Flee the country!

It's quite one thing to be told by ex-Joburg friends visiting from New Zealand to leave the country because South Africa is supposedly 'like, so hectic' - after all, they are surely making themselves feel better for moving to a place where everyone speaks funny, where 'music' equals 'Abba'* (they are classical musicians, and now severely unfulfilled in Christchurch) and where it rains more than England - but quite another to be harangued by a homeless man at the end of my driveway on the same topic.

His argument, loosely bracketing a request for cash and just so I'm clear on this, completely uninterrupted by myself**, was rather more circuitous but much more clearly thought out. He told me if I were to emigrate I would be saving the lives of my 'beautiful, unborn children' (alarming: just how did he know about the suede Armani shoes I want to buy?) and that 'you know when someone says they're your friend but actually they hate you?' Yes. 'Okay, consider 35-million people who aren't really your friend.'

Like all issues concerning race in South Africa, this went on a bit. But I was fascinated to hear what this (as you have guessed, white) homeless man had to say, because he had been living behind my house for a month. There's a piece of land that used to be part of the property I now own but has since been separated by a wall. The subdivision bears some outbuildings that I suspected - and now know for sure - were being used as a home base by vagrants (more than one set, if this latest squatter - I apologise, informal settler - is to be believed). And if I ever wondered why I was twice so efficiently burgled***, it's because the burglars**** could just hop over my back wall whenever I wasn't around, which in my superbusy and supersocial life is all the time. The lazy owner of that piece of subdivided land has now, after rather more than a year, finally decided to clear the ground and start building, which means there are now no more vagrants living behind my pad. And a few weeks ago, my house really did begin to feel safe again - it hadn't for many months - and now I know why that should be.

Only, now I get stopped in my driveway on my way to work to be asked for cash - and essentially told to leave or die - by someone who may or may not have had a part in the nicking of All My Stuff.

I am amused.

Also because this should happen on the day that the Scrivener points me to this article.


*Not that I have anything against Abba. Heavens, no. In fact, anyone who knows me knows I am the world's second-biggest Abba fan (H.D. is the first). But, good music though it is, it's not quite so intellectually satisfying as say, Die Kunst der Fuge.
**Possibly because there was no place to politely interject, and also because I was curious to see how it all ended. Like, in my death.
***US readers: burglarized. Also, dear folks across the Atlantic, you spend the day lying around, not laying around.
****US: burglarizors?