Last year another young lady arrived at her matric dance in a coffin in a hearse.
I POPPED into an exclusive fabric store a few weeks ago to purchase a metre of silk material to make a sari blouse.
Given that it was mid-morning on a weekday, I thought I would be in and out in a few minutes. How wrong I was.
The fabric shop was having a 50%-off sale. There were hordes of women holding on to rolls of fabric for dear life. Some had their hands on two or three rolls. All clamouring for service. For a minute I thought I was at one of those "India fairs" which pop up regularly selling goods from India. This particular shop sells imported fabric of the fabulous, over-the-top, glittery, sequinned variety. The starting price of which is well over R500 a metre. So the frenzy at the sale started to make a little more sense to me. I mean, who doesn’t like a good bargain or two?
Still my curiosity was piqued as to why there were so many shoppers guarding rolls of fabric as it seemed unusual behaviour. I asked a salesperson and a customer. The replies were that it was matric dance season. And so the penny dropped. When I was in matric, we never had such an event. Even though I attended a co-ed school, if you were even seen talking to the boys, the message would probably have reached your parents before you even got home from school.
