It’s usually remarked how those of a non-appealing visual arrangement must needs be equipped with a remarkable streak of humour to attract and hold the attention of those who normally would not deign to cast eyes upon them past the cursory fleeting glimpse, but for the poor, this need is elevated to the same sense of importance and fundamentalism as the very needs for victuals and water.

This is an age wherein strolls by the countryside in which the strollers bathe their feet in the early morning dew, caressed by the gently blowing and unblemished morning breeze, whilst cavorting to the tune of countryside, birds, the whistling of the grass as the wind blows through it, the chirping of crickets innumerable, the distant hum of the tractor ploughing the far-off fields, the odd human hail to some working partner, amongst a greatly diverse cacophony of other sounds, has since been replaced by movie dates, candlelit dinners at some expensive French diner serving seafood ‘fresh off the plane from the harvest in Scotland’, and various other experiences which all require the expenditure of a not inconsiderable amount of pennies.

A bloke, in spite of his bright promise and almost certain destiny perched in the upper echelons of society finds himself undesirable if he displays even the slightest inability to subject his lady friend (or otherwise, I am not bigoted), to the full rigours of such surfeit and luxurious comfort. A simple offer to walk a couple of blocks to the high-end destination is met with severe suspicion, for what self-respecting man hails not a cab in such advanced times as ours. It is increasingly difficult to find anyone who regards you simply for the jolly good company you are reputed to be if that enjoyable companionship is not shared over a bottle of (I don’t know any really good wines-let me revise that, I don’t know any good wines, so insert precious vintage here) and some snooty food with only a French designation.

I am an engineering student. That statement has many a time seen me imbibing a great many pints of beer at my local pub courtesy of some of the male regular patrons, whilst it has seen many a prospective conquest shirking away in scarce disguised horror and consternation. The male patrons recognise promise and decide to make an investment that has the slightest of chances of maturing after the passage of time in years, whilst the ladies, of whom I’ve learnt to be wary, and to keep my distance, are perturbed by the very thought of a student daring to approach them. The nerve on that boy! What have I done to encourage such low people to approach me? Has my mascara clouded again? No dear lady, as the irrepressible Bob Dylan sang on the song Goin’ to Acapulco “it’s a wicked life, but what the hell, everybody’s got to eat.” It gets to be that occasionally we have to aim higher despite the crippling fear and dread.

I remember well my first girlfriend as quite a special somebody. Our first date was a tennis match at the university courts, and when we decided to break for victuals, we walked the kilometre or so between the courts and the nearby Spar, and there we split the bill and proceeded to buy six hot cross buns and a two litre pet Sprite. We then downed these on the way back to the courts, alternatively taking turns to drink from the bottle. I even mocked her about how she would stop walking every time she took a swig at the bottle, albeit at the least opportune moment, for she was just then holding the bottle at a sixty degree angle, drinking from our shared refreshment and the fit of giggles that ensued almost brought her to choke! Subsequent dates never improved much from this early example, and included long night-time walks, long day time walks, and long eventide walks. I’m yet to get her opinion on such odd date behaviour, but my own experience of the thing was unforgettable. It simply was a better way to spend time with one’s beloved, and had a level of intimacy and privacy simply not offered by the most exclusive of dining establishments.

I have subsequently been on many similar dates, albeit all inside my imagination, and they were simply indescribable in their elemental and simplistic candour. I am an avid walker, known at times to wander off for no apparent reason and to no apparent end to the exhaustion of fifteen miles and more at a time, and the course of my plenitude of impromptu gallivants, I have come to know of a good deal of sublime and unimpeachable treks. Walks through virgin land leading up to a secluded lake; climbs up rocky hills where I found myself leaping from rock to rock akin to the fashion of a rambunctious young mountain goat all the while grinning with stupefying glee; long, arduous wanderings on sultry afternoons without water or any refreshment through a network of intricate and often dead-end dusty paths. I have been lost innumerable times courtesy of the male ego which believes males to be equipped with an infallible internal compass, and the asking for directions to be the very basest of all actions. I have encountered hostility from both humans and rapacious dogs after inadvertently trespassing through some property on untold occasions. I have tired whilst still walking to the point of finding some shady bush or tree to crawl up underneath, covered my face with my hat to prevent flies landing on it, and proceeded to knock out for a goodly two hours from sheer exhaustion. I once had thrones cast at me after cutting through some compound by the frankly unruly inhabitants, and from thence I beat a dignified yet hasty retreat all the while heeding the mutt that was paying undue and rather disconcerting attention to my ankles. I once almost slipped off a rather high rock I had surmounted, the hasty descent from which would have resulted in significant maiming or even death. I have seen nature in all its beauty and splendour, at its most dangerous, and I have had many of the sightings. The overpowering yearning of my very soul through all these adventures has been to find a soul to share them with, and it is this drive that has led me to experience vivid and all too real  daydreams of what could be.

Is it too much to hope then, that amidst the crowds of highly selective Godiva and Roche consuming lasses might be found my companion walker? One who scoffs not at the idea of a walk that could only leave them tired, sweaty, parched and dry; one who does not reproach the awkward commute home in a commuter bus whilst carrying the unmistakable odour hard physical exertion entails; one who would voluntarily give up on a 5-star dining experience whilst donning Dolce and Gabbana and Dior fragrance, for crisps and a 50c bottle of mineral water whilst baptised with a quiet twang of urea and ammonia infused with that morning’s deodorant, and a slight degree of halitosis borne of long periods without water and solid food.

Oh well, till I  find her, I’m off to bed, for tomorrow I go walking once more, the lone participant in what remains my favourite activity. I will enjoy the thrills, the unpredictable joys and spills all on my lonesome, till I won’t have to.

Jo.

“The fool hath said in his heart there is no God.” Well, I guess I probably am a fool.

Now, this is no common admission for a young African male to say, and is even more inconceivable given my background. To fully treatise my religious beliefs (or lack thereof) and the reasons and justifications behind them would require no less than a substantial number of tomes, so  I  will summarize the tenets only.

I was brought up in an ultraconservative household, with an ultraconservative father and a similarly conservative ma. Today ‘ultraconservative’ is a term that is loosely bandied about by left wing publications to describe any stances that are moderate by most definitions, but happen to fall foul of the high libertine standards they espouse. I do not make the same mistake here when I say I was brought up in an ultraconservative setup. Let me take you on a tour of some of the ridiculous standards and rules I was expected to live out my life by.

The church my parents belonged to (deliberate use of that proprietary term), believed in the absolute authority of the Bible, and I grew up sharing their staunch belief in its infallibility. Women were inferior to men. They were encouraged to be stay at home moms, raising rag rats in the fear of the Lord, making sure their husbands came home to a steaming meal, and then they would fulfil their conjugal duties without debasing themselves by actual enjoyment of the deed. Okay, maybe I exaggerate here, but seeing the austere visages that seemed ubiquitous at church brought to my active imagination very dour and mechanical performances of that most desirable of activities, sex.

Worldly music was of the devil. So were worldly movies, television programs, novels and any entertainment that did not lead you closer to the Almighty. As such I grew up eschewing all music and movies. I found myself immersed in literature as a consequence, and I used to precociously devour volumes no child should normally be burdened with. I completely missed out on all the excited morning chatter of prepubescent school goers in which last afternoon’s cartoon or wrestling events were discussed in detail. My head would be buried in Biggles book at such moments, and it’s no wonder I used to regularly baffle my primary school librarian, Mrs Pearson, with my turnover of library books. I would read all three of my allotted books before the week was out, and she actually came to build a rapport with me because of the frequency with which I was in that well stocked library.

I digress. The sisters, as all women are wont to be called, are forbidden from wearing slacks, shorts, trousers, pants, or any clothing that resembles men’s. They are not to cut their hair, or apply makeup, or paint their toenails, nails. Coloured hair is greatly frowned upon. They are forbidden from assuming any leadership role in the church. Hell, they aren’t even supposed to speak in the house of God. Subservient always. They are the lesser creature because it was Eve who sinned, signalling that the woman is the weaker sex. It is a must that that every girl submit to the will of her father until such a time as she gets married, then she is to submit to her husband, for as the Christ is Head of the Church, so is the man the head of the woman. I’m not making anything up. In fact, in my overwhelming desire to be succinct, I am omitting quite a library of details.

All alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, clubbing, dating and fornication are expressly sinful, and each youth  is encouraged and raised up to eschew them. (The excessive restrictions I had are probably partly responsible for my near excessive drinking, my smoking and drug habits). Thou shalt not date unless you’re seeking to marry. That was the general, binding though unwritten rule. Any of the copious ladies who have had unrequited amorous feelings towards me will testify to my disconcerting awkwardness around those of the female sex. I was permanently ruined by the first seventeen years of my life, in which I couldn’t even look at the bright young lasses, lest I lust after them, let alone talk to them. I had my first girlfriend when I was nineteen and my first kiss when I was approaching twenty! God fucking almighty right? Twenty-three years old now and I still struggle to express myself clearly and without the proverbial ‘sticking one’s foot into one’s mouth’ when it comes to talking to the broads, except when I happen to relay my words via the written medium.

I couldn’t even masturbate without feeling an overburden of guilt that would compel me to fast for several hours and offer a most contrite prayer. I remember praying for wet dreams to go away at one time. Such was my zeal to escape the sinful ways all around me and the hellfire reserved for those who sinned without compunction. I was a stand-up guy as anyone who knows me from those days could testify. I abhorred drink, girls, coarse language; I avoided the lewd anthems that so often where prone to be sung on our way to the various sporting events I always used to attend.

I believed the earth to be how old the bible said it to be, circa 10 thousand years (according to the church’s own set of interpretations). Any source which suggested otherwise was of the devil. Evolution was a laughable and easily dismissed contrivance, a pseudoscientific hypothesis akin to alchemy’s transmutation. I genuinely believed true science could never contradict the Word. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. God was infallible, so was His Word. The creation account in Genesis was the truth. Even then, in my ardent zeal, there were one or two areas I wasn’t sure about, but that was because I didn’t have sufficient Revelation, not because the word was wanting.

Imagine just how topsy-turvy my world was turned in my Advanced Level years when I began to be a true student of science. I no longer believed things were to be taken at face value, but all things were to be tried and tested before being accepted. I started checking up on long held beliefs against accepted scientific knowledge. The age of the earth, evolution, the exodus, the identity of the authors of the Old Testament, were areas in which doubt was firmly planted. As soon as I established that the bible was not the infallible authority I had grown up believing it to be, my faith crumbled into nothingness. I stopped reading the bible, I stopped praying, I stopped going to church. I still recall the phone call in which I informed my late father of my decision to stop attending church. The poor man called me to ask why wasn’t in town yet to meet up with them before heading to church together (I was at home). I had been dragging myself to church for the previous month without conviction, but that day, towards evening, I had suddenly decided to break ranks with the faith of my fathers. I told him that I no longer wished to attend church. He wasn’t too surprised with this, for my growing indifference had been telling, but he still asked me why I had arrived at that decision. He wanted to know whether it was because I had been disenchanted by seeing sinful church members whose identity was unknown to him, or whether I had seen something. Painfully, and awkwardly, I had to tell him that I simply was in doubt of the biblical accounts and needed time to set my house in order.

Cue hedonism. Cue satyriasis. Cue intoxication. A bird raised in captivity will soon die from an excess of freedom once it’s let loose. I had to catch up, on music, on movies, on porn, on boffs, on swearing, on life. I became a grotesque caricature of evil, the kind of man mothers point out to their infant boys to never become. I have become a wild thing since I broke free. My fourteen year old self would sooner have committed suicide than witness the sin machine I’ve become. I hold nothing sacred. I hold nothing reverent. The only time I ever felt lost in this new world of mine was when my father died. I hoped then, more than believed, for a heaven and a god so that that most worthy of men could find justification for his beliefs, for he was the last person I loved unconditionally.

I am reminded of John Lennon’s song God in which he essentially states how he doesn’t believe in anything. I believe nothing, and yet am so strongly a believer in everything. I believe so strongly in women’s rights a lot of women would find me off-putting. I’m not going to go around being the patronizing gentleman who opens the ladies’ doors and other such antiquated practices whose provenance is a patriarchal and misguided ancient world. I will not spoil girls because I’m expected to, and not at all when I cannot afford to. I am so firmly married to the idea of equality of the sexes that I will not participate in any practice I deem originated from the days when men were expected to be sole breadwinners who would deign to occasionally treat their wives to something extra.

I would love to see people breaking from the yoke of religion just as I have, just as they wish me to repent of all my sins while I still can, for be not mocked, every man shall reap what he sows. I have seen a light so bright I could never settle back into the same repressive, misogynist lifestyle of yore. How could I ever live without the music of Bob Dylan, or the acting of Humphrey Bogart or Cary Grant? How could I live without the bittersweet taste of beer? All that porn I’ve so painstakingly collected. How could I abandon the prurient pleasures of copulation with a callipygian nubile? No sir, I couldn’t do. If I’m a sinner, and a fool, then sinner and fool I am.

I am very much against religion because of the hold I’ve seen it exert on people, and my own sour experience with it in my formative years, yet I’m not totally against the idea that there might be a god out there. If there is, she/he’s no doubt extremely different in nature to the picture I’ve had from infancy.

Humans! Urghh! Human beings!! URGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!! I hate these creatures. I concur with the erstwhile Agent Smith’s (you know, the guy from that captivating post-Millennium Matrix trilogy) utter revolt and distaste for these mammals. It is my waking and living wish for some apocalyptic event that would expunge the globe of the scourge of human existence.

I’m walking through the streets of filthy Harare, having just stepped out of the office to eloign myself of the rigmarole of the office space, the urgent desire to indulge in one guilty fag being utterly coincidental and not at all contributing to my overall tenebrific outlook. Peace, tranquillity, serenity or at the very least, a passable simulacrum thereof are my hope, but hope in a place of human activity is the reserve of the naïve. The streets are littered with debris of a dubious nature, human excrement lies on the worn and battered pavements, the stench of urine cloys up the air, and worst of all, that nefarious being, that obstreperous nuisance, that opificer of doom and hegemony, man, oh how he makes for the biggest littering presence.

Men in ridiculous attire; boys in garb inspired by Western fashions but collectively assembled in a frivolous manner, thereby making for a preposterous if not sorry overall mien; women carrying howling babies on their backs, said babies still displaying an overall deficiency of fine dieting, and a general aura of ill-use; tartlets in various skimpy items of dress, fluttering eyelids at gullible and lascivious men who follow the progress of said succubi with greedy eyes that scream obscenities and concupiscence; school-going younkers walking in groups of several thousands and thus filling up all available walking space; vendors (oh boy, where to begin), vendors…*aposiopesis descends*

My very best of memories in this city either involve copious amounts of libation to induce thorough inebriation (and hence inhibit the perception of the dirt and filth all round), or they involve some of my obambulations in the purlieus of the city, in areas where man’s hand is yet to corrupt, in the bushes, in untilled lands not yet marked for development. There, a man’s heart is to be free. His mind is on the higher things in life like the ideal cup-size to ass ratio, the Arsenal game wherein Liverpool FC was thoroughly chastised, the shape of that overhanging boulder, oh, and that of that cloud, doesn’t it seem to resemble a man with an extra long chin, or is it a beard resembling those Oriental beards, or simply some kind of straw, but how can it be a straw, not, it can’t be a straw, it must be a combination of long chin and the Asian beard thingy.. Oh, the setting sun,  I must take a picture, yeah, even I who detests the taking of pictures, no doubt due to my frustration with this Instagram generation, I mean, those broads take over a thousand pictures of themselves, every new dress, every new place visited, every food ingested, everything and anything in their humdrum lives must they share….anyway, I lose myself, how did I even get on this train of thought, I come here to escape such thoughts, ohh yeah, I was contemplating immortalizing this sunset from this particular position by taking a snap, well, here goes, the sun’s actually  sank a couple of centimetres whilst I dithered…anyways, I best be headed home if I’m to avoid freezing half to death. Oh, how I dread this next bit. What would it be man, to just have a fucking backpack with all the essentials, and I’d just hike through bush for about a month or so…*long fucking sigh*

Back to civilization I head, back to hegemony, back to noise, back to people who fret over their humdrum existences, completely oblivious of the bigger picture in life, completely engrossed in their own affairs, the fucking bills, the electricity bill, rent (that scoundrel), the sermon the minister just delivered, living up to societal standards and norms, presenting a simulacrum of having their shit in control (the sanctimonious tartuffes), the cleanliness of the yard, the car, the house, the clothes and so it goes.

Oh man, open your fucking eyes and see. You are not the centre of the universe; you are not some special entity shaped in the form of some Deity. The aberration of Evolution…. Fuck it, it’s no use, I’m blowing my fucking brains out!

Don’t let the Sun go down on me

Many a man has found himself feeling the full dread of a setting sun. Not so much the setting of that physical behemoth, but rather, the setting of the sun of a man’s years, that sad, inevitable moment in his life when he finds himself irreversibly in the twilight of his years. He’s left behind the best of everything, his most raucous laughter has long bid his erstwhile company adieu, his deportment has long since gained that state that betrays a nimiety of fine dining and fine libation that indeed borders on crapulence, his desire has all but crept away from him, his physical strength is a shadow of its former glory (he winces when he thinks of whence he’s fallen from). He is but a pale shadow of his former self. That propellent quality, curiosity, has long since refrained from visiting our sorry subject, except in cursory and perfunctory stints, and even then it’s relegated to the most bilious and mundane of topics, the obituaries, the price of desert roses, or other such matters to which no ordinary younker would ever dream of being drawn to the contemplation of.

Such a man, in such a state, is  not necessarily a bad thing, for when man has, in the course of his life prior to this crepuscule, lived his life in full measure, then said crepuscule will elicit only a minor sense of resentment in the visited. It offers him a chance to rest  before that final rest that must visit all men is visited him, aye, ‘fore the Grim Reaper draws nigh for the harvest he will not be denied. Fortunate is the man who upon reaching the twilight of his years finds himself with little or no regret (indeed barring the one regret of being subject to senescence).

“And so to conclude and to finish this skit,” I will state my utmost terror, here in the very prime of my youth, an overwhelming dread really, that on the day that I will confess myself to have taken that last turn on the highway of life, the turn that leads in only one direction, and to a final destination six feet ‘neath the ground, having passed through geriatric station, I will find myself with regret the regret of not having lived as I set out to, not having travelled extensively as possessed my young mind to imagine, not having dined with kings and with beggars, amongst a bevy of other goals objectives formulated in the formative years of my life. Please don’t let the Sun go down on me, (but when it does, let me have done all I set out to).

Blog Entry

They are marked by a wide and greatly varying set of characteristics, all sharing the same core feature, which is the extreme annoyance they cause. They chatter loudly, animatedly, senselessly and with hardly the foggiest as to what their long-winded and extemporary tirades are intended to achieve. They love it when the general populace envisages them as god’s great representatives on earth. They read with great zest and with faces contorted into comical proportions by sheer dint of the sanctimoniousness of their beings, the very scriptures which condemn their behaviors, but these persons are beyond reproach in their own eyes in their monomaniac clutch on religion. They seldom have any great material wealth, and sagacity in the making of decisions is alien to them, having their own lives riddled with bad decisions, yet they are always the first people to offer advice, which they give in no short-supply, and with a peremptory nature about it. No valued reader, I do not possess any love for the nosy, gossipy, loquacious and invidious woman!

The other day I had the misfortune of waking up to what seemed like a train passing through our living room. To add to my misery was a malodorous stomach which sent me scampering over to the lavatory halved-over in sheer discomfort. As I raced there, I had peeped into the living room, and discovered there a woman talking furiously. As I sat down to empty my bowels, (painfully so), bits and pieces of the conversational thread found their way behind that door. It turns out that there had been a death of a former tenant (or someone else that these women knew somehow), and whether by dint of the magnitude and severity of their grief, or if it was to recount as much of the deceased’s life as quickly as possible, or just the excitement at another chance to showcase the great humanity and feeling engendered to these women by the creator; whatever the reason, they found it necessary to converse in tones nigh approaching those of full-blown expostulation. The one woman in question I have to live with, being resident in her house whilst attending college, whilst the other is but a neighbor, a rather penurious one I gather.

It’s always a sight to see these women in the height of their excitement, and obsequies, nuptials and other such auspicious occasions are when this excitement reaches dizzying heights. They harass, harangue and cajole everyone to the point of exhaustion. This incommodious and otiose behavior betrays the excitement in them, which their every other action is at pains to disguise. For instance, there is the slow saunter of the pained individual, the dragged feet, the melancholic facial expressions and other manifestations of that afore-mentioned humanity tainted with sanctimoniousness and downright playacting.

It is when I observe such persons that I very much contemplate spending my life a solitary, bohemian existence which nevertheless would be free of such needless drama and sorrow. But then again, I cannot help but tergiversate about that line of thought, for when one does find the right one; it could and would make life much more bearable and worthwhile.

More will be said on ‘those women’ and with greater succinctness and less glibness later on. In this particular blog I wanted to assure myself that my ability to be grandiosely grandiloquent yet exists. Needless to say, it took longer to type this than it would have been a couple of years back when I was feasting on Mr. Charles Dickens’ works!

To the sounds of a certain Mr Buble I begin my second blog entry.

Is it not a wonder how opinions, thoughts, beliefs and perceptions are so easily altered and transformed. With the slightet alteration in circumstance or status are giant changes in those named respects. A popular example is how a single man thinks that his singular existance is the worst thing in the world, but then that same man, once in a relationship will look with absolute envy upon those that are single.

As my last relationship was drawing to a close, I bethought meself the world's most miserable being. I might indeed have been miserable, but that misery is of scant propotions to the misery that sits upon me when I consider my relationship status now, that of being single. Now, the obvious choice seems to be to plunge right in that inexhaustible market, but as with a plethora of other circumstances, it's hardly that simple! Firstly, there is the fact that I am at a conundrum concerning the whole relationship phenomenon. One side of me is abhorrent of any relationships at this time, it prefers a hit and run modus operandi, a string of absolutely meaningless liasons of duration not more that a couple of hours. The other part of me is all for settling down with just one girl, and hope that she has not set her moral standard too high, for that's likely to be a bummer, and someone would only end up getting hurt. Then there is the very small part of me that wants to direct my efforts elsewhere. Somewhere else that has nothing to do with those kind of social triviances.

Suppose a girl was to be chosen, there's a whole lot of considerations in so doing. These I will touch upon in my next blog. Sleep and Top Gear bid me heed them.

First blog entry:
So why am I blogging? Well, I've always wanted to be some measure of a writer, and this seems an appropriate first step towards achieving that objective. secondly, well, it's as simple as Barney Stinson!Yep, that chap and all his talk about blogging were not without their effects. So yeah, here i am.

I really haven't written anything serious since my O'level days. advanced level was all about sciences, and in these i was seldom required to wax lyrical. As a matter of fact, the few times I did churn out that masterful eloquence I had been well known for in my earlier years was when I was glibly attempting to hide ignorance in a certain subject. This trick did help me once or twice in biology-a case of playing the man rather than the game i suppose. (okay, where are the damned smileys, i now find it hard to fully express myself without them).
Well it's been a hectic few weeks for me. School started, I broke up with my first and only girlfriend thus far (no real surprise there), and I've kind of been on a social roller coaster. In school I've just discovered that some of the topics I'd skirted over, or even totally avoided in my first year are coming back to haunt me. As such, I've begun backtracking, pouring over my year ones notes, textbooks in a desperate attempt to bridge the gaps as quickly and as efficiently as possible, of course without having forgotten to draw an important life lesson from such an event, the lesson being that commonly repeated aphorism; when you do something, do it well and thoroughly at the first time of asking. It's always good to avoid unnecessary regress.

Okay, let me move to the girlfriend issue. Well, it had been coming for quite a while now. The breakup was simply inevitable given the governing circumstances. Here were two well matched people who did dote on each other so, but were misfortune'd enough to separated by distance, school being the green eyed monster to first separate them, us. She had to leave for China, I had to head south of the country to Bulawayo. The first few months of this long distance experiment were indeed rosy, and anyone who suggested anything to effect that it was not so was immediately declared our mortal enemy. We apped. We vibed (or is it vibered?) We yahooed,gmailed, skyped, and used just about any reaches of the social media available to us. But what must happen to all long-distance relationships slowly began to wander into hours. At first, the fierce and fearsome fights, two volatile persons exploding spontaneously into fitful bouts of apoplexy and expostulation. These were invariably followed by floods of a pheromone nature, absolute highs of love, and great and fearsome asseveration to that effect. Declarations would be made, as would be promises of life-long commitment and adoration. dear reader, if you ever see your long distance relationship get to this point, and you wish to save it,then kindly sell all you have, and heard for the nearest airport, and from thence be ye with your  partner for some time, for whilst normal relationships in which you see each other on a daily basis may have explosive fights too, they are soon forgotten and forgiven as the participants go about their daily lives. I guess that constant contact does that. Well, my bony lass and I gradually drifted apart, and close to the end there we would go for days on end with speaking communicating. This wasn't intentional, but it was an inevitable conclusion to a relationship between two people who weren't going to see each other for at least five years.

Presently I'm torn between going for this other girl I've always had my eye on, and fooling around without any ironclad attachment. She really is a most wonderful girl to gaze upon, as pretty a sight as they come, and i fear that dawdling from me may result in her permanently being lost, but on the other hand, who doesn't appreciate a bout of tomfoolery!

well, in such matters as in others, sometimes time will tell, as Bob Marley sang in one mournful song I'm particularly fond of. On the other hand, this is just an excuse people use to avoid taking action, or being put in the firing line. 

I must be bringing these random mental excursions to an end now, for I must to my bed, and on the way to that mini Utopia is a pre-bed routine of brushing of the teeth, my weights session, and I a stomach session I only squeezed in because I wasn't satisfied with yesterday's.
So long then, dear reader. I'll be coming here more often than I've hitherto made an attempt to methinks, for I seem to be better able to rid my mind of those most stubborn cobwebs sticking obdurately in the corners when I put my thoughts on paper.
JI Ndlovu