I was sort of expecting to spend the weekend quietly working on my thesis, or something similar. As it turns out, that's not exactly what happened. I left home at 7:30am on Friday morning, and woke up in the same clothes in Capetown on Sunday morning, very unsure of where I was.
What happened was, Tristan drove out to Stellenbosch on Friday afternoon and picked me up from work, and took me back to Capetown, and so the weekend began.
Pretty much as soon as we arrived in Capetown, we (Tristan and I and his two digsmates, Rory and Rigard) went off to some party hosted by some girl called Bianca (why are all the women in the Western Cape called Bianca?! What is it with being called Bianca!? There were two Biancas in Ms Matieland, and another three cropped up at various stages this last weekend!). The idea was that everybody brings a pizza topping, and they make pizzas, and we eat them. However, we didn't really know any of the Biancas at the party, or anybody else, so we just drank beer and ate all the pizza and acted like prats.
They kind of asked for it. They all informed us that they didn't want to be introduced to us because they'd forget our names, except for one guy, who informed us that he wanted to know our names because he was doing a memory course that meant he could remember everything, and he wanted to try it out on us. Which, of course, was just asking for it. Thereafter, every hour, on the hour, we changed our names (I became Kevin at 8pm, and Cedric at 9pm), and he lost track completely, and wasn't sure whether his memory was going, or whether we were causing trouble. I think we may have set his memory course back weeks.
Then there was this stupid pretentious girl who wanted to disrupt society with neon-coloured string. I mean, come on. She explained to us that they were going to "six major cities" in the world, and trying to break people out of their ruts and disrupt their conformist world- views. A very admirable fight-club style goal, although she seemed to think she was being novel and revolutionary, but who hasn't watched a movie about somebody who tries to make people think a bit differently? Even American Beauty was about that. And she honestly thought she was being amazingly intelligent. And here's the thing - she wanted to do it with neon coloured string. Her grand idea was to go and thread bits of string everywhere, weaving a sort of neon-coloured web around people, and this would make them think outside of the box. She says she did it in a restaurant, and "people really responded". I mean, I would respond. My response would probably not be polite, though.
I asked her if the neon-coloured-ness of the string was important, and whether people didn't respond as much to string that wasn't bright pink. She just sort of looked at me and said "Neon string is pretty". I suspect that Capetown hippies prioritize prettiness a lot more than me.
She got a bit exasperated with us by the end. I think she was upset that we came to her house and ate her pizza and didn't think she was being cool. She finally said "My god, don't you understand? It's all about being empowered!", to which Rory replied "But I don't need to be empowered, I'm male." She sort of looked at him for ten seconds, and then left.
At this stage, we decided we should probably leave, too, so we went to the Long Street Festival. Apparently there is a street in Capetown that is long, and it is called Long Street, and they had a Festival on it on Friday night. They shut the whole road off, and had music and alcohol and stuff.
The first thing we did when we got there was verbally abuse the skateboarders that were doing demonstrations on a half-pipe in the street. We were loudly enquiring as to why they were so kak, and whether they had meant to fall off their skateboards. Rory eventually hustled us off after a bit of that, and we found a marching drum band, which we joined. It was actually very awesome, toyi-toyi-ing down Long Street surrounded by hippies playing drums. They didn't seem to mind that we joined them, and it was great fun. We had a police escort and everything. One thing that was quite weird was that at one stage, this brass band sort of just joined in. They weren't there when we joined the drum band, and suddenly there was a small coloured guy with a trumpet next to me, and he didn't seem to be playing anything to do with what the drums were doing. Then his backup arrived, and they marched with us, and may or may not have been playing with the drummers - it didn't sound like it to me.
The place was swarming with Capetonians, and they were all weird. The thing that stood out for me was seeing two Capetonians walking together: one had a shirt that very clearly said "Support your local Soldiers For Jesus motorcycle club", and the other one's shirt very clearly said "I was born with nothing, and I still have fuck-all".
After that we moved further down the street and watched a fashion-show thing which was utterly unimpressive, so we moved on and watched some bands.
I really don't understand Capetonians. The band we watched had won the Battle of the Bands, so you'd think they'd be good, right? Well, the lead singer had this bright purple wig, and white paint all over his face (I think he was a him, although he was rather Marilyn-Mansonly androgynous, and she could have just been an incredibly ugly woman), and was dressed like the artist formerly known as "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince". The bassist had a weird Twiggy style side-parting and was wearing a horrible tuxedo, and the drummer had a big fedora on and a Hitlerish mustache. But the thing that really took the cake was the frontman of the band, who had absolutely nothing to do with the music, and didn't play a single instrument or sing a word. He started off the show bent over, presenting his very naked rear-end to the crowd. I say "very naked" because he had no clothes covering them. He did, however, have flowers in his bum. And, yes, I said "in". He then spent the rest of the show wielding an axe vigorously at the crowd, and stomping around the stage, but not in time to the music. He was wearing a ski-mask, and crotchless trousers (with a sort of loincloth thing thank god), and he was covered in fake bloodstains, but you could actually see him pop to the back of the stage in between songs to give himself a few more squirts from the tomato sauce bottle. You will be glad to know that he removed the flowers from his nether parts, although you won't be so glad to know that he used his axe to chop them up and shower the audience with the resulting pot-pourri (although the smell was not as pleasant as that normally associated with pot-pourri).
I promise you, the above description is deadly accurate.
On Saturday, we went to watch the UCT Rag floats parade, which I thought was silly. After we'd had a beer or two and watched that, we moved on to Stones and then to Cornerhouse, which is the most awesomely fantastically disgusting and manky club you've ever seen. They have carpets on the walls, but not on the floor, and you can't actually see anything except the vague outline of the bartender in the UV light. I also discovered that they sell wine in, like, pints. Tassenberg, nogal.
Adeline came to find me after her shift, and we sat outside talking, then she drove me home and bought me a pie. I shall buy her a small South American country when I have saved up enough.
At this stage I had vaguely begun to wonder if/when I would be returning to Stellenbosch, and how I would get there. It wasn't that much of an issue yet, since there was still a braai at somebody's house on Sunday, which turned into a game of Pictionary.
Finally, Bryony drove me back to Stellenbosch. I eventually arrived home at 8pm, so tired, so dirty, so sore, so smelly, so broke, and so happy...
It was a damn fine weekend is the point I'm trying to make. Although since I spent most of it in the clothes I wore to work on Friday, they took a bit of a beating. My executive work pant got torn.
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