was practising for a tournament. Spoken for though I am, it was the most flattering opening line Iâd ever received. I asked them if my perception that Pretoria was far more laid-back than its stressed southern neighbour was accurate.
âSure,â replied a freckle-flecked blonde of tousled allure named Marli. Pausing to mentally translate from her first language of Afrikaans into English for my benefit, she continued, âBut we still have a high crime rate here. My car has been broken into so many times that now I just leave the electrical cords exposed under the steering wheel so thieves think someone else has got there first and couldnât start the thing.â Call me crazy, but thereâs something pretty cute about a woman who can hotwire her own car.
I woke up the next morning with a companion I hadnât counted on: a hangover that carpeted my tongue with shag pile and made my skull feel as if it was being tattooed from the inside. This was exacerbated by the fact that it had barely gone 6 am and I had been roused by a piano accordion. With a mouth foul in more ways than one, I peered out of the window to see a solitary jive merchant alternating between singing and whistling as he cajoled a melody from the cumbersome instrument. Unlike the Bavarian Brunnhildes one usually sees playing the piano accordion with graceful wrist movements, caressing fingers and the kind of anguished expression that suggests either infinite melancholy, polka-induced psychosis or chronic constipation, this musician brought a different energy to the instrument.
He played it more like a percussion instrument, pumping bellows with the urgent rhythm of a conjugal visit. The combination of his voice, the accordionâs joyful wheeze and his uncle-dancing-at-a-wedding shuffle stopped a commuter exiting the station. Then another. And another. The music went from being infectious to sparking a full-blown epidemic of exuberance as a twenty-strong crowd of toe-tappers gathered in minutes. Just as quickly, however, they dissipated amid glances at wristwatches and the arrival of buses. No hat had been placed on the floor as a shrapnel receptacle and not a cent had been solicited. It had been music for the pleasure of its sharing and I couldnât have asked for a better start to the day.
Nursing a stream of cappuccinos in the hotel restaurant, I mused on the idea that the drink had been named after the Capuchin monks who came up with the idea of diluting black coffee with warm milk. As caffeine and my blood stream renewed their happy acquaintance, my mind began idly to contemplate various other useful articles that had been named after the folk who had presumably inspired or invented them. You had your Stanley knife, your Phillips head, and my personal favourite, your Lazy Susan.
It was peak hour by the time I joined the traffic and crawled through the stately suburb of Arcadia, which boasts a hundred embassies in a five-kilometre radius. Heading away from the CBD, my route took me past a series of gushing fountains fed by the natural springs that prompted the cityâs forefathers to settle here.
My destination was the Voortrekker Monument. Commanding views across the city, the monument is a granite cube as high as the statue of Christ over Rio, forty metres wide and forty metres long. Designed by Gerard Moerdijk, it was reputedly inspired by the ruins of an African civilisation in what is present day Zimbabwe. Which is an odd twist for a structure that for both devotees and critics was apartheidâs holy tabernacle.
Its original raison dâêtremental was to commemorate the Great Trek, a flight to freedom undertaken by thousands of Afrikaners who left the Cape in the 1830s. Under various leaders along different routes, the Voortrekkers, as they were known, shared a common motivation: the desire to be free of British rule and the abolitionist philosophies that were gaining political clout in London.
This seminal
âSure,â replied a freckle-flecked blonde of tousled allure named Marli. Pausing to mentally translate from her first language of Afrikaans into English for my benefit, she continued, âBut we still have a high crime rate here. My car has been broken into so many times that now I just leave the electrical cords exposed under the steering wheel so thieves think someone else has got there first and couldnât start the thing.â Call me crazy, but thereâs something pretty cute about a woman who can hotwire her own car.
I woke up the next morning with a companion I hadnât counted on: a hangover that carpeted my tongue with shag pile and made my skull feel as if it was being tattooed from the inside. This was exacerbated by the fact that it had barely gone 6 am and I had been roused by a piano accordion. With a mouth foul in more ways than one, I peered out of the window to see a solitary jive merchant alternating between singing and whistling as he cajoled a melody from the cumbersome instrument. Unlike the Bavarian Brunnhildes one usually sees playing the piano accordion with graceful wrist movements, caressing fingers and the kind of anguished expression that suggests either infinite melancholy, polka-induced psychosis or chronic constipation, this musician brought a different energy to the instrument.
He played it more like a percussion instrument, pumping bellows with the urgent rhythm of a conjugal visit. The combination of his voice, the accordionâs joyful wheeze and his uncle-dancing-at-a-wedding shuffle stopped a commuter exiting the station. Then another. And another. The music went from being infectious to sparking a full-blown epidemic of exuberance as a twenty-strong crowd of toe-tappers gathered in minutes. Just as quickly, however, they dissipated amid glances at wristwatches and the arrival of buses. No hat had been placed on the floor as a shrapnel receptacle and not a cent had been solicited. It had been music for the pleasure of its sharing and I couldnât have asked for a better start to the day.
Nursing a stream of cappuccinos in the hotel restaurant, I mused on the idea that the drink had been named after the Capuchin monks who came up with the idea of diluting black coffee with warm milk. As caffeine and my blood stream renewed their happy acquaintance, my mind began idly to contemplate various other useful articles that had been named after the folk who had presumably inspired or invented them. You had your Stanley knife, your Phillips head, and my personal favourite, your Lazy Susan.
It was peak hour by the time I joined the traffic and crawled through the stately suburb of Arcadia, which boasts a hundred embassies in a five-kilometre radius. Heading away from the CBD, my route took me past a series of gushing fountains fed by the natural springs that prompted the cityâs forefathers to settle here.
My destination was the Voortrekker Monument. Commanding views across the city, the monument is a granite cube as high as the statue of Christ over Rio, forty metres wide and forty metres long. Designed by Gerard Moerdijk, it was reputedly inspired by the ruins of an African civilisation in what is present day Zimbabwe. Which is an odd twist for a structure that for both devotees and critics was apartheidâs holy tabernacle.
Its original raison dâêtremental was to commemorate the Great Trek, a flight to freedom undertaken by thousands of Afrikaners who left the Cape in the 1830s. Under various leaders along different routes, the Voortrekkers, as they were known, shared a common motivation: the desire to be free of British rule and the abolitionist philosophies that were gaining political clout in London.
This seminal
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