I'm still alive

Sitting in a small pool of warm light on my mattress on the floor.

Surrounded by quiet and by books, my May Day reading, and a bottle of cheap red wine and a tumbler.

I bought the plonk last night at a garish yellow on the street bottle store in Rondebosch; a friend coerced me into going with her in the rain to her favourite and extremely cheap Italian restaurant

Because they don't have a licence you're encouraged to buy whatever booze you want with your meal at the dodgy store next door. Which we did. She was so proud, like a child, of how cheap the wine was, R39 for this bottle, which she strongly recommended, that I felt compelled to buy it.

And then to drink it, over a flickering candle, just her and I alone in the restaurant, as the rain came down on a busy, even turbulent Main Road: minibus taxis honking and plying their trade in the dark, last minute pre-public holiday shopping at Pick 'n Pay and the fast food joints, people scurrying frantically between shops and across the busy road as if it was Friday night, students darting mostly alone into the liquor store to get their cheap booze for wherever they were heading, or for whoever they would soon be romancing.

That was last night.

Now, from all of the seven or so kilometres away from the Mouille Point lighthouse I know myself to be, I hear it's mournful foghorn sounding right across the city bowl; Moaning Minnie she's known as; I'm strangely comforted and snuggle deeper into both myself and the futon.

Then suddenly - it's the grinding of steel-upon-steel that makes strangers to my home lookup wide-eyed ("what's that?") - another train screeches-and-grinds to a long-lasting halt on the iron tracks in front of my building. It's the dangerous no man's land that separates Woodstock from, firstly, the highway into town, and then the harbour. The train is either going to the city's main station, not far away, or 180 degrees in the opposite direction to Simonstown.

Curious about the fog I pad across the flat to my front window. It's silently, and wonderfully, not slowly, seeping across the city and into the suburb.

Down below, Argyle Street, directly in front of me, remains a brightly lit artery on the x-ray sheet before me. Brightly lit for now, and very pretty.

I wince from the pain in my back and chest; my ribs were cracked when I was mugged at Easter.