...and so the barman says 'why the long face?'

Monkey says: I don't get it...

Day Ten: Hung, Drawn and Quartered

Cape Town is as expected. Beautiful blue skies, a wind developing through the afternoon, culminating in a wispy tablecloth and strong gusts in the evening. Saw friends, did work. But so what? Home is where the heart is, and my heart is elsewhere.

It's 25% of the way, a quarter, but this doesn't feel like progress. It's just feels like half of a half, which is half of the whole. So it's a third-level down fraction of a distance I can't quantify.

Fuck quarters. They belong only in American wallets or pizzas. Pah!

Day Nine: I Found You On A Cloud

Johannesburg has fantastic clouds. The day I flew out, today, Sunday the 30th, was the first day since my arrival that it felt like a true highveld summer's day. The other days were humid, low to mid 20s, patchy rain, muggy. This was a scorching day until noon, when plump white clouds appeared from nowhere and began to fill up the stark blue sky. Another high-altitude thunderstorm on its way?

It seemed appropriate to look at the clouds on a day like this, seeing as I would be soaring above them later in the day. By the time I took off the cloud-cover was almost complete. And I began to look for you in the cumulonimbus...

No dice. Once in the airport, I looked for you in the crowd (perhaps I had heard wrong when I was told you were in a cloud, perhaps Kim Jong-Il had mispronounced it)...

Still no joy. Off I flew to Cape Town and reviewed the photographs I'd taken. And there it was. Staring at me. The cloud you'd been on all this time. We must have flown over you at the point where I got butterflies in my stomach. Pretty much the same sensation I had exactly two years earlier, when you saved my life.

a poor substitution for the real thing...

Day Eight: Twenty Percent

...but it feels like less. No wifey, no lifey.

Day Seven: Black to the Future

Okay, who turned on the timewarp machine? While I wasn't looking, or perhaps I was but in the Highveld glare I simply didn't notice, somebody switched on the megatron, the De Lorean that hits 88mph, the Time Machine was cranked up, and I was transported back to an earlier time, an earlier country.

It's all rather ironic, really, in the sense that Nelson Mandela is a man of 92 and is (probably) at death's door. I'm surrounded by hysterical white liberals who have fallen for the ANC's false-prophet media manipulation and weep at night, praying for their spiritual leader to make a full recovery and thus live, as is expected of him, to 320, or at least until everyone else is dead and therefore doesn't have to attend the funeral (or witness the mass slaughter of whites by angry blacks at the death of their sweet prince).

For god's sake, let the man be. If this is his time, he's led a full life (no-one could argue that), let him sleep. Rather, the myth-making of a great man (but a mortal nonetheless) fills the vacuum of true intellectual and political discourse.

I went to a dinner in a gentrified neighbourhood, and ended up being treated to the most egregious and underhanded political tosh by people claiming to be political but amounting to nothing more than dipsomaniacs. Confusing intelligent discourse with alcoholism works only when you're the one who's been drinking.

The fact of the matter is that, for all its new-world, post-colonial, "world-class" posturing, the country remains firmly rooted in the past. Exactly which past isn't entirely clear, but it's certainly one built around the country's tenets, the essence of its formation, which was the extraction of wealth and the defence of land.

Despite the obvious outpouring of aspiration (black yuppies in 4x4s, low-cut blouses, botched botox mouths and Louis Vuitton bags), class still takes a back seat to race. It's not a preoccupation here. It's an obsession. It works alternatively and simultaneously as a cushion, a crush, an explanation, a slur, an excuse, an explanation, a deception and a truism. It is silly (even impossible) to expect anything else. Asking South Africans, for whom culture, tribalism and skin colour was the very basis for its wealth, borders and identity, to forget about race is a bit like asking the Fins to forget about the concept of snow.

It's utterly exhausting. Thankfully the aspirational culture meant there was a fine selection of single malt whiskeys on offer.

Still, I say enough already. For peat's sake.

When Travellers Travelled

I'm realising more and more that my interests in art and life are rooted in marginal/outsider figures, but more than that, I'm interested in unfashionable things, movements that are dead or dying or maybe extinct things. I'm talking about a mode of art making that has lost its place in the contemporary art world... the question now is should I argue for its relevance? and if I do who will listen? The great fear is I'll be labelled an idealist, a romantic or worst, a hippie-loving fool...

Even travellers used to travel, but now they face extinction. Well not quite, but soon they might be known as the settlers.

I admit watching this particular community was pure voyeurism, but then TV is made that way. To be honest I loved the costumes, pomp and pageantry. It seems you have to 'go big or go home' if you're a Gypsy girl. The dresses are big, the false eyelashes are even bigger, and the highlight, a pink wedding dress covered in fibre optic/fairy lights to rival Oxford Street's Christmas decorations.

Sadly all my observations are screen based, I'm experiencing mini-revelations via the computer while writing on Thek, and for tonight I'm opting for tele-visual comfort. Today's challengers on Eggheads, The Lancashire Hotpots, won £11,000. The question asked for the scientific name for the gap between the eyelids... something like the palpating aperture... but not quite.

I'm so pleased you're in the real world, meeting real people, receiving the bureaucratic warmth that you've been longing for, and more importantly the renewal of your passport.

You must come back to me.

No red-tape must get in the way.

Day Six: Red Tape & Green Screens

After green comes red. Today was red tape day as my mother and I needed new passports.

And what a change from the bad old days. Okay, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Some things don't change. The architecture is still dreadful --

-- and the experience incredibly boring and draining...

But here come the differences. Back then, all staff at official departments were Afrikaans. Just as the post-apartheid government created a bulging civil service to fill an employment gap, so the old National Party handed civil posts to their own. They had names like Du Toit and Visser and were officious and surly and grumpy in their (undeniable) efficiency. You didn't dare attempt a human remark like "Funny weather we've been having," nor even attempt a perfectly fair question like "How long does it take for the passport to be ready?". You simply waited for hours, hoped you had all the forms and did the whole thing with a bit of terror in your heart. The grand design was about bullying: the state is more powerful than you can imagine.

Now, the efficiency is gone. There's a lackadaisical air, people slouch, not much happens.

The scene is so unmanaged corruption seems only a few banknotes away. Potholes and puddles litter the car parks. Taxis have replaced police cars...

...and previous applicants have left their mark...

Hand-written cardboard signs giving instructions in eleven languages have replaced the steel notices written (only) in English and military Afrikaans. Some were to the point and incredibly useful:

And get this: we waited barely five minutes. We spoke with human beings who understood we weren't perfect, that we wanted to know what to do, that we might get things wrong, that we might want to share a joke. Authority was maintained through confidence and not brutality. And the whole thing was done in a fraction of the time we were expecting.

What does this all mean? I'm not entirely sure. Between the plush, cold, efficient, honest, Orwellian offices of the Netherlands to the kangaroo-court, breezy, friendly halls of post-colonial bureaucracy there must surely lie a happy medium. Ultimately all you can ask for is a lack of queueing and a service that delivers. Which we got.

My only question is what they'll do with my picture once they've taken out the green screen and replaced it with a background of their choice. I'm hoping for palm trees...

In Joburg with you... aka Which one's Wally?

Day Five: Still amputated

Day Four: Accentuating the +

Why does the plus sign look like + and the minus sign like – ? Is it because the plus sign cancels the minus sign, or because it is double its value? We assume that – takes things away and that + adds them, but only because we're used to the symbols. Is there a logic to them? I don't know, but the point is they are extremely close. We could have chosen to represent positive/plus as, say, %, and negative/minus as, say, '. Instead, we've chosen symbols that are not only close but are more or less versions of each other. Just ask any battery.

I'd argue this isn't coincidental. We know how close the margin between negative and positive is. Our moods can shift on a dime, the weather can change on the wind and our luck can run out as quickly as it's flowed in.

So it was from yesterday to today. A better mood, more sleep, and people generally feeling better has had me accentuating the positives despite the ongoing quarantine. It's only 10% of the journey now, but to look at it the same way, it's already 10%, and only nine more of these short segments remain.

What's more, the weather here is wonderful, the fresh produce terrific (I have been devouring the tastiest peaches on earth) and the people warm and friendly. There are also unexpected visual pleasures to be found on the frontier, such as old-school shop lettering that lives on despite the changes going around us. An example:

So there it is. Positivity. This is not to say tomorrow might not strip the vertical bar away and everything + becomes –. For now, let me try to keep +ing on. And I leave you with this, from a visit to the vet today:

Re-searching

Today was truly a re-search day, a lot of plans were made at home, some leaps in new directions for Chapter 3, but hopefully something that will strengthen the whole. Later in the day at the Camden Arts Centre, I learnt about Christine Borland and Kerry Tribe, the two artists for the education pamphlet. I'm excited about the challenge of making it, hopefully something worthwhile that makes looking at their work easier to process. I have no doubt that some wise guy will want to use it for wrapping paper...

I wonder how your day was? I imagined you and I working together but at a distance... I find one part of my mind is a channel that constantly searches for you, whilst the rest focuses on actions and things to keep busy with. I'll leave this channel open for you to invade as you please.

Day Three: Green There, Done That

Today seems to be all about green. Green can have many shades and many attributes. It can also have many connotations. Sure, green can be bountiful, the sign of a garden that's had tons of precious rain, as the garden here (indeed the whole city) looks in mid-summer:

Green can be envy, thoughts, halfway to blue as a state of mind, it can mean money (if you're American) or an insult (if you've just arrived). Green can also be memory. I noticed the badge of my alma mater, blessed Greenside High School, venue of misery and mayhem for five interminable years of my teens, perched on a window display in a school uniform shop. The security logo beneath it was priceless, as though all people who grow up here need to know the importance of authority.

Feeling thoroughly vindicated by this sight given the subject matter of my next script (the twin arms of government brainwashing in full force), I marched onward into the glare. The sky was beautiful, chunks of massive white clouds of every meteorological description. Again, the threat of rain but no delivery.

And greener still, my sweetheart's ailing lungs, infected with longing and sadness, for me and like me. Somewhere on my person something simply has to be green too. Perhaps that's a new idiom for the colour. As green as separation.

I have seen better days

Sunday has slipped into Monday, I am at present going with this flow, unlike the great King Cnut, I feel no need to control the perpetual ebb and flow of days, let them wash over me, until one day a messenger brings me news that my patience has been rewarded.

I fell asleep, narrowly missing out on my best score, but I feel no resentment, I expect to reach new heights before your return, and I've promised myself to stop playing then too.

I fear it really has become an addiction. It soothes me, mindlessly blasting bricks into oblivion...I am sad to report that my lungs are not holding up, they've been overcome by a lurid green mucus, and I sound more and more like a wheezing old codger. My throat is red and my nose blocked. If this is the state of play mid-week, I'll visit the G.P. but I'm not sure what they can do for me, because I've diagnosed myself.

Its a clear case of longingforhusbanditis, I miss you and this is my body's response.

I'm going to do my best to work, my head is foggy but I'll try goddamit. I may take a bit more sleep, but I'm looking forward to the peace of a house to myself, and I take comfort in knowing you'll have the day to yourself too. I must return to my slave duties, shirts to be ironed and sandwiches to be made...

Day Two: Sunday in Suburbia

A slow Sunday into which I emerged late, having slept until midday (the previous night's sleep had come only at 4am thanks to aforementioned dogs, hard bed and tumultuous dreams. The gardener was already at work in the garden. He wore the star emblem of the Zion Christian Church, which made his presence here on a Sunday even more surprising, and had the face and name (Hendrik) of an older generation. He felt a bit like the character from my script, 25 years on. His lunch differed from ours, and he ate it outside.

After lunch was a trip to the Light Music Society, a gathering of older folks who come each month to the Roosevelt Community Centre to be reminded about what they listened to before music became the thing of nostalgia. Half were asleep by the time the third track had been played, so the host – who described himself as being at the helm – brought out the heavy artillery, switching from obscure numbers to showstoppers from Broadway hits. The final song of his set had folks swaying to a tune from Guys and Dolls, followed by rapturous applause. (This performance was missed by Trevor who had to dash home: the alarm had been set but not bypassed in the garden, meaning Hendrik the gardener had alerted the armed response thanks to the simple act of having planted some bulbs.)

The garden swelled with birds. Thunder rolled in with the promise but not the delivery of rain. The day slipped away as they do.

Only a late-night Skype session with the Fink warded of other demons. Those that remain in my thoughts cannot be countered. The sense of dread is pervasive.

Day One - The toilet brushes have short handles

The transport ship had arrived late, as if to delay the inevitable. Already I had to re-acquaint myself with the sounds and smells of what was so familiar and yet was what I had fled. The transit guards seemed friendly enough, but greeted me with "How are you?" instead of "hello", as if they expected my condition to change.

The 15-minute journey into the city was more crowded than I'd remembered, with the locals still scrutinising the train, unsure what to make of it. They were unsure where to sit or what to do – couples clutched hands nervously and looked out on the veld – as though the very existence of the service meant the words 'public' and 'transport' could be used together in the same sentence. The presence of armed guards on board suggested the sentence in question was like mine: it promised tough times ahead.

I wore sunglasses for the first time in months. The glare here is more than just sun, it's a high-altitude, science-fiction third-act, blazing light that scores the retinas. Nowhere to hide here.

I was picked up by the wardens and brought to the first internment camp. My room was as I remembered, only this time, weary from travel, I had to clean it before being able to sleep there. I went one further - reorganising the space, throwing away bags and bags of items and cleaning caked dust off every surface.

Some of the discarded items included: an installation disc for Microsoft Publisher 1998, a receipt from a restaurant meal eaten in 2003, blank diaries from 2002, 2003, 2006 and 2008, a green plastic shoestand (broken), seven tomato crates, several floppy discs, dozens of non-working pens, random newspaper cuttings, broken audio cassette boxes, plastic stationery organisers, several hole punchers (broken), a pink 1980s calculator (sadly also broken)... the list goes on.

To wit: images from before and after said cleanup of cell.

A long sleep followed, disturbed only by ghostly dreams and the perpetual burring of the neurotic dogs outside. One has large silver ticks that have burrowed into its back, causing it discomfort and the need for constant nibbling, but at least giving it something to do.

Dinner was at a restaurant in Linden. We were the only guests to arrive and the only guests to leave. Kwaito music blared out seconds before and after our departure. We were told, unsurprisingly, that we "must come again", as though it were an order.

A phone call with the Fink enlivened spirits, as across the waters two soft ferret toys found themselves in conjunction, perhaps in the 69 position. The resolve remains strong to get through the quarantine, even with only 2.5% of it completed. While running a bath before bedtime I noticed the toilet needed a bit of brushing from a previous occupant. And that the toilet brush had a small handle, which meant that as I cleaned the bowl my hand disappeared below the edge of the toilet rim.

This meant – perhaps – that in order to flush things out, to clean things up, I must wade deeply into the problem. As apt a symbol of my current state of mind as I could hope to find, sanitation level notwithstanding.

Now wash your hands.