Spinning in infinity

Saturday 13 April

The day for driving back to Jozi dawns beautiful and dewy and the horses are looking ace, and I realise that the plughole effect is kicking in: things are changing, there is too much to do in too little time, I don't know which way's up, I can't get any purchase anywhere, I am hurtling around, spinning in infinity (with thanks to Paul Simon). There is going to be the tarmacced silence of the car and then a whirl, a hurtle, a race to the end, aware that I'll be failing people, not doing things, forgetting things while desperately trying to remember them, and trying to forget things because remembering them will cost me too much. We don't really want to leave, we want to investigate this area. We are about an hour from Durban and I long to drive down there, so long is it since I arrived - a whole three months - and so fleeting was my distracted visit to that city, which I remember from my first time here, when I was seven. It is a slower, more gentle place that Joburg. I love Joburg, but Joburg means leaving and Durban means arriving.

And yet we are still attempting to live, we are still making contact with those we meet, arguably my favourite thing to do with Bartelt. For example, we just pop in to pay the guy who runs the B&B with is wife, and of course he is most interesting. We have many points of contact and we have many points of difference, and we spend ages talking about so many things that I wonder why I can't bundle up all the great people I meet, day in day out, and have them in some kind of library, so I can get to know them properly, select them from the shelf, use their wisdom, steal their stories.

But we must not be distracted by jewels like this chap, we have to head north. To this end, another great breakfast ensues and then we have to face the terrible moment when Bartelt says goodbye to his favourite cafe of all time. I know it's okay because we'll be at his next favourite cafe of all time somewhere else soon, but for now his grief is real: he knows he will never feel like this again about a cafe.

This particular favourite cafe of all time is situated by a disused quarry which is eerily beautiful and, as it's not actually raining today, I get some nice shots of it. He gets some nice shots of it too. We get the same nice shots and, as ever, his are better because he has a better camera and, ultimately, because he loves a bit of photoshop. Me? I'm too impatient to bother with that - and technically inept, and lacking in visual skill......, so I just stick them on Facebook so my mother that I'm still alive.... or at least was alive at time of posting.

I'm aware how much more my mother worries about mine and my brother's welfare since my sister's murder than she did before, and I understand that. I have to strike some kind of balance between not sending her wild with anxiety and living my life - luckily she endorses my attempts. And I know how dangerous South Africa's roads are. They are very dangerous, and although driving gives one a very powerful illusion of control, most of what happens on the road is the random blow-out or the unpredictable behaviour of others. Mum does not know we are driving back today, or at least that we are driving back at this time, and I hope to text her later to let her know we've arrived without her having a day's worry about whether we are alive or dead or simply lying in a ditch waiting for death or help.

By some excellent conflagration of lucks -and Bartelt's ability to find his way - we manage to find our hitchhiker's accommodation and then we're speeding out of town. Somehow, for me, the journey back feels far longer than the time it took to drive down. Admittedly, 6 hours is a long time for a Brit to be in a car, but I have only recently driven down here and then there was the epic journey from Cape Town to Johannesburg. Maybe it's too long in the car with my own thoughts, that could be it. My own blinking thoughts and doubts and the knowledge that this time next week, for the first time since 14 January, I will be waking up in Blighty. Not necessarily a bad thing, but a thing nonetheless and I'm starting to question if I have achieved all that I could here, and, inevitably, the answer is no: no I certainly have not and it's because I'm such a misery and so defeatist.

I am, then, delighted to have Jozi interrupt my thoughts at last, and after we have dropped off our passenger we go to the shop to stock Martin up on food. It's getting dark and we manage to persuade an off licence to sell us some wine as we head to Martin's place where we become involved in a bit of a party. Obviously I am going back to my friends' place, but for a while I am caught up in the jollity of Martin's gorgeous sofasurfing place. The three people who join us have been drinking and there is some political debate, into which my teeth sink in a state of delight.  There's also a history of big in-fighting in this group, which gradually reveals itself to us. It'll be sad for Bartelt to leave tomorrow as he has become good mates with the guy whose place it is. I do think Martin will come back to Jo'burg, he'll see this guy again, but who knows how and how knows when.

I get back to Peta and Daniel's place and watch a bit of telly, am fed beers by Daniel and I eat. I'm leaving these guys tomorrow as well and I'll miss them, especially because I've got to know Daniel a bit and I'd like to know him more. And because I've reignited my friendship with Peta and it's as easy as ever it was, enriched, I think, by what we've both been through during the decade since we first met. I mean, I know I'll be back to Jozi sometime.... I mean, I will, won't I....?

Fear and loathing in my head: doing what you like, saying what you think

Friday 12 April

Day two in the perfect breakfastariam means that we are both very happy and relaxed.... except for me. I am not relaxed and only mildly content: we are about to do a lecture to a group of students. We are up against a rather successful and well-known theatrical practitioner who will be doing his thang in the theatre auditorium; we will be in a much smaller lecture theatre..... thank the gods in whom I do not believe, all of them.

I have been bothering Bartelt for some kind of structure for our lecture, for which I constructed a title with Anna our wonderful producer, while Bartelt was in Namibia seven weeks - and a lifetime - ago. He basically titters and refuses to discuss even the idea of discussing what we might say, or even the structure of what we might say, in advance. He is infuriating. He cares not about my nerves or my need to prepare, he does not want to, it would be foolhardy for him to do so: he will work off the cuff and the energy of the room and the people therein. And so I am awake and tense, as if I have not revised for my exams because I hung out with my brilliant mate who did not *need* to revise for his exams. It's a bit like my recurring dream of realising that today is the day a show I did not know I was in goes up, that I have not learnt my lines, and I have to step out into the blinding light and fail in front of an audience, letting down friends and colleagues alike.

Argh.

I have to play a part which we play all the time in our lives: the part of the person who knows what they are doing. And I am, today, the person who gives lectures to young people about making campaigning theatre, or autobiographical theatre, or whatever it was Anna and I agreed.

Some students come to our lecture theatre, quite a few, predominantly girls. And I start talking. Luckily, I am a consummate talker. And Barty talks to. And the students laugh, because we're funny, okay? And then they ask questions which we attempt to answer.... as if we're in any position to answer any questions. We can't even answer the everyday questions, like what will your next show be, how we are going to pay the bills next month, which continent does Bartelt want to live on? Somehow though the questions they ask, about death, acting, writing, are easier than those.

Afterwards several girls gather around me and I give my barnstorming speech: I tell them not to waste their time worrying if they or their work are good enough, I say that's one of the reasons men still run the world, I tell them I have been enormously privileged and have spent far too much time wondering if I ought do this or that, Just Blinking Do It, I say: do not waste what my generation have wasted, what the next generation are currently wasting, just do it*.

They like me. Of course they do: they don't know me. One asks if it's okay to write an assignment on me. I hold back my disbelief and say of course she can, and that she does not have to ask my permission to do so. She asks if she an send it to me. I say of course she can, I'd be delighted, at which moment I realise the acting that began the lecture has totally vanished and I'm just little old me talking to little old her and feeling so flattered I am almost certainly floating a few centimetres above the ground.

Finishing up the day is sad, saying goodbye is hard, driving out of the school past the friendliest gate staff ever is ridiculous. We have arranged to meet some of the other performers in the pub, the meeting room of choice amongst so many actors, and we have a gas. Our hitchhiker is there, our hitchhiker who had the previous day told me he'd not come to our show because he couldn't be bothered to get out of bed. And I kind of admire him - I hadn't even asked him if he'd seen it, he'd just volunteered the information. I am so aware, as an actor, that I need all the contacts I can get I regularly go to shows I suspect I won't like just to see whom I might meet or whose work I might encounter. And not only am I impressed by the fact that he didn't come, but it's quite something that he goes on to tell me that he didn't come because he couldn't be bothered. He didn't have to tell me, but he did. I suspect that in the pub that night, while we were getting along very nicely with the others there, he was liking me and Barty less and less.... though I could be wrong.

And he is almost certainly right to do so. Sometimes people just don't like us, especially as a double-act, and I think they've got a massively valid point. Sometimes I don't like us much either, sometimes especially Barty but mostly especially me.

*Of course, I still do not manage innumerable things: I am racked by guilt and self-loathing and doubt about my creative voice, my right to even show my writing to someone else, let alone put it on in front of anyone else, but I'm not going to mention that to these pearls, forming as they are, and full of potential.

A day-long lesson in humility

11 April 2013
Bartelt is, in general, far more experienced* than am I. However, we are both very experienced when it comes to conferences: he is used to being a guest performer and speaker and I am used to handing out the badges, pointing to the toilets, explaining it's just one goody bag each to people who earn at least four times what I do. Between us we really do have all the bases covered.
As has been the case all over South Africa, and over both of us hangs the fact that we are now days away from leaving though we try not to mention it, we make friends here in Hilton, real friends: people we engage with on facebook almost right away! One of them is Sheryl, who works for Hilton, the school at which the event is being held. She has two great kids who are volunteering here and we all laugh together, and talk, obviously. Sheryl is clearly very good at her job whilst remaining open and lovely. We also make friends with one of the teachers - she teaches drama to lots of teenage boys and I suggest the idea of Black Watch to her as something her students might find engaging - I mention it's one of the best pieces of theatre I have seen in my life. We exchange ideas and get excited about life in general and theatre in particular - Joclyn's energy is just infectious. I wish she'd been my drama teacher when I was at school. In fact, I wish my school had taught drama... but that's another over-privileged moan for another over-privileged day.
As well as the marvelous people, we have also benefitted from seeing great work here in RSA and this conference is no exception. There is a performance of a show about all that is sex when you're a teenager which gets a massive reaction from the audience. It is dealing with subject matter which moves the students and they show it. It's a great piece of educational theatre with the emphasis on entertainment and on patronising no one: lots of these students will already have endured situations the performers know nothing about - that's the case in the UK, but it's so much more certain here. And there is another show about the lives of an old couple, a mask show, so different, and great.
Over lunch we are approached by students and teachers and we sit and eat with the other creatives who are here to work with and speak to the students. In fact, I have lunch with, amongst others, Sihle Xaba who, I quickly realise, is a very famous man. I could probably have lunch with Meryl Streep or Brad Pitt and not realise I was with someone famous, so utterly rubbish am I. The great thing, though, about being surrounded by students who are fans of his, is that they make it utterly clear how very fabulous he is.
And that evening I start to see why he is so adored: we get to see a screening of the excellent Otelo Burning in which he stars. Set in a township in the turbulent 1980s we follow a group of teenagers through a story that is more than real. The students who surround us are too young to remember the necklacing that took place, or the inter-tribal violence... they don't even remember Pass Books. Martin and I do though. And it's curious, to me, that there I was, a teenager myself, on the other side of the world. And because of my South African family, though maybe I'd've been engaged anyway, I watched avidly the development of many horrors in 1980s South Africa. In some curious ways it feels like my story too. Of course I realise that's ridiculous, that I was a very distant bystander, able to dip in and dip out of the goings on as I slept safe in my bed in a village where there is still no street lighting, (because people don't want it not because there is no electricity). And yet these teenagers know little of this history. Not only does it fall into that Bermuda triangle of just before they were born - too early to be history, too late for them to  know about it - but there is also a desire amongst many young South Africans not to dwell on Apartheid. They are not their parents, they are not the struggle, they are the new South Africa. The danger in this is, of course, that if we do not understand our antecedents we cannot understand ourselves, that we risk making the same mistakes and laying blame in the wrong places.
But that's not to pretend that I think I have the right to judge the way they are being  South Africans, being themselves. I see why the desire just to move on is so strong, and so it is heartening to hear so many questions for Sihle at the end, of all kinds - technical, historial, about his own celebrity life. Some actors are great at playing humility, but I swear this is no act - the man's feet are clearly rooted to South African soil and he remains un-pumped-up by the screaming of teenage girls. And Martin and I, driving away, off to find some supper, yet again, cannot believe how lucky we are. It is as if we have been party to a private conversation in a private home - we have been allowed to sit and look and listen to this on-going debate about who these young folk are, who they will be, and what they do and do not consider important. We've heard responses from artists and seen their work standing there for itself.
And in a country where many people do not have clean water and sanitation we are going home to electric blankets: we are more privileged than I can describe.
*Older

Performing to the most important audience

11 April 2013
I have passed through the euphoria of the successful Bartelt breakfast and beholding the gorgeous teenagers while high as a kite on morning coffee, into the Valley Of Considerable Fear.
At the back of a big auditorium, the crop of swaying teenagers laid out before me, we are watching a dance performance. I am loving it. I am glad I'm not sitting next to Bartelt who, being an ex-dancer and choreographer who worked for a period of time with Pina Bausch, would undoubtedly have an opinion. I mean, he has an opinion about *everything* but he *really* has an opinion about dance.
The inestimable Ingrid Wilde is making a speech, it is she who has brought us here, but it's not only that which makes us like her. She seems to also be a case of utterly great, and she certainly is as she respectfully stamps her authority on this event - and the 15-year-old audience - as it gets under way. She only produces nine regional Schools Festivals for the Grahamstown Foundation, as well as the national festival: whatever.
Very soon I am walking down a side-aisle, smiling at the students, who are wriggling and talking and laughing and not noticing me at all. OH.... this is terrifying. These kids are about to be bored out of their minds by my story of death and misery and grief. It's going to be awkward for every living soul in this room, so awkward that I'm sure even people not in the room are going to feel awkward and have no idea where the feeling is coming from: it'll be viral. The whole of Kwa-Zulu Natal will be in the grips of an Awkward Storm which no living weather specialist will be able to diagnose. This is an occasion for which the current usage and popularity of the word awkward has, indeed, been invented.
These are not unfamiliar feelings and, like childbirth and death itself, the only thing to do is just get on with it regardless of how I'm feeling. Unlike childbirth and death itself, though, the auditorium lights dim and I am blinded by the powerful stage lights. There is nothing left for me but to declare, for the 21st and final time on our South African tour, "A year or so after my sister was killed a friend of hers came to stay with me in London, and we went out, we went out drinking." And we're off.
Now, Bartelt and I think we have written a very funny show, make no mistake. The fact that no audience has yet appreciated all of our jokes is irrelevant - the gags have taken it in turn to be appreciated, which much more classy, obviously. And yet.
It is today that we have finally met our match: *this* audience gets us. They laugh like drains at the refrigerated gag, and so many others, that I keep having to stop for the laughter to die down. Not only is their shock at the content of the show palpable, but it is audible: everything comes out of their mouths and we all have a hoot together, tears together, some truthful journey together. I have done a bit of stand-up and have sampled the smallest of intoxications when a room above a pub full of folk laughs at your jokes, but has nothing on this. This is an 350-teenagers-full auditorium, laughing at our jokes and at my delivery. I go off-script a bit, impro-ing around like I'm not supposed to, but I am feeling the closest to a superstar I'm ever likely to feel and it's absolutely fine by me: this need never stop.
At the end the applause is sustained and touching, and silence for the dedication to our five dead journalists all the more moving, as I feel these powerful creatures of tomorrow, taking in the facts, ruminating on them, realising what I have just said: that today's performance is dedicated to the following people who died like Kate in 2005 on account of their jobs:
Julio Hemando Palacios Sánchez, radio journalist,
Colombia Hussam Sarsam, tv journalist,
Iraq Elmar Huseynov, journalist,
Azerbaijan Ahmed Jabbar Hashim, journalist, Iraq
Marlene Garcia-Esperat, journalist, Philippines
and to their families.
(Please do view the full list of dedications from the entire life of the show.)
I can feel them take in the fact that these people died to get the news out to us all, to them.
In the break which follows Bartelt and I are mobbed by students and teachers, the conversation free-flowing and fun. Some of the children want pictures with me. How easy it would be to mistake this attention for being directed at me. I am incidental, the conduit through which things pass: the work is the thing, the journalists, alive and dead, are the point, these children are what count.
We take ourselves outside for a walk and a wander and take lots of photos of the extraordinary campus under the threatening sky. Alone, Bartelt and I agree the show was wonderful. We are pleased we can now relax and enjoy the rest of what the KZN Schools Festival has to offer us. Oh, there's the small matter of the lecture we're giving tomorrow morning, obviously, but Bartelt doesn't do preparation for that kind of thing - of course he doesn't. He feels the room on the day - of course he does. I get worried and wonder what on earth will happen: of course *I* do. But for now we can just sit back and enjoy the shows.

Making it up as I go along

Early April

Inveterately stylish as I undeniably am, I put on my full stage make-up over breakfast. Two-and-a-half years ago you'd've regularly found me putting it on in the very busy Pleasance Courtyard in Edinburgh, almost certainly in full view of some of my about-to-be-audience members.

I put my make-up on on the bus, the tube and in the pub. I'll put it on in meetings if I'm off to stand behind a table representing an organisation and I'm running between the two. I'll put it on bit-by-bit and frighten people during that phase where a woman removes all her features, smooths them out almost to vanishing, in order to re-apply them in, roughly, the same places as they were before the whole process began.

On the back of a bus once with my mother and my littlest aunt I started applying make-up and they both complained that it's not nice, that it is, basically, rude to apply my make-up in public. I was astonished. It's not like spitting or fishing your underwear out of your arse, it's not even like blowing your nose, surely? It's just a bit of titivation, but without the nail clippings, under-nail scrapings or follicle-loosenings which seem to be all the rage otherwise. Of course, I carried on.

And one of the reasons I carried on was that I want to subvert the strange idea we have of mystique in our culture: that somehow the bits about actually travelling around in a majority-liquid, ageing, oozing, flaking, gas-creating, blood-pumping, amazing body should be, by women, concealed. I like going out looking as I look - a woman of roughly my age with all bits you'd expect in an able-bodied woman, with no make-up on at all. And if I apply make-up I've no desire to pretend I haven't or to conceal how it's done. I mean, in my case it's often done cack-handedly with my fellow passengers running around picking up eyeshadows and rolling mascaras as they fly to all four corners of the carriage: I am not an oasis of womanly secrets which turn me into a full-on lady. In fact, I was taught my current make-up routine by a friend at drama school back in the days when you could still drink to the tube. We both had huge bottles of Budvar, I sat in a Piccadilly Line seat and she straddled me. The then proceeded to do the full make-up on me, explaining what she was up to as she went. It's more than ten years since I last saw her but I, and casting directors/first dates/members of the good British public owe Mariamne a debt of thanks.

Not to wear make-up is, for me, also a test of myself: how vain, how caught up in the male gaze, how fearful am I of how people will relate to me if I simply look as I look? How much ground have I lost today to capitalism's desire to unnerve me, in this instance, about my appearance enough to make me buy buy buy purported solutions? It's not always easy or straight-forward, but I'm buggered if I am going to be shameful about the way I look with no make-up - it's only my face - no one's got to eat off it or anything.

Breakfast is a success all round and we head for the school. 350 souls is the biggest audience I've ever performed the show to and we arrive during a squall of teenagers, milling, yelling, laughing: being wonderfully themselves, being the huge majority, owning the place. And I look at them, and I think why-oh-why-oh-why are they, almost certainly, already cursed with the idea that they should look like anyone or anything but themselves? They are full of life and potential and are fabulous to behold, as a group and as individuals. Bartelt and I find their energy infectious. What a privileged life we are leading, to be about to share our show with these gorgeous creatures of the future. Maybe it's the coffee Bartelt let me have for breakfast, but I cannot help but love them all as they push past me, a rolling boil of excitement, into the theatre building, barely noticing the middle-aged lady and her woolly-hatted companion.

Breakfasting with Barty

There is a very exciting part of my life concerning Martin M Bartelt. Is it hearing about his years working alongside Pina Bausch, I hear you cry? Or when he talks about touring his dance shows all over the world? ....Maybe. Yeah, well, no, no it's not. It's not that. By far the most exciting part of my time with Bartelt is finding myself on the cusp of breakfasting with him and wondering how on earth it will go.
There is no doubt we have both worked hard with this show, but I feel my still being on the planet, as well as the show itself, of course, to be a collaboration. From my family's acceptance that I was going to make it in the first place, to the endless hospitality we have been offered over the years, via free rehearsal spaces and that house in France where we did the major edit of the show back in 2009. Oh, that house in France. It was in the Frenchest of towns, small, but with two cafes and various independent stores. And French people largely ignoring us. And the town hall where there was a jumble sale....
Two cafes though, two. Possibly the world's most distressing dilemma: where should Barty breakfast? And I'm not even going to go into the fact that it's possible that neither of them will be in the sun at the requisite breakfasting hour.
Bartelt himself is a work of all-knowing, brilliantly idiotic, behaviours, travelling around in the body of a broken lizard with the mentality of a five-year-old or a zen master, depending on... well, mostly depending on the quality of any given day's breakfast. Get it wrong and he will suffer. And when I say he will suffer, I of course, mean I will suffer.
In this little French town we hit the cafe-elect, sometimes together, sometimes apart, both sleeping until we needed to, both working late to suit Bartelt's working hours. He is, after all, the one in constant pain who mostly cannot taste or smell anything, though he maintains he can tell the quality of coffee from its texture. I choose to believe this, it would be to my detriment not to. And he's the one who had had his heart valve replaced just two months previously. In fact, let's add some collaborators to that list of those who have got us here: Jacques and Jean who have nursed this creature, my collaborator, back to... existence, after his operation to replace his heart valve, and the bonus death-on-the-operating table that he got for free as part of the experience. He has a sophisticated heart monitor with him which has to be taken out, together with his heart and astonished body, for a walk of exactly the right kind every day. We talk work as we walk, and life, and about his poor, poor heart, so overwrought that the doctors wondered how he was alive at all. He is, my friends, an enigma wrapped up in a corpus unsound, engulfed every day by a tidal wave of irrational emotion concerning breakfast.
And so it is one day that we find ourselves breakfasting, sharing thoughts about how he is a connoisseur of the coffee with several sugars and the pain au chocolate and I am, essentially, a food disposal unit. I am desperately unrefined. He feeds my his croissant crumbs when he has finished doing his thang - I'm a sucker for Crispy Bits. Obviously I have already had my own croissant, or similar: not my usual breakfast choice, but when with Barty I find I often do as Barty does.
If this were a business consultation we would be bottoming out the problem of why breakfast affects him so much, and it seems to be that he feels that if it goes well, everything will go well, and if not, then not only will it be a bad day, but everything will be a disaster. And it is here, at this moment, outside this French cafe that we discover The Truth: a good chocolate croissant doth not make a good day and a bad cup of coffee doth not a day ruin. We laugh like drains. And we quote ourselves endlessly. I'm sure we exclude many people over the subsequent years and breakfasts with our clever cleverness, but, we have both to admit, we are tremendously funny.
Back in South Africa it is morning, early morning for Bartelt - anything before 9am being the early hours. Outside our room there are horses in the morning mist. It is cold and, what is more, it is time to leave for breakfast. Following breakfast we will have 350 schools students around us for two whole days: I don't know about Bartelt, but I am feeling for our poor chosen-cafe owners - they have no idea of the pressure on them, but they really are going to have to deliver.

Bartelt and me: the most unwanted

Thursday 11 April 2013

I find my way from my place to Martin's couch-surfing haven to to the house of the fellow we are driving to the Grahamstown Foundation KwaZulu-Natal Schools Festival all by myself without getting lost once. I'm hoping I've been rewired in the night, but I realise it's just a stroke of luck, like all those other strokes of luck, some good some bad. I have not had a knock on the head and unearthed the ability to find my way, so I should stop hoping that's the case as it will inevitably lead to my heading off, confidently, in the not too distant future towards a potentially far too distant point in the wrong direction.
What is even more remarkable is that I have already been for breakfast with a friend and colleague of Kate's - South Africans begin their day at leat an hour earlier than the average Brit. And likewise Brits who are in South Africa. This woman came to the show, I'm a big fan of her work, and it turns out she and Kate knew each other a long time. She's lovely to me.

We eat in a cafe near where Kate used to live, full of memories of those terrible two weeks after her murder, when we would come here, if we went anywhere. We talk about all sorts of things, I unburden myself of the same stories of frustration, fear and despair which thinking back on the extra pain the BBC put us through always brings me, and she listens, seemingly not surprised. When we come to say goodbye I want to tell her what it means to me that we have met and talked... but that would be ridiculous. It means a disproportionate amount to me: I am absurd. Why does it matter so much to me? If I told her she'd probably run a mile. We embrace, say goodbye and promise we will stay in touch. As I go to my car I am losing Kate again, I want to find her through this woman, through any woman, frankly, through any person, through an object or an experience, I don't care what and I don't care what I have to do to get it. I would give everything up to get her back. I am going down that rabbit hole again and I have to grip hard to the wheel of the hire car as I go in search of Bartelt in the hope of finding some space in my racing brain.
Bartelt and I, reunited, and our passenger are looking at at least five hours on the road. We do engage our passenger in some chat, but pretty soon he's asleep while we talk on. Bartelt listens patiently to my bizarre, wonderful, exciting, draining, precious start to the day. (Oh, but being with me requires endless patience.) Bartelt and I will probably talk forever about everything and never come to the end. I suppose that's one of the reasons we are so close - I have an endless curiosity about him, his life, how he functions, his fears, hopes, mistakes, doubts, ridiculous certainties (these are legion) and abject terrors (these are legion plus one). And, miraculously, he is endlessly interested in me, my badly formed opinions, built on my lamentable memory, my lamentable memory itself, my anger, my copious stories of loss and loneliness and self-pity, my friends, family, foes and extraordinary former bosses. And my lamentable memory. He laughs at my jokes, defends my behaviour and tells me I am, essentially, worth it. As I often say to him, thanks be to lady luck that we are not attracted to one another.... we would have been married and divorced a few times by now.
Given how well we get on we are rather mystified that the other is single..... well, it's that bit harder for Martin to meet a man than it is for me due to sheer numbers, but one of our regular conversations is how are we so unwantable? (I refer you to the accompanying photos for what is at least part of the answer, surely.)
It is autumn in South Africa, yes, but nothing can justify the stark closing in of the weather as we head south. By the time we reach our destination we have been through wind, rain, fog and, it looks like,.... Wales. Of course it looks like Wales. As I have mentioned before, in the end everything looks like Wales. I could have said it looked like Ecuador, but, in fact, lots of Ecuador simply looks like Wales and there's an end to it.
The school has a very friendlyly staffed gate at which we stop and then we are welcomed onto the hallowed turf.  It's quite a place - like a particular kind of public/private school in the UK with which I am familiar yet, like a dream, this one has been styled by a 17th century Dutch architect. It's a dream - it's so green and schooly and European, even down to the glass fronted wooden cabinets that house the sports teams, play castings, church reading rota. The sight of these cabinets brings me to a lurching halt. So much of my childhood was taken up by looking into them, scouring them for a particular set of dread information that I feel nauseous just looking at them: exam results, violin lesson rotas, excursion information. Excursions. Urgh.
We head off to find our contact and do our tech. Our travelling companion finds his team and quickly we are in a huge, fabulous theatre, doing our little tech. There seem to be a few stressed performers? directors? around, but we have a laugh with the lovely technician and then spend some time getting to know Ingrid who runs the Schools Festivals, all nine of them, for the Grahamstown Foundation. Then there's Sheryl, the person who runs the venue for the school, and Jocelyn, the English/drama teacher. Three mighty, excellent women, plus the volunteers - what joy - and we haven't even met the school students who are attending the Festival yet - we will do that tomorrow when Sometimes I Laugh Like My Sister completes is 2013 South African Tour by being the opening show at the Grahamstown Foundation KZN Schools Festival. On my non-existent life ambitions list I quickly write down opening a massive schools festival and cross it off, like you do when you complete the hoovering and find you'd never put it on your to-do list in the first place.
Bartelt and I are staying off campus, so we get some advice about where to eat in the very small town and go to find our B&B and it looks as good as it does on the website: a free-standing building, beautifully fitted out, with a wall of books to boot. We spend some time in bed because we are COLD. It is freezing. Bartelt, my pet lizard, is not coping well with this sudden change in his fortunes. The heat relieves the constant pain he is in and this damp cold does not bode well. Our hosts have given us some wine, so we have a bit, take pictures of ourselves with the festival programme and then head for a restaurant which is strangely Czech or Polish or similar. The food is great, the welcome is warm and they slap up a meal the like of which we believe a doctor would want for us. I am full of nervous anticipation as we slip into our electric-blanketed beds: tomorrow's audience will be 350-or-so 15-year-olds. What on earth will they make of it? And how can I possibly be nervous again, after 102 shows? I reflect on the fact that I am, maybe, more nervous about the place we think we have found for breakfast in the morning: what if Bartelt doesn't like it? What with the terrible weather, tomorrow's breakfast could make or break these last few days. I turn my light out and dream fitfully of vengeful fried bread humanoids.