I GOT my hair done to go to Cape Town. Lovely place in Johannesburg "glass of guava juice or coffee?" I sat and looked at myself in the mirror with the stylist.
"Wouldn't you like a seat?" she asked.
I examined the fine strong wrought iron chair with the cushion "No, this is fine," I said.
"I think a seat would be better, it would last longer," she said.
I now examined the chair with increasing alarm. There are some chairs which might be contra indicated for me, but wrought iron? Were, they going to bring in a garden bench?
"Whatever you think," I said humbly.
"We are going to seat Madam's hair," the stylist said. "Madam was going to have a blow dry but we agree that a seat would best."
I sat there under the dryer wondering about the English language I, who have been unable to pronounce the word "birthday" in England in any way which conveyed even vaguely the meaning.
On one side of me, a handsome black woman was having her hair straightened on the other, a handsome white woman was having her hair curled. You could become a philosopher if you stayed in a place like that for long enough.
Back at Jan Smuts Airport, the rain coming down in stair rods, the happy campers were the ones who had tickets to The Cape.
It was a two hour flight over miles and miles of green veldt it wasn't all that spectacular but you couldn't stop looking at it. It had a kind of importance just by being there, so much of it.
"Amazing bloody place, amazing," said a man in front of me to his wife. "I say that every single time I cross it."
"You do dear," she said sadly.
And then there was a lot of twinkling ocean and we were at The Cape.
We had chosen the place to stay from a brochure, on the advice of a South African expat in a Dublin travel agency.
I wanted somewhere quiet, with a fax and a big swimming pool and nice food. There's a little booklet called The Portfolio Series like the ones we have at home for small hotels and big guest houses ... they all looked absolutely marvellous, so it was like choosing one with a pin.
The one we picked was the Villa Belmonte, in an area called Oranjezicht (which I have given up trying to pronounce. Instead, I say it's just under Table Mountain and you turn right after the Mount Nelson Hotel).
And the days roll into each other, working by the pool all morning under an umbrella. Occasionally, a couple of other visitors appear but usually there's nobody else at all. The other guests are more serious, intense sight seers who come back at night with tales of the wineries and the various peaks and promontories. They've been to see sharks and penguins while I flop in and out of the pool like a contented seal and look up at Table Mountain which has a tablecloth of cloud on it in the mornings.
Then, at lunch time, you'd go down to the Waterfront busy, bustling, a genuine working harbour but tarted up with wonderful restaurants, art galleries, craft shops, cafes, The portions are enormous, almost Texan. The wines are amazing £3 a bottle for something you'd be talking about for ages. And £5 for the gorgeous Thelema wine that has won every prize around and is in danger of running out, considering how much of it I have accounted for personally.
At night there are Cape Malay restaurants the kind of curry that is full of fruit and nuts and has a sweetish taste. There are elegant restaurants in the posh Constantia area and seaside places where a table looking out at the ocean has to be booked a week in advance.
The Cape has discovered tourism in a very big way, and cold people from snowbound, rain filled lands have discovered it. Soon, there will be cheaper flights already, the hotels and self catering accommodation are flying up. On the side of the buses there is a notice "Smile at the tourists and then we'll all be smiling."
Since I arrived there has hardly been a day when Kader Asmal has not been on the front pages of the newspapers. As Minister for Water, he is in the front line. There's either a drought or a flood or as last week both. It's a very big place.
Positive and enthusiastic as always, Kader gets a large number of Irish visitors these days, and seems glad to see them. His sitting room had the Chieftains on the turntable a John Behan bull on the mantle piece an Alice Hanratty, an Edward Maguire and a Louis le Brocquy on the walls.
Kader and Louise were talking about the President of Ireland's visit to South Africa next month, and what she will do and see. It will be busy and official and we decided we wouldn't tell her about the other way of seeing Cape Town, the way that involves an ice cold pool and bright sun under Table Mountain, and a busy harbour scene at lunch and a drive by the coast and then a face full of Cape Malay Curry and the thought of an outing to the Cape of Good Hope itself and the Stellenbosch Vineyards. If you were coming out to a place like this on a state visit which will not be set up with the needs of a lazy tourist in mind you wouldn't want to hear about all the things you will miss.
However, she won't miss the people smiling whether or not the advertising tells them to do so, and the welcome and the sense of hope.
The black are still poor, the white still own big homes. There are no white families in the shanty towns trying to bring up children in a tin hut but there are black people everywhere now in their own land which once denied them access to beaches, bus seats and the right to live in the city where they worked.
It may be sentimental but when you see white and black singing Nkosi Sikele'l Afrika and cheering together for South Africa in every sports field, you would have to be very cynical not to see the good wind of change that blew over this particular place in the last five years.