It's precisely 1.21am, and despite being up since the very crack of dawn I'm not tired. With the increasingly vivid and daunting shadow of debt hanging over my head, I'm very much in one of those pondering and wondering states - of which I so cleverly named this blog above.
Obviously.
Now, shortly after the catastrophic error of taking a sip of orange squash not ten minutes after brushing my teeth, I do what I usually do when I'm in such a mood. Drift through pictures on Facebook, and memories in my head.... Bruce Springsteen playing on my iPod and a longing for a return to eight months and five thousand, nine hundred and seventy-nine miles ago.
Eight months ago, I spent twenty-odd days having the time of my life with two friends during the World Cup in South Africa. On my course, I spend a lot of time talking about the one thing I feel confident enough to talk about in front of anyone - the emotional attachment I, and millions of others, share with a football club. I've never been the biggest En-ger-land fan, and I certainly don't share the emotional concrete bond I do with Liverpool - in fact most of the time I sling abuse and joking about how blessed we are to have Gareth Barry patrolling the middle of Wembley.
Amongst other comments.
All in all, I wasn't overly arsed by England's attempts to win in SA.
Ummm.
But something came up from the whole trip that I wasn't expecting. To generate an emotional attachment to the country, the city and the people we met. Of course, I was expecting to have a great time. A football carnival! No matter my lack of interest in England, we had tickets to the likes of Portugal, Holland and Spain. But what I took from Cape Town was something I hadn't even considered before we spent 27 hours en route to the Western Cape.
As happy as I was to go with my two long term school friends, I knew we'd clash if we had to spend 3 weeks living in each others pockets. My well known ability to be wound up like a jack-in-a-box, as well as the general mood of two generally sleep deprived and hyped up 20 year olds suggested we'd have a few tasty moments.
This whole thing changed on our first Sunday where we went to a pre-arranged BBQ with distant family and friends of family. I'd previously met one of the hosting party, a quite simply terrifying woman who had scared me to the core four or five years earlier at a Christmas meal - appearing out of no where, before hugging me and kissing me, reminding me of that time she last saw me when I was two. Of course, I didn't remember.
Dear old Gill, now 70+ and blind held a position of complete and utter madness in my mind ever since that Christmas, so I was looking forward to see how the others dealt with her. But apart from her, we knew no one. So we were to be on our best behavior, be charming and by absolutely no means whatsoever turn up horribly hungover after a night drinking copious amounts of £1 pints, and dancing on table tops with Dutch, Mexicans, and a bunch of English.
So what was already a meeting to be somewhat worried about, soon became a mammoth challenge to stay awake, conscious and not die in front of our welcoming hosts. To cut a long story short, after rejecting (politely) the opportunity to crack open a few cold Castle lagers, we had a lovely meal and met two kids our age. Caitlin and Reece. To say we owe these two a lot would be an understatement of staggering proportions. That night they took us to meet their friends, and with them being as hospitable and welcoming as Cait and Reece were, we were sorted.
And to think, I vaguely recollect (remember: horrific hangover) comments thrown around that morning like "do we have to go?"
Thank god we did. Those two, and their friends are absolutely 100% responsible for giving us a better time than we could have expected in our wildest dreams.
The football became a barely relevant bonus for me.
I could write till I ran out of blog space (can you even do that?) about the things we did over there... climbed Lions Head, Table Mountain, Braii's nights out, days out, a fantastic 21st birthday and so much more... but I think I'd test the patience of my two readers a tad. And with such a target market, that wouldn't be a wise move.
Anyway, the whole point of this meandering waffle was to say the emotional connection I feel with both the country and the people we met there is so big, I spend a part of every single day thinking about it. I miss them so much, some more than others and I miss the place.
This year my motivation levels have gone up and down more than Liverpool's league positions, but throughout it all I've been generating an end goal. Of course, to do as best I can in my course and get the best possible job in the future - that has to be there, for the money and time being put into it, it simply has to be the end goal. But the real end goal for me, above all of that, is to get back to Cape Town, get back to that. My pipe dream is to get back out there in early 2012, work a bit and generally just settle into a 3, 4 or 5 month spell out there. Of course, it's so money dependent it hurts, but if there's a way of getting my self together and getting out there - I'll do it.
No music this blog entry, just a bloody hilarious sign on the walk down to Grand Parade. Pahaaa.
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