Pipe Cleaners save the day – an unlikely story of desperately needed support obtained from ex-smoking paraphernalia.

On the 14^th of October Kwaaiplaas (the news/chat group) is having it’s 2^nd Birthday party and the theme is supposed to be Greek Mythology. A certain wise-ass declared that she would be appearing as the one and only Madusa (you know the one with the full head of snakes…or having a very bad hair day?), and honestly I thought it would be really simple.

My plan was to strap some toy snakes to an alice-band and voila! Madusa as promised. But in not one single toy shop out of the 6 that I’ve visited have I been able to allocate a damn rubber snake that is suitable for this mission. Some of them are so big that if I had to strap only two onto my head I would also have to figure out what an Ancient Greek neck-brace looked like too, so as a plan B I decided to just add some coloured shiny ribbons and hope for the best. Unfortunately this did not even vaguely resemble snakes and I ended up looking more like the NixNax guy than Madusa.

Finally today I experienced a breakthrough! Yay! I was cleaning a corner of my room and discovered a bag full of old smoking stuff (4 pipes, 2 packets of pipe cleaners a big box of matches and about a kilo of flavoured tabacco). For in case you were wondering: I may have bordered on chain smoking but this was actually bought for a fundraising event at church – I’m just the custodian. Today is day 332 that I am clean of smoking, and still going strong. Anyway, back to Madusa… with the help of some pipe cleaners and red ribbon I now have a full head of snakes ready for next week. (Okay maybe half a head of snakes, but I ran out of pipe cleaners and frankly I think it will do).

See below – my snakes – expertly modeled by my lovely kettle together with a fetching black head scarf! I’ve grown quite attached to them already and can’t wait to show them off next week. ;-)