The Tooth is Out There.

It’s an unfortunate reality that during the most awkward moments of your life, you are often in the hands of a stranger. Giving birth, having your legs waxed, or placing a discreet enquiry at the pharmacy.

The indignity is bad enough when the person is sane, if a little desensitised. For example, when your first-ever gynaecologist grabs latex gloves and an instrument shaped like a giant duck and asks you, in a bored sort of voice, where you go to school. Or when a beautician casually tells you her kids’ names whilst pouring hot wax into bits you didn’t know you had.

I don’t think human beings are made for this kind of encounter. We’re not socialised to expect it. The horror is compounded when you throw into the mix a practitioner who is just – for want of a politically correct term – flat-out cracking nuts. I’m not talking about a person who is so used to their job that it makes them a little insensitive*. I’m talking about completely oh-my-God-get-me-out-of-here bananas. (Like a proctologist who can't stop talking about his ex, or a psychologist obsessed with antique china poodles.) And yet because the situation is already so completely fucking weird, your brain doesn’t have anything on file for what to do with an added element of crazy - it is already in full-out suspension of disbelief. It digs into its database for notes on Stranger With Latex Gloves (Customs officer – stop breathing, do not attempt humour), cross-references it with They Are Very Angry About Their Divorce (nod and smile) again with Near Your Naked Buttocks (run), and lastly with You Are Paying Them For It (no results found). In the end your brain merges all possible answers and winds up with this:

Often, you end up just combining a random selection of known social behaviours, hoping one of them will turn the scene normal again.

My biggest 404 came about two years ago, when I had to have a root canal. Because it had been botched previously by my regular dentist, a colleague recommended the province’s root canal specialist. “Go to him,” she urged. “He’s dishy. You’ll love him.”

Now, there are a few phrases in the world that should instantly set off alarm bells for any halfway intelligent human being. One of them is, “You can’t miss it.” Never has anyone using this phrase given me directions that didn’t land me in the middle of Malmesbury with a bright red light flashing on my what-the-fuck-o-meter. But it’s even worse when someone says, “You’ll love xyz.” Because whatever it is, not only should you know that you will not love it, you will also feel duty-bound for the rest of your life – whether it’s the person’s hairdresser or a particular kind of pudding – to validate their assessment and pretend you did love it.

In fairness to my colleague, I admit that when I first cast an eye over this root canal meister there was a fleeting – very fleeting – resemblance to George Clooney. Something about the greying hair and the Strong Masculine Jaw. But I should also have remembered that my colleague was rather more open-minded than I was and that no sane human being would ever specialise in root canals. It’s just not normal. Alarm bell 2: he did not once, during our entire encounter, smile. It was as though he had a permanent dose of Novocaine in the base of each cheek, keeping his expression and tone of voice eerily soft and static. Alarm bell 3: no assistant. Alarm bell 4: he started working at 5am. Call me prejudiced, but I just don’t trust people who are functional that early in the morning.

Maybe it was so that nobody would hear us scream.

On the morning of my appointment, I walked into the deserted building at 6am, took the deserted elevator to the top floor, and found him waiting alone in his rooms. “Hello,” he greeted me, starting off well enough. “Won’t you have a seat? We’re going to be about an hour.”

“Thank you,” I said, still all small talk and good humour. “Do you have a toilet I can use before we begin?”

“Certainly,” he answered evenly, and handed me a key.

Incongruity #1: Dangling off the keyring were several human teeth. A little brown in places. Attached to a pink, plastic gum-guard.

My brain, finding nothing in its filing system to cope with this, went straight to Default Setting – Give a Compliment. “Nice keyring,” I said warmly.

“Thank you,” was his deadpan reply. “They were a patient’s.”

On the toilet, I took a few moments to think about whether to run and pretend the whole thing had never happened. But denial (“maybe he’s just a little eccentric”), and the fact that my handbag was still in the reception area, led me back to the waiting room. It was the last moment of that appointment where I didn’t feel sure I was in the hands of a serial killer. His actual surgery room – and I don’t want to exaggerate, now – looked like a morgue straight out of Law and Order. Everything was pale minty green, oddly dilapidated and peeling in places, and reeked of formaldehyde. Icy fluorescent lights. Unnatural silence. The tinkling instruments being sharpened.

I sat in the chair. I was cool. I had done this sort of thing before.

Now the thing with a nerve-wracking situation is that your brain seeks any – any­ – aspect of familiarity for comfort. So the way to send you completely over the edge is to tamper with the little things. The things you expect. The way the light looks, or the angle of the chair.

He turned the chair upside down.

I was strapped in, dangling at an 80-degree angle to the floor, head at the bottom and feet pointing absurdly into the air.

“I find I work better at this angle,” he said darkly. “Don’t you?”

I didn’t have time to answer him, because the next thing I knew a dental dam had been clapped over my nose and mouth. Now, if you’ve never had a dental dam, I’ve got one word for you: don’t. You can’t breathe because it’s covering your nose and mouth, and if you’re this particular root canal specialist, you’ve rigged it so that the patient’s jaw is locked in position and it is very uncomfortable indeed, and you’ve strapped their limbs in so that they can’t poke you in the eye and run for their lives. I tried to mention that I was claustrophobic.

“Mbbrldble,” I said.

“I know!” he said. “Much more hygienic!”

Now the thing with dentistry is that it’s ideally suited to monologuing. The patient can’t say anything – especially if their jaw is locked around a dental dam – so you can basically treat them to any subject you like.

“Where do you work?” he asked, just a little hungrily.

“Grgle,” I said.

“Oh I know already, I read it on your form,” he nodded gleefully. “But I noted it because I have a story for you! Headline news!”

And he started talking. And talking. And talking. Turns out he was not just a root canal specialist, but also an amateur sleuth. And his deductions had led him - in travels spanning approximately 65% of the globe – to believe Brett Kebble was still alive.

“I know where he is, too,” he said smugly. “I know where he’s hiding. And I can get his bank records.”

“Grgh?” I asked.

“You bet,” he said. “And I’m not telling yet, either. Because my time will come. And I’m going to out him. I’ll make millions. I’m the only one that knows. But because I like you, I’ll give you a clue. I found the answer on a mountain in Switzerland.”

He flashed his drill thoughtfully.

“Of course, I guess I could show you. You wouldn’t tell anyone else, would you? I don’t really like people. But we could make a trip of it. Get the newspaper to pay. Take some pictures. Sell the story. Share the money.”

He paused. “But I’d need to finish your teeth first.

“Can you see my probe anywhere?”

----------------------

* Witness the teenager ahead of me in the pharmacy queue this morning, who exhibited telltale symptoms of Embarrassing Itchism – fuschia -coloured ears and an inability to form audible consonants. Not that I needed the clues, because the doddering pharmacist nodded, smiled, and bellowed: “SORRY DEAR, I CAN’T HEAR YOU. IS THAT ORAL OR VAGINAL?”

A Sign of the Times.

Do you ever have those weeks where you just can’t shake the feeling you’re the butt of a giant bureaucratic joke? Where, with the bewilderment of poor Truman before you, you are trapped in an administrative farce of Shakespearean proportions?

You know – the kind of week where you get called aside because Jill from call centre has, in earnest, filed a complaint with your manager that you spilled a small blob of yoghurt in the office sink (true story). Or you take your computer in for repairs and the technician tells you, with a straight face, that he’s lost all your data but you owe him R3000 for the installation of hardware you didn’t ask for (also a true story).

It’s been that kind of week for me. The kind of week where you know, in some temporarily inaccessible part of yourself, that actually it is the rest of the world that has gone bananas. But it still smarts.

Never do I feel the sting of this brazen, batshit-craziness quite as strongly as when I’m reading street signs. My capacity for reasoning peeks out to investigate, registers an unrecognisable entity, and shuts right back down with a resounding COMPUTER SAYS NO. I know, in the deepest part of myself, that the municipality cannot be serious. That when they paint this:

…they do not actually expect me to understand what to do in a life-or-death situation when I’m operating a three-ton killing machine at 120 km/h.

(For the record, this sign does not mean “portly alien with chastity belt ahead”. It means “vehicles with dangerous loads only”.)

The devilish power of the bureaucratic bullshit generator is that it actually can make you feel like a simpleton, even though you know they must be having you on. I’m telling you: go into any signwriting office and you’ll find cubicles full of snarky designers laughing their heads off and cashing in on everyone else’s terror of inadequacy. I can hear it: “Hey Bob! Bob! This one looks just like YOUR MOMMA, Bob! Ha ha ha ha ha! I’m gonna use it as a tunnel warning!”

I get the same feeling when I’m doing IQ tests. That there must be some chuckle factor I’m missing; it simply is not possible that everybody in the world gets it except me. Last year, I took over 12 online tests in one day when every single test bar one told me I was clinically retarded. (I’m serious.) One even said kindly: “Subject should not be given tasks outside of his/her skill range, as this can be demoralising. With guidance and encouragement, confidence may be developed and subject may eventually be groomed for a position of moderate responsibility, such as a janitor or Wal-Mart cashier.”

Well.

Maybe there is something wrong with me. I have the same problem with the instructions on childproof caps and basic kitchen appliances. I can never get the damn lid off the Panado and it took me a year to set up my oven when – seriously – all I had to do was stick in the tray and burn the gas off by turning the oven on for 20 minutes. But to be fair, wouldn’t you be confused if you were confronted with the following instructions?

1. Do not use appliance for other than intended use.
2. Turn the heater switch dial on the position.
3. Turn the Time Control to desired darkness. Bell will ring.

Is it just me, or does that last line in particular sound a little… apocalyptic?

Of course, just in case you really are the moron you think you are by this time, the writer kindly includes a few basic life-saving instructions that are unambiguous enough for even those of dubious intelligence to understand:

1. Do not immerse appliance in water or wash it under waterspout.
(Seriously – it’s an oven. Who do they think I am, He-Man?)
2. Never leave the appliance unattended under any circumstances.
(Whoops, better get a sitter for those times when I’m not home, baking.)
3. Do not store any materials in the oven. (Well, there goes the cat’s bed.)

I hate feeling that my survival depends on joining this discourse of insanity. That whether I’m trying to get my breakfast from the office kitchen, navigating through the city or trying to open a fire extinguisher when my car goes up in flames, I’ll have to learn the language of bureacracy first. It’s like being trapped in a never-ending episode of Survivor: Urban Edition. And knowing that, although there's no escape for me, the tribe has spoken.

Neither Queer nor There.

Gays these days! What’s up with all the hatin' on Steven and Tiwonge? Sure, young love is fickle. One minute you’re all Romeo and Romeo, embracing lifelong incarceration for the man of your dreams. Next thing you’re hot-footing it back to your home village, trotting into the sunset with some hussy named Dorothy.

Jawellnofine, love hurts. But why is the rest of the world acting like they’ve been slapped in the face?

Let me tell you something: if I had the whole of Malawi threatening to give me a spanking – and not the fun kind - I’d also let Dorothy munch on my Mbatata cookie.

And I don’t think that would delegitimise the relationship that came before.

There’s a funny trend going on here; the assumption that a) being gay is absolute and b) there’s no choice involved. That it’s some kind of biological finality made null and void the second someone displays any ambivalence or looks at their orientation from another vantage point. And the second they do, blam! There goes any claim to support. Because obviously they can help it, the little ingrates.

So personally, I’ve found a breed out there I hate far more than homophobes. And that’s the type who trumpets, righteously, that gays shouldn’t be judged because they can’t help it.

Seriously? That’s the best defence you can come up with?

Every debate around homophobia has some do-gooder tacked on the end, bleating lamely that homosexuality appears in animals or that some chemical explanation has been found for it in humans. But intentions aside, are they any better than their homo-hatin’ brothers and sisters? Their logical process is both patronising and fundamentally flawed. I’ll rather take an honest-to-goodness conservative any day. At least they have the balls to nail their colours to a mast. But limply cooing that the poor gays can’t help their abnormality, and then patting yourself on the head for being such a stand-up, open-minded guy? Stick it, bru. We don’t need your pity.

People claiming gayness is a biological absolute belong in the same category as the so-called Caster Semenya supporters who kept snivelling that she was a “real girl”. Just take a moment and think about what you’re saying. That Caster would only be okay if she weren’t intersex? That being gay wouldn’t be okay if there were an element of choice?

Here’s another news flash for you, my friend. There’s always a choice. Sexual bonding is fluid and many people the world over – regardless of orientation – are married to, or sleep with people they aren’t 100% in love with. It can be done. Whether they are in an arranged marriage or married for money or the romance died or perhaps they just made a poor choice of partner, staying there always boils down to free will. People prioritise what they need most. For some, this is status, morality, convenience, acceptance or even basic safety. For others, it’s love.

But that’s not the point. The point is we should be allowed to explore our options. We shouldn’t be open to dissection by either homophobes or homophiles. It’s nobody’s bloody business but our own.

Moreover, the idea of absolute sexual orientation – betrayed by any exception to a person’s general preference – is tripe. Many of us have the capacity to fall in love not with a gender, but an individual. I know many people – myself included – who have been attracted to both men and women in varying degrees, depending on who they were. I know many people with powerful attractions to the same sex who manage, happily, to love partners of the opposite sex, and vice versa. Being gay isn’t a physical abnormality that leaves you totally unable to connect with someone of the opposite sex. Ultimately it’s a sexual preference, i.e. what you prefer. An orientation, i.e. where you place yourself. Yes, there are gay people who are only attracted to the same sex and straight people who are only attracted to the opposite sex. But they’re on two ends of a spectrum. The rest of us fall somewhere in between, and we shouldn’t have to hide behind “I can’t help it” to justify our choices. Or commit to one gender for life to validate public support.

Those who say gays should be accepted because they can’t help it – because the poor lambs just can’t bear someone of the opposite sex – are still reading from the same moral rulebook as any homophobe; they’re just on a different page. They still aren’t seeing that choice or no choice, no one has the right to tell others what to do.

Our legal system is here to prevent people and animals getting hurt. No more, no less. It prevents injustice, violence, and abuse of beings who can be overpowered into sex against their will. It is not here to make moral statements about private relationships between consenting adults.

So please, defenders, next time you’re feeling magnanimous and handing out badges for Pat a Gay Day, please remember that we are not ill and we are not children.

And then, for the love of Pete (and his partner Gerald), just shut the fuck up.

-----

*In case you've been living under a rock, Steven Monjeza (26) and Tiwonge Chimbalanga (20) were a Malawian couple recently imprisoned for being gay. After massive international protests, they were pardoned - only for Monjeza to leave Chimbalanga and begin a controversial relationship with 24-year-old Dorothy Gulo, rumoured to be a prostitute. According to news reports, they plan to marry.

** This piece has also been published by TheDailyMaverick.co.za. Be a pal and give them some love, because they rock.

The Importance of Being Comatose.

So I spent today making sums. This is because an angry client came knocking with a project which (for reasons that I promise will not interest you, and did not really interest me either) had been dragging on for 18 months in the hands of five writers who I can only guess were rescued from a Russian mail order bride catalogue or a rehab for injured circus bears. Client finally realised, today, that it had to be redone from scratch. By me. And wanted it completed today. By me.

Unfortunately I suffer from a rare form of involuntary muscular contraction which occasionally forces my jaw to form words I do not mean. In this case, I meant to say “Are you completely fucking insane? These documents were finger-painted by sea-cows!” but instead my lips went: “Ok, sure. It shouldn’t be a problem.”

It only took me about three seconds to realise the consequences of my mistake, but by that time it was too late. So, because I am a sensible person, I did the only sensible thing, which was to freeze in terror and immediately go onto Facebook and tell everyone I knew OMG I HAVE SO MUCH WORK I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M GOING TO DO PLS HELP GUYS SRSLY. Which in turn led to a friend thoughtfully distracting me by asking what she should do with her hair.

Of course, this was a situation in which I did know what to do, so I did what all good friends do – listened without judgement, although I clearly had the answer neatly stored in my multi-faceted brain – and offered helpful insights without forcing her hand. Because I am a woman of both precision and generosity of spirit, I illustrated my objective report using a number of advanced statistical models.

And because I realised you might be wondering about how to style your new haircut, I decided to share it with you.*

Hypothesis
a) You are a person who washes your hair regularly and styles/ blow-dries it.
b) Towel-drying, brushing and styling your hair takes approximately 15 minutes, if you are reasonably quick.
c) There are 24 hours in a day and 364 ¼ days in a year.
d) Our generation’s life expectancy has increased from +- 80 to well over 90, meaning the average person has approximately 80 solid blow-drying years.

Calculation
If you spend 15 min per day blow-drying your hair, that’s 1,75 hours of your life each week, which is 638,75 hours a year, and if you live to be 90 that means you've wasted 51 100 hours or 5,8 years blowing hot air at yourself.

Conclusion
Let the little fuckers curl.

Of course, once you start this line of thinking, it’s only a matter of time before your brain starts taking some logical leaps and your heart starts sinking at the thought of your life ending, one miserable, procrastinatory moment at a time. If, as I do, you spend inordinate amounts of time Googling random factoids, you will already know that the average person spends six months of their life licking stamps, or that you will probably spend 27 years of your life asleep (50 if you’re me). Or, at a conservative estimate, 86 days shaving your legs.

You will also spend six months on the loo (10 years if, like mine, your toilet is the quietest place in your house), 2,5 years with a headache (more if you’re an asexual housewife, presumably), 13 years watching TV (50 if you’re American), and four years standing in queues (eight if you’re South African and it’s Home Affairs).

But what about those other things that sneak up on you? Like drooling, staring into space, or trying to figure out new ways to annoy taxi drivers?** Or lying comatose on a heap of dirty laundry, watching Walker Texas Ranger?

I am now 29, and a series of foolproof calculations has led me to the sobering realisation that I spend:

• half a month every year on Facebook,
• a month every year looking up random crap online, like the history of facial transplants or the longest dog ever recorded (nine feet from nose to tail – it was a Newfoundland/ Great Dane cross),
• 22,8 days a year in traffic,
• 15 days a year napping (naps being snoozes that fall outside of the normal eight-hour sleep night),
• at least nine days a year on a treadmill,
• 8,5 days a year swearing because I can’t find something,
• eight days a year re-reading Harry Potter books,
• eight days a year cleaning,
• five days a year making truly terrible puns,
• four days a year in the bath (I was hoping for more, actually),
• four days a year eating cereal (see above comment),
• 2,5 days a year SMSing,
• 2,5 days a year looking up Dolly Parton quotes,
• two days a year closing cupboard doors my girlfriend hasn’t noticed she’s about to bang her head on,
• 45 days a year lying on the laps of various people I love, and
• 438 hours a year whimpering to Anna that I want chocolate.
  

That already takes me to - hold me - 197,05 days out of a 354,25 day year. And I haven’t even started adding up the time I spend drinking gin, eating pears, lying in the sun, writing posts like this, avoiding the bank manager or watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer reruns.

My only hope is clearly learning to multi-task (e.g. making puns on the toilet, or closing cupboard doors while chewing). But it's a long road ahead, and I fear the strand of optimism is a thin one.

* Well, if you are reading this, you are probably Anna. Hi, fan.
** Though this is a worthy enough cause to justify at least 12 years of dedicated effort.

Shag, Marry or Push Off a Cliff.

When I was a growing girl in the idyllic mountain village of Lower Woodstock, we used to play a wonderful game called Shag, Marry or Push off a Cliff. The object of the game is to drink a lot of whisky.

No, seriously. The object of the game is to completely flummox your opponent; that is, give them a combination of names that leaves them well and truly snookered, unable to make a worthy choice.

It works like this. You name three people, and your opponent has to choose who of the three they would kill, marry, or have a one-night stand with. If they cannot choose, or look unreasonably grossed out by all possible options, you win.

Relevance to this post: I find myself losing daily in a horrifying ongoing game of Shag Marry or Push X-treme - Reality Edition.

Scores:

South African political landscape: 1.

Me: 0.

Winning question:

Choose who to represent your point of view in the struggle songs debate: Steve Hofmeyr, Gwede Mantashe or the FF+.

*game over*

Liars, Damn Liars and Estate Agents.

As my friend Claire puts it: "Estate agents - it's like they are trying to win some amazing lying competition. They spend the day stewing, then go home and mail their lies to the estate agent evil brain. If the lie is lame, they are instantly frazzled into frog-soup. But if the lie is judged to be suitably evil, it is directly downloaded into the brains of other estate agents."

If you have never bought a home before, you will not fully appreciate the horror that is an estate agent on the prowl for gullible first-time homeowners. They are like witches out to lure babes in the wood, denizens of the underworld scattering little crumb-lies leading to the door of a house of horrors. You think you're following a trail of chocolates to a humble cottage coated in honeysuckle, but beyond the threshold is eye of newt and stench of fish; seventies tile and roach-brown rug. And such is their power that no matter where these demon-agents lead you, your tongue instantly freezes, leaving you unable to say: "Get thee behind me, devil-wench: this is no north-facing investment opportunity, but a dingy hell-hovel overrun with the ghosts of house-hunters previously sacrificed in your bizarre legal-parasatanic ritual. Fly!"

No, instead you say: "Um, I need some time to think about it. Here, have my phone number."

In a way, you've almost got to respect it. Whatever they're doing, it's a devilishly powerful bulldozing spell. So, as I surrender to the enemy and give the bank my soul in exchange for the one sparkling gem cowering in an otherwise terrifying property market, I give you this page in honour of the lies I was told by estate agents during my year-long house-hunt.

Standard-issue sales lies (evil score: novice):

1. You will never find another property of this calibre in your price range.

2. I’m embarrassed to take your offer to my client. Nobody sells flats for that.*

3. Somebody else is desperate for this flat, so you'd better take it before I give it to them.

More adventurous lies (evil score: shortlisted):

1. That’s not a cockroach.

2. Neither is that. Or that!

3. [Same agent’s last desperate attempt, after the third cockroach in 10 minutes ran over her foot] Well, I’ve been an estate agent for 20 years and never in my two decades have I ever seen a unit that didn’t have a large cockroach colony. Frankly, you’d be wasting your time looking for one that didn’t.

4. Pest control in external drains and communal areas is never done in flat buildings. I’ve never heard of a flat building that does it.

5. It’s really difficult to find flats where birds are allowed. If you want to find something in your price range, you should really consider selling your pet.

6. [Later, by the same agent] Some estate agents would advise you to sell your pet. I would never ask that of you.

7. That’s not a flea.

8. I’ve never seen a flea here before. Didn’t you bring those in with you?

9. [After a neighbour told me never to buy in the building because the security and maintenance were terrible] That’s just a tenant. You must never listen to tenants. They lie all the time. Everybody knows that.

10. If you buy now, we will build walls and install gates around the complex so that you have secure parking.**

11. This is the place to be if you want to avoid traffic. It's so quiet. (Lansdowne Road!)

Downright outrageous lies (evil score: direct download):

1. Oh dearie, dearie me. We do have champagne tastes on a Coke budget, don't we?

2. Well, if you don’t like the balcony, I can’t see that the body corporate wouldn’t agree to rebuild the whole building’s balconies in a different style. They talk about it all the time.***

3. Steer is a wonderful managing agent.****

4. White people don’t live in buildings like that. If I were the agent, I’d refuse to sell it to you. Now this one, on the other hand, is all right for a white person.

5. Fleas lie in wait in empty buildings for a blood host to enter. They do this in all empty buildings. Didn’t you know that?


* One week later, the self-same client dropped her asking price to R20 000 below what I’d offered, completely of her own accord.

**Thanks to Alistair James for this. Five years later, still nothing.

***Thanks to Claire O’Neill for this. Well done to estate agent for neatly bypassing the "permission for structural changes" law.

**** Steer is the managing agent that left my previous flat building infested with Godzilla-sized sewer rats for five years before calling in pest control.

Farewell, Oom Steve.

My uncle died this week.

Dying uncles are normally viewed with a certain distance; a way to explain a sudden, unexpected cash flow, or a morning off from work. But no real loss, and if there is sadness, certainly not for more than a day. It’s polite to feel that it death is a sad event, but one doesn’t actually expect real grief to follow the words “dead uncle”.

This uncle was different. I like cantankerous old men in general, and I loved this one in particular. I loved him very much. If I’d had some presence of mind, I’d have done something enterprising, like ShitMyUncleSays. The last two years of his life I saw less of him, because I felt awkward. I struggled to look at him getting older and I battled to know what to say to him. He seemed sad. I became self-absorbed.

I also pulled back because my mother, with whom my relationship is strained, is very close to him, and I felt she needed him. I might also have felt that he needed her.

I missed him, though. About eight weeks before he died, we had a confrontation about my mother. He did not know my side of the story, only hers, and felt I was neglecting her. I didn’t want to tell him any details; I don’t want people to judge my mother or take sides, I just want to be left alone about it. But I did tell him that there were things he didn’t know, and asked him to give me the benefit of the doubt. That confrontation turned into a very careful, meaningful conversation about how much he loved his own daughters, and what he meant – independently – to me and my mom.

I didn’t know he was unwell. I knew he had an auto-immune illness, but it seemed under control. I saw him about two weeks after those letters were exchanged and he looked happy. He’d just moved house and seemed older, but content. Actually, he’d just moved out of an old age home (where we’d been planning to raid happy hour at the pensioners’ whisky bar) to a flat in Rosebank. Things looked good.

About two weeks ago, my mother (whose version of a crisis generally needs to be divided by 17) told me he was very ill. I didn’t believe her. I thought it was a projection of her own fears that she would one day be old, and alone. It was only when I saw my cousin during the course of the week and she told me that her dad was at the end of his life that I got a fright. The next day he was hospitalised.

There is something unutterably horrible about seeing someone you love crying and jerking in spasms of pain. I don’t really know how to describe how it was to see him when the pethadine stopped working and he wasn’t able to eat. He was a tall man and had been normal weight around Christmas. By the time he died about two months later, he weighed about 45kg. He couldn’t get his words out, although he tried.

I asked if I could get him anything. “Five – let-ters. E, D, A, H, T,” he said.

“Sorry,” I said. “I can’t help you with that. Is there anything else you would like?”

“What,” he said, “You – could-n’t – smug-gle – a – sick-le – un-der – your – black – dress?”

It was that kind of party. Actually, a lot of parties with my uncle were that kind of party. I think we understood each other with a kind of giggling grimness somewhere between grin and grimace.

The Sunday before he died, my cousin told Anna that he was resistant to help; that he didn’t even want a DVD player in his house.

“What does he do all day?” asked Anna. “Stare at the wall and think about death?”

“Um,” said my cousin. “Basically.”

It sounds morbid, but it wasn’t. He wasn’t morbid. He just didn’t pretend. He had a habitual and deadpan delivery of the truth. He didn’t see the need to make other people feel less awkward about it.

I think we liked each other because neither of us really liked anybody. I am often mistaken for a sociable person. But believe me, it is a mistake. (If I had my way, I would live alone in a corner café in the Karoo in a straw hat, swatting flies and watching nobody come past.)

One New Year I smsed him to say I was sitting alone on my couch glugging JC le Rocks out of a plastic sippi-cup, classy-like, and watching the SABC1 special.

“Aberrant child,” he replied. “You should be out partying. What will you do when you are my age?”

On his second day in hospital, he tried to get longer words out for me to unscramble. He couldn’t manage it.

On my last visit to him, he fell asleep while I was there. My mother says he never really regained consciousness. He died in the early hours of day five.

I can’t really believe that he’s gone. The thing that makes it strange is that I never thought of him as old. He had big specs and a white beard but we were buddies. I didn’t think of him as in another generation. It’s a cliché, but I actually did believe he’d always be around.

I liked going to visit him. I hate chocolate éclairs, but I really liked his. When I was younger, he had a whiteboard on which I always left a cartoon after visiting. He would mutter crotchety things about my "grotty little pictures" but I choose to believe he liked them, deep down. (Perhaps very deep down.) One Christmas, I made him a book - an extended collection of cartoons - and called it Grotty Little Pictures. I wrote in water-resistant ink because he was known for his legendary Saturday-morning baths, when he would disappear into the bathroom with a book for several hours. I'm not sure whether my book ever made it to one of those reading marathons. I hope it did.

When he quit smoking (briefly) some years ago, we each caught the other at my cousin’s wedding, skulking behind opposite sides of the same tree with a fag. I was still in the closet; he’d allegedly “given up”, and hadn’t yet broken the bad news.

His flat was home to sundials he’d made himself, a telescope, countless drawings mapping stars or designs for rebuilding antique instruments, an analemma, and two cats named Frasier and Niles (he did outlive them). Frasier was fat and neurotic, Niles was skinny and hyper-expressive. They were well-named.

An analemma, for those of you who don’t know, is a design mapping the movement of the earth relative to the sun over the period of a year. You allow a sunbeam to reflect off a shiny surface at noon on a particular day of the week, and mark the spot it hits the ground with a nut or bolt. The next week at the same time, you do it again. At the end of the year, your fifty-two bolts form an elliptical design mapping the movement of the earth for that year. It looks like a long, lean figure eight.

My Oom Steve knew everything. He told me why popcorn popped and why mirages appeared on hot roads. He could explain anything you wanted to know about biofuels. He was a physicist, but had an incredible general knowledge: he bought me my first Sara Vaughn album, pirated the Bach violin partitas and sonatas for me (oh come on, it’s not like J.S. was going to get anything out of the sale!), and taught me how to do many great things with chocolate. He taught me that when one buys a car, the first thing you do is to make a dent above the wheel and remove the knobs from the radio face, so that you don't feel so bad when you first crash it or it's broken into. He dug up a limited edition Felice Swados Reform School Girl diary for me. From when I was little, if there was anything I wanted to know, I asked him.

I remember the first time I ever asked him something he didn’t know. I recall it as one of those painful moments when you realise adulthood has come for you and you don’t like it: you may no longer fall asleep on your father’s lap in company; you must cry with dignity; you find out your nanny’s husband beats her and realise your parents are not going to save her; you ask your uncle who knows everything a question and he can’t answer you.

The question I asked him was whether he knew an archaic term for a poisoner. Not an apothecary; it started with a V. I had known the word and forgotten it, and could never find it again.

At the same time – Google wasn’t what it is today, then – I had been on a decade-long quest for the name of Brakenjan’s horse. Brakenjan had been my favourite programme as a kid, and I had a special feeling for that ole yellow pony. Sometime after the programme ended, I forgot the horse’s name and it bugged the heck out of me.

Oom Steve knew about my quest, but kids’ programmes weren’t his field of expertise. I expected him to be more useful in the search for the term for a poisoner, so sent him an email giving him all the clues I could. He didn’t know. I tried the last port of call: Rodney Edgecombe in the English Department. A week later, I had the word: venefic.

I emailed Steve immediately.

“Venefic,” he deadpanned back. “What a great name for a horse. Hopefully this will spur you on to redouble your efforts in the search for the poisoner.”

Oom Steve wasn’t his name, by the way. He was a lone Zimbabwean marrying into a predominantly Afrikaans clan. (When he first arrived, he thought Roomies was the most popular brand of ice cream in South Africa.) On encountering the rest of us, he was somewhat bewildered by the vast droves of Ooms and Tannies. Oom Steve became a nickname; something he said to make himself laugh. I became Niece M.

He met my aunt when she was hitchhiking home and he picked her up. She was a drama student, he was a physics lecturer. He dropped her home and she told my mother: “I’m going to marry that man.” She basically followed him around campus until he did marry her. And it’s a good thing she was so single-minded, because I don’t think he would have approached her first. He didn’t like big displays of emotion. In later years, he softened a little, but he always remained a little awkward.

In the weeks before his death, he disengaged from the world more than ever, although for the first time, he seemed to really enjoy affection. He liked having his hand held, and he would squeeze if you tried to let go. He beamed at visitors, whereas previously he’d only just tolerated them, if he let them in at all.

But he was leaving. The interest he’d always had in anything and everything waned; he stared into space and retreated.

“I’m preparing to go,” he told me.

When my mother cried about it, he lost patience with her. “For goodness’ sake, I’m an old man,” he said. “I’m supposed to die.”

And maybe so. But I’m still going to miss him.