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Promenade, a leisurely and sociable walkway.

They say outdoor exercise is better for you anyway. Not only do you get burn calories carrying around the weight of the money you would have wasted on a gym membership that you may (or may not) have used, but there are all sorts of other benefits: fresh air can rev you up as much as coffee, vitamin D from the sun, that fresh air feel good feeling, and the chance to show off to a wider ranging audience.

Now Cape Town has the mountain, the forests, the beaches and the hills, but the Promenade has always been one of my favourite places to stroll. I have a greater appreciation of human diversity that of botany, and I like its lack of gradient. And the sea, with its many moods, is soothing to the human soul.

I rode my bike down the promenade the other evening, it’s one of the best places in town to watch the colours change as the day dies. The after-work hour is one of the most popular for the social walking talking types, dog walkers and the joggers. Since October last year the promenade, which runs from 11km from Mouille Point to Bantry Bay, past the salty public swimming pools and man-made tidal pools, has been open to wheels as well as heels. Bikes, skateboards, roller blades once banned, are welcome to weave amongst the walkers.

It’s quite a task. A blonde with a small dog on a lead had one arm outstretched to restrain her pet and the other holding a phone to her ear. She wasn’t looking where she was going and the pooch was pulling her into my path, but I dodged the little bitch and slotted myself into the slipstream of a couple of runners.

Down the Mouille Point end of the promenade, but not as far as the candy stripped lighthouse, there is an outdoor gym; deemed necessary as the Western Cape is the most obese of all the provinces. The beach front equipment hasn’t quite brought out the Schwarzenegger’s of Venice beach. In fact, I’m not even sure that some people haven’t worked out that it isn’t a playground. Hands on two parallel poles a man just in shorts with a rippling muscular chest bounced up and down with his feet off the ground, whilst next to him an overweight lad had taken off his shoes and was pushing his denim knees up and down and unzipping his hoody. An old man with a can walked past and tapped another a step-up machine with the end of his stick.

The beaches are littered with broken shells that crunch under your feet and the smell of the kelp clings with mussel like tenacity to the coastline, briney and rotten. Out in the waves the weed bobs like playful seals, but on the shore it festers under a cloud of little flies.

Sometimes when the wind is high, the waves crash over the paved walkway, licking it with salt and littering it with bottle caps and sand and weed. On calmer days the seagulls paddle in the shallows, serenaded by the hadidas.

The air on the promenade is sticky, it makes your skin feel clammy even in the cool of winter and I breathe it deep and wait. And all because there ain’t nothing like a west coast sunset and I stopped my bike to watch. The sun looks biggest as it yawns and slips below the horizon, last flashes of red on the water and pink in the clouds. As the greyish light it leaves starts to dim to blue, the streetlights bring their soft orbs to stand watch over the evening. And I turn my wheels towards the firefly lights of town.

Down in the Basement

For a lover of language there is something erotic about a bookshop. It’s all the virgin editions with their uncreased spines and unhandled pages; all the books you can't afford. And all the covers are prettier than the ones you have at home.

The Book Lounge is one of the most perverted bookshops I’ve had the pleasure of frequenting, frequently deviating from its chosen trade. I always leave satisfied and often empty handed; I've only bought a book there once. You see the Book Lounge doesn't just sell books: The Book Lounge has been doing interesting things after hours.

Down in their basement a few Friday's ago, with his back against the self-help and the poetry, I came across Lance Herman for the first time.

Herman was there for the third session of the Book Lounge's Down in the Basement, a once-a-month evening that has nothing to do with books, and Herman had brought his guitar to perform as Eliezer.

'Hush, this is a sacred place' doesn't really hold true of bookshops anymore. Books actually provide quite good acoustics; thousands of sentences absorb the echoes and soften the sound.

Eliezer’s music is clear and lyrical, and the evening had that unusually musical nakedness of just one man and his guitar. Amongst the wine and the books and the hypnosis of the guitar strings it was really a pleasurable evening. Just one thing Lance, don’t say 'fuck' when there are kids in the front row.

When did you start playing music?

10 yrs old.

What was the first instrument you picked up?

Guitar

First time you performed in front of an audience?

My brother. Played him a song I wrote after I learnt my first 3 chords.

The first band or singer you liked? Who did your parents listen to?

My uncle in LA sent my brothers a package of CDs, that was just when CDs had come out in the States but were new to South Africa. Amongst others, I remember Dire Straits, and also Eric Clapton. Those two albums had a big effect on me at the time.

Why the name ‘Eliezer’? What does it mean and when did it start?

Eliezer is my Hebrew name. So technically it started when I received it, at the same time I was named Lance Herman.

Is Eliezer a one man show? Is it just you Lance, with occasional trumpeters?

I’m not quite sure at this point. Initially, Eliezer was a name for a performance outfit that would just be solo guitar and voice – it was born as an experiment, or natural progression, out of two other bands I’ve performed in, Fly Paper Jet and Ginsburg & Herman. I would like to see it evolve, changes form and style, go with the flow. So right now it’s still minimal folk. The addition of Lee on trumpet was really fun, and hopefully we do more of that. Currently, I’m into Thom Yorke and Frank Ocean, and maybe Eliezer gets some of that flavour. Or, maybe Eliezer becomes something that resembles landscape music. I’m also looking forward to making an album under the name Lance Herman, and seeing how that differs from Eliezer.

Do you write all your own music, and lyrics?

I do write my own music and lyrics. But also I have collaborated on these (in Fly Paper Jet, Ginsburg & Herman). I’d like to see the music being experimented with and treated on its own terms. And the lyrics. I used looked at “Songs”, as complete units, that more or less came in a single package, for example “Bus Station” - currently I’m quite keen to disaggregate the music from the lyrics, experiment with words, sounds, chord-colours, rhythms, as individual, constituent parts, and then find ways of bringing them all together again. There’s a new track I’m working on called “Rain”, it exists only as a repetitive-groove, something I play over and over again. And then there’s a single lyric, “When the trouble came, you split like the rain” – not sure where that’s going, but its nice to see something that is at the this point, un-realized potential. Open canvas. I look forward to doing more collaborations in the writing process.

Do you sing about experiences, or about thoughts?

It varies. In Fly Paper Jet, lyrics were more fantastic, absurd, object-material driven – singing about things like trumpets, chocolates, marshmallows, coffee shops; food, basically. Ginsburg & Herman became landscape driven, forests, subterranean creatures, in oceans, rivers. And Eliezer has been quiet abstract - yearning, metamorphosis, idealism – I suppose more pensive, philosophical even. I hope it hasn’t spiraled into maudlin. But if I look at the 3 projects I’ve been involved in, they have each had their own mood, maybe compatible to time in one’s life – playful, epic, philosophical. There's some kind of progression, or at least, differences in lyrical subject matter, style, approach. In terms of the new stuff, I’m trying to get quite close to the bone in terms of writing about actual experience, or people. I have a song I’m working on, it’s called Johannesburg. It’s about a guy who sells his car, buys a motor-cycle, and rides up to Johannesburg. Along the way, he finds himself dodging shadows of falling antelope. Overwhelmed at the clouds. Thinking about his son. It’s a song based on a person I know.

How would you describe your sound? Do you think you fit in to a genre?

Eliezer is folk. Fly Paper Jet was a collage of styles – funk, rap, indie, rock, folk, pop. Ginsburg & Herman is sort of meditative, electronic Indie-folk.

Who inspires you?

Lots of people. Family, friends, artists, writers. People.

Are you from Cape Town?

I am from Cape Town. There is a lot of creative energy about the place. Cape Town is very small, which is nice. And the music-art scene seems quite under-developed relative to Europe and America. Which makes it a challenge to practice as an artist, but also leaves room for great opportunity. I think there is a lot of encouraging development.

What do you do when you aren’t singing?

Figuring out ways to make it easier to sing more regularly.

If you won the lottery what would be the first thing you spent money on?

Guitar.

When you get home at the end of the day do you want a cold beer or a cup of tea?

Cup of tea.

What makes you angry?

Parking Tickets.

Press

There were two other journalists staying in the hotel with me, both of them from France. He was short and she was shorter, neither coming much above my shoulders.

Julie, that was her name, had smooth skin and wide eyes. Her hair was thick – maybe thickened by the humid air – and held back behind one ear with a child’s clip, which struggled to restrain her ample mane and, though she seemed to have no wrinkles creasing her face, her hair was streaked with grey. She smoked cigarettes rolled thick between her fingers and her teeth were stained from the tobacco and the coffees and the wine. She chatted to me often and when she couldn’t think of the word in English she’s whistle to fill its place and

Nicolas, that was his name, was thin and had bad posture. He wore dark glasses with dark rimmed, which is swapped for dark rimmed specs when he moved into the shade. As his back curved it pointed his nose towards the ground, and he had to use the muscles in his neck to lift his face and look forwards. He had paper-pale skin and black hair and a large Adam’s apple that pushed out through his stubble. His voice was nasal and low and when he moved his mouth the words made ripples up his cheeks to his ears.

Julie kept her press pass in her huge handbag and Nicolas kept his in his pocket. I wore mine around my neck like a uniform, like an apron in a kitchen, like it gave me a reason to be there next to them with my extra inches and lack of experience.

The fool and the frown

All the cars had parked along the pavements, so the people (unable to move between the wing mirrors and the walls) had all taken to walking in the streets. They moved like rivers, sweeping up drifters and carrying them along.

Have you ever seen a child separated from their mother? If you do you’ll see the face of absolute misery, like the frown of a melancholy clown. I saw one lost child last week: he had chocolate on his cheeks (perhaps from an ice cream or a crepe he’d merrily munched earlier) and now his salty tears were washing off the sugar. When his mother found him, he clung to her for a moment and when his sobs subsided he jumped down, took her hand and laughed. And they went together to one of the Festival’s clown shows. Children feel emotions in a pure and simple way don’t they?

Circus clowns base their acts on simple childlike emotions: often exaggerated by the painted expressions on their faces. That’s why people enjoy them, they are empathetic characters, often simpletons, who struggle with inanimate objects and find their own bodies hard to control. But the exaggeration in their behaviour and the paint on their faces can make their true emotions hard to read.

Last week I saw a pair of clowns perform – Bibeu and Humphrey, from the L’Attraction Céleste in France. They interacted like an old married couple, awkwardly balancing each other. Like a pair of Greek theatre masks she was jolly, he was glum; she was fat and he was thin. Bibeu talked in gibberish and shrieked with laughter while Humphrey’s voice was low and clear. They were wonderfully old-worldly and charming to watch. Their show had no story line and they made no progress; it was just an absurd little transient thing.

Bibeu and Humphrey weren’t the only clowns performing in Saint Leu that week, but some were not for children: Cedric Paga performed his show Que Sommes-Je? (Who Are I?) as his alter-ego Ludor Citrik. Citrik is a clown that Paga developed back in 2000 and has been experimenting with since. Now this is just hearsay, but here is what they say:

Cedric Paga is an interesting man. Trained as a dancer and performer, his interests lie mostly with the world of the clown. He is a method clown: in Que Sommes-Je? Ludor Citrik (Ludor acidic) is born on to the stage in plastic wrapping, naked and niave. But Paga had to know how it felt to be able to act it. He spent days in nappies with a carer to change him, he breast-fed, he was disciplined, he prepared. In the show we watched him form childish obsessions with the things he found: fascinated by a mirror he shows his own reflection his genitals and is amused to find they match; when he rips out the cotton padding from his nappy he tries to eat it then plays with it as though it were snow.

The only other character to appear is that of a watchman, a discipliner in a suit that enforces the world of conformism on him, rewards him for ‘good’ behaviour and punishes him for anything too free spirited. It was an exceptional performance, strangely psychological and brilliantly funny.

Apparently Paga runs workshops in clowning, should you be interested. The application form runs on for pages and if you are excepted you are told a location to meet and from there you are taken, blindfolded, to secret places where he teaches you his craft. Though the workshops only number 10 or so people, I’ve heard few make it to the end. Many find Paga and his program too unsettling. He might make you crawl across railway tracks naked, or eat disgusting foods to learn facial expressions, to leap around, fondle yourself nude in public...

When he washes off his face paint he’s quite a gentle looking man, barely recognisable in fact. We sat near each other one lunch time, and there he was, just a bald man with a single silver hoop in his left ear. Every so often he’ll look up and grin and idiotic grin and his voice becomes the high voice of his alter ego. Ludor Citrik does not live on a stage… Citrik and Cedric live on either sides of a mirror plane.

Je Suis

My French teacher at school used to wear matching outfits: beige jeans, brown jumper; red polo neck, rouge trousers. I have such a vivid memory of the brown ensemble. The jumper had acorns and oak leaves on. Shame I can’t remember much of what she taught me whilst she wore it…

When I am listening to people speak in my own language I have good peripheral hearing and I can listen to a couple of conversations at once. But in any other language I have to listen with my full attention focused on just one person’s mouth.

Since school I have attempted to learn a little Spanish. But in the mess that is my brain there is space for only one drawer in the filing cabinet and the drawer is labelled ‘foreign’. I threw a whole load of Spanish phrases in on top of the French and now they are all muddled up together. I speak bad European, and, contrary to popular belief, drinking isn’t helping.

Kaput

Waking up at 3am is never easy: it’s right in the middle of the graveyard shift, the crickets have finished their requiem hours ago, and the morning chorus will wait for first light. At 3am on Sunday morning, 5th day of the 5th month, the only life on the street outside my flat was the taxi man who sat waiting and a cat.

The airport too was almost empty and on the plane I watched the sunlight spill slowly over the brim of the world.

Joburg, where I landed so that I could take off to Saint Denis in Reunion, grew busier as the morning aged. I felt exhausted; my mind seemed to slip in and out of consciousness, like a buoy anchored almost out of its depth gets pulled under the waves of a rough sea.

From my seat on the starboard side of the plan, I had a perfect view of the island as we drew close, like Richard Attenborough in Jurassic park as the chopper landed.

A pretty blonde lady in a stripy top met me with a sign that said my name and together we picked up a rental car. Then she led the way in her Renault and I followed in a little Citroën. The number plate of my car read CT 006 JP and I was sure it was sign: I was a Cape Town agent and most likely would end up in a bunker being threatened with a laser at some point during the week.

At the hotel I met Jean Cabaret, ‘in charge of ze artistic programmation of the festival’ and we agreed to meet the next day and I slipped away into the clean sheets of my double bed.

The hotel Iloha is nice, a little corporate maybe. The rooms are small huts in the gardens and everyone has a set of plastic wicker chairs on their balconies.

Breakfast is laid out for you to help yourself. I pressed the button for a cappuccino but the machine made me a hot chocolate. Which was fine, and I helped myself to a few croissants too. There are tiny ants crawling through the bathroom of my room. I can’t tell if they’ve climbed through the window or maybe live in there, but unless they have headaches or tooth decay, they wont find much of interest in there.

The Leu Tempo festival, which has brought me here, starts on Tuesday, giving me Monday to fill how I’d liked. Working was option – my room has wifi, as does the hotel bar. But I decided first to take a better look at the island, to head towards the volcano.

The roads wind up from the coast like Mountain Rivers, and in half an hour or so I had risen nearly 1000m and the temperature had dropped by 13 degrees. There are little stands that sell fruit and vegetables all along the streets, each advertising the price of their tomatoes. A stray dog crossed at the zebra crossing.

After getting lost and going the wrong direction up a one-way street in a town called Le Tampon, I made it as far as the road that turns towards the Vulcan. And this is where my day had a bit of a melt down.

I was, of course, driving on the right handside of the road. Operating the vehicle was easy enough – the pedals are same, and other than sometimes smacking my left hand into the door when I went to change gear, I seemed to have the knack of it. But my spatial awareness has never been great, and I was still getting used to having the bulk of the car on my right.

Along the side of the road there are large rocks painted white to mark where the tarmac ends. Now these rocks are about the size of an upright rugby ball, you know, how they leave them when Pat Lambie’s about to score off a penalty. Except they don’t fly when you kick them, they’d stub your toe like nothing else.

As you got closer to the summit the landscape changed. The lush green fields turned into scrubby plains. I’d been admiring the view when I looked up and saw a tour bus coming towards me down the narrow road. I flinched, and pulled the wheel to the right and rolled my wheel into one of these boulders. The wheel ripped and the rim scrapped along the road.

I do know how to change a tyre, but I panicked for a moment. I had no phone and my French is pas très bon. So I prayed. On an Island where almost all the towns are named Saint-something, God must be around somewhere. And you know I was feeling quite religious, I’d been saying ‘merci, merci’ all day.

I always believe in moments of disaster that God is involved, that he is trying to teach me some lesson or punish me. I hardly ever admit that this is not really divine intervention; this is a spectacular human blunder.

A minivan moving in the opposite direction stopped and four or five people got out to see what had happened. I asked if any of them spoke English and one stepped forward to help. The men amongst them helped me take off the wounded tyre.

As one bent down to turn jack, he asked ‘is you married?’. His eyes were dark and his lashes long, and – other than the safari hat he had tied up under his chin – he was well dressed.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Ah,’ he said, and looked up from under the brim of his hat. ‘This man,’ and he gestured to a friend standing next to him, wearing running shorts that must be un peu plus petit than his swimming trunks because his tan line was clear across his thighs, ‘is looking for a pretty wife. And he is a very good driver.’

When the biscuit tyre was on the car and it had been lowered off its tiptoes back onto the road, I turned away from the volcano and made my way slowly back to the hotel.

The rental company confirmed that I was responsible for righting the damage, and asked if the whole car ‘was kaput?’ I told them no, but I was.

This trip was meant to be about the culture, not about la voiture. But the garage would have to wait until the morning.

I bought myself a croissant and an orangina and sat for a while on the black beach in Saint Leu. Then I went to meet Jean again to find out what my timetable of shows would involve.

I met one of the other journalists: Julie, from France. She was tired from her flight and her glasses were slipping down her nose I drove her back to the hotel.

I had supper at the hotel, the only advantage of which is that I can have a drink (which by then I needed) without worrying about doing further damage on the roads. And once again, I slipped into the clean sheets of my bed.

easter

This weekend many people will celebrate Easter, many who aren’t even Christian. Good Friday, the day that Jesus died for our sins. Easter Sunday, the day that Jesus rose from the dead. We rarely the question the traditions we grew up with, but then who has the energy to examine the way they live?

The Christian Easter (as many Christian festivals did) took over an old pagan celebration that marked the coming of the spring. That’s partly why Easter moves around: the moon determines its date. Easter falls on the weekend that follows the first full moon that follows the spring equinox. Christmas – overlapping almost exactly with the northern winter solstice – remains on the same date.

The old pagan celebrations used to glorify the Saxon Goddess Eostre, goddess of spring and dawn. The eggs that are now confectionery used to symbolise the fertility of the season, as did prolific bunny. It was easier to redefine old pagan rites than to banish them completely so now the egg is tomb of Jesus from which he emerged and the rabbit a sign of new life. They hid the old meanings like chocolates in the garden.

The day of the equinox is the only day you can balance an egg upright as the world’s gravity is balanced and the sun hits the equator. Here in South Africa we don’t welcome the spring. Since the equinox last week we’ve been welcoming the winter and losing minutes of light everyday to the north. Hello darkness my old friend.

Education in a Catholic school has embedded in me some need to observe lent and give up some token pleasure. For a few consecutive years I gave up chocolate, to be able to empathise better with Jesus’ deprivation in the desert.

This year I gave up my only daily drug. I went for 40 days in the desert without coffee. I am not caffeine addict, I don’t need it to start my day or get me out of bed. I have a coffee habit: one or two a day, not much more.

I love the ritual of coffee. That it gives you a chance to take a few moments out of your day whilst you make it, wait for it to strengthen so it can strengthen you. Mostly I think its effect on me is placebo, but I find it pleasant on my tongue and any va va voom it might give me is just an added (and subtle) benefit.

Legend has it that an Ethiopian goatherd discovered coffee. Noticing that his goats were practically dancing across the fields, he finally made a connection between their strange behaviour and a red berry they were eating. He tried the berry himself, and though he found it bitter, he also found that it gave a new lease of energy. The goatherd told his wife and she sent him to tell the local monks of his discovery.

The monks condemned the berries and threw them onto the fire. Their delicious aroma as they roasted filled the abbey. Curious, the monks raked them from the ash and distilled their flavour in hot water. The resulting drink kept the monks up at their prayers through the night without needing sleep. They were pleased to have found something to enhance their piety.

So the link between coffee and faith is older than you might think. On Easter Sunday in the morning, before I break bread with my family, I will stand at the oven and brew a coffee, breath it in before I take a sip, and then wait for its grace to move through my veins.

I tried a red cappuccino instead. I don’t really recommend them, it tasted like how I imagine ripping open a rooibos tea bag and chewing the leaves would taste if you washed them down with warm milk.

I’ve seen coffee served in tall glasses instead of china cups: black liquid with a white collar. The white collar is the symbol of religious covenant, it separates the vicar and the priest from the secular worlds.

Coffee is the drug of goats. Jesus is the Lamb of God. We feed our children the symbols of fertility and we rarely thank the lord.

Happy Easter

Hello darkness my old friend

Today is the equinox. Equal day and night, twelve hours of the sun shining straight at equator. And then where there was shadow there will be light; and my days will sacrifice their minutes to my nights.

Lions, and Wizards and Bars, oh my!

Last Saturday night, after spending an evening (but not a penny) in the Grand West Casino, I ended up in the relatively new Lion’s Head Bar on Bree street. Sitting in the bar there is a bit like sitting inside a navy submarine: the walls, the floors, the chairs and tables, and the bar are all a stark shade of grey. (Just the one shade of grey.)

The bar serves craft beers, whiskeys and biltong, and the crowd – now the crowd were pretty cool. A lot of lace up shoes and second hand clothes, I think I found where the chilled people go to avoid the hip.

In the back room of Lion’s head there is room for gigs. And, having missed the act I’d heard of and had hoped to see, I stumbled upon the beginning of the John Wizards set.

There are quite a few members of the band and I can’t remember all their names. They looked young, standing there together. Neat haircuts – all their ears were visible – and wearing lace-up sneakers. Still at an age where their metabolisms work at the speed of their sexual appetites rather than their stomachs, their guitar bodies where broader than their shoulders and hips.

Their music is spectacularly hard to describe. I’ve never seen someone make a guitar sound so like a steel drum. It’s a fruity cocktail of african-soca-pingu-dance--disco-funk-with an occasional calypso/jazzy-two-step-beat. And there is something of Vampire Weekend to the vocals.

At the end of their set the audience were sweaty and thirsty and the Wizards packed their keyboards into their denim backpacks and headed to the bar.

I asked lead man John Withers a few questions about the band.

What are all your names and ages?

John Withers, 25, guitar and vocals; Alex Montgomery, 25, bass and keyboards; Raphael Segerman, 23 or 24, drums; Thomas Parker, 23, keyboards and guitar; Geoffery Brink, 21, keyboards and guitar; Emmanuel Nzaramba, 31, vocals and guitar; Sarah Thomas, 21, guitar.

Why the name?

Why the name John Wizards? My friends and I used to refer to sportsmen as ‘wizards’ when they had reached a certain level of skill. It’s a play off my name that Sarah came up with.

How long have you been playing together?

A couple of years.

Where did you meet?

All over the place.

Are you all from Cape Town?

All except Emmanuel, who is from Rwanda

How do you describe your music?

Inclusive

Any big influences?

Baliki Baba Bishops

When are we going to see the album?

May, hopefully

Who’s the songwriter amongst you? Or is it always collaboration?

I write the music, and Emmanuel collaborates on the songs that he sings on.

What do you order at the bar after the gig?

A rock shandy

What do you like doing on Sunday mornings?

Hiking

Dumbledore or Gandalf?

Dumbledore

Oh Baby

This is the story of a sorry young man,

I’d like to tell you, if I can,

I hope this story will serve as proof,

That he is quite the troubled youth.

He wears a thick coat all the time,

Wears this coat come rain or shine,

He’s no desire for a place of his own,

He plans forever, to live at home.

And, I’m afraid, he is awkward and shy,

He never made friends, didn’t even try.

He was home schooled by his mum and dad,

(A result of some mid-life hippy fad).

His parents, you see,

Were prone to a whim

And he resented that it affected him.

His parents were sometimes strange with each other…

His father rarely touched his mother

Since she’d given birth, dad said,

She prefers to sleep in her own bed.

His family did everything as a whole,

All three together

that was the rule.

Three chairs at the table

(they didn’t have guests, they felt weren’t able)

One bed for dad,

One for mom,

And a bed in their room for their little one.

In the mornings when they rose,

They’d strech their backs and touch their toes,

Laid their spoons next to their bowls

Left the kettle over hot coals.

Went out for a morning walk,

And of the important thoughts they’d talk.

(The walk was part of his home-schooling,

And while they were out, their breakfast was cooling,)

They slept, they ate, watched TV,

Never alone, but as a three.

Then his father stopped coming on their morning stroll,

He’d stay at home, on the whole.

“I’ll make breakfast,” he would say,

“So it can cool while your away.”

But he was lying,

That was rot,

When they got back it was always hot.

The young boy wondered what his father did,

There must be something that his father hid…

He demanded that his father come,

On one walk with him and mum.

His father agreed, his smile faltered,

And on that day his life was altered…

When they got home, things had changed,

Something was different, something was strange…

They went upstairs and low and behold,

All their pillows were fanned with gold

And in the smallest of the beds

Lay the goldest golden head.

His father shouted “Oh Goldi-… ummm who?

“Er what are you doing… um who are you?”

The girl woke up with a look of surprise,

Looked at papa with her bright blue eyes,

“Oh shit,” she said, “I think I’ll go…”

And she slipped out the window.

The papers printed the news,

About the intruder with golden hues,

SHE BROKE INTO THEIR HOUSE, THEY DIDN’T KNOW HOW

The story is urban legend now.

“I don’t understand it”

father said

Raised his shoulders, scratched his head.

The boy stood quietly by his bed,

His sheets still warm, a few remaining golden threads.

He lay awake all of that night,

Awake still when it got light.

His father snored, his mother was dossing,

But he spent the whole night tossing.

He was up

When they came down

They smiled

He frowned

His eyes were dark; he broke out in spots.

And became sort of sullen a lot.

His mother cooed and stroked his cheek,

My poor baby’s tired and feeling weak.

But since that night he’s slept sound,

Because he likes what he has found

In his dreams he finds the blonde

And in that dream of which he’s fond

He reaches out to touch her hair

To touch it with the greatest care

But as he’d reach out to hold her

His mother would wake him,

Touch his shoulder

“Come on son, rise and shine

Your porridge is ready, so is mine.”

He didn’t care.

Everyday

That’s what she’d say

It wasn’t fair.

It was more than he could bear.

Holi one and only

White is the colour of peace; of new beginnings and fresh starts, some even consider it to be the colour of perfection. Cricket players wear white. It is a game with a gentile history and white helps keep you cool in the sun.

If you followed the trail of white-clad people to the pit of Cape Town’s stomach on Saturday you would have found your way to the Rainbow Nation’s first festival of colour. The Holi One Festival began at midday on the Grand Parade, the city’s oldest public square; the city’s very own stage.

The city centre bakes in the heat of the day and there is very little shade. Tented bars flanked the Grand Parade where normally market stalls might be, but their insides offered little relief from the high temperatures, and they ran out of bottled water well before the peak of the afternoon.

The Grand Parade is lined with tall palm trees, whose thin trunks barely cast their outline on the concrete. The strength of the sunlight also seemed to bleach the colours as they flew around the crowd in clouds as danced in front of the DJs on the stage. For a daylight celebration of colour and love, the music hit midnight far too early – heavy base and fast beats that were too hard to move to in the harsh light of day.

On the hour, every hour those who had peeled off to the shadows and the bars were called back to the dance floor to throw their colours in unison. A countdown from 59 minutes to 10 seconds and then suddenly the air was full of coloured powders that rose up and faded to a mottled brown in the air.

Security guards dressed in black patrolled the perimeters, but even their clothes soon were soon splashed with colour. The rubbish pickers too had their yellow vests dusted green and their tear ducts laced with pink moved quietly among us collecting cans and empty powder bags, blinking the colour out their eyes.

For a while I sat with my back against the railings. On the other side there was a small boy waiting for his mother to pack up a stall of cheap handbags and t-shirts. Inside the fence the crowd was younger than at some of the grassy outdoor parties I had been to (grade 12 kids who didn’t need cars to get to the party had made it here today), but his was the youngest face I’d seen. I took a handful of pink and threw it down in front of him. He shrieked and stamped his foot on it and when he looked up he had pink freckles.

It wasn’t quite a full rainbow. Some of the colours were missing. And as the layers of powder thickened on our famous we became a homogenous crowd of dusty brown people, flecked only with the freshest of the colours that had hit us.

Only when the sun sunk behind the clock tower of the City Hall, and the Grand Parade became dusky that the colours really came to life. Without the sun to dull them, the powders became luminous.

As it got darker the wind picked up, and powder rippled off people’s shoulders like sand off desert dunes towards the railway tracks. Mysterious clues for Monday morning’s commuters who weren’t there, who didn’t see. Who hadn’t heard it was happening.

In India and Nepal, where the Holi festival originates, it is a celebration that welcomes spring and all its vibrancy. But the same winds that blew the coloured powder into the eyes of the revellers has started to shake the leaves from their branches and invite a chill into the shade. In India people run through the streets throwing colour and water at each other. In Cape Town we threw colours behind a fence.

Even now, days after the delirium of the party is over there are flashes of green powder on the pavements, and I’m sure I’m still finding yellow in my eyelashes.

First of the month and last of the week; the year Marches on.

Brightness

For those who live in the northern hemisphere where your gardens face south, the end of February brings with it lighter days and snowdrops.

February is a short month – the kind of month that has to stand on tiptoes to see over the rest of the year. August borrowed a day and never gave it back, used it to buy some ripe pears and a picnic rug and fell asleep before his dept was paid. February is short and dressed in the red. Red for luck, red for the Chinese New Year, red for the Valentine’s rose petal kisses.

There is no China Town here; a few Chinese supermarkets and acupuncturists with waving cats beckoning you in through the window.

The cat didn’t make it on to the Chinese zodiac. Twelve animals for twelve years, but the cat, the cat didn’t make it.

When the Jade emperor called a meeting to decide on the calendar, the animals had to cross a river to reach him. Deciding they were weak swimmers, the cat and the rat rode on the back of the ox. Right in the middle, where the current was fastest and the water deepest, the rat pushed the cat into the river and when he reached the shore he ran ahead of the ox to be the first at the feet of the emperor. The other eleven animals arrived, with the pig (sating hungry on his way) arriving last. The cat, wet and half drowned, missed the meeting. But on the sly rat, the cat would have revenge.

This is the year of the snake. The snake arrived to the Jade emperor wrapped around the leg of the horse and follows the dragon. Where the bold dragon marked a year of change, the snake – similar only in his scales – marks a year of steadiness and focus. Discipline he hisses.

On the eve of the lunar year only the fireworks light up the moonless sky. Families are together and houses are clean, so that the pregnant moonbeams can fall upon the floorboards as her moon belly swells. And when the moon is full, then the lanterns are lit and with them hope for the year.

Sometimes catching old boots is more fun than catching fish

Far South there are Tinmen in the East; it’s a marathon of a trip to see them.

Life in Cape Town can trick you into thinking the world is small. I climbed to the top of Devil’s Peak and turned to look at the city spread out beneath me, and like the devil himself I felt that I could reach out my hand and play with people below me, gather up the corners of the city bowl like an old tablecloth and swing it round my head a couple of times. The highways looped up and over each other like children’s toys and I could have flicked the metal cranes in the harbour way out to sea.

The heat of the morning intensified and the flies began to buzz in the air. And so I descended from the breezy heights and the green of the mountain fynbos back to the hot tarmac of the road.

Beyond Cape Town though, as the city peters out and you pass its corrugated petticoats you realise that it’s you that’s small and the world is immense.

When we left the city the sun had heated the car so that I could hardly rest my legs against the seat. I sat on my hands instead. Did you know that a car tyre turns around 394 times in a kilometre? Before we had even gone over Sir Lowry’s pass the tyres had turned over 21,000 times each. And for every time the wheels turned I felt my eyes trying to take in something else, watching the horizon, reading the street signs. The further east we went the cloudier it got; we chased the sunrise and by now it was late afternoon. The grey clouds dimmed the distance and turned the mountains into broad shouldered silhouettes. It softened the world, kindly obscuring the details from my tired mind. To see human emotion in the world around you is known as a pathetic fallacy. But this, this was just a sympathetic fallacy, and I was grateful.

Just before we turned off the coastal road we stopped by the sea and swam. It started to rain as we showered off the salt water and as we turned into Nature’s Valley it thundered in the jungle.

Hostels are barefoot places. Good hostels are anyway, in the worse or less hygienic ones people keep their shoes on. But a good hostel in a warm country has the same kind of reverence amongst travellers as temples do amongst the faithful: shoes come off.

That evening people sat clustered around guidebooks and ashtrays waiting for supper, gathered like the moths had around the lamps and candles. The moisture in the air had made their hair lift and curl around their heads, and the light shining through gave each of them a sort of halo.

In the morning I woke in one of two single beds pushed together and l left him sleeping. The rain was fine and formed a hazy curtain between the clouds and the fog that lifted off the trees. I looked out through the steam that rose from my tea to join it. And then we left and drove onwards to East London, which, by the way, is 13,925.65 road kilometres from London, UK (nearly five and a half million tyre revolutions).

Our East London landlady had fake nails and do. Her house had a small indoor swimming pool and garish orange cushions. Friends of ours found stains on the sheets and a used condom in the drawer. I kept my shoes on.

From Cape Town to East London is around 1050km. If you ran at 10 kilometres per hour (finishing a half marathon in just over two hours) it would take you 100 hours to run from Cape Town to East London. That’s more than five days of solid running day and night. You could maybe make it faster on a bike. The world record for 1000km on a bicycle is 45 hours, held by a man called Pap Zoltan. Probably a hard man to beat.

The Ironman Triathlon was conceived in 1977 on a Hawaiian Island. During a debate about who were the fitter athletes – swimmers, runners or cyclists – U.S Navy Commander John Collins suggested that they find out by combing the three existing long-distance challenges: the Waikiki Rough Water Swim (3.86km), the Around Oahu Bike Race (185.07km) and the Honolulu Marathon (42.2km).

The man who finished the race first would be the Iron Man. On the bottom of the pages of race rules that Collins gave each of athletes he wrote, “Swim, Bike, Run, Brag for the rest of your life.”

In February 1978 15 men started the race early in the morning and 12 completed it. In January 2013 there were 3000 entrants for the East London half Ironman. Half the distance of that first Hawaiian full, but a gruelling course.

And so the Athletes gathered. Never have I seen so many smooth tanned calves. Never have I been around so many men whose legs were more hairless than mine, and I am by no means feral. Though I felt it then.

There didn’t seem to be much that the athletes had in common. There were a few muscle-bound – straight jacketed by their own biceps, some women, some older men, those who did and those who didn’t look svelte enough for the months of training an event like this must involved. But what they shared wasn’t corporeal; it was something deeper…

Would you do an Ironman, knowing what they involve? If for a moment you are hesitating, if your eyes are drifting across your head and your wondering, if – god forbid – you start to nod your head as you think it’s feasible, then you’re one of the ones lost to challenge. The Ironman is not about winning. It’s about finishing what you’ve started.

I can’t explain what it is that appeals to the modern man about this intensive kind of physical challenge. We live in an era where we don’t have cultural rites of passage that take us from childhood to manhood. We don’t hunt, we don’t slay lions, shoot arrows at wild beasts. We have no real coming of age moment or chance to prove our virility. And we’re a principally sedentary society – something must get pent up.

Marathons and other endurance races are one of the only ways to prove that you have extreme physical toughness in a non-aggressive way. And yet they share a kind of morbid fascination to a spectator as bare-fist boxing does: who will bleed, who will live, who will die.

The selection of restaurants in East London won’t satisfy a true gourmand. But the night before a race all you look for is a good feed of carbs and then you pray for sleep. But sleep is like the finish line, elusive, part of wakeful dreams.

That morning we woke in the dark and he left me sleeping. I went later to watch from the other side of the barriers. I watched as waves of bodies ran into the sea and bobbed like the heads of a colony of seals. I watched wetsuits being pealed off and I watched bicycle wheel disappear off towards the N2 and King Williamstown.

By the time you really see anyone’s faces the sun is hot and hours are passing. Four hours or more into an intense race the athletes have legs of lead and iron wills. The sun cream that some kind volunteers were rubbing into their shoulders was sweating out, like warhorses with sweaty white flanks.

Some came over the finish line and threw their hands up; others came over and dropped their knees down. Many moved slowly back towards the sea, where it had started that morning, and soothed their hot bodies in the cool water.

Bodies take a while to recover after such an excessive workout, days sometimes. Dehydrated muscles take a while to rebalance their minerals and can involuntarily twitch at night, but it passes. The pain is temporary the glory is forever.

We broke the journey back to Cape Town up a little, broke it up into three. Then we drove up over Sir Lowry’s pass and through the Cape Flats. When we drove back into the city I saw the Waterfront – the least authentically African part of Cape Town, with its foreign crowds and its German Ferris wheel. The Cape Town wheel turns four times in 15 minutes. If the wheel could move, four turns would take you about 500m. Travelling 1km would take about half an hour. Travelling from where the wheel is in the V&A to East London would take about 20 days. That’s bound to make you dizzy.

In search of good fortune.

I am addicted to my horoscope. I read it almost everyday, impose meanings on the mundane where they seem to fit and discard what I don’t feel (or want) to be relevant. I’d say that I’m pretty grounded, I’m up to my knees in the earth, and I think of it as a harmless sort of hobby. Much of human energy is given to imagining the future. So no wonder the thought of a future revealed is irresistible…

I did once have my palm read. It was a summer party and we’d all dressed up as hippies or drifters and pinned flowers in our hair. There was a palmist there, offering two-minute prophecies. I didn’t feel too persuaded that she possessed much of a gift, nor that some little imp sat perched on the hoop of her earring whispering my fate into her ear. So I hadn’t paid much attention then, but I have since felt the occasional impulse to have my palm read again. The urge returns when I face complicated decision. And here I am again, at the beginning of a new year and at a liminal stage of my life, thinking about it again.

I don’t want to go all ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ and disappear off to Bali but I did get a number off a neighbour, a probable (possible) palmist, and was told to send a message. I texted the number:

“Hello. Do you do palm readings? K”.

Two days later an answer return, as if from nowhere.

“Hiya, no I don’t. I work through mediumship hun. x”

It was a shame; I liked this friendly-message sending stranger.

I’ve seen a gypsy wagon on the Brighton peer. I thought about getting the train there and had visions of myself roaming the Brighton lanes in the drizzle looking for a chalked up sign saying someone would tell my fortune. But neither that, nor text-messaging mediums fits my imagined meeting with a fortune-teller.

In films I’m sure I’ve seen pink-cheeked girls, hot from summer sun and flirtatious chases down the beach, stumble through a curtain and try to catch their breath as a dark skinned woman with tumbling curls of ebony hair told her of her future, usually of love.

Over the years there have been many famous psychics. Cheiro, an early 20th century Irish clairvoyant and one of the most famous of palm readers, was followed by people such as Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde. He learnt the skill in India, where he met his guru, and studied a book whose pages were made of human skin. Marilyn Monroe had her palm read by a man in a turban in a Beverley Hills Hotel. Now there are more mystics than ever, you can have your future predicted through your computer screen.

Palm reading has existed for thousands of years. Coming from lands in the east with dark-eyed, nomadic gypsies. Gypsy women became known for the tarot cards and crystal balls they used, but they also read faces, palms and tealeaves and palms. It is a skill that has been used by Aristotle and Alexander the great. And Darren Brown.

Our fingerprints we are born with. They form when we are no bigger than a plum in our mother’s womb and we keep them all our lives. They change less than our names will.

A man’s individual character is writ in his hand, so they say. My hands are broad. My sister’s are dainty. My hands are made shaped for kneading bread or digging for potatoes than for playing a piano; that much I can tell you by myself. Our hands are the most dextrous part of the body. Character and daily habit must therefore work itself into the creases; deeper even than the wrinkles on a face.

My history I could have read off my palm, but what about my future?

Here is the problem that I find hard to reconcile. If you can read a life-path off a map on a hand, or a map in the stars of the sky for that matter, then that path is predestined.

There. If my destiny is on my hands then can it also be in my hands?

I already read into the semantics of the world. I am recreationally superstitious; I pick up pennies, count magpies. I found a three of hearts on the pavement last week and I put in my pocket. I haven’t worked out its meaning yet, but I feel it must have one.

And now my intuition tells me not to find out what life has in store. My fear is that I’ll believe too much and then indirectly make it true. If it were possible to find a palm reader who is persuasive, then I would be sure invest some faith in what they say. And then I might be at risk of making things happen in the wrong pattern.

If, for example, I was told that a man in red would break my heart, I might be tempted to avoid the man who drives a red car, wears a red hat, red shirt, red tie. But maybe the man in red is supposed to be a great love of mine that might have been worth the heartbreak. There are many things in life that will cause us pain. We don’t each have the foresight to know what is good for us. Pain is sometimes good for us. I don’t want make the mistake of trying to avoid it, or know its coming.

Anyway, the future is a lonely place if you’re the only one who’s there. Better to stay here now. Until I rush with flushed cheeks off the beach into a gypsy wagon I will struggle through my personal little journey blindly, feeling my way forward with my hands.

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