Friday 12th Feb


As none of the local schools have any teaching vacancies for Kate, she starts to think about starting up her pottery again but is dubious as to whether it’ll take off. Jo, the Headmaster’s wife, insists that it’ll go down really well, as there are lots of very well off mums living in the posh estates in Ballito who are always trying to outdo each other in the children’s party stakes. Jo takes Kate to a Pottery warehouse and she stocks up on supplies. Kate is grateful to Jo when she tells her to just go ahead and buy the bloody stuff, as Kate is a well known ditherer, and would probably not have bothered had she not done so.



Kate also decides to add face painting and temporary tattoos to her party repertoire. The face paints arrive and Kate grabs Mason and tells him he’s having his face painted. Mason says only if he can have a Thomas the Tank Engine face. Shit, thinks Kate, how the hell am I supposed to do that? The Thomas face does not look good and Mason takes one look at his face and shrieks; ‘I want it off!!’



Kate then plonks a very reluctant Charlie down in the hot seat. She tells him he’s having a tiger face. Charlie wheedles and whinges – he’s got a Valentine’s Party to go to at his school and wants to spend a bit of time primping, Kate suspects. Kate does a good job on him and Charlie takes a look in the mirror and grudgingly admits it’s quite good. Kate goes to wash her hands and when she comes back, Charlie is naked and crawling tiger style on all fours towards their full length mirror, growling and snarling at himself. Kate shudders to think what he’ll be like when he’s a teenager.



Rob does not escape the face painting torture.After much ‘Will it damage my complexion?’ and ‘It will wash off right?’ Kate transforms him into Darth Maul, finding that she is able to take the face paint much further up into Rob’s hairline than her sons’.

Rob actually looks quite scary and Kate is pleased with her work. Rob’s phone rings, it is Lisa, the mum of one of Charlie’s friends saying that they are back from the party and could Rob pick Charlie up? Rob insists on wearing his Darth Maul face to pick up Charlie, saying that Lisa might think it’s good and tell all her rich friends. Rob drives up to the estate gates and raises the barrier. The guards are all in their little office and, as usual, look up to wave at the resident at the exit. They see a big red and black patterned face with pale eyes and big black ears staring at them. They shriek and scuttle back into the office screaming ‘Aaaagh! Tokoloshe! Tokoloshe!*’ Rob hisses at them and drives to get Charlie.



Saturday 13th Feb



Charlie goes to yet another ridiculously lavish birthday party, held by one of the many Crawford mothers with more money than sense and very little else to do except visit the salon and lay by the pool as they have live in maids who raise their children for them. Bitter? Kate? Naaah!

This particular extravaganza is held at a water park which boasts a surf centre. Charlie and chums will be taught how to surf!! Unfortunately, young Charlie, being at a clumsy age, slips over and lands halfway in a Jacuzzi on his undercarriage. Apparently there is much shouting and screaming, as one would expect from an injury to the nads. Charlie limps home with his tail – and a much bruised set of pre pubescent man bags between his legs. Kate reassures Charlie that it’s just a bruise, and though it hurt, it’ll get better. Charlie is concerned that he will be unable to provide his future wife with children. Kate doesn’t think Charlie needs to be worrying about this sort of thing yet, as only last week he was asking Kate exactly how he was supposed to go about having sex. (For once, Kate was momentarily at a loss for words, stunned by questions such as ‘So how do I get it in?’ and ‘Which hole does it go in?’) Kate pre empts further questions by telling Charlie to man up and go and sit on a bag of frozen peas.

Unfortunately, Charlie is fascinated by the large purple bruise that has appeared around his sacks of manliness, and insists on showing Rob, Kate and Mason at every available opportunity. Kate thinks things have gone too far when Kate’s parents get treated to a genital close up via Skype one evening. ‘Oh God no, stop it!’ wails Kate’s Dad into the webcam; ‘It’s like a horrible porno!’

Eventually Mason takes matters into his own hands, having had Charlie’s violet tinted organ thrust under his nose once too often. ‘For God’s sake Charlie!’ he shrieks; ‘Put your nasty willy away!’



• Tokoloshe

According to Rob, the ‘Tokoloshe’ is a terrifying demon like creature feared by the very superstitious Zulus, kind of like their version of the Boogeyman. However, once your typical Brit or Yank reaches the age of 12 (Charlie seems to be a bit behind in this regard) they will have realised that said Boogeyman is nothing but an underhand tactic used by their parents to scare them into doing as they are told. Not so the Zulus. Apparently, Zulu parents raise their children’s beds off the ground with bricks, so that the Tokoloshe can’t climb into their bed at night. Kate reasons that this must mean the Tokoloshe are very short, so why would the guards be scared of her dopey husband? Do the Zulus believe Tokoloshes drive cars too?

Confused, Kate decides to ask Thuli, her ‘Domestic Worker’ (Kate prefers this term, cringingly PC though it is, to the term ‘Black Slave’ used by her sister) Kate also thinks 95% of what Rob tells her about Africa is complete bollocks.

Thuli finds Kate’s question hysterically funny but tells her that the Tokoloshe is a bad demon created by witches to cause problems for people. Kate asks what they look like but Thuli says she has never seen one. She says that if a person has something bad happen to them they are said to be ‘walking with the Tokoloshe’. Kate asks Thuli if she believes in witches and Tokoloshes, Thuli says yes, of course, looking at Kate like she’s a nutter. Only the other day as she was stopped at a traffic light (or ‘robot’as they are quaintly known in South Africa) a young Zulu man handed her a leaflet advertising the services of a local witch doctor, who would ‘talk to dead people and the wind’ and ‘check the bones’. Apparently the good Doctor also helps women who are ‘unable to ejaculate during sex’!!