A weekend in Haiti has no ring to it.

After dropping the Brits off at the airport and guiding them through check in - I think they were still drunk - I met the girls for dinner and drinks. Petri is very down as her first attempt at AI failed and she is worried that all her bad behaviour in the past, particularly smoking, has finally caught up with her. I try to cheer Petri up by mentioning that the world has suddenly become very precious about what our bodies need to survive and breed. For hundreds of years, Catholic women have been churning out babies in conditions that would wipe out the hardiest township dogs of today. In some of the poorer parts of Ireland, many of those women lived on Guinness, potatoes and cigarettes with no filters. Admittedly some of the children died but it was very seldom do to with exposure to too much smoke – in or out of the womb.

The mood around the table was very low and the fact that Fay is the only one of us with a Valentines date isn’t helping. Fay and the NGO man are now an item and she has become very scarce. The only reason she’s even with us tonight is because he has flown to Haiti to help with the disaster there. I have to chuckle a bit at these NGO types. They always seem to find a disaster in their field that is thousands of miles away and sounds very heroic and impressive. It’s not so fun to spend your days tromping around Khayelitsia helping Somalians who are getting shot at for trying to be entrepreneurial. No-one gives you the thumbs up on the N2 on the way home for that. But if you jet off to Haiti, then you can really claim to be saving the world. I remember a Christian family from Llandudno telling me that God had called them to evangelise in Hawaii just when the informal settlement was mushrooming over the hill in Hout Bay. Aloha and welcome to bullshit. Freud would have had a lot to say about that.

After throwing back a few Vodkas, Ciggy came up with a great idea to go away for the weekend. We all take out our Blackberrys and start the search for a quick getaway. Petri wants to go to McGregor where she can get hold of some pure Olive leaf extract and try to reverse all the ill effects her partying days have caused. Whether olive leaf extract causes her eggs to attract sperm in a shallow glass laboratory dish is another question entirely. I want Riebeck Casteel because my hormones are on fire and I need to shag something quickly, preferably a man, and I have heard that there is a bar where hunky olive farmers hang out. Ciggy wants to go to Club Mykonos where there is a casino and she can smoke her lungs out and lose all her money. For a financial advisor her gambling habit is a bit worrying. Fay provides no useful input because Haiti doesn’t count and, besides, I don’t know of any bars in Haiti that have a reliably large number of hunky olive farmers as patrons. After arguing for the next hour, Fay finally loses her patience and marshals a game of rock, paper, scissors. My last paper play wins the tournament and our fate is sealed. Riebecks here we cum. At least, I’m hoping to cum. Farmers can be hunky but twenty five minutes of well-choreographed clitoral stimulation is generally the preserve of clued-up city boys who have had plenty of empowered working women hit them over the head and complain about their technique.  

When I return home Nikki and I sit on the steps for a bit and then go back inside so I can take a shower. While lathering my body and scrubbing under my arms I am sure I hear Nikki barking. I turn off the shower and listen. To my horror she is and that can only mean one thing - I’m in shit. She never barks. I grab my towel and run into the passage and find the front door open. I am sure I locked it. I peek outside and see Nikki in a very agitated state, barking at the wall. I notice her leash lying next to her so I slam the door closed and hit the panic button. The bathroom door slams and I’m not sure if the intruders are inside or out. I run to my room and call C for backup. While waiting for C to arrive, I call Ciggy to try and reverse my mounting hysteria and while talking to her, I hit the panic button again for good measure, not remembering that it is connected to my phone line. The phone goes dead. Now I am in a complete state as I recall all the horror films I have ever seen and am convinced that my phone lines have been cut and the bad guys are still in the house. C arrives 7 minutes later to find me under the bed and the security company arrives 2 minutes after that. They go through the house yanking open all cupboards and doors hoping to catch any intruders off guard. C is holding one of my kitchen knives which is making me more worked up as I visualize him sparring with a gun-toting bandit. Once every space capable of holding a human body has been searched I realize that my handbag, cell phone and house keys are all missing and my bedroom window is wide open. Standing with a small bath towel rapped around me, imagining the intruders entering the window 3 meters from the shower it begins to dawn on me how close I came to needing one of Beehive’s rape condoms. C says I must pack a bag and go home with him and then either the testosterone or insanity kicked in. I know if I leave now, I will never have the courage to come back and sleep here alone, so I do the next logical thing and call the Iraqi body guard and he spends the rest of the night outside with a loaded gun. 

Paper, Pens and Files with an SPF of 30.

The Brits didn’t need much convincing when I suggested they change hotels, and to drive the point home I followed it up with the story of my best friend Stephen.

Steve had a business 8 years ago importing products from India. He had paid his shipping agent R14,000 to clear his goods through customs, and after waiting months for his products to be processed, he eventually threatened to go to the police if the goods weren’t released. So the shipping agent arrived one night at Steve’s house to have the final papers signed, but instead of wading through all the paper work, it was a lot easier just to kill Steve - so he did. After using a stun gun to immobilize Steve, he shot him in the chest and he died instantly. The shipping agent and another suspect were arrested for Steve’s murder, positively ID’d and released on R5000 bail. The case was then conveniently lost and there is no record of Stephen ever being alive or murdered except that I have pictures to prove that he once was, and memories of him being the best salsa dance partner ever. Lord knows the world has few enough male salsa dancers as it is.  

I need a new profession fast and the memory of standing in my long, heavy coat sweating in an over-heated, cramped pharmacy in NY trying to sell my family’s suntan lotion in the middle of winter seems more favourable than being thrown into the boot of a gangster’s car and taken for a fatal-shot-to-the-back-of-the-head spin around Cape Town.  

My family had produced a really cool suntan lotion packaged in the shape of a surfboard. It was called Wipeout and we were trying to break into the American market. There were several hundred boxes of the stuff sitting in a warehouse in San Francisco which I was put in charge of selling. I carefully plotted out the location of every pharmacy on Manhattan Island with a big red dot on my hand drawn map and each day, headed out into the snow with my sales kit. I invariably had to wait for the pharmacist to finish serving a customer before doing my pitch so I had plenty of time to go over it and hopefully I wasn’t going to make the same mistake as I did on my first 2 sales appointments. In the first one I mistakenly mentioned that the product was manufactured in Germany and was escorted out the shop by Wayne Cohen and on my second appointment, I mentioned South Africa and was asked to leave by Antoine King.  

But once I had fine tuned my sales pitch I was faced with another problem. On the display tray, I had space for 12 surfboard bottles and 12 lip balm, but there was no lip balm in the country and the pharmacies didn’t want to buy the kit without it. My brother arranged to send me some, but there was another slight problem, it had not been FDA approved. I was desperate to make some sales so I decided to fudge the details a little. Ted and I caught the subway to the airport to collect the lip balm. We remained in complete silence, as what we were about to do was weighing heavily on us. The mood between us didn’t improve as we walked helplessly around the industrial section of the airport trying to find the customs warehouse. Driving around when you’re lost is one thing, walking another. When we eventually found it, I signed for the lip balm as ‘stationery’ and was on my way down one of the aisles to collect it when the inspection officer joined me saying he would like to “see my stationery”. I just about fainted. The thought of being imprisoned in New York for smuggling lip balm into the country was all a bit too much for me. We arrived at a pallet and as he searched for number 114-HGQ6. I had already spotted my brother’s spider-like handwriting on the side and began preparing a speech denying any knowledge of this lip balm addressed to me. As the box was lowered to the ground the inspector was summoned over the intercom for a telephone call, he hesitated, gave me one last look and walked off and I avoided criminal prosecution by a well-timed phone call. Ted and I walked away from the customs office as fast as we possibly could, the incriminating evidence on Ted’s shoulder.  

Lip balm in hand, I zig-zagged my way across Manhattan on a bus and sold Wipeout to 99 different stores. Then I turned my attention to The Hamptons. Ted and I rented a car and drove out of the city with boxes of Wipeout and the kitchen table folded in the boot. We drove to the end of Long Island and set up our goods at the entrance to Montauke beach.

It was on one of these trips that we passed the exit to the North Shore animal league and after begging Ted to make a detour and a promise that I would assume all pet responsibilities, Nikki joined our family and became part of the Wipeout team. Nikki took her place under the kitchen table at the beach, sitting on Annabel’s hatbox. Ted’s ex roommate had joined us and was selling her homemade hair bands and scrunchies, fashioned from off cuts from her father’s curtain and couch fabric business. Nikki’s presence definitely ramped up sales when bikini clad girls couldn’t resist the temptation of cuddling this soft ball of cuteness.

Our bachelor neighbour Ken also cottoned on fast to the attributes of a cute puppy and borrowed Nikki for stoep sitting sessions to try increase his chances of reeling in a babe and getting shagged after an attempt to take up roller-dancing in Central Park had failed. They always said that the hardest part about roller-skating was telling your father you were gay.

By this stage my Scottish friend Trish was no longer married to her stoner American boyfriend and was now shacked up with a multi-billionaire. On our way back into the city after a selling trip, we stopped in to visit them at his Hamptons house. Trish’s new boyfriend, Tony, invented something really important which I can’t remember and helped fund Clinton’s campaign in 1991. They would fly down from NY each weekend, on his private plane, taking off from the Hudson river outside his Upper Eastside House and landing on the sea in front of his Hamptons house. After our visit Ted and I would leave waving to them from our car rental with Nikki, Wipeout and the kitchen table in the back. I don’t remember why I didn’t spend more time asking him how a businessman of his stature would get rid of several hundred boxes of illegal sunscreen.

On the eve of Trish’s 24^th birthday, Tony sent a limo to fetch us for a surprise birthday party he was throwing for her. We spent the evening rubbing shoulders with Kim Bassinger, Alec Baldwin and Calvin Kline. Little did I know that years later I would be interviewing Calvin in minus 40 degrees outside his Spring Fashion show.

I always like reciprocating to invitations, so I invited Tony and Trish over for dinner, but in retrospect it wasn’t very clever. The four of us sat around our rather versatile kitchen table facing the wall as there wasn’t enough room to pull it away and face each other. We were also horrifyingly close to the only bathroom. I was silently praying no-one needed to use it during the meal and was silently cursing Ted for feeding Nikki from the table every time she swatted Tony on his lap asking for something to eat. 

Then my family threw a curve ball and I had to fly to San Francisco within 24 hours and remove the suntan lotion from the warehouse to a secret location before their business partner, Harry, found out. To my moms horror she discovered he was selling the lotion right from under our noses and we had to act swiftly before he stole the whole shipment. On the plane flight over I was feeling very anxious as I had never driven a ten-ton truck before and I also had to negotiate driving on the other side of the road. But I needn’t have worried. The quadriplegic on the opposite isle seat to me turned out to be very sweet and by the time the plane landed and I had spoon-fed him his lunch we were buddies. His friends fetching him at the airport escorted me all the way to the warehouse, helped me load the boxes and deliver them to the new location. All very under cover stuff.

Hopefully once the Brits leave tomorrow my life will cease to be in danger and I can start applying for a sales or waitressing job. The shoot ended on a very high note at Mavericks, a high-end ‘gentlemen’s’ club with some stunning Ukrainian and Russian strippers. As we were lugging the camera gear into the club, a car pulled up and a man got out, spotted the camera, and got straight back in his car. No prizes to anyone thinking he was a married man. I spent the evening chatting to a Russian stripper trying to pretend she wasn’t sitting naked in front of me. The crew seemed to be having a fantastic time and I noticed Lindt Chocolate had slipped his wedding ring off. Ho hum. 

I preferred MC when he was a humble tree hugger.

I arrived at the office at 7am to find MC standing outside my door with a bunch of dried flowers. He wanted to know why I hadn’t responded to any of his messages and he wanted to let me know that God is starting to lose his patience. I took that as an indirect threat and called security. He managed to squeeze out “I’ll be waiting for you” as he was marched out the building. What freaks me out is that it looks like he spent the night outside my door. Oh, the fine line between romance and stalking. How I would have melted if the British director with the Lindt voice had spent all night outside my office with dried flowers – I would even have been fine with stalks – and swore to me that the creator of heaven and hell was desperate for us to make love on my desk. So my first phone call of the day was to a lawyer to obtain a restraining order against MC followed by one to the Maitland mortuary to make sure the Brits had made it there in one piece for their interview with the head pathologist. I made up the excuse that I needed to sort out filming permits so couldn’t be with them. I don’t need to have the image of a foot sticking out of a white sheet turning different shades of blue to spoil my pleasant memories of Cape Town. Thanks to their Nav., they arrived on time and are already inspecting the results of a bloody weekend on the Cape Flats.

Later I joined the crew for a live demonstration of another inventive crime prevention product dreamed up by another South African getting rich off our horrendously high crime rate. This high-end security company installs 7-8 night vision cameras at their client’s home or business. Back in the control room the images are viewed on a wall of monitors, 24 hours a day, by some poor buggers who are assigned to stare at this panel of revolving black and white images. If they see anyone suspicious on the property, the first step is to give them a verbal warning over a loudhailer. The unsuspecting intruder must nearly wet his pants when a booming voice stops him in his tracks, “You are trespassing on private property and have 5 minutes to vacate. I repeat, you have five minutes to vacate”. Now he either heeds this warning or, if unluckily for him he decides it’s a Leon Schuster prank and he proceeds, he will be sprayed with teargas and pepper spray which the officers in the control room can release. While he is still lying helplessly on the ground, the security company arrives and arrests him. That’s only if the security guard on duty wasn’t on the crapper reading a ‘You’ magazine when the intruder slipped in.

We all get into our separate cars and follow the security company director to one of the fancy houses in Clifton that sport their product. On route I notice an old orange Ford driving in front of me. It pulls to the left and then back in front of me. This goes on until hospital bend where I overtake and glance into the car and see 3 men who seriously look like gangsters. The one sitting in the back gives me a Queen of England wave accompanied by an equally spine-chilling smile. Our eyes lock.  I alert the Brits to the fact that possibly one of the gangs is making their presence felt. Toks, one of the security guys, offers me his protection and we swap numbers.

We end the day filming the presenter walking down the beach and return to our dusty cars to find the name ‘Ernie’ written on the front windshield. Great. For once, it would be reassuring if this had simply been as a result of MC trying to send coded messages or, even more benign, a leathery old standloper named Irene with terrible dyslexia who was just marking her territory. 

No sex for the Brits

This is how I like to spend my Sundays - sitting in a seedy bar in Long street talking to an ex gangster with ominous tattoos lining his arms. Thinking that the Brits may need protection, as they hang out the window filming the speeding ER24 paramedic van into one of the most dangerous areas in South Africa, the Cape Flats, I arranged a meeting with Zee. I am hoping he will escort them into the hotspots giving them protection or tip them off when things start to look a little dicey on the ground i.e. before the shoot out begins. We all order a beer and pretend this is a normal get together with old friends. But the truth is, sitting in the booth with us, is one of the Sexy Boy’s most violent ex-gang members who has now reformed after seeing the benefit of not killing people (please God he really has). The director casually asks him if he can arrange a meeting with any high flyers like Ernie ‘Lastig’ Soloman or Quintin ‘Mr Big’ Marinus. He stiffens, looks around and lowers his voice “Don’t throw names like that. You never know who you are talking to.” Yes he’s right, we don’t.

Our next meeting is with a woman wearing a bright red dress, lipstick to match and a beehive to top it all off. She earnestly takes out an alarming looking object from her briefcase. The device is a female condom which women are supposed to insert into their vaginas if they feel they are at risk of being raped. The device, made of latex and held firm by shafts of sharp barbs, can only be removed from the man’s penis through surgery, which will hopefully alert hospital staff, and ultimately, the police.

Beehive gives us a demonstration,  “It hooks onto the rapist's skin, allowing the victim time to escape and identify the perpetrator.  And I promise you he is going to be very sore down there and will go straight to hospital". The Brits are visibly shaken at the thought of being trapped in it – not a pretty vision especially with old beehive.

I tried to end my day on a gentler note reading my Cosmo magazine, which rammed the fact that Valentines day is only 7 days away up my nose. But I did garner some useful tips:

1. Don’t sleep with a guy on the first date.

2. When he says he’s not looking for commitment, believe him.

3. Don’t pretend to be interested in his hobbies – you’ll get caught out or find yourself hugging the rails of his sail boat feeding the fish on rough stormy seas.

No Lindt covered sex for me.

No Lindt covered sex for me.

I had a lovely little bout of road rage in rush hour traffic on my way to collect the docci crew from the airport. The testosterone is flying around my body at a rate of knots. Do Capetonians think that observing indicators are optional? I am indicating to get into another lane and this asshole actually speeds up to close the gap. Ahhgghhh. Do any of these people actually possess a driving license? The irony is lost on me that I actually did drive around without one for a year and took my brand new car out for a spin when I didn’t know how to operate a stick shift.

When I went home for my father’s funeral there was a beautiful red Honda ballade waiting for me in the driveway. The only problem was I didn’t know how to drive a manual car, so I sat in the driveway listening to the radio, until Bridie decided this was a total waste of a Saturday night and convinced me to drive us into town. Bridie yelled “go!” I pushed the clutch in and she changed the gear. How we got to the Dolls House in Hilbrow I could never begin to speculate, but we did. We parked the car in fits of giggles while the unimpressed waiter on roller-skates tried to take our order. We scoffed down double hamburgers and milkshakes, still on a high from our reckless drive into town. What we didn’t anticipate was getting out of the place. We approached the steepest hill in JHB with gusto but our joy ride came to an abrupt halt when we didn’t change down to 2^nd or 1^st gear. We tried for half an hour. Our hysterical laughter turned to complete disbelief when each attempt to pull the car off lurched us into the dashboard. To my relief a jogger appeared in my rearview mirror and as he began to tackle the hill Bridie and I catapulted out of the car and in a flurry of words and anxious tugs to his sweaty t-shirt managed to convince the baffled jogger to assist us.  In retrospect Bridie and I were bloody lucky he didn’t decide to drive home instead of jog.

After settling the docci crew into their hotel we had a drink in the dingy bar to discuss their shooting schedule and all the characters I was about to introduce them to. A quick scan of the director’s wedding ring finger revealed that his Lindt chocolate voice was spoken for - damn. That done I ventured to the other side of the mountain with Ciggy. The party was in the up-market suburb Constantia where I had the fortune of chatting to the only single male. He said that he enjoyed painting in his free time as it helped him relax. I imagined him on the stock exchange floor in an expensive suit, his tie loosened after a hectic day of trading, yelling out orders, and waving his arms about. This chaotic scene in my head came to an abrupt halt when he informed me he was actually a bodyguard in Iraq. I immediately lowered my voice thinking this is probably classified information he was giving me. But he seemed okay telling a complete stranger that he escorted journalists, and other mad people, through the hot zones in Kabul. Realising that he was not going to be around much longer I stopped fantasizing about our future together. Then it occurred to me that our meeting might not be such a waste, maybe we could use him in the documentary so I asked him for his number.

The upside of Brian’s wine habit.

The upside of Brian’s wine habit.

The only club I joined yesterday was the club for the tiring, and more to the point, tiresome tri athletes. After having an exhilarating cruise above Cape Town and spotting familiar landmarks, Pete deftly landed the plane and announced that there was this amazing place he wanted to show me. We walked through the most beautiful forest, following a stream up the mountain. We got to a spot that overlooked the valley and sat on a log for 2 minutes. He was pumped, I was struggling to breathe. We then ran down the mountain and sped off in his car, and before I knew it I was sitting behind him on his paddleboat trying to contribute to the trip around Cape Point. I had stopped talking long ago and was just trying to stay conscious.

I am now lying face down on my physio’s table, my head stuck through the hole, regaling my dating woes to Mary as she tries to ease my iron clad muscles. Nikki is also flat on her back at home. I couldn’t imagine going out with Pete ever again, never mind having a relationship. Nikki and I would have to sneak little naps in between each triathlon.

I really should write another film. I couldn’t dream up Risk_it, MC, Flying Pete or Camper_Take it higher, even if I smoked six joints in a row out of a mango stalk. Sorry, I walked into that one. If I smoke six joints, I am very likely to have at least one character called Camper_Take it higher and the odd Flying Pete with ‘righteous’ wings.

When I was 22 it had never occurred to me to ever write a film, but a series of chance meetings and a very eager acting partner set my pen in motion. Brian was one of the most dedicated actors I ever met in New York. Once a week he sat down and sent his headshot and CV to agents. He didn’t put them in an envelope like the rest of us, he put them inside a box of chocolates to try get anyone who opened the box to feel some sort of decency to at least call the desperate bugger. But his persistence paid off and he got his big break - as a stand-in for Matt Dillon on the film A Kiss before Dying. He was elated. While the crew set up the shots, Brian stood patiently being lit, and as the camera was about to roll, Matt would take his place to do the really fun part - acting.

During the shoot they threw a party at The Tribecca Grill downtown and Brian asked me to go with him. I agonized over what to wear and finally settled on a pair of olive green pants (cringe) and a black top from the Soho flea market. On my ride down to the restaurant on the subway, I cursed my cheap purchase and tried to snap the loose threads on my top without the whole garment unravelling. I met Brian outside, my heart pounding. This was my first legitimate meeting of anyone famous that I hadn’t accidentally bumped into on the street while minding my own business. Or should I say ‘accidentally’ bumped into on the street while they were minding their own business. I actually had an invitation to be there!

On arrival Brian firmly placed a glass of wine in my hand and marched me up to the Director, James Dearden, introducing me as his very talented acting partner. Bless Brian’s soul. He was a really generous, passionate person with no sense of holding back. My next introduction was to Matt Dillon and Sean Young and it must be said Matt was a lot more gracious than she was. Then Brian had another glass of wine and we ‘bumped’ into the director again and he introduced me to him once more. Several glasses of wine later, Brian put his arm around the director and said “Have you met my talented acting partner?” James was quite amused and answered “If you really are that talented why don’t you drop your headshot and resume off at The Mark hotel where I am staying”. Bless Brian once again.

The next morning I had a hangover that made me suspect that I had been drugged and thrown into a hotel-laundry tumble dryer at the beginning of the cycle. I sat down at my unstable kitchen table and typed a letter to James. A few sheets of paper later I mentioned that even if he didn’t have a role for me, I would be happy to get any kind of job on the film, no matter how menial.

Two days later my phone rang and it was James’ producer asking me if I would like to be in charge of cleaning Matt Dillon’s Portaloo on set. I leapt at the opportunity to start my career in film like a plucky immigrant fresh off the boat who had passed the tuberculosis test at Ellis Island. Actually, he wanted to know if I would like to be James’ assistant for the last week of the shoot in Charlottesville, Virginia. My dream about being ‘discovered’ was about to become true. Before I knew it I was on a plane sitting behind Matt Dillon grinning like a lunatic. If the pilot had seen me he would have had me escorted off the plane.

The gravity of what I had gotten myself into dawned on me at midnight as I lay in the hotel bed, wide-eyed and terrified. I had never been on a film set in my life and wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the catering or lighting guys – ok I probably could have if I had studied their actions closely enough: the one lot are cutting fruit, the others carrying huge lights around. After calling room service on three different occasions for a glass of warm milk, I finally fell into a series of nightmares of what could actually go wrong - unable to suppress a massive sneeze during a take, being mistaken for the directors girlfriend, walking into shot because I didn’t realize which way the camera was facing. Just the usual worries before the first day on a job.

I survived the first day without major mishap and managed to deliver James a hot cup of tea, in the middle of winter on a railway track with great skill. In order to fulfill his wish of English breakfast tea with honey, I kept the tea bags in one pocket and the honey in the other to ensure I had all the necessary ingredients at all times. By the end of the day my right pocket was a sticky mess.

On day 2 I arrived on set feeling happy and relaxed until the 1^st AD handed me a stop watch, Polaroid camera and a set of papers and declared I was the script supervisor for the day. Panic set in and I searched for a friendly, kind face. I settled on the 3^rd AD, a film student, and made him swear on his mother’s life that he would never reveal the fact that I had no idea what a script supervisor was. He gave me a crash course and somehow I managed to hand in a set of reports which didn’t even resemble the English which I had studied for 10 years at school.  And looking back at my handwriting I’m surprised anyone else recognised it as such.   

Having the luxury of spending all day on set with a famous writer and director eventually lead to a conversation about my budding acting career – ok I did bring it up on the third day. James mentioned that if he were to type cast me in a role, it would be of a farm girl. I had a light bulb moment. So intense was my epiphany that I could see my name in lights on a movie billboard. I knew a farm girl – Emily in  ‘A stranger arrives’. This would be the ultimate role to launch my career. So being industrious I wrote my first film to create a role for myself as an actress.

Back at home, I tackled Ted onto the bed and told him in rapid fire about my plans to write film, even though I had never seen a script in my life, and become a famous actress. I left out the part at the airport when Matt flirted outrageously with me and gave me his phone number – Ted was one lucky man; I was the loyal type. And yes I still have his number and no you can't have it. Hold on maybe I should give Matt-baby a buzz, I'm single now, but he might not remember that 30 seconds at the airport 16 years ago.

God told me to issue MC with a restraining order.

God told me to issue MC with a restraining order.

I popped into the office before meeting Flying Pete on the runway. A brown package was waiting for me at reception from MC. Inside I found a lavender stalk, a letter describing how God had spoken to him on the mountain, as he hugged a tree, and told him that we were destined to be together, and that he should be patient while I realized this to be true. I came to the very unsettling conclusion that I had a certifiable stalker.

The problem with God is that he has an abysmal record when it comes to speaking into the ears of the unbalanced. When we consider some of the things that have been attributed to God, it is very surprising that more of these nut jobs don’t credit Satan with their ideas. Consider the following. God told John Hinckley Jr. to assassinate Ronald Reagan to impress Jodie Foster. Gold told Mark David Chapman to shoot John Lennon because people would rather listen to the Beatles than go to Church. God told Mary that she was going to get pregnant without Joseph’s help and he told Joseph fuck all about this which must have really tested his trust for Mary when her belly started protruding with the Holy Spirit’s love child. He also told Osama bin Laden to organise September 11^th, although this time he called himself Allah. God has a habit of being the source of instructions when fruitcakes start appearing on centre stage.

MC is either schizophrenic or suffering from erotomania and I need to deal with him before he shoots Julius Malema to impress me. Actually, that would help South Africa, but if he did something horrendous, I would be upset and seriously embarrassed.

He included a piece of bark; I suppose to prove he was up the mountain in the first place. If there is anything I respect in a stalker, it is a respect for evidence. The last time I felt this creeped out was in New York when I was sharing an apartment with a psychiatrist from South Africa who had come to the City to save the ‘yout’. He came home in a fury one day clutching his deflated plastic globe that one of his patients had destroyed while he was trying to make the ‘yout’ believe that there were other countries in the world besides America.

But now up, up and away. Time to join the mile high club. Come to think of it, a mile up is about 1600 meters above sea level and Table Mountain is about 1086 meters above sea level. I’m not steaming up the cockpit with only just over 500 meters to play with. The winelands’ mountains are even higher. Flying Pete needs to give me a few minutes of stick and then return to full alertness before we start scattering hikers – all in a two-seater without autopilot. No, no, no, a mile up simply won’t do. I am going to insist we join the four-mile high club.