Growing up sometimes presents itself as a kind of strange multiverse. A world in which the comfort of experience confines you to particular spots in the world around you.

You take a certain route to work. You buy your pepper-steak pies from one shop, your morning coke at a single garage, you drink your sundowners at the Scud.

On Fridays you hit the booze in the usual place with the usual people, go to the same Liquid Lounge and listen to the same DJ playing the same tunes you’ve been hearing for 20 years.

Saturdays find you gocharing that lekker sausage, outside the customary butchery or bottle-store, with people you’re used to, drinking the usual poison at the usual pace.

See, it’s interesting to consider just how much we are creatures of habit. It gets more intriguing when something shakes your routine so violently, encroaches on your schedule so abruptly that you question your entire existence and the cocoon you have built around yourselves.

You start to wonder whether, in carving out your comfort zones and peer groups, you have limited your scope of experiences, and by swimming in your channel, you’re missing the obvious under-currents of a life you will never know.

Yesterday, for exampuru, I discovered that there is an entire sub-culture in Harare, where women meet on Sundays and play hockey. The catalyst for this new and intriguing find was my sister, who was invited to play for some club.

Forsaking my regular Naked Sunday, I went along with my lover in tow and next thing you know, my little Field (hockey) Mouse is in a league game, scores a goal, dubbed new fish and is a part of the team.

Where she got the energy to suddenly run around 35 minutes each way, carrying a fucking log no less, on a Sunday afternoon I have no goddamn clue!

Time to dust off those social soccer boots, my fellow sedentary boozers.

Cos  if the missus can do it, goddamn it so can I.

There’s this little Zimbabwean girl kicking ass in the UK. Gamuchirai Nhengu auditioned for The X Factor in Glasgow, and did quite well.

The only problem is she was obviously auto-tuned, which drew howls of derision from across the world; peeps are saying the fix is in, she can’t really sing, Cowell is a snake etc.

Well, here’s another video of the kid singing at some gospel thang in 2009. Kid’s got talent.

Pamberi newe Gamu, show dem.

Cee-Lo is that fat guy from Gnarls Barley (who thinks he’s craaaazaay), and this is his latest single.

Bathe in the awesomeness.

We are pouring our lonely souls down the black pit of social networking fakery.

It’s no longer “So are we going steady?”. It’s … “Are we Facebook official?”

We have stopped phoning each other. We no longer text. Fucking hell, we hardly ever talk.

We meet up, and because of Facebook, we already know what’s happened in the week. We know how work was, we know all the opinions on the latest news and recent sporting events and old-school singles and this weekend’s discos.

What happened to us?  Did we trade in conversation, insight and understanding for random, irregular snippets of each others’ lives?

Are we such a cynical, disconnected society that we can substitute the occasional “News Feed” scan for the age-old, tried-and-true reaching out and touching somebody?

I don’t think so. I reckon if we disconnect from over-connection, we can re-establish the bonds that made us friends instead of drinking buddies, mates instead of people-who-hang-out, lovers instead of people “In a relationship”.

You try it. Close down your Facebook, and call one of those “friends’.

And try not to talk about Facebook.