My journey to the Caxton Awards – Part 1
As usual, we are notified by Caxton to enter the awards towards the fourth quarter of the year, and every year like clockwork, we all leave it till the last minute as we aren’t sure on what to enter. We all become flustered, juggling work and spending hours paging through entries to find the perfect ones.
This year, I had my entries for the “Best Written And Designed Advertorial” category were prepared well in advance, but because my usual format hasn’t changed much, I didn’t feel too confident.
Entries were submitted and after two months of waiting, and more and more people are getting hyped up, the nerves kick in harder than the finals of America’s Got Talent, and you’re praying that an email comes through.
On the 7th of March at 08:41 it happened, my invitation came through via email. Mid-meeting with my manager, I jumped up and started dancing. Not only did she think I was a bit cuckoo, but also got mad because we were discussing very important details.
Getting my outfit
Suddenly, with the excitement, the shock horror sets in that I haven’t even got an outfit, and the party is three weeks away. This year’s theme was Renaissance, and as I didn’t know of any places that kept these kinds of clothes. Google was my new best friend, but alas, coming from a small town, the options for Renaissance outfits were very limited, or to be frank, just plain ugly.
After many kilometres, fittings and Googling, I finally found the perfect outfit! I was going to be the king of the north.
And so the journey begins…
Fast forward to the day of the awards. We were summoned to the bus for our journey to Pretoria. Climbing on the bus claustrophobia set in. These seats were smaller than those in planes, and the material was quite scratchy. But hey, it’s a trip and we should make the best of it. Not being a very social person, I decided to refrain from striking up conversations and kept to myself by watching reruns of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
After a few hours and we arrived at one of the most beautiful hotels I have ever seen! Rooms were allocated at a sharing basis, but when I got to the front of the queue, I was delighted to hear that I will have a room all to myself.
Things started to get interesting here, stay tuned till next week to read how the evening panned out.
