Rejoice, for it is the end of Abuse Linda Week

Please do what I say. Find your keyboard settings. Change the command SHIFT+1 so that instead of printing an exclamation mark make it do a flower, or a kitten - or better still, make it do nothing at all. It will make the world a better place - prevent wars, hinder divorces. More children will live and fewer guns will be manufactured. Just do it.

One day I will write a Lazy Guide to journalism. And when I do, there will be one very short chapter on exclamation marks. Don't use them. Not 'Don't use them!' Just - don't use them. It makes a writer sound insane, or religious, or both. Calm down, put the pen down, take a deep breath, bugger off and stop bothering me.

Don't use it

Why all this, you might ask? Well, unbeknownst to me, this week just gone was apparently African "Abuse Linda Week". Celebrations peaked yesterday, when I received 400 words of grade A verbal abuse in my inbox from a disgruntled Kenyan who hasn't been paid yet for an article he wrote for me (coincidentally also measuring 400 words) back in May, only to be handed a fresh ladle of abuse at a nightclub in the evening.

On the first incident: Ok, so May is a while back. And we should have sorted it out before we did. And I can't say how sick I am of asking people in my office to check up on things, only to have to ask them to do it again a few days later. Only to find they've gone on holiday.

But nothing merits language such as this:

"Now iam really getting tired of this because you are giving me unconfirmed reports.Someone from the bank just called me and informed me there is no money since i had told him to check instead of me rushing there.I went and confirmed and there is NO MONEY.I was hoping to even go there tomorrow but already there is no TRUTH....But you have decided to make it my nightmare day in day out!You are telling me of things you are not sure of.One thing for sure i cannot look at your magazine anywhere again.Never." &cetera &cetera ad nauseum...

In the above, there is only one exclamation mark, although this is remedied further down the email.

Then, in the evening, I felt like soothing my shot nerves by going out on the town with Miracle-Gro and listen to a friend of ours DJ at a place called Roosevelt on Bree St. All was well until Gro got chatting to one of the owners of the place, who incidentally must have a very small manhood, since he proceeded to first insult Gro then myself in such a way as to render beyond doubt his complete lack of balls - or brain for that matter.

Recounting the whole episode would be tedious. But highlights included me getting told I was "shallow" for saying it was a pity that the excellent DJs didn't get more of a crowd. As an editor, he said, I must learn not to have expectations. Oh, and next time I should take this off. (As he unzips my light jacket) And do this... (as he tries to lift up my top).

I told him to take his club for "creative and environmentally conscious people" and drive it up his arse sideways. At least, I told him that in my head several times in my car on the way home.

So - in return I'm thinking about proclaiming next week the "Linda abuses Africa week". It's only fair.

Where's my spam?

Ever since Deborah started, my work down here has taken on a new routine. Instead of doing absolutely everything myself, I now spend most of my time thinking up things for her to do, then telling her to do them. The rest of the time I spend swearing at my email account for giving me spam while keeping back the good emails.

At least it was, until today. Today Deborah is off and I've got nobody to tell what to do. What is more, my email has gone topsy turvy and will now give me all the good emails, but not the spam.

This should not be a problem.

But out of old habit, I keep clicking on 'send and receive', scanning the progress box jealously for spam emails. Old habits, and all that.

Otherwise, things are going pretty well. Deborah is getting better and better at doing everything I get paid to do. It's my ultimate goal to render myself competely surplus to requirements, then give myself a fat redundancy deal. If only...

My freelance is taking off again, since Boss in London has agreed that I can write for the Mail and Guardian down here. They pay next to nothing, but I have always been a fan of Guardian (the M&G is an arm's length subsidiary) editorial policy which is basically to let their writers get on with it. I've never had more than, say, 5 changes in any one piece I've written for the G. It's great for my feelings of self-worth. I now feel about 1 rand 50 per word more valuable than I did a week ago.

In about 3.5 weeks I'm off to Europe. I'm looking forward to all of it, especially since it's the coldest and rainiest winter in Cape Town for [enter arbitrary digit here] years. Even if I have to swim through the streets of London, dodging Al-Qaeda sleeper cells as I go, at least the water should be warmer than the icy rivulets threatening to sweep me off the slopes of Table Mountain. London floods would be a seaside holiday in comparison.

This is in South Africa, not Switzerland. Sersiously.

Find five wrongs

Sorry I'm not updating this blog much, but it's cold here - bloody snowing in Johannesburg - and NOTHING happens here in winter. Well, except for the incessant cold fronts tipping lots of rain on me. But then, a friend sent me this photo from some random Web 2.0 upload-your-own-shit website. And I knew I had to say SOMETHING.


Now take a good loook at it. I swear I have no idea where this photo comes from, or who took it. But look. Look closer.

I thought at first that some kids had been to some formal do, spent all night drinking Hooch (does anybody drink Hooch anymore or have I just dated myself horribly?) and then struck gold with their digital camera on the way home in the morning. But nobody would be wearing a tied bow tie after 12 hours on the piss. So this must be BEFORE the party.

What is going on? Anywhere you start - the guy, the van, the police - you just end up somewhere that doesn't make any sense. But nothing beats the sowing machine. Was it salvaged from the van? What's in it? Cake? Gold? Is that why the chap in the foreground looks so chuffed? Or is this a weird sadist about to chuck it into the swollen river, containing his pet hamster? What? WHAT????

There, now I'm feeling nauseous again. I have to stop looking at this picture. I haven't felt this affected by art since seeing Damien Hirst's decomposing tapestry of dead flies in the Guggenheim. Somebody should call Charles Saatchi.

Media Mole at the World Economic Forum

Since I'm going to be busy over the next few days getting the anniversariy issue of RA ready, I brought the Media Mole with me to the World Economic Forum on Africa in Cape Town to entertain you during my absence. - L

Media mole in the hizzouse! Yo, finally the author of this blog has allowed some talent onto these pages. World Economic Forum in Cape Town, check us out. At the CTICCTICCTTICC, fo sho!

Registratioooon... Hello pretty lady! Mole, Media - yes that's me, darling, the mole with the mostest.

Wow, you get a World Economic Forum laptop bag for free and gratis. Ka-ching! Unfortunately, we journalists lose out on the WEF tie, the WEF pen, the WEF sunhat and the WEF Wunderbaum (smells of cold, hard cash) that the real participants get to finger. Not to mention the WEF MoneyMaker. I don't even know what one looks like but I sure as hell know that most of the people round me couldn't wear the suits they do without it.

The WEF laptop bag - own it

So this is the Davos of Africa. Low on the Gluhwein if so, in my humble opinion. But who listens to a mole? People watch, people watch... Wow, people are really a lot more attractive at the WEF than at the sciency jobs I usually get dragged along to. Maybe I should start hanging out with business reporters.

Opening press conference... It's the united colours of Benetton. That's right, keep the white man on the sidelines. Yam-di-dam. Have you heard the one about the Chinese, the Indian and the South African? They would never stop talking. Bla bla bla...

Molecam: Opening press conference

ZZZzzzz...

Wonder how Linda's doing. I'm bored. Look, she's scribbling away. Amazing, I don't understand a word. Are they even speaking in English? Yam-di-dam.

Hang on! Did that Chinaman just say that Africa was "backward"? Better check Linda's notes. Hey, move the pen! "Bla bla bla bla... we used to be backwards just like the African countries are today" HA HA HA! Why aren't people laughing? This is gold!

Yum-di-dum. Where's the cafeteria? Oooh, free sarnies! With smoked salmon and caviar! Wow, Africa must be a pretty rich country to be able to afford food this expensive. Bet they all eat like princes.

Holy smokes, look over there it's Coffee Annan! He's the most honest guy in the world, no flies on him. Just look how he takes a swipe at Senegal's President Wade about buying arms instead of seeds for farmers. Hmmm... He's really quite an attractive man, Coffee. Well-preserved. Wonder what he's doing tonight.

Now they're talking about hunger. Speaking of which, where are those sandwiches? They seem to have all vanished. 30 per cent of Africans are hungry. Whatever - what about me? I'm hungry too. A little bit of hunger never killed anyone.

Oops, now it's over. Coffee doesn't let on whether he thinks it's been a success. He should play high-stakes poker in Vegas instead of chairing agriculture commissions. And then give the money to Africa.

That's enough for this time. Linda needs to "file" a "story". That's what press releases are for, dumbass! Whatever. Later dudes and mofos. Media mole has left the building!

Girl cat... you'll be a woman soon

This weekend, you couldn't breathe in my humble flat for the female sex hormones flying around. And it wasn't me, I'd hasten to add, but the cat. That's right, my baby has become a grown lady. And what a lady!

It started with some odd meowing and scratching at the door. But before I could look up 'cats on heat' on wikipedia, the formerly innocent kitten herself left me in no doubt as to what was going on. Hunkering down, she was giving me and anyone unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity what can only be described as a very Lindsey Lohan view of her charms while tapdancing with her hind paws and purring like a tigress. Restricted to the balcony, she soon had a suitor circling below like some boho Romeo to her brazen take on Juliet

Wherefore art thou down there, Romeo?

Pole dancing Juliet - rated XXX

This all troubled me, since sterelisation of lady cats is neither cheap nor the work of a swift nick with a scalpel. I could take the cost, but what would the cat's real owner say if she found her with a big scar on her belly and a 18th century ruche collar to stop her performing unintentional hara kiri trying to scratch at the stitches?

There were other complications. The owner (I've spoken to her now, by the way - she knows the cat hangs out with me a lot, but not that I've fed her) namely thinks that she's a he - a Tomcat. I don't know how blind you have to be to think that, but there you go. Now, I can't really tell her that the bergies done it, can I? Not without kicking up a neighbourhood feud.

It was all resolved peacefully this afternoon, if somewhat sadly. Finding the real owner at home (for a change) I went over and knocked only to be greeted by a 'Hi, where is my cat? She keeps running away.' Hoping that my blush would pass for rosy cheeks on a brisk winter's day, I told Her Holy Blonde Absentee Catownerness that her cat was a she, that she needed a vet, and that she was being gang banged around the corner (which turned out to be true). That seemed to shut her up.

Alas, it also meant that She-Who-Is-Hated-By-Cats locked my baby up until Friday, when she'll go to the vet. So I won't see her until then - and who knows how long it will take her to get well after the op. Frankly, I miss her. And I know she misses me. Maybe I can smuggle her little kitty treats through the kitchen window when the Wicked Witch is away. She may hold the key to my baby's fortress, but I hold the key to her heart!

Complex systems

This week's award for wasted effort goes to Pick'n'Pay (the South African supermarket chain whose name had my sister in stitches after she was subjected to it and those of the toy shops Tinka Tonka Toys and Plinka Plonka Play in the space of ten seconds when she arrived last October) and it's "organic" range of fruit and vegetables. After painstakingly unwrapping the cling film that swaddled the styrofoam plate that held my organic avocado in bundles of four on the supermarket shelf, I felt about as environmentally friendly as Halliburton on a cold day.

Wrapping with avocado

Wrapping without avocado

It's a funny old country. And not so old, come to think of it. But what it lacks in age it makes up for in complexity.

There are many stories worth listening to about South Africa. One of the most worthwhile is of course that about the struggle led by Mandela and others to free the country from its Apartheid opressors. Another is the tale of the HIV/Aids epidemic and its victims. A third is about the disenfranchisement of the white South Africans and their loss of identity. There is the story of the growing upwardly mobile black middle class. And there is the crime.

What still confounds me after over a year down here is how all these stories fit together. Mandela would have us think of new South Africa as a weave, where many strands make one strong whole. Some days, I think that sounds feasible - as long as it's liberally strewn with the social glue that is money and wellbeing. Others, I'm determined it's not.

Maybe it's just me. But I have a growing feeling that this disjointedness that I feel is not superficial, that it goes right to the core of new South Africa.

If it does, that would mean the new South Africa is inherently unstable, just like the chaotic systems we studied in the final year of my maths degree in London. In those systems, prediction was inherently impossible because uniform small events could have arbitrarily small or large effects - in the same way that when a small tremor occurs along a faultline in the Earth's crust, you can't say how big the earthquake will be because the earthquake itself doesn't know yet.

Take the new South African consitution. It's one of the most progressive in the world, making all men and women equal regardless of race, gender, creed etc. But, watching television on a rainy Wednesday you will realise that the VAST majority of South Africans are almost militantly set against the constitution on at least one - often several - points. People from rightwing christians to traditional tribal healers come out all bleary eyed and wonder what all this is about... "Gay marriage? I didn't know that buggery was legal, even!" and so on.

Rocks rolling down a hillside. *Plod Plod* South Africa wins the 2010 World Cup. *Plod* Zuma, despite everything he's been accused of, soars on the Zulu vote. *Plod* The government introduces a HIV/Aids plan. *Plod* A white middle-aged couple is murdered in bed, causing all their closest friends to think about moving to Australia. *Plod*

Some of the events seem positive, some negative. All seem too small to cause cataclysm. But they are all the same in a critical system, perpetually poised on the verge of a rock slide. And so predicting the future of this country, at this time, is about as futile as me trying to rid the loan-cat of fleas. It sounds like a cop out, but isn't really. Because like with the fleas, the fact that it's impossible isn't discouraging me, or anyone else for that matter, from trying.

Pass the crisps!

It's nine-forty-six pee-em and I've just finished watching a film called The Holiday. It's a film about how if you're a size 6 you'll end up with somebody like Jude Law, whereas if you're a size 14 you'll end up with Jack Black.

Apparently women get some sort of kick out of wathing things like it. At a loss to see why, I must assume that it's because it simultaneously makes them feel crappy about who they are (because, judging by who they go out with they can't be knockouts and women love nothing more than a reason to hate themselves) while also reassuring them that there is a hierarchy of the beautiful and the ugly, that they can do nothing about being near the bottom, and that they therefore can sit back and help themselves to another bag of crisps.

I got this so-called "feel good" movie out only because I'd had a crappy day and thought that for some reason watching people fall in love would cure it all - I know, in hindsight I need my head examined. Besides, curled up on my sofa with the cat at arm's length and my hair just greasy enough to solicit questions about whether I'd dyed it recently, I was merely a glass of red wine short of being Bridget Jones.

Although to think of it, the glass would have come in handy - if nothing else for chucking it at the television thus ridding my living room of Jude Law's smug face. I hope Ms Diaz has enough sense to fire the nanny.

Bah, humbug. Why so glum, you might ask? Well, amidst crappy weather and problems with lost car keys, it seems that my boss in London has succumbed to paranoia and says I can't write for the Guardian anymore. At least not on education and Africa, which let's face it has been a nice little cash cow until now. It's bad news. It's such bad news that I can't be bothered to be upset about it. I just hunch my shoulders and let the gloom wash over me.

Maybe I should look at the bright side. After all, there are other magazines I could write for. Hear Worms Weekly are looking for a correspondent on annelids that live in poo.

Bloody useless.

Something else that irks me is that I have to renew my passport. The Swedish authorities found it fitting, a few years ago, to start giving out passports valid for eight years but that would only hold together for about two.

It's like this. The face page is made of plastic. A needle is used to sow that page in with the rest. The needle makes a sort of perforation that rips when a border guard so much as looks at it. Not so comforting when you're travling in third world countries, where things like stamps and passports and visas are taken seriously. (Actually, I'm impressed the Blair administration haven't thought of this - it's a great way of keeping track of people, making them file for new passports every time they leave the country.)

Of course, it wouldn't have to be so bad. I'm getting a new passport for free, which is nice. But since I live in a third world country they don't have photo booths for taking passport size photographs. Instead, they offer this service in photography shops. Stand just here just under the lamp that will make your skin pallid like a corpse's, Miss, and smile. CLICK.

I don't know about you, but I don't like that. The beauty of photo booths is that you walk in, pull the curtain, and pose. For as long as you like! The lighting is great, you can relax. You're in control.

Now, there's a reason why most people look like shit in most pictures they're in. It's because, as soon as somebody you're not completely comfortable with points a camera at you, you pull a face. It's no coincidence that the only pictures most of us think we look good in were taken by boy- or girlfriends - people we are pretty sure thought we looked alright at the time of taking the picture. And, deep within, we all know our good and bad faces.

So a few minutes with yourself will leave you looking pretty hot, at least in your eyes, which at the end of the day are ones that matter the most.

But were I to put the make up on by the trowelful, I know that walking into Kodak and being paraded in front of a minimum of five snivelling retards on minimum wage will end in disaster. I underwent the whole humiliation once down here, to get an emergency passport (hours before I found my real one), and ended up looking like somebody who'd just been rescued from Bergen-Belsen. I swear, had I not found my proper passport I would have stayed at home. I'm not handing that picture over to anybody with eyes.

So what, you might ask. It's just a passport photo. Well, it's time to own up to my vanity. It's like this. I look seriously good in my current passport, to the point where border patrol people raise their eybrows and sneak an extra peak at me as I go through. And every time they do, I feel great about myself and let me tell you, after 14 hour cross-continental, nay, cross-hemisperal flights, you need something to feel good about.

An end to those little perks would not only ruin future international travel. Since passports are called upon numerous times down here to confirm that I'm not Osama Bin Laden, that picture represents me - to the bank, the car sales people, the estate agents, that is who I am. The me that goes to work, and who wakes up every morning knowing that the sleep in my eyes and grease in my hair that meets me in the mirror is only a temporary veil that hides my charms.

And it all mounts up. Moan groan boo hoo. Poor wee me. I know it's indulgent, but let me for a moment, all right?

Hmmm... I just had a terrifying thought. Maybe this is all the success I'm entitled to, according to the Holiday rulebook of life and happiness. I've been a cute girl with a column in the Guardian for long enough, now I'm doomed to a future of greasy hair and worms?

Pass the crisp packet.