Can I Have My Rack Back?

Can I have my rack back? A Unicenter tale.

My shirt is damp and crinkled this morning because my new drying rack collapsed in the night, folding it awkwardly on itself. My colleagues think I have neither shame nor self respect, on account of my rumpled appearance, and I, as a reflection of this, have shame and no self respect, which could only be achieved if I was to turn back time to the purchase of this problematic piece of plastic.

Alliteration aside, it was almost on entering the Unicenter at the weekend, the largest and busiest Shopping in the Latin American world, that I’d bought a drying rack. Yes, it’s all glam, this anecdote. This naturally means Katie, the better half, had bought a drying rack, which I was now carrying around the Unicenter for the remainder of the day, like a student who’d lost a drunken bet.

You can really only carry a drying rack one way. You carry it like (and yet so unlike) a surfboard: flat, under one’s arm. A surfboard, for geeks. However, this Ubergeek Drying Rack (UDR) was almost exactly one inch longer than the distance between my armpit and finger stretch, so had to walk around trapping the UDR betwixt inner arm and side, flattened palm.

Which was sore.

Especially so when I failed to avoid the ladies of Zona Norte approaching from the flank, who would bustle into the UDR, fueled by their rich cocktail of Botox, hunger and caffeine, sending me spinning like a character in a silent comedy into Falabella.

Much swearing later, and I was trying on a tie (a Christian Dior tie, no less), and as such I wanted the UDR to be safely hidden and therefore disassociated from my now restored sophisticated self.

After rejecting all manner of striped and loud colours (mostly on account of the fact that they failed to bring out my Godgiven Scottish complexion of offal) I turned to find said UDR rack missing. Que paso? one might well ask.

I headed off to find out que paso and, eventually (and, in truth, by chance ) tracked down the now loathed UDR, heavily guarded and sitting behind the front desk.

Several officious looking staff stood between me and something I now desperately didn’t want.

I tried to explain the situation as best I could, which wasn’t very well, as I didn’t feel I could just bypass the queue, release it from its Falabella counter prison, and walk off.

Unfortunately, my Spanish was not up to such complexities, so after asking each of them how they were and where they came from, I was rather stuck.

Included in this dialogue were the words corbata, rack de drying, and cambiar (and I didn’t know how to say, Can I have my rack back? like a Zona Norte lady discussing her surgery options).

In the midst of bastante pointing I had somehow managed to communicate that I wanted to exchange my despised UDR for a tie. Which, fearing the wrath of my good woman, I did not.

I DID - moment of triumph - manage to explain that I did not want to exchange rack de drying rack of a tie. “No quiero cambiar mi rack de drying por una corbata” (it wasn’t in my phrasebook). But that only led us back to the start of the conversation. So I fell back on Como estas? De donde sois?

At length, I resorted to plan A: picking up my rack de drying and scarpering, with a Sales Assistant in hot pursuit desperately checking I wasn’t angry. “Soy Gracila, puedo ayudarte?”

I remember her as a Sales Assistant, although in retrospect she was more probably a shrink. There was a queue of around 5 people, which according to most estimates would indicate that there were 8 shrinks watching.

So now my shirt is crumpled and I look a mess. All the stigma of a vagabond and I wasn’t even out late.

The lesson to learn, is, I think, an obvious one.

Drying racks are shit.

National Obsession

Mosquitos.

They made the front page of the Buenos Aires Herald.

Everyone has their own theory. It's the humidity. It's the sewers, they're not draining. It's due to Climate Change. It's cold in Paraguay now so they've come South. It's Bush's fault. It happens every seven years and it's caused by El Nino.

Either way, they get in your head. Literally: I have Your entire day becomes a mental battle map based on safe and vulnerable mosquito zones. And these aren't normal mossy's, in case you think I'm exaggerating: they are aggressive, they are smart and they are organised.

People no longer whinge about their classes, they whinge about how many mosquitos are in the room, and how likely they are to be bitten on the way there.

You're late for the bus in the morning because you don't want to risk being exposed on the corner for a second later than you need to be.

This is because they bit you through your clothes.

Don't wear dark colours.

Don't go outside at dawn or dusk. Or from dawn to dusk.

At break, in the Primary, they line the little ones up, in single file, and - eyes closed, hand over mouth - they get sprayed with Off before they are ALLOWED outside.

No one uses the toilets on the ground floor in the Primary. The mossy's took that last week too.

Even now, I am typing as fast as possible as I'm in an exposed zone and want to minimise exposure.

I hate them.

Flat: after photos