Strange things happen when you leave your home city and return several years later. Things are the same but different. Your friends are the same yet, well, older. Of course, this happens in reverse too. A colleague who spotted me recently was overheard to say, ‘Has he really changed that much?’. (I know where she lives.)
Not only the city changes but you find that you have changed too. My wife, for instance, has always been a Pietermaritzburg girl, even though she had lived in Cape Town for yonks before we moved to the UK in 2002. Then, halfway through our sojourn, we made a fortnight’s foray back to the southern sun and she suddenly felt differently about the city.
In the two years since then, during which we have made many trips to Cape Town from our temporary base in the Karoo, she has slowly come to see herself at least in part as a Cape Town girl.
Not that we recognised half of the place. The Foreshore had somehow managed to splice itself to the Waterfront via a convention centre and some zooty hotels. Central Cape Town had turned itself into a residential playground of overpriced minimalist apartment buildings.
Still no pubs worth going to though, at least not in our neighbourhood. That’s one thing you miss if you’ve lived in the UK. Pubs around every corner. Here the nearest we can find to one is a zhoosh little place with stainless steel barstools and very gay lights.
Mind you, the drivers haven’t changed. If anything, you’ve all got worse. Still, there’s something comforting about tootling along De Waal drive being overtaken by a car with lights flashing which then crosses three lanes in front of you without indicating. Just like old times.
Not that anyone on the roads in Cape Town knows that we are locals. The problem is, our car still has a Northern Cape registration plate. A horribly embarrassing affair with a green and yellow drawing of a gemsbok and some cheesy fynbos.
You get a hint of how uitlanders see Capetonians when you drive a seemingly out-of-town car. We had the misfortune, a few months ago, of breaking down on the Foreshore. In the middle lane of five lanes. In peak-hour traffic. Cars whizzed past, hooting, flashing lights; one man waved a fist at us. Another bunch wound their windows down and hurled insults. One actually yelled, ‘Go back to the Northern Cape!’
‘Um, actually we lived in Cape Town for nearly 40 years before we got this car …’
But we were home.
Which reminds me of my favourite Cape Town driving story, and it’s true. A young guy was driving home through the southern suburbs in the wee hours, and stopped at a set of traffic lights. A car in front of him had a fish on the back and the legend, ‘If you love the lord, hoot twice.’
So, for fun, he did. Whereupon the driver in front wound his window down and shouted, “Can’t you see the f****ng light hasn’t changed yet, you c**t?’
He’d evidently borrowed the car. I know how he felt.