I picked the 20th Oppikoppi to go on a solo mission, an Oddysey of my own. Nope, it wasn’t really “brave”, as one Oppi-goer told me – there were plenty of people I knew there, and I never felt alone. Even while chilling on the legendary Stoep of Tess and Boors’ house, sorting out some dustbunnies in my head and peering over the mushroomtown of Mordor below.

There’s a special kind of magic to people who can take you right back to a time and place, making you experience what they did. People who are good at telling jokes, embroidering events, tickling a laugh out of the most mundane situations. Tall tales indeed.

I know why my neck cricks. It’s because of all the bloody phoner interviews I have to do. Pinching the phone between shoulder and ear, frantically scribbling (or typing) in a one-handed shorthand hybrid that even I can’t decipher afterwards… Explaining the awkward pauses away with sorry, I have to write that down, I’m doing this old school, ha ha! (Call me techno-challenged.) (Ed’s note: this was a decade ago, I’m way more high-tech now!)

I’m not entirely sure when I started becoming so obsessed with cheesy horror and all things B-grade… It was probably an act of self-preservation, in light of all the intellectual, arty, high-concept movies I’d been reviewing for years as one of the perks of being an entertainment journalist.

If I never see a paintbrush again, it will be too soon. Although it’s quite possible that I might not see anything ever again, if I don’t get this fetching green paint out of my baby blues…

I’ve been told that meditation will help me with various issues… Sleeplessness, relentless earworms, generalised chaos in the filing system that is my head, imagining that the rainspider hiding in my orchid is out to get me… I now know that everybody encouraging me to meditate is actually trying to kill me.