WORK was fun, but I was still depressed by returning every night to the concrete jungle. My job was on a suburban industrial estate, so there was really no need for me to live in town. If only I could find somewhere else.
It was midsummer, and the city was stifling. At least our hotel had a swimming pool on the roof, and the liquor store opposite supplied free ice, but our company for happy–hour consisted entirely of people for whom the city life was the ultimate in good living, so Deidre and I had little in common with them. Funnily enough, my move to a commune in the suburbs resulted from meeting friends of the city-people, but our introduction to adventure had to come through my office contacts.
It all started on the night of Pete’s party.
Deidre and I nosed our way out of the town, following the directions on the back of a fag-packet. It was still daylight and the directions were quite clear, so we soon found ourselves in the ultimate of chaotic communes, being introduced to a dog called ‘Cat’ and a cat called ‘Dog’ and being pushed, fully clothed, into the swimming pool before we even had a chance to say ‘how-do-you-do?’
Pete and his friends brewed their own beer and pretty potent stuff it was too. The purpose of the party was to drink up their entire stock before they left on a three-month scuba safari to a remote bit of the Mozambique coast.
About two o’clock in the morning, full of home-brew, they invited us to join them for 10 days over Easter. Needless to say, we accepted. With unladylike alacrity!
We began to have misgivings about it almost immediately. What did we know about living off the land – or rather, the sea – on a remote bit of African coast? On the other hand, we would be in the company of self-confessed experts, so all we had to do was to find the place and all would be plain sailing.
On the way home, we got lost!
I could see the Hillbrow Tower clearly outlined against the sky, but I couldn’t get to it. Every time I lined up for a run-in, a golf course got in the way. If I couldn’t find a Post Office tower, how was I going to find a Land Rover and three tents on an almost unmapped section of an almost uninhabited coast?
By the time Easter came, I had moved out of the concrete jungle into a house in the suburbs. This I shared with a variety of people and livestock, most of whom merited the title of `shifting population’ even more than I did. So seldom were they at home that, in those few days before I went on leave, I had only managed to establish that the sandy-haired chap with the golf clubs was called Geoff, Linda wore the same size jeans as I did, and the cat’s name was Shu-shu!
HAVE YOUR SAY
Like our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter and Instagram
For news straight to your phone, add us on BBM 58F3D7A7 or WhatsApp 082 421 6033
