ETCETERA / Home Thoughts

BY THE time you read this, I will probably be in Johannesburg. This is rather a dramatic event in my life, partly because I have not left London for the past 10 months (apart from a day trip to the Isle of Sheppey and a weekend in Sussex). The trip to South Africa was planned as a cheerful family reunion to celebrate my grandfather's 90th birthday; given that my extended family is - how can I put this? - more than a little dysfunctional, the idea was perhaps ill-conceived (divorce, despair, destitution, despondency - you name it, they do it. Oh, and feuds too. Feuds are a family speciality.) But, anyway, I went ahead and booked air tickets for me and my two children, and persuaded my sister to come with us.

Things started to go wrong four days before our flight. I phoned my father to check that he knew what time we were arriving, and he gloomily told me that he was depressed - very, very depressed indeed. He outlined a catalogue of calamities that had befallen him - too terrible to go into here - and then I failed, spectacularly, to offer him any comfort at all.

Slightly alarmed that we might add to his misery by turning up on his doorstep, I rang a cousin, who said: 'Oh, I think you should still come - I'm sure we'll have a wonderful time. That is, if your grandfather doesn't die this week.'

'Is he ill?' I asked. 'No, just old and exhausted,' she said mournfully.

At this point, I considered cancelling the trip, but we had already paid for the tickets, and my five-year-old son, Jamie, would never forgive me if we didn't go. He has been talking about it since August, and filled a rucksack two weeks ago with all his holiday requirements (Thomas the Tank engine; a pair of Power Ranger sunglasses; a plastic robot; and a new dinosaur toothbrush).

Perhaps as a reaction to the parlous emotional and physical state of my relatives, I have developed a variety of neurotic worries about other things. Things like, will we be murdered in our beds by axe-wielding robbers? This has been exacerbated by my husband (who is now working in America); the night before he left London, just as I was falling into a peaceful sleep, he hissed into my ear: 'Did you know there's a serial killer on the loose in Johannesburg? He's killed 11 women in the last four months - it's true, I heard it on Radio 4 this morning. Do you really think you should be going there?'

I pointed out that there were serial killers in America, and in this country too, for that matter. We had a depressing conversation about violent death, and then he went to sleep and I lay awake for the rest of the night, beset by anxiety and a rising sense of panic.

Still, we're going. All I've got to do is pack a large suitcase. So what do I take? Nappies, shorts, sun-tan lotion, Prozac, a book on family therapy and perhaps a gun? No, no, no . . . this is not the right attitude. We're going to have a lovely holiday in the new South Africa. We're going to see elephants and antelope and shopping malls. It will be absolutely wonderful - just you wait and see.