Columns written during my time at IOL, and some written in the years since I left.
Cape Town – When I was at school, there was a girl who had shiny, straight, black hair. I wanted her hair more than almost anything. Mine was (and is) an unmanageable mess – a wavy, frizzy, bumpy, boring brown mass of hair. Short or long, it has kinks and cowslicks and crinkles, and a tendency to go to dreadlocks if I neglect to brush it with great fierceness at least twice a day.
According to British TV presenter Ben Fogle, Lego is a Bad Thing. Apparently Fogle is an adventurer (though perhaps not as well known in South Africa as Bear Grylls), and he had a rush of blood to the head at the annual conference of the Boarding Schools’ Association in Manchester. Oddly, as he was once a brand ambassador for Lego, he is reported to have told the gathering that modern Lego is harming children’s development…
Cape Town – So, Freedom Day. On Tuesday night I reflected quietly on the freedom of not setting an alarm for the following morning, but resisted the temptation to share the thought on social media for fear of seeming to trivialise the day [April 27]. On Wednesday we had a friend round for a braai, who said that as she was driving to our house someone on the radio was talking about how we voted…
Cape Town – So, is there a “bitch switch” or not? Cell C CEO Jose do Santos has had a terrible week for saying – on online radio station CliffCentral- that they do. After an outcry, he apologised. Then senior women managers at Cell C issued a statement supporting him, saying that while he had chosen some inappropriate words, these were “far outweighed [by] what he has done for every employee in this company, particularly…
Cape Town – When my niece was in Grade 2, she needed an empty shoebox for a project. This should have been simple – but it wasn’t. Neither my sister, my mother nor I had such a thing as an empty shoebox. I had to ask a colleague (who has beautiful taste in shoes) to bring one to the office so that the school could get its project.
A back injury forced me to lie down for weeks at a time. This is what I learned…
Cape Town – Every week, I have to come up with an idea for a column. Sometimes the idea is right there in front of me. Sometimes there are lots of ideas I just don’t want to touch. And sometimes there is nothing at all. This was one of those weeks. What, I said to my husband and son, am I going to write about? Jack, 13, had an instant response: write about Magic The…
