Me and the gay men in my life, we have a lot in common. We sing along to 80s power ballads. We can identify the colour taupe. We don’t think it’s ridiculous to spend R280 on a bottle of shampoo. We have fraught relationships with our mothers. We like beautiful men.

Most of the time, the rules are clear (“You be George Michael, I’ll be Aretha Franklin,” he says as the cheesy keyboard intro kicks in). But when it comes to the mutual appreciation of gorgeous guys, the line becomes frustratingly fuzzy. Look, I’m not just being a diva – I don’t want to share my Paul Mitchell Extra-Body Daily Rinse either.

I’m not a gal that a gay guy could pejoratively call a fag hag. I’m charming and attractive, if occasionally a touch neurotic and shrill (another thing me and my boys have in common). I’m smart and blonde and have fabulous boobs. As one of my boy buds once said to me, “Mish, you’re not a fag hag. You’d drop me in a second for a straight man who’d screw you.” And it happened just about as often as you can imagine.

So, back when I was footloose, I would regularly bring delicious things into the orbit of my gaggle of gay friends. There was the lanky Camel Man focus puller, the cute charmer with the internet start-up (back when internet start-ups were really sexy-edgy), the buff geologist, the beefy acoustic guitarist, the model-cum-trapeze-artist… okay, I guess that I can’t blame my housemate for homo-ing in on that one.

Now, a little aside of “he’s hunkalicious!”, showing an appreciation of my impeccable good taste in men, I will lap up. Even giggle flirtatiously when you’re speaking to my conquest – I know you can’t help it. But do not grab his ass when he’s standing in his tighty-whities at the open fridge, trying to decide how to get his sugar levels back up after a night of being ravished by me.

I know, I know, the chiseled trapeze artist is standing there in his underwear in what is one-third your kitchen! He must want you to fondle his sculpted cheeks! What else could it mean?! The fact is, it’s insulting that the thought that the man was disorientated and couldn’t find his pants because of the dizzying heights of passion he had reached in my curvaceous, moist embrace didn’t cross your mind!

There you are, I’m getting neurotic and shrill again. But can you blame me? That boy was my plaything! And – despite all evidence to the contrary – he was straight!

I’ve often wondered at the gay man’s assertion that “there’s no such thing as a straight man”. I’m aware of the Kinsey scale and the fact that some men who have sex with women might have enjoyed another boy touching their willy in Std 5. Gosh, who hasn’t? I know there are guys who wanted more from that teenage fumble but could never admit it and now cruise the streets for rent boys when their wives think they’re at the pub watching rugby. Hey, everyone has their troubles.

But straight men do exist, and they really are into women. They put pictures of them up on their res walls and on city billboards. They write poetry and play songs and make movies about them. They build giant reclining female nudes out of peaches (don’t ask, I saw it on the internet). Actually it probably all gets a bit sickening. No wonder you’re sometimes tempted to poke a stick in a straight man’s eye.

It’s all very well wanting to shift societal perceptions, but targeting a grown man who is quite comfortable with his sexuality (and with yours, until you put your hand on his thigh… and left it there) is banging your head against a wall. Throwing yourself at a man who is obviously straight is embarrassing for you and incredibly awkward for him. Not because you’re making him confront his latent homosexuality, but because he’s simply not attracted to men (although I’m sure you’re gorgeous, darling). It’s like if Kerry McGregor offered to slather herself in baby oil, rub her breasts all over your naked body and then ride you like a soaped pig all night: Would you be frothing with sexual excitement? What do you mean, “who’s Kerry McGregor”?

Okay, Sweetie, I know: He was just irresistibly delicious, you couldn’t help yourself. All is forgiven. Now, can I borrow some of your Paul Mitchell Sculpting Spray? I’ve got a big date tonight…

It is utterly still here. The sky is hard blue like pottery glaze. The skeletons of spring’s daisies – little papery discs on dessicated stems – stand stiffly between small, sharp, black stones. An invisible insect flies past, making a metallic whirring noise like a miniaturised helicopter. The sound stretches until it melts back into the hot silence. Nothing thrives here. Except us.

Tankwa Town, a village of tents on the edge of the Tankwa Karoo National Park in the Northern Cape, is the home of the 1000 people making up Afrika Burns. Afrika Burns is an “invent”, an art and culture event created entirely by the people attending it.

The concept is based on Burning Man, a week-long creative explosion at Black Rock in the Nevada desert. The climax of the event is the torching of a 12-metre high wooden man, but with every person bringing their own weird wonderfulness to Black Rock, there’s plenty more to see and experience. In 2007 nearly 48 000 people took part in the big daddy Burning Man, with thousands of others attending smaller regional offshoots around America and the world. From co-founder Larry Harvey saying “Let’s build a man and burn it” on a San Francisco beach in 1986, the Burning Man philosophy has developed into a global movement. Afrika Burns 2007 is its first South African incarnation.

At Afrika Burns there are no curators or directors. There is no passive consumption of programmed entertainment. There aren’t even cash bars or branded T-shirts or bouncers or bins. There are just the participants, their creativity and their generosity. (And emergency services and long drop toilets.) Afrika Burns is anarchy meets carnival: individuals express themselves in consultation and collaboration with their community, beside huge flaming sculptures, while dressed in kilts, feathered headdresses, gold platform boots, cowboy hats… or nothing at all. No, it’s not something you see every day.

So Sean the photographer, his wife (with nine-month old baby) and I find ourselves packing 20 litres of water, four bottles of sunscreen, some boxes of old polaroid film and a carrot cake, and driving three hours from Cape Town into the desert, just to see what will happen.

At the Africa Burns welcome point we hit the pile of scrap metal called the Virgin Gong. Its clashing sound heralds our crossing over from the “default world” of daily life to Tankwa Town, a world filled with its own marvels. We see a patch of flourescent toadstools sprung up from the stony ground. A mud mermaid with a tail of mussel shells reclining next to a baobab tree made of plastic containers. A forest of tethered balloons; bright spheres shivering like living things in the hot breeze. A beaded sheep nibbling on a tumbleweed. Two giant wheels joined together – a person walking, like a hamster, in each – perambulating across the shimmering plain. A matt black scorpion made of car tyres. A latticed dome like a huge sea urchin in the distance. It’s Yeats’s line “I would mould a world of fire and dew” made manifest, a dream created by human hands in a place that offers us nothing but the harshest elements.

We spend an unfun half hour hammering tent pegs into the scorching, iron-hard ground. With camp set up, we go and explore. Sean takes his polaroid camera and I take my carrot cake. We go up to strangers and Sean takes their pictures with the old polaroid film. The photos come out pre-faded, like the hot sun has beaten its way inside the camera. When Sean hands the photos to the subjects they already look like memories, and the people laugh with delight. I hold out my container and they dig pieces of carrot cake out of the gooey mess of the melted butter icing. “Thank you!” they shout as they set off again on their own adventures.

We find Camp Desert Rose, a Western themed camp with a bar where they serve free vodka sunrises. A jewellery-maker gives me a necklace with a pendant of a multi-headed and -limbed person – the symbol of Afrika Burns, inspired by San paintings. Someone hands me a chunk of cool watermelon. A woman called Jan comes up to me holding out a purple shawl covered in butterflies. “Take one,” she says and I do, pinning it to my shirt.

The people of Tankwa Town practice an ethos of decommodification: nothing is for sale. Instead, there is the practice of Gifting. Gifting is about giving things away without expecting anything in return (although Sean does get a “Heaven Note” which he is told can be exchanged for an unlimited number of spanks from a certain young lady. He doesn’t cash it).

Monique Schleiss, one of the people who has been putting together Afrika Burns over the past 13 months, explains that they focussed on getting people to understand Gifting because everyone can do it: “It’s not intimidating, like making a 10-metre high metal sculpture in the middle of nowhere.” Gifting promotes the Burning Man principles of Radical Participation and collaboration. “The value of the gift is not in the object, it’s in the interaction with another person,” she says.

In the desert, collaboration and co-operation is important. “It’s an extreme environment,” says Steven Raspa, the American Burning Man Special Events Producer who has come to help out at Afrika Burns, “you have to work together to survive.” Steven is wearing a white net skirt. His beard is twisted with wire, looped around his neck and tipped with a daisy. He looks quite at home. So is Afrika Burns different from the Nevada version? “It’s a reflection of South Africa through a common philosophy. But Burning Man manifests differently wherever it is, because it’s a conference of the human imagination.”

Of course, there are practical concerns too. We meet Jono Hoffenberg, the Head Ranger, while he’s refilling the oil lamp hanging on one of the signs marking Tankwa Town’s “roads”. As a Ranger, one of Jono’s key functions is to educate people about Afrika Burns’ Leave No Trace policy: “You are responsible for your own waste. There are no bins here, so you need to learn to carry a bag around and put everything in it.” When Tankwa Town disappears from the Karoo, it must disappear completely. Every bit of burned wood, every bright pink feather, every watermelon pip must be gone.

A dust storm whips the sunset into muddy orange and when it settles, the full moon rises, huge and yellow like a second sun. It is so bright that we cast shadows as we set out from our camp to see Tankwa Town by night.

The excitement is palpable after dark – this is when stuff burns. We follow the glow to Main Camp, where Triple Bypass is being stoked. This three-metre high metal sculpture has three flues, punched with patterns, that are filled with burning logs. The wind is picking up and is funneled through the aortas of the sculpture, which periodically spurts a huge veil of sparks from its peak. It’s mesmerising.

But we’re looking for wooden stuff that’s going to be burnt to the ground. Not because we’re destructive, mind you, but because there’s something liberating about The Burn. The burning of the art, explains James Happe on the Afrika Burns website “is meant to be constructive in the sense that it frees people from attachment to the material objects and focuses their attention on the experiential aspects of the process of creation.”

The experience of the art and the environment is different at night. The 12th Key – which looks like a rather dull wooden radio tower by day – has a collar of lights near the top that slowly change colour, like the lights on the masts of Nelson Mandela bridge in Jozi. As we get closer we see that there are screens on each of the four radiating arms. Each screen shows a video of an eye, looking at you and blinking. It’s deliciously creepy.

Art Cars like the sangria buggy and bright orange Voo Voo Vehicle beetle about the camp offering lifts and free booze. At Camp Desert Rose there’s a non-stop line-dancing party going on while at Camp Vuvuzela there are women doing astonishing things with hula hoops to live saxophone music. We’re invited for flaming sambuca’s at Camp Here And Now. While we’re out dancing at The Turbine (a beautiful dome built by a set-building crew called The Upsetters) people spread the rumour that the Burns have been cancelled because of the high wind.

On Sunday morning we hear that some smaller stuff – like the Post Boxes filled with notes on issues people want to let go of – was burned. But all the big structures are still standing. “I’m not too stressed about it,” says Monique. “I just remind myself that Afrika Burns is not about the Burns, it’s about everything that happens around the Burns. It’s about the community.”

If asked a Burner how they thought the spirit of temporary Tankwa Town could work outside the Karoo, they might paraphrase Voltaire: “The experience of Afrika Burns is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.” The experience of the event is intended to ignite acts of generosity, creativity and community back in the so-called default world.

On the Monday after Afrika Burns it’s raining in Cape Town. I’m driving to a meeting and see a woman making her way down the hill, shoulders hunched against the rain. I catch her eye and grimace in sympathy. Normally, I’d think that was enough of a kind gesture. But this time I stop. “Would you like a lift?” I offer. “Thanks!” she says, smiling as she jumps in.

It’s said that one of the great joys of travelling is the fresh perspective it gives you on your everyday life. Afrika Burns will change the way you look at things for a very long time.

The most memorable meal I had in France was one that we cooked from ingredients we gathered at the local market in St Menehould – a cassoulet made with the Champagne area’s famous Puy lentils, fresh leeks and tomatoes, and homemade parsley and pork sausages, washed down with Valmy, a fruity beer from the farm down the road.

Ah, happy days. But luckily I don’t have to spend 12 hours on a plane and embarrass myself with clunky Standard 8 French to experience a market stocked with gorgeous fresh produce. A 15-minute drive to Woodstock and I can stock up on pig’n’fig sausages, pink Roseval potatoes, organic sparkling wine, caramel-filled crepes and handmade gorganzola.

A morning at The Neighbourgoods Market at The Old Biscuit Mill is like a holiday. It’s festive and you’ll eat too much. You might even find yourself buying something you don’t really need – a bar of buchu, cranberry and rooibos soap, anyone? – just because you’re in the spirit of things.

On 1 September the Market opened a new section, more than doubling its floor space, and Arthur and I visited to see what we could indulge in.

The first exciting new discovery was a stand called EarthApples. Now, ask Arthur, I’d been banging on for months about how we don’t get enough potato varietals in South Africa … and here were hessian sacks of at least 10 types I’d never heard of! I got some perfect baking potatoes called Odem. Sure, they were ridiculously expensive at R20 for a bag of eight, but they’re purple!

We entered the new section of the market (thankfully it’s covered, as the weather was decidedly un-Springlike) and were almost immediately waylaid by Karen Dudley’s stall. I ordered an aromatic Chicken Curry of the Seven Veils and Arthur got the Famous Roast Chicken Sandwich (R25 each), and we grabbed ourselves a spot at one of the communal trestle tables. It’s a country fair-like atmosphere, sharing space at a table decorated with jam jars of wild flowers, watching the live bluegrass band play and grandparents bounce their grandkiddies on their knees. Lovely.

My next great discovery was mace. Mace is the husk of the nutmeg seed, and has a subtle nutty, peppery flavour. I often come across it in UK cookbooks, but can’t find it on the shelves of my supermarket. At at the Divine Foods stall, I not only found mace, but organic mace.

Dessert for Arthur and I had to be one of the famous Bonaparte Flannerie waffles. For R20 you get a perfect waffle – crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside – drizzled with Belgian chocolate sauce and topped with two dollops of fresh cream.

And of course, we couldn’t leave without a bottle of Edie’s cordial (R30). She now makes a lemon and ginger one which we love to glug down with some soda water and ice (or hot water and a dash of whiskey, as she suggests with a wink).

The Old Biscuit Mill offers other great shopping adventures (Beads for Africa is worth a visit on its own). Recent additions are the relocated Plush Bazaar, for new and used glass and silverware, and the Mü and Me stationary shop, stocked with the famously adorable Meu products. A newly opened branch of the A is for Apple children’s book shop is the cherry on the top.

More parking has been secured at the College of Cape Town (opposite the Mill, but reached from Kent Road off Salt River Road). Take along your plastic and tin recycling as there are now facilities for it, with people to help you sort your PE-HD from your PE-LD. The Market is open Saturdays and Sundays (from 1 December), 9am to 2pm, for your mini-break from the mall.

It may not be wise to judge a book by its cover, but we do. And if you’re browsing in one of South Africa’s bigger book stores, which stocks at least 30 000 individual titles, all roughly the same size and shape, a book’s cover can seem, well, all-important.

Imagine a packed stadium full of teenage girls, each trying to get the attention of Robbie Williams. The competition is not unlike that.

Author cachet and marketing are huge factors, of course. They can, in fact, mean that bookbuyers don’t care what the cover looks like, as long as they’ve seen it clutched and held aloft in Oprah’s manicured hand. But for your Jane Soap trying to find a second book to use up the difference on her gift voucher, The Cover is king (very closely followed by royal jester-cum-spin doctor, The Blurb).

No wonder a huge amount of effort goes into creating and selecting a cover for a book. Yet until quite recently in South Africa, you wouldn’t have said so. People would remark that a book ‘looked local’ (polite-speak for “ugly”). In the past few years fierce competition – from UK publishers, DSTV, magazines, new local imprints – has had South African trade publishers paying more attention to how their books are packaged. South African consumers are demanding beautiful products, whether they be television title sequences, shop window displays or book covers. Visual engagement matters like never before.

Internationally, there are publishing houses that have built their brand on “fantastic cover design” – Penguin is one – and designers – Chip Kid, Jon Gray (gray318), Kai and Sonny – who are renowned and revered for their book covers. In South Africa, the trend is catching on: imprints such as Double Storey and Jacana consistently publish interesting covers and designers such as Toby Newsome, Dale Halvorsen, Richard Hart of Disturbance Design and Michiel Botha of Flame Design are becoming known for producing them.

Publishers are not only more open to encouraging the art of book cover design, but are also thinking differently, and cleverly, about how they use the cover to sell their books. As Michiel Botha says, “Whether you like the spirit of the new Two Dogs imprint books or not, their quirky covers with cheeky style are attractive.” Two Dogs is the new Struik imprint for men, and they have created a standard template for all their book covers which mimics the feel of magazine features, while also strongly reinforcing the Two Dogs brand by treating the logo as a kind of masthead.

This is a formula for this particular range of books, but there are broader formulas in the book world: Dark covers where the author’s name is bigger than the title are thrillers, line illustrated covers with pink, wonky font are chick lit, garish block type and huge front cover author pic are personality-driven self help etc. “There are definitely formulas,” says Richard Hart. “One only has to pop into Exclusive Books and look for covers featuring photographs cropped to show only the legs and feet. The best book jacket design, like any other design, should be a surprise and a brush with the unfamiliar. This isn’t always possible and sometimes publishers even ask designers to follow a formula, anticipating (perhaps correctly) that readers who are used to having certain types of literature packaged in certain ways will respond to a product packaged in the same way.”

Toby Newsome confirms this, but suggests it’s not all bad: “There are formulas, especially in educational and academic covers, where there is a lot more concern about legibility and misinterpretation. There are also classic design approaches which can be revisited time and again.”

Designer Sean Robertson believes that most staid formulas are not consumer driven: “I think that the more conservative publishers stick to what they think are winning formulas which might make people think that there are set formulas in place. A cover is supposed to have impact and make the buyer at least pick the book up out of interest. But does a cover need to be horribly in-your-face in order to make impact? I don’t think so.”

Michiel Botha proposes that there are not formulas, but a visual language that could be subverted to enrich a design or increase its impact.

The idea that book cover design has a visual language that needs to be acknowledged and then tweaked for on-shelf visibility has seen interesting new cover approaches in genres that have traditionally had formulaic covers (generally, literary fiction titles are the only areas where publishers allow themselves to get “arty”). Jacana is currently in the process of rejacketing its Sappi Tree Spotting series. The covers were the usual “tree-dissected” approach of most field guides. The redesign (by Georgina MacRobert of Hothouse Design) combines the formality – suitable for a guide – of traditional botanical illustration with an unconventional tight crop that evokes for the reader the sensual beauty of the subject they’re examining.

There may have been some fear of losing the appeal to the “common denominator” in this approach, but in a world inundated with information there’s the real potential for success for publishers who have the conviction to aim straight for the intended consumer. For example, the image selection of the Struik cooking title Season to Taste avoids typical mass market “food porn” or chef deification á la Jamie Oliver and appeals directly to the precision and aesthetic clarity of the professional chef, the main target market of this book.

When considering the character of a particular book, it may be important to the integrity of the work that a publisher and designer subvert the expected: The cover of the Zebra Press autobiography Acid Alex (illustrated by Anton Kannemeyer) both eschews and embraces the “moody posed author photo” memoir convention and uses the right illustrator to capture the author’s personality in a memorable way.

For publishers, how much of cover design is a physical manifestation of the author’s vision and how much it is product packaging is a sliding scale depending on the book. “In an ideal world,” says Richard Hart, “the designer would always read the manuscript (the best covers I’ve done have always been for books that I’ve read before designing), and make a considered, thought provoking cover that complements, even extends, the thrust of the work. But time and money don’t always allow for this and often covers are simply hashed together or worse: a solution is dictated based on notions of market tastes.”

Authors can give a designer the inspiration they need to “solve” a cover, but they can’t always be the driver of the process. “Often authors have very clear ideas about what they imagine the cover looking like,” says Toby Newsome. “This is always useful, but I try to never let it stop me looking in even completely different directions.” Sean Robertson explains, “I don’t think that a designer should only try and make the author’s vision a reality and ignore what works on a bookshelf. This is where the publisher steps in.”

This is probably one of the most inspiring, yet frustrating, elements of book cover design for designers: the number of cooks stirring the broth. Andy Jamieson and Greg Lomas of Green Tea Bag Design describe the three spheres of influence in the cover design process: The Designer, The Author and The Publisher (who usually also embodies the opinions of the company’s sales, marketing and production staff). The more common ground the three spheres have, the smoother and quicker the process will be. The process is often a long, convoluted one.

Putting more pressure on designers is the production process. Print runs in South Africa are small – usually about 3000 copies for a first (sometimes entire) run – which means no economy of scale. Design budgets are tight. Paper is expensive and the range is meagre. Special inks and other processes are very expensive and local repro houses have limited experience with them. While some designers and publishers claim that if you can’t pull off a decent cover design in four-colour then it’s not strong enough, others would like the money and opportunity to have a bit more fun. A cover like Michele Staples’ At Her Feet (Oshun Books) was lifted from ordinariness by a veil-like UV spot, a clever solution for a play about Muslim women that had to have a patterned cover the (the rules of Islam do not allow for representative art). Production extras must make publishing and design sense; as Sean says, “Sometimes too many finishes can ruin a book cover just as quickly as too few can.”

When budget does allow it, designers can enjoy pushing the boundaries of what the book format allows. Toby Newsome’s end papers for Nice Times (Double Storey) enrich a book that celebrates joyful indulgence. The full, bright flaps of Glass Jars Among Trees (Jacana, designed by Roger Jardine of Disturbance Design) mirror the colourful surprises of the book’s content.

Cover design can even extend to the title page. In fact, a well co-ordinated book design should see the cover pulled through the whole book. Says Sean: “It’s very easy to see when a cover is freelanced out and the typesetter or book designer does not communicate with the cover designer. Fonts differ, design styles fight and it just looks like a forced relationship between the inside and its jacket. Obviously budgets can determine what the inside of a book looks like (cash for illustrations, photos etc) but this does not excuse poor design and weak typography inside a book.” Lauren Rycroft of Flame Design enthuses: “There is enormous potential for book design and typesetting in this country. People are becoming more visually literate and information is also demanding to be become more visually accessible. It’s a great opportunity for designers.”

For all its challenges, book cover design is still highly conceptual work that offers great rewards for designers. “No-one in South Africa is going to make a living doing exclusively book covers,” Richard admits. “But they do offer unique design opportunities … and it feels so much better dressing a work of literature and contributing something of cultural value, than devoting time and talent to an anonymous corporate bottom line.” Michiel says simply, “It makes my heart beat.”

The question nervous publishers are still asking themselves is: Is the South African bookbuying public ready for interesting, subtle cover design? “I don’t know,” says Richard, “but I think there’s a growing awareness and appreciation of good work. I’m often complemented on my good book designs, never on my crap ones, so at least there’s an appreciation of the difference!”

Eventually, traditional book publishers will no choice but to respond to this growing awareness. As information goes digital and people go visual, the stimulating physicality of a well designed book is the ultimate USP.

Half the titles on the Homebru list are by women. But, asks Michelle Matthews, what more can be done to make women’s voices heard?

In a recent newspaper article, novelist Ian McEwan proclaimed: “When women stop reading, the novel will be dead.”

He and his son had sorted through the McEwan bookshelves and found a number of duplicates of classic books. They gave away 30 novels to people lunching in a garden close to their home; only one was accepted by a man. McEwan reminds us: “Women not only made possible the development of this emerging literary form [the novel], but to some important degree, shaped its content.” McEwan doesn’t say how many of the classic novels he handed out were written by women. One assumes that when he says women shaped the novel, he means the demands of the female reader, not the efforts of women writers.

A recent survey by Lisa Jardine and Annie Watkins, published in The Guardian, found that women’s favourite books had a range far outstripping men’s, and included titles from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to Jane Eyre, Catch-22 to Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.

Of course, in non-fiction there is a demand for relevant content aimed squarely at women — such as parenting and “mom”oir — that Oshun and other publishers aim to meet. It is widely accepted in the publishing trade that women buy and read more books. Marketing campaigns target book clubs (comprised mainly of women) and publicity teams push for reviews in women’s magazines. In the United Kingdom, new cellphone book technology is being targeted at young girls. Imprints are geared to market segments of women — such as Transita, which publishes fiction for women over 45, or “grey lit”.

Women with disposable income are told to take reading “me time” at every turn, but what is done to encourage women writers? In the UK, the Orange Prize was founded 10 years ago to recognise women writing novels in English. The award has been controversial, with some commentators saying it puts a deserved spotlight on women writers and others claiming that it “ghettoises” women’s fiction and draws attention away from the fact that not many women win the “big” literary prizes. Both camps have a point.

Do women writers in South Africa need special support? Bookstores have piled high the latest titles from Antjie Krog, Patricia Schonstein, Melinda Ferguson, Praba Moodley, Margie Orford, Zoe Wicomb, Marieta van der Vyver and others, but there is still a need to encourage South African women to write and to take their writing seriously. Women are being published, but they are still under-represented in the charts, and there is not enough diversity within the group.

Women readers drive the sales of books and their needs and demands inform publishing decisions. Women make up 70% of the British and local publishing industries. It is only the representation of women writers on the bestseller lists that lags behind. Oshun, the Orange Prize and similar ventures encourage buyers (mainly women) to read books written by women. If we want more women writers on the book charts, women readers have the power to put them there.

“Sometimes you go into a bookshop and you see a shelf set aside just for women writers.” Sindiwe Magona is speaking at the launch of a book of essays on her work, collected by Siphokazi Koyana. The crowd of about 40 people is a mixture of academia, government and family; and a young Japanese man who has read Magona’s work in translation, a representative from O magazine, and Antjie Krog (who I deliberately try not to meet in an erroneous tactic developed in my rock groupie days. Antjie, of course, doesn’t notice my fey beauty and try to pursue me). As for the speech, I’ve become extra attentive — the new venture we’ve started at Struik is a women’s imprint.

“The reason we have a separate shelf,” Magona continues, “is not because we’re special, but because we’re an underclass.” She goes on to say that in New York she sees Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou in the shop windows, and when she comes to South Africa? Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou. (Magona, predictably, is more popular overseas than in her own country.) The question she is raising is: Are South African publishers doing enough to encourage and support local women writers? Her answer: no.

Struik has risen to that challenge with Oshun Books, an imprint that publishes books — fiction, memoirs, biographies, life guides and gift books — by and for women. Part of the motivation behind conceptualising a women’s imprint was that Struik was receiving excellent manuscripts by women that didn’t fit in with its publishing programme. Another, large, part of Struik’s motivation is that women buy more books. Oshun Books has a two-pronged manifesto: it is a platform for South African women writers and it will fill information and entertainment gaps for South African women readers.

Oshun Books publishes extraordinary stories by women. Sarajevo Roses by Anné Mariè du Preez Bezdrob, one of our launch titles, tells the gripping, moving story of how the author, a United Nations peacekeeper, survived two years in the besieged city of Sarajevo during the Bosnian war. This is a book that will appeal to men and women; many of our books will. However, by focusing too on what local women readers, specifically, might want to read, Oshun Books can tailor titles for its primary market. Coming up in the new year we have a book on surviving your first year of motherhood and a resource book for women golfers, among other targeted titles.

Do we know what women read? On my shelves at home, Sarah Waters snuggles with Isaac Asimov, Bessie Head and Marian Keyes, Toni Morrison sits next to Alexander McCall Smith who bumps covers with Peter Carey who rubs shoulders with Kathy Reichs who shares space with Diane Awerbuck who squeezes in beside Umberto Eco who jostles with Jane Austen … Other than being rather revealing of my bookshelf cataloguing system (I don’t have one), it is telling of what women read. Women read what they want to read. Oshun Books will give them more of what they want.

Visit the Oshun Books website: www.struiknews.co.za/oshunbooks/

I need new Nikes. I mean, the last time I bought sneakers was three years ago.

Cute little soccer-style Converse takkies. But a few climbing walls, several seasons and a puppy later… I need new Nikes. But unfortunately this month I needed to fix my car and buy a heater more. Okay, so maybe I don’t need new Nikes. I want new Nikes. Nikes would be nice. But how am I going to get them?

Have you heard about the woman who went on the internet to ask people to donate money towards paying off her credit card bill? She had run up more than $20 000 in debt buying lattes and Prada pumps. Her site was called www.savekaren.com, but it didn’t give her surname and the pic showed her hiding behind her computer. Oh the shame of gluttony! I decide on a more personal approach.

The Zone in Rosebank is a hang-out for the young and trendy. These are the kinds of shoppers who’d appreciate my need for Nikes. So on a Saturday morning just after payday I go to Rosebank to begin my own collection, using that great South African fundraising tool – a cardboard sign. On a strategic street corner I elbow my way between the newspaper vendor and a woman selling Homeless Talk. (Said elbows are clad in a Diesel jacket – R750 on half-price sale, a steal.)

I tramp those white lines. The sun is beating down. Thank God for my Guess sunglasses, not to mention my Estee Lauder LightSource Transforming Moisture Lotion with SPF 15 (R450 for 50ml – worth every cent). Through the glass, inside their controlled climate, I see one or two people sniggering. Grrrrr… I’ll bet the feet pressed against the pedals are encased in gleaming new Nikes. A few people – particularly one woman whose scrubbed young son is swooshed from head to toe – manage to wear an unusual expression that somehow combines embarrassment and terror.

Finally a window rolls down. ‘I’ll help you out with your Nikes,’ says the man, dropping a 50c piece into my Alessi collection jar (R186 from Spilhaus stores nationwide). The golden coin tinkles satisfyingly against the finely crafted Italian glass. I’m on my way!

When the next window rolls down. I’m smiling and confident, like one of those groomed ladies on an infomercial. ‘Would you like to help me, sir?’

‘Just do it, huh?’ He’s breathing funnily. Maybe it’s the sudden loss of air-conditioning pressure due to opening his window. ‘You’re cute,’ he rasps.

I debate whether being scrubbed with Clinique exfoliating cream, spritzed with Gucci Rush 2, slathered with Body Shop nut butter, smoothed with Mac foundation, perked up with a Wonderbra and then accentuated by fashionably low-slung Guess jeans is actually an advantage when begging on a street corner. At least it’s broad daylight.

And then my payload pulls up. It’s a businessman in a brand new silver Porsche. I approach and he suavely allows his window to slide down. ‘Hello sir,’ I say, admittedly coquettishly. ‘You look like a man who appreciated the finer things in life. So do you understand that I need new Nikes?’

‘Come and live with me,’ he replies. ‘I’ll buy you new Nikes.’ I’m considering. Tempting, but… he pulls off. It’s my first and, hopefully, last chance to live a life of luxury in exchange for sexual favours.

The next to respond is a car full of students. ‘Why are you doing this? What are you studying?’ asks the shaggy-haired driver. ‘Because I did exactly the same project for my marketing class.’

‘I just need new Nikes,’ I say, getting the stomach-churning feeling that every ad exec must get when realising for the first time that everything has already been done.

Suddenly the boy is twisting. And his leg pops out the window. ‘Look at the wicked Nikes I managed to buy from my project.’ They’re beautiful. They’re red. I look down at my dismal 50c piece.

I remember a street kid who came up to me one day and said: ‘You have to give me money if I make you laugh.’ I looked blankly at him. ‘Because I’m saving up to buy my BMW.’ I laughed. I gave him R2. My first R2 comes like that, the man chuckling as he drops it into my jar.

I get another R1 like this: the window cracks open far enough to let pursed fingers through. ‘Thank you,’ I say. The man grunts sadly. His eyes, staring where his passenger would be, are shifting quickly, as though his sockets are oiled. The window snaps shut. It’s horrible. What’s a new pair of Nikes really worth?

I have R3.50. I’m about 1/200th of the way to a bottom-of-the-range pair of Nikes. And it’s getting ugly. The laughing I can handle. I’m trying to be funny. I know that I don’t really need the money. It’s the glares I can’t take. One man accelerates as I pass in front of his bumper. Through the windscreen, his face shows undiluted hatred. Clearly there are a lot of peopl out there who think I don’t need new Nikes.

‘I need new Nikes,’ I say to a young guy driving a Toyota Tazz. He turns his Oakleyed eyes to me.

‘Don’t we all,’ he sighs.

I retire. I take my R3.50 and give it to Grace, the woman selling Homeless Talk. She smiles and gently claps her hands. Thank you. I feel guilty about stealing the limelight at her corner all morning, so I give her R20. She hugs me, squealing like the grand-prize winner on the Coca-Cola Mega Millions game show.

We don’t need new Nikes. What we need is perspective. What we need is to know what we need.

‘Wha’ choo do-in?’ my housemate’s three-year-old sister sing-songed.

‘I’m taking this paint off the drawers and then I’m going to paint them again.’

‘You can’t do that,’ she said with the dumb bluntness reserved for toddlers and Mark Gilman.

‘Why?’

‘Because you’re a girl.’

Strange child. My gender had never come into the question as to whether I could do DIY. My mother taught me everything I know about stripping, grinding and painting. While TV-moms would emerge from the kitchen, wooden spoon in hand, powdered with flour, my mom would step out from the new study, circular sander in hand, white with paint dust. One Christmas my dad gave her an electric screwdriver. It was exactly what she’d been hoping for.

The idea of a woman doing the DIY around the house was perfectly natural. I started small, hammering in nails for pictures. Soon I moved on to more ambitious projects – shelf assembly, respraying, some basic wiring. And it was when I moved out of home that things got really big. I decided to paint my bathroom. Sunshine yellow. A rather more complex endeavour than the old ‘paint your bedroom white’ affair. There was water-proofing, spackling, sanding and some pretty hardcore masking. The job couldn’t be done slapdash – a good, smooth colour paintjob needs patience and a steady hand. This obviously took some time. Gradually the transformation took place. I began to feel like a better-groomed, more articulate Tim ‘The Toolman’ Taylor. I felt… virile.

DIY, like washing one’s car, has a uniform for girls. And it really is faded cut-off denim hotpants and a ragged-to-the-point-of-transparent white vest. These are old clothes that we refuse to wear in public anymore and have therefore been relegated top ‘dirty work’ status. The clothing, the working with my hands, the occasional involuntary grunt during a particularly vigorous rolling session, the feeling of paint hardening under my nails… DIY makes me hot. And men pick up on it. ‘What’s this?’ he’ll ask, fingering a smudge egg-yolk yellow on my arm. ‘I’ve been painting my bathroom.’ ‘Oh wow,’ he’ll moan, imagining a bit of slap ‘n tickle with a wet paintbrush, ending with a romp in the soiled dropsheets.

DIY is in fact perfectly suited to women. We have the commitment to attention to detail necessary to do a decent household fix-up. There’s only one thing we won’t touch. Even my mother would defer this to my dad. It’s the most masculine tool of them all. The drill. Perhaps it’s because of the similarity to other of their functions, but all men can drill.

Just to illustrate this, I visited a gay friend of mine the other day. ‘Hilda! Reeva!’ he squealed in queen slang (translation: ‘Hideous! Revolting!’), waving a manicured hand limp-wristedly at the utensils scattered across his kitchen counter. ‘I simply can’t have this “kak” lying around any more. Excuse me darling, but I’m going to have to put up a rack.’ He minced off and returned with a large, black drill fitted with a very impressive bit. He plugged it in with a flourish, positioned the drill bit in the grouting, braced himself and the began jackhammering away in that crack like he was born to it. I just don’t have the necessary confidence.

I’ll do pretty much everything else though. And I’ll like it too. However, I can’t always get my fixing to fix. In the first few months of living in my new home I’d only had one lukewarm DIY experience. Yup, I painted my bedroom white. Not exactly a handygirl high. Oh, and a few blows at the Hilti, but that doesn’t count. Then I inherited a crusty old chest of drawers from my grandfather. Under those layers of yellowed Velvaglo there was oak, I knew it.

And that’s how I got into stripping. The best part of this particular DIY job was being able to go to the local hardware store and say with a straight face: ‘Can you help me? I’m stripping my drawers and I need longer screws.’

I spent hours giggling over this witticism with my housemate Andrew, who, like me, is a firm believer in keeping a chilled G’n’T in one’s unoccupied hand while doing a household job.

Now, the stripping is the easy part. It’s the sanding that’s the bugger. It was while sweating over a bumpy drawer that I realised that my housemate’s little sister may not be so silly after all. Let the men do the handywork. I’d rather cook a Sunday roast – they can spend their weekends slaving over residual varnish stains. Except that men are so bad at it.

I came from the kitchen with a fresh G’n’T to find Andrew, obviously inspired by my frenzied rubbing, having a go at sanding the drawers.

‘No!’ I screamed shrilly.

Andrew dropped the sanding block. ‘What?’ he said, surprised.

‘Sand WITH the grain, for God’s sake! Didn’t your mother teach you anything?’

People mill about the juicy cornucopia that spills from the small gallery into the street. Some stand, briefly, brows slightly furrowed, before moving to the wine table. Others lean forward, pointing out details to companions. Someone reaches out, plucks a grape from the display, and pops it into their mouth.

“I didn’t expect people to eat it,” says Paco Rodrigues of his sculpture, “but when I thought about it, I wasn’t upset that they did.” I’m speaking to Rodrigues on a Friday afternoon, when he has an open studio at the Mark Coetzee Fine Art Cabinet in Bree Street. Rodrigues is visiting on a Fulbright Scholarship and is using Coetzee’s space, vacant since he accepted the directorship of the Rubell art collection in Miami to create his assemblages. “Twist”, a metal chain woven with fresh fruit, leaves and flowers, was shown at the December Church Street Art Walk. Rodrigues is working with food again for the pieces he’ll show at the next Art Walk on Monday March 26.

He has sourced retro kitchen cabinets, which he is collaging with recipe cards from the Sixties and Seventies. On the evening the shelves will be bursting with the food of those times, dishes of the ham-in-aspic variety. I smile at the old recipe cards. Thirty years ago these orangey pictures of food looked appetising, but today they’re just heart-burn inducing, what with the move towards crisp, light cookbook photos.

I’m thinking about the colour of food when I visit John Hodgekiss’s exhibition at The Cold Room (143 Harrington Street, Gardens) the next morning. About half of the “Negative” show is close-ups of meat as it comes out on a photographic negative – cyan coloured. Bright blue food, which doesn’t exist in nature, is alienating to humans, which explains why only toddlers (who’ll nibble on dog food and ants) drink bubblegum-flavoured milkshakes. The hunks of meat therefore don’t remind one of flesh, but take on patterns one wouldn’t normally see in one’s lamb chop.

As Hodgekiss points out, they still look organic, reflecting larger fractals like landscapes or smaller ones like bacteria. These negative prints of strange meat are spaced between images of animal skulls and human x-rays, consistent with the artist’s fascination with anatomy. The bones are also in negative, showing up solid and black. The skulls are just beautiful, but it was the x-rays that got me thinking. According to Hodgekiss, they are “intimate portraits of ourselves, not clouded with perceptions of skin colour or creed”. A universality is achieved by stripping away the skin with the skin goes the context. Why did his mother have head scans? Where exactly are those staples in that man’s groin? The x-rays balance well with the animal elements of the show for example, a tangled strip of boerewors resonates with our intestines.

Why the talk of digestive organs? ‘Cause a girl’s gotta eat! And I had the scrummiest time at Gorgeous in Loop Street on Friday night. I last saw actor Peter Hayes the owner of this popular new restaurant chopping and frying in the culinary theatrical experience Play With Your Food with Gatan Schmidt (who, being Belgian, has a mussel dish named after him at Gorgeous). I saw the act repeated on my way to the bathroom. I always trust a place that has a window into their kitchen.

I had a tangy salmon in citrus dill sauce, a lot of Chardonnay, my tarot cards read (a service offered on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays) and a nice chat with Peter. I’ve heard some people say about the menu, “Well, it’s not anything I couldn’t make at home.” Exactly. Gorgeous is friendly and frill-less and you don’t have to do the dishes! Just remember to phone and book. While you’re there, if the food, the company or the ginger, Chivas Regal and Frangelico on crushed ice has inspired the artist in you, you can order a disposable camera from the waiter.

Paco Rodrigues has an open studio at the Mark Coetzee Fine Art Cabinet, 120 Bree Street, Cape Town from noon to 5pm on Fridays. Negative is showing at The Cold Room, 143 Harrington Road, Gardens, until April 5. Gorgeous is located at 210 Loop Street, Cape Town. Tel: (021) 424 4554. Closed Mondays.

It is tempting to use the cliché “cutting edge”, but surgery as art is at least a decade old. French artist Orlan is its most famous proponent, having undergone 10 cosmetic operations in her expression of carnal art.

In her latest she has created “the largest nose technically possible and ethically acceptable”, thumbing her now prodigious proboscis at the millions of women who have had theirs altered in attempts to conform to conventional ideas of beauty.

Calling cosmetic surgery art is not far-fetched. A person conceptualises the image they want and then has it constructed to their specifications, projecting a message to the world. Two artists currently showing in Cape Town have taken surgery as the basis of art works, both of them using the medium of flesh and scalpel to examine issues of gender.

Peet Pienaar plays with his sense of self in I Want to Tell You Something …. This is not unusual for Pienaar, but this time he cuts closer to the bone.
At the time of writing, Pienaar is languishing in bed, nursing his snipped willy. He has had himself circumcised and if all has gone well, you’ll be able to see the video at the Brendon Bell Roberts Fine Art Gallery.

Pienaar’s original proposal stirred up a lot of controversy. He was invited to join Ubudoda, an exhibition examining masculinity currently showing at the Association for Visual Arts. Pienaar proposed going through a masculine “rite of passage”, a circumcision, like that undergone by Xhosa males. He wanted the operation done in the gallery by a black woman doctor while people around the world logged on to a live webcast for $1 a pop. He planned to auction his foreskin on the Internet.

Fellow exhibitor Thembinkosi Goniwe was horrified by Pienaar’s appropriation of a cultural ritual that is not his own, especially since he aimed to turn it into a commercial spectacle. Goniwe also questioned Pienaar’s use of a black doctor, accusing him of power-mongering. Pienaar responded: “The doctor would have my dick in one hand and a scalpel in the other. I think I would be the vulnerable one.” After a public debate between the artists, Pienaar was excluded from the show.

“When people look at this exhibition 20 years from now,” Pienaar tells me, “they’re not going to see the same debate. They’re going to see this as a time when white male Afrikaners were feeling oppressed by their identity.

“Most Afrikaners aren’t circumcised – it’s a Jewish, Muslim or Xhosa thing – and this is a symbol of me broadening my identity.” Meanwhile, Leora Farber is exhibiting Endless Renovations at João Ferreira Fine Art.

Farber looks at the cosmetic surgeon’s role in reshaping women’s bodies, tailoring them to create the ideal external appearance. The sculpture In-cise, a secretarial-style suit coated in fatty pink wax, conveys the idea of flesh as something that can be adjusted or even slipped off like an article of clothing.

It’s Farber’s video work and stills that deal most graphically with surgery. In the videos the delicate surgical procedures are set to lilting music. The music was fitting, but it became unsettling as layers of skin and strings of fat were stripped off a living body. There’s a quiet violence in cosmetic surgery.

For her stills, Farber has chosen to document a breast reduction. Ink lines mark where the skin should be cut – like the outline of a dress pattern.

Skin is removed. Fat is removed. At one stage the woman’s breasts are just bloodied lumps on her chest. Amazing the fuss made over two fatty pieces of meat. The woman finally gets her new breasts, complete with Frankensteinian stitches.

Farber sees cosmetic surgery as masochism, a destructive tendency of women to subordinate themselves to sameness and the desires of others. They’ve strengthened their gender identity, but weakened their sense of self.