I'm coming up only to hold you under

They were mock-fighting. Pushing each other's buttons, because after a lifetime together one knows the other and what will drive them close to an edge of sorts. Both got cramps in their right legs. It was fun to observe a father-daughter relationship when mine ended about 12 years ago. I mean, we live, but they are lives apart that connect through the occasional forced phone call where nothing is said because I don't know (or want to know) his life, and he has no real interest in even remembering the names of people we have been friends with since school. Condescension towards what we do and where we live does not help. 

My cousin has a mulberry tree in the back corner of the garden. There used to be one at the far corner of our school as well, and in the afternoons, before sport started, we would go and stain our white polo shirts with handfuls of berries. My cousin wanted to get some before returning to Cape Town, and I wanted to get some to make jam because the  last time I tried it wasn't that successful. It was dark already and we had only one flashlight and a very dim (almost non-existently dim) head-light. Is that what one calls it? I don't mean a car headlight, I mean those tiny torches you strap to your forehead and that make you look ridiculous. And others get irritated when you then proceed to shine directly in their eyes continuously. I assume my uncle thought we shouldn't be hunting for mulberries at that time of the night (haha, it was close to 19.00), but he came to help us. Sans torch I sort of felt my way around for the ripe ones, but my uncle kept dumping handfuls into our zip-lock bags, so we had quite the stash.

In primary school we used to get silkworms and feed them the mulberry tree's leaves. The end result of a worm was a little round silken bookmark. Don't really know where the bookmarks have disappeared to, but watching the worms' whole transition into moth was cool. These days I'm not that fascinated as easily any more. Well, no, that Consol Solar Light is supercool, in the whole "suck it silk worms, this is technology" manner.

Haha, and later, when the mulberries are done marinating in sugar and cooked, they'll probably be put in Consol jars for preservation. Ag I don't even know what I'm rambling about. It's one of those days of procrastination where I'm waiting for my conscience to kick in and tell me to start.