This morning I tried to call Orange to tell them how my phone is good for little more than throwing at a window. It sometimes allows me to call out, it won’t text and it switches itself off independently.

For all the thing isn’t doing, it did manage to send a standard “please call” text to a friend in South Africa, whose number is saved without a dial code. The text didn’t feature in my sent items box and my friend thought I was knee deep in trouble. I don’t know how this works, but I’m eager find out. Or rather, I’m interested to count how many “S’not my job” shrugs I get before I stop getting passed through the useless front-line employees.

I was cut off from the customer service line after twice going through the motions of pressing 1, 2, 1, 1, 4, 4, 3, 2, 4 and 1. I never reached a human voice, but spent enough time on the phone to probably crank up a small bill. I sent an Adrian Mole-esque online query telling them how my phone and their help line are good for nothing. I resolve to dunk the dull lump in the loo if they don’t sort me out quickly.

I decide that since my mood is already sufficiently sullied, I may as well deal with Google checkout at the same time. “No” your service hasn’t been good enough. “Thanks” for the small, broken pieces of information you have offered “But” you’re avoiding my key query. “When” will I receive payment so I can gauge “How long?” it will be before I receive angry emails asking for money back, or telling me to stick my prints “Up my cat’s naught”.

I think I should get another shot of personality* in me, but quickly drop my mom a line to let her know that my phone isn’t being a sport.

She says “that sounds terrible” before telling me how my brother’s close friend, Marcia, collapsed on Saturday. And that a few hours later she had her life support switched off.

Perspective.

*coffee, not scotch

Lyndall-O

I went to a dance class last week. You know how at gyms, they list dance classes, but in actual fact they’re gruelling little toning sessions perforated with the odd ball-change and “kick-and-kick-and-kick-and-kick-AND”?

This was just a dance class. Run by a woman with an accent that tells me she’s from somewhere in Europe, however, where I cannot distinguish. She started the class with “I am probably the most worst person to learn street dance from”. And I instantly believed her.

The routine was simple enough, yet I was still all elbows and knees. Those sexy-cute little hip swivels catch me. “I need a definite MOVEMENT” I think as my arms fall to my sides, a second after the instructor’s.

The class itself is interesting. Remember, I don’t go to one of those brand gyms. I go to one that has what I need, as well as some extra classes that pull maybe five regular people to them. It also has a ladies section. So (presumably) people with body shame can spare men the awful sight of their arse sweat patch. This section has all the obsolete equipment in it. Remember those bikes that work your arms while you pedal? Me neither.

There’s a fat lady, a small American girl and a lesser-fat lady who serves as her gym pal. There’s a new girl and another new girl (me) as well as a wet mountainous man who exists as the wheezing debris left over from the previous class.

A guy walks in a minute late and wears oversized shorts, a tank top and a beanie. I want to point and laugh, but I don’t. I picture this guy picturing himself doing n’sync style break dancing and wonder what us ungainly gym-clad girls and fatties look like to him. Another guy walks in, in more or less the same attire, with more or less the same jaded idea that he’s going to call himself “dog” and slide his tongue over his front teeth (too close to a wide angle lens).

I think how much funnier the whole episode would’ve been if the females arrived in gold bikinis (with perhaps a gold Cadillac to jiggle our ass fat over). It’s certainly the sort of unrealistic ideal these two idiots clutched.

We learn the routine; we all do a miserable job of something very simple. The instructor keeps shouting “yes or no?” to which none of us respond. It’s that sort of thing you feel like she’s only saying to you and you can’t bear to say anything since it would scupper plans to “mix in and go unnoticed”.

I’ve also reached an odd point where I’ll laugh out loud if something is funny. I’ll say “fuck me!” if something shocks me. I’ll withdraw and throw things down if I find them repulsive. I behave, more or less, like a toddler who takes no responsibility for their actions, responding openly to everything.

In short, I snickered and giggled all the way through class and probably wore the sort of arrogant “ooh, we’re SUCH tossers!” smile that will one day shorten my life. It was fine and mildly amusing until our instructor told us that what we’d learnt was just part of something much bigger. We’re told how to repeat, butcher and repeat the routine and waited for the song it had been choreographed for.

I guffawed. I openly howled with laughter and forgot everything I’d learnt as the room started to muddle along to a Backstreet Boys song. I didn’t know which it was, but it reminded me of the last time we did synchronised swimming.

As we were leaving, our instructor reminded us that there’s also Latin Aerobics to attend on Tuesdays. If Backstreet Boys was street dance, then I suppose Gypsy Kings would be Latin Aerobics. So I smiled and half nodded my head before running off to a treadmill to cleanse myself of the last 45 minutes of pure fuckery.

Love

I passionately detest being told that I don’t understand a speaker of broken English.

I was a bartender in London. I speak fluent broken English- in many variations (and there are variations a-plenty).

I am forever bending over and picking up the orphaned words that fall, butchered, at my feet. And I meticulously and quickly thread them together in the most understandable format.

I even respond in plain understandable, clearly spoken English. I don’t patronise anyone and speak slowly and I don’t use hand gestures. And I don’t mind either. Christ, it’s not like English is anything divine and I admire anyone who can speak more than 1 language, because I don’t. (That’s right. I was hardly going pay Afrikaans the attention it demanded since all I wanted to do after high school was leave the only country it is spoken in)

However, I do struggle with the condescending tone of someone assuming I can’t comprehend their questions simply because my answers don’t make sense to them.

I fink sometimes I maybe might break my head on walls wif frustrationness.