The Ancient Shark Of Despair's blog

Tuesday, December 30th 2008

“Hi son!” I was really talkative today. I'd been getting ready. I think the kid was a bit shocked. “How was another day in court?”
“It was fine,” he said. He was making tea by this point.
“Is our team winning?” I called out.
“We're winning. You're winning, I'm winning. Everyone's winning.” As he said this he came out of the kitchen and leaned against the doorframe.
“What are you winning?” said Henrietta. She was there too. She was smiling even though she was on the losing team.
“I have no idea.” said the kid and went back into the kitchen. I winked and put my fin against the side of my nose. It is quite hard to do but I've had practice.
“What's that?” she said, shaking her head. I did the same thing again and again. I was telling her that she was not on the winning team, that we had secrets against her. Then the kid came in with tea. Winning tea.

Still no e-mail from David. He is never going to get his own room in my building if he keeps doing this. You have to be cool to qualify.

Wednesday, December 31st 2008

Hello everybody. Sorry that The Ancient Shark Of Despair couldn't make it to the blog today. But don't worry, I'm going to write one instead. I'm a developer and I'm trying to buy his whole building and turf him and all the old people who live there out onto the streets so that we can build some shops that probably aren't even very good. Then we'll skim all the sadness off those homeless old people and boil it to power even more development. It's a cycle and it goes on forever.

But it's not all fun and games, guys. Developing The Ancient Shark Of Despair's place has been pretty hard. For years, he took a stand and just said 'no' to development. He believes in things like 'community' and 'making the world better,' so he's a tough nut to crack in negogiation-fights. He does have one weakness though and it's a doozy: his landlord.

Basically, his landlord betrayed him just to make a point. The Shark just wanted to do his own thing but the landlord thought that he couldn't do that any more, but the landlord was just jealous that the Shark was spending a lot of time with his new friends (who are young and nice) and not enough with his old family (who are old and dying). So the Shark's landlord turned the tables on him one day and took his building away from him on some technicality and stopped him from having more than R100 at a time because he said that the Shark would only spend the money on pizza and on tipping the pizza guy, who was the best of the Shark's new friends. But then, just as the landlord was about to sell the building to us for developing, the Shark's real son jumped in the way and used his hotshot legal dynamo of a brain to fight us. We've had this big invisible war going on with the Shark for quite some time. We came so close to winning. But now we're losing, friends. We're losing.

---___---___--__-

Pretty funny, hey? It wasn't really a developer. It was me writing that. I thought I'd shake things up a bit today because it's my birthday. I don't normally do anything special for my birthday but today hotshot legal dynamo of a son and also the landlord and the grocery kid came over and asked me if I wanted to go out somewhere.
“I don't know many places,” I said. All three of them were lined up next to each other. They looked like they were about to sing or defend a goal. They looked so funny.
“Rhodes Memorial? We could have a nice big breakfast with scones,” said the grocery kid. The landlord nodded to show that he thought it was a good idea too. It meant that he wouldn't have to cook.
“And there's that glorious view of the city, Shark. You can see how it's all changed. You know you were telling me about that? How different it all looks today?” he said.
“No,” I said and I grinned and wriggled uncomfortably. “It'll be full of grannies and old people.”
“We could go on a hike,” tried the landlord. “Up Lion's Head, somewhere like that.”
“You won't get me up there with my back,” said the grocery kid. He touched his back with his hand to remind us that he had a bad back. Yeah, we know. “We don't have to go all the way up,” said the landlord. I shook my head. I didn't want to go up Lion's Head. There would be no point in it.
“We could go to the Museum, and see the whale they've got. Remember the whale? We saw it once. Or the Planetarium, you loved the Planetarium the last time we went.” This was the kid talking. “Henrietta and me went just the other day, to the museum, but the Planetarium is still there.”
“I used to take you all the time,” said the grocery kid. Yeah, like I didn't know that. I shook my head again. I did kind of want to go to the Planetarium, but it was too far. If we were going that far, we might as well go to the movies.
“Well then let's go to the cinema,” said the landlord. “It's been a bloody long time since we did that together.”
“You used to take us when we were boys,” said the grocery kid. I rolled my eyes at him.
“The kid wasn't allowed to go in those days,” I said. “He's allowed to go now, right?” They assured me that he could. I nodded. That's what I wanted to do.

It turned out that the Alhambra theatre had closed down a while back, so we decided to go to the Kenilworth Centre instead. I checked on the internet to pick a movie that looked good and we decided on one that was about South Africa and witchdoctors. The kid went to fetch the landlord's mother's old wheelchair and the landlord helped me wrap up in blankets. We used the old blankets that I always used to use – no towels. It was weird that he still had the exact same blankets but I guess a blanket is a blanket. I wasn't too happy about the landlord driving my car or the grocery kid sitting in the front seat, but it was okay in the back with the kid. The drive didn't take long and when we got into the parking lot they got me out of the car, put me in the wheelchair and took me inside the Centre, which is this huge mall with all kinds of weird shops. I'd seen a lot of ads for places like them on TV, and some of the shops were shops from the old days, but different. The kids seemed to really like pushing me around in my wheelchair. The landlord kept taking deep breaths of mall air and the kid (who was driving) kept on speeding up and slowing down to make it more fun. The grocery kid even looked kind of happy, although he wasn't as fast as the others but we waited for him to catch up. Not many people were around, just us boys, going to the movies.

When we got inside the movie house I got really quite excited. I hadn't done this in so long. I kept getting memories of what it was like back in the old days before the grocery kid turned the two houses into apartments and before the landlord came back from the Navy and married Celene. I used to not like those days, as a memory, because I don't think I had all my stuff worked out at that point. I was a lot of things to a lot of peoplen but I didn't have a core to myself that I was proud of. But now I think that maybe those times were pretty fun – I had my girl and I had these great kids and we got up to so such mischief before everything got serious and everyone got old. Stuff changed so much when the landlord moved out and the kid went off to Japan to study and the Abrams got kicked out of their house and it was just me and the grocery kid and a building full of people who complained all the time. At the time I was so excited to be running a business and fixing things the way I wanted them that I was kind of glad that all the changes were happening. I don't think I agree with me-back-then now. While I was thinking all these sorts of things, I kept losing my concentration and whenever the screen blacked out and a new ad came up, I'd ask the landlord if the movie had started. He got kind of irritated with me because it is supposed to be obvious when it happens, but there really were a lot of ads. I guess there's more stuff to buy now so it makes sense.

The movie was okay. It was about time-travel and that kind of mingled with my thoughts, but it was a funny movie and we laughed a lot. It feels weird that they are making movies about South Africa now. It doesn't feel right, somehow. I kept checking on the grocery kid to see if he was laughing and he was, nearly every time I looked. That made me feel good. He used to be my favourite and I when I saw him laugh at the screen, I think he was my favourite again for a little bit.

When we got back in I was so tired but I wanted to talk about the movie to everyone. We got Celene and Henrietta together and I told them the whole plot and the best jokes. The grocery kid and the landlord helped when I forgot a bit or did a line wrong. Even though I was so tired, I stayed up all the way until midnight and then it was a new year and it wasn't my birthday any more. I drank some wine to celebrate and came back to my room. I'm glad that the developers didn't win. I don't want everything to change again.

Friday, January 2nd 2009

The kid left today. He got tired of fighting. He's not as young as he used to be. Maybe Henrietta got to him. Maybe there is no reason – he just decided to follow the wind and do his own thing. The kid takes after me, don't forget. I could sit around and throw out theories all day, but here are the facts:

The kid came over early. I usually would have been asleep and might not have answered the door but I'd been up all night downloading music that @groombridge had e-mailed to me. It took a long time because my internet is so slow compared to the stuff they have in America. The way @groombridge talks about the internet in America makes it sound really magical and easy. I might move to America.

I asked the kid what he was doing around here so early. I smiled and said it was okay because I was actually still downloading the last few songs at that point. Then the kid said,
“I thought I could help you with moving some of your things out. You know, into your new – well, the old – the granny flat.” He didn't know what to call it. He shifted his weight and came at me, explaining, “Anything heavy. Which you might not be able to manage.” I couldn't believe it.
“Oh, can you not cut it in court any more? Was it too hard for you?” I wasn't trying to be mean, I was giving him a way out of it. All he had to do was say, 'yes.' He still hadn't come inside yet. This part happened at the door.
“I haven't been in court.”
“You said you were,” I said. I was ready to start quoting him to support my argument.
“I was just playing along with you,” he said. “I thought it was one of your games.” I nodded sagely. I've read that the Romans never used to record their defeats. They were positive thinkers.

Then he came in but he didn't want any tea. His mind was fixed on moving things for me. He wanted to know what he could take.
“I'm kind of using everything right now,”
“No you're not,” he said. “What's in that box?” He pointed to the box by my cupboard, the box full of the landlord's mother's things.
“That's important and private. I'm going to go through that tomorrow.”
“What about all those boxes in the back room?”
“I'm using those too. They've got art stuff in them. I might need it soon.” He went in the back room.
“This one is full of old newspapers,” he called out.
“That's in case I break anything – The grocery kid keeps buying glass.” I pointed out.
“I'm going to move some of them.” And then he did. He picked up one box at a time and walked with it out the door and down the stairs. A little later he came back, out of breath, and did the same thing again. I could have stopped him if I wanted to. I'm pretty tall and I can block up the whole doorway if I want. But the kid just wanted to help. I guess he felt bad about getting defeated in court. He doesn't like to lose. He takes after me that way, too.

My back room looked weird with all those pieces of it missing. I was suddenly worried about breaking something so I put all the mugs and dishes that were lying around my room into the sink where they were safe. Then I tried to remember what the back room looked like before the kid had taken the pieces out but I couldn't quite do it. It was hard to get things back to normal with the back room looking different.

Monday, January 12th 2009

Sarah came over today. The first thing she did when I opened the door was ask me why I looked so sad. I could have held her right then, but I don't do that very often. My skin is rough and greasy. People don't like it.
“No one's been to visit me,” I said. This wasn't really true – the landlord and the grocery kid have been over here, same as always, but I meant her.
“Oh Sharky, I'm sorry. I've just been really busy, there's been so much to do. I'm trying to get my visa together.”
“David didn't come over for christmas,” I said. “I wanted him to but he didn't.”
“I haven't spoken to David for a while,” she said. She sat down on the bed like she normally does and started adjusting her hair around. She can put it in so many different configurations. There's a lot of hair in my apartment and it all belongs to other people. I like to keep it there because it reminds me that there are people around, but the landlord says its gross that there are balls of hair around. Quite a lot of it is his, I reckon. “I'll talk to him and ask him what's up, how about that?” she said and then got up and made some tea and I put some of her music on.
“I keep mailing him.” I called out to her. You have to speak loudly when the kettle is on.
“I'll speak to him,” she called back. She came in with tea but I didn't really feel like drinking any. I'd never asked for tea. Sarah blew on hers for a while. She does that all the time.
“Does the place look different?” I asked. She looked around.
“No, I don't think so,” she said.
“The kid moved a bunch of my stuff out,” I said. “Soon they're going to move ME out.”
“Where did he move it to?” she said, looking worried while she blew on her tea.
“I don't know,” I said. I didn't want her to get worried about that. I didn't want her to get up and go looking for my stuff. I wanted her to stay. After three more blows she took her first sip of tea.
“Did you have a nice christmas?” she said.
“I had lunch with the landlord and everyone downstairs,”
“That does sound nice. Christmas was weird for me, it wasn't like a normal one. My family were being really uncomfortable so I tried to spend as little time in the house as possible. I ended up, like at the last minute, I didn't plan it or anything, going camping with Clar and her boyfriend and this guy I'm seeing.”

Sarah and guys.

But it's okay, I'm cool with that. I used to be a bit more aggressive about women. When things got serious again with the landlord's mother, I wouldn't let her go out too much in case she met a guy and liked him better than she liked me. But when Celene married the landlord I was cool with it. I just had gained a lot of perspective by then. You have to realise that sometimes you just can't reach people. You have to learn to be alone. That's what being a shark is all about.

“Sharky, do you need someone to help out around the house?” she said suddenly.
“What?” I thought she was calling my place dirty. I thought she was above that.
“Well, I'm thinking of going to England in winter so I go to their summer and get two summers in a row. I want to get some caring work there, like looking after old people, so I thought that maybe I could build up some work experience here with you. You don't have to pay me, you just have to tell the agencies that I'm signing up with that I did it.”
“Would you stay here with me?” I asked. I imagined her camping out here, like in a tent. She'd live in the kitchen and have a little has stove.
“No, I don't think so,” she said.

I said that I'd want that more than anything. With Sarah around, I could get so much stuff done. I wouldn't have to worry about doing the washing up and I could just focus on my work. And she'd be good in a fight, because I know it's going to come down to a fight between me and the landlord in the end. I think that I always knew that it would end up with me versus him. I'm not going to leave here without a fight and it'll be good to have her on my side.

Tuesday, January 13th 2009

I think this fight has been coming for a long time. Ever since the landlord came back from the Navy. Maybe before even then. He wasn't the landlord then, he was just a kid. You can't fight kids. There are rules.

It'll happen when he comes to fire me. After all these years and all the crazy things we've been through together, that's how it will end. He will walk through the door (after I've let him in,) put that sad old 'oh, why me' expression on his face and then tell me to leave the building, gotta get my stuff, the developers are here now, just down in the courtyard, it's time to go.

I think he'll bring the grocery kid with him as back-up. That's okay because I can take them both. I am a shark. I instinctively know how to fight because it is the nature of a shark to be alone and when you're alone out there in the ocean, stuff happens. Sometimes you've got to fight your way out of it. He'll then say a lot of things to fill the space because I won't be talking. I'll just be standing there looking big – big enough to block the door if I wanted to. I'll be beyond talking. I'll be all the way into 'fighting,' and there'll be words that I'll want to say, like, “From the moment I met you I knew that this would happen. I didn't want it to. I tried to stop it. But the world pushed us to where we are.” But I won't be able to say them. I'll do the first punch and then he, too, will be all the way over in fighting. With me. At that moment, the grocery kid will gasp and leave the room. He'll run downstairs to fetch the landlord's old leather boxing gloves. He used to box in high school. The leather is all black and broken. He's had them for a long time. We'll stand there, facing each other, while we wait for the grocery kid to come back. It'll take a while because he's so slow. By the time he finally comes up and helps the landlord put the gloves on, we've had a lot of time to figure out our strategies. Mine will be the best one. I'm not sure if the landlord's gloves still fit him these days buyt if they don't then we can make a plan. I won't need gloves because I reckon my fighting style is mostly headbutts. When his gloves are on and he has been made ready, I'll go at him, mouthing one word – 'win.' The word won't be for him. It will be my word. He'll try his punches but I'll dodge and I'll block. He's old and I'm a shark. I can absorb a lot of damage and then I'll do my headbutts. It'll hurt but I'll be ready for all of it.

When he's beaten and dazed and the grocery kid is calling for him to snap out of it and fight, that's when I know it's time. I'll tell him in my mind that he fought well then I'll pick him up in my mouth, walk over to the window and throw him right through the glass. I'll have to take the burgular bars off the window first though, or else it won't work. The landlord will probably have to help me with that.When the glass breaks and he falls through the window, the grocery kid will cry out and run to try and stop it all from happening. But hey, grocery kid, 1) – You're too late, 2) – I'll punch you in the face while you're not looking and you'll fall asleep right there on the bed. The landlord will fall into the courtyard, right in front of all the developers.
“I'm so scared!” One of them will say, and mean it. There will be a lot of fast talking and anger. They will look up at the window. They'll see me.
“We can't develop here! There's a killer shark on the top floor!” the leader developer will say. They'll all agree and then will leave. Later on they will offer me a lot of money for me to not make a fuss about what happened. I'll tell them that I'm staying and that they'll just have to deal and that I want the stuff that the kid moved brought back to me. They'll send the grocery kid round with the boxes of stuff and then me and him will get talking. We haven't really talked in years. I'll say that I'm sorry I won but that it was the best way and he'll tell me what's on his mind. Then I'll make him the landlord again, like he used to be, but this time he won't cop an attitude because he's seen what happens to landlords who turn against me and my system. I won't have to say any of that out loud though. He'll understand and I'll understand too.

Things will be okay from then on. I'll spend a lot of my time making a statue of the landlord that will go in the courtyard at the very spot where he'll land. He wasn't a bad guy and it's important that people remember him for the times when he wasn't a jerk.