battery acid & adam's chick

So there we are, a whole bunch of us on a Kulula flight last night, and we reckon:
‘Hey man, let’s drink champagne.’

It happens.

Sometimes because we’re a feisty bunch of yacks, we do stupid shit.

I mean you gonna get more bang for your buck if you drink, say the mini white wine bad boys for the same price as the champers per glass, but whatever – we’re feeling festive, we’re all together ( 6 of us), and it’s all good up in the sky, like.

Problem is, Kulula serves their sparkling wine in cans ok. Tins. And it’s called ‘Eve.’ This pink, rose type carbonated fermented merde, whereby by the time you land, you’re already hanging.

Two hours later – we all have a massive headache. We’re hanging man. Before dinner.
C2 reckons JC Le Roux is the same price for a whole bottle and the headache isn't like a migraine.

So it went something like this: Damager (C2’s boyfriend) and I decide to klap one of those cardboard, bread-like-a-Sealy, faccacio bad boys because our stomach linings are discintegrating from hunger. Smash an Eve, and then get hungry again and smash all the Pringles the air hostess has to basically offer. Poen’s boyfriend, Game Ranger Deluxe, is running down the aisle asking the air hostess for more Pringles.

Because we‘re mowing like it’s a sport.

And I mean we’re mowing, chowing all the plane food Kulula stocks, and he’s getting those wild dagger looks from hunger passengers who are ready to gauge his eyes out because we’re eating everything we can see.

The Fritos were ten bucks a bag.

Game Ranger reckons, after deflating the chip bag to reveal like 10 grams of corn sensation: ‘There’s no mark up on these bad boys.’

I’m sceptical.

The plane is very restrictive on my lifestyle, because after two Eve's, you wouldn't mind breaking out a shnaftie.

We blame the ‘Eve’s’, which Damager points out is ‘Harvested not in the Western Cape winelands, but in…Centurion.’
This stuff is made from battery acid in a place called ‘Techno Park’ in the lesser-known fruity viney backdrop that is Centurion. Says so on the can. And everything.

8000 Eves later, we stumble off the plane, hit Café Paradiso on Kloof, for a few mojitos and collapse in bed.

The air in Cape Town was fishy. Chinas, we were smelling the fish in the air something chronic. And can I tell you - it was good.
That sea air, tingling the old nasal passages, the coloured dude who chills on the pavement and screams obscenities at passers-by, with the word ‘Poes’ as the fundamental architecture of each sentence, Slaapstad does have it’s foibles, let us not lie.

Good friends, good location, good wine, battery acid champagne…it’s awesome to be here.

Except the fucking noise. Crisis. There’s this cement machine, 8000 loud and screaming workers and a whole lot of noise going on downstairs right now.

Cape Town is meant to be chilled. But C2 and I sit here bitchin’ and mornin’ because, we're more hung than a pair of donkey's testicles that were born oversized.

It’s the Eves.

Cement mixers on an Eve headache. And Damager was on a conference call at 6:30, like in the middle of the mixers, C2 looking very upset because she was woken up, and then told to shut up.

'Shhh! I'm. On. The Phone.' Yes Damager, we can see that.

i can actually remember most of it

I’m on a definite high at the moment – not literally, that would shweet – but am still bouncing around from the weekend, greatly anticipating getting to Cape Town on Wednesday night for more festivities.

Some of us are packing into our Cape Town flat, always festive, because location-wise it’s pretty much on Kloof Street.

On Cape Town, I’m rather fucking amped with my varsity. They’ve put my book in their library.
Now that’s fucking cool, not to mention completely unexpected, let’s be honest.

UCT, it may not be the literary work of Hemingway (but when would Hemingway talk about sex, dildo’s and relationships anyway? That wasn’t his bag. Hell, could be wrong. Maybe he did after a few whiskeys, but you get my point), but UCT – I love you.
What, pray, will my book teach your students? (Maybe what’s in store for when they leave?) The whole idea makes me giggle like Soli Philander on a papsak.

Of course, UCT gave me more than just an edumacashun. It introduced me to soft recreational activities and stimulants, breaking into public pools and skinny dipping, or just running into Camps Bay naked during a 21st tour bus party.

It gave me grand exposure to arts students, history, literature and ideas.

I studied an Arts degree, so most of my classes were girls, with a small handful of dudes who all hippied it up something chronic, or otherwise had interesting hair.

One dude wore a dress sometimes.

I sat behind him in an exam once. He was chilled.

It gave me res food and Budget Rolls. Those minging things you’d get for lunch with the tokens your res gave you. Chicken mayo, always with a pinch of fly.

It gave me dental procedures.

It gave me the ability to stumble back from Barney’s, a drinking hole in Rondebosch, after an exam, punished on Crackling and/or R2 tequila shots, where me and a mate decided to zyphe the red and white traffic tape running along the side of a ditch.

We stole 3000 metres of the stuff.

We thought we were the fucken champions of the decade.
And we were, quite frankly.
We dragged this bundle of tape, and a stray cone, back to the boys res that faced us, and dumped it in a mate’s room.
Giggling and pissed we thought it would make a very nice beanbag for his quarters.
And the cone, an excellent hat.

It, however, got stuck between the first and seventh floor, due to the two rotating doors and dodgy lift. So for weeks later, there was this tape, going up and down in that lift, stuck in the gap and in the rotating doors.

We were the Legends Of The Tape.

It gave me lectures that were flexible enough that I could sort my timetable around my beach time. So for one year, I had no Friday lectures – and I’d chill with the rest of the BA’s on Clifton, tanning my rear end.

It gave me Sunday evenings at La Med.

It gave me the beauties of student living. Where inflatable furniture made up most of the seating arrangements in our living room.
Where my car wouldn’t start when it was raining.
Where if someone ate someone else’s peanut butter, it was a big deal.
Where digs parties and braais left the aftermath of visible debauchery in its wake, with passed out humans and alcoholic detritus strewn about the place, some comprising naked strangers.

It gave me Romano, the dude who was painting our digs. Who turned out to be an escapee from Valkenberg Mental Hospital. And would rock up, fucked on meths that he’d soaked through bread to scream at us or otherwise use our outdoor toilet.

(He did that once. He broke into the garden, and fully just chilled out in the back yard shitter. Until we found him and had to call Valkenberg. Again.)

Stealing roadsigns in the dead of night, which would later be used for general house décor.

Writing essays to deadlines, filming short films, scraping money together for a Jammie Shuttle, waitressing and dropping two drinks on a dude’s crotch twice in 20 minutes, teaching hyperactive kiddie spawn French at the Montessori School, doing crazy ass no-responsibility working at ski resorts, backpacking around Mozambique and endless parties.

It gave me the most beautiful city to study in.

It gave me some pretty darn awesome mates.

It gave me varsity old faithfuls, like selling rag magazines, 21st’s and formals. Sax Appealgate aside – selling rag magazines where we all passed out in someone’s boot on the lot the cathedral on the corner of Roeland Street, and Jeremy Maggs wouldn’t buy one from us.
In my year, it had a nude centrefold of Thabo Mbeki, if I remember correctly.

Kinky.

So although it is le pique of controversy at the moment, hey, I had a great time. Running around like a hooligan and stuffing it into people’s car windows. I wore a satin dressing gown with condoms printed all over it, and didn’t batter an eyelid.

Whatever. Those were the days, and I do realise how unbelievably lucky I was to have had them. So thanks, UCT.

It must be said though – that Monday evenings do leave me on a high as well. Seriously.
For one, Monday, the day, is over. It’s Idols and Grey’s, it’s the night I get to have Peas Alone time, a long hot soak, and other sundry.

From now on, I’m claiming Monday. Unless Prince William is getting married, and I crack an invite, and it happens to be on a Monday, Mondays are my nights.
My non-event, ‘let’s-listen-to-horrendous-music-that-only-I’m-subjected-to’ night.

ag...

...my gran is so cute.

Firstly, she has knitted about 78 teddy bears for children who have been abused. And continues to knit away commenting to herself, "Should this one's eyes be blue or black?" She's knitting bears for seriously unfortunate little souls, and with such care and precision.


Secondly, I showed her my laptop. She wanted to know how I play Sudoku "in my computer." When she started screaming, "Peas! Peas!! There's a fly in your computer!"
(Where, behind the screen?) "No, I saw it, it was over there (points to screen), and it's moved - there's a bug trapped inside your computer, how did it get there?"

Fiddle around a bit more. "There it is again! I thought I was going mad, but bordell there it is!"

The cursor. The cursor, Grandmere. God she's adorable. We had long conversations about the therapeutic side to knitting. I've found 45 different coloured balls of wool which I plan to manifest into this multi-coloured fokken ding...and will start knitting on the journey home this evening.

Leaving Cape Town tonight. I'm a little...put out. Because I am really enjoying myself and I fear the moment I spot the Hillbrow Tower, this sense of enjoyment will hastily cease. I've been walking everywhere, getting healthy levels of oxytocin secreting from my hypothalamus, enjoying the sunshine, watching squirrels, conversing with a coloured woman who was just somma sitting in a trolley on our street, and wondering why the fuck Cecil John Rhodes is such a fucking saviour in our history when, as a friend put it: He's really just an olden day Brett Kebble. I mean, the man is everywhere. Statues, memorials, roads, a university. So terribly boring and ostentatious of the man.

And so the trip home. I can hardly wait.

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.

fake town

I've been meaning to write this post for over a year. It takes a fair amount of balls, because the Capetonians might kick up a bit of a fuss.

But what the hell. I'm just going to say it. I hate Cape Town.
And now that my job entails writing for a Jozi site and a Cape Town site, it looks like I might have to fly down there sometimes. I will be hurled into the abyss, and will therefore have to accept this.

I was hoping to never go there ever again, but let me explain before you potentially get all “fuck you Delilah” on me.

I lived in Cape Town when I was a student. I've done my years; both on holiday and actually living there. And I had a whale of a time. I've done all the shit there is to do in Cape Town, including the youthful intoxicated extras like stealing road signs, 1 000 m of red and white roadside tape, and streaking and breaking into the Claremont Swimming Pool. I've also sat on Jameson Stairs discussing Stanley Kubrick's very probable crystal meth habit.

I've smoked joints on the Tampon Towers and I've ridden the fucking cable car 8 times. Hell, I ate a Johnny's Roti.

You and I will possibly fall asleep reading this, but, the beach every Friday, the wine route, the frigging mowwwntain, Long Street, District Six, the carpeted walls of Corner Shop.

Kirstenbosch Gardens and the copulation thereof under the Strelizias and I even climbed Devil's Peak. Naked. (Well only the second half. Long story.)

Cape Town is an aesthetically beautiful place. Everywhere you look there's beauty. (Barring Ottery. “If God ever took a dump, it landed in Ottery.” - a friend summed it up well.)
The sheer opulence of the city is both overwhelming and powerful...and overrated. Yes. It slaps you like a wet mop, because it's just in your face the whole time.

By contrast, one needs to look a little harder for the beauty in Johannesburg, but once you get it, you appreciate it more. Cape Town is very one-dimensional. It doesn't have layers, unless you include the Cape Flats. Fine. And Valkenberg Mental Hospital.

This is my personal opinion – it's probably wrong – but it's how I feel. Cape Town also depresses me. I have memories of that place that are bittersweet, and I find it hard to go back there for a holiday. In fact, fly me to East London rather. If I don't go to Cape Town for the next five years, I'll survive.

It is a place that harbours sadness for me. Not when I was a carefree student, but the spin-offs of that. Capetonians also stick to their own.
The problem of course is that my family all live down there.

I find Cape Town a bit....taxing. In a lost childhood/misspent youth kind of way.
Leaves me cold. Can't bear the thought of it. I have an issue with Cape Town.
Hell, I have issues with Johannesburg, but I find, for fucked-up-me, it's more stomachable to live up here.

So nail me up on a board, and tell me I'm a dumb, irrepressible fuck. See if I care. Cape Town doesn't do it for me. Anymore.