First Anniversary Chills

My Facebook status for today reads:

Vanilla has to take a cold shower. It's her first wedding anniversary. The two are not related.
Posted about an hour ago · Comment · Like


I have to say, it’s not exactly how I expected the day to start. I thought I would be writing a romantic blog post about being married for one year. Some of you may even remember the happy day. Instead D woke me up this morning and said, “Happy Anniversary, Vanilli, and now for the bad news. The geyser has blown.”

Kind of takes all the romance out a girl’s day, doesn’t it. At least the shower wasn’t as cold as I expected. By dint of turning on the hot tap full blast I manage to extract the last few litres of warm water from the ailing geyser and now I sit here waiting for the electrician to arrive. He’s not sure, he said, if he can make it today. I suppose I could have pulled a line about it being my anniversary and oh pleeeeeeese, Mr Electrician.

Google tells me that the first wedding anniversary is celebrated by gifts of paper. I mean what sort of gift would you give someone that was paper? A piece of origami maybe? A paper packet. A notebook. Okay, all offers of notebooks gladly accepted. A newspaper? No thanks. A paper hat? Oh, if you must. But I suppose it might mean books? Of course it must mean books! I sincerely hope it means books! Okay, all books happily accepted!


Which, moving on, means talking about “the book”. Well, the book aka the manuscript, is lingering for a moment. I am thoroughly pregnant with words, fit to explode really, but I have to do more research. So I have my nose buried in volumes on Slavic mythology and treatises on vampirology. I have to say that to some extent it takes the fun out of writing and it does induce nightmares but it is, on the flip side, incredibly interesting. I never realised one could get so wound up about Marx (yes, that Marx) and vampires – you know, the line about capitalism being like a vampire. And there I just thought I was writing a teen-friendly paranormal novel. Ah the layers of life. You’ve got to love it.

And talking about layers and vampires (oh you have to love word and thought association…) – I’m expecting a wonderful feed tonight – layers of flavours harmoniously married together into a symphony of taste... Yumyum! We’re off to La Colombe, the restaurant we went to exactly one year ago – and which has now been awarded the status of best restaurant in SA this year. So lack of hot water notwithstanding, hauntings by vampires aside, I still plan to thoroughly enjoy my first wedding anniversary! Champagne, anyone?!