The Story Of A F**king Blender.

Last Christmas I gave you my heart, but the very next day, you gave it away. Ja, I know that was a pretty lame opening intro, but I've been humming that song all day, I'm just digging the Wham! vibe at the moment.

Last Christmas also saw Steve O presenting me with a gift. For months I had hinted about wanting a new computer, leaving notes in his lunchbox, talking about it incessantly during our weekly conference calls, and even keying the word along the side of his car. It was with some surprise then, when he presented me with a blender instead, lovingly wrapped in old newspapers and pages from my manuscript which he had stolen from The HQ weeks before.

"This isn't a computer," I said thoughtfully, before playfully jabbing him in the throat. "But thanks anyway."

I was thankful anyway, as it allowed me to eat soup and other liquidified food stuffs without the use of my dentures, which I had won in a bar fight many years before but which never really fitted nicely, if I was really honest with myself. Also, I had a strong suspicion that this could be the root cause of my horrible morning breathe, so I was pretty keen to see the back of it. So it was with great disappointment and a gnashing of teeth, when I realised I actually owned the blender equivalent of an Eskom load-shedding schedule - clever and practical in theory, but ultimately useless.

Making pea soup took about as long as growing the actual peas in the back garden, and then beating them with a large stick until they turned into liquid mush. Crushing ice was also out of the question. The appliance was more likely to do a stand up comedy routine than crush my cubicles, which really pissed me off as I wasn't in the MOOD for a stand up comedy routine, I just wanted some crushed f**king ice.

Eventually I summoned up the courage to return the blender to Makro, the juggernaut wholesaler where it was originally flogged. The returns section of Makro is rather similar to the Wynberg Home Affairs office, with hundreds of smelly and desperate looking people standing around in a never-ending queue, watching their lives and souls slowly seep away. One gentlemen claimed to have been waiting in the queue for the past 2 weeks, and so was understandably irritated when I managed to jump in front of him whilst he urinated in the blue box he was carrying, a blue box he carried so as not to lose his place in the queue. Which I think is what's known as irony. Or just bad luck.

Through the good grace of God, I managed to stagger to the front of the line - beating off everyone with my pepper spray and choice use of curse words - where I was then greeted by a staff member who seemed to have recently been in a serious car crash, as she spoke slowly and seemed unable to grasp what I was saying. Using a combination of grunts and hand signals, I managed to get the message across that my kitchen appliance was as useful as an ANC Youth League member - minus the sense of entitlement and naked buttocks - and eventually got her to reluctantly accept my donation of one defective piece of kitchenware.

Oddly enough, my act of endeavour was merely the first play in a long winded production of returns, phone calls, more returns and the inevitable threats to commit grievous bodily harm, which I certainly didn't take lightly as Yvonne from returns seems disturbingly psychotic.

So it was with great joy and celebration when I eventually received the blender a few weeks back, after months of to'ing, fro'ing and general procrastination. Excitedly I rushed home, threw in some bananas, a few mangos, a couple of strawberries, the body oil of a 17 year old virgin, and some nectarines - the essential building blocks for a wonderfully blended smoothie. My appliance had other ideas though, and with a burst of electrical flame which singed my nose hairs and burnt my eyeballs, it gave up on me again. After a few minutes of rolling around and singing to Jesus, my eyesight eventually returned, and it was then that I noticed the small yellow note attached underneath.

"April Fools!" it said, signed by the staff from Makro.

And so our battle continues.



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