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.
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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.