I kind of knew it was coming. Scrawled in a journal somewhere back at the end of July or early August are these words "The next few weeks are going to be mental, in one way I can't wait for them to be over, which is sad really." And they were mental, and I am sort of glad they are over but also kind of sad. I've been all the way to South Africa and back and my feet are just now touching the ground.
I went to Cape Town for the 4th Homeless World Cup - 48 countries from around the world come together to play a week's a worth of "street soccer" in an attempt to raise awareness about homelessness and help move the players who take part on to better lives - or something like that.
I worked for the England team - a pleasant bunch of lads plucked from hostels and supported housing schemes from across the country. With that, and all the the other things that have been going down at work these last few weeks, I've found the days slip away into weeks and suddenly here I am, the skies darkening before 5pm, layered in thick cloud.
I had mixed feelings before going to Cape Town. South Africa has never been top of my list of places to visit - and I really didn't know what to expect there. I kept bumping into people who had connections to it, a woman on the train who used to live there, someone who went on holiday there last year. Some people went "You'll love it, it's amazing." Others went "It's mad, there are dead people lying in the street. Don't go out after dark." Actually, thanks to its colonial past, it was very British I thought. You go half way around the world and find a sea front not dis-similar to Margate bar the palm trees and streets packed with bars which could be in Manchester or Newcastle. The more I travel, the more things look the same. A cable car up to table mountain like the gondolas up to the alps in Switzerland. A bland cafe on top of the mountain serving chips and beer.
But the people... I can honestly say I've never met people like Capetonians before. Are they perhaps the friendliest people on earth? Laid back, helpful, genuine. If the city left me a bit unmoved, I fell in love with people. Especially the people I met who worked with the street kids over there (of which there are a lot!) People who were motivated to change what they saw as a gross injustice running barefoot in the streets around them. Cape Town is one of those places where the world's rich and poor slam up against one another. People lie barefoot, face down in the street (alive or dead - who can say - I passed two like this and didn't stop to check), but there they are in front of million pound apartment buildings.
Anyway, this is all a bit of random blog, mainly to return to the keyboard and just say something really. The weeks have fallen away, it's autumn, I've been to South Africa, seen Desmond Tutu dance on the soccer pitch waving his hands in the air and learnt the word "Lekker" which is South African street for "cool". Life ey?