rezendi

They say a prophet is without honour in his home town.

( This probably means I am not a prophet. )


Meanwhile, in case you didn't hate me already, I'm having a lovely and sweltering time in Paris (and am way too busy doing so to read LJ.)

(Accidentally deleted and reposted. Don't ask.)

Last night a group of South African publishers and booksellers used my visit as an excuse to go out for a three-course meal with a selection of Stellenbosch wines and put it on the company tab. I protested vociferously, of course, but to no avail. Stupid Customer Stories from some of the booksellers:

Bookbuyer: "I'm looking for Lionel Ritchie's Wardrobe..."
(I too had to think about this one for a moment)

Bookbuyer: "Do you have a copy of James Joyce's Useless?"

Bookbuyer: "I'm looking for a play by Shakespeare."
Bookseller: "Which one?"
Bookbuyer: "William."

Elderly male bookbuyer: "Pardon me. I'm looking for a book entitled 'My Little Clitoris'."
(Bookseller, somewhat taken aback, leads him to the Sex section. He seems baffled by this. My Little Clitoris is nowhere to be found. She goes back to the desk, looks it up on the computer - nothing.)
Bookseller: "Could you just repeat the title, sir?"
Bookbuyer: (annoyed, very clearly) "My Little Clitoris."
Bookseller leads him back to the Sex section.
Bookbuyer: (more annoyed, heading for outrage) "Why are you looking here?"
Bookseller: "Er..."
Bookbuyer: "I'd expect it would be with the dictionaries!"
Bookseller: "Diction - Oh. Oh dear. You mean 'My Little Thesaurus.'"


Before dinner I built an appetite by climbing Table Mountain, which is both the symbol of Cape Town and its literal heart: the city encircles the mountain, which rises 1000 steep metres from the sea to an almost perfectly flat top (see someone else's picture.) From the lower cable car station, it's theoretically a 2.5-hour hike: I'm pleased to report that I ascended in just under half that time. There's life in the ol' leg muscles yet, even though they were already battered from cycling 50 hilly, rainy K from Simon's Town to Cape Point and back, a few days ago.

The mountain claims several lives every year, and you're not really supposed to climb alone, but I took a straightforward route up, figuring that if Reinhold Messner could summit Everest solo without oxygen during monsoon season, I could conquer Table Mountain singlehanded. As I reached the tabletop, the clouds that often line it - the mountain's famous tablecloth - were just beginning to arrive, so I only got twenty minutes of the spectacular views.

Just as I attained the top of Platteklip Gorge, I met a South African woman who (like almost everyone else on the mountain) had come up by cable car rather than leg power. "Did you climb up from the bottom?" she asked. "I did," I said. After a moment she asked the inevitable second question:

"And you didn't get mugged?"


( Crime, Afrikaans, the Cape Coloured and the townships )