Farenheit 7/11

The heatwave has relented for long enough for my brain to unscramble and form some sentences again. All of London is rotting, there is a stench in the streets, the roads are melting, tourists are keeling over left right and centre with heat stroke and there is an ice cream shortage! If this is climate change, where will it end?

In a few days, I'll be returning to the pleasantly chilly nights of South Africa. There's something I never thought I'd say.

Some complete dick has piloted a submarine into the Galapagos archipelago without permission. God I hate people who think their right to do whatever they please supercedes whatever rules might be in place to save the world from idiots like them. I was there in August a couple of years ago, and immediately felt guilty about it. I mean, it's the kind of place we just shouldn't be. Leave it alone, for god's sake, no matter how beautiful it is. Apparently they're thinking about allowing massive cruise ships to dock there on round the world trips. Boats bigger than the bloody islands they're to visit!

Slight crisis back in Cape Town as well. Paul sales manager is facing an ultimatum from his wife after the accident with his son. So he's going back to England. And we need another sales manager. Crap for me, as I will be producing a product with nobody selling it. Or almost. It will take time to get the new person familiar with the product. And Paul had promised to get me a raise...

I'll be on my own. In Cape Town. Please send me some emails or I'll go absolutely mad and start talking to myself. Oops, too late for that...

Tranny Lip Sync

What is that, a tranny lip sync competition?

Tin Pan Alley

London is in the middle of a heat wave! Only one thing for it, and that's to go to a free festival in Denmark street and have beers with the rest of the underage drinkers.

Cape Town International

The departure lounge at Cape Town International probably has one of the most beautiful airport views in the world. The setting sun is reflected in the Drakensberg mountain range making for a Tolkienesque backdrop for the Boeings and Airbuses lined up waiting for passengers to board.

I’m en route to London. Tomorrow at 7 I’ll be trying to cope with the bustle of the Eastbound Piccadilly Line. I doubt I’ll get views like this one for another two weeks.

Driving here with Cousin who is baby sitting my car for me while I’m away, I thought about how much I have changed since I got here. How much has happened, how much I have rediscovered. New places do that to you. They make you remember things other places made you forget.

Speaking of forgetting, I’d very much like to forget yesterday. Packing up my stuff yesterday morning, I couldn’t find my passport. Not at home, not at work. So I panicked.

The Swedish consulate closed at 1 pm, so I had to give up looking, throw myself in my car and drive there via a shopping centre to pick up eight horrendous passport size photos of myself. They’re a wonderful memento of the day as I look mightily pissed off.

The consulate staff took my application for a temporary passport and processed it while I ran to the closes police station (like the wind, it was already ten to one) to report it lost and drawing out 1000 rand to pay for the bloody thing. I tried not to think about the hassle I’d have to go through to get a new passport, PLUS a new work permit to put in it from Home Affairs who aren’t exactly known for their expediency or customer service.

Mine was not a happy prospect.

Of course, when I got home that evening I found the passport. I’d hidden it in a ‘safe place’ when I went to Grahamstown a few weeks ago in case my flat was broken into. I can un-block it by phoning Swedish police on Monday. Piece of cake, and of mind.

I think the same thing happened when I moved to London eight years ago. I had a pretty in pink temp passport then too. That I never learn…

Now, I’m en route and that is the most important thing. It will be lovely to be home. Or, I’m so confused about that word. This is home. But so is London, and Stockholm (where I’m off to next weekend).

How many homes can one heart hold? The problem with multiple homes is that wherever you are, part of you always wishes it were somewhere else. And already now, with another 22 months to go of my contract down here, I still feel acutely that I’ll miss this. I’ll miss the views. The vistas of South Africa have already claimed my heart.

Little ironies

Life is full of little ironies. For example, they are building a restaurant next to my gym called "Sinns". I'll be able to go straight from heaven to hell without passing Go. Convenient.

Yesterday, as I mentioned in the last post, was press day. Another little irony was that yesterday was also the day the company back in London picked for their annual summer picnic. So when I faced urgent software problems at around 8pm last night, they were all too sloshed to care.

Before that my boss back home, William, had spent a few rushed minutes looking over the editorial, cover and analysis piece for me. But when he sent them back he forgot to attach the file with his comments. And left the office. I had to take his directions over the phone from whatever park they were all frolicking in. Doubtless by that time there was a glass of Pimms in his hand.

I had to deal with it myself. Luckily, I'm quite resourceful in a tight spot. But constructing an advert from scratch when I don't really know what I'm doing and with the printers' deadline ticking over was not FUN. I wouldn't call it fun, no.

Operation Botch Job ended at about 10.30pm. An hour earlier than last month, so that would count as a success. But OH MY GOD it's so seriously urgent for me to take a course in Indesign NOW that it's not funny.

Press day 2

Hmmm. Press day sucks. Would have been 8 o'clock if the bastard template had not given me a hard time. Missing fonts my bottom. Off to check proof now, then home to bed and a lie-in. I hope. The proof is probably going to look shit, and I'll have to get out of bed before I have time to get in. Hmmm. Over and out.

Sticks and stones

Today, finally, I was interviewed by the police in regards to that accident I witnessed a few posts down. The boy was fine in the end, apparently, but the driver of the speeding car is being sued for 60,000 rand worth of damages. Suits him right.

Accidents is not a happy topic, however, as I come in yesterday to the office to meet a very distressed Paul. His son had been hit by a minibus outside his school in a hit-and-run and mangled up his right arm badly. He was in surgery today, and Paul and his wife, Lucy, are naturally beside themselves. Let's hope for Jamie's speedy recovery.

In other news, tomorrow is press day - again! Where do the weeks go? I'm in good shape for an early finish. But then I said that last time. This time there might be a graphic on the front page. How exciting!

Hulk fish and lottery

For a gambling junkie like myself, this job has some strange satisfactions. Every morning I come in, sit down, and see which emails or telephone messages have hit their mark. I'd say I've a hit rate of 1 in 6. That is, one in six people who I try to contact will ever get back to me, or have provided me with the right email address or phone number.

My newest impossible task is to find a telephone number to the Chinese ministry for science and technology. I think it's a lost cause. My only hope now is that the embassy will at least deliver SOMETHING.

Paul in Sales told me today about this fish that lives in the Amazon. It's a carnivore, but not a shark, can grow up to 13 foot and when the Amazon floods it will headbutt the swamped trees to knock down monkeys and eat them. Poor little monkeys. But clever fish! Check out a photo of this mighty pissed-off pike:

Grahamstown

Right, so I spent the weekend in Grahamstown, a 12 hour (!) bus ride up the coast towards Mozambique. Or, in my case, an 18 hour bus journey as we were plagued on the outward leg by breakdowns. Welcome to Africa.

I left on the Thursday evening. The bus was late getting out of the station. It waited just outside town for an hour and a half for a mechanic to come and tie shut a door that wouldn't close with a piece of string. And at midnight, we were stranded in Mossel Bay (just under half way) for three hours waiting for a replacement bus after ours had filled up with smoke.

I managed to get to G-town in the end, after a long story involving rides with people from the bus company the last 100 kms which I won't bore you with. Once there, however, I met up with Hanna who I know from London. She's in East London (on the SA coast, not Whitechapel) doing some development work and was in G-town visiting others from her Swedish development course. So with the numerous Swedish jazz bands that were there visiting, there was a large Scando contingent.

Grahamstown looks like a Home Counties village that has been uprooted and moved to the South African veld. It's a university town, and once a year it plays host to the biggest arts festival of SA, possibly of the continent. It's a little bit like the Edinburgh festival in terms of what's on, and people come from far and wide to see plays, comedy, music shows.

We saw a modern dance company, a theatre production, a jazz band. But the best, I think we all agreed, was sitting in the festival field with a beer watching some random Zulu tribal dance while the sun beat down hard on our faces. Still, it wasn't warm. At night, it creeps below 10 degrees in Grahamstown, and there is no heating.

Hanna and co's SA experience is very different from my own. They see what I don't the poverty, the villages, the hiv/aids and so on. It is amazing how it all exists side by side. One girl had been at the pre-circumcision party for a boy in a local tribe. Xhosa boys are circumsised in their teens, when they officially become men. And it's a big deal. They have to spend weeks alone in the bush after the 'procedure' which is done with no anasthaetics. And infection can be a problem, leading to death.

I was immensely impressed by how one of Hannas friends in particular - Markus - had learned a bit of Xhosa, one of the main non-colonial languages of SA. This is the click language I spoke of before. There is a click that sounds like you are trying to move a horse, a 'tsk' noise that sounds very disapproving but isn't, and a Q click which sounds like a wine bottle being uncorked. He could do them all, and without contorting his face to look constipated, which the rest of us did.

And going through the game reserves between Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown, I even managed to do some roadside safari. I saw wildebeest, zebra, antelopes and to my joy some giraffes.

The busride home was not so eventful. At 6.30 this morning we pulled in to Cape Town station and I went home to get a well deserved rest before coming in to work. That was only half an hour late. But next year, I think I'll catch a plane.

Some photos: Hanna looking pretty; Actors exploring their masculinity (yes, seriously); Apparently you can train your man; Markus who was good with click languages; The street where the swedes lived. A bit Desperate Housewives?; Zulu dancer; and YOURS TRULY.