Life, magnified.

Our garden always has a skink or two. This is the dark baby I've spotted a few times, basking in the sun. (Through the eyes of a tall man, whom I have convinced to join Instagram - you can see more of his incredible images here)

Life is busy right now... I find myself neglecting important things - like this place of mine. Blog posts take time.

I've written a thousand in my head, but right now

I'm finding it much easier to post a photograph now and then.

They are HERE.

I'm moving on to other things and it may be that the time has come to say so long... I've loved every second.

💔

Every story has an ending.

The past three weeks have felt like months.

The days have not been long enough for the mountains of work to be done. The nights too short for sleep.

We've criss-crossed this land, driving vast distances and experiencing huge differences in weather and culture.

On the border of Lesotho, where it is dry and icy,

a kind soul left reluctant blossoms in my room.

I fell in love with the jungle that is the South Coast.

I loved not knowing what was around the next corner.

The hidden doorways...

Peeks into gloomy cupboards.

The gentle decay of beautiful things.

I loved the feeling of our sets before the crew arrived, before the chaos and the disarray.

I loved the long-suffering Indian staff of these large Colonial mansions, following us and closing doors and windows "for the monkeys". The vervets regularly pelted me with date stones as I walked beneath the palms. 

The unexpected pleasure of finding zebras in the parking lot.

I'll miss the huge flowering trees.

I'll miss the smell of burnt sugar that hangs heavily in the humid air. The human cries of the hornbills. The clicking of fruit bats and falling asleep to the lullaby of nightjars.

The leopard orchids that I cosset at home here grow in trees - lush and abundant.

We are in harsher climes now.

I'll miss these arid places too. 

The smell of raindrops falling on dusty leaves.

I'll miss the silent men from the anti-poaching unit who guarded us while we worked at the game farm. They have seen the worst atrocities imaginable. After many days, they granted me this photo - along with rare and beautiful smiles.

I travel home today and I am ready. The tall man has sent me pictures of a lush Spring waiting. 

 

Farewell Natal.

Fame is a fickle food, upon a shifting plate.

I want to dispel a myth. The film industry is not glamorous. At least not from over here where I'm standing it's not.

Oft asked question: Who's in it that's famous? See my heart sink.

Sure, I've brushed shoulders with famous people. But you avert your eyes and do your job.

(I broke this rule once only: on the last day of a film, I told the wonderfully deadpan Bob Newhart how much he had made me laugh as a teenager. He's a lovely and gracious man.)

I have crossed paths with many glamorous people. (It doesn't brush off.) I've ironed countless sheets for these people, I've fluffed their pillows, polished their shoes and taken up their hems. I've cooked for some famous people too -

which brings me to my next point. The film industry in South Africa used to be known for it's extremely delicious on-set lunches. That has changed dramatically in the last few years. It's very dispiriting - after hours of slog, to be greeted by chafing dishes of steaming grey meat, wilted salads, the vegetarian option of mushrooms and patty pans adrift in brown water. Five litres of melted ice-cream to follow.

Thankfully the majority of my work days are not spent on set. I drive and I search and I glean. Lunches are eaten on the hoof, leaning against my car in parking lots, sometimes while I'm driving.

What a treat to finally have a lunchbox from my friend Ammy's Food Maker Merchant in Observatory. I was tootling down Nelson Road when I spotted her tiny shop - a window in a wall, a yellow awning.

Let me explain: that is a cardboard container - completely recyclable. Those are arancini, which I last ate in Rome. They made me swoon - those crispy, melt-in-the-mouth balls of deep fried, tomato-ey risotto with mozzarella centres. Not a trace of oil. Alongside a zingy pesto - so green the herbs must have been growing still, mere minutes ago.

Grated beets and pears. Mustardy, vinegary chunks of potato. Pear and walnut salad. Roasted butternut with black beans and pepitas. The surprising little bursts of flavour - lemon rind, flecks of parsley and mint. Such a fine lunch I have not had in many a long moon.

What else can I say? Ammy offered a fork. I said I'd wait till home. Then I ate most of it before I started the car. I drove away with beet-stained, dill-infused fingers, sniffing them appreciatively at traffic lights. At home I licked the container.

Capable of being filled with air.

I was going to write about my drive home from a small coastal town - the huddles of dusty ostriches, the solitary blue crane in a field.

How depleted I felt to see a place after so many years and find it beyond recognition. Spoilt, a husk of what it was. The youths in town poaching crayfish to support their methamphetamine addiction. Inequality so vast it made me gasp for air.

But of course there were other things as well.

My friend John writes so succinctly:

Days wandering across tarmac between props trucks and craft tables, the director and crew far at sea in rubber ducks and trawlers, the cast ferried offshore in batches to swim in freezing water. They ride out of the surf as knights on horseback, as queens in sedan chairs, a barmy army on inflatable crocodiles, pizzas, pretzels and luminous whales. They float on pedalos, dinghies and lilos or slump in plastic chairs under huge tents waiting to be called into action. Wardrobe assistants wash and dry and iron hundreds of costumes. The sun, wind, too many dark and misted mornings, too much coffee, too much meat, a lot of waiting - days spent pacing and standing - but there is nothing as exhilarating as being part of a really big job that goes well after weeks of preparation .

And off he rows, our intrepid art director.

On the other channel.

Whenever I go to Geoff and Alistair's shop, I am drawn - beyond understanding, to the items with no price. Yesterday it was an old garden fork. Turns out it's the tool they use to draw the security shutter down with.

With persistence, sometimes I get what I want. Hence the weathered grey step - now my nightstand. The pink Colonial lady hails from Côte d'Ivoire and has watched over me for many a year.

I get all het up when there isn't a pile of bedside books.

Some stay there for many months, for the odd dip into - Elizabeth David's French Country Cooking, the love letters of André P. Brink and Ingrid Jonker which are way too intense for a single sitting. Other important things live there too: a mini Maglite for power cuts and late night rambles. Tomato leaf hand cream. Reading glasses. Zam Buk salve for lips and itchy bites. The leather nail care kit given to my father by an order of nuns. Calendula tissues for the sniffles. Notebooks for dreams, recipes and playlists. 

Songs for dancing by the moonlighting DJ.

I finished Patti Smith's book last night, so reluctantly. (A tall man bears the best gifts.) I don't remember ever being reduced to sobbing by a book before... Patricia hits a nerve. But mostly I smiled.

She is woven into the fabric of my small town childhood - my three older brothers had all of her records, I know all the words, I know all the moves.

 How I wish we could meet in a dream: Patti, the cowpoke and I.

Share a bottle of snake wine at the desert bar.

Amongst other things, she has awoken my Murakami-lust, so I plan to reread them all. Their books are similar in many ways: love and loss, the importance we give to objects. The rituals of living. There is always spaghetti, there is classical music and poetry and of course, there are cats.

The dusky bells of the Cape Fuchsia turn into dusky seedpods.

A family of sunbirds visits the flowers every day.

A striped field mouse has moved into the compost heap.

I am back at work and it is driving me growling mad.

The TVC world is so different to the features world.

Way more money. Way more grief.

Year's end.

I made a mistake.

I had a bad feeling about accepting the last commercial of the year, but I did it anyway. It's only a week, I told myself.

It felt so much longer.

There's a feeling I've been getting lately - South Africa's plummeting rand has been good for the film industry, BUT ...

foreigners arrive here thinking that we are cheap, thus inferior.

I have never been treated with so much condescension and disrespect.

Afterwards, I burnt my notebook. I deleted all of the emails.

The bad feeling lingers.

Sometimes the only good thing about a job like that is the sheer relief when it ends.

And knowing that at home, the earth runs riot.

So much pleasure!

The frangipani blooms much pinker this year.

In a few weeks there will be figs.

The curry leaf tree is flowering now - the scent more intriguing than anything I know. At night we make fires, we brush against basil and bergamot.

I want to join the spotted black beetles as they dive drunkenly into pink blossoms. I want a peaceful new year, for you and for me.

A cat is a lion in a jungle of small bushes.

My legs were trembling. My kneecaps felt like the moon jellies my mom used to watch at the City Aquarium, and just then something brushed up against my bare shin, and all the hairs stood up on end like I'd been zapped with a taser. Tatari!(Spirit Attack!) I thought, and jumped and screeched, and my dad started to laugh, and in the next Buddhist moment I found myself looking down into the moss green eyes of a tiny white-and-black cat. He gave me a quick sideways glance, then turned his back and started doing that thing that cats do, winding himself through my legs, arching his spine and sticking his tail straight in the air while extending his front paws.

His fur was soft and hot, and just then the temple bell began to ring with a sound so deep it made the green blades of the bamboo leaves shiver, and Dad, who was standing just beyond the stone gate, looked toward the temple and whispered to no one,

"Tadaima..."

which is what you say when you come home.

Excerpt from A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki.

Every house we shoot at has a cat. The people go away, the circus arrives, and the cats slink around corners, eyeing us from afar.

Commercials are like feature films on speed. Those long hours you hear about - these are them. Getting up at four or earlier, working till nine at night, or later.

When it's over, your head is spinning. You're left bruised and breathless. But sometimes, when things turn out incredibly well, or you realise you're actually having fun while you work, you remember why you chose this life and there's a particular sense of fulfilment that makes you mad keen for more.