My writing

“It’s flat up there,” Matt’s high school friend, Richard, says to us when we meet him for lunch in Windhoek on day four of our trip across Namibia…

In this place, at this time of day, you are the anomaly. Everything around you is dry, dry as dry can be, dry as deadpan humour, dry as a dead pan.

From above, Johannesburg in January was green. Greener than I’ve ever seen it. I stared out the window as we descended, watching as farmland gave way to villages, small towns. Wait, one more farm. Another town. The city builds from the outside in. In me, a familiar feeling built, too.

London rises. It emerges from the treetops and chimney pots as I gaze out of my window-seat view on the train. Steel and glass and past and present climbing…

“I’ll make some tea now, love,” I say to Matt. “I just want to rinse the shower gel out of the mugs first.” Stretched-out adult arms can reach opposing sides of our bathroom. In the sink, I pick up the mugs and rinse them of the shower gel we’ve been using to clean them. We have nothing else.

I wake in the early hours, expecting to hear rain on the roof of the quirky, quaint and full-of-personality cottage we’re staying in. But it is quiet. I can’t hear anything at all. The forecast, which warned us of heavy rain all the way from Barrydale to Cape Town…

Matt gets back in the Triumph, laughing. “What did your dad say?” I ask. “He says not to worry about the rev counter,” he replies. “Apparently it only starts working once the car’s warmed up.” We drive out of the Willowmore Old Jail and pull over almost immediately.

In a year where all plans were scrapped, the stars aligned to make this one happen. Matt first mentioned it to me sometime in the middle of 2019: “When my parents move from Kenton to Cape Town,” he said, “I’m hoping to help my dad move his cars.” A 1934 Austin 10 and a 1964 Triumph Spitfire.

Dear Laszlo, I revamped my website. When I started, the folder on my laptop housing early copy revisions and new images was called “Website revamp: April 2020”. It’s now September. I don’t know what happened to the time. Actually, I do. Covid happened. And I lost the person who started it in the first place: you.