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.

A brief history of self-pity

February 2013

I now have the most magnificent opportunity to enjoy Cape Town. And I do.... to a certain extent. But all of it is tinged by me wanting a man who does now want me. Yes, he's the one from a couple of blogs ago, if you've been following my eloquent whitterings. I've been here before, not specifically in Cape Town with a man who does not want me, but you know, in Birmingham, Granada, London, Bury St Edmunds, New York, Beyton etc etc ad nauseam, where there is a man who does not want me. What's weird about this situation is that he does want to spend time with me... just.... you know, on his terms. He wants to step back from where we got to and revert to the good friends setting. It has all happened very quickly and despite my extensive experience in unrequited love (I have a PhD) I am ridiculously surprised at the strength of my feelings after what has been a matter of weeks.

For the sake of my ability to get up in the morning, the coherence of my personality, my general mental health, I should not spend time with him. Spending time with him is too enjoyable, too safe, too exciting, too fricking meaningful for me; it reminds me suddenly and after so many years of not experiencing this, of what my life could be if there was someone beside me, even if they were irritating and difficult and, you know, human some of the time. Even though I know they could not save me from my existential angst they could make me a cup of tea of an afternoon and pop out for nightnurse when I'm ill and prevent my mother from lying awake worrying who the hell is going to look after me when she is no longer here. I don't care about flowers and romantic walks, I want someone to hold my head out of the toilet bowl when I am throwing up. That's probably why I'm single: love for me exists only in action, in engaging with the mess of life, not in lovesongs and grand gestures to apologise for not turning up/being rude to my boss at a drunken party/falling out of love with me.

Unfortunately this man has lifted the corner of a long-neglected curtain into a room so dark and cobweby, so full of skeletons, ghosts, and all kinds of the living dead that I don't know what to do with myself. At 40 I am living the life my 15-year-old self was terrified I would end up with: the strange, itinerant lifestyle of an artist with no husband/boyfriend/fuckbuddy with benefits (see tea, vomit, above) to give a hoot or two about me. And I have the added removal of my still point, my scrambled-egg-making-holiday-planning-company-of-her-younger-sister-loving Kate.

Exposed by this latest, vanishingly rare, encounter with a man who actually likes my company and fancies me, each breath seems more painfully comical than the last as I struggle to keep my composure all over town. Beautiful, interesting Cape Town, which was already heaving with loss for me, has, unbelievably, gone and acquired one more loss, a man who is still here in town, who opened up to me, let in the light, and as quickly absented himself, leaving me to deal with what the famous incredible Cape Town light, so popular with all those films and ads, exposes within me. Most surprisingly, most disturbingly, my long-dead father shakes his gory locks at me in ways almost forgotten and I long for him so hard I fear this longing will solidify and burst out of me unbidden.

I walk hard and fast in the summer heat all over town, take myself for that swim every day, trying to outrun my neuroses, zombies rearing their rotting heads unpredictably all over the shop. I try new places I've not been with any of these darn people who no longer want my company, some - admittedly - through no fault of their own, and find myself in a hotel cafe because they have wifi and I can work there, for the price of too many Coke Zeros. The staff are lovely, which helps.

Before too long two English couples are sharing my table and we get talking. They are Rotarians. They are here delivering hundreds of wheelchairs to people who would not get them otherwise. They tell me the story of how they first got into it, how many thousands they have delivered to many countries, of the people they have met along the way - the hopeful users, the other Rotarians who put them up, the dignitaries who attend the Ceremonies Of Handing Over. They describe how disabled people arrive at the prescribed venue, against all odds, dragging themselves, carried by others, and are overcome by emotion at having their mobility for the first time in their lives, a mobility they truly believed, and with good reason, would never be theirs.

They tell me a woman came one day, with a very hunched back, and from under the blanket she was wearing as a cape slithered a human form, a man, collapsing to the floor, her son, whom she had carried on her back for the 19 years of his life. The son gets a wheelchair and their lives are changed forever.

The five of us, five Brits, sit and marvel at the level of need here in South Africa, at how little it takes to change a life - in either direction - at the love-in-action of this mother, of so many people they have encountered in their charitable work, which runs alongside their full working lives.

We talk about Kate, about the show, they are so sympathetic. We exchange cards, take photos, we laugh, I even succeed in not crying my tears of self-pity, because that's what they would be: not tears for these strugglers from their stories, it would come from somewhere else, somewhere dishonourable, and I try to think of those who would like to know about their work.

Walking back down Long Street, walking home, I have had my spirits lifted by this human interaction, with the Brits, with the hotel bar staff, and I am just that bit quieter, slightly less likely to burst into tears. I have a word with myself about my ocean of self-pity, I begin the count of my legion blessings, numbers one and two being the use of each of my legs, number three that I can afford one too many Coke Zeros. My luck is in fine fettle I remind myself. And yet I can feel it there, somewhere very safe, the currently quiet desperation, fear, indulgent, pointless self-loathing linked to a man I did not know six weeks ago, and I wonder what kind of ungrateful meathead I am if even the Rotarians' stories cannot shift that shizzle.

Snipers on the roof

Saturday 16 February 2013
Like all the best stories, this begins with a knock at the door. I was sure it was Martin or Jacques coming down from upstairs, so as I shout "Je viens!" (we are so, like, multi-lingual), I pull what is something between a hand towel and a slightly larger hand towel around my nakedness and head for the front door. It was just me and my eight-month-old roommate hanging out that day, you see, so neither of us had yet bothered to get dressed. Well, one of us was wearing our nappy, but I shan't say which.
I open the door and it's the guy from Telcom. Hoorah! He is a bit surprised and I pretend it's only because I tell him I do not have the key for upstairs, where he is due to do some work today. He was expecting me to be a man called Mark. A dressed man called Mark, I'm guessing. I put some clothes on, grab the baby and the keys and we all go upstairs. After an eternity of ever loudening knocking, finally I rouse Jacques and my roommate and I are able to go back downstairs.
A little later in the day there is another knock at the door. I don't fall for it again: I've elected to put some clothes on but I cannot call out as I am brushing my teeth; I open the door and there are two of THE hottest police officers I have ever seen, and I am a police role actor and assessor and so I've seen a considerable chunk of police officerdom in my time. I lean seductively against the door and say, through my toothbrush,
"E-o"
"Hi, miss. Is Mr Gooding here?"
"No, I air-ibi soway, ee at ork."
"I see."
"E wa men oo ee ere, ut a oo o oo ork. Ca I ewlp?"
He opens his notebook.
"Is this still Mr Gooding's number."
I take the opportunity to lean closer.
"Es, is. Ca I arse wa i abou?"
"It's the opening of Parliament and we usually have snipers here."
"Oh, es! I owe ore abou at! On't ee a oblem!
This would have been the ideal moment to invite these beautiful young men in for something hot, but I glance up at Officer Notebook's companion and notice.... is it a rye smile? Or is it, in fact, an out-and-out smirk? The brush droops in my mouth, the moment passes, and for now they slip through my fingertips. For now.
"I'll give Mr Gooding a call, then."
"Oh, oo!" I semi-shout, just the smallest amount of toothepaste-ridden spittle issuing from my mouth, thinking that Mark will be very pleased to hear from these chaps, very pleased indeed.
We get to watch and hear lots of rehearsals for the opening of Parliament from our 12th floor eerie, which is taking place opposite the flat. Of course, rather than seeing if the sniper is as hot as his colleagues and, oh yeah, watching the opening of parliament actually happen from the flat, we go and do a matinee for a group of drama school students.
At the end of the performance (it was compulsory for them to write a review of it) one young man is overheard to comment that he thinks it's not okay to make money out of your own sister's murder. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Making money. Oh, hahahahaha! Yeah, right. I wish I'd heard him, told him how much we've sunk into this tour, and then advised him that if he wants to make money he should get some proper training for a proper job. So I'm glad I didn't hear him - the students didn't get to see me pull back my skin and reveal the desperate, bitter performer/writer I could be if I just relaxed the clench on my soul.
The Q&A with the students lasts  a long time and is so interesting. When the last one leaves we realise we only really have time to pop to a restaurant, grab some food and head back to do the evening show. It sells out, and the next day and the next day.
Our week at Theatre Arts Admin Collective culminates in a wild end-of-run party, which consists of Martin, Jacques and I wandering up and down Long Street - the main party street here in Cape Town - trying to find somewhere where the music is quiet enough on a Saturday night for us to sit and have something to eat in our old age. We settle outside an only slightly pounding restaurant and watch the young beautiful people walk past. Martin points out a woman and says her hair is beautiful. Jacques and I start wondering whether it is a wig or a weave and Martin asks what we are talking about. Well, we say, we are wondering... whether it was a wig or a weave, obviously. And, we discover, much to our delight, that Martin knows nothing, really, nothing, about the choices open to black women for their hairdos. Seriously, he knows less than a guy with a shaved head and a long pony tail and the laziest woman in history, who washes her hair when something new moves into it. We laugh at Martin, Martin laughs at Martin, we play spot the weave -  Martin loses - and we leave Long Street in good time for an early-ish night.
And we are surprised to find that our two Cape Town runs are over: it is unbelievable. I am reeling from the generosity of the people we have met, their stories, and I am preparing for about five weeks in Cape Town before we leave for Johannesburg. What on earth am I going to do with myself?

Things happen when you least expect them: a lesson murder has taught me about love

Obviously the last thing I wanted to do (apart from lose a limb, be wrongly accused of embezzlement, start a political movement based on the principles of Scientology, etc) was to fall for some man while in Cape Town. And as everyone tells you there are between 5 - 6 straight men to every straight woman in Cape Town I was pretty much on target for this. Add to this the fact that I am the kind of woman who is approached by a man roughly every decade, and then only because it's a really busy bar and I'm the shortest woman at it so he has to talk to me as he reaches above me for his drinks, and you get the lifestyle of one of the most undesirable women, at least of my acquaintance, if not on the planet.
My undesirability has its upsides: I very rarely get hassle from drinkers in bars/workmen on the street/my friends' husbands when everyone else has left the room. In fact, I am the kind of woman women I have only just met confidently leave their husbands with while they roam a party: they know that everything will be alright. Neither have I ever been pressurised to do anything the least bit jiggy in order to get a job. I was recently talking to an utterly gorgeous young woman, having just seen her do a really good job on stage. We were agreeing vigorously that doing sexual favours to forward your career is not on. I pointed out to her that she was far more principled than I as I have never had the chance to test my ethical stance on this one - no one has ever requested anything from my yard, whereas she regularly gets demands for her milkshake which she turns down. Respec. Oh, and I live a wonderful life of diagonal sleeping, surely the king of sleeps, and not available to those with a nocturnal companion.
It also has its downsides, one of them being that if a chap, who is not concurrently seeing one or more other people and who can actually look me in the eye, does show any interest in me I either miss it entirely (I'm putting this category in because although I'm not sure it exists, it's good for my ego to think that there are more people out there who find me attractive than the handful I've been aware of during these 40+ years), presume he is joking or, well, fall for him.
Of course, in the end, nothing came of this thing between this rare heterosexual man in Cape Town and me. I say of course because, well, I wouldn't be sitting here writing this if I could be going to the cinema/planning a weekend away/sitting in confusing silence with a fella who thought I was of some passing interest. And I found it not going the way I wanted pretty... devastating. That's one of the problems of being thunderously undesirable: I have so little experience of the  ebb and the flow of things 'romantic' that even now I have no understanding of what is going on or any substantial resilience. Give me a bereavement and I reckon I have a fighting chance, but a bloke not wanting to be with me when I fancy being with him, well, I'm defenceless. I know no one understands these things, but I don't understand these thing on another level entirely. I like to think I'm touchingly foolish, but I fear that I'm just irritatingly dense.
People with whom I discuss these matters often opine that I am too choosy when it comes to men. Where they get this idea from I cannot imagine. One day I'll do the True Life blog about the numerous internet dates I've been on with men who tell me on the first date about the brutality of their soon-to-be-ex wife's divorce demands, burst into tears about the way their mother beat them as a child or tell the story of how much the other patients enjoyed their guitar playing during their post-suicide attempt stay in the mental ward. There is nothing, intrinsically, wrong with any of these stories, but they are curious fare for a first date. Incidentally, I don't judge any of these men - they just happened to need to talk about those things at that time, and, after all, they often get to hear that my sister was murdered.
So, you know, I'm really not choosy, unless you call wanting someone who's single, has a sense of humour and can name the capital city of Mexico choosy.
Often friends then say I want to meet someone too much. This happens about 50% of the time. The other 50% they say I do not make enough effort.
Want it too much, not enough. Oh blah blah blah. If only they'd just shout "IT'S YOUR FAULT YOU'RE ALONE, BOZO!" and have done with it.
And a great deal of the time they tell me that I will meet someone when I least expect it, which is odd as I have never met anyone while having a bra fitting at M&S.
As I struggle with my dose of heartbreak, I long for my sister. You'll probably realise I do that a lot anyway, but she would have had that great angle on this. She was of totally different cloth to me, desirable in an utterly mysterious and devastating way, she got all of those genes, but she also received her fare share of heartbreak. And she got me, on every level. And I knew, whatever happened, I'd always have her. Der. Although, now I come to think about it, she was in love, preparing to marry, full of hope an passion for the future when the last thing we all expected happened with the aid of just the one bullet... maybe there is something in that theory after all.

No one's forcing you to be an actor, you know

Monday 11 February 2013
Actors.
Oi vey.
Obviously, having been an agent an now being an actor myself I have lots of complaints about them. Get into their natural habitat: green room/pub/casting waiting room and you can find them gathered together complaining about their agents/working conditions/not getting any work and yet they largely won't sack their agent/join the union/realise that there are far too many of us and not enough jobs. Maybe I don't get enough work because I know it's a saturated industry, do not look to change agent and complain to the producer if there are problems on set. Or maybe I'm overweight for my look/too short for my age/have the wrong hair colour for someone with a substantial chin. OR maybe something else. You can go crazy wondering, but one thing you can be sure of is that no one is forcing you to be an actor, or, if they are, you must find a responsible adult and tell them and get out of that abusive situation.
I know that people in other contexts complain about their work, but there is quite something about choosing to be a freelancer, knowing the odds are well and truly stacked against you, moaning about it but not joining Equity. Join Equity, for crying out loud, it's the only chance we have. And make your own work, don't expect work to be brought to you on a plate. Acting, as with life, is about clawing whatever you can from the rock face of resistance: messy, hard and most of the time pointless.
And then there are fabulous humans who are actors.
Last year I was employed on a total of eight  wonderful acting jobs, the combo of hard work (somewhere between 8% - 15% even if you work really, really hard) and the remainder, luck (comprising 26% - 57% talent, doled out at birth and worked on through... hard work) delivering for once. Mystifyingly I know people who really believe that if you put in enough work to something then you get what you want.
Ahahahahahahahaha.
I worked with an actor a couple of months after Kate died. We kind of sort of met up for talks about going on dates and on one of these occasions he revealed one of the secrets of the universe to me: that my sister had wanted to die. He knew this because he knew that those who die want to do so, which is why they die. Get it? I told him at the time that she was engaged, having wanted to get married for years, had just had her new step daughter come to live with her, having been desperate for more than a decade to have her own children, and that she asked with trepidation, after being shot - in the car on the way to the hospital - if she was going to die. She didn't seem to want to die, I said and he told me I was wrong.
He had a serious case of a very strong illusion of control. He was a taekwondo champion after all and had, as far as he was concerned, achieved all of that through sheer will. We get want we want if we want it enough: that was his mantra.
It will surprise you to know that our talks about dates didn't work out despite his being a taekwondo champion.
But I'm digressing. On one of these great jobs in 2012, just before Christmas, I got talking to an actor when we had both done our bit. We talked about politics, and Politics, and agreed and agreed. We became friends on facebook, as you do, and then he was out here for family reasons in Cape Town and then he messaged me and says he is coming to the show, with a bunch of people, to see the show. He's even bringing his Mum.
He is true to his word and brings a great collection of people. We end up with so many folk in the bar/restaurant that Martin and Jacques sit with one collection of audience while I sit with Tim and his friends. And his mum. His friends are great, I'll keep bumping into one of them over the next few weeks at various shows, and his mother is such an engaging person. It's great! Everyone has such an interesting story to tell and this after show fun passes too quickly: Tim and his mum can't be out too late, they have a plane to catch tomorrow. Their last evening in Cape Town has been spent at the show and here afterwards in the restaurant.
I love actors, you see. I know I was complaining about them earlier, but, as I said, that's not all actors. I also meet great actors who are great people. They don't moan about doing something no one's forcing them to do as if it is dragging coal out of the underground darkness with their bare hands. Actors are fabulous: we work together, we meet, we talk, we quickly engage and we find compatible others. There is a very swift intimacy with actors with whom you get on. And then they turn up half way across the world and bring seven or so audients with them, including their mother, and their mother is also fabulous and we talk and listen and exist in the same space over some fine beers.
We know we are subject to the ebb and flow of things, things we know about and many other things which are beyond our understanding and mostly we don't fight it, we try to swim with it. And that is why, despite having been an agent, some of my best friends are actors.

A pattern is developing....

Saunday 10 February 2013

If you've read, you know, a couple of these here blogs you'll have seen a pattern developing:

1. I get edgy and nervy and wonder why I'm doing the show.
2. I do the show.
3. I remember, with the help of fabulous audience members, why I am doing the show.

And so it goes.

Rather brilliantly Caroline, the AD at Theatre Arts Admin Collective, had suggested that we have a Q&A after each show hosted by someone else, and this evening we have Rev Alan Storey who is the rev from the church on Greenmarket Square. The church that has a cafe inside the church. You know, that church. My kind of church. There are clearly some members of his congregation here as well as other folk and we have such an interesting time talking afterwards, with one young woman explaining Xosa traditions around mourning, including spending time with the body, and how these are going out of fashion and so she is wondering what the future holds for her community, its attitude to death, what will happen when she dies. Martin and I are both sorry to hear that is the way things are going, rather than the way we'd like them to go: towards death, and the rites surrounding death, becoming more part of everyday life.

My - as it turns out - modest hope at the beginning of this extraordinary journey with Martin M Bartelt back in autumn of 2007 was that I, we, might change something for one person through this show. We managed that at the first performance when a woman, now a friend of ours, told us how she had been standing next to a friend in a queue in 1979 when he had been murdered - stabbed in the back by a passing stranger. At our opening preview she explained that she had felt all these years that her behaviour at the time had been crazy, but seeing the show, 30 years on, had made her feel that she had simply reacted as people do in these situations. Martin and I had listened to her, agog, the pair of us, struggling to take in her story and, well, amazed that our play had somehow given her permission to talk, and maybe to accept herself. Since then we have become accustomed to hearing these incredible stories, although not inured to it. The sum of human suffering is somehow smaller than its constituent parts and we cannot but be moved by what we hear and be frustrated that so many people feel so utterly alone, that we cannot do enough about it. Tonight, and for the rest of this week, we encounter extraordinary stories.

When we are at the back of the hall saying goodbye to the audience a woman, shorter than me, probably in her 50s, approaches me. She was sitting next to her husband in the front row during the show, I remember her. She thanks me, which I accept as graciously as I can, and then she says that she used to be one of those people who didn't mention a death, that if someone she knew was bereaved she would not say a thing.

In the Q&A I had talked about people's propensity to avoid the subject of the dead, that this, for me, is such a shame, a real missed opportunity, and often adds the insult if isolation to the injury of loss. I had said, as I always do, that mostly all I have to say to someone who has suffered a trauma is that I'm very sorry, that I don't know what to say, but that saying that to someone can very often be of comfort. They are not expecting you to bring their loved one back from the dead or cure cancer during a five minute conversation between work and the supermarket in the street, but you may be able to let them know that you still mind about them and that you accept them for whoever they are now, and whoever they will be; that you do not expect them to be cheerful or, well, anything other than that which they find themselves to be. I'd said those sorts of things. And this woman in her 50s, part of the Rev's congregation, I think, said to me, "I used to be one of those people who avoided talking about death, but not any more; thank you."

Blimey. Just blimey. Partly I am always surprised that people avoid the bereaved, even though I have erstwhile friends who did just that with me, close ones to boot, but the blimey is only, you know, 10% about that. 53% of the blimey is that this show can make that kind of change, and the remaining 37% is that this gentle, polite woman wants to tell me this. I mean, well.... blimey.

A lovely rainy day to hide the tears

Saturday 9 March 2013
Saturday 9 March dawns in a very grey, rainy way, as if it knows my soul. Eight years to the day since Kate was killed and here I am touring the show in South Africa, but to my disgust this tour is not curing me and, what is more, Kate seems still to be dead. I swear I am not looking for her, but the problem with Cape Town is that I came here with her quite a bit and even though the cafes have changed hands, the pavements have been improved, shop fronts have been renovated, in spite of all of that, the weather is the same, shut your eyes and people talk in the same way; open them again and the mountain is right there where it has been for a good few years now, even before I came here with Kate for the first time.
I have to get across town. I wait for the weather to change as I have no umbrella or raincoat... or even much of a cardy with me. I wait. And I wait some more. In the end I go out anyway and get soaked - hanging around is more distressing than getting on the move. And - infuriatingly - once out on the street moving, I can't help but cry. I don't want to, I try not to, but I just can't help it. I turn my face to the sky, to let the rain dilute my tears and I hope I look slightly less deranged than I feel. Obviously, a woman in not much of a cardy, tunes pounding in her earphones, face skywards does not immediately say all's-well-in-the-belfry, but I like to think it was an improvement.
Mostly this day passes unremarked. Sometimes I'll get a text or two, fewer as the years pass, or I'll find I need to mention it to whoever I'm with, just to say it out loud. Mostly I'll contact Mum and maybe Charlie, but not as a matter of course. It's not that big a deal, really, not like her birthday. Her birthday is heartbreaking. But I suppose it's not an ordinary 9 February, it's one here in South Africa.
The ipod is an attempt to block out  my feelings, or at least to modify them, but it keeps playing things which remind me of her, or me or... the state of things now. And it's not just Kate, ridiculously it's my dad, it's.... all the things I'm struggling with. And no amount of other people - and there are lots of them for me to turn to - will make any difference. There is a show tonight and I wonder, idly, whether I'll get my shizzle together and be able to do it, which thing I have wondered many a time an oft in the past few years. I always do a show with most of the words in the right order, the quality of which I am in no position to judge: but I turn up and do my level best, and I'll do that again tonight.
During the two week break between runs, we had gone to see the Theatre Arts Admin Collective. They are based in a Methodist church hall next door to the church and they are mostly a rehearsal space where classes also take place. Sometimes they convert into a theatre for shows they want to host. I confess I'd not done a great deal of research and when we visited the place looked lovely and Caroline who runs it was great, but I couldn't quite see the how it would become a theatre space, which only goes to show, yet again, how little imagination I have.
Jacques and Martin teched the show without me the night before the show so that I could go and see Les Mis with a man I'd met... but more about that another time. Yes, I have much to confess: Les Miserables, for crying out loud! And it is lovely and sunny by the time we get to the theatre to prepare for the show, the space looks fabulous, it has been transformed. Once again I wonder at my luck and I wander around in it, putting on my make-up. Plugged into my ipod I dance around a bit as per my routine warm-up. While we are preparing we have to lock ourselves into the place - it is gorgeous and on what appears to be a quiet residential street, but the threat of crime is never far away. Then people start arriving and suddenly it looks like I'll be doing the show any minute now - how does that always come around so fast?
The script mentions the date of Kate's death, and, as I am prone to do, I spontaneously adapt the line "And it was a beautiful day, the 9th of February 2005, eight years ago today, quite chilly, but not  a cloud in the sky." Feeling the audience hear it I am slightly less alone, which is nice. And I wonder, as I plough on through the text, at the strangeness of things, that beautiful day in London in 2005 which tore Kate from this trivial round and this rainy 9th of February in Cape Town where I pursued consolation but could not find it... except for here beneath the lights. The show is not therapy, how I wish it were, I think for the squillionth time, but there is... something in this strong sense of belonging I feel on stage, where I am meant to be alone, where time is both suspended and passing at speed. If Kate had not died I would not be here; I would give anything to have her back, but that is not an option and, given the reduced smorgasbord on offer to me, I would not want to be anywhere else.