Monday, July 30, 2007

LONDON SHRINKS, INTO CAPE TOWN DARKNESS

[image from Wikipaedia, London page]

Leaving London; the plane rose, the houses shrank, red buses moved like beetles along the streets, slowly shrinking too, the streets became smaller and smaller. What was I doing there? I thought. As if the jaws of a steel cage had suddenly released. It was a beautiful day as the coast receded and became blue sea. I arrived 6am in Cape Town, dark and in a thunderstorm. But, out in the dark, there was mountains and space. And, at the airport, was my sister, wondering why the plane was two hours late.

I explained that as we were about to take off from Frankfurt, and approached the main runway, the pilot explained there had been an urgent telex from airport control and he was waiting for it. After a while he explained they had found landing parts of an airbus of the type we were in on the runway, and needed to send an engineer to check it was not our plane. After another very long wait, we were told our plane was safe, the parts had not fallen from it. As we turned into the main runway, and gathered speed, one of the passengers shouted out, 'We are now in God's hands...'

Well, whoever's hands it was, we got to Cape Town, although the luggage of my co-passenger, a young Scottish woman headed to work on a game park, didn't. So she headed off without any kit to her next destination as I entered Cape Town. I had over-optimistically expected to see the mountains as we came in, but all was dark as the sun was out and the wind and rain were howling (haven't you heard rain howl before?). They had been working on the airport car park so we entered a building site as we came out of the airport.

Despite expecting major cultural shock, as I had always had coming back to London, I didn't have any going back to Cape Town. Nothing much has changed, only salsa venues, and the weather maybe, which is apparently more wet than normal. No jokes about bringing the British weather with me, please. On the salsa floor, people were much the same, in fact, most of them looked better than before. It may have been my jet lag affecting me though, as I was a bit tired after packing and working non-stop before leaving the UK.

So, I'm off to explore culture and look at the theory of how creativity and practice crosses nations; hence my own translocation as my own guinea pig. And, as they say on the dance floor, one step at a time, before the spinning begins....

No comments: