Hotel foyer

Suspended between a coffee shop playing French love songs and a cavernous, modern-designer hotel foyer playing loungey Jazz I feel like I've been dropped into some strange vortex between worlds. The women here all wear higher-than-high heels and tight pants. I'd never noticed before but those higher-than-high wedge heels actually really do make one look taller.

At one end of the cavernous foyer, which reminds me of my school hall but more designer, is one of those floor polishing machines dragging around a tired-looking man with the demeanour of someone who'd rather be somewhere else. Anywhere else.

Three crumpled businessmen pulling bags on wheels roll across it's newly-polished floor, little track marks across the only-just-there shine. There must be a pool somewhere in the hotel. I see a small boy wrapped in a towel skid across the business men's tyre tracks, his barefeet making no imprint.

For some reason I can't shake the feeling of anxiety in this place filled with transience. Nothing seems stuck down. Even the (designer) lamps seem to be trying to escape. Everything echoes and reverberates, the air rushes out of the door, making an escape each time it slides open on its designer tracks, sensing someone in its little electronic beam.

I feel very, very alone as I wait for the other Eager Beavers to arrive. It's book club night and we decided to meet somewhere else, and this is it.

Lift music

I'd tag her at about 49-years old, give-or-take five years. Her hair is dyed blonde, cut well and looks like it took a good amount of time earlier in the evening to get it to its current state - long, smooth and loose. She wears an unsuitably-tight-for-her-age white lace top. Underneath it she either has a boob job or a very good push-up bra, which we can clearly see. A little off-putting, really.

She breezed in as if she owned the restaurant, with a strangely-shaped large black suitcase that looked like something a mafioso might carry. She had various other boxes and a suitcase with her, all of which she placed next to us in the space left there after she ordered the waiter to remove the table and chairs. Right. Next. To. Us. Close enough for me to look at her perfect make-up, lots of it.

Collecting a bar stool from the bar, she placed it in the spot next to us too, and then led a power cord under our table and plugged in a small computer which she placed on a small table that she'd found somewhere while I wasn't looking. Her white lace top and dyed-blonde hair glowed in the blue light from the screen.

We were finishing up our food, chatting voraciously about books. It was book club, after all, a haphazardly put-together meeting of The Eager Beaver's Reading Circle because one of our circle, our host for last night, had to rush away to see her sick mother-in-law. We'd decided not to just cancel, but instead to meet at a restaurant, just to chat, because we can.

At this point the lady opened her mafioso suitcase and I wondered whether I should duck under the table, seeing the headlines in my head: "Eager Beaver's Reading Circle members injured in bizarre mafioso shootout at local eatery." Luckily, my sense came to me before I made a total fool of myself, as she pulled out a large, very shiny, saxophone.

She then began to play, using her computer to make background beats, what I can only refer to as Kenny G-esque lift music. Basically, my worst musical genre. Luckily, we were done with dinner, so could pay the bill and leave hurriedly, the dulcet sounds of the saxophone haunting us all the way into the parking lot.

The Eager Beaver's Reading Circle

I finally did it. I’m an adult. Okay, scrap that, I’m one step closer to being an adult. It’s going to take a lot more than this to make me a complete adult. Hell, this 13-year old boy brain is here to stay I think. I stray. I am now, officially, part of a book club. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that I’m a co-founder of a book club. We had our inaugural meeting a couple of weeks back. A book club! Indeed.

The Eager Beaver’s Reading Circle.

That’s what we’re called. There are five of us thus far, although one couldn’t come to the inaugural meeting. Does that mean she gets thrown out? We’re unsure of book club etiquette. We knew we needed some food, some wine, the book club/reading circle members… Oh, and, of course, books. The rules, though? That we're unsure of, being virginal book clubbers. We decided to each bring a book we’d read and loved, and a suggestion for another.

It was great: we have an architect, a nutritional therapist, a copywriter and a some-kind-of-computer-worker (well, maybe we have her, depending on the rules). We ate yummy food, discussed our books and pulled two out of a hat for discussion at our next meeting. We plan to be as environmentally correct as possible and not buy too many new books, preferring rather to support second-hand bookshops, and always to have one South Africa book.

Our books:

The Valley of the Dolls, by Jacqueline Susanna, ‘cult classic’. I am still to read it, I’ll report back when I have.

The other one, our South African option, is The Au Pair, by Michele Macfarlane, a true story about a married woman who left her husband for… you guessed it… her au pair. I read it in two days. It’s like reading someone’s diary, something we’d all love to do, but don’t (I hope!) because it’s rude to do that. This, however, is allowed. I liked it for its brave honesty. It also contains some hot and heavy lesbian action. (I wonder what hits that sentence will bring on Google…)

So, there you have it, Shiny moves one step closer to adulthood, at her advanced age. I’ve joined the sacred book club circle and we’re serious about it. No drinking wine while discussing the blurbs on the back cover for us, we plan on actually reading the books and talking about them. While drinking wine, of course. Now, if someone could just send me the Book Club Rules, please?