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