How to cross the road.

It is my sincerest hope that reading my blog has made at least one or two people out there think of visiting South Africa. Should such a wonderful thing come to pass, I feel that I have a bit of a responsibility. 23thorns is not a travel brochure. It is not here to create some utopian wonderland full of bunnies and people who say “Have a nice day” like they mean it.

One out of two isn’t bad.

16. Everyday magic.

Every now and then, I like to read a little bit of fantasy (no, not the Nancy Friday kind, you dirty buggers. The Tolkien kind). As in most genres, some of them are brilliantly original and compelling. And as in most genres, most of them are pretty formulaic. There are gruff dwarves with huge axes, grumpy magicians and elves in impractically tight tights. And magic, it always seems, is dying out in the land, a sad echo of a bygone golden age.

Elf-girls don’t need tights because their bikini-armour is electrically heated.

9. Smile and wave.

Once in a while, every two or three months, I turn into the sort of person other people don’t want to make eye contact with. But by the time they realise this, it’s too late. You see, I wave at cars. Not all of them. Just a select few. And it’s not just the cars I am waving at, it’s the drivers.

But not in a creepy way. Friend.

2. Johannesburg traffic is a circus.

I nearly got involved in a fender-bender the other day. I was driving down a busy, three-lane road in town, and glanced down for a second. Mistake. I looked up to see that, to my horror, I was about to drive over a cow. I had to swerve sharply to miss her, and nearly hit another car.