The Park Hyatt Foyer Coffee Shop, Rosebank

Saturday, July 10, 2004

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

I'm a littttttttttttttle nervous. The woman who's on her way to meet me has only ever seen photos of me. Three photos, to be precise. And two self portraits. She's heard my voice on the phone, cos we've chatted. And she's seen my email style.

I've seen four photos of her. And that's really all I know.

She's my very first date from the Ananzi internet dating service I've signed up for. I've decided that I'm now over Jacqui, and I must move on with my life.

A buddy of mine showed me his profile on the service, and browsed through the gallery, showing me all of these babes. Hundreds of them. And a matching system that takes your preferences into account.

We have to see how well the matching system works. The software claims that M and I are around 97% compatible. (I'm keeping her real name and her online name anonymous, cos I haven't asked her permission yet to reveal those. But there's no reason for you to know her real details, so "M" will have to do.)

My phone rings. "Okay, Roy, I'm approaching the hotel foyer, but I can't see you."

I leap out of the couch, and walk into the open space. A tall woman, glasses, black hair, smart jacket is walking toward me. Matches the photo. It's M.

"Hullo!" I say.

"Hullo!" she says.

And we get on swimmingly. We make each other laugh. We talk about intimate things. We talk about how weird it is to try this internet dating thing. We talk about the odd dudes she's met. I tell her about the time I was forced to use James Small (a rugby player) in a Panasonic commercial, and he stood around for half a day with ad agency girls rubbing his chest while he sent the production assistant around the shoe shops of Sandton to get him the right pair of boots.

Somewhere in the middle of this, I ask the waitress if it's possible to wangle a free slice of chocolate cake. "No," she says, "There's a very complicated system, and we don't have access to the cakes. But what we have got is some tarts. Little ones that we are allowed to give our customers."

"You get a BIG tip tonight," I say.

She brings tea, and four little fruit tarts. Remarkable.

"I'm not going to have any," says M. "I baked blueberry muffins this afternoon. I NEVER bake!"

Next thing, it's 1:30am, and my contact lenses are glued to my eyelids, and it's time to go home.

"Yes, I'd definitely like to see you again," I say.

"Me too," she says.

It's hard to tell whether or not there's chemistry. There's so much pressure on a blind date of this sort. Probably a second date will tell, cos the ice has been broken, and we're both sure that the other one isn't a hag.

I've decided that I'm going to meet pretty much all of the people who I feel some kind of empathy for. Not everyone. But I'm not going to exclude people just cos they're not in my "profile preference range". Who knows what can happen? And who knows WHERE love lives? I dunno. As experienced as I am at having my heart broken, I STILL have no idea what the heck this stuff is all about.

Head for http://ananzi.matchmaker.co.za and sign up for free to be able to check profiles. I'm on as CoffeeShopSchmuck (predictably). If you want to communicate with any of your finds, you've got to pay a trivial subscription fee.

With internet dating, it's really not a matter of clicking with the person. It's more like a double click.

J.B. Rivers, Hyde Park

Friday, July 09, 2004

Service: * * *
Food: * * *
Ambience: * * *
Babe Count: * * *

Bianca and I are chatting. It's that awkward chatting before you've gotta say the things that have to be said. Stuff like, "So Cape Town was really cool?"

"Yeah. I really needed the holiday. Had some really cool interactions. One or two dates."

"I felt a twinge of jealousy when you told me about those."

She's ordered nachos, and I'm getting through a chicken sandwich. They can't cook anything that requires frying, cos something's happened to Joburg's gas supply, so restaurants all over are in trouble. The sandwich isn't very inspiring. And Bianca's nachos look revolting. Melted cheese all over.

"Yeah," I say. "So, uh, maybe we should talk about our feelings for each other."

"Hmm, yes, I suppose so," she says.

So we mutually give each other the bullet. No tears, no wrenching jabs to the solar plexus. Nothing really. Just a brief discussion about the fact that we both knew that this wasn't a permanent situation, that we've been waystations for each other in getting over previous breakups, and that we're ready to move on. Very rational.

After, I say, "So does this mean we're not gonna shag anymore?"

"Fraid so," she says. "But you WILL still come shopping for fishnet stockings with me now, won't you?"

She has an audition for a soap opera on Monday, and needs to look slutty and very young.

"Of course I'll come! Can I help you try them on?"

The Spaza Gallery, Troyeville

Thursday, July 08, 2004

Service: * * *
Food: * * * *
Ambience: * *
Babe Count: * * *

Back in Joburg. It's my portrait circle, and once again, we've got Beaujolais. When she models for us, she takes her clothes off, and we pay her. All of our other models keep their clothes on, and they get sketches as payment.

It's completely freezing in this place, and Beaujolais is lying on some cushions in front of the heater. "I'm NOT stripping off!" she says. "It's too cold!" Instead, she's taken her top off, leaving her titanic bra in place. This is one big woman. Her skirt is also on.

I'm the time keeper. "Okay, Beaujolais," I say, "first pose will be five different three-minute poses. Happy?"

"Happy," she agrees. And we start. There are only five artists here tonight. Alistair Findlay, the famous cartoonist is one of them. Lionel Murcott is another. Karen. Dan. Me. I'm doing my quick sketches in ink on paper. Lionel's working in ballpoint pen. Alistair has half metre long tree branches with bits of rag tied to the ends. He dips the sticks in ink and scribbles away on a huge sheet of paper. Amazing results.

We finish the five poses, then go for the first of the long ones. "Thirty-five minutes," I say. "Starting... NOW!"

About halfway through, our model starts shivering. "Is time almost up?" she asks.

"Almost," I say. We do our stuff. Lionel's doing an acrylic, and it's taking shape nicely. I'm working onto my palmtop, and taking a lot of care over the colours. I've bought a book on the Exclusive Books sale which deals with colour. Excellent resource.

"A minute left," I say, and Beaujolais shivers. "Okay... time."

Beaujolais puts her top on. "I'm doing the soup tonight," she says, and goes off to dish up for us.

She's been down on her luck, and the modelling and soup fees are the only money she'll see for a while. She's an ex scrub sister, a surgical nurse with serious qualifications. Something mysterious seems to have happened to her, and she's clawing her way back to some form of normality.

She's made vichyssoise, and it's quite peppery. "I meant to get smoked tofu," she says, pointing to a dish of crumbled white stuff. "But this is just normal tofu. You might wanna try it."

I do. The tofu is as bland as water, but it adds bulk to the soup, and I'm ravenous. I need the protein, and it doesn't taste bad. Just different. I'm sweating by the time I finish my second bowl. This stuff's good. A bargain too. I decide to slip her a few bucks extra, just to help her out a bit. I'll give it to her at the end of the evening, when we're all paying her.

She takes her top off again, and lies down in the same pose, to allow Lionel Murcott to continue with his acrylic painting. "Lionel!" says Beaujolais, "Stop mixing your paints now and start painting!!! I'm NOT lying here for thirty-five minutes! It's tooooo cold!"

As the time-keeper, I speak up. "Okay, how long would you like to pose for?"

She considers. "Twelve minutes," she says.

"How about fifteen?" I say.

"Twelve!!!!!!!!!"

"Okay. Starting now."

We do our stuff. She's rubbing her feet together and turning a mild blue. Her breasts are jiggling very distractingly as she shivers. Twelve minutes comes and goes.

"How much longer???" she says.

I pretend to look at my watch. Instead, I look at Lionel's painting. "Uhm..." I say, "about... uh... six minutes left?"

"Eight!" says Lionel. Another twelve minutes go by, and Lionel puts a finishing dab of blue onto his page. "Okay," he says, "I'm done."

"Jeeeeees," says Beaujolais. "It's cold. It's realllllllly cold."

We pay her the modelling fee and add our soup money in.

I hand her my contribution. "I'll get change," she says.

"Nah," I say. "It's for you."

She rushes up to me and hugs me. "Thank you," she says, "thank you!"

Sheesh. It's only about fifteen bucks more than the others have paid. Eish.

De Malle Madonna, Paarl

Tuesday, July 06, 2004

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

Phone: +27 21 863 3925
Email: mallemadonna@operamail.com

Homeopathy has its delights. Marianne is one of them.

I've just driven the one-hour trip from Cape Town to visit her in the tiny town of Paarl, breeding ground of Boland rugby players.

We're on the back porch of this delightful little bistro, sitting in the winter sun. Deeply pleasant.

I tell Marianne, "I wanted to go into the chemist and say, 'I'm travelling from town to town in search of the most beautiful homeopath in South Africa. Any candidates here?' But I chickened out when this pharmacist walked up to me and said, 'Yes? Can I HELP YOU???' Too aggressive. Thought it wouldn't wash."

Marianne says, "You're a stranger, and they're very curious. This is a VERY small town."

Our waitress walks over. She's very short, very compact, petite, with a gorgeously feral face. I shudder to think about her and the local rugby dating stock. Her name's Viodie.

We ask about the cakes, and she goes through a fairly long list of them. Marianne goes for the chocolate cake. I would normally go for the chocolate cake too, I think. But I'm on holiday. I'm doing unusual things. Like travelling to Paarl to flirt with this gorgeous blonde I met on Friday night with Ian. I figure that the green fig tart will be interesting.

I order normal tea, and Marianne goes for rooibos. "May I have some mint?" I ask.

Viodie says, "We have a mint plant. You can pick your own."

So Marianne and I head for the mint bush and pluck a few sprigs to add to our tea.

We talk about things shamanic, and about how small Paarl is for a single, professional woman looking for love. Everyone's either conservative or a rugby player.

When the cakes arrive, the tart looks a bit sorry for itself. The figs are minced up into a greeny-yellowy-custardy type cheese-cake-ish substance, and it tastes a bit like fig flavoured condensed milk. While the local tannie who made the thing must be pretty proud of it, I give it one and a half stars on the Roy-o-meter.

Marianne's chocolate cake, on the other hand, is worth the trip to Paarl. I end up eating about half of her portion, and she takes a mouthful of mine. I finish more than half of mine, but it's hard work.

Near the end of our time, Marianne looks at her watch. We've been keeping an eye out for time flying, since she's got to be in Hout Bay at 4pm. So she's got a 90-minute drive ahead of her. So we head for my rental car and I drive her down the inordinately long Main Road (it's about 15 kilometres long) back to the pharmacy where she has her consulting practice. Her car's parked back there.

We kiss goodbye.

Yummy. Better than the chocolate cake.

Mugg & Bean, Kloof Street, Cape Town

Monday, July 05, 2004

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

Cape Town. It's the gift that just keeps on giving. I'm sitting right now in Exclusive Books in Tamboerskloof. I'm at a counter which divides the bookshop from the Mugg & Bean next door, and the two places are linked.

This is the first time I've used wifi to connect to the internet. My buddy Charl lent me his wifi card before I came to Cape Town, and I'm now at one of Mweb's free hotspots. (I have 20 hours of access a month free before I start paying. And it's HEAVY payment... R1 per minute once you've hit that 20 hour ceiling.)

I'm using the wireless connection to avoid spending money on my cellphone connecting to the internet. If I used the cell, I'd pay a serious fortune for the privilege of updating this site, seeing as it's charged by the kilobyte.

And the babeage here is extraordinary. But you know that. So I'll just shut up now, wipe the drool off my keyboard, and hit "send".

Harbour House Restaurant, Kalk Bay, Cape Town

Sunday, July 04, 2004

Service: * * * * *
Food: * * * * *
Ambience: * * * * *
Babe Count: * * * * *

Phone: +27 21 788 4133

It's not possible to recommend this place too highly. This is the ultimate restaurant. It has everything. And I urge you to get yourself to it with a romantic partner, and enjoy the sublime.

Tonight, the moon is just past full, and it's sitting above the ocean, smiling in at our window table. Below us, a vast shelf of ocean rock is slick and potent in the silver light. Heather has seen a drunken couple dancing on those rocks. "A wave broke and came up to their knees," she says. "The Polana staff had to go out and save them." (The Polana is downstairs.)

Beyond the rocks, the ocean is raw and excited, and is smashing its way into our hearts, flinging spray at our window, steaming against the floodlight.

"That's weird," I say. "There are airoplanes taking off from Simonstown!" The Cape Town airport is on the OTHER side of the world from where I notice these planes coming from.

Heather looks. No planes. She turns to me, and one takes off.

"There!" I say.

She turns. Nothing. It's gone.

She's busy consulting the homeopathic apothecary in her head, wondering what kind of symptom I'm manifesting, and what remedy might be good for it.

Then I figure it out. The planes are reflections of oncoming cars on the road behind us, their headlights assuming the correct takeoff angle in the window. What a relief. Planes taking off from Simonstown would be very uncool. Cos Simonstown is where South Africa's navy resides. Planes would mean war or something.

Heather and I have established that a holiday romance is not on the cards, and we're just enjoying each others company. But what lovely company we're enjoying.

And the food!

We've opted for their three course menu, at R95 per head. We've both gone for the vichyssoise with blood orange and danya as a starter. It's unbelievably delicious. Heather discovers that if she turns the orange slice over so that the skin is facing up, rather than into the soup, it releases an orange scent that mingles with the food in the most remarkable way.

Then the lamb shank arrives. Ayeeeeeee!!!!!! Oh to live here! Oh to eat this whenever I feel a craving for meat! Oh to enjoy a peasant dish so expertly prepared any time I want!!! You've heard the cliche... the meat just "fell off the bone". Mine does. I touch it with the knife, and it falls off the bone. And then when it goes into my mouth, it kinda dissolves, with only a bit of help from my gnashers. We're both doing the meat frenzy tonight, and Heather is enjoying hers as deeply as I am mine.

My dessert is a thin slice of chocolate mousse, with caramel trickled round therim of the plate. Jeepers. It's evil to subject an ex-chocolate fiend to this kind of violence!

Heather has ordered the pear. Oh my goodness. Yummyness.

And then the evening's over, and it's a short walk back along the seafront to Heather's flat (which has a mountain view AND a seaview from THE SAME WINDOW!!!!!!!), and we kiss a chaste goodnight, and I drive back to Leigh's place.

Chantal's Flat, Seapoint, Cape Town

Saturday, July 03, 2004

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

Ian Henderson, you're the best! You rock, you fine musician fellow, you!

You know why Ian rocks? It's because of his friends.

He's invited me to supper at a buddy of his. His sms to me read, "Supper tonight in Seapoint. Assorted babeage."

Holy moly. He understated. This is not ASSORTED babeage. This is PRIME babeage. This is the whole nine yards.

It's me, Ian, Ian's girlfriend Anneke, and four single, unmarried, available... morsels, delicacies. Ayeeeeeeeeeee!!!

On my right is Chantal, an architect. She's going to be going to Australia in a month or two, to be with a boy she met while travelling. Lucky him! But in the interim, as far as I can tell, she's living in the here and now.

Sitting next to her is Heather, a homeopath, living in Kalk Bay. Fairly quiet, dazzling. Delicious, eat-me-now eyes.

Next to Heather is Fotini, a Greek mega-goddess. This chick is sex on turbo charged pogo stick. Angular face, carved beauty. Lean, muscled. A kite surfer. And studying homeopathy.

And then there's Mariane, curly blonde hair, a satin sarong wrapped casually over her eligible hips, unfortunately marred by the fact that its winter in Cape Town, meaning she's wearing jeans under the sarong instead of just a g-string or nothing. She's also a homeopath, practising in Paarl.

Ian's girlfriend is a lawyer, and she's got long, straight blonde hair, and she's a total slinky being too.

Sigh.

And the conversation is hot.

We're talking about sex, and Ian and I are doing our best to be sincere communicators of the male experience. What we're really doing is a propaganda job, selling the idea that we're simply the most astounding male beings they've ever encountered. And of course, I'm drawing whoever I can, and taking phone numbers and email addresses as a pretext for contacting them.

Chantal looks at my sketch of Heather, and asks for a turn. Seeing as she's an architect and all, I hand over the palmtop, and show her how to use the drawing software. She pumps out a quick portrait of me, and exclaims that she wants a palmtop like mine. But she's saving as much as she can for Australia, so she probably won't be buying one. But hey... if I can persuade her to buy a palmtop, maybe she won't go to Australia, and then she'll ditch the thug she's going to meet, and maybe I'll stand a chance?

Caffe Magnifico, Canal Walk, Cape Town

Saturday, July 03, 2004

Service: * *
Food: * * *
Ambience: * *
Babe Count: * * * * *

In Cape Town, there are two types of women. Beautiful women. And extraordinarily beautiful women. There's no such thing as a dog in this town. And because there's a shortage of men, it seems that all of these outrageously gorgeous babes have some sort of self-esteem way going on.

Pick out a supermodel stunner from any mall passage at random, and say, "You're really beautiful," and she'll go, "Oh, no! I'm average at best."

I like competition. Survival of the fittest.

Canal Walk is in Century City near Blouberg Strand. It's in an area that used to be the arse end of Cape Town, but it's the latest area of Growth. This particular shopping mall is the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere.

I'm sitting at Caffe Magnifico, slap bang between two escalators. I get to see up the skirts of the babes as they travel up into shoppers' paradise, and I get to see the faces of the beauts coming back down, bathed in radiance and bliss.

I'm here because Leigh has taken Oscar to go and see HARRY POTTER III, which I've already seen. Oscar's been with Leigh since last night, and he had no problem at all with me colonising his bedroom. He's cool to sleep in Leigh's bed.

"How come?" I said to him last night.

"Cos you snore," he says.

"How do you know I snore?" I say.

"My dad told me."

Leigh's nodding hugely. "When I went to work this morning, you were snoring your head off," he says. "I could hear you all the way from the kitchen downstairs."

The film finishes, and Leigh and Oscar approach.

"Do that magic trick!" Oscar commands.

"I can't," I say. "Harry Potter is the magic one."

"Do it! Put the coin in your ear and make it come out of your other ear! DO IT!!!"

I've made the fatal mistake of doing the kind of trick you are expressly forbidden from doing in front of a five year old: any trick which involves the placing of small objects in any body orifice is just verboten. But I forgot to self censor when I first showed him the trick, and now he can't get enough.

"Promise me first that you WILL NEVER PUT ANYTHING IN YOUR EAR, OR MOUTH, OR NOSE!" I say.

"Do the trick!" he says.

"Promise first," I say.

"I promise."

I do the trick. And like all good tricks that involve a coin passing between the ears, straight through the brain, the pain is immense! But I survive.

News Cafe, Cape Town International Airport

Friday, July 02, 2004

Service: * * *
Food: * *
Ambience: * *
Babe Count: * * * *

Chantal V is flying to London this afternoon to meet her new boyfriend's parents. She's an old flame of mine who I inexplicably dumped some years ago. She contacted me recently after seeing my name in Fair Lady magazine, and we agreed to meet.

I've been wracking my brain to work out why on earth I broke it off with her. She's prime babeage. Only thing is, she smokes. Strange thing is that I simply cannot remember that she was a smoker. I do recall that when we started dating, she was earning about eight times more than me, and I felt intimidated and outclassed. I suspect also that our dating was a victim of a strict rule I apply to myself... don't date clients. (The company she worked at in those days was a client of a web design house I co-owned with a buddy of mine.)

When I picked her up this afternoon in my rental car, it was from her mansion in Camps Bay. You don't need to know much about Cape Town to understand that Camps Bay is one of the most desired areas in the world. I don't even want to imagine how much her house must have cost.

I thought I was way over this stuff of being outclassed. But there must be some residual bit of self-image crud sitting in me that needs work. I'll have to tackle this with Zahava next Thursday in therapy. Because sitting here in the News Cafe at the airport, catching up on what's intervened during the years, I feel relieved that she's committed to someone else, and that she's not available for me to hit on. I'm a tad intimidated, and STILL feel like I'm outclassed. Odd. Distinctly odd.

Kulula.com Flight, Johannesburg to Cape Town

Thursday, July 01, 2004

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

I'm on the plane. On an impulse, I've bought a return ticket to completely cement my pact with myself that I really ought to learn to relax. I'm going to be staying at Leigh's house. He's my best buddy from school days. We basically grew up together.

I'll be sleeping on the bottom bunk in Oscar's room, and Oscar will see if he can tolerate sleeping in the same room as a snoring, farting adult. Oscar is five-and-a-half, and he's an expert at Sony PlayStation 2 games.

Bianca met me for coffee at the airport. It's her birthday tomorrow, and I can't make it to her party. So I gave her her presents before I left, rather than after.

Right now, I'm noticing that my knees are touching the seat in front of me. Kulula seems to be packing us in more tightly than ever before. I certainly am not the tallest dude in the world, and if my knees are touching, I can't imagine how awful it must be for the taller specimens.

The dude sitting next to me is lanky, and he's forced to sit with his legs spread as wide as they can go without encroaching too viciously on my space and the dude beside him.

I've got the window seat, and a wicked view of the setting sun on my right all the way to Cape Town. Wild.

The dude beside me hasn't noticed that I've been sketching him, even though I'm literally looking up his nose at his nostril hairs, with long, hard stares every twenty or so seconds. When I finish the picture, I study it.

"Amazing machine that," he says. "Can you do everything you need on that?"

"Yeah," I say. "Writing, email, sketching." I turn the drawing to show him.

"Who's that?" he asks.

"It's you," I say.

"Hahahahahha!!! Did you do that now? Right now??"

"Yup. Would you like me to email it to you?"

"I'd love that," he says.

I get his email address, and we start chatting. He's an insurance dude. Does highly specialised stuff for civil engineering firms. Covering things like walls falling on people, or rain preventing the completion of a shopping mall. Stuff like that.

"September eleven really changed the insurance industry overnight," he says.

And then we start talking about God. He's a reborn Christian, and we spend a long time on how he came to realise that only God can help him and the whole of humanity. I'm not a reborn Christian. I'm more a scurrilous half-Jew with wayward Taoist leanings. But I kinda agree with his position on the whole. Same content, different packaging, I s'pose.