Several lashings of transport roulette

Monday 8 April

A great deal of travelling hither and yon is about to occur: my mother and my littlest aunt leave for the UK tonight, Jacques for Switzerland tomorrow and the next day Martin and I will be driving to KwaZulu-Natal, well aware that our journey will be a whole lot more risky than any flight to anywhere from anywhere in the world. 13,802 people died on the Republic's roads in 2011, which is 31.9 per 1,000 of population. In the UK the rate is 2.75 per 1,000, in India it is 18.9. (Source: Wikipedia).

But before the exodusing begins, there is a performance to give. We have been invited by Warren to do the show for his University of Witwartersrand Drama for Life students. Shifting focus to the next show, my mind has filled once more of the wonderful Caroline and her Theatre Arts Admin Collective, for it was she who put us in contact with Warren. Imagining Caroline in her office in Cape Town, I see her face, her clothes, her passion, and I marvel at the sheer number of wonderful people I've met on this journey and how I'm going to miss them. I think again about Martin's friends who have come to the show in Joburg, including a couple who drove from Mozambique to see it, see Martin, then drove back. People are amazing.

Despite my profound efforts to mess it up, we finally find the right area of the enormous university... and after some serious fact-finding and stone-walling are given a parking space. The theatre is amazing - huge, beautiful, a joy to behold and Martin and I run around a bit, marking our territory (proverbially, I hasten to add) while Jacques, for the last time, sets up his camera. As it is with people with whom you have been spending a great deal of time, it is hard to believe that we will deposit him at the airport tomorrow and that will be that.

I have come to believe that this show can be done anywhere, or at least that Martin has given me permission and the ability to do it anywhere, yet when I'm on a large stage in a large auditorium, in fabulous full light, there is no denying that it feels different... easier to me. I feel supported by the context, it feels a more-relaxing-less-distracting watch and listen for the audience, and a large space feels like a great place to be, especially a stage where I can rumble around with my show full of characters, some of them appearing before me, some holed-up inside me.

A Q&A hosted by Warren follows, and there are more questions about the making of the show than usual. We talk about taboo, about technique, and this time, rather than my seeming like the magician, Martin is revered for his skills. This audience is constituted of practitioners and, hopefully, has no illusions about the wings this extraordinary director has given me. We sell a few of the final copies of the script - we will have sold the 40 we managed to get out here. We could have sold more.... but then I'd've had to dump some pants to get them into my rucksack and I'm fond of my pants.

All too soon it's over and we are packing away. We have one more gig left in RSA: just one. And before I know it I am taking Mama and my littlest aunt to the airport. That road that sweeps round the centre of Joburg, the buildings glinting, the terrible Jozi rushhour threatening to wind Mother up beyond her ability to remain cogent for fear of Missing The Flight. When the traffic moves I feel swept along by things, by events, by time itself. I am out of my real world for just a couple of weeks longer and I am starting, finally, to revel in the fact. Maybe a few months late, but at last I am hiding from who I am and what I feel, and all the broken washing machines, missed appointments, suddenly-collapsing-and-dying-of-a-brain-haemmorrhage-in-the-street family friends of my future fade into obscurity; I am here and now, personalityless, futureless, pointless, and it's wonderful.

Saying goodbye is oddly hard - we will all be back in the same hemisphere very soon. But it's this darn airport again - for all it has been done up and expanded over the years, I remember it well and feel as if I have a full cast of my past right behind me, dogging my steps. It is not that Christmas, 2002, when both my aunt and my sister were alive and I took Mum to the airport with my brother and sister and had to wave our tiny Mummy off on her own, which we did not enjoy at all, Tiny Mummy even less so. Things Have Changed and that is all there is to it. I can rail against it or I can just get on the Gautrain. We have abandoned the hire car. This bit of this is over. It is the beginning, or maybe even the middle, of the end. It will be the usual rush to the finish, as I remember all the people I've not seen, things I've not done, places I wanted to visit.

We did manage a trip to the Cradle Of Humankind with my uncle. It was fascinating. I am delighted to be reminded that we all come from here, this very part of this very continent. Maybe that's why I love this country so much. Or maybe I'm just the terrible sentimental, neurotic batbox I always fear I am. It was just Mother, Uncle and me and Uncle treated us to coffees. Coffees in the heat.

This Gautrain is, rightly, a matter of great pride to Joburgers. It travels from the airport to............... It is clean, efficient, safe and reassuringly expensive. I can get it to very close indeed to my friends' place and she picks me up. We talk about our days. It's even a bit normal, arriving at this shiny station in one of the most spangly parts of town, being met by a chum, going to her house. Does it feel like my life or am I pretending it feels like my life? Or am I becoming the itinerant person who only reconginses being on the move?

24 hours later we are back at the airport, having dropped off another hire car and another person. It's goodbye to Jacques. I insist on taking three-way selfies until I get a semi-decent one and then he vanishes through to departures. And here we are, Martin and me, the two of us, on tour again. We pick up a new hire car. We get unforgivably lost for quite a long time, all my fault for imagining I could make it back from the airport just because it's a route I've driven tens of times and I have written it down carefully. I drop him at his home and drive to mine: tomorrow we move on for the second to last time. Tomorrow we are heading to the Midlands.

I hope it's working, I hope you're impressed

Very early April

When I started working as a light entertainment agent's assistant I discovered I had an embarrassing problem. And it continued on into the time when I became an agent, and basically, yea, verily, into my present life: I have a shocking memory. Obviously I cannot remember whether I've written about this before.... so I'll do so now just in case and then probably again in a few blogs' time. Repeat until fade.

The discovery went like this: I would go out to reception and recognise someone waiting there. I would then get up on my tip toes and lean over the reception desk in order to have as private as possible a conversation with Norma, the receptionist, and I would ask her whether the person was a friend/colleague/drinking buddy/sexual conquest* of mine or if they were famous. Norma, thank the universe, was an expert in my drinking buddies and family members, so would be able to say 'Corrie', 'News At Ten' or 'it's your mother'.

There were so many things about being an agent which brought home to me how little I ever wanted to have any kind profile or celebrity, far too many to name here, but one of them was that terrible feeling of someone looking at me as if they know me and my having to respond as if they do, just in case they do, because I have too poor a memory to be able to work out whether they are Peter, my plumber of fifteen years, or Beyonce (she's a singer-songwriter-megastar). I have too few fingers and toes to be able to enumerate the number of times I have grinned broadly at someone, as I gambol towards them confidently, been on the verge of saying hello while they look back, 87% friendly, 13% unsure, and just as I'm about to say something I realise they're off the Fast Show or similar, and I have to convert the word I was about to utter into one of the noises that goes with the end of a cold whilst trying not to look as if I was about to break my stride. This manoeuvre should really be on my CV: I am genius at it.

And so there I am at the beginning of the last POPArt show milling amongst the audience before they are seated, which is actually the beginning of the show (see what we did there?) and I spot someone I know. Or do I? She is very familiar, a slim, attractive, dark-haired woman with lovely eyes. Have I slept with her?** Is she a friend of Kate's? Why isn't Norma here for me to ask? If she were here she'd whisper, 'no, she's a famous broadcast journalist'. Our eyes meet. She smiles at me. Does she know me, have we met? And suddenly we are talking to one another and embracing as if we are old friends and I know who she is: she is a correspondent for the BBC whose work I have followed for years.... basically I'm simply a fan: we have never met before. I feel about her and her work maybe how you feel about Nigel Slater or Kate Moss or One Direction. Unless you hate them, then I feel the opposite feeling.

I have met so many of my heroes through Kate, or rather through Kate's absence, and we present ourselves to one another, raw side out, for me the loss so fresh I want to cry. For them? Who knows.

She has come here today with the journalist for whom Paulina now works part-time... and with Paulina herself. Paulina is looking good. It is lovely to have her here, this most important of Kate's mates, who comforted my sister through so many difficult times, kept her company when she was so alone, the person who kept the house running when Kate died as we dribbled around, incapable, one of the strong team of women insistent on washing up during the period of the funeral, the obvious and perfect choice for the end of the show. I forget how short she is - she's shorter than my mother. She tells me this is her first trip to see a play. That's pretty hardcore: the first show she is seeing in her life is a show about the effect of the murder of her good friend had on that friend's sister. I tell her it's not like all theatre, that people have said it's different. I wonder whether she is nervous. She is not nervous. Of course she's not. This woman, who can withstand the hurricane of injustice, who can laugh as she tells the story of her life and break my heart.... of course she's not nervous.

Swiftly we are into the after-show questions, hosted by one of the amazing women who run POPArt. The BBC correspondent asks me a great question - I am being very forthright about the BBC and I get to explain how I do not want the utter sanitization of journalism, that people will always have to risk and sometimes their numbers will come up, but how those decisions are made is important. I feel as if this BBC correspondent I do not know but respect massively has given me the chance to explain myself even better.... she feels like a friend***. I know the danger of letting that feeling in - she is not my friend, she is Kate's, but just for a few delicious minutes I enjoy the fantasy. And I point out to Bartelt that, unlike a few other journalists, she is not behaving as if we do not have the right to speak because we are not journalists ourselves.

Post-show I get a picture taken with Paulina. I can't believe we have less than two weeks left in the country. I do not want to think about leaving..... so I don't.

*Just trying to add some showbiz snazz to the image you have of me. Hope it's working, hope you're impressed.
** Obviously not, but I'm just trying to add some credibility to my sex-life. Hope it's working, hope you're impressed.
*** She is not my friend, but I'm just trying to make it look like someone like that would like me. Hope it's working, hope you're impressed.

You may as well ask whether Thomas Aquinas would have enjoyed the dodgems

There is a moment, during the 100th show, early on, where I hear the laughter of my seven-year-old cousin ring out when the rest of the audience remains silent. There is a moment, later on, where I can see and hear him shuffling around. Is he lying down? Could be. Both of these things is individually delightful to me.
You will find some actors blaming the audience for not getting a show, being too raucous, only laughing internally. I understand the emotional response, after all, we feel what we feel, but I do often wonder why people cannot check themselves, stop before they say anything destructive after a show. One of the frustrations, and certainly a major joy, of being an actor, is that it's pretty hard to tell how well you're doing. Yes, there are reviews, or if it's a funny show laughter feels good, or you can be delighted because you managed not to cause any kind of technical or business (business being, say, a complicated custard pie scene in a panto) disaster. But the reviewer's companion may have hated your performance or people might have felt tricked into laughing by all-jokes-and-no-substance theatre, or you got through the very complicated fight scene but nobody believes it was really a fight.
As for me, I do not pretend to understand much about what an audience feels. I've said it before, and, being me, I'll say it again, a lot: how on earth can an actor 'know' in the way that they seem to, that a show has gone a particular way? Let alone how their own part in it went? If you're playing Hamlet or Winne in Happy Days or Rebecca in Sometimes I Laugh Like My Sister I can see the temptation of believing that there is a direct correlation between your performance and what you feel about it, but it is only what you feel. It is allowed, but it does not give you any definitive information.
So, I might think that my littlest cousin's fidgeting can be interpreted, I might even be able to blame myself in some way, for encouraging such a young chap to see the show, for not making it clear he would not like it. But I decided long ago not to do that to myself and not to do it to my audiences. And time and again I am reminded that it is the right thing to do. They can react how they want and at the end of the night I walk away and get on with the (mostly more important) parts of my life. It is only acting: nobody dies... and if they do you really should think about a career change.
There is a carnival feel after this show for me - there are so many key characters in the audience and they seem to have enjoyed it, and, given that I am the only practicing actor in my extended family, I choose to believe them when they tell me they got through it okay, or anything above that, enjoyment-wise. My littlest cousin tells me he has questions and we agree that I'll answer them the next day, for me this is because we are cracking open the Cape bubbly we have carefully brought or, should I say, arduously not drunk during the weeks since we left Cape Town. We take a picture of the family group, my mother exudes relief and, maybe, pride - it's hard to tell with my mum, and Martin seems satisfied enough.
People are wont to ask me what Kate would think of the show. I want always to point out that there is only a show because she's dead, but I have to resist. I rarely think of what Kate would want or feel, she is so dead to me, though I often long so hard for her counsel, her encouragement, her shoulders, either one of them, that it freezes my tears, stops my breath, winds me like a statue at a busy station as the world rushes past. But looking at this night, full of my cousins and uncle and close friends I reflect that for once I have a sense that Kate would be pleased about this, though annoyed to miss out on it. For once, wondering what my sister would think about something, is not, to quote my inestimable brother, like pondering whether Thomas Aquinas would have enjoyed the dodgems.

100 Not Out

4 - 5 April
Look, it's an emotional show, I get that. But there is something about this run of four shows in Johannesburg that is, well, not exactly unprecedented, but quite something. We are having a drink after the opening night, we've done the Q&A, it seemed to go well - a friend of a director with whom I worked in London chaired it for us and it turns out that he's great. I need no reminding that this show is a collaboration of many people. my main collaborator, the co-creator of the show, martin m bartelt, it must be remembered, is the kind of chap who finds a pair of snazzy shoes at a venue and will try to persuade the artistic directors let him have them. maybe it's the stress of touring and all that emotion we encounter arising out of the show, we each let off steam in a different way...  but i've come to believe that it's really just who he is. that is who i'm touring with; a man who wants these extraordinary pointy shoes even though they are beyond painful to put on.
I am with Zadi, Mark, Mac, Martin, Jacques and lots of other folk, some who knew Kate some who didn't, having a drink, after the show in the bar next door, ou rnew home-from-home. Peta and Daniel, my friends and hosts, have come with friends of theirs. There is not nearly enough time to catch up with friends, but there is an urgency, a need. And the time flashes past and too soon we are in the car driving out of the centre of town, talking about the show, about the venue, about Johannesburg. The centre of town looks amazing in the dark. That's South Africa for you: incredible light, everywhere, all the time, except in the veld where it gets just that bit darker than you can imagine.
Martin and Jacques are couch surfing: staying with someone they didn't now until they turned up at his house. It sounds lovely. It is lovely. The place they're staying is great... and near a dentist, which is good news. There is something going on with Bartelt's teeth. A time will come, I think to myself, and it won't be too far away, when Bartelt will need to got to that dentist, he knows it and I know it too, but he is so accustomed to pain and illness, and so not-fond of their companions: medical professionals. Well, it's not that he doesn't like them, really, it's just that he has a very healthy, far more healthy than he himself is, mistrust of them. This mistrust is entirely based on his lamentable health and the reeling and confusion of the doctors who have to deal with him. Sometimes I'm not sure whether I feel worse for them or for him, and then I remember they're doctors and he is a very ill man and I know who is having the bad time.
The second show in Jozi is going to be attended by my uncle, two of my cousins, one of their husbands and three of their kids. The youngest member of my family to be seeing it tonight and I have a frank conversation about how bored he might become. Now, I've been bored in some of the most important theatres in the world, and I've wanted to walk out of the performances of some of the greatest actors, so I can offer him little comfort, but I do tell him he can do whatever he wants, bring something to do, go to sleep, have a drink. He is seven and has decided that he wants to come. I think it's a great age to see this show. Obviously, and in case by some odd chance it's escaped your knowledge, by the time I was seven my father was dead, and so I do not consider it too young for a show like this. It's an abstract piece of theatre, in the end, it's not full of shoot-em-up images and he can ask me whatever he likes the day after.
I'm more worried about my uncle. I'm not convinced that he really wants to come and I certainly don't want him coming out of duty - Kate lived in his house, spent a great deal of time with him for the near-decade she lived in Joburg, he's allowed to feel and do whatever he wants.  But then he goes and buys everyone's tickets and I feel more at ease.
My mother has seen three different incarnations of this show and she always laughs like a drain. She is excellent. She was very, very nervous when we first started doing it but more recently she has been at ease.... but not for tonight. Tonight she is worried, worried that our South African family won't enjoy it..... or worse than not enjoy it, hate it, find it distasteful.... or something even worse for which we cannot find a name between us. Luckily I am waaaaaay past the point of worrying about that much in advance. I only really start worrying about it when I'm on stage, alone, with no way of stopping and checking, at which I become accompanied by a shape-shifting homunculus whose opinion of me as a human being, an actor, a woman in a dress and make-up veers between low and unimaginably disgusted, depending..... depending on how many laugh I get, but not in any consistent way. I can hate myself even if there are gales of laughter and a perfect atmosphere of tragic delight. But of course, I am on stage dealing with that: mother is a passenger, waving goodbye as I head of university again, stuck in the passenger seat teaching me to drive again, seeing me head for my first day at primary school again - she has to suffer the curse of parentdom, which in her case is one of her daughters risking a one-woman show about the other daughter's murder. My mother's private, exquisite, unique hell.
And she is the key passenger, as I step out onto the stage, the lights coming up, the audience disappearing before my ever-surprised eyes, and I tell a room of folk, for the 100th time, that a year or so after my sister died, a friend of hers came to stay with me, and we went out drinking......

Adventurous by accident: clawing efficacy out of the rock face of existence

Early April

Sometimes in life, by sheer hard work and lashings of good luck, things work out. I'm no believer in fate, I take to task friends who say that we "make our own luck" and there is no meaning to be dragged from the chaos of life. Alright? But sometimes the bleeding stumps of our fingers claw out some efficacy or success or usefulness from the hard rockface of existence.

And so it was that we managed to 'navigate' our way to POPArt a couple of days before curtain-up. My previous abortive attempt proved slightly useful, I think, given that when I spotted a street sign or landmark mentioned in the instructions for finding the place, because they had been burned into the very gristle of my brain, I realised where we had to go, or at least that they were relevant. This is not to play down the contribution of the other crue members: my littlest aunt with her navigation skills and the near-silence of my mother (no mean feat, for either of us) who excellently announced, every so often, that she wished she could help.... but we all knew that keeping her counsel, and maybe mopping our sweating brows, was her only way of being teamly. Teamish?

The Maponeng Precinct is a controversial development in the heart of Johannesburg. It is a private venture aiming to bring culture, living space, commerce to what has been for a while now, a no-go area for many affluent South Africans. The controversy arises out of what is seen by some of the cleansing of the area of the local population who have lived and/or worked here through the very hard times. But on this, my first visit, I know little about any of that, and simply find myself exhilarated by the sight of Joburgers, sitting, at cafe tables, their lattes before them, soaking up the autumn sun, on the street. There are all kinds of people here, I realised, as we were given advice and help on parking the car half-on-half-off the pavement. People in chinos with laptops walked past. South Africans like the mall shopping experience, or at least that's what's mostly on offer, and this felt rather like an excellent dream of what might become of here. I let Hayleigh know we had arrived and we found the door to the theatre.

POPArt has been here three years, nearly three years. It's a classic fringe venue with all the energy, hope and challenges that can come with that. I press my nose up against the glass of the door. I explain to Mum and my littlest aunt that it's important for me, this moment of arrival at a venue where I'm going to do the show, nervousness, excitement and loads of disbelief. My mate Em likes to say that if you get the stage with a fella where you are taking your own - or each other's - clothes off, do not worry about how you look: the chap is mostly likely to be thinking: a woman is letting me see her naked! A woman is letting me see her naked! A woman is... etc. And so it is with me and theatres: Hayleigh arrives and shows us round, she is slightly apologetic about the modest lighting rig, but I'm just thinking, this theatre is going to let me perform our show here on my own! This theatre is going to let me perform our show here on my own! This theatre is going to let me... repeat to fade.

Hayleigh is the second member of the POPArt team I have met and she lives nearby, which surely means she gets to do things like opening up the theatre for actors and their random family members to have a look at it. She's as friendly and warm and full of energy as Orly, whom I met a few days ago. I am getting excited. I cannot wait for Martin to get here: he's going to love this little, black-box of a theatre, love it's urban, vibey setting (where we can look like anachronisms or site-specific art works amongst the trendsters, "And here we have late twentieth-century hippy, wilfully clueless about fashion, mostly concerned with comfort..."); he will adore the fact that it lies between two (count them!) restaurants. And he'll love these women. I am warming to them immediately.

Walking the stage - which doesn't take very long at all - puts a zing in my guts and I remember my terror at Artscape in Cape Town, the first time I had ever walked a stage and felt afraid, out of place, alone. This one feels just right and I cannot wait, cannot wait I tell you, to get on with the show.

It's less than 48 hours later that we are back, Martin, Jacques and I. I feel duty-bound to point out to you, dear reader, that we took ages to find the venue. Even though I've now driven the area extensively, and been to the venue, prepared exhaustively to get us here in order to impress Martin and Jacques, I still lead us astray, driving around in the fabulous sunshine, looking at the great buildings, me failing to remember (realise?) that the road we are looking for is very split in two, even with a map in my hand. Essentially we find ourselves, as is often the case, adventurous by accident. But we have masses of time built in and Shoki, the third member of the POPArt team, is also very late. We tech in the afternoon, giggling and chatting with this third lovely woman from the venue team. We find the magnificent toilets (there is a poster for the show in here, we have to get a picture of me with the poster in the toilets, obviously, as it's too, too good: a poster in the outside toilets), looking at the exhibition of shoes, hurling some food down our throats ready for showtime.

Eating in the restaurant next door I spy a group, including a friend, a colleague, of Kate's. She and I have been in contact - I've known she was coming. She's brought lots of people with her. I am transported to eight years ago, when Kate had just died and I first met Melanie. We embrace, I meet the people with her. I am touched.

But it is getting late, I must go and get ready. There is never enough time with people who come to the show. I spy Mark, my sister's best mate, one of my hosts in Cape Town - he's here on business for the night. He is with Zadi. We embrace. Zadi is a Burundian refugee who Kate was helping when she died; she was 39, he was 18. Even though I've sent him a copy of the play and already said it, I apologise for the fact that his story is one of the things that has been entirely expunged from the show. His story is so amazing, so harrowing, so important, that Martin and I felt we could not simply brush over it - so we could do it no justice at all - and so it went. Seeing him tonight, I feel guilty. He asks about Mum, my littlest aunt, my brother, I tell him he can see the two former tomorrow, if he comes here again, but I already know that he cannot be here tomorrow - he's flying to Angola on business, he will not get to see them.

But I must get on. It is time, after a good few weeks, to do this thing that I do, for what is, Martin has worked out, the 99th time.

The spoils of the echoing dead

Easter Sunday and thereafter
It's a beautiful day, of course, Easter Sunday. The family brunches, spectacularly, in the garden, the boys hurtle about, I sit like the non-child I have somehow become. And, far more importantly than my family and a beautiful day and great food, I have made an arrangement for someone to pick up the darn posters from me and take them to  POPArt: the venue which we are playing here in Johannesburg.
Even for this to work there has been some back and forth and re-arranging. Of course there has: the venue is run by three young women all needing to make a living and pursue their creative careers and run a fringe venue. I have absolutely no illusions about the sheer time-consuming thankless slog this can be most of the time. On top of that, Orly who, it turns out, lives near to my cousin's place, has a small child. Personally I can't fathom how she can manage that too, but as we greet each other in that very traditionally Joburg way - though the grating of the gating which closes off my cousin's place from the street, I spy a fella in the car. Well, that certainly helps - to have someone else involved in bringing up your child. He smiles at me - he's clearly fabulous.
Orly is very friendly and I tell her that I plan to make the trip to see the theatre tomorrow, in company this time. I've told her about my harrowing trip the day before to find the place. She laughs and says that it's a good idea to have someone to navigate as it's not that easy the first time. This makes me feel the slitheriest of scintillas better about the whole debacle, though deep down I know it's my fault that I cannot find my way.
The show opens again on Thursday and amidst all the things I need to do I cannot resist visiting old haunts, old friends, with my mother and my littlest aunt. Our tastes are embarrassingly similar: we want to go where their sister went, to see her friends.
Jane was 21 when she married a Dutchman who lived in South Africa. She lived nearly forty years in the country and she was well-loved. Jane may be gone, but we want to reconnect to her life and her people. She made wedding dresses for a living, as does my littlest aunt, and we go to her local fabric shop, still there like it surely has been forever. We go to Jane's favourite local cafe and meet her best friend and her daughter who is about my age whom I first met when we were seven. It is so natural to see them and yet so odd that Jane isn't here. It is hurling a typical Joburg afternoon electric rainstorm outside and I'm basically chilly and damp. I remember meeting these people more than thirty years ago. And here we all still are, yet depleted.
We visit another friend of Jane's where we talk politics and the past, present and future. That extraordinary optimism-laced-fear or pessimism-laced-hope or horror-laced-excitement or joy-laced-grief which seems to be the lietmotif of the discourse of so many of my South African friends, old and new. We talk about Jane. We talk about Kate.
This particular friend of Jane's gave my brother and I small gifts when Kate died,  helpful gifts. Mine is a series of painted blocks strung together. One one side of each is an angel. On the other side is the legend "And all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well." This friend is a Christian and I suppose that might be what she believes... in fact, I think it is what she believes. The angels and their message hang above my kitchen sink reminding me that I was born an optimist and it has been well and truly beaten out of me because I am weak and ungrateful.
And we see Paulina. If you've seen Sometimes I Laugh Like My Sister you'll remember her - she was my sister's very dear friend, her housekeeper, and she is the last moment of the show. We pick her up to take her out to lunch. It's another strangely rainy, cold day and we go to Moyo's at Zoo Lake, near to where she and my sister used to live. I get lost on the way, and we stop to look at the map, finally working out how to get to the shops in Park View where we are meeting Paulina. I'm driving and I apologise to Mum and my littlest aunt, explaining that I was trying not to go down Kate's road. "We know that," they both reply. There we all are, talking about everything but, yet thinking the same thing.
Paulina seems not to have aged and has not lost her infectious laugh. She's had a tough time since we last saw her, having to give up a job and move house. Moving house has involved moving into a shack in a different township. At first, she says, she was mortified at the idea of living in a shack. It is very small, smaller than her old place and, well, it's a shack and there are rats everywhere. She tells us that one day it began raining and it turned out her roof was leaky. As despair was about to grab her, a neighbour came round with some plastic sheeting which saved the day. She tells us she is very happy where she is living, that the people are lovely, that she's far happier than she thught she would be. It's so good to see her, to hear her opinions on the political future of South Africa. She says that whatever happens, the rewards of post-apartheid South Africa are not for her, that she and most of her generation will have to forego things so that future generations can benefit. She does not sound resigned, she sounds accepting. Maybe that's me romanticising or trying to make myself feel more comfortable about my massive western advantages, but she states it as if resistance is futile and I'm sure she's right on all counts.
I think of the story most Europeans know of South Africa, of Mandela and wine and rugby and gun crime and I think of Paulina's amazing life and massive good grace. And I know I cannot even begin to explain the place, but that it's got me good and proper this time. In my head I blame Jane and her Dutch husband, I blame Kate and her over-arching ambition, but mostly I blame Paulina and all the other Paulinas who open their hearts to me and demonstrate their eye-watering good will, their love-in-action.

Consummately driving in all the wrong directions

Easter weekend, still: March/April 2013

Of course one of the problems of being on tour and being on holiday at the same time is that everyone around me is on holiday while I really do need to be getting on with some work. Part of this work is getting flyers printed and the posters to the venue.

My maternal grandmother was an artist, a painter, watercolourist, oiler, pastel maker, portraitist - for a living. Two of my aunts have made clothes for a living. My mother can draw, her doodles by the phone, in the days when the phone was fixed, were of the faces and the dancers from her mind. Turns out Mother's mind is full of beautiful stuff no matter the brickbats life throws at her. And the drawings were good, so good you could tell what they were - please bear that in mind. My sister qualified as a civil engineer, a fabulous draughtsperson, and my brother can draw, though he doesn't. (More of my brother's legion talent another time, sometimes it's too much even for me to dwell on). Me? I have to leave an explanation under an image of a stick person. I understand the theory - you don't grow up with these people around you and not understand the technical requirements - but I cannot make anything look like whatever it's supposed to be. Worse than that, I cannot even pull something out of my imagination and make it look like anything others might understand or even simply recognise.

And I've got to make sure the flyers and posters look okay. I mean, we have a great designer, but while Martin is out of contact, I need to sign them off. For anyone who can make something look nice - not only can I not draw but I cannot tidy anything up - this sounds like a doddle. But I'm rubbish. On top of the not being able to draw or make anything look good, I regularly leave the house looking as if my arch enemy from the comic-book version of my life has dressed me.

As if that weren't enough I also have to get the posters to the venue, which means driving into central Johannesburg. On the Saturday afternoon I leave the family in the garden and head off for what the satnav tells me will be a one-hour-or-so round trip. I've communicated with Hayleigh, one of the women who runs the venue and she will be at PopArt to meet me. Perfect. It's yet another beautiful Johannesburg day: it really is the best climate in the world, and I am driving, talk and tunes on the radio, heading for central Joburg for the first time in..... about fifteen years.

As my new best friend tells me which way to turn, on a part of the journey I actually know - the first bit - I reflect on the last time I was in central Joburg, long after it had become something of a no-go area for middle-class white folk from the northern suburbs, before it became an utter no-no for the likes of me. I had been heading to Durban with my friend Caroline just after graduating and my South African aunt had dropped us at the coach station. She had been very jumpy, the jumpiest I had ever seen her, and she kind of threw us and our luggage out onto the street and hurtled off in her dust of terror. It was... out of character.
.
Which is odd, and had been at the time, because the centre of Joburg is fabulous... if you like cities, and I love cities. I like urban and shiny and mixed and big and grotty and unpredictable... but not this unpredictable. The satnav keeps losing its connection to the satellite, or at least I think that's what keeps happening: big oceans of grey and silent and asking me to wait while I become increasingly nauseous. It's the same nauseous I experience whenever I get lost, which is often, irritated at myself for not preparing well enough, as if more preparation would help - I know it would not - but I cannot help feeling it might, that one day I will be able to find my way. I won't, I know that, but still. And I resent Martin, and where the hell is he? And why should I be dealing with this alone? And why did some man in Cape Town seem to like me and all of a sudden not? And why was Kate killed? I would not be in this predicament if she were alive. I cannot believe my aunt is still dead - she could have navigated for me. Massive, unrelated emotions start to overwhelm me as the toddler inside unleashes her fear and fury. None of which helps me get any clearer about the rather mystical one-way system. I know that. Why can I not keep a stopper in this and just have a good rage later?

The beginning of the sunset is incredible. There are huge reflective buildings in the CBD and they are all around me. And people are out and about. I am reminded of... Harare? Bulawayo? Durban? Nothing as big and shiny as Joburg, but something metropolitan and African and hot and from my past, from happier days, all at once great and terrible to experience. As well as the phallic shinies there is massive urban decay, gatherings of folk who look like drug addicts or muggers or both. Every so often the satnav springs into action, only to leave me in the lurch at the vital moment, like and internet datee who loves to text but won't quite commit to the date of a date. I need to stop to read the map - I keep getting onto the road where the theatre is but not finding theatre, as in those fearful, frustrating dreams. Then I lose it entirely emotionally, spinning out towards the unknown, panic grabbing and shaking me. No tears, just panic. The story of Johannesburg, the one you are constantly told about violence, is something I assiduously ignore and I am furious with myself that I am now so afraid. Kate would not have been this afraid: she was so much braver than I. Damn her and her stupid bravery.

I do stop, I look at my map. The dark is moving in. I am aware that I look exactly what I am: a lost foreigner, or worse, a tourist. Not wanting to stop for too long, I pull out, starting to worry that my driving is less than it should be, if I'm not shot for my car and laptop then I'll kill someone inadvertently, driving into the sun, looking at street names, mowing them down, a casual, inconsequential obstacle to and in my panic. It's at least half an hour before I officially invite defeat into the passenger seat and start to read the runes for indications of how to get home. Quickly I find myself on the new multicoloured Mandela bridge speeding out of town towards more familiar territory.

Arriving home I casually drop into the conversation that I have, actually, failed to deliver the posters. There's lots of looking at watches and asking where I've been. I am determined not to worry my mother, but I am also determined not to cry, not to rage, not to make the next half hour about my inadequacies and their attached fury. This has not been the end of the world. And from the wreckage of my crazy hour and a half I salvage dignity, magnanimity and another lovely evening with my beautiful family. This has been, finally, about my being able, in the end, to contain my emotions - about which no one is more surprised than me. And obvioulsy, but no less surprisingly, nobody has died, as my sister used to say, about fuss and nonsense in her daily work.

How I long for the distant tape recorder

March into April 2013

Martin and Jacques have been doing quit a bit of holidaying, making the most of being here in South Africa and enjoying their many-tyred trip to Namibia. For now they are.... somewhere else. I'm not even sure where they are. When Martin and I are together I can feel where he is and we are wont to communicate via facebook (his preferred method) even when simply on different floors of the same building or across the table from one another. But they are.... somewhere else in South Africa. Lord knows where - Martin is not one for having his phone on, or if it is on, having it with him, or if it is with him, bothering to answer it.

So I begin the Johannesburg part of the tour with Mother, my Littlest Aunt and lots of my South Africa family. In fact, our first full day in Joburg is Good Friday, followed by Easter Saturday, Easter Sunday and Easter Monday. I do no realise it at the beginning but we are about to get the chance to spend most of four full days with my cousins, their kids and my uncle. This has not happened since the 1970s . Food is prepared, eggs are painted, we all gather.

I have long known that I get far too fond of people far too quickly. I don't mean romantically, stuff things romantic... maybe it happens romantically (see earlier miserable blogs) but I mean all the other loves. I feel connected, I fear, to folk far too fast. And I have often felt that I love my South African cousins in an exaggerated fashion for people I have spent no more than fifteen bursts of time with over my years on the planet.

My South African aunt, Jane, who went and died on us nearly ten years ago now had three children just like my mother did, girl boy girl. My cousin Lou is my age. Well, she's a few month younger than me, months that become more and more important as I age, and she follows me far too slowly into these lengthening-shortening years. We had met a few times before, but when we were 13 my aunt Jane brought her to the UK to visit family. My mother, Jane, Lou and I went to London together, including Madam Tussaud's, spent time with my mother's cousins, travelled to The Channel Islands to see our grandparents, aunts and cousins there.

And it is there I fell for Lou. Lou was beautiful, and worldly in the ways that matter. Sure, I knew far more about global politics - this was the 1980s when a South African child of whatever stripe would find it hard to find out what was going on in their own country, let alone anywhere else in the world. But who cares about human rights abuses in Turkey or the Amazon rain forest when there are boys to know about, actual boys: 13 year-old-boys, 14-year-olds and - whilsper it quietly - 15-year-olds? Pointless, pointless education and political awareness! Interestingly - or not - I fear I still suffer from the same problems I had then: too much understanding of what it is men do in parliaments and not enough understanding of how they function in bars. 

Lou was the kind of 13-year-old girl who turned heads when she walked down the street (Just to let you know, I have yet to reach that stage of my life). And we bonded. This lovely, witty, learned woman-child wanted to be my friend. We talked and played and did sophisticated things, like listening to Phil Collins and Genesis on my grandmother's cassette recorder. Lou wore make up, for crying out loud, and it looked great. It occurs to me that it is only about now that I am genuinely ready to understand what Lou had to teach me about boys then, but it's too late. The moment has passed, zooming into history, several other me's ago I was there, but I cannot be redeemed now and I was just in no place to learn any of that stuff then. Like Alice in Wonderland with the small door and the shrinking potion: now that I have the key to the door I am way to big to pass through it.

I guess we complimented each other. Me with my gawkiness, still metaphorically - and often actually - up trees with so much to learn, but far more aware of - and able to articulate things about - the political world in general and the UK in particular, where we happened to find ourselves. And she with her suave ability to chat to anyone, look right, behave appropriately, explain Everything Else in the world.

We have spent quite a bit of time together over the years for people living on these two continents and my love for her has never waned, she is still rather magical to me. These days she is married with two children and all kinds of professional success behind and ahead of her. Over these Easter days we are together with her kids and her husband and everyone else and we just are. No desperate need to grab time together, as can so often be the case for me on my trips to Joburg. I start to realise I am going to be doing very little work over these four days, and despite being rather obsessed with achieving things, I begin to come round to the idea of hanging out with my fabulous family and start to feel it's time for the cassette recorder. 

In which I wonder at the significance of position in the family

It is Passover. I know about Passover, you're not brought up a Christian without knowing all about Passover. Well, I say that, but I am about to learn a thing or two about Passover and grains that swell, it turns out.

I made a friend at drama school and it was great to learn that she came from Johannesburg. At the time I didn't realise she lived about fifteen minutes' drive from my aunt's place. I have always had an open invitation to stay with her, but have never taken her up on it as I have family and other friends in Joburg. In the time since Kate died I have wanted to stay with her friends, spend time with them. But one of the terrible corollaries of loss for me is that although I have got access to some of Kate's mate's in a way probably impossible had she been alive, I have also found that many of those relationships were tremendously ephemeral. More ephemeral than I had wanted. Something about the desire to connect at the time of her murder to rediscover Kate, maybe to be with someone we'd heard so much about or to be with someone who was enduring something similar to our own pain.

Being a hoarder, being desperate to keep my sister, to find something, someone who would, basically, I suspect, be my sister, I had wanted to continue those relationships, but mostly they have fallen by the wayside, which in itself has caused me distress. I think this is my problem, not theirs, that they are just doing the right thing and what comes naturally, and I am misguided, needy, mistaken. Thinking about it, it all sounds rather..... well... barking. And I'm loathe to write about it really, but two months in and now confronted with Johannesburg I am feeling pretty.... peeled-back skin-wise and I have a desire to be honest. And so, I think I have been blinded by grief and fear, by a terrible knowledge that without my sister I am nothing. I always knew I was rather an insubstantial creature, but the severing and expunging of my other self, my better self, my sympathetic, loving, resilient sister, has left me over-keen to find or make life and love and understanding on the barren territory of surprise and loss and desire for the utterly gone.

Add to this the fact that some of Kate's mates are no longer in Johannesburg and my familial homes are full, I find myself with the chance to take up my friend on her open invitation.

She is full of apologies as I arrive, late into the evening for parents with a baby who is not fond of sleeping. She's sorry because it is Passover, and so there is very little food in the house, she says, food of the kind she clearly thinks is right for a guest. I do not know how to reassure her: I've come to stay for... up to a few weeks and just a bed and somewhere to wash is enormously generous. I admit, being far less knowledgeable about Passover than I'd thought, I didn't realise that there would be unusable crockery and many un-eatable swelling-grain-based foods in the house, but there is tea and there are matzos. And boiled eggs. And salad and fruit, mountains of fruit and, as I mentioned, tea. AND the warmest welcome. Actually, it looks like a pretty healthy diet, to me, this Passover diet, especially when you add the lovely people with whom I'm about to stay.

When I see her husband later, he looks me in the eye and tells me, essentially, that his home is my home and that I must simply treat this house as such, he'll have no standing on ceremony. He and I have only met twice before, both times pretty fleetingly, and as I go up to my room I do, indeed, feel at home. And I feel happy that my friend has married such a very lovely man, a man who put me at my ease and who is genuinely happy for me to drink his beer even tough he can't - it's Passover.

And yet there's an 'and yet' in the mix. Will I always live he life of this single woman, the interesting, perfectly pleasant (if you like that sort of thing), woman, with a good sense of humour, who will eat anything (anything I tell you! and love it) and be a houseguest in the homes of her friends, in their couples, maybe with their children in tow? Will I tramp around, never fixed, always looking for whatever it is that's missing?

It's Passover. And I think about the first born in my family, the oldest brother who died before he was born, and the oldest sister, who died as she was starting to live the life she'd hoped for. And I remember I can get very maudlin indeed if left to my own devices. Maybe I will always be itinerant, but if the homes I visit have matzos, or similar, and fruit and tea and boiled eggs and beer, maybe it won't be so bad.

I can feel the love wrapped round my neck

Firsts are the stuff of childhood, obviously. As I age, though they come thinner and slower, still they come, and I notice them a lot more than ever I did when they were the stuff of life.

We are driving into Johannesburg. I have never entered Johannesburg for the first time on any trip like this before, I have always flown in. I did fly into Johannesburg, just over two months ago, but I flew straight out against to Durban to begin the tour, my feet never touching the outside of OR Thambo International.

Two months ago. That's, like, two months. Two of them, for crying out loud.

Now, Mama, my Littlest Aunt and I have been on the road about eight hours. We are about to drive to my cousin's house but currently we are in a bit of the city we do not recognise and after eight hours on the road we are calmed considerably by the gentle ministrations of Tracey's satnav. It would be a whole other ending of wrong turnings and stress and extra hours of snappy panic without it. All hail satellite technology, plastics and microchips in general, and this particular stanav in particular.

The thee of us got on the road this morning, slightly later than intended because we were staying in a fabulous place. Nieu Bethesda is a tiny settlement located, roughly speaking, somewhere between Oudtshoorn and Johannesburg. Mum, Auntie and I have overnighted in the loveliest of little cottages and in the morning we visit the very famous Owl House and Camel Yard. We buy gifts in gift shops and look at the second hand bookshop. I rue the chance we have lost to do the show here, for despite a population of only 1,000 souls, 900 of those living in the township nearby, there is a theatre and the woman in the bookshop tells me that they love to go to the theatre. I'm not surprised: this place is bijou in the extreme, no sealed roads and only in existence because the local farmers not that many decades ago needed somewhere to build a church so that they didn't have to go all the way to Oudtshoorn to worship. Any entertainment whatsoever must be welcome, even if it is a woman doing a show about her own sister's murder.

Seven of us, plus my tiny roommate, had celebrated my birthday in a very idiosyncratic self-catering place, run by a German couple, in Oudtshoorn. Their living quarters, their kitchen, the contents of their fridge mingled with ours as Martin eeeeeked out the story of their being here. Buying the farm without ever having seen Oudtshoorn, previously never having lived in South Africa, never having run a farm, they gave up having a manager for the farm and started, in their late fifties, to learn to be farmers. He speaks no English at all, or Afrikaans, or Xhosa. He speaks German. They are welcoming and solicitous and interesting and.... individual.

On these few days' holiday to celebrate my inexorable age journey I had a trip to the caves, some ostrich visiting, eating out, eating in, a spectacular electric storm with angry rain and blood-curdling sound effects, a power cut which lasted and lasted, tickling a cheetah, lying by the pool, finishing the antibiotics for my infected ear and enjoying Precious the boa constrictor round my neck, amongst many other fabulous activities. I am loved, I can tell. I could tell before, but, well, a boa constrictor! Round my actual NECK!!! It is as wonderful as I hoped it would be when I did that (very poor, as usual - I am no researcher, no academic) project on snakes when I was eight.

Only a couple of days after my abrupt ageing, it had been, suddenly, time to say goodbye to my tiny roommate and his fathers. It's tough. I've been with them for two months and Mark is.... was, after all, Kate's best friend. There is something about the nature of our relationship which incorporates her without us speaking about her that much. I am lucky to have a brother whom I love and loves me. On top of this I have these extra brothers who have had me in their home for two months: count them. That's love, or at least amazing tolerance.

And I am aware that the heartbreak I'm trying to metabolise about that man is inextricably linked to Cape Town. In spite of all the wonder of the place, every metre I get away takes me from what now feels like a terribly embarrassing mistake, or at least that seems to be the current coping strategy adopted by my psyche. So it is partially with alacrity that I put everything to do with the city behind me. I cannot imagine never going back, but neither can imagine ever being able to face it again.

Johannesburg, on the other hand, looms large and lovely over the whole trip. This is a bit odd as it is where Kate and my now dead South African Aunt lived, it is the place I have been coming to since I was seven. I resist the idea but there is no denying that it is one of the places I call home, though these days it is irrevocably marked by loss, nausea and fear. Not the usual Joburg fears of carjacking and brutal burglary, though. My more prosaic fear of simply unravelling emotionally stalks me hard and close in Joburg, although on previous visits I have outrun it. But then maybe that is partially what home is for me. I've never properly understood the relaxed comfort which the idea of home seems to bring some of my acquaintance. Maybe one of the reasons I am drawn to doing things that scare me is that home is not a place of safety. Why stay home, full of fear, when one could be out there experiencing the real thing?

But I'm not into the real fears, things that might bring me genuine misery, which is why I am very happy when I realise the three of us are nearing Linden in the northern suburbs of Joburg, the end of our journey, at least for now; the safety of my cousin's place and the promise of some good times to come with my South African family. And the Joburg shows. The location of the heartbreak, all the great new - and old - friends, each Cape Town show, the lovely moments with my tiny roommate, are behind me and what is left is the here and the now and the whatever comes next.

Why can't *I* have a wife?

I remember travelling to Spain, at the beginning of 1995, when I lived there. I got as cheap a flight as I could, which meant that it was at a very ungoldy hour in the morning when I had to get up off my brother's floor in north London, get the first tube and make the journey through the dawn dark across town to Gatwick.

I remember driving myself to school, in the summer of 1989, while my mother was away on holiday for two weeks. She had left some food for me, but I was definitely alone in the house - Mum had gone on holiday with her cousins to Italy in the days before mobiles or the interweb.

I remember getting on the train alone, saying goodbye to Kate, leaving her on the platform in Manchester, where I'd gone to stay with her at university for the first time. I was 14.

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There is nothing like leaving alone. Nothing. It can be devastating or exciting, anticipatory or tearful, but it is always exhilarating. That luxurious feeling of alone when you are indeed by yourself, but you have a gorgeous lattice-work of friends and family somewhere in the world, keen to know about you, loving, familiar, your invisible shadow. There are other alones that are not fun or cool or things I want to know about: a fully, vertiginous aloneness where there is no one who will offer me a mattress for the night or lend me a fiver. No siree. I've read about those alones, had them described to me, but I do not need to experience them.

I am about to leave Cape Town alone. Martin and Jacques help me get my stuff to the car. I've been packing for days, I've kind of been packing forever. I'm always in and out of one bag or another. I love packing to leave, even when I don't want to leave, I love the packing. I think it's probably got something to do with owning too much stuff: packing to leave, the kind of packing where you know you can get the stuff in your suitcase/rucksack/handbag because that's how the stuff got here in the first place, makes me relax. Not the packing to go. I hate initial packing to leave home as much as the next person who always carries too much stuff and has to take multiple bras, even for a couple of days away. Packing to go is one of the few things that makes sense of the Christian idea of purgatory, of hell, of the very devil himself. He's imaginary most of the time, but Lucifer is sitting on the end of my bed tossing paperwork and tights at me when I'm packing to go.

As someone who always has too much stuff I feel great when I can get things in a bag, everything I have that needs to go in the bag goes in the bag. This is not true of any other part of my life: draws are overflowing, cupboard doors are forced shut, things spill off.... other things which teeter on the edge of furniture I have half painted/sanded/mended, and land in great drifts by the things which fell there seven weeks before.

I'm as happy as a sandboy packing to leave. Marvelous. And we've had a top fairwell do. Luckily the last few days in Cape Town are so busy, so eventful, so interesting that I find myself suddenly at a play reading and then suddenly leaving the play reading and suddenly preparing the flat and then people are arriving, talking, meeting. My mum and my aunt are here. I've been thinking about these Cape Town people meeting them both, especially as they appear in the play, for a while. Luckily Martin and Jacques have been very good at getting things ready for the party too. I find myself horribly wanting as a hostess, not through lack of wanting to make people feel happy, at their ease. But I fear I am so much not at my ease that I have no sense of proportion and find myself frozen with worry that I'm not cutting the celery into the right shaped pieces, that my gin and tonics are too tonicy (making me stingy) or too ginny (making me something far worse), that there's too much potato and not enough salad cream.... in the cheesecake. Every decision I make is surely wrong.

God, how I wish I had a wife. We should all have a wife. Lots of my mates, even now, in 2013, have lovely, old-fashioned wives, who produce drinks, souffles, children, while my mates get to chat to guests and shelf-wrangle. Why can't I have that? Oh, yeah, it's because I can't have anyone: nobody wants me. Yep, yep, I remember now, there's  no need to go on about it.

Martin and Jacques make it look like a party and the guests make it a party and I treat it like a party, so it's  party. And it's so hard to say goodbye that one guest comes the next morning to wish us bon voyage, birthday gift for the impending day in hand. She was a friend of Kate's. It is unexpectedly difficult to let go of all this, never mind we're off for a few days' holiday, never mind I'll be in wonderful company, never mind we have some shows to look forward to in Jo'burg, I just don't want to say goodbye. As the opportunity that is Cape Town finally closes down on me I want it more than anything else I can think of, more, even, than that darn man.

I hug Martin and Jacques on the street, even though I'll be seeing them later, and I drive out of the Mother City. I'm picking up Mum and My Littlest Auntie on the way, but for now I am alone, beautifully alone, as if this were my natural state, and, with all the farewells done - for now, fleetingly - I can pretend that Kate is beside me and that we are off on one of our adventures.

If I'm looking right at you why am I missing you?

March 2013
People  have a drink and they say things they don't mean, do things they'll regret. It's part of being human. And enthusiastic. And, often, English - you don't want to speak your mind, best say yes for now, and get out the door.
So I was at that lecture, having had too much wines, too many wine... drunk too much and someone called Zavick is saying we should take the show to his studio - he's an artist. Yeaaaah! Let's do that!!!! That will be great. Yessssssss.
And then it's the next day and a man I don't know is trying to friend me up on facebook. Who the hell is... he's the artist from last night. Okay. Fine.
A few days later I'm walking over to Gardens where his studio is to have a look round. He really is an artist and he really does have a big studio, with other artists renting space and a fabulous thing called toilet cubicalism going on (see the attached photo). We talk about the show, about the art he makes, about his recent clear-out which has helped him get back to the art he wants to make. My gut fills with the thought of my stuff-bound flat, lots of that stuff being my sister's belongings, some of it still in boxes, and my terrible, miserable inertia, my inability to get rid of things or even move them, look at them... the way I hide from them, which is not easy as they surround me, day in, day out....
While I've been lost in thought, Zavick has made some tea is looking at possible dates on his wall planner, he's got started on making an event page on facebook.  He has the energy of a five year old. He doesn't seem even to have developed the ennui of a nine year old yet, he's in very bright toddlerdom; he has much more energy than my roommate, who's not yet eight months. I wonder whether I've ever met a person of his age with this much energy. I guess that he is, depressingly, about my age. It's depressing and impressive. He is also very dyslexic and so I take over for a bit at the computer, writing whatever copy we agree on, and we agree quickly, just getting on with it. We are both excited about the show coming to Studio41. I'm not sure what Martin will think.... but he's on holiday in Namibia, very short on mobile phone coverage let alone interweb, and I decide we'll do the show whatever and Martin will think whatever he thinks, but he'll get on with it too. I'm pretty sure he'll like Zavick.
In general Cape Town is starting to spin around me, gently at first, but with increasing urgency as I approach the date when I will be sucked out of the plughole and hurled back onto the road towards Johannesburg. It affects my sense of proportion and already pretty poor ability to make decisions. My mother and aunt will arrive before we leave, we'll do the Studio41 gig, we'll have a little gathering at the flat for a few of the fabulous people we've met on our time here. And then we'll leave.
I knew this would happen and that it would happen like this: I'll've been here two months and some of the weeks have dragged out... not necessarily unpleasantly, but languorously, as if they were going to last forever. I've known all along that they would not, and they knew it too. We have both known that time would speed up and I'd be stuffing experiences and people and sights and sounds and hopes into the vanishing hours like the burglar does into his bag in a nice Cape Town flat, fear of missing out on something great bearing down on us both; knowing that even if we do come back, the flat will not be the same as it is today. Today provides only today's experiences.
I've endured the heartbreak and confusion it threw me into, I'm starting to rise, vulture-like, from the ashes of my hope, ready to feed on the carrion of the next car crash in my life.  Feeling this raw confusion I wander the city seeing all kinds of work in the huge festival that is Infecting the City. Once a year the city is overrun with art, lots of it performance art, but also visual art. Frustratingly I miss shows or can't find venues, but I also see lots of things, some by mistake, bump into people I know, get a black eye helping someone up onto a wall - it's like any other visit to the theatre. I even get to see an UK director I know who has made one of the pieces - small performing world. It's not like any festival I've been to before and is all the more marvelous for it.
The night before the Studio41 show, four new tyres down, Jacques and Martin arrive back in Cape Town, with tales of the desert, some stones they've lifted and a pile of washing. For me the performance is yet another great experience. Zavick has brought some great people together and a few of my mates come, and it's like no other show I've done. I have to be careful not to touch the audience, so close are they, but also not to destroy the art behind my back. I spend more time sitting down that usual.
Afterwards, yet again, I meet such interesting people people who have suffered, people what feel so strongly about theatre, art, South Africa. Even though my mother and aunt land tomorrow for a three-week holiday, including a few days off for me, even though I am longing for Johannesburg, my first love, even though I want to leave this place which has broken my heart, I can feel the regret, I am missing Cape Town already. I'm still here and I'm missing it. Why can't I just be here and enjoy it and deal with the change when I leave? What is wrong with me? Naturally over-acquainted with grief, that's my diagnosis, too ready to anticipate it. My musicality, my skills as a show-off and my feelings of loss when simply contemplating something I love, let alone someone: these were all bequeathed to me by my father, the last one because he was too full of life  himself to live past 42, or at least that's how he fills my memories.
People gather in the flat on the Thursday evening, our last night in Cape Town. Mark and Ikeraam and my tiny roommate have already left for our holidayette, and so I am hosting a bit of a do in their flat. These are very nice people, I wonder why I ever wanted to leave: the sun sets and every new position it takes makes yet another preternaturally beautiful scene out of the city spread before and below us. One friend who attends has not been to this building since she tried to blow it up in the 1990s, another tells her that it's good to meet her, that she was out on the street protesting to get her released from prison.
Well, at least I'm not leaving South Africa.

The trouble with lemurs

Tuesday 11 February

"The trouble with lemurs is the same as the trouble with meerkats: they make very poor pets because they mark the house and their owners." Wikipedia

I am aware that I arrived at Mark and Ikeraam's place on 18 January, to fizzy wine, fabulous supper and a Cape Town sunset to simultaneously break my heart and make me believe all is possible.

But I worry.

I worry that by, or before, 22 March, our scheduled date for the beginning of the drive to Jo'burg, they will be so irritated by me, my stuff, by our romantic suppers for three, by my choice of foreign language DVDs, my dull cooking, my lack of cooking (in most UK homes I'd be okay because I'm up for the washing up, but here we have Staff, so even if I do the washing up I'm ingratiating myself with her, and not with the chaps, which is not to say I'm not for trying to charm Staff....), my every-so-often managing to be caught in a state of tears due to my broken heart, the strangeness of my working schedule, my inability to turn the lights off at night without turning all the lights on first - well, actually, that's their architect's fault - and legion other smaller and larger annoyances about ME will make them want to throw me off this, the 12th floor.

I raise the issue one day:
"I've had offers to stay with other people... you know... while I'm here."
"Oh."
"How, you know, would that be? Maybe I should."
"Well, itt's up to you."
"Well, I was thinking it was more, you know, up to you guys."
"If you do go, don't go for long."

No more information than I had before, possibly, even slightly less, given a rather heightened sense of paranoia and broken-heartedness and, well, I have no idea what else in the mix.

I stay put.

Before Martin and Jacques return from Namibia, I have my lecture to deliver. My lecture about journalist safety at City Varsity. That lecture I agreed to on that sunny afternoon, writing happily with Vanessa, feeling pretty much invincible. Yeah, that one. I write it down and everything - a radical break with my usual routine of... not writing things down properly. I do put in some sections where I am going to riff, or do bits of the show, but basically I trawl my brain, the death and danger stats on the CPJ (Committee to Protect Journalists) website, rifle through my passionately-held beliefs about press freedom and the state we are all in, and and and....

And.... who knows what they thought of the lecture. I kept remembering to look at my notes and I covered most of that stuff, about how journalism has changed and the risks that there are and not to be bullied into going anywhere, but to remain ambitions - don't let anyone take that either; that journalists are bound to be at risk, terrible things will happen, which doesn't met we ought not to let people go if they want to, unless we really ought not to let them go; that risk assessments are there for the protection of the employer; that broadcasters, papers etc are not necessarily your friend after you're dead and they may try to close down official lines of enquiry, may threaten your family with legal action, as the BBC did to us.

But that was all so serious and I know listeners need some light relief, so next we play guess the five most dangerous countries for journalists since 1992. It takes ages, they're way off-beam. Mali is in the news, and that's one of the guesses; I make a joke about it not being there yet, but, you know, just wait.

They get Iraq, but they don't get the others:

1. Iraq
2. Philippines
3. Algeria
4. Russia
5. Pakistan

Mostly they've never heard of Algeria, so it being in the top five is a double-whammy. We are having so much fun, we look at the next five and yes, I make a joke about Kate's country of death not making it into the top five and how frustrating that is for a high-achiever like me. We find India surprising:

6. Somalia
7. Columbia
8. Syria
9. India
10.Mexico

Some of these folk will go on to be music journalists, the majority not to be journalists at all, I'm sure, if my experience of further education is anything to go by. I wonder about my relevance here. Who knows whether there is any point to me at all, this lecture or, you know, on the planet at all.

But I feel vindicated. It turns out I know some stuff, I really have become a journalist safety expertine (a small expert). It's not my career, I tell them at the outset, it's more of a hobby. I tell them that journalists and their managers have told me, have told my family, that we are not allowed to comment because we are not journalists. At the time, years ago, I was too damaged, too nauseous, too afraid to say a word. These days I'd point out to them that a journalist is someone who gathers and then disseminates information: there is no club, you don't need a certificate; I'd tell them to get over themselves.

I'd tell them that the trouble with me is that I have been touched by the meerkat of murder, by the knowledge and experience of the hell my sister went through because her employers failed to stop her thinking she had to go to Somalia to keep her job, and that it has marked my home (still full of boxes of Kate's stuff) and my psyche and my tenuous future. I have been visited by the lemur of learning and I feel duty-bound to pass it on. Because it's not about me, it's about incredible people all over the world risking their lives to get the story out: if I can't get that story out, then what am I?

The vertiginous nature of yes

March 2013
1.
Vanessa and I are sitting outside a cafe, each in front of our laptop, working. Sometimes we are talking, but mostly we are writing. A woman comes along whom Vanessa knows. They've not seen each other in a while and it turns out she is the head of journalism at City Varsity, an educational establishment just down the road from here. A place where the man I fell for lectured on his specialist subject. My mind wanders to him as they talk. He has left town now, which is good... but sometimes my mind trots over to him like a forgetful old dog, hoping to have a good lean against someone it has forgotten died years ago.
I vere back into the conversation as this woman asks who I am and what I'm up to. She says she's heard of the show, but that she couldn't make it. I say not to worry, and, as I mostly do, mean it. I say it might have been interesting for her students, that we're always looking for places to perform it, people who might want to see it. She asks me if I'll do a lecture on journalist safety for her journalism students. I say yes. She heads off. Within the hour she has emailed me and we have agreed a date and time for my lecture.
Hahahahahaha! I'm going to be doing a lecture on journalist safety.
Oh.
2.
Tracey takes me to a lecture by a very eminent African academic. The place is heaving - we get there early to get good seats, and this is a town where you don't arrive on time as a point of principal. During the lecture I take lots of notes... but I struggle to understand what he was talking about - not the finer detail but, you know, what he's talking about at all. By halfway through I had concluded that I am still a ghastly academic, that age has not withered my massive ignorance. He's taking questions and I want to ask Tracey if she has some colouring with her, or a book with pictures. I am such a disappointment.
There were, though, drinks afterwards and I inevitably bump into folk who'd seen the show. Cape Town is a small place. Well, no, it's more complicated than that, but let's say that the pools in which I find myself pleasantly eddying are very small, especially, I guess, if you are used to the enormo-city that is London and its absurdly big, beautiful and bounteous arts scene there.
There are also snacks, which was good, as I am probably having more wine than is right and proper.
A point comes where Tracey introduces me to two men, one of whom seems to be called Zavick. Obviously that can't be right, but I can't for the life of me work out what his name really is. He's an artist. The two chaps and I talk about the lecture a bit, by this stage the wine has loosened my ability to be bold and brazen about my cluelessness. The other chap is a doctor who has practiced in the UK. I do a great deal of communication skills training, including with doctors, and he and I have a ball discussing various matters surrounding communication in the UK and here. Tracey is eddying around the reception - she knows everyone - and then 'Zavick' is suggesting I do the show at his studio, cards are exchanged, farewells are hugged and Tracey drops me home.
In the morning someone called Zavick has befriended me on facebook. Zavick....? Zavick! And he messages me to say that he means business, I need to come over to see the studio, to make a date for the show.
****************************
And there you have it. I bump into people, they ask us to do the show, they ask me to do a lecture. These are the things that happen in a small place when you're the kind of person who gets talking to people. Or maybe it's because I'm 5'4". Who can say? I just know that when people say I am brave or adventurous, I understand that, deep down, all I am doing is stumbling from one preposterous even to another, or, better put, putting one foot in front of the last just as the previous one does not seem to be holding my weight anymore. It's a question of saying yes or plummeting to the floor. Mostly I have a sense of running away from the tidal wave, out of the burning building, rowing away from the sinking liner.
I have no idea how we will do the show in Studio41, but I go there and see it, I understand that Zavick means business, and so we will.
I cannot imagine putting a lecture together, but I cannot shy away. It is my duty to do the lecture: I have been forced, kicking and screaming into a better understanding than most of journalist safety and if someone wants me to tell their students what I have learnt then, quite frankly, it's not about what I think or feel any more. It is about talking about the dangers, telling the stories of those who have died, of those who live now in fear to those who are yet to start out. It's not about whether I feel qualified to talk about any of this, whether it makes me uncomfortable, it's about speaking out for journalists who need our protection and I have to get over myself and do the right thing.

Chewing on the wheelbarrow

February into March 2013

One night getting in from a performance after my flatmates have gone to bed, I am challenged by one of the preternaturally humanoid cats who also share the flat. She shoots out one end of the sofa, I approach the other, she shoots out that end, almost simultaneously, skidding across the wooden floor, Cato-like in her vigilance.

It's about 10.30pm and my roommate is up. Cue drinking, eating, giggling and both of us practicing our standing. It may as well be 10am: the little fella is AWAKE. Quietly awake, but awake nonetheless. And he cannot understand why I won't play ball. Or Barney the Dinosaur (Barney is, apparently, a dinosaur from our imagination..... aargghh!!!) Or that great hair pulling game. Having got up at 6.45 today, before my miniature roommate, in order go to Home Affairs to extend my visa, (because we are extending the tour for a schools' festival!) I want to go to sleep.

And then he starts talking. Really talking, loud, insistent words designed to put me off my journey to bed. He is emphatic, insistent and so I continue with my ablutions, get my stuff off my bed, put on my jim-jams, and then settle him again, dummy, blanket, adoptive-love-teddy. I tell him it's time to go to sleep and, miraculously, he agrees - lights out and not a peep.

The flat, however, is not so accommodating: it makes all kinds of noise in the wind. It's like there are a number of very boisterous ghosts in the flat. The cats are responsible for quite a lot of movement and noise, eating lizards, chasing their own tails, springing unbidden from places I didn't know were there, but there is more to it than them. The wind can get very, very high here in Cape Town, but even when it's not that high the noises are frequent and bizarre. Luckily, though, the skill of sleeping through when my roommate wakes in the night, means that I have extended my already considerable sleeping skills and the wind can rearrange things - and it does - yet I will mostly sleep on through.

My roommate is growing fast, he can crawl forwards now, and says specific things, rather than just burbling. He's not speaking any language I speak, but I can tell he's saying things, proper things with proper meaning. My cousin's boy, Matt, spent lots of time with their Zulu domestic worker when he was very small. So, when he started talking scribble, before he could actually speak in a language anyone else could get, his scribble was Zulu. Ten years on he knows very little Zulu, studying it at school now he wishes he was as fluent in Zulu as he was in its nonsense counterpart.

By day, my roommate is tormented by the cats - they sit and stare at him as his unpredictable shuffle-trundle brings him purposefully closer to them. At the last minute they simply get up and move slightly further away, escaping the baby's grasp. Obviously this is a metaphor for life: you may want something, but it eludes you. Often it seem to elude you at the last minute, willfully, only to sit just a small distance away to observe you, emotionless. Frustration is what it's all about. Or maybe that's just me.

My roommate is, as I have mentioned, a gorgeous, easy baby. He may simply chew on his new wheelbarrow, but he also smiles and burbles, giggles and only complains a bit when he wants feeding/changing/more Barney. He nearly always gets a tour of the kitchen if he visits a restaurant and everyone remembers his name. I repeatedly tell his parents how lucky they are to have such a good baby. I should state clearly here that they seem great parents to me, but being a great parent will not necessarily bring you a good baby, and vice versa.

He is a classically South African baby, given up by his mother for adoption and now living with his gay parents. And his mum chose my friends to be his parents. The incredible constitution of South Africa means that a gay couple can adopt, indeed, a single gay friend of theirs has adopted. Of course, the fabulous constitution combined with the terrible amount of babies in need of families means gay people can adopt a perfect, beautiful, baby.

Not that the exemplary South African constitution means that there is no homophobia in South Africa, far from it, there is even a thing called corrective rape suffered predominantly by women, but I am sure, what with rape not being about sex and all that, that gay men suffer it too... which would be funny, obviously, were it not beyond ghastly. But where there is a constitution, there is hope, and I am committed to hoping that the extensive nature of these crimes will pass into South Africa's history, a strange, chilling glitch.

There have always been lots of black or coloured people looking after white kids in South Africa, but now, more and more, you see couples of all shades looking after coloured and black babies. There are so many different stories, you cannot guess what any given story is, so why bother? The story is that babies need families and grown-ups often want children. Mark says that people sometimes say to him what a wonderful thing they are doing for my roommate, but the truth is that they wanted to be parents and they are lucky to have him and they know it.

In which it's made clear to me I'm lucky that Kate was shot once and killed

March 2013
I have already sung a song of love for the many fabulous folk we encounter in Cape Town, but one song is not enough.
Like many others, as I age I am working out which things really are great for me. Three of them are
1. Walking
2. Seeing theatrical productions
3. Eating fruit.
Mysteriously, amongst other chums, I find myself with two buddies: one is a walker and one is a theatre-goer, with access to seemingly everything which is going on on the Cape Town scene. Frustratingly I do not meet a fruit dealer and find myself having to purchase my own fruit although Mark, one of the fathers of my eight-month-old roommate, makes the best smoothies known to humanity, one day producing a little something shot-through with basil grown on their roof terrace which Ikeraam, the other father, does not like much, so I get extra rations.
What I'm saying here is I really cannot complain. While Martin and Jacques go on the most tyre-expensive trip around Namibia in modern history, I am looked after by the good folk of Cape Town in a way I cannot imagine before and will surely become some kind of dream afterwards.
It is Stacey who takes me walking. There are lots of places to walk here in CT but, how can I put this....? If they can, most South Africans will avoid walking. The vast majority of South Africans have no choice but to walk and walk and walk, to work, to their friends' places, across the highway at dusk - I could do a whole series of blogs about the transport infrastructure crisis here, where pavements are anathema and the idea of a public transport system, owned by the people, seems as far off as full employment and a decent education for all. Those who do have access to a car may well use it to get to the gym, the pool or iron man competition but they would no more think of walking five minutes to the shops than running naked through their own brother's wedding. Actually, my uncle walks his area a lot. He comes across, though, as rather an eccentric, shorts (never mind the season), a woman's red body-warmer with fur-lined hood, cinched at the waist by a belt, and, given the rest of the look, standard sandals with socks. He pounds the streets with breaking-edge scientific philosophy on his ipod and is, remarkably in this crime-ridden city, never bothered by anyone. Can't think why.
Stacey, though, is a walker. She is also a purveyor of coffee, cheeses and little boxes of the best snacks. I even stop talking myself to listen to what she has to say, so interesting is she. The walks are beautiful, her friends and family are interesting and it's just great. I can walk a bit of my angst away, stop worrying about the fact I am not writing, talk about my heartbreak to a woman who Knows About Life, though, disappointingly, she has yet to solve it. And I get to see Cape Town from many new angles, literal ones.
Conveniently, my theatre maestra is Tracey so I do not have to trouble my shocking memory to remember their names. Tracey takes me to opening nights where there is free food, introduces me to actors and artistic directors, explains the Cape Town theatre scene to me. It is at one of these events where, not only do I get to listen to John Kani speak, an inspirational ten minutes where he raises up, above us all, the young people we have just seen perform - where they belong - but I also get to shake his hand and gush and generally embarrass myself. I also meet a woman who has seen Sometimes I Laugh Like My Sister.
She is, she says, pleased to meet me, she wants to talk about the show. And I am grateful that I never, ever relax and presume that someone wants to tell me I'm brave and eloquent and a beautiful performer.... obviously sometimes they do want to do just that, but not on this occasion. No. As she stands just that bit too close, even for me, she tells me that she could hardly stand the show, that she wanted to walk out. I say, I wish she had. Er... that sounds really bad, but I say it in a way that means she would have been as welcome to go as she was to stay. And I mean it. Bartelt and I always mean that. We do not expect everyone to like our work and it is emotional stuff, people must look after themselves. She says it was horrible to sit through, that so may awful things happen in South Africa, she tells me of two terrible attacks on people she knows. Other people are coming up to us, including my friend Tracey, but I do not break eye contact with this woman, who feels as if she might break apart at any moment. I feel I must stand here ready to catch the glowing, furious filings of her shattering self. Because that's what it feels like, as if she cannot keep her self together, that the pain and fear and anger are too much to contain. I hold my ground, I hold my eye contact, just as I tell doctors and dentists and lawyers to do in the communication skills training I dole out with alacrity. Frankly, I do not know what else to do. The show has affected her, or she was already in this state pre-show, and it is my duty, as Bartelt and I have said from the start, to bear witness to whatever the show unleashes.
I'm managing, I'm doing well, and then she tells me I'm lucky, that Kate was lucky just to be shot once in the back and die, she was not assaulted by several people, tortured, afraid for her life as the cruelty that humanity can dole out enjoyed her fear and suffering. She was not tied up, not gang-raped, not left for dead. She had a good death, a clean murder. I hold my ground, my eye-contact, it is all I have left: I must hold this, she is speaking about herself not about me, not about Kate, she is hurt, she is lashing out, I do not know her journey, I cannot, must not judge, she is allowed these feelings, and it is good that she is expressing them.
I just want to yell "FUCK YOU! YOU KNOW NOTHING!"  but that's because I am weak and I am ego. In the end, that I want to do that, has nothing to do with her, it is my self-pity, as strong as hers, pulling at its reigns, desperate to hurtle across the space between us and shake her until she understands. But we can never understand one another, the gap remains no matter how long your arms.
But I don't. I don't know why, but it's a combination of feeling so sorry for this wounded woman, years of post-show practice and the final bell going for the show I'm about to see. There has been no appropriate moment to stop the conversation, so I choose an inappropriate one and break away anyway.
And this one angry, hurt voice, in a sea of praise for what we have created, is enough; I am assailed by that familiar doubt, wondering if we should ever have made the show, and this feeling sits with me a while, open and unresolved: no one can tell me I was right to do it, but then equally no one can tell me I was wrong.