Soul Muti

This time last year I was worked for a mail order company (specializing in home décor) in Chiswick, London. It was my first real job outside of bars and restaurants. The thrill of having my own desk, a company e-mail address and a pile of clients to phone made me feel just like a grown up. I couldn’t wait to get home on my first day, crack open a larger and start moaning about how the boss was riding me.

The work itself was an eye opener.
I spent all day telling people their orders were not going to be delivered on the dates they were promised. You could basically cut the responses in half.

It was lonely widows and widowers who simply bought stuff for the sake of it. It hardly mattered whether or not the silk parasols and lampshades were going to arrive on time. They just wanted someone to speak to when you called. I could have said the shipment of stock was highjacked by a team of kangaroos wielding laser guns and they would have said, “ah, bless Dear, it’s allriii’”.

The second half of clients wanted heavy compensation or a trinket of my blood sent over instead. “Three months for a disco light! Outrageous!” They’d scream obscenities and curse my family until the office manager came up with a solution. No matter how happy or understanding you sound, telling someone that the goods they’ve paid for will take another three months to arrive is no fun.

“Put me back in the cage, this is heinous!” I thought after my first month.
When people started posting photos of the December holidays on facebook I wanted to crawl into a ball and scream for the beach sand.

So today’s post goes out to anyone sitting in an office far away, feeling like being an adult isn’t all its cracked up to be. Even if times are tough in South Africa with jobs, politics and crime, its still home and we all love it as is, warts and all. Especially when the sun shines and the waves are cranking.

I took a few pics of Anne Avenue in St Francis this morning, showing some of the progress the beach project has made. You can see the level of damage to the parking lot and then how much the beaches have improved since the project went ahead a few weeks ago. Very impressive.