Picture Bobby 2

I mentioned how South Africa, and in this case, Cape Town is a land of massive contrasts.

My parents have a house with a wine cellar, employ a man to skim the pool and 20 minutes' drive away...

You have to take these photos out of the passenger window because it's generally too dangerous to stop. They're shacks along the busy freeway into the city.

Most of the people who live there are without jobs, some have electricity but many don't have running water.

Hey, ho!

Anyway - driving into the city centre I get the first glimpse of Table Mountain...

No matter how many times you've seen the mountain or now matter how many years you've lived in Cape Town, the mountain always takes your breath away.

It is beauty on a gargantuan scale.

So, I'm going to meet Andrew & Ian who're a couple, Andrew is a friend from school who I've known for 16 years (more than half my bloody life...)

First we have to go to some drinks do for another gay couple who're leaving for the UK. The reception is at a very swish Cape Town hotel.

I am wearing one of Andrea's T-shirts which makes me look very booby.

You can't tell it from the picture that I'm titty, nor can you tell that the logo says "I Drink At Work."

Well, this is the perfect T-shirt to wear out to a party where you don't know anyone because if one guy came up to ask, 20 did...

"Is that a joke?", "Oh - funny...?", "Is that your company motto?" etc.

Of course I just answered back "it's an exclusive Italian fashion label - I guess it's post ironic really..." which drew a lot of blank faces.

What was also confusing, I guess, was that I was steadfastly drinking only Diet Coke.

The party was going rather nicely, some of the guys were quite fit until this guy joined the conversation.

Fuck knows why he said it, but when he found out I was from London and worked in TV he said "oh, you fit in perfectly because we're all the A-list here.."

I turned to Ian and demanded we leave immediately, so we did.

After dinner we decided to visit some of the poofey bars in Green Point, the gay(ish) area of Cape Town.

The first place we went to was The Loft which is like a ... yeah, you get it.

Spread over two floors, there were some quite fit guys (even though it was quite empty) but I could still hear the comment from the gay drinks party ringing in my head so I was still rather irritated.

And this enormous picture on the wall was just irked me...

Har har - a 6-foot cock. Geddit!?

We weren't at The Loft long and went up to Beulah Bar around the corner.

This is (finally) where the fun started because Beulah Bar is a lesbian bar - the first time I've ever been in a fully-fledged lesbionka establishment.

It was bizarre and ridiculous in one.

Do you know when you take a photo of something, load it onto your PC then push a button and it inverts the colours in the picture?

That is exactly what a lesbian bar is like - a gay bar inverted.

There were mostly lesbians but gays and some straight people too. Like in a gay bar where you have mostly gays, some lesbians and some straight people too.

Nobody drank slim-line tonics, Diet Cokes or vodka. Everyone drank beer straight from the bottle.

These two empties above were stood together, embraced in sapphic heaven, in the loo.

None of the music had the words "fabulous", "gorgeous" or "raining men."

Of the songs I recognised:

Prince - Kiss (Remix)
Lyric sample: "You don't have to be rich to be my girl"

Leo Sayer - Thunder In My Heart (Remix)
Lyric sample: "Girl, I feel a thunder in my heart that takes my breath away."

Sugababes - Push The Button
I don't think I need to extrapolate this one...

There was also a lot of demin going on, boob grabbing (the ladies' boobage, not mine) but otherwise it was actually a lot of fun.

The only thing I thought was slightly ridiculous was this painting on the wall...

What's that rude saying about drinking from the furry cup?

In the end I flirted (and exchanged some mouth-spit) with some Brazilian guy.

You leave London, travel 10,000 miles and you end up having it off with a young Brazilian in a tank top with muscular arms.

The more things change...