I can't lie...

...man, I just can't lie.

Cape Town has but been the best thing for me right now ever. Who. Knew.

I will hang my head and admit that a) it is so fucking beautiful in every which way; b) it's really helped me feel oodles chipper than what I was feeling a few days ago and c) any associations I had with the place before have been wiped clean. By choice. My family lives here, I have a strong base here, and it's really my second home.

Cape Town has really been the exact thing I needed.

Although let's just talk about Dad and his se motorbaaik for a sec.

I have been driving around with my fazsher all over the peninsula and environs on the back of his motorbike. Dad, by no means a Hell's Angel, has been driving this thing for over 28 years. With only one collision - which he beautifully elaborated on and described to me whilst driving down De Waal Drive during a full-on testicle-knackering South Easter. Perfect timing Dad.

I'm scared of motorbikes because a few years ago on Ko Phan Gnan island, I fell off a bike, breaking open my knee to reveal oh there is bone under skin after all. So I'm a little nervous, if not a little fucking tentative. And De Waal Drive during gale force winds isn't a good start for a bag of nerves as myself. He had the gaul to tell me I was being embarrassing when I started screaming.
(Beg pardon? Kettle, pot, black; what the fuck did you just call me?)

However, by the end of the day I was having a whale of a time with pops. Wind in hair, dorky helmet, leaning in the right direction into the curves - I was loving being on the bike with Dad.

I also got to see all my cousins, get ancestral paperwork for the possible emigration that may loom, walk and have sundowners with my mum, have a fabulous glass of vino at Rhodes Mem with Max, which, on that: the mountain burst into flame.

Just our luck, we go there, drink and leave. Actually admire the view from my varsity days, and then leave. As people do. Then, there's a fucking fire.

Did we set the mountain on fire. (Do bad things happen in fours, do they?). Oh God we set the mountain alight, we combusted the fucking mountain.
Except we didn't, so, like whatever. It was later extinguished by firetrucks, FYI.

I played with my dog. I threw out a few sonatas on my uncle's piano. I had a fabulous afternoon with my friend Kyknoord, ending up contemplating life at a beautiful dive called...Rascals.

I caught up with the French grandparents, and made peace with my father and all his crazy fucking ideas and eccentricities.

I am starting to feel normal again. No job - sure - but feeling normal and relaxed, even a little happy about my current joblessness, as I have prospects and am happy on how some of these things turned out anyway. At least right this second. I'm dreading heading back to the J-Word city, I am. But that's only in two days anyhow.
For now, I have re-fallen in love with Cape Town. And I'm sorry Cape Town that I ever doubted you or forgot - mainly - how kiff you actually are.

It must be said though that things like Easter and Christmas' etc are hard for kids of divorced parents. As a result, I'm not a big fan of these holidays at all. Splitting my time between mum and dad, and worrying whether I've spent too much time with one and have to head back to the other, diverting interrogations and questions referring to the other, and there's always half a family at the big lunch. However, the blessing? Both my parents are great in small doses and I prefer to see them in separate places anyway. And they're alive. Blessings, see. Count.

PS: Hair = rat's nest. Done some mileage on that motorcycle. And it certainly looks like it. Yeehah! Gimme more, gimme more.

PPS: Happy Easter for tomorrow! I will be doing it the Catholic Creole way, believe you me.