Compromising thoughts

I suspect that each of us has a favourite experience, where everything is just so. A place that defines us, and on the day we finally make that transition from worm to butterfly, it will the place that we think of with nostalgia, joy and a feeling that life is complete. I have two.

The V&A Waterfront Hotel restaurant in Cape Town at 7 am, just as the sun lights up Table Mountain and the mist starts to burn away… Whoever first had the mad dream of turning a chaotic fishing harbour into a place designed especially for me, and then pursued that dream, has my eternal gratitude. Breakfast at the V&A, in my humble opinion, is one of the most romantic experiences on earth, and after seeing more than 50 countries I have yet to find anything quite like it.

Which brings me to the second significant place in my life: Balducci’s, which is coincidentally also in the V&A Waterfront. Late afternoon, sipping a Waterford ‘Kevin Arnold’ Shiraz lovingly created way back in 2003 when life was simpler and more innocent, watching the passing parade, and waiting for that first spicy tuna temaki (spicy tuna handroll) (or, if even that escapes you, strips of raw tuna and rice wrapped in a seaweed nori thingie and liberally dowsed with Japanese spices designed to cure malaria and other serious diseases).

Which brings me to the point of this email. Life is a compromise, a balance. No one place is perfect, although Cape Town is as close as it gets. But even so, the tourist adverts make no mention of a South Easter that can blow the chrome off your towbar. Just as those alluring accolades of Perth don’t discuss flies the size of small ostriches. And those glowing tributes to Vancouver omit the fact that you live on shaky ground. (The San Andreas fault passes underneath and burps daily and kids are taught to dive under their desks at the first rumble of colonic distress.)

The folk in Sydney don’t mutter much about the Sydney funnel spider, which I understand can see you from 4 metres away and can jump almost as far, and is pretty lethal. Almost as toxic, in fact, as its lesser known relative that has colonised Brisbane, and apparently shortsighted in comparison. Up north, in tropical paradise, nobody says a word about the box jellyfish, the most toxic creature on earth – at least not until it is too late and you’ve just stood on one, at which point it is apologetically mentioned while they’re administering your last rites.

At least in SA, the dangers are well publicised. So well published in fact that I was tempted to slit my wrists at breakfast at the OR Tambo International Airport Southern Sun Hotel. OK, so the hotel was a little sad, but four days of The Star at breakfast was enough to drive me to an early Jack Daniels. Frankly, it is no surprise that the folk outside the country (where I am most of the time) think that walking across Adderley Street is as safe as jogging in a bikini across the Afghanistani plains.

Despite fearing that getting home to Hampshire was a remote hope, as a result of reading the SA press overseas, I only saw two events that could be concerning. A fellow passenger was fairly vocal when his suitcase arrived in Cape Town without the padlock he had carefully attached in Durban. Fortunately, his soiled underwear had not been filched. And, en route to my hotel, I passed 5 police vans, sirens a-ringing and lights a-flashing while three unfortunates lay on the ground with their hands behind their heads. I’d like to believe it was a movie take as I understand that Cape Town has become a premier destination for moviemakers worldwide.

And on that note, it’s not that the grass is greener on the other side. It is merely that the sewerage fertilises different sections of the field.