I MET JO'BURG PEOPLE

I was starting to wonder where all the actual Jo’burg people were. Going out, I meet Durbanites, people from Port Elizabeth, other ass-end towns where the children escaped and obviously Capetonians. I’ve met more Capetonians here than in Cape Town and had come to the conclusion that all the Jo’burgers had buggered off when they heard I was coming. So when I went to a relatively Cape Town people-packed dinner on Sunday, organised by a Capetonian, I pretty much concluded it would be another Capetonian-infested dinner. Not necessarily a bad thing, but when you’ve allocated Sunday as Homesick Day, spending the evening talking about Rocking the Daisies wasn’t high on my list of things to make me feel better. I might as well have stayed at home and phoned my Dad while he told me how many more Christmases he had left.

Well kill me softly if the dinner wasn’t full of people from Jo’burg. Actual born and bred, living, drinking Jo’bugers. And what great friggin people. People are always banging on about how friendly Jo’burg people are, but since I had confined my meetings to the male variety and they were indeed super-friendly, I remained skeptical of the girl portion of the city.

Girls are funny creatures; we size each other up in an instant. In Cape Town, the questions usually formulate themselves so the following information is gathered: which school you went to, where you studied, who you know, who you’re married to and where you live. In Jo’burg the questions are loosely based on what the hell you’re doing in Jo’burg, what do you do for money and where did you go last night?

The girls I met were great. Girls who were nursing such severe hangovers, that when the waiter came to take their order, they ordered a hug. By the end of the evening, we were exchanging phone numbers, and making plans. I’m very much to blame for the ‘We must do lunch’ scenario. It’s accompanied with an air kiss and said so flippantly that the person is not sure if you said something or swallowed a bug.

And because perhaps when they asked me for my number and suggested a novice game of golf and I reacted by hugging them, falling at their feet and in between sobs, shouting ‘I’ve been accepted, I’ve been accepted’, I got a call the very next day and a golf ‘date’.

Not the best reaction to being invited somewhere but I’m thinking, I can only improve.