Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Unexpected expectations

I THOUGHT I was a good father. We’ve raised two reasonably decent kids and now, in dotage, she’s dragging the family name through the mud. Literally.

Tiggy. The cross-Staffie-cross-Collie-cross-who-knows-what-all.

I’m reminded, as I sit in the vet’s waiting room, of the most recent embarrassment prior to this. I was walking down the hill with the satisfied air of someone who’s stuffed himself with great food and drink, and has enough hours left on a lazy summer evening to carbo-load on even greater TV.

I spotted her in the neighbour’s yard. They (the neighbours) were opening the door for guests and this big discussion ensued about Tiggy. Understand, this is Rondebosch, a pretty decent part of the city. The neighbours, whom I’d not yet taken time to get to know, are likely to be professional types or academics, certainly animal lovers, activists even.

And there she was trying to duck out of their front door with a child’s toy in her mouth. They knew her name – and ours – because, having done what we believed was the right thing for conscientious parents to do, she has those personal details on her collar.

Apparently, according to the snippets of conversation I gleaned as I hovered at their gate, Tiggy was stealing toys, their dog’s and their child’s.

I knew it was true, she having gone through a period of collecting all our daughter’s toys with eyes – dolls and stuffed bears and other cuddly creatures – and hiding them under the bed. She had issues then about toys with eyes, but I had hoped lots of caring had helped her deal with things. Clearly not.

I knew what the neighbours were thinking. Irresponsible owner, that’s why the poor dog comes into their house and steals things.

All thoughts of stepping forward gallantly and claiming her vanished from my mind. I wanted the ground to open up and swallow my satiated butt.

But that bit of embarrassment pales into insignificance now, as I sit here with my 10-year- old cross-Staffie-whatever, knowing the charge of responsible ownership is about to be re-visited.

It started with the sickening realisation a couple of days ago that my girls – the one with issues and Molly, the beautiful Alsatian – were struggling up the hill on our afternoon walk.

Usually, they would drag me up to the field of birds, the one not wanting to be a nose-length behind the other. But, this time, there was Tiggy huffing and puffing like she’d already chased the hadedas for a full hour. And Molly now dawdling just within nudging distance of her, apparently having given up the desire to get ahead of her (it’s a dog thing).

Eyes wide open now, I noticed Tiggy was a little bit rounder than before, even though she had been off her food. It called for a visit to the vet.

“Why is the dog here?” asks the receptionist from her desk across the room.

“I think she’s pregnant,” I say quietly under my breath, the shame almost overwhelming me.

“Sorry, I can’t hear you – why?”

“She’s pregnant,” I mumble again.

“Huh?”

“She’s pregnant,” I shout, almost adding “the bad slut bitch is pregnant and are you happy now that the whole world knows this and thinks me irresponsible even though it’s not my fault she got herself knocked up?”.

And the mutt looks up at me in that tentative way she has when she’s not sure if she’s the most gorgeous, most loved dog in the world.

It takes the vet about two ticks to confirm that the little tramp is packing, but not before he’s wrung out of me that I neither know which hound did the deed or when and where it happened.

I try a bit of humour: “It’s a little bit unexpected – her being expectant.” His response is more of a grimace than a laugh.

And my feeble “I thought we’d zipped her up years ago” does little to exonerate me.
He’s giving me a look that says he suspects I’ve been a delinquent parent and that he really feels sorry for her. Damn this dog.

Much later, Tiggy crawls back from another sortie outside – I have to fix the fence between us and the back neighbours to avoid another oops.

I imagine her this time running through the neighbourhood, sniffing at lampposts and house gates, for a hint of the brute who forced himself on her, who shamed her in her old age.

Or maybe she doesn’t feel shamed. Maybe she’s happy to have done what dogs do.

Maybe it’s we humans who have to deal with embarrassment and humiliation and shame, who have to take responsibility for unexpected expectations. And rightly so.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Taxman should let us spend a penny

I have a short fuse, generally. But my irritability today has nothing to do with my fuse.

It’s about my short bowel – and the absence of public facilities in an important public facility.

I’m down at the Receiver’s Chapel Street, Port Elizabeth, offices to sort out a wad of paperwork and outstanding taxes.

I remember this place. In a former life the service hall was an arcade with some arbitrary boutiques, a couple of eating houses and maybe even a pawn shop. It took SA Revenue Services some effort to use this space effectively, although any change from the Nationalist-inspired architectural motif of the permanently congested building in St Mary’s Terrace would have been a positive one.

Since last I was here in Chapel Street, they’ve brought in more cubicles and chairs. The reception counters, queuing ticket dispenser and plasma screens are further improvements, clearly aimed at increasing throughput.

Maybe simple, easy- to-read signage and a couple of sussed ushers permanently directing people on the floor would be a better solution than the hi-tech innovations which face the hard-of- hearing, short-of-sight and just plain psyched-out majority of us who must endure the pain of coming to sort out our affairs here.

I get to the queue shortly before 9am and I’m issued with ticket number 324. I don’t think there are 323 people ahead of me in the queue, but there are enough for me to take note when the guy next to me says it will probably be many hours before we make our way to a counter.

He’s an observant wag. First, he says, pointing to the trail of no-show numbers at the bottom of the plasma screens, they keep calling people’s numbers but nobody moves to a counter.

Maybe those are yesterday’s ticket numbers they’re calling out, he suggests.

I ask him if he’s never heard of ghost clients. It’s one up from ghost employees.

Yes, he says immediately, that’s how they increase their productivity, put ghost numbers that belong to nobody into the system.

And then he points out that some of the counter numbers on the screen to which people are being sent don’t exist, certainly not on this floor. Maybe ghost counters?

It’s at that moment I realise I have to go. There’s a sod’s law for this, I know. You’re forced to go at the most inconvenient moments. I’ve known this law since the bulk of my bowel was removed a few years ago.

Where are the toilets, I ask a security guard. Oh, you must go outside, down Chapel Street to Mutual building, he says, there are no toilets here.

I think he must be mistaken, so I appeal to a Sars official who happens to be walking past. No, she confirms, we don’t have public toilets, you must go to Mutual.

But, you’re a key facility servicing the public, you must have public toilets, I say, in a frenzy now and not because of the short fuse, you understand.

And when she persists that this building has no toilets and Sars and/or the owner are not obliged to provide such, I berate her on the illegality of government departments not providing facilities to relieve oneself.

I’m not going outside to Mutual, I insist. I realise the illegality argument may be tenuous, but it’s either raise a constitutional stink or risk losing a load in the most unceremonious of circumstances.

Later, I consider that perhaps it’s not as tenuous. There may well be building regulations which are being flouted by SARS and its landlord.

For now, it seems the look of sheer desperation on my face and the mumbled reference to a medical condition, get through. Come with me, she says, escorting me past a security guard to a staff toilet.

Back in the queue, the ghost toilets are a hot subject of discussion among the many sitting or standing who very badly need to go.

So, this is a free tip for Bra Prav Gordhan: bring on the toilets, chief.

You can even get us to pay for the privilege of spending a penny.

Could be a nice little income stream which will fill a hole in the Budget somewhere, I’m sure.