Spinning in infinity

Saturday 13 April

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday 12 April

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

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

Argh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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