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Island Blog – Birthday, Trees, Luck Dragon.

Today is Friday 13th December. I know you know that. For some, both the date and the day bring collywobbles. Such a lost word, and a good one. Moving on. It is memoric for me, for our family, because it is a birthday. This boy was born in a frickin snowstorm and in an old folks home on an island because that is what there was. He spent his first few days in Matron’s bottom drawer. He survived all of that and is now a spectacular man, husband, father, although I leave his family to qualify any of that.

As for us, the we in Africa, in the sunshine, far distant from the birthday man, from the minus degree thing that’s going on in the homeland, we moved easy. An early walk, barefoot and skimpy clad to the Indian Ocean, to watch the Luck Dragon/ big dog bound and bond with a load of other dogs and owners as the whapshuck of light-lit waves, the height of walls, pounded onto a slop sand beach. Boom, and boom as the cusp curved and smashed against shell and stone, rounding into gentle . Such is a massive ocean, whispered in, or blocked by the resolute rocks of centuries, and the ocean will respond, raunchy and irritable, banging against resistance, with an attitude I wish I had learned.

We did our own work for a while, a morning while. Let’s walk again. This time among trees. I get that, the need for trees, and not the scrub trees of the bush, bent into an apology, but the huge wide-spread oaks and fever trees and pines and others with fat trunks and an eye on the sky. It’s Friday and we just can go, permission given. And we do. We load up the Luck Dragon and we head for the trees. It’s a drive, traffic is a Friday thug, but we get there and we walk through the space and the silence and the water and the trees and we forget the traffic and the tension and the demands of life and we grow silent. We watch the Luck Dragon welcome every other dog, enchant everyone who sees his smile and his permanently wagging tail.

And we drive home, the echoes of our time under the trees, beside the water, within the peace, still holding us in stasis.

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Island Blog – Drifting, White Teeth and a Cobra

I have been wondering, to be honest, why I sort of float through the days In Africa. Heretofore, I would not have defined myself as ‘floaty’, although I definitely can be at times, as if I have momentarily lost my way, looking about me in the hopes that my way will de-mist itself and reveal. Those times might have occurred in vast, and, as yet, unvisited, railway stations or when I walk up to the woods behind my home and can’t remember why until I do. The former is understandable. I am a very small and lost old woman in what feels like a panic zone and the only way to remain upright and in control of my luggage is to stand well back whilst I mind the gaps. The latter is considerably more pleasant. After all, I am at home (ish) and it is a simple task for me to turn, return to where I was when i chose to go up into the woods, relocate my purpose which is always on the other side of a doorway, and begin the process again.

There is no such logic in Africa, not for me. I believe it is because I am constantly awed, by the people, the languages and their percussive melodic phrasing, by the build of summer colours, smells, sounds and the suddenness of encounters on pavements, beaches, everywhere. Let us say we are travelling somewhere to get something. A perfectly normal thing. In the passenger seat I observe that very few drivers indicate. In fact, I wonder why the car manufacturers bother with the expense of indicators, so infrequently are they employed by the driver. A car, truck, fire engine, police car, woman, man, black, white, just drift left or right as if there were’nt another 450 vehicles swapping lanes all around them. There seems to be no car rage at all, if you don’t count the swearing within the vehicle nor the swerving and a lengthy comment by the car horn.

I’m watching bougainvillea scoot by on a high wall, crisped up with very sharp, security, knife blades, hibiscus the width and breadth of a small Scottish cottage, palm trees holding fragile bird nests, black faces, white faces, sun-burned skin, half naked tourists, the flash of white teeth in black faces: pavements too sizzly for dog paws, boats floating, ocean waves rising all turquoise and white-topped to crash down on laughing swimmers. Endless big homes, gated, locked, secured, beautified with spectacular colours; dwellings of tin and plastic, bunched together, a community. A seaside town, brightly painted, quirky, vibrant, offering fabulous food so cheap, everything fresh, great service, tiny bill. Colourful clothing. Africa. We arrive to buy the thing and I drift into the Exit until called back. I was watching the people, the movement, the whatever. I’m ok with it.

It isn’t the same as it was last time, up in Kruger Park with the definite chance of meeting a giraffe on the walk to dinner, and the absolute…….no walking after dark #leopard. Do I miss that? At first I did, but then I remind myself how completely terrificated I was just taking the puppy out for a pee in the morning. I could have met snakes of all varieties, warthogs (grumpy shits with big tusks and barely a brain between them) giraffes (don’t mess with that neck of steel). But, to be honest, none of that happened. My imagination has always got me into trouble. I can make a tiny thing into the end of the world as we know it, in a nanosecond. It isn’t a gift. So when my son called out, in this Capetown garden, whilst we played a gentle game of scrabble with no rules……oh look, a Cobra! I leaped onto the stoep, my heart playing jambells and dissonance.

Then I heard the throaty roar and saw the damn thing shoot by. Told you my imagination was trouble.

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Island Blog – A Mordant Flexibility

Any journey can be a pain in the ass, or a wonderful thing. It can also be an ok thing, which is not much, really, and not a time that will be remembered, just a ‘meh’ journey, like a crosspatch trip to the food shop, all those drivers who don’t indicate or stick to their lane, or the bus that shoots past your stop, etcetera, etcetera. I like the full word. Thing is, you never know at the outset. All you know is that you are driving from here to there, but the in between is an unknown, even if, un-trafficked up, you know it like you know your own name. There was rain, Hallelujah, and a traffic overdose. As we realised that the speedometer was not going to rise far beyond stop, and for flipping ages, we began to share thoughts. Issues arose, thoughts tumbled like cats over us, ideas butterfly-ed around the car, a Wimbledon of play and respond, as we sat facing the same way, the way of the snake of cars. You could feel the grumps from others, gringe-worthy green, puffing through slit windows, see it on the faces of those who absolutely did not want to be stuck beside the besider.

And we talked on, about thoughts on things which, very possibly, have never been thought about before, or not for a long time, at which they all woke up in delight and joined us. We discussed concepts and precepts and pets and how to break into change and what to order for dinner. In short, we flew. Subjects listed, elevated, flew, curved and landed with a stasis and a depth they didn’t have before. T’ween two like-minded humans, a journey that should take 40 minutes, but instead stretches out into double that, in that precious catch of time, of (if you like) enforced sharing, a new new can begin. It happens in the waiting, inhabiting the waiting until it eases fright muscles and begins to flex. Ok, we are late. We can do this fraught, or we can engage with where we are, and make it a new thing. And that new thing can couture a map for the next journey, define it with a fineliner. We find our way like five year old kids on their first day. Every single time.

We drove all the way there, and turned back, without achieving our goal and on a different route. Capetown traffic is, basically, a test of character, for sure. Attitude is good. We laughed at the push of humanity, the aggression, the arrogance, the fast pace we know is alive and kicking, but not one we want, nor value. You could say we achieved nothing. We would say we defined a new map.

Not bad for a Friday all subsumed with ‘deals’ and ‘offers’ and consumer beckoning and the biggest advertising push of all. That if you buy this, own this, everything around you will turn into a perfect life.

Such a lie.

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Island Blog – A Thingummy Tree, and a Surprise

Another lovely warm morning, too hot, actually, to read my book in the full sun. I look to the Thingummy tree over there, all that dancing shade and the two pigeons coo-ing on a branch. David Bowie, I think, as I take in their colourful feathers, flagrant and sparkly bright, as most creatures are in Africa. They even coo musically, more the beginnings of a melody and not irritating at all. Beneath is grass trying to grow, elephant grass, tough and fat-leaved, but failing somewhat in the growing palaver. Mostly, I notice, there are ant mounds, wee ones, not termites, little tumps of sand with an air hole I am careful not to block with careless step. I consider what to lie on that close to the ground. I’m thinking snakes, beetles, all those other crawly things, none of which I mind as long as they don’t sting or bite me. I haul out a yoga mat, towel, pillow, book, glasses and the ever necessary water bottle, and lay down. All goes well for sometime, the shade most pleasant, the David Bowies hopping around me, the flying things remaining in the air. So far so good. I had just finished The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, a fabulous read, and, becoming completely captured by Marjam Kamali’s The Stationary Shop of Tehran, I failed to notice that something was crawling up my body. It, or she, had managed quite a distance over clothing, and it wasn’t till she arrived on my shoulder, and tickled, that I snapped my head around to look. It’s always wise to look before swatting in Africa.

The sun was almost blocked out and I kid you not. This insect is huge. 2 inches long, an inch deep, scaly and brightly striped, red and black. She was, I swear, as startled to see me as I was her and, I confess, I did swipe her off, apologising as she plumped to the ground beside me. She took a minute to gather herself and then, snail-slow, no hopping, she began to wander into the bushes. She is a female African Great Grasshopper, at least seven times larger than the male and spectacular to look at. Our encounter, albeit harmless, kind of put me off lying there like bait. I read the same page twice, darting looks over my shoulder and jumping at every tickle. Ridickerluss, I know, I know, but once the thinks think me, I am done for.

I had made a promise to myself on the yesterday, I remember, and when all my hearty thoughts rushed in like I knew I had to push them away and just go. I couldn’t take a bag, a house key, anything pinch worthy, particularly not on a Tuesday when dawn rises with a lot of noisy lid closing as many poor folks, knowing it is bin day, riffle through old rubbish to find whatever they can to eat, to sell, to repair, to make into something. Not a day to be leaving a bag on the beach, even if it is always in sight. Starving folk run fast. So, cozzy on, shorts and a sun top and the always bottle of water and off I set, marching down the road towards the Ocean. Skies scud skimpy clouds, the blue endless and white teeth flat welcomes and greetings from black and coloured faces. I met the fire service attemting to stem a burst water main, a massive burst of water arcing way over my head, and we joke about me getting soaked so ‘move quickquick Ma, Ayeee!’ The car guard who watches over parked vehicles wishes me a lovely swim, and on I go, ducking under the road, dodging piles of kelp, through the freshwater flow from the Flei (marshland) and onto the white hot sand. No more thinks are thinking me as I strip off and head for the waves. The water is warmly glorious, the waves lifting and lowering me, the salt delicious on my skin. I swim a length or two, then sit dripping myself dry in no time. I watch other swimmers, dogs in the water, children at play, and I smile.

I surprise myself sometimes, when the thinks don’t think me and I take action.

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Island Blog – Sun, Rain and I will Tomorrow

It may appear that, now I’m in Africa, I have less to say. Of course, it isn’t that, not at all, but more something to do with the sun, the beckoning, the light that opens up a day into a ‘let’s go’. It’s the same back home when the sun finds it in himself to show up at all, and we all respond, leaping into shorts despite the freezeback wind and the threaten of clouding somewhere over by. Kids want the beach, a picnic, play and more play, and thus everyone and anyone heads for the sea, or the river, or the pool if there is one in the vicinity. So, my musing will have it, sunshine and water are strongly linked. Very few will choose a cinema matinee or a visit to Great Aunt Granola in the nursing home. Not on a sunshine day. The film will show again, and she can wait a day or two as it is sure to rain tomorrow or the next, as it always does.

In Africa, rain is a blessing, and a challenge to drivers. I imagine it is also a challenge to those who live in townships, all those roofs fashioned from sheets of tin if you’re lucky, bits of tarp or bin bags if you’re not. But rain brings instant life to soil, fills water tanks, cools broiling bodies, eases tension. The drivers, as aforementioned, however, panic. Slippy roads stultify and confuse, it seems. Capetown, and other places, go slow, and I mean very slow, so that traffic convergence becomes traffic hesitation. Windscreen wipers swing like crazy and every other vehicle flashes emergency lights at any opportunity. It’s hilarious, unless you’re in a hurry, and a bizarre to me who knows rain in every state from slightly slippy road, through compromised vision to roadside puddles deep enough to sink my mini.

I walked again today down to the Indian Ocean. Sounds so majestic. She is warm and wild, her waves no hawking spit but rising above the horizon, backlit by sun, clutching kelp and shells in her grasp, to boom, and I mean BOOM onto the wide arc of white sand. She has a lot to say, and loudly. I felt it today as I read my book, the sonar wave shooting up the beach through me and knew I was connected, as we all are to all things, all the wild things we have, unfortunately forgotten in our rush for worldly gain. I watch dogs scuttle and dash in and out of the waves, their humans wandering besides. I see kite surfers fly above the crests, and canoeists paddle out to investigate rock formations. I hear children laughing as they tumble and shriek through the shallows.

My walk here takes me through an underpass, meaty with kelp-throw, a rush of freshwater strictured after big moon tides and very gloopy to navigate. Then I meet the ocean, flooding like she has a load of tongues, no two with the same sweep. One ankle deep, the next losing most of my legs to the swirl. I chuckle. My feet are safe, sand locked, my frock hem-soaked. I read a while, watch a train chortle by just above my head, wish I had brought my swimsuit. (is that what it’s called these days?)

I will tomorrow.

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Island Blog – An Attudinizing Aptitude

Over the past couple of days, I was felled, like a tree, all credit for this going to a dodgy prawn. It isn’t often I can miscorrelate day, tree and prawn in one sentence and it makes me smile, not that I smiled much during the fall. However, in spite of the inner turmoil of collapsa dendrobranchiata, and of being thoroughly compromised by what was sorting itself out beyond my control, I knew, as I always do, that I have a choice. Not, t’is true, over much on a physical plane, but over everything on a mental one.

I gave in and up to it – had to – no choice in the face of a dodgy prawn attack, weaponless against the might of the small curly pink thing with vengeance on its mind. Who would have thought something so insignificant (or so I thought) could fell a big tree like me! I know the species has been around for about 400 million years, and could, during those endless hours of floating about oceans, have planned the odd grab for vengeance against being fished and dished, but the resulting result seems disproportionate to the size of the small curly pink thing.

Thankfully I was not on a plane, nor caught in traffic, nor alone. I was safe and cared for whilst the process processed, slowing down the hours and making me feel like it was never going to stop its onslaught. And, all the while, I decided my attitude. This will not last forever, I told myself, even though Forever suddenly looked like a million miles long. I am not alone, although I was, as life, sans dodgy prawn attack, continued outside my bedroom door, and merrily so. I am safe, I said, feeling about as unsafe as it is possible to feel. Choose, I said, probably out loud, as the stagnant silence around my sick bed needed a riffle through, and I did, choose.

Recovering, this thinks me. I know that my attitude to absolutely everything decides absolutely everything, whether I face the mild irritation of an encounter with bad grammar, or a disaster of disastrous proportions. I believe this to be one of my skills, learned over endless hours of floating about life’s oceans, and I am so very thankful that all that floating learned me such power, not over anyone, not over everything, not over that which is much bigger than I (like a small pink curly thing), but over myself. To allow what is happening to happen, without reacting to the piddly stuff, such as the ‘my way’ of doing, seeing and approving’ is peaceful relief, because I don’t even need to take a second look at any of those.

In the process of sickness, uncomfortable, inconvenient, alarming, discombobulating, I can choose to smile, albeit weakly. I can accept help and kindness. I can admit to pain without drama, humbly and honestly, simply allowing the process to process. The power in that will ‘well’ me again, and it has. I have been reminded, again, of my ‘weakness’ against such power – power such as sickness, world issues, bad grammar, small irritations, upsetting changes, all of these and more, and this ‘weakness’ fits me rightly in the world. What empowers me, however, even against a small curly pink thing with vengeance on its mind, is my choice of attitude.

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Island Blog – What You Say

I’m seeing a lot of smelling pistakes in Africa, many of which hilarious me. ‘We are sory but your fury friends are not aloud in our cafe.’ Thank goodnes for that, thought I. Fury friends, silent or aloud, are not easy company over coffee on a sunshine morning. Another reads ‘WARNING! Fasten bra straps and remove dentures. Very bumpy road.’ A third, outside a guest house ‘ Wanted – Guests to sleep with us. Thrid one free.’ There are so many of these misspelled, or just quirky, invitations, restrictions and warnings that to find one which makes sense, makes no sense at all. And it thinks me.

Back in the day when Great Britain owned half the world, doing nobody much good in the end, language and its correct usage was of great importance, any incorrectness tantamount to treason. Now, with the flow of peoples across the world, very little of which is ‘owned’ by foreigners, great or otherwise, language is learning to tango, to flex, to shift in construction, tense and meaning. Adverbs fly about the sentence, pronouns plural and twist, and everything from an ice cream to the discovery of a new star is ‘Amazing’. I am glad of it, having been made to stand in the corner for mispronouncing or misspelling or misconstructing my language enough times to wish me I spoke ‘monkey’ instead. I. learned that instead of listening to what I was saying, they were listening to how I phrased it. If I sounded like a young Princess Elizabeth, no matter that there was no flex, no tango, no music in my rendition of whatever poem or piece of literature I was outlouding to the class, I gained a star and a smile and a well done. One girl, Henrietta, O Du’Banjo, daughter of an African king, cried her eyes out after many stern corrections and it furied me. Her voice was her language, her phrasing that of her people, and this English teacher was endeavouring to dilute it. All wrong.

In South Africa, if I were to announce I was expecting twins, which I obviously am not, the delighted response would be ‘Is it? Oh Shame!’ I can just see my English teacher faint clean away at that. Admittedly, it makes no sense to me either, but that’s not the point. How they say what they say out here is how they say what they say and grammar be blowed. However, and there’s always one of those, I adore the English Language, am a committed student keen, always curious, delighted at the discovery of a new but ancient word, fascinated and excited by everything about it. My language is my work and my passion. But that is for me and not for everyone, nor anyone else who doesn’t enjoy it as I do. I read the wrong there,they’re,their and snort, I do, I admit it, but if someone (most people, actually) misuse the there/their/they’re in a sentence, I still know what they are saying, and anything beyond a private snort would be judgement, and on a person. So not my thing.

My granddaughter once announced, confidently to me ‘ Granny, I love dogs cos they don’t.’

I heartily agree.

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Island Blog – A Spangled Lacuna

In every life a little rain must fall. The trouble is that we, as negatively wired humans, tend to collect up all those rain days until the sunny ones get tired of shining, and all but disappear. Folk around us can say ‘Look on the bright side’ until our ears deafen, but it makes little difference. They can also suggest that we focus on the positives, but blind inside our fog or darkness, we just cannot find them. Am I a ‘glass half full’ person, ‘glass half empty’ or ‘no glass at all’ person? Oh please…….too much platitudinosity! In truth, we are all three of those, at times, all of us, even the ones who exhaust us with bounce, their faces always lifted, the lie a cloud in their eyes. None of us are Either, nor Or, Black nor White, for we are both at times. A million colours and a million greys at others. And to feel disallowed when wallowing in black is to feel corrected, fixed and re-routed which does little, if anything at all, to help. We long to be heard, listened to, accepted, befriended, our injuries noticed and respected, and only then can we decide to lift our heads from the ground. It is not easy to find such support outside of a counsellor’s cocoon, because, bizarrely, we all feel the need to elevate a ‘fallen’ one, seeing it as encouragement and inspiration when, in truth, it only serves to highlight the state they are currently in, stuck in mud, pale and lost, beaten down by life.

When I, rarely, flip through social media, I notice there are a gazillion ways to lift my spirits, wisely worded, some ancient, some contemporary, and they all make perfect sense. To my mind, that is. But this is for others, surely, not for me down here in the oubliette. I can see the daylight, yes, long for it to surround me as it seems to surround everyone else in this whole coloured-up world, but I cannot reach it. I am unworthy of this light, obviously. The platitudes and uplifting phrases are as irritating as bluebottles around my head, buzzing out my failure to keep above ground. Until, that is, my eyes adjust to the dark, until I can smell my own decay. I might look back on my life already lived and recall a flash of rainbow, a shift of perspective, and remind myself that I played a leading part, and I played it to the very best of my ability. It was I who made that choice, that decision, took that first step, activated a change. Nobody else did. It was all mine, and still is. Yes, I made mistakes, some ghastly, but I made something happen from nothing. My head lifts as the sun glides overhead and I feel the warmth brush my face. My shoulders soften, my mind gentles, the tanglewire now compromised. Yes, I have been weakened by this decline, but I am stronger too, because I am done with this darkness, and it is I who found my way here, and I who will raise myself up again, with new thoughts, a new energy, singular and vital.

It is precisely because I have become lost in this lacuna, that I have learned just how strong I am, how resilient, how much I want this one life to be all it can be. Others’ lives impact on my own, of course they do, and some have taken all I can possibly give, too much in fact, I gave too much. What was it that led me to give myself away, to believe that, in doing so, I could ‘fix’ all their manifold human problems? We are taught to give, are we not, that to be ‘selfish’ is to be a ‘bad’ person? We are also taught that everything healthy grows from self-love, without which we cannot effectively and wisely love others exactly as they are. If, however, we build ourselves from the amount of love we are given, and that is often lacking, we tell ourselves we don’t deserve it, anyway. We are easily hurt, put down, can feel judged and misunderstood, awkward, unseen, unimportant, invisible. Just as in the oubliette.

I see a rope, one I hadn’t noticed heretofore. The spangle-light dances off rocks, footholds. I rise and stretch my limbs, turn my face to the sky, and begin to climb.

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Island Blog – The Now People

November 11th and the Christmas Tree is up in the shopping centre. I know that Africa runs two hours ahead of the UK, currently, but this big-ass glitzy tree did stop me in my tracks. I am no sour grapes on this or on any other marketing decision, swallowing them and allowing a timeline settlement, plus the subsequent period of indigestion. In my day, this. In Nowday a very different this. Old people did it one way. The Now People do the same thing very differently. But do they, I wonder, in their hearts? Is this what the Now People want, this massive pressure on purse strings and expectations; the ghastly thought of all those hideous relations determined to arrive for the feast, with a suitcase full of grumbles and judgements? I sometimes/often hear folks my own age, teeth long gone, arches sunk, bewhiskered and still hoping their yesterdays will get better talking about the Now People as if they hadn’t a single scooby about how to live, work, raise children, break boundaries. None of us did, by the way, not one. We all fell at the first hurdle, and the second, and some of us, I included, fell at most. They got higher, that’s why.

Materialism used to mean, just saying, the gathering of cloth for a sewing class. I remember the feel of cloth, the weight of it in my palms, the soft ticklefinger of backthreads, the clogs and shawls saga depicted in the pattern. I thought of the initial design work, the dreaming and thinking, the thin lines spidering between one truth and another’s; the lift of a paintbrush or pen, the subsequent push of a needle point through virgin cloth. I saw the dying process, the scrape of lichen off magma rocks, salted and blasted by story winds from pole to pole. The beginning of mythos. I wonder about stories now, hoping, and I do hope, that the Now People ask about our time and the time before and before and before, because how life is for them in all that really matters, is not so different.

It is people who matter, not things, although things, and their acquisition, do seem to have topped the charts these days. On our yesterday wine cruise, through beautiful vineyards way up in the sharp-stoned mountains in an old tram with wooden seats, an open bus, also vintage, and ending on a trailer pulled by a more than vintage tractor (just like the one we used in the days of Tapselteerie), we met people. Guides, sommeliers, tram, bus and tractor drivers, waiters, other wine tasters……oh we laughed and talked and learned and said farewell. The dynamic day was done. We had tasted the best of South African wines, learned how one wine-grower amalgamates grapes, how another whose land stretches from sea to high peaks, plants vines to work with salt, with clay, with wind, with sun, with shade. But, the memories sugar spun into those encounters are what remains, because they are animiate, animated, alive, and inspiring. I watched black faces, white, coloured, bejewelled, simply dressed, awkward and easy, all smiling in the vine-world sunshine. I will forget the wines long before I forget that laugh, that smile, that little conversation with two women on the bench in front of me.

In my perfect world, life would slow down, marketing would calm its britches and those who demand complete ownership of workers in the workplace would be required to swap shoes with those souls for one year. Just one should do it.

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Island Blog – I Just Need To Be Me

I was scared, I was. The thought of an airport, just the one was enough to skirmoil me, and that was just Edinburgh. Just. Edinburgh. Change enough. For starters, I had to have the right suitcase, hand luggage, shoes, coat, stuff in handbag for all possible sniffles, awkwardness, etc. At home, I had fretted a lot about the weight of my big suitcase. I knew, yes, 23 kilos. The conversion still confounds me, being a stones and pounds girl. Noneltheless, I weighed myself, stepped off, picked up seriously heavy hold luggage and weighed again. 71 kilos. I am damned and going to hell. I am so overweight it’s not just embarrassing, it’s rude. There will be chaos at the check in desk and what will I do?

I flung out this pretty thing and that, which is all I could do as time had come to depart for the ferry. All the way down to the airport, in spite of the knowledge that my daughter would be seeing me safely off; in spite of knowing that all would be well, the tension built. How can a suitcase possibly weigh 71 kilos? There was no body in there, no stash of concrete, no lignum vitae sculpture, just frocks, knickers, teeshirts, etcetera. It was the suitcase itself, I decided, somewhere near Tyndrum, damn thing, four wheels and enough steel connections to hold up a small bridge. Why on earth did I buy it? Yes, it is hard shell, and yes, if I had to trundle the thing for miles I would need all those go-any-direction wheels and the pull-up handle, and the wherewithal of all of those will obviously require attaching somewhere in the bowels of the thing, but 71 kilos?? I’ll get rid of it, once the embarrassment of being told I am seriously overweight has passed, all those tutting people watching and judging and muttering, not to mention the suspicion on the face of the nice girl at check-in.

I am nervous as it gets to my turn. Big smile, eye contact, ever hopeful, keep moving, Good afternoon and how are you M’aam, she says, and I proffer my ticket, lifting, with extreme difficulty the damn suitcase onto the weight thingy. I can’t look. That’s fine she says and I look at the luminous digits. 19 kilos. Wait, how can that be? Does a suitcase lose weight? Mum, says my daughter. Did you subtract your weight after you both got on the scales?

Well, no, obviously. It thinks me. All that stress and tension, the sleepless night before flight, the imaginary fears of being refused boarding, punished and marginalised, or, worse, forced to open the damn thing in front of a whole airport, to hand over loads of frothy kit to my girl, or, worse still, to have to put it all on over whatever I was already wearing, was a ridonculous waste of energy and thought. I do try, and I am learning how, to tell myself that all will be well, that I am not an old fool. I accept that any big changes, such as flying alone to Capetown, will discombobulate most people. We all make mistakes and therein lies the choice to either berate self or to have a jolly good cackle about the whole thing. I choose the latter and this is why. One life, that’s what we have, in this particular time and place as this particular person. If we are all here by intention, not accident, then I am here to learn humour, to work hard, to find the fun in everything I do, to love others, to give freely, to be brave, vulnerable and humble. So I don’t need to get everything right. I don’t need to be sensible according to the bizarre expectations and rulings of the world. I don’t need to be organised, like her, or without fault as he likes to believe he is. I don’t need to make no mistakes.

I I just need to be me.