Consummatum Est

I have proof...

...that you're on your way to me (or that your on you're way to me).

T-1: We have lift off

It feels like you've been on another planet, or me orbiting some on some strange satellite. Occasionally I heard your voice, even made out your grainy pixellated image.

But this is the real thing. About bloody time too.

Houston, we don't have a problem.

Baby, we made it.

xxx

crossing the finishing line...

I love you xxx

Flying in to a city near you...

Squadron Leader... permission to land?

T-2: 48 hours

I'm so looking forward to it I forgot T-3.

Watch your back....

I'm coming to get you....

T-4: Time travel

I have achieved the power of time destruction and destroyed T-5. You are now a day closer to me...

Also rather pleased about this...

T-6: Humour is the best medicine...

... so I'll just leave this here.

Hope your neck gets better soon. x

T-7: Sick of this satellite...

...time to come back to Earth, and human contact.

Is this our shop?

T-8: At last, we have a date...

See you soon on the island of Fernandos...

Inching closer...

I think the last image should be your director's photo - you look amazing...

T-9: Trapped in Tuscany

Johannesburg's hysterical materialism, nouveau rich sensibility, frontier paranoia and aspirational culture combine in the form of Italianate architecture, sculpture and design. What is it about the putti, fountains and cracked walls of la bella toscana that inspires people (or tricks them) into believing that they have reached their highveld ambition? Who made naked boys the ne plus ultra of achievement? (Sure, the Vatican did, but not officially).

Truth is, Joburg is and always has been a scruffy, dusty frontier town, the Wild West, where fortunes are won and lost on the throw of a dice or the whim of a railroad. Personally I prefer the ramshackle side of the town, the weatherbeaten sections the Tuscanati never visit. At least there's something real about them, their decay isn't postponed, and it certainly isn't sprayed on for effect.

Still, the Tuscan theme remains a mystery. Maybe it's because the upwardly mobile consider themselves the pillars of the community?

T-10: Time is running out because...

...there aren't enough days in the world for your company.

T-11: I love it when you talk techie

Having spent a day fiddling with various knobs, it was comforting to know we were at least doing the same thing, trying to figure out compression rates, render times, frame rates, and all that other bullshit no-one trained us for but no-one's going to do for us.

Such dire work naturally switches one's mind to sex-speak, trying to generate some heat beyond the transformer resting against your thigh. Here are some ways to spice up your techspeak:

How do love thee? Let me count the pixels.
Spank my firewire.
I'd like to take a megabyte out of you.
I'm making room on my drive so I can fit your entire file.
I'm really integer, you know?
You've rendered me speechless.

Oh well, it'll have to do for now. Just that I've been pulling my wire and you double clicking your mouse for long enough now. It's time to leave the technical stuff to the geeks, to unplug the machines and, without the use of a manual, just feel our way around.

The Furry little shit in all his glory...

an escape plan....

It looks like madness, but there's a method in it...

T-12: Parallel Universes

Feel like I'm living in a parallel universe. And, of course, it begins on television...

Come back to my world or let me into yours, because I don't like this look of the galaxy. 

T-13: Hello Joburg

Back exactly 37 years later...

for he's a jolly good fellow

Happy Birthday my darling, thinking of you now, while I sleep, during the day - we'll find ways to connect ... Love Michelle xxx

T:14: A nightmare without you

I had a nightmare last night. We were at some large house or hotel, and a large event was taking place. I was looking and looking for you but couldn't find you. Somehow I knew you were looking for our child, even though I didn't know what the child looked like. A friend spoke to his child who was there. The child was only about five but looked and spoke like a child twice his age. Something in what he wrote and said helped me find you.

Eventually I did find you. In a room at the top of the building. You were incredibly sad, like you knew the time we had was short. You lips were twice the size and your eyelashes twice as long. You sat with me at a long table but didn't eat anything. We held each other close, but again the feeling that it was temporary. An overwhelming sadness.

Then a noise. I walked out of the room, and saw two shadowy figures behind the smoked glass of the front door. And I suddenly realised they hadn't just come for me, they'd come for you and for our child, whom we couldn't find anyway. I pressed a nearby panic button but the button wasn't connected to anything and had no effect. I turned, attempting to warn you about the intruders, but you were gone.

I woke up. Aching to have you by my side. And you were thousands of miles away. It may not quite be nightmare when you're not with me, but when you aren't, there's no true end to it.

T-15: Two Weeks in Another Town

I'll be your Edward G. Robinson if you'll be my Cyd Charisse...

What's more she's one of "your kind"

check these out... I'm glad I'm with you beyond classification...

T-16: My lilac-breasted role model

Dating agencies, internet dating sites and even matchmaking sources as esteemed as Take me Out may have different methods, but they seem to agree on one thing. When it comes to finding a suitable partner, it's important to have things in common. Some even go as far as pushing the belief that anything outside your culture is a things-in-common dead zone.

Bring on the checklist. When enrolling for 'love services', it is imperative and widespread to fill in forms asking you questions about where you were born, if you're religious, what you like to eat, the kind of activities you engage in regularly, and whether or not smell is important to you. Computer programmes are designed to match up answers and give each entrant's status a 'score', then trawl through a data base of rampant but lonely liars seeking a perfect match.

The main reason why the hit rate is successful but the match rate poor is that one tends to meet compatible people not through an algorithm but by meeting compatible people, that is, actually going out and meeting them. Why is it that dating questionnaires don't ask about parties, social events, clubs and dinners? Because generally the people filling them in don't attend such people-meeting events, preferring to leave their matchmaking to a microchip and hoping their other 'talents' (such as money, car, clothes) will paper over the cracks of their attendant (and unsurprising) lack of social skills.

Loving conversation (read: talking too much) has been my usual entry into meeting people. Curiosity and a sense of humour certainly don't hurt. Next step is a level of compatibility and affinity. But even this isn't enough. There has to be something more.

Having a wife who's extremely brilliant has made me realise what it is. It's all very well finding someone who's attractive to you, who shares your interests, someone whose company you enjoy. But when you respect that person, when you look up to them, admire them, when you're intensely proud of them, then you're hooked. It's a reflection of you and of them. Next thing you'll be calling yourselves the Power Couple.

Pull the other one

Lying in a double bed was a chicken, smoking a large cigar and looking extremely pleased with itself, and an egg which looked very disappointed...

Well, I guess we`ve answered that question then, haven't we?

T-17: Still waiting on a star