Codes, The Zone, Rosebank

Wednesday, October 16, 2002

Service: * *
Food: * * * *
Ambience: * * * *
Babe Count: * * * *1/2

Right. No excuses for my long absence. Except to say that I've been pretty busy playing backgammon, writing a corporate video (which was shot yesterday and the day before by Envisage Multimedia), kickstarting my Screenwriters' Spitballing Sessions (we meet two Saturdays every month to talk about movie writing).

And also, if I'm frank with myself, I think I've been avoiding Coffee-Shop Schmuck for a while cos it means I have to face some stuff.

One -- I've only progressed marginally in my feature script since last I spoke about it.

Two -- my friend Kim, the one who got date-raped twice on that radical drug, has been a burden on my conscience. I'm not speaking to her, and I suspect our friendship has taken a serious dip. But time will tell.

Three -- my mom and brother asked me to deal with their debt situation, and I narrowly avoided falling into the trap of becoming a tough guy, the sorta guy my father was.

But that's okay. I'm sitting here at Codes, after a three-month boycott. They messed with me, you see. One Saturday, Alistair and I sat down to some vicious backgammon warfare, and the management started getting very stroppy without being straight about it. Instead of the dude coming up to us and asking us kindly to move to a different table, he started applying pressure to us to leave.

A deeply unpleasant character is David, in my opinion. Tonight when he saw me, he avoided eye contact, even when I waved at him. So hey. Perhaps I won't be back. Even though the balcony is very pleasant indeed. And I'm finishing up my "Castro and Coffee", an open potato-Jalapeno omelet, served with a bottomless cup of (normal) coffee. Like all other idiotic restaurants in Joburg, decaff isn't bottomless, even though it must surely cost the company a similar amount of money.

But it doesn't matter. I'm happy to pay for the decaff refill, and the omelet is one of the best I've ever eaten. Except for an impromptu one a one-night stand made for me once. Oh man. It was better than the sex.