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.
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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.