If you were having coffee with me I would welcome you to my tangle of words and offer you a date…
Atleast I think they are dates… They fruits picked from the Queen Palm tree outside. Believe it or not, I have lived my life oblivious to the fact that these bright orange fruit are edible and that they are a variety of dates. I only realised it when a visitor was ecstatic to find the Queen Palm tree fruit was ripe and ready for the pickings.
I helped them gather the fruit while wondering if they were edible got offered a bite, to taste. I felt like a descendant of Adam being offered the forbidden fruit… I didn’t suddenly become wise to the ways of the world nor did I die as evidenced by my still being alive to give you the update on the date….. unless, of course, new age ghosts are capable of blogging…..
If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that I took the liberty of Googling the so-called “fruit” from the so-called “palm tree” and that is how I came to know that it’s a Queen Palm a species of Sygarus also known as Giriba palm or cocos palm and yes the fruit is edible….
Fun fact you can ferment the fruit into a fruity alcoholic beverage…. (why didn’t I learn this cool fact during lockdown when sale of liquor was banned…. Still still here we are…)
If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that speaking of dates what is your preferred date format??
•dd/mm/yyyy
•mm/dd/yyyy
Where d is day and m is month and y is year.
You can have your reasons for your default date format but personally, I think people who prefer mm/dd are vampires…. Because they don’t like the day….. Also, I mean doesn’t it just make structural sense to start with the day, month then year in a sequential progression…
Why my current fascination with dates; dates dates and not dates Dates? It’s because I had an interesting conversation about when one should stop wishing people Happy New Year and I got this date as the answer:
01/02
Was this 1 February or 2 January 🤔🤔🤔 That is the question.
If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that our president has taken his annual leave with effect from 13/01 to 05/02 and the country is in the capable hands of the Vice President.
First order of business was to extend lockdown by another two weeks…. (though to be honest the lockdown regulations exist on paper and on the ground really just vibes) Aside from schools not opening, everything else seems to be business as usual except for when the cops show up.
If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that football soccer fever has gripped the continent as all eyes are on the AFCON Tournament. I am not a fan of soccer but one does feel a certain contagious thrill when one’s national team has qualified into the Africa Cup Of Nations.
Equally when you find yourself drawn into the excitement if you support the Zimbabwean national team known as the Warriors then you’ll find yourself equally sucked back into disappointment and agree with someone who mumbles to you “why do we support the Warriors when all they do is worry us….“
The Warriors will be returning to Zimbabwe having been eliminated from the group stage of Afcon after losing 1:0 to both Senegal and Malawi and that is that. Although they have an upcoming game with Guinea, win or lose they are still out of the tournament…. Well, at least they made it that far.
If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that the AFCON has had its beautiful moments but not without its drama too. For example, the match between Tunisia and Mali which almost resulted in violence when the referee blew the whistle at the 84th minute and then after realising his mistake resumed play and still proceeded to end the game in the 89th minute, no extra time, no excuses….
Some people joked how if we had had that referee in our match against Senegal perhaps the match would have ended in a draw as the penalty goal that cost us the game had been scored in the 94th minute…
If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that load-shedding is back again, apparently during the festive period the power utility company had shelved their system maintenance to minimise power outages. Now that they have resumed whatever it is they do, electricity has again become an elusive lover who is never home.
Oh by the by, with effect from 13/01/22 Nigeria finally ended its Twitter Ban. The Nigerian government suspended Twitter on June 4 2021 after it removed a post from their President that threatened to punish regional secessionists. Telecoms companies subsequently blocked access to users in Nigeria… Through the marvel of VPNs Nigerians on Twitter had managed to stay on the Twitter microblogging site.
What’s been going on in your neck of the woods?
~B
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Becoming The Muse 
Such an amusing piece. The one about date formats and the referee halting the game at unappropreate times took me by great thought. Great pieces, Beaton. Keep up the good work.
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Thank you for dropping by Lamittan…
Guess what our national team won it’s game with Guinea but of course they still got eliminated from the group stage of the Afcon tournament, ironic that their first win in 16 games of years of AFCON doesn’t really count for much except a graceful exit… A bit bittersweet that why didn’t they play this way in the previous matches…. I think there’s a profound life lesson in that somewhere 🤔
~B
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Oh it’s quite disturbing! Yes, there’s something to take from this. Wonder why our govts aren’t always very willing to support national teams both morally and financially 🤔
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My grandparents had a couple of date palms in their backyard way, way back in the 70’s. Typically the fruit was just an annoyance as there was so much fruit. Strangely we seemed to have a lot of stewed dates for sweets (dessert to others) whenever we went there.
I hadn’t thought about that in decades until reading your article. A nice trip down memory lane to when life was simpler.
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I think this season has been the only time the fruit has ripened by the droves…
Oh you can stew it??? I think I’ll try that cause right now it’s just being a messy pile of dates🤣
I really should look up what else one can do with dates 🤔
Haha thanks for dropping and glad to have taken you back to simpler times 🍵
~B
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How people do dates is definitely cultural. America does the whole mm/dd thing. I know we stick to it because decadent europeans do the dd/mm thing and we don’t want to be like them after all! 😀
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That makes so much sense and then decadent Europeana came and settled in Africa and passed on some of that mm/dd thing and here we are 🤣
~B
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I prefer dd/mm. As you said it makes sense. I’d like a date sometime soon
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dd/mm just makes sense😅
Dates are kinda awesome🥳🥳
~B
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Yeah I’d be hard pressed to find a fellow American (1st Generational) that writes the date as 02/01/22 and they meant January 2
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It wouldn’t put it past me if immigrants that are used to that date being January 2, probably will write it as such and confuse the hell out of anyone they encounter 😂
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🤣🤣🤣
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That 2 January looks just about right to me… 🤣
Back in school I used to get confused which number stood for what and a teacher explained that if you remember big bigger biggest: that’s day month year And that’s just kinda stuck with me 😅
~B
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I had no idea those things were edible. Next time are see ripe dates, I’ll have some. Thanks B
NB: The date format is dd/mm/yyyy for me.
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Those things are edible… Still can’t get over that😅how are we only just knowing this now 🤣🤣
~B
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I have always used mm/dd/yyyy format. For some reason seeing it used other ways makes me stop and think for a second 😁 I live in America maybe that’s how I was taught way way back when I was in school. 🤣🤣
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Looking at the responses seems America has the mm/dd/yyyy format as standard 🤔
Also for us I guess it’s steeped in history as we adopted British format.
~B
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Yeah, we’re all about mm/dd in the US, which causes me all kinds of trouble when I’m doing European paperwork. Unless the dd is greater than 12, I’m likely to switch it up.
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This reminded me of my troubles with the telling of expiration dates on European items – are they translated to US or not? Unless one of the numbers is greater than 12, there is no sure way to tell.
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It can be a bit a tricky, I had a friend who missed a scholarship interview because they mixed up the dates and what they thought was 6 July was actually 7 June….
~B
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Ouch!
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Blowing the whistle too early? Oh boy…
I think the date was meant to be January 2nd.
Yes, I use mm/dd and I prefer nights to days so you are right about that. However, I do agree that it’s a weird order of dates. Most people just care more about months than days since the latter fly by too quickly.
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Was reading a news update from the referee on ending the soccer far too early and they explained that it was because the weather was wet and humid and everyone was thirsty but the water was not quenching the thirst and he was hearing strange sounds and voices telling him to end the match… so he ended the match….
Days do fly by…. OMG times is rushing to end!!!
~B
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For real?! Hilarious.
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