Grahamstown - the lull between term and fest

End of university term and not yet start of festival week.
Grahamstown in this inbetween time is always a strangely enjoyable place. It's that lull between the flight of the Rhodes University students from campus and town, and the descent of the artists and audiences to take up their places and spaces.
The frenetic edge is gone during this lull. There is space to breathe and think and walk. You don't have to fight your way into the pub for a quiet drink, although you wonder that the service is a bit poor - maybe the hungry hordes queueing to get in on a busy term or festival night actually ratchet up service levels. The locals get a chance to take back the streets and the shopping malls, aware that their re-occupation is a temporary one and that their patronage alone cannot sustain the economy.
The posters have not gone up yet. You can still see the walls of buildings, sidewalks, trees - dull and bland, guaranteed not to distract you as you walk along from anywhere in the city.
But it can't last. It's 24 hours before the curtain goes up on the first of some 2000 performances between Thursday morning, June 28 and Sunday evening, July 8. This town is beginning to hum again. The early bird productions which have been setting up since the weekend have been joined - overnight - on the streets, in the venues, residences and on the lampposts by scores of fellow artists. Today, the serious festinos will start trekking into town and the lull will be properly over. And South Africa's biggest gathering to enjoy, appreciate, applaud, hear, critique, reflect on or dismiss the offerings of our artistic community will be well and truly undErway.
Grahamstown is the better for it. And so is our country.