The Scroobious Guide to Switzerland

(An erratic overview by a partial* and undereducated observer.)

Grueziwohl mitenand!
("Polite greetings to all of you.")

Switzerland is a very peculiar country. Don't let anyone tell you different. After eight years of exposure to a (half) Swiss personality, plus repeated visits to his home country (and family), I can say with absolute certitude that these Swiss are crazy**.

As evidence, I give you the following:
Every adult male, as you probably know, has to do military service*** - first for six months at age 18, then for a few weeks every year, as a refresher. Men are expected to be ready for service at any moment, should the Austrians invade, or whatever. The countryside is dotted with bunkers and the Swiss army is famous for important things like knives, and chocolate rations. This is familiar stuff. What you probably don't know is that, as a natural adjunct to this militia principle, every adult male is in possession of an army-issued machine gun, and ammunition.

In any other country, it would be news if a lunatic didn't run amok with these government-issued weapons. Right?

I give you this just as a little background colour. The rest of the guide to be published in daily instalments. Come back tomorrow for the Scroobious Guide to Swiss language.

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* As in biased. Not as in incomplete. I am still an entire Scrivener.
** Then again, I'm increasingly inclined to side with Obelix in the belief that "these [insert nationality here] are crazy". Anyone you care to name. Madder than cut snakes, the lot of them.
*** Apparently, this is being cut down. I'm a bit vague on details, but the essence of my report is purest truth, I assure you.

Shhh...

Scroobious is sleeping till October.

Well, she is if she gets her way. What else are holidays for?

OCD R somebody else

In response to a heartfelt plea, I shall now list and describe all my personal OCD tendencies in loving detail.

Or I would, except that I can’t actually think of any. It’s not that I’m suspiciously stable. I check things like plane tickets repeatedly and obsessively – every time I book a trip, I am quite, quite convinced that I’ve made a horrible muddle and will wind up at the airport on the wrong day, forced to pay a fortune in idiot tax to get where I need to go. (I will only calm down when the trip is successfully completed, in fact. It makes no difference how many times I compare diary and tickets; I never quite believe that they match up.)

Similarly, knowing perfectly well that I’ve already triple checked that I’m carrying wallet, mobile, tube ticket and keys won’t stop me checking again as soon as it pops into my head that I need to be sure I have all those things.

I don’t really have any weird compulsions, though. Although it distresses me to be in possession of two partly used items such as, oh, shampoo bottles, or ballpoint pens. (The pens one is a bit of an issue, working in an office, because of course people are always walking off with my pens and leaving theirs. It’s simply not possible to use up pens in an orderly fashion.)

And I take colour coordination very seriously. So I’m absolutely on Anna’s side regarding the T-shirt/duvet clash. I also have to stop myself staring pointedly at, oh, say, anyone wearing brown boots with an all-black outfit. No matter how cute she may be and how much I envy her dinky little waist and shiny red hair, and how stylish she is in general terms.

Just as a for instance, you understand.

Similarly, I like a clean desk, and a clean PC desktop. But I’m not anal about it. Not really. I mean, if any misguided freelancer happens to sit at my workstation when I’m out, and if I come back and notice that, I’m not going to spend more than, ooh, twenty minutes neurotically cleaning up. At most. Probably.

While I fully empathise with the tic recently described to me by an anonymous friend (who may or may not be Anonymous), of lining coins up so that the heads all face the same way, I’ve definitely never done that myself. Definitely not. Nor have I ever sat at a restaurant table carefully arranging the salt and pepper pots, cutlery and other table furniture so as to (a) align with the floral print on the tablecloth, and (b) leave the minimum space between them. Ever. You hear me? I don’t do that. That would be weird.

But while I’m on the subject, there’s nothing at all weird about folding up tissues before and after you blow your nose. It’s just neat.

So there.

Old faithfuls

In the wall of the Victoria & Albert Design Museum.

To those who wait

After long periods of work and waiting and more work, some of the Good Things that have come to me in the past few days:

Time spent with Anonymous. It’s been too long. Side-effects of same: excessive calorie consumption*, excessive laughter, excessive shopping. Blisters.

Renewed conviction that if I’m to live on these benighted shores, it should be in Brighton. London is terribly exciting and all, but Brighton is Better. Like Sea Point without the mountain. More hippies, less models. And last time I looked, it was possible to leave Sea Point without a henna tattoo. You know what? I don’t even like Sea Point that much. But I do like Brighton. It’s as close as I’m going to get to Cape Town without leaving the UK. So, if Beloved could only get a job on the south coast…

Delivery of many excitingly large cardboard boxes from overseas. With equally large, but less exciting customs duties to be paid.

Delivery of one small cardboard box, containing free wine. We really do heart the internet. And may I point out, it’s a Cape winemaker who generously decided to give this “serious marketing disruption” thing a go. They make good people in the Cape**. As well as good wine. Yum***.

Now it’s back to the work for a bit. Sigh. But also, from this Friday, a week of holiday in Switzerland****! Yay!
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* The good Anon having stuffed his tiny suitcase with Albany Double and Milo slabs. To non-Saffers: you just don’t know what you’re missing.
** They also make good people in the States, apparently. Who knew? [ducks flurry of cyberslaps from Yankee readers] Mr Gapingvoid not only came up with this bright idea, he made sure I got my bottle after the offer closed – my first mail having apparently disappeared in a cloud of binary wossname. So, good people all. (If you're curious about this peculiar booze-for-bloggers idea, there's tons more discussion on the blog and wiki. Makes for fascinating reading.)

*** That's a generalised "yum". Not a Stormhoek-specific yum. I haven't tried it yet, but I'll be sure to let you all know if the taste's as good as the tactic.
**** [coff] …meaning yet another blogging hiatus… brief, though. Brief.

"Hello? ...Hello?"

Not only am I Very Busy and Important, but this week one of my Favourite People in the Whole World Ever* is in London town, and I'm playing host and tour guide**.

So I'll be further neglecting my online host duties. Sorry.

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* Clue: Anonymous won't be posting this week.
** The Scroobious Tour of London is rather low on Crown Jewels, cathedrals and the like, and rather high on amusing shop names ("eatmyhandbagbitch" being a favourite, though sadly it's shut down), one or two world-class salons d'amour, surprising public art and architecture, and patisseries.

Not. Acceptable.

I'm aware that things have been a little quiet around here. (Because I'm very busy and important, you see, shut up and wait for the big reveal in a few weeks.) One might even say, deathly dull. I'm not surprised to see my stats sinking rapidly into utter oblivion.

But I am SHOCKED! to see that MSN Search tossed the Scrivenings up in answer to the dreary query: "How many days till I die?"

THIS IS NOT GOD'S WAITING ROOM. There is life. I promise.

Be patient.

Vagina dentata

The rape victim's revenge: a Femidom with teeth.*I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.

Problem the first: it doesn't actually prevent the foul deed occurring, it just causes pain for the perpetrator. If you can convince him that pain will ensue, okay, but I'm not sure of that. So I agree with the concern that it might just trigger a more brutal attack from the now really pissed off attacker.

Problem the second: what women need is to be free of the fear of attack. That fear will not be ended by the knowledge that ooh, but if he DID, he'd be sorry. And in SA, I can't imagine that the knowledge of this device would spread to the extent that potential rapists would be scared off even thinking of such a thing.

Problem the third: cost. R1 may be nothing to middle class women, but as the inventor herself points out, middle class women are not the ones most in danger. The article doesn't say whether this is a washable/reusable item, or a disposable one, but I strongly suspect it's the latter. So do you spend R1 a day - R30 a month - on this uncertain protection, when your monthly income may be only R800 and you have a family to support?

But none of that explains why I hate it.

When I was a (very far from promiscuous) student, I was in the habit of carrying a condom in my wallet at all times. I did so whether or not I was in a relationship. My reasons were complicated: I would have said at the time that it was my responsibility to be prepared, even if I wasn't planning any escapades, because who knew what might happen; I would have said, also, that living in SA, my chances of being attacked were terrifyingly high and I wanted to at least have a chance of protecting myself from HIV infection if that did happen.

I'm sure that sounds bizarre to non-Saffer readers. I must point out that first, SA women are bombarded with stats on the high incidence of rape (one every 8 seconds, was it?), and second, it really is possible (sometimes) to convince your rapist to wear a condom, because he's as scared of Aids as you are (and probably hasn't a clue whether he himself is already infected).

It is still bizarre, though. Obviously. In hindsight I think my condom-carrying habit was a rather silly gesture based on the idea that I should be a liberated and responsible sexually active woman. Even if I wasn't all that active.

But the thing is: it was an empty gesture with little connection to, well, anything. As high as the rape stats are, they're skewed by the fact that if you're a woman (or girl) in the townships, you're pretty certain to be attacked. It's not so likely in the suburbs. (Well, it's a lot likelier than in a nice Sussex town, but still.) The more distance I have from that state of mind, the more revolted I am that planning for a possible rape even featured in my thinking. It's good to be careful, of course, not to put yourself in dangerous situations and so on, but really. It's deeply unhealthy to be constantly thinking in those terms. Isn't it?

And so, even knowing the dangers that South African women face, I truly hate the idea that they are being invited to prepare themselves, every day, in such an intimate way, to be raped. It's not empowering. It's not protective. It's sick. And I hate it.

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* Link courtesy of strawbs.

I win

Is there anything better - anything - than the sound of someone who has previously played hard to get saying:

"You have my full attention."