “Maybe in a year or two.”

She dropped the subject, until she went to leave then turned back and said: “Do you really have to wait for a year or two?  Maybe you could borrow some money from your brother …” 

Weeks later, I had lunch with Groomed Friend, who I hadn’t seen for months and months. I couldn’t help but comment how good she looked.  Not radically different, but the best she could be … relaxed and happy… maybe a teensy bit younger.

After a couple of gins, the truth came out.  She’d had some ‘fillers’.   

What the heck was she talking about?  I was filler-illiterate. 

She prattled on about marionette lines, laughter lines, bunny lines, cheek augmentation, tear troughs…

I couldn’t wait to get home and google my newfound vocabulary, following links to YouTube to watch fillers being administered. If you’re needle phobic, don’t go there unless you’re drunk or drugged.   But scary though it looked, the results were great and nowhere near the cost of a face lift.

Groomed Friend phoned to encourage me to take the plunge.  She made an appointment and escorted me to meet her delightful Dr Akel, a charming young dentist with a serenely engaging manner.   He brought out a mirror and told me to smile.

 ‘You smile a lot,’ he said.  I smiled in agreement, then realised Dr Akel’s forehead was attempting to frown.  And failing.  Botox ruled okay.  Blimey – he was only about 30!  I was well behind in this game.

‘You have pronounced laughter lines around mouth and eyes,’ he intoned, his voice heavy with disapproval. 

Minutes later, with Groomed Friend egging me on, I had agreed to three sets of fillers – one split between tear troughs and cheek augmentation: one for nasolabial grooves and a third for marionette lines (also known as drool lines).  Ah – that vocabulary… cleverly designed to undermine what’s left of fragile self-esteem.

A syringe appeared with a very long, very thin needle.  Wishing I’d had gin for lunch, I closed my eyes and held my breath.  A sting, then strange tingling as Dr Akel gently massaged the collagen into place, then numbness. 

A few more stings and numbed patches and the mirror reappeared.  The result was amazing.  Even to my critical eyes, I looked a thousand times better.  I was delighted… and hooked.  More … I wanted more …

Then came the bill.

I really wish that reality would fuck off just once in a while.

(More reality later that evening when my face felt as though it had been stung by every killer insect on the planet.  Dr Akel had used anaesthetic cream during the treatment. No such thing as a free lunch…)

Six months later, having scrounged another filler budget, I returned, instructed by Zoe to ‘tidy up’ my mouth and jawline. (Yes, I’d told her about Dr Akel and learned that she was augmenting surgery with collagen.)  This visit didn’t go as well as the first.  Possibly because of a disastrous visit to a new hairdresser the day before. 

Bad karma is a Thing… being vain is not cosmically good.

My request that Mr Hairdresser ‘texturise’ my hair had been interpreted as ‘make me look like an orang-utan that escaped a forest fire’. 

Random tufts of short ginger hair bristled around my head, interspersed with patches of apparent alopecia. 

This time Dr Akel’s facial muscles triumphed over his Botox and his expression registered wide-eyed horror. 

Perhaps it was the shock that put him off his aim.  He hit a capillary vein while ‘enhancing’ my lips, giving me a purple-black bruise on the right top lip which bled up to my right nostril overnight, then seeped into my cheek.  No amount of concealer could hide it. 

I was mortified.  My guilty secrets of vanity and extravagance were about to be revealed.  How to explain to family and friends?  They weren’t going to be kind or understanding.

So I told everyone I’d got drunk and fallen over. Everyone was ever so kind and understanding.

That kind of cured me of my short-lived filler addiction.  Now I’m saving to go under the knife…what could possibly go wrong?

You find me in a state of turmoil.  I’ve made the most wonderful discovery.  My life has been revolutionised … a lifelong problem solved.  But I’m also devastated.  I feel as though every woman I’ve ever known has let me down … at least those who knew but couldn’t be arsed to tell me about beautiful, liberating nipple covers.

Since puberty, my nipples have been the cause of angst and embarrassment.   They have a mind of their own.  They react to minute fluctuations in temperature, to the rustle of fabric, to my smallest mood change.   In fact, they react to any bloody thing happening anywhere …

I snorted at a FaceBook graphic that said:   “My nipples tell me Summer is over.”  Hah!  If that’s all your nipples tell you, you’re the lucky one! 

My defence has been to wear moulded foam bras.  They’re rigidly pre-formed and prim, about as sexy as granny in a G-string. 

As an earnest wannabee eco-warrior, I worry about such gratuitous use of a plastic product.  I read somewhere that every toothbrush you’ve ever used still exists somewhere on the planet.  I’d wager the same goes for padded bras.  I imagine upturned cups floating around the oceans, gathering in flotillas, maybe providing little floating homes for tired amphibians, until they’re washed up on far flung shores where Man Fridays gather them to store watermelons … or, in the case of mine, lychees.

For some reason, most of my friends are well endowed.  My friend Emma has breasts that are as big as her head.  I’ve stopped drinking with her since social media became commonplace.  When she’s tipsy, she takes her bra off and puts it on her head … and plonks the second cup over whoever is sitting next to her.  The last thing I want is to wake up with a hangover and see myself tagged on FaceBook wearing half of Emma’s bra, the pair of us looking like conjoined WWI fighter pilots.  Not that you would recognise me.  I have a small head so Emma’s bra covers most of my face. 

When I met the man who would become The Best Husband In The World, I had a black halter neck Devil Dress with a neckline that plunged almost to my naval, exposing a large expanse of bony chest and the outline of my ribs.  Donning it for the first time in his company, I asked if he thought it indecent. 

He gave the matter careful thought and pronounced:  “On a woman with boobs, it would be; but on you, it’s mildly interesting.”

Oh my goodness!  A Devil Dress!   For the first time in my life, I don’t have one!  That’s why I’ve become so prim and well behaved.  My alter ego has no way of expressing herself.  We are what we wear.  Would Superman have superpowers if he wore his underpants under his tights?  Could Scooby do without his collar disc?

My maternal Grandmama dreamed up the Devil Dress.  She said every woman should have one.  A dress that’s slightly too tight, or slightly too short, or slightly too décolletage … or all of the above.  A dress that you know will bring out Naughty You … 

Grandmama was a femme fatale who exuded the predatory sensuality of old-style movie stars.  She wore killer heels, red lipstick and red nail polish throughout her life, even as a nonagenarian born-again Christian (and her toenails always matched her fingernails).  Her life was full of Devil Dress occasions, as was Mother’s.  By the time I came along, they’d drained our gene pool dry of flirt genes, but that’s not to say I haven’t had some Devil Dress moments.

Anyway … back to nipple covers.  It was horrendously hot a few weeks ago.  I spent the day with my bra clinging damply to my rib cage, the foam soaking up perspiration and occasionally leaking it down my belly.  Dressing to go out that evening, I suddenly remembered that I used to wear elastoplasts over my nipples when I wore my halter neck Devil Dress.  I resolved to abandon my bra and do the same with micropore tape and lint that happened to be in my first aid box.

It was wonderful.  Freed of clammy AA-cups, I was empowered, liberated, cool. I had a lovely evening.   I didn’t ever want to wear a bra again; or at least, not until the winter. 

Practical though my solution was, the lint/micropore tape combo wasn’t pretty.  What if I was knocked down by a bus and woke up in hospital, to face the disapproving stares of nurses whose first duty is to judge whether your underwear is clean, white and pure.  (I am led to believe that they describe the state of your underwear in secret code in your personal notes.  Those with shabby knickers get examined with extra cold stethoscopes.)

I thought of a burlesque show that I went to last year (I must tell you about that sometime – it was a hoot) and wondered if I should venture into the realms of nipple caps… so I poured myself a night cap and settled down to research the possibilities.

It usually takes a few goes to get search terms right.  I found some interesting videos on how to make sequined nipple caps, and got quite involved in a long discussion between Burlesque Belles about whether toupee tape or latex provided the best fixer.  There seemed to be quite a complex formula involving size of breast (big breasts have a bigger tassel tossing range than small ones), weight of sequins and length of tassel.

Then Eureka!  I strayed into the world of nipple covers.  Neat little flesh coloured, self-adhesive silicone discs that fit snugly over nipples and leave the rest of the breast gloriously free. 

What really pissed me off about this late-night discovery is that they are sold in most high street fashion chains, in the bra section.  Talk about ‘hidden in plain view’!  Why had I never noticed them?  Why had no one ever told me?

So I bought a pair and ventured out to have breakfast with friends, wearing nipple covers and a light summer frock.  The sense of freedom was overwhelming.  Like skinny dipping.  I resisted the urge to do a little shimmy when I met them.  I managed to avoid sneaking satisfied glances down at my tamed nipples.  I tried not to look superior when I noticed beads of sweat forming in a friend’s bra-bound cleavage.

I breakfasted in the morning sun, shopped without the shackles of bra straps and sashayed through dinner on a moonlit patio.

There were a couple of small reality checks during the coming days.  They aren’t suitable for hiking on hot days, or so I realised when I glanced down mid-walk and saw a nipple cover stuck to the toe of my boot.   Sweat tends to make them slide south.  And supermarket chiller cabinets are saboteurs as covers pop off when nipples suddenly contract in the cold. When wearing a baggy blouse, I’m not sure whether etiquette requires that you reach back into the fridge to peel your nipple cover off the yogurt pot whence it landed or simply abandon it. 

Even with those limitations, I am forever converted.   Should I get knocked over by a bus in my 90’s, the underwear police will be surprised to find little silicone covers stuck to my willful but aged nipples.  I bet there’s already a secret code for such minimalist underwear and stethoscopes lie ready in the freezer!

I’ve recently done a course on ‘menopause and beyond’, about how to not only survive but thrive after menopause. I’m a fitness instructor and I liked the idea of offering the course to my older clients.

Until I reached the module called ‘know your vulva’…

I haven’t had children so my body has never been subject to invasive scrutiny. I’m a private person. I probably verge on prudish. The title of the module made me feel a tad squeamish … but it’s good to push oneself outside one’s comfort zone… isn’t it? So I soldiered on.

There were lots of diagrams naming female parts and a detailed description on how women should undertake a monthly examination of said parts, including using a mirror to detect changes in colour.

I wondered how I got to be so old without ever thinking about the colour of my vulva. How would I know if it had already changed colour and was preparing to explode in a technicolour wave of life threatening disease. Apparently, skin changes can indicate a multitude of conditions, including lichen sclerosis. I don’t even want to remember that.

Then I read the comments in the chat room after the module had been delivered in a webinar. A fellow student (an enthusiastic and persistent chat room visitor called Rainbow who teaches yoga and frequently posts vegan recipes) couldn’t wait to deliver it to her eagerly waiting clients. She wondered what we all thought about her asking her clients to bring mirrors to the ‘know your vulva’ session so it could be a shared experience.

At this point, my brain shrank to the back of my skull and crouched there whimpering. I was now so far out of my comfort zone that I was going to need therapy. For the rest of my life.

But once thought, such things cannot be unthought. My cringing mind kept returning to the concept of a group ‘know your vulva’ session.

I suddenly realised that many, if not most, heterosexual females are probably vulva illiterate. What chance do we have to do comparison shopping? The average bloke probably knows tons more about what colour vulvas should be … indeed what shape, size, texture… Until this awful moment, I hadn’t even wondered about my own, let alone anyone else’s.

I suppose one could do some comparison shopping on the world wide web’s prolific porn offering, but it’s hard to do serious research when laughing.

I spent my young adult years in Zimbabwe, pre-world wide web. Porn wasn’t commonly available and our prudish, patriarchal society painted it as something very naughty and very exciting. I didn’t know anyone who actually admitted to seeing a porn movie. No one except my friend Liz. She was also the first woman I’d ever met who was openly gay, a Big Deal in c.1980.

A group of work colleagues and I met with her for a drink when she came back from a trip to Europe. Knowing her sexual orientation, one of the men slyly asked if she’d seen a porn movie while in Amsterdam. She airily said she wasn’t that fussed about the sight of a working penis so she’d happily joined her heterosexual travelling companion for a couple of hours in an adult movie house.

We were agog and aghast. She had actually seen porn?

“It’s very boring,” she said. “Like watching a old silent movie about the principles of the piston engine. A steam train engine jerks out of the station, the pistons working in slow motion. The train starts going down a hill. The pistons go up and down faster and faster. Then there’s a big crash. The train engine falls off the rails. And that’s it. Over and over again. The same thing.”

The imagery grew in my mind. I recalled that Maternal Grandmama played the piano accompaniment to silent movies to earn pocket money when she was between husbands. If she had a hot date, she would play the music really quickly so the projectionist had to wind the hand wound projector equally quickly, and the film finished early.

When I finally went to Amsterdam a couple of years later and saw my first porn films, I couldn’t get Liz’s description out of my mind. She was so right. I’m afraid I got the giggles as one train after another crashed and fell off the rails.

Not quite the turn on first husband had in mind.

Anyway, back to the serious business of vulvas.

I found myself mulling over the idea of Rainbow’s shared vulva experience . Would everyone have the self-discipline to only look at their own vulva as the class did a group crouch or would some cast a sideways glance at their neighbour’s mirror?

I know that men steal glances at one another’s parts while peeing in public urinals. And they comment about anything unusual, especially those that are particularly large. If penis envy is a thing, why shouldn’t vulva envy be a thing too? But would one envy those that are particularly big, or particularly small, or particularly pink… Are some vulvas prettier than others… So many questions…

My thoughts veered to Stormy Daniels revealing salacious details of her affair with Trump, including his strangely shaped penis. Is there such a thing as a weirdly shaped vulva?

Oh my goodness! What if I have a weird vulva but neither of my husbands told me? (Both are dead now so I can’t ask – and no, their demise had nothing to do with eating mushrooms.) Now I have yet another anxiety to overcome should I one day take a lover.

As age takes its toll on my body, I’m fast developing body dismorphic disorder but I hadn’t given a thought to my vulva … until now.

Is vulva shaming a thing? This may be an anxiety too far. Am I too old to become a nun?

Excuse me for a while. I’m approaching melt down. I need to take a pill and seek shelter in sleep …

As I waited for calming sleep, I found myself wondering what direction Rainbow’s yoga classes will take in future. I mean, why bother with mirrors if you can shove your nose up your… nooooooooooooo!

Best I take another pill. Good night y’all.

I’ve just returned from my cousin Ed’s wedding. It was lovely. They said it would be a no-stress, friends-only, casual do, and it was. The bride was beautiful in a pretty Indian cotton print. Ed was Ed – in immaculately pressed white shorts, white polo shirt, ankle socks and trainers. That’s how he’s comfortable and smartly comfortable he was. They wrote their own vows, spoke with love and made a genuine commitment, their way. I return home with my belief in marriage confirmed.

I couldn’t help but recall my weddings … only two! The first would provide fodder for a farce.

At the tender age of 23, I chose to marry a twice-married man of 44. Yep … I set a new standard in stupidity. My father, not generally a man of principle, drew the line at this and chose to boycott the wedding although he paid for it, which was jolly decent.

Husband-to-be, a Catholic excommunicated on the grounds of two divorces, decreed that ‘God should be involved’. Apparently God had been involved in the first two (and had done bugger all to ensure their success) but third time lucky seemed a good gamble… to him.

His sternly pious sister-in-law didn’t agree. At the engagement party, she sidled up to me and announced: “Of course, in god’s eyes, you’ll only be concubine, not wife.”

I was delighted – I was a tad worried about doing wifely stuff like making jam and tidying sock drawers but I just knew that I had it in me to be a really, really good concubine.

Not many pastors are willing to marry divorcees, particularly double divorcees. We eventually found such creature. He arrived at our home in Harare, noting we had bull terriers. The conversation started with him asking if we had instructed our gardener to beat the dogs to ensure they didn’t like black people. Hmmm … so God wasn’t to be involved after all, at least not via this ungodly racist.

(Lest you worry about my attitude towards men of god, may I add that I have been privileged to know men of faith who have inspired me and enriched my life. But the racist, misogynistic git who married me first time round wasn’t one of them.)

I’d decided to omit the ‘obey’ part from the wedding vows. That didn’t please the pastor. Without any forewarning, the text he chose for his sermon was ‘as you submit unto your husband, so you submit unto the Lord’…

(Yes, really! Ephesians 5:22–24. If you Google it, you’ll find numerous earnest Christians trying to reconcile the text with modern life, with one helpfully suggesting that ‘women should only marry men that they can submit to…’)

But not many people heard the sermon.

The ceremony, in my parent’s garden, was memorable. My husband’s best friend Parker was to be best man. He called off the week before, on account of having a nervous breakdown. But he offered to do the photography instead. As we did the ‘I do’ stuff, his camera jammed (this is prior to digital photography) and he went into the most amazing meltdown… the pastor’s words being drowned by ‘fucking camera…Jesus fucking Christ’ … As I said ‘I do’, he threw the camera onto the ground, literally jumped on it and stormed off to the bar to befriend a bottle of whiskey.

We didn’t get any family pictures or any of that traditional bride with bouquet stuff. Just as well. With Father boycotting the day, Mother was unfettered. She had a bright copper-coloured Afro hairstyle. Such was the fashion then, and she was always fashionable. She chose to team it with a red caftan imprinted with a black devil’s mask from about nipple height to knee. Was it an omen? Could she see into the future? Did she know something I didn’t?

My second wedding was lovely. The man who was to become the Best Husband In The World adored Christmas and birthdays. (I’ll probably dwell on that more later). Deciding that there was wasted party time between Christmas and New Year, he voted that we add a wedding party. So we popped off to the Welsh countryside with a group of friends for Christmas and New Year, with a wedding party to fill the time between traditional celebrations.

It snowed in that part of Wales for the first time in decades. Each day for a week, the snow partly thawed. Each night for a week, sub-zero temperatures froze the thawing snow, and the clouds dusted the ice with a sprinkling of new snow. It was very pretty.

It was also an ice rink.

I stepped out of the bridal car in a cloud of lilac silk and nearly went arse over tit as my leather boots skidded over the iced car park. I plummeted towards the steep flight of steps that forked left the registrar’s office and right to trickle down a hill to an icy moat festooned with cold, glum swans. I hung onto my purple hat for all I was worth, closely followed by my attendants whose heels scrabbled for purchase in the cobbled ice and whose shrieks echoed off the walls of the medieval houses surrounding us.

We tumbled into the venue with hot cheeks and limp hair. The registrar had thoughtfully turned the heating up high in the wedding room, and closed the windows and doors. As arranged, guests and groom had arrived before me and packed themselves into what had become a steaming sauna. I felt as thought I’d stepped into a Christmas pudding.

Himself was a traditionalist.  He had decreed that stag parties were a fine tradition to celebrate a man’s last night of bachelorhood, so it had to take place on the eve of wedding. The pub chosen for this solemn rite was dispensing a guest ale that went by the name of Santa’s Rocket Fuel, with hops liberally laced with cinnamon and nutmeg. The boys had imbibed well. The fragrance of their chosen beverage lingered on their breathe, seeped through their pores and hung in the hot air.

They had gone to bed late, risen early and stumbled to breakfast at the aforementioned pub where the publican thoughtfully served shots of rum, whisky and brandy to revive them. Those gloriously fragrant spirits mixed with Santa’s Rocket Fuel to provide rich aromas … and signalled that every man present was pissed.

I did get photographs on this occasion. I wore silvery lilac silk and overdid the fake tan. The silver blended into the backdrop of grey skies so my disembodied orange face, topped with disarranged purple hat and wild hennaed hair, seemed suspended in space like an intergalactic Orang-utan with a penchant for Mary Poppins’ hats.

Sleepless and benignly drunk, Himself was deathly pale. With dark hair that grew in a widow’s peak from his forehead, he had the look of a newly risen, slightly dim vampire.

But pictures don’t always tell the full story. Ghastly though they looked, Orang-utan and Dracula lived very happily until death did them part …

Friday started off with a surprising email from my doctor. Contrary to expectations, I wasn’t in the grip of a deadly tropical disease or about to die of an over-active imagination. Apparently the blood extracted at some cost on Wednesday revealed that I was deficient in all the B vitamins and testosterone.

So that was why I was waking up exhausted and spending the day aching to go back to bed (even taking the odd nap during the day). It wasn’t because I’m a lazy cow (the view of friends so fuelled by HRT that they can shop non-stop all day, then stalk the male population of Cape Town on Tinder all night).

My doctor recommended an array of tablets, injections and creams. I was, however, a tad anxious about her recommendation that I supplement testosterone. I had visions of sprouting facial and chest hair and my voice breaking. In my current state, I’m more Sleeping Beauty than Shrek. Do I want that to change? Is being awake all day over-rated…?

I also suffer from chronic google-itis so the obvious next step was to check out the symptoms of low testosterone in … ummm … mature… women. (I use the word ‘mature’ purely in reference to years. I subscribe to the view that if you haven’t grown up by 40, you needn’t bother.)

First in the search was a website stating Testosterone Deficiency Syndrome (TDS) is a collection of symptoms some people recognize as ageing, an untreatable condition of humanity.

I should probably state here and now that ageing is freaking me out. It isn’t going to happen. Botox and collagen fillers would be my best friends if I could afford them. If it was proved that eating a pound of squirrel shit every day would take 10 years off my face, I’d do it.

I digress… Back to testosterone deficiency and anther internet search. Apparently, the first symptom is loss of libido. Having been widowed a few years ago, I was quite pleased to see the back of that!  It’s most inconvenient having juices and drives when one’s potential partners are grumpy old buggers with creaking knees and nose hair.

The best chat up line I’ve had this year is: “You must have been beautiful when you were young”. (I guess he must have been fucking stupid all his life.)

Is it me or do men become boring quickly when left on their own after 50? I’ll probably go back to that another time.

(To avoid gender bias, I must add that single women over 50 have a tendency to witter when excited.  My golden rule is to avoid excitement at all costs.  Wearing pants that ride up your bum is a good way to suppress excitement of any kind.)  

Back to testosterone…

More research revealed that the symptoms of low testosterone are:

fatigue – got that;

disrupted sleep – never been good at sleep but maybe I always had low testosterone;

weight gain – not me.  I notice people go one way or t’other as they age. They either plump up or they wither. Unfortunately, I’m a witherer. I’m envious of my plumper-upper friends and thought I’d put on some weight in the hope of getting lovely smooth arms and apple cheeks like theirs, instead of having monkey paws and cheeks so sunken you can see the outline of my fillings. It wasn’t easy putting on weight. Sadly it wrapped around my waist like a flotation aid, while my chest remained bony and my arms and legs stayed stick-like. I looked like I belonged in a beetle drive;

depression – when the love of your life dies, you’re bound to feel a bit low so probably not a testosterone thing in my case;

anxiety – if worrying was an Olympic sport, I’d be a gold medalist. I’m becoming convinced that I’ve been low on testosterone since forever.

hair loss – I’ve always had crap hair so I thought it didn’t apply to me, but the website picture made me think twice… 

Does loss of a good bush matter? Do I want it back? Should I want it back? Apparently ‘most’ women nowadays have all their pubic hair removed (some opting to leave a little Hitler moustache atop Mons Pubis). 

As a committed environmentalist, I won’t be doing that.  It’s been at least 20 years since I’ve had the inclination to wear a swim suit. The level of deforestation required to tidy up my nether regions would surely contribute to climate change … but I digress…

anorgasmia – ehhh? I had to google that one. It’s inability to have orgasms. Do I care!!?

My doctor’s receptionist is very excited about me ‘doing testosterone’. Apparently it makes you feel amazing. She wants me to pop by in two weeks time to tell her how wonderful my life has become. Despite her enthusiasm, I was still plagued by thoughts of morphing into Shrek so headed back to google the benefits. Apparently testosterone will :

contribute to strong bones – yep – always a good thing;

help manage discomfort and pain sensitivity – my husband would mutter “where there’s no sense, there’s no feeling” as I drove garden forks through my feet and pruned my fingers while merrily gardening. My apparently high pain threshold allows me to do terrible damage to myself before I realise I’m not feeling well. Would it be good to desensitise myself further?

preserve cognitive health – another quick Google explained that’s ‘the ability to think clearly, learn and remember”. I don’t think I ever had that ability.  I’m becoming increasingly convinced that I’ve spent my lifetime low on testosterone. Having never had a clue about anything, would the sudden onset of mental clarity and a memory be good? Suddenly I’m afraid.  I’m rather fond of my slightly hazy world.

bestow a sense of well-being – Well, it’s good to feel good, isn’t it.

So, in the interests of staying awake for more than two hours at a time, having strong bones and enhancing my sense of well-being, I’ll do testosterone. At the slightest hint of morphing into Shrek, it’s going straight down the toilet. I shall report back…

One of the early Big Surprises in getting to know the man who would become The Best Husband In The World was to learn that he loved ballet.

I received the news with a touch of disbelief. Was this for real? Could this large, bearded, beer-swilling, football fanatic really love something as delicate and … umm … high-brow as ballet? Not that I’d ever seen a ballet, you understand. I was generalising horrendously. Resorting to gender stereo-typing. Judging a book by its cover.

But a lot of men have said a lot of stupid things to me in the hope of getting into my knickers (some even asked me to marry them – what a laugh) so forgive my cynicism. Was I so wrong to think that this was just another seduction technique … a good one though…

Until then, my experience of ballet had been negative. And limited – ballet wasn’t big in central Africa where I grew up.

I was a very very thin child, with knobbly knees, sharp elbows and a chin like an ice pick. Even my grandmothers were reluctant to cuddle me, wary of the bruises my bony body would inflict. Attempts to feed me up failed. When I was about five, Mother decided I should do ballet, in the hope that I would develop some muscle to clad my skeletal frame.

I recall the lesson vividly. It was in a school hall in Blantyre, painted drab green as government buildings were, and smelling of blocked drains. I wasn’t keen on Teacher. She was short and round and excitable. What I now realise was a theatrical application of sparkly eye shadow and red lipstick (much of it bleeding into the lines around her eyes and mouth) was the stuff of nightmares.

Apparently I was quite a disturbing child. Apparently I had a way of observing adults with a detached intensity which made them feel self-conscious. Apparently that’s what I did to Teacher.

She got quite shrieky, insisting I hold my foot ‘like this’, demonstrating her requirement with a plump pump-clad foot. I tried but I couldn’t please her. Mother came to collect me and Teacher said I was disobedient and naughty. ‘I tried to do what she was doing’, I protested. ‘You can’t do this?’ Mother asked in disbelief, pointing her foot elegantly. (She had beautiful hands and feet. I don’t.) I copied her, nearly elegantly. ‘Why didn’t you do that for me’ demanded Teacher. ‘Because that isn’t what you were doing,’ I said reasonably. ‘You’re feet are fat and don’t point.’

Mother decided not to take me back.

(Not long after, Mother decided not to take me back to Sunday School because I pissed the teacher off there as well. I tend to take things literally. Teacher said Jesus was our friend and we should talk to him and he would talk to us. All the other kids nodded happily and said Jesus was their friend and they talked to him and he talked to them. Well, I kept talking to him but he didn’t talk to me so I was hurt and told Teacher as much. Teacher told Mother I was a disruptive smart arse and maybe Sunday School wasn’t for me – not in quite so many words, you understand, but you get the drift.)

Anyway, I digress. Back to ballet.

Himself wasn’t kidding. He took me to the ballet weeks later – nothing less than the Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London. It was the best date ever. I still feel all tingly at the memory. I was entranced, bewitched, smitten… with the ballet and with him. Fairy dust sticks. The magic stays with me, more than 30 years later.

When we got married, Himself’s Boss gave us a box at the Royal Opera House as a wedding present. Not a box of chocolates. The kind of box that the Queen sits in when she goes to the theatre, with red velvet seats, free Champagne and tiny smoked salmon sandwiches. I was ecstatic. I rather disliked the Boss but this gift redeemed him. I was prepared to give him another chance.

We invited our best friends Colin* and Dymphna* to join us in the Box. Dymphna bought a complete new outfit for the occasion and made Colin wear a tie that matched his shirt. I’ve lived a lovely life and am privileged to have many wonderful memories but that evening is in the top 10.

Himself thanked the Boss again a few days later, saying the evening had been all the more special with the company of Colin and Dymphna. Boss looked at him with incredulity.

“My dear boy,” he intoned, “You completely missed the point … don’t you know that sex in a Royal Opera box has the same caché as sex in the toilet on Concorde?” (We’re going back a few years here…)

Ehhh? Call me boring but a bonk in a Box somehow doesn’t do it for me. Clearly it does for some though… I was haunted for years by the nightmarish thought of the Boss bonking in a box. And now, should I watch the Royal Variety Show on British TV, my eyes are glued to the Royal Box, waiting for the Queen and Prince Phillip’s heads to bob below the balcony…

Back in Africa, it’s not quite like the Royal Ballet. Not that I want to sound snobbish or anything. And it isn’t because there aren’t any boxes to bonk in.

We are lucky here to have access to world-class performances. The Americans are big on cultural exchanges, dispatching the cream of their classical artistes around the world in a desperate attempt to prove that there’s more to ‘Murica’ than their … umm …uncultured president.

Excited though I was at the prospect of seeing the best of the New York ballet recently, I was also a tad anxious. Our local theatre provides the frisson of a slippery stage. It’s possibly the world’s only extreme ballet venue.

Will the prima ballerina land in the principal dancer’s arms or take a short flight into Row C? Going to the ballet here poses the same Big Question as Formula 1 Grand Prix. Do you go to appreciate the finesse of the world’s best or for the excitement of the crashes?

Now I might be wrong about the stage. Maybe it’s just me but, at a recent performance of Giselle, I could have sworn that Albrecht swooped into the wings just a little faster and little sooner than we might reasonably have expected …

On this occasion, the Americans proved they were up to the task. There were a couple of wobbles, even a teensy fall, but they recovered magnificently.

I’m ashamed to say that I was just a little disappointed …