I have robbed a bank. Once. Put on a catwoman outfit and on ‘Action!”, slinked around one of this countries biggest vaults.

I have been Cinderella. Once , complete with crystal coach on stage and honest to goodness sparkling white ponies.

I groaned and moaned ala ‘When Harry met Sally’! 44 times. Opposite South Africa’s most renown rugby captain. In a restaurant. For a T.V commercial. He blushed.

I have ridden horses, bikes, jetskis, rollercoasters and a one of a kind humvee with American actors firing bullets all around me.

I have been a gypsy, a rockstar, a pirate, an aristocrat, a slavetrader, and rescued Africa from germ warfare….

I have worn corsets, negligees, leather pants, corporate suits, Victorian gowns and combat camo. (Although not all at the same time.)

I have been bad, good, selfish and brave.

And this, all for a living.

I have done other things too.

I am a daughter, a sister and an aunt. and I have buried my father and my grandfather.

I have given birth. And fallen in love with my sons. I am a mother. I AM A MOTHER!

I have visited a few far off places. Enjoying dirty old Big Ben and wet streets in Amsterdam, Poetry in New York, Edgy New Orleans and Stone owls in New Bethesda.

I have pimped out my phone with Star Wars ringtones and I hug trees on a regular basis.

I have eaten chocolate and lost myself in Haagendaz cookie dough dynamo.

Been enthralled at the Guggenheim, but its my boys bright paintings that adorn my walls.

Sat for an hour in front of the Rosetta Stone. Entranced.

I have played director and producer making 2 meter high ghosts weep, and turning mine dumps into desert dunes.

I have written books that have connected me to victims who have become victors!

I have been on billboards in strange countries like Ghana and Nigeria.

Have had my public face posed on magazine covers .

Have had my private face slashed all over the newpapers.

I have signed papers for a marriage and more papers for a divorce

Been hit by a man and betrayed by another.

Have laughed hard and cried in private.

And somewhere between all of this I grew up and stopped believing in faeries, although I craved happy endings…. Its just an average ordinary life of a perfectly imperfect woman who is still writing exams In the Art of Love.

And it is at this point that the beginnings become endings and the endings become beginnings and so my story starts.

(from ‘Bittersweet- Confessions of a Freshly Single’)