How do you respond when..?

At a social function this weekend (read: raucous birthday party), I found myself in two awkward situations.

The first was when I decided to show my newly married friend, who is very excitable about engagements and betrothals, my spiffy glow-in-the-dark nail art. I did this by holding my hand up to her face, similar to how... say... a fiancee might brandish some new jewelry.

LA's face lit up. She inhaled a giant gulp of air and I could hear the squeal forming in the back of her throat, when I realised what she thought I had just tried to tell her*. At the same time, she realised that there was, in fact, no jewelry to brandish. The squeal petered out and her expression went from delighted to bemused, while my hand went from stationary to frantically flapping.

"No, no, no, no... it's not that! Oh god, no. Sorry. Look at the nails.... they glow. In the dark. Um. Not so exciting now, after all of that."

Moving swiftly on.

Later that same night, LA and I had the (dis)pleasure of meeting a Dodgy Old Man. Urrrgh, I get the grils just thinking about him now. Dodgy Old Man was introduced to me, shook my hand and stepped in closer for a few cheek-to-cheek kisses. Now, it may be the Dutch way to greet people with three cheek-kisses (right cheek, left cheek, and right again) - but that's for people that you know and have met before. for people you have just met, you shake hands. Klaar.

Anywho, there's more to this story. So, he gets a few cheek kisses in, when his girlfriend pipes up with, "that's how we met... we went from cheek kisses to french kissing in one action!"

Ew.

But there's more. They demonstrated this 'action', in case we were having any difficulty trying not to picture it.

Ew.
Eew.

LA and I tried to carry on as politely as we could. We got the topic back on to safer ground and he mentioned his daughter. I asked how old she was.

Dodgy Old Man: "She's thirty four."
Dodgy Old Man's GF: "Same age as me!"
Dodgy Old Man: "Except she's five months older."

I had nothing. He's 61, she's 34. I had just seen them snogging for public benefit and now learnt that he might as well be shagging his own daughter. Lost for words, I felt there was nothing to do - except blow the party blower I happened to be holding.

"Pppppppppppp."

And on that note I walked away. I'm really not sure what the etiquette books would recommend for that situation. What do you think?


* Note: this is not unlike the email I recently sent to Little Big Sis, which - for lack of a better subject - was titled 'Week 11'. Little Big Sis is apparently in a very fertile crowd at the moment and so knows lots of pregnant women - all of whom give her weekly updates, "week 12 through to 36... ".

Little Big Sis initially thought my email was a pregnancy announcement. Sorry to disappoint everyone. I am not engaged and I am not pregnant. Just thought I'd clear that up.

Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein

Hi. So, it's been a while. Some would say, almost a month. Pathetic. I promise to start blogging more regularly again. I also promised to start going to gym and eat healthier. So... ja. Hmm.

I have no excuses. Things are quiet at work. Turns out people aren't so big on hiring new people when there's a credit crunch/economic crisis/recession/global warming, whatever the papers are calling it. So there aren't many vacancies going, but there are lots of desperate people around. It's not fun - a completely different side to recruitment to what I've been dealing with over the last two years.

When previously job hunters could pick and choose from three job offers at a time, now hiring managers can faff and fart about making a decision between ten top notch candidates for weeks - because they know the applicants will still be there, or if they're not then others just as employable will be.

In other news, I haven't broken anything - on me or any one else - for a while either. Makes for boring blogging. Oh sure, there was the odd glass or two (Mills keeps insisting that we need to purchase a new 'full' set of glasses, but I maintain the mix-and-match look is in this season) but that's nothing new.

Oooh, big news is that we're going to the French Open to watch (hopefully) some of the big boys play in the final weekend. Ticketing opened on March 1 at midnight and Mills and I spent the first three hours of the morning just trying to get onto the website. It was totally worth it. Come Friday 5th June we will be sitting in Phillipe Chatier centre court, hopefully watching Federer or Nadal in the semi-finals. Dear god, please don't let it be that twat Andy Murray. I wish someone would caption one of his 'gun show' poses with, "I am mouse, hear me squeak", preferably complimenting it with a rippling shot of Roger and Rafa on either side. I don't know why, but that twit really grinds my cogs.

Besides the French Open, Mills and I don't have any other big adventures planned for this year. Yet. We definitely need a holiday in the sun somewhere...

Speaking of holidays, I've recently learnt about three places that I would love to be able to say I've been to...

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (in Wales)
Tetaumatawhakatangihangakoauaotamateaurehaeaturipukapihimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuaakitanarahu(in New Zealand)
And Krungthepmahanakornamornratanakosinmahintarayutthayamahadilokphopnopparatrajathaniburiromudomrajaniwesmahasatharnamornphimarnavatarnsathitsakkattiyavisanukamprasit (in Thailand apparently)

Unfortunately, I can't say any of them. Having only just got the hang of Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein, I don't think I'm going to master those names any time soon. Maybe I could just write about it, once I've been there.

Protest?

I'm not sure I understand the logic...

I'm not presuming to know these people's life stories, but I'm guessing they're living in a camp because they have no where else to go. They have nothing. The authorities want to relocate them somewhere else. True, it's not nice to relocate. I for one will do pretty much anything to stay in my comfort zone. But I would not burn my home, burn everything I own, in order to protest about moving somewhere else. But I guess that's just me.

So now you still have to move, but the good news is... you have nothing to move. Well played.

In other news, he may be single-handedly destroying our ice caps by endorsing fuel-guzzling motor races to the North Pole and such like, but let's face it... Jeremy Clarkson can write a column. Bless him for adding Joburg to his list of politically incorrect rants.