My Western Front

From the promenade at Queen's Beach, Seapoint.

I was at my desk and feeling guilty for, mostly, being at it and indoors for the whole of that day. 

At 4 pm I couldn't anymore. 

I showered and then took the bus at 16h30 to the far side of Seapoint: Queen's Beach to be exact. 

From there, hugging the coastline, I walked with a bounce in my stride all of the way to Camps Bay. 

From just before its main drag, I watched the sunset, which was showing itself off. Then, dunk, it was gone.

Had fish 'n chips, grilled calamari and a carafe of white wine at Ocean Basket while scribbling in my notebook; this while intermittently observing the Camps Bay Saturday evening strip get busier as people, many of them tourists, emerged for drinks, cocktails, dinner. This as the clammy but exhilarating reek of the icy Atlantic seeped upwards from the beach, then crossed Victoria road, leaking into the restaurants and shopfronts. 

Then, away from the lights and madding crowds, I decided to walk back to town,  this time over Kloof Nek. Out of breath from the climb and over the saddle that separates Table Mountain and Lion's Head apart, straight into the bright lights and rowdiness of the city bowl. This sudden transition, not unlike flicking a light switch, from the relative darkness, silence, and obscurity above Camps Bay in the lee of the Twelve Apostles. It was like walking onto a brightly-lit stage before a packed to the gills auditorium.

Strode down Kloof Street, a fast-flowing steam of raucosness for its pulsating length, where my instincts warned me to be alert and on guard.

Just in time, I managed to catch the last 102 home to Salt River from Darling Street at 21h20. Alighting from the bus at Salt River Circle and into the hushed darkness among the softly catcalling prostitutes on Lower Main, before walking the last stretch home in the metallic light along the facade of the Biscuit Mill, still disgorging restaurant goers, still on gaurd and scanning the road, before a quick right into Mill Street, an even quicker sh'rt right into Bromwell.

The Three Feathers was already in darkness with its gates bolted, my contentious back Street quiet, me the only one on its length, before bathing in the bright security lights at the back of my apartment block. Elevator upwards, then the darkness and familiar homely scent and silence of my apartment. With its, always, jaw-dropping view over Woodstock, with Devil's Peak almost invisible as a mute hunchbacked backdrop.

Clinging to the edge of Bantry Bay, just after Seapoint, the view that most miss.

To bed with Adam Feinstein's biography of Pablo Neruda, wherein I'm approaching the end of his life and the first signs of the prostate cancer that took him from it. 

Just over 16,000 steps, my muscles strained with exercise and tiredness, almost exactly 11 km later, all's quiet on my Western Front.

Do you mind spit on your filter?

I scuttle home from the bus stop clutching my freshly printed  copy of 'What Fanon said', past the scantily dressed, spider-legged prostitutes on lower main. Greeting them in my head I cluck-cluck-mother them into warmer clothing. And home. Please, it's cold. Also in my head. And shower them in prayers.

The gentrification trees recently planted, only, in front of the Old Biscuit Mill and it's Saturday neighbourhood goods market, where the neighbours actually aren't welcome, are in full bright leaf. Even in the dark. 

I kick at the litter and stones and think that just the other day these feet were shoeing their way though Oxford, Hampstead Heath, Gdansk. Not that I'm discontent.

In the heart of the city of spires I met a guy under the bridge of sighs, my first words to him were 'how fucking romantic'. His name was Turner. Although a student, he wasn't from there. Los Angeles. We shared some Rothmans, I coughed but enjoyed. I liked his glasses and fingered his, long, hair.
Autumn in the north ('the trees are in their autumn beauty, the woodland paths are dry'), spring here in the south. I'm again straddled between two worlds.

Now, I sit in silence with the city and mountain in darkness at my back contemplating tomorrow's public holiday and a chapter's corrections to complete. On deadline. Tight. 

My heart's transplanted itself elsewhere... change is coming, fast. Straddled between two worlds, leaning keenly, strongly northwards.
Oxford.

Clickety-click

Yesterday, just before the noon-day gun and despite my claustrophobia, I took a walk around the Old Biscuit Mill in Woodstock. At most it's 200 metres from where I live.

Don't touch me there

Okay, so I'm drunk now in a Charles Bukowski-kinda way; got home and on an empty stomach opened a chilled bottle of Cape champagne (you're not allowed to call it that anymore, the Frogs got sticky and possessive) and three medium tumblers later here you have me: I've been called a cheap date before, as a 'compliment', by someone wanting to get into my pants. "All it takes is two drinks," he said, before pouring a third. "Cheers," said I.

Jumping off the bus I was surpised to find Lower Main road so quiet and deserted, except when I passed the Old Biscuit Mill: a man reminding me of one of Shaka Zulu's impis ran past in only shorts and a backpack strapped on to him like a suicide vest, but to his back, barefoot on the tar and motoring it. It's Woodstock after all.

Without a stitch of clothing on I'm sprawled on a comfy wicker chair a friend of mine loaned me indefenitely, as part of pair, on Monday. I've got them as close up against the view of The Mountain, and amongst my plants, as I can get them. I'm as relieved to have ditched my clothes as I am to see on Google that tomorrow is going to be much cooler and overcast. 

That's a profile, one of many, but so disapointing in comparison to 'reality', of Devil's Peak, leftwards from my window where, thankfully, a  coolish breeze is caressing my skin and cock. 

I'm thankful to be home and alone. Enormously thankful.