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Struck down by paradise syndrome on a Cape beachTHE problem with being in Cape Town at this time of year, as I have remarked previously, is the onset of the debilitating illness known as "paradise syndrome". When I jetted into Cape Town airport, laptop in hand, a couple of weeks ago, I had noble ideas of finishing off my script for the new Spielberg movie, dashing off a couple of chapters of my new blockbuster novel "Affirmative Action" (a moving tale of unemployable white, middle-aged accountants who pay a fortune for a cosmetic surgeon to turn them black only to find that they can only get jobs as short-order chefs in a burger chain) and churning out at least half a dozen magazine articles. Unfortunately none of this has come to pass due to circumstances way beyond my control. The problem is the sun. It has this annoying habit of rising in the morning and dappling the top of Lion's Head with the sort of inviting shadows that suggest there may be better things to do than sit in front of a computer screen all day. Stronger men would probably resist this temptation to indolence, draw the blinds and get down to work. But being something of a procrastinator, I reason that the rest of the day stretches before me and that the two-hour walk from the flat to Signal Hill and back will do me good. Besides, I tell myself, I can conceptualise while I am walking. The walk to Signal Hill offers stunning views of both the city bowl and the Sea Point coastline with Table Mountain towering behind. On a windy day it is possible to attach a piece of strong rope to a manhole cover and fly it as a kite. On a calm day, however, the walk is as perfect a way to spend two hours as it is possible to imagine. The only problem is that, if it isn't windy on the mountain then it almost certainly isn't windy on the coastline below so the next stop is usually the beach - which rules out work for another five hours. I DID once take my laptop down to Clifton but the glare from the sun made it impossible to see the screen so I put it away. Besides, I didn't want to get sand in my stiffy. Who does on a public beach? After a few hours lying around listening to the waves and contemplating work a fellow gets thirsty. The laptop has by now melted and is a smelly, misshapen piece of grey plastic which looks like a giant lump of discarded chewing gum. A late lunch of a few beers with beer chasers and sushi at the Waterfront leads to an inevitable two-hour siesta by which time it is late afternoon. I finally manage to borrow a computer with every intention of writing something. Except that the sun is about to set and one needs to be well-positioned for this event; preferably at Nino's in Camp's Bay with a glass of something cool. By then it is time for dinner and before you know it another day of spectacular under-achievement has passed. Never mind, perhaps it will rain tomorrow.
Last year Cape Town played host to more than 1.2-million overseas visitors. I suspect that very few of them bothered to visit Johannesburg, where the crumbling city centre is looking more like a Keith Alexander painting every day. As Cape Town's unofficial praise singer, I am wary of becoming repetitive but one has to admire the way the mother city is getting its tourism act together. The city streets are comparatively clean, the roads are in good repair and the police have just announced that, New York style, they will be cracking down on petty offences like vagrancy, public drunkenness and vandalism. The attraction of Cape Town as a tourist venue is that there are several interesting things to do all year round. Many of them cost virtually nothing like a visit to Kirstenbosch which now offers the added attraction of the internationally renowned Zimbabwe Stone Sculpture exhibition. The gardens at Kirstenbosch provide an inspired and dramatic backdrop for these remarkable works which add a welcome new dimension to a familiar landscape without in any way detracting from the beauty of the gardens themselves. Fortunately, most of the scupltures are too large and heavy to steal so the exhibition should still be there for the next few months.
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