Worse off than a mouse?

EVER since I learned that in order to fry an egg you first have to remove it from its shell, I have been virtually unstoppable in the kitchen.

I enjoy cooking the occasional meal; it’s almost like therapy … and thanks to the onions, you even get to cry a bit just as you do in real therapy.

My cooking mantra is simple. I have a hierarchy of steps that I follow religiously as I prepare my meals … I call it my 4H hierarchy.

Before I cook I have to be in a good mood. Preparing meals when you are grumpy makes it either salty, bland, too spicy or mushy. So my first H is for ‘happiness’. If there’s no grin, there’s no grub!

The second H is for hygiene. When I cook the work surfaces, pots, cooking implements and my hands have to be clean; it’s not acceptable if they LOOK clean. They have to BE clean.

My next consideration is health. I mean, it’s no use feeding your family something that they enjoy and it’s not nourishing.

And finally I consider flavour. So that’s my 4H method: Happiness, Hygiene, Health and Heartiness.

It all seems so ideal doesn’t it? But why, if it’s so simple to prepare a meal, do I start sniffing the minute I place the pot on the stove? That’s even before I peel, chop or slice anything!

Do you know how irritating it is to constantly wipe your nose and then pop off to the bathroom to wash your hands … It steals my happiness!

It’s like that line of poetry that goes: “The best-laid plans of mice and men oft go awry.”

Away from the kitchen, I also enjoy a bit of gardening. It gets me off my office chair, away from my screen and out into the fresh air. And I can choose for how long I want to garden; you know, light stuff like pruning, watering, replanting seedlings and weeding flower beds.

However, as soon as I start feeling the exhilaration of my mind starting to release its tension, that fly starts buzzing around my head … and he buzzes until the exhilaration turns to frustration.

Yep, there always seems to be that one thing that is bent on stealing one’s joy … you know, like when you finally start to nod off on a warm summer’s night and that high-pitched whine of the monstrous mozzie declares: “There’ll be no sleeping here tonight!”

Then it’s a case of, “Mosquito hunt. You vagabond wait … tonight, I will you get!” And that hunt usually chases more than culicidae, it chases one’s sleep away.

Another thing chasing my sleep away is the fact that I feel like I have been robbed of my festive season window shopping. It used to be one of my favourite things around that time of the year.

I remember the family packed into the family car driving down the length of what was then Transvaal Road into Jones Street, where the shops were decked out in the frilliest festive finest!

It’s hard for me to process that there will probably never be something like evening or night-time window shopping during the festive season ever again. Our city’s CBD is not a festive sight. Besides, it’s too risky for businesses to display their wares. Unless, that is, you wrote to Santa this year and asked for a brand new roll-up garage door.

Besides, are children even interested in something like window shopping seeing as it doesn’t involve screens, wi-fi and data?

And then, as if losing window shopping wasn’t bad enough, I actually got to drive down Phakamile Mabija Road recently – what was formerly Transvaal Road and Jones Street – and it wasn’t easy for me.

Firstly, the area in the vicinity of the intersection of Phakamile Mabija Road and Quinn Street is like a hornet’s nest. Having a busy wholesaler on that corner without adequate and easily accessible parking was not a good idea, in my opinion. I have heard that sometimes traffic just slows to a standstill right there.

Added to this, the huge trucks that rumble around that corner are chewing up and grinding down the road surface. I noticed some pretty decent excavations, and to my mind it won’t be long before that intersection is closed again for repairs.

Are our city’s roads engineered to handle such huge trucks?

Further down the road we stumble across the old, historical market square area. This used to be a place where tourists were brought by tram.

A while back I was in the area taking photos and an informal car guard sidled up to me and suggested I put my camera away. He said shiny things are snatched in that area so it’s best to hide your valuables. I felt that it was a pity because I am sure that tourists are still being told about the Diamond City and there are still a few who have a trip to Kimberley on their bucket list.

I hope they are not disappointed.

Well, there it is, I started with cooking an egg and spiralled down to depression. What a miserable start to the weekend. I just played the part of a runny nose and a ‘buzzy’ fly.

However, on the topic of eggs, did you know that a master chef’s hat – more correctly called a ‘toque’ – usually has 100 folds to represent the 100 ways one can prepare an egg?

I say that because if I would continue to allow a running nose to steal my cooking joy, I will never master ‘eggery’ and get that fourth fold in my toque. If I allowed a fly to keep me from gardening, I would not have a corner of the world where I could de-stress. Mosquito repellent works, and one can get some pretty amazing sleep during summer.

And though window shopping is a thing of the past, sitting in an intimate circle of friends reminiscing about the good old days is priceless. And I am blessed enough to still have friends like that.

Being frustrated in traffic, bouncing over crumbling roads, delays, being cut off by a negligent driver and living with the constant fear that something bad is going to happen will eventually drain our joy. It will, I can almost guarantee, lead to us sitting around speaking about nothing other than things that make us miserable.

However, in his poem, ‘To a Mouse’, Robert Burns expresses remorse at having destroyed the nest of a tiny field mouse. He apologises for his mishap. But – in the context of always dwelling on bad things that may or may not happen, I found the last stanza pretty interesting.

Burns laments: “Still you are blessed, compared with me! The present only touches you: But oh! I backward cast my eye, On prospects dreary! And forward, though I cannot see, I guess and fear!”

The thing is, if we keep on worrying about what bad things may or may not happen tomorrow, we run the risk of missing out on the good things that are happening all around us today.