Feeling très ADD today.

Managed to write one riveting article on pedestrian road safety (yes, I know, the excitement) and have now been paging through job bags not really achieving anything that could be construed as work.

On a nicer note, am going to a little meeting tonight about the launch of Papergirl in South Africa (if you don't know anything about it, clicky clicky). I'm quite excited about this project (can you tell? I'm piggybacking on meetings that really have nothing to do with me, just so I can spread the word). It's probably something about the whimsy of girls on bicycles spreading the art love around our city that makes me think, wow, isn't the world a lovely place?

Hmmm, what else?

Oh, this made me laugh:

Valentine's Day is here

Okay so not really. It's almost a month away. But I always know when Christmas is over because Woolies replaces everything ho ho ho with all manner of pink and red heart-shaped paraphernalia.

And because I work in magazines and we run to a schedule a couple months ahead of the real world, Valentine's Day started sometime around Guy Fawkes for me.

Since then however, I have come into contact with:

• An ensemble-cast movie with a storyline that goes something like: we repackaged Love Actually, set it in LA and gave Jessica Alba and Biel starring roles. And we're releasing it in time for February 14. Oh and we're calling it Valentine's Day.
• Jewellery houses all desperately trying to shift their stock of 0.25 carat diamonds as 'the perfect gift this Valentine's Day'.
• The 5FM / DStv Vuzu collaboration party, Love Sucks.
• Multiple magazine cover-lines pandering either to couples ('the perfect date' – everything V-day is also by definition perfect) or singles (Single this Valentine's Day and loving it! – sure, we believe you).

Jeepers, it's only January 19 people...

Anyway, my feelings about this Hallmark holi have always been pretty neutral. My first red rose was a thrill of course, but I've never taken it all that seriously. Neither am I of the leftist, down-with-V-Day crew who thinks the occasion was invented by greeting card and chocolate companies as a means to bleed us dry another day out of 365 and make singletons buy tubs of ice cream and cry about never finding the perfect mate.

I have been single for all but four February 14ths of my short life. It hasn't killed me, and certainly never made me break out the Gino Ginelli or feel despair at my lack of a plus-one any more particularly than I might have on any other given day. And when I was loved-up, well ... let's just say the ceremony of the day pretty much passed me by anyway. For the one February le Boyfriend actuel and I have been together, we stayed put in our respective cities and I saw a chick flick with some girlfriends.

My theory of Valentine's now goes like this:

• If it's a day both marked and driven by consumerism, who cares? What holiday isn't? What day of the whole year isn't? We're a consumerist society. Deal with it.
• If one day out the year a girl who is not usually spoiled by her dude can expect some kind of romantic gesture – a bunch of roses, a box of chocolates – is that so bad?
• If you're single and desperate not to be, why not kill yourself on March 4th rather? I hear it's going to rain.
• If your best friend's guy takes her out dancing and for a moonlit walk on the beach on the big day ... then he's gay and you have nothing to be jealous of. (Actually you do. I'd kill for a GBF. I am in the market. Please direct all inquiries to the comments section of this post. PS, yes I am stereotyping. Get over your-PC-self).
  

Saw The September Issue last night.

Pretty interesting documentary about the making of the September 2007 issue of US Vogue, their biggest issue ever clocking in at 840 pages (727 of those were advertising) and nearly five pounds.

The main attraction of the film is, of course, finally getting a tiny glimpse into the life of the inscrutable Anna Wintour (you know, the Ice Queen who pretty much singlehandedly drives worldwide fashion and inspired the book/movie spin-off The Devil Wears Prada).

The real Anna's not quite Meryl Streep's Miranda Priestly, but the chill did occasionally leap from the screen into the theatre. And wow, that is one woman who knows her job and does it better (and works harder) than anyone else ever could. Vogue is her life, fashion is her oxygen.

You know you've made it when:

• A quiet 'excuse me' causes underlings to leap backwards in fright.
• Prada reworks their fall line with a different fabric because you happened to mention it was 'a little heavy' (from wool and mohair to silk and mohair. 'To fur or not to fur' isn't really a question Anna quibbles with. The answer is always 'to fur').

Was I perhaps all-too-easily manipulated by the film's format? I found myself feeling a tad sorry for Ms Wintour towards the end. It can be heartbreaking when the things you think are important – what you've built a career, a name, a life out of – are met with derision and amusement by the people you love.

I think the fashion world is nuts most of the time, but even in my jeans I can appreciate the fact that couture is living, breathing art. Nobody laughed at Da Vinci's contribution to the world, so why do they laugh at De La Renta's?

The weekend in numbers

Number of hours spent actually concentrating at work after 1 pm Friday afternoon: about 0.5 in total. I have been the poster child for ADD since getting back from Botswana.

Number of girls in the Assembly bathroom wearing the same outfit: 4. High-waisted leatherette skirt with tucked-in pink vest and statement heels. Apparently Cape Town is not only too small in that you will always know somebody who knows somebody who has slept with your boyfriend/girlfriend before you, but there aren't enough outfits to go around on a Friday night either.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeah that's it really. Still not quite in the swing of life. Happy Monday everyone.

Now that the Brother Figure has all but well and truly moved out, and I am for all intents and purposes an only child, I'm starting to really feel the itch to move out.

In the meantime though (possibly because of the emptier house, my recent absence and my rather contemplative state of mind of late) I am suddenly noticing things about my parents.

Like the fact that for every year that I get older, they do too (I know, it's taken me longer than most to come to this realisation). By the time I am thirty, they will be well into what one euphemistically calls their twilight years.

The shock of realising my parents are human beings who are aging is supported by certain irrefutable evidence:

• The level of enjoyment they derive from cruising the streets around our house with the Neighbourhood Watch.
  
• The fact that they know not only all of our neighbour's names ('Kevin, Jade, Kevin. The one who drives the white Jeep. Jack's son. Lives next door to Ida and Louis. No of course you know Ida and Louis...') but also every piece of what could possibly be construed as gossip about their daily lives.
• BBC World is always on.
• I can no longer get a straight answer from either of them that does not involve the events of two preceeding hours, a few strange coincidences, random thoughts on a tangential topic and more names of neighbours. (Thanks, I was just wondering if Woolies stayed open till nine.)
• They bicker. Not the all-out, scream-the-house-down fights of my formative years (ah, an insight into the root of my many issues), but arguments about, for example, the whereabouts of the DSTV remote.

God love 'em.

Holiday (n) leisure time away from work devoted to rest or pleasure; eg 'I recently spent nearly three weeks on holiday in Botswana'

The plan:
Nine people, two 4x4s, seventeen days exploring the wild spaces of Botswana.

The route:
Cape Town. Witbank. Palapye. Makgadikgadi Pans and Khubu Island. Planet Baobab. Maun. Drotsky's Caves. Nguma Lagoon. Maun. Moremi. Maun. Witbank. Cape Town.

Saw some things that blew my mind, things that made me question the trivial nature of my day-to-day life.

A few things Botswana taught me:

• I can drive through 50 degree heat and live to tell the tale.
• I can survive for eighteen days without wearing makeup or endlessly straightening my hair (in fact, I think I prefer this laid-back me).
• Extreme heat affects one's alcohol tolerance.
• Hippos are inexplicably attracted to Chris Wilkinson.
  
• Management, even at rest camps in Botswana, will never tell you about a complimentary breakfast.
• Lions do not really sound like the Goldwyn-Mayer one does.
• Bat guano between your toes feels pleasantly like beach sand.
• Beetles, even ones bigger than my thumb, will not hurt me.
• I do not get airsick in a 4-seater Cessna.
• Never underestimate the goodwill of a family of inbred hillbillies.
  

A few adjectives:

• Sweltering (the weather)
• Sweaty (me, us, everyone)
• Scenic (er, the scenery)
• Sexy (le Boyfriend)
• Sozzled (brought back a few cocktail recipes)
• Smiling (Botswana's entire population)
• Starry (the night sky)
• Serious (getting stuck in a swamp for five hours)
  
• Surprisingly sad (crossing the border back into SA)
  

Regrets:

• Just one. Boyfriend gave me (along with a signed copy of my favourite blogger's book) a lovely bottle of Moët et Chandon for my birthday, which careless, thoughtless silly silly me accidentally left behind in Maun.
• Maybe two – the fact that it is currently unfeasible for me to pack up my life and go travelling around the world for the foreseeable future.

Congratulations to Lo and Kim, who got engaged in a baobab. May you continue to have sex.

The biggest thank you, with bells on, to the rock star C-team, Candice and Chris. You were, hands down, the most amazing travelling mates ever. May Vodka Fizz flow from the heavens, and hippos become fully aquatic and trouble you no longer.

Feeling a little melancholic this morning.

After a three-hour delay (thanks 1Time) I arrived home at 10 last night, and was at work promptly at 8.30 this morning. Only unpacked insofar as the definition can be extended to me turning my suitcase upside down on my bedroom floor.

It feels somewhat surreal to be back at my desk, editing copy, as per usual. Come to think of it, it felt weird to be in my bed last night, in my room, at home. Hell showering with a roof over my head seemed kinda odd.

I am ... restless.

More on the incredible incredibleness of the Botswana trip soon. Just need to crawl my way out of a tottering pile of job bags.

Back!

Well, kind of.

Arrived 'home' to Boyfriend's place last night, and hopping my flight back to Cape Town and home home later this afternoon.

Was not savaged by lions. Just thought I'd let you know. More soon.