Porn or erotica: does it matter if you're 4?

A strange question, and not one I anticipated having to grapple with on behalf of my 4-year old son quite yet. I have been mulling over this one over for a few weeks, wondering whether this is actually a problem or not.

I went to collect my beloved innocent boy from a friend where he'd been to play for the afternoon. His mum welcomed me into the house and took me through to her bedroom where the boys were watching a dvd. While listening to her natter away about her renovation, I chanced to look up at the pictures on her wall...and choked.

On the walls were six large framed photographs of very naked women. They were not Rubens-like old fashioned black and whites. Nor were they culturally interesting and beautifully rendered drawings of couples shagging a la Karma Sutra. Nope, these could not be described as art. They were full colour full frontal fully nude shots of women with NOTHING left to the imagination. They were porn. Granted they were not ugly porn, with girls called Kimberley displaying shaven air-brushed pudenda and captions underneath saying things like: Kim likes to ride horses and read poetry. She also likes her men hard and ready!

These did have a certain appealing aesthetic. Some might argue that the pictures constitute erotica. The liberal in me demanded they be classified as erotica. Indeed I may have argued that until I had to think about my baby boy looking at them whilst watching Monsters Inc with his little friend one quiet Friday afternoon.

What do mothers do in such cases? They phone another mother. Early the next morning I rang the mum who is my arbiter of all things parental.
Me: "Has L been to play at T's house?"
Her: "Yes."
Me: "Did you go inside?"
Her: "Yes."
Me: "Did you go into the main bedroom?"
Her: "Oh, you're calling about the pictures?"
Me: "Yes."
Her: "Of course. T's mother showed them to me specifically. Said that's her and her husband's thing."
Me: "Oh. Nice for them. Do you think it's OK for our 4-year olds to see them?"
Her: "Yes."
Me: Oh, OK."
Her: "Did he mention it to you?
Me: "No."

So I dropped it. Then I took the coward's route. I invited the son of the sexy mummy to play at our house rather.

Not even organic slugs taste good

For years I have avoided the green thing. As an issue I actively engaged with I mean. When the New Yorker ran long pieces on global warming or the melting of permafrost I simply skipped them. That's a big one for me cos I usually read everything in the New Yorker - OK maybe not all the theatre pieces, but I did read the one on Monty Python's Spam premiering on Broadway.

Then my interest began to be piqued.

First the New Yorker ran a piece on organic farming, specifically lettuce. It was a long investigative piece on the growth of the organic food market, and how it was becoming mainstream and run by conglomerates and how that ran counter to the spirit of organic farming. Fine I thought, but why all this effort and money going into organic growing of lettuce. Could it be that much better than what I buy at my local overpriced deli supermarket?

A while afterwards I had lunch at Marianne's in Stanford. This tiny restaurant up the coast from Cape Town had developed what can only be described as a cult following. While waiting for our table I ambled through the enormous kitchen garden. Sage, spinach, tomatoes, basil, butternut, celery, cilantro, lemons, rosemary, chives, dozens of lettuces - radicchio, frisee, cos, butter . Rows of beautiful food. And then overlooking the garden I ate the most delicious salad ever. Each lettuce leaf tasted of something yummy.

A taste memory of that salad remained with me over the months. It began to resurrect memories of some of the truly great food moments I've had. Eating asparagus we'd just picked from a friend's farm in the Drakensberg mountains; I am not sure if it tasted better raw or cooked as both were sublime. Earthy and fresh. Bloody hell, it tasted like asparagus. A dessert of gooseberries straight from a garden in Franschoek. Sweet and tart and that earthy thing again. A bowl of meaty tomatoes and bitter herbs tossed in balsamic to accompany lunch and dinner picked from the garden of the guest house we were staying in in Corsica.

Even now, months and years later I can recall the taste of these and other fresh organic produce I have been privileged to eat straight someone's garden.

As with blogging I began to plan a kitchen garden in bed. My visions tended to Versailles. A long elegantly laid out formal potager. Me tending it in gloves and a wide brimmed panama hat. I bought books on kitchen gardens around the world and drooled over square, circular and crescent shaped raised beds dripping with tomotoes and fennell, edged with perfectly tended box hedges and canopied over with sweet smelling roses. But the visions proved overwhelming. I had garden block. I was no closer to picking my own salad.

One hot Sunday morning after another tasteless frisee and cos combination I woke up and raced into the garden. I annexed a rectangle of 3x3 metres from my kids' grassy knoll, sped to the nursery, and gathered some helpers who could dig. By 4pm that afternoon we had a kitchen rectangle. Not very big. Edged with rather unattractive left over yellow bricks. We quartered the space and planted our seedlings.

Six weeks later it really is beautiful although not quite Versailles. So far we've only eaten herbs, lettuce and spinach but the tomato plants are vigorous and ascending their stake nicely. The only bug busters I've used have been crushed egg shells which have worked well and planting some marigolds and onions.

Only hitch is no one in our house except me will eat the spinach. My husband will grudgingly eat some lettuce, and my son says its all green and yucky. Not as yucky as the organic lettuce stuffed slug I ate by mistake. My son says he is waiting for the tomatoes. I can only hope they live up to his expectations. My kitchen rectangle has exceeded mine.

The Perfect Friday Night


The perfect Friday night. What is it? Well tonight I had two options (sort of.)

The opportunity was there to glam up, and swan off to dinner with mates - sans husband who is at a work thang - at the gorgeous and yummy restaurant, 95 Keerom St. I would engage in witty conversation with my book scout friend; have intense - and edifying let me tell you - discussions with my other old friend about her the reconstruction and development she has done on herself in Greyton this week; get the lowdown on SA's hot hot hot music scene from the scout's husband; all while I ate delectable carpaccio of linefish, probably cob, perfectly offset by an excellent Springfield Sauvignon Blanc. All this and I get to watch the whose who air kissing as they meet and greet. This would be followed by some serious dancing at a concert being held in a seriously cool small venue (the only way to do it) that the music guru would slide us into.

Unfortunately no babysitter was forthcoming so plan number two is in operation. Open a bottle of icy cold Chardonnay whilst bathing children. Glug down first glass. Bath kids, storytime, bed kids all by 7.10pm. Ding dong, Asian takeaways at the door. Wolf 'em down watching some crappy TV, then into bed with a September edition of the New Yorker (life is getting a little on top of me I confess), and then to sleep. Bliss.The doorbell just rang. Dinner's here. Good night.

Censored in cyberspace: Confrontation and technology can be a fabulous combination

Sometimes it's quite tiring living down here on the southern tip. Emotionally tiring I mean. Maybe I just need a holiday. But my Pollyanna sensibility left me briefly today when a new client wrote a one paragraph fax stating that they were unhappy about the demographics of our client service team. Despite us having won the pitch, and the client having met the entire team during that pitch. The client even announced our winning the account in the business media - and then the letter.

While Black Economic Empowerment in its local form is a uniquely South African phenomenon, affirmative action is not, and has been used to some good effect all over the globe. But it got me thinking and I realised that my problem was not with the client's request for us to address the demographics of our team, but the WAY it was communicated to us. I couldn't engage with them over it, we couldn't discuss it, there was no back and forth. It left me feeling powerless, a bit angry and a little confused.

And as new tools for communicating hit the market, it is getting easier and easier to avoid confrontation, and that ostensible good thing: the face to face which allows for a back and forth discussion.

But I realised this is not always a bad thing. Take the sms for example. As I was leaving work the other day my cellphone beeped. A message from my 8 month old daughter's nanny to say: "We have to talk. I thought I was 6 weeks pregnant but actually it is 32 weeks." Well, as it was the first I'd even heard of her being pregnant I almost gave birth for her right then and there in my open plan office.

We talked when I got home and once I was over the shock, I realised that the sms had actually helped. My nanny had been terrified to tell me that she was pregnant and the sms broke the ice. By the time I had got home I already had four contingency plans swimming around in my pond of a brain.

Not that I am scary, and confrontation is certainly not my own strong point. I naturally shy away from it. But I am her employer and there is that eternal unavoidable unequal power dynamic inherent in such a relationship which always makes confrontation hard. In this case, the sms gave us both time to think before we spoke.

And then there is the blog. I got booted off a group blog the other day. I was quite shocked. I was even a little hurt. Actually I wasn't booted, but the moderator would not post my comment until I rewrote it to change my tone which was considered too personal. So I bailed.

I began blogging for a many reasons, but chief amongst those was the opportunity to rant, to comment freely on whatever I felt like. I was euphoric after my first two posts. Even more excited when I was invited to join this group blog. But then I got censored. Censored in cyberspace, I didn't realise it could happen. But of course it does. I am censoring myself as I write this. BECAUSE OTHER PEOPLE READ IT. It satisfies another reason behind my need to blog: not only to be published, but also to be read.

Cyberspace, emails, blogs and chatrooms are a blessing for those of us who have opinions, want to engage and confront, but aren't great at doing it face to face. Call me a coward but technology has created some space for those of us with difficult, sassy or downright slanderous things to say.

As with everything there's a limit though. Getting dumped by sms must be a real bummer - you can't even throw a drink in the bastard's face!