In Good Company

The trick with spending time by yourself is to stop looking inwards and look outwards. You can, if you want, get lost for a long time in the labyrinth of your own mind, but that it is maybe healthier and more interesting to pay attention to what is going on around you. I like to spend time alone in busy places, but I sometimes wish I was invisible. People who are able to project confidence never look awkward or attract sympathetic glances like someone who clearly is uncomfortable: you only look lonely if you feel it. That’s what I tried to remind myself whilst I sat at the bar sipping ginger ale through a straw and waiting for a friend. I knew I was going to be there before him – I wanted to walk whilst it was still light enough to be safe and I knew he was coming from further than me. I was quite looking forward to the sitting there by myself. I have never been brave enough to go into a bar and buy myself a drink. Coffees I quite like on my own. But a bar was new. I always wondered if it would be a good way of meeting people. Ace it at the bar; wait for someone to stand close enough to talk to you. Offer a lighter to the first person who holds a cigarette between their fingers. Except I don’t smoke and forgot to bring any matches, and perhaps the choice of a non-alcoholic drink was sending out the wrong messages.

I had come to that same bar earlier in the week with some friends, but tonight – even though it was now the weekend – it seemed much emptier. And the average age of the patrons significantly lower. A group of kids (who can’t have been older than 14 or 15) took it in turns to approach the bar and buy rounds.

Turn of boy one: he stands at the back of the room, takes a deep breath and makes sure he has his money out of his pocket and in his hand. He has to ensure the barmaid (who barely even looks at him before relieving him of the cash) knows he meant business. He orders shots, pushes his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose, and leans his elbow against the bar stool next to him. Look at home, look like you do this all the time… Looks down at the bottle tops on the floor. He flips one with the toe of his adidas shoe, looks up over the top of his specs to catch a glimpse of the barmaid’s hip as she reaches up to grab the bottle from the high shelf and then pours the drinks.

The line of thumb-high glasses in front of him now presents the young man with a new problem he hadn’t considered. He can’t carry them all at once, and so he has to quickly signal an accomplice to help him take the bounty back to the table where the pretty girls are waiting. And so it continued until my friend arrived.

My bedroom is boiling. The air that night hardly moved and it was like trying to sleep in a soup bowl. The only fan in the flat is pointed at the old hamster that is lying panting under his wheel. If the air won’t move around me I have to move myself through the air. So I left the next morning to walk around the town.

I bought an ice cream and walked to the Company’s Gardens, satisfied to be holding something that is melting faster than me. I found the Gardens on my first day in Cape Town; English swallow flown south for the winter, I came and at amongst the pigeons and the squirrels there. There are always children running in and out of the sprinklers in just their pants, and wilted bodies lain out in the shade. People come here to escape the heat, or bask in it and I am at once with everyone and with no one at all. My favourite time alone is spent in Company.