We got through nearly 100 days; we can keep going. Stay safe and pull your mask over your nose, Karen, thanks. I’m going to slide into Derek Watt’s DMs now and ask him for some insight into What’s Next.
South Africa (5 May 2020) – Kim Nicola Stephens is fast becoming our favourite author during South Africa’s COVID-19 lockdown… because we need laughter more now than anything!
She has given us the top 10 middle-class quarantine categories, a hilarious depiction of how confusing level 4 actually is, the beauty truths of the burbs during the lockdown, the runners versus smokers debacle and she weighed in (hilariously) about how everyone in South Africa has suddenly become an expert on nearly everything.
South Africans have a way of getting through the toughest times, usually with a side dish of humour, and her writing is on point.
Kim has permitted us to post the piece on Good Things Guy, and we hope you enjoy the brilliant humour.
100 days later – what now Derek Watts? What now???
One hundred days ago us Saffers were sort of ok. I mean we had some water in our dams, and electricity supply was relatively stable, at least 4 out of 7 days. There were busses, trains occasionally, and almost all our robots were working. We were kinda aware that this state capture thingy had changed the game, and that Sea Point had a sewage problem, but we didn’t have a giant orange disaster for a president or massive wildfires, and we survived Carte Blanche music on a Sunday since 1988, so bring it, right? That overseas virus didn’t scare us…
Then the media got weird, and someone said lockdown coming. And we were all like… for what, the flu?
Can someone ask Derek Watts what the fuck is going on, he will know? And before Derek could answer, the cages were on the Woolies wine shelves, and we had to get the fuck indoors because of a curve, and we thought 21 days was long. We postponed weddings and sporting events to, like, June to be safe and pinged a little reminder in our phones to book a wax in three weeks, maybe a manicure after three weeks of doing one’s own dishes. We Zoomed our gym, our meetings and our long-distance relationships and wrote all these kak things about how the world needed to pause and reflect.
The booze ran out, everyone found a dealer, and then our money ran out, and everything was extended, except our employment offers. There was a brief time of pineapple beer and garden marathons, some Tiger King, and then we roared a collective Fuck This Shit and curled up in a fetal position, praying for some wildfires or a zombie apocalypse to relieve us of the endless game of What Next.
What Next is a fucking stupid game because what happened was we got told that some schools were opening, then they weren’t. And some businesses could operate, and then they couldn’t. And then you could smoke, but jokes not really, and you could get your wine at Woolies on high days, not holy days, which is when it started feeling like the 80s and Cele was strutting his arrogant ass around making everyone nauseous while we dyed our own hair and stopped baking banana bread.
I don’t know if the world got bored of talking about the pandemic, or if we finally had time to read more stuff, but some pretty important conversations opened up.
And one fine evening our president said their names and admitted that the abuse of women in our country could be considered a pandemic itself, and so we uncurled ourselves from our fetal positions, and wiped the panda rings from below our eyes, and hoped like fuck that something good was going to happen.
It was short-lived because the president has to use all his time managing corrupt ministers so he can’t solve any other problems.
I think he wants to do better for us, and I think if I were him, I would not have the patience for so much bullshit.
Then just when we thought we might find the energy to get off our couches or at least attempt to flatten the how-many-days-since-I-saw-my-dining-room-table ironing pile, we heard via the via that the whole academic year might be scrapped, and our little feral beings could be home and entirely reliant on us for friendship, education AND SNACKS for months or years, so we lay down again and watched reruns of Netflix, The Whole of Netflix.
Then the rest of the money ran out so we had to get a free Showmax trial and the only good thing there is L Word which you can’t watch with kids around, and they are at home forever now so what’s the fucking point of Showmax.
We don’t know who can or can’t fly in a plane, or if it’s safe to do so. We don’t know if it makes sense to eat at a restaurant because everyone takes off their masks to eat but has to put them on again in between making conversation difficult. I’m actually quite good at understanding muffled mask language because I have experience in raising teenagers who can grunt whole chapters. The cops are sad because they can’t pounce on surfers any more, and Zoom meetings are fucking awful so can we please all delete that app and just phone each other or send a detailed email instead?!
We are watching hospital admission stats, and they don’t look great, and we really should be blowing our Vuvuzelas at 8 pm for frontline workers NOW and not 100 days ago when we all thought 21 days was long…
It feels like a long winter ahead, and I hope you are all ok. Fetal position is ok some days, as is punching a “cut out” of Cele. I know he didn’t create COVID-19, but it’s nice to have one target for the frustration.
We got through nearly 100 days; we can keep going.
Stay safe and pull your mask over your nose, Karen, thanks. I’m going to slide into Derek Watt’s DMs now and ask him for some insight into What’s Next.
I’ll let you know how that goes.
By me, Kim Stephens. Ignoring my ironing pile for another 100 days at least.
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