Where Have All the Miniskirts Gone?

In the legscape of the city of Accra, the miniskirt is fast fading away! Its boring big sister (the skirt) is making less appearances. Its equally ravishing cousin (the minidress) is now oh so shy.

Popularised (some say invented) by Mary Quant, a British designer, in Swinging London in the sixties, this organised strip of fabric is accused of scandal, corruptive influence, car crashes and every bad thing in between.

It is, properly, a delightfully skyward wrap, whose hemline (when conservative) is eight inches above knee level. It is sometimes better measured in mere inches below (sea level?) No, below the crotch fork :)

I have said it all my life, and it will bear repetition. Along with the internet and the mobile phone, the miniskirt was the most intriguing invention of the twentieth century. Three powerful modes of instant communication :). And deep in our hearts, we all know which one has the biggest impact.

A poor young woman was sexually assaulted recently in Johannesburg for daring to wear a miniskirt. Her assailants skirted GOOD SOCIAL RULES about consent. Nwabisa Ncgukana gets a mention in my heroes section this week for going back with others to tell the demented taxi drivers what we all think of them.

The Accra weather is hot. The miniskirt is ideal for the heat. The miniskirt is comfortable to wear in the heat (or have I been lied to?) Ergo, the miniskirt is perfect for Accra! So, where have all the miniskirts gone? Accra is sweltering these days. Everywhere you go, the pair of trousers rules.I guess it is each to their own.

Well, then, my own is to wonder if people have privacy issues. Or are we short of graceful legs? Maybe the staple diet denies the chance to be body beautiful. A tight pair of ... anything, really (but the miniskirt) can round off just about any knobs or flabs or handles :)

Where have all the miniskirts gone? We must stop constructing the city centre pavements in protest. What is the canvas without the paint?

I Can!!!

The Birds Still Sing in the City of Accra

The Axolotl is a very pretty bird! It rules the skies of Accra and the Amazon. The Axolotl has amazing colours to take your breath away (but most Accrans are out of shape, anyway, these days). We will get to that some day soon. By the way, 'Accran' refers to a resident of Accra. You stress the first syllable (because I say so! Got a problem with that?)

False start. A false start is a satisfying prank. If the victim is really fooled, the inward pleasure is complete. I hope I have got you already. :)

The Axolotl will not be found in Accra. And it is not even a birdie! The Axolotl is a Mexican salamander. They eat it raw and cold, early in the morning. Gotcha again, I lied! :)

Everywhere you wake up in the City of Accra, the birds will sing in the morning. Not a boring one-chord song; in their whistled octaves, they explore the full rhythm range of rich African music. They tell us that, here, in the City of Accra, we have not done the worst to our environment.

But do you even hear them? Or are you too busy keeping up with the pace of life? Life has work, late nights out, television and the internet. But life also has you, the birds and the Axolotl. :)

Nothing makes you feel more alive at the thin-and-light end of the day than the song of the Accran sparrow. A delightful ditty, really, beating to an unseen clock, reminding all that life can still be beautiful.

Of course many an Accran may not see beauty in a venture that does not promise a deluge of GHCs at the end.

Humans live full and exciting lives; salamanders just eat flies!

I Can!!!

Why the Free Night-time Calls will not be Extended

An old connection re-engaged with me at 4 a.m. because the link was free. Let us call her Bad News.

It was totally impolite of Bad News to call at Spirit Hour, right? I might have got hitched. I might have just gone to (my hard) bed (or is it gone to bed, hard?). I might have been with present connection (let us call her Sweet Entry). Had I been sleeping since midnight, it would still have been rude to call me, then, in residential Accra, where we sleep quite early.

Even my sweet Sweet Entry makes her many pleasant ingresses, in person or on the phone, between first light and the witching hour. So, we can all agree that I must have been right in jilting Bad News three girlfriends ago, no matter how I did it.

It is just plain wrong to read your manners wrongly, and call people up in the small hours of the morning, right?

WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!

Let us think a about it a little. We work in the day and sleep (two-legged, four-legged or multi-legged) at night. Hee hee. But we all came to meet this rule. A rule set, perhaps, by the first humans to begin to reckon time.

I choose to defy this rule of society for two simple reasons. First, I do not wish to comply with it. Secondly, this remote ancestor could not have known, better than me, what is good for me today.

So, I will not be calling you at Spirit Hour, no! But you are welcome (in fact, I encourage you) to keep my phone busy at that time. I will have no complaints, and I will pick up every call.

If you have missed the obvious question, then I will ask it for you: if I am not bothered about the late phone calls, then what am I griping about? Answer: I would rather not be called, at any time at all, by Bad News.

And I know why other companies do not follow the telephone-company example, and give away free goods and services at Spirit Hour.

You know I would be proved right about silly societal rules. People would not sleep at night. They would be queuing up at 3 a.m. for free chicken at Papaye and free microwave ovens at Game.

I Can!!!

Building Back to the Past

I have to wake up at 4.30 am everyday. At that time, I would have slept for only three and a half hours. I wake up that early because my bed is too hard. With all the time before first light, I do not even have ten minutes to wash my car, Maxine. At that early hour, I want to be "alone" in the world, to own it, to love it, to think about life.

I am all alone, except for the long line of neighbours I can see up and down the street. I have not asked them, but I bet their beds are hard too. Even the little ones are zombieing into the cars, and I know why!

At 5.30, we are already queuing up on the Spintex Road. There must be a spectacle at the end of it. Some breathtaking beauty which will be gone before sane men wake up. Six streets or so terminate in a little roundabout we have named for a cocoa smuggler who is a national hero. A huge, windowless mall slows down the traffic some more so that we can all savour the nostalgia of the linear beauty and cool breeze of the trees that used to line up the street some twenty years ago. But I admit I like that mall once I am inside it. There, we do not only pick up essential commodities.

In that small roundabout and the mall, somebody was playing a game (excuse the pun) with our intelligence, health and productivity. Just for the pleasure of seeing the benighted roundabout and the floodlit car park of the mall, I stay late at work. I get home late, savour my private time, sleep late. And as I sleep, I cannot wait for the next morning's breathtaking sights on Accra's most scenic route.

We spent a lot of money building to the past. Why did we not build a Mayan or Egyptian pyramid?

I Can!!!

The Hypocrisy of Age

A parent wants to be friends with their children when they grow up. That same parent turns their face at a relationship between their child and a person ten years older. You are twenty-something years older than the daughter you want to be friends with; why cannot she go with a guy ten years older? I get it: because you say so.

I Can!!!

Free Minds

If the mind is a terrible thing to waste, what do you think you are doing following the charted course of other minds, norms, social rules, advice, routine, habit? Free your mind.