The hypoglycemia - at least, that's what I think it was - made my head spin as badly as if Bakkies Botha had head-butted me.

It struck just as I reached gate nine. The heavily-armed guard there was just about to say something to me when two black 4x4s roared past him in the dark. Their blue lights flashing, and without as much as a by-your-leave, they tore through gate nine.

The guard was lucky he wasn't six inches closer to them. He could have had a severely truncated nose. If he'd had a hard-on at the time, he would have been in serious trouble.

Clearly, as Auberon Waugh might have remarked, the main role players inside the black vehicles were in search of a place where they could go to the lavatory free.

"Why don't you shoot the fuggers?" I asked the policeperson.  "They just drove into a prohibited area without permission."

"Well, it's a minister," he shrugged in a long-suffering sort of way.

He then said that the gate for the evening was not the usual nine but in fact 10 and that I needed to return to Church Street and turn left. This I did, starting to feel pretty woozy.

My whole life flashed before me, a tedious series of events including glimpses of Hillary and Bill Clinton, Pilates classes, Ronald S Roberts, Maureen Isaacson, Constantine Cavafy, Vo Nguyen Giap, Charlize Theron, Mrs Van der Zol (aka Van der Schyff), my history teacher at Brakpan High, and Deon du Plessis.

I said: "Oh Lord, please don't let me die here, hard by the presidential guest house - my friends all drive Porsches - and imagine what the media'll say about Lakela Kaunda and me..."

Then, like life itself, the dizziness passed and I drove up the dark byroads of the guesthouse. Why were there no lights - other than flashing blue lights? Surely Mahlamba Ndlopfu (A New Dawn) ought of all places to be exempt from Eskom's shenanigans?

I finally made it to one of many hostesses who gave me a card with my name and table number on it and then I walked into the foyer of the guest house.

This is where one has a drink of cheap sparkling wine or juice or both. I grabbed a glass of juice to stave off the hypo-shakes. This is also where one and meets and greets old friends with enormous glee and huge jocularity.

Members of the ANC and/or the Struggle are particularly good at this. You grasp the person by the hand while grinning broadly and expostulating loudly, "Well, how are you, Fikile? Remember the time we had to flee from the safe house in Durbs?" And then pretend that you are completely overcome by happiness at seeing this person even if it's, say, Essop Pahad.

If she's a gal, preferably a robust ANC gal (a gezunte meidel), you may kiss her resoundingly. If he's a boy, you touch shoulders affectionately - you sort of crouch, touch, pause, engage and then touch shoulders.

Unfortunately, however, I didn't know anyone in the foyer. I did see one chubby fellow who looked very much like an ex-pharmacist (my father was a pharmacist so I know the look) who indeed turned out to be the present finance minister, P Gordhan (no relation). Not wishing to embarrass myself any further with my loneliness, I went inside to my table.

This was a mistake. The festivity, a state dinner for President Lulu of Brazil, had been set down to begin at 7.30pm. Now, I don't know if it was because the presidency now operates according to Soweto time or because Lulu talks a great deal (I heard that this was the case), but by 9pm there was still no sight of dinner - nor indeed of Lulu or JGZ.

The MC for the evening, minister of the national planning commission in the Presidency, Trevor Manuel, had suggested at about 8pm that we all take our seats but by 9pm we'd all abandoned our seats.

By the way, if Manuel ever gets tired of this planning thing - which seems pretty moribund anyway - he could get plenty of gigs as a MC. He's very urbane, cracks a mot or two, and even speaks a bit of Porra.

Also, by the way, talking of Lulu's alleged penchant for talking a lot, did you know this? "Lula had little formal education. He did not learn to read until he was 10 years old, and quit school after the fourth grade in order to work to help his family. His working life began at age 12 as a shoeshiner and street vendor. By age 14 he got his first formal job in a copper processing factory as a lathe operator." (Thus Wikipedia.) Pretty cool, huh? "We don't need no education/ All in all it's just another brick in the wall." (Thus Pink Floyd.)

The long time period, during which "we" awaited the arrival of the great men, did however allow me to chat to some old friends and acquaintances.

"Aha," I said in my usual charming manner to Lakela Kaunda, the DDG of the Presidency and apparently Zuma's eminence grise, "I have been reading some interesting things about you in the newspapers. I hear you've instituted a putsch or two with a skill and fervour that Joseph Stalin might have envied."

"I know, it's terrible what is written about me," responded Kaunda. "I'm starting to feel frightened of myself."

"I see," said an acquaintance of mine - no names, no pack drill - "that you have made friends with Kaunda. After all you, here you are after all this time."

"Nah," I said, "I think the Presidency realised soon after January this year that the president needs all the friends he can get ..."

"No, you have it wrong," he said. "It's Kaunda who needs all the friends she can get ..."

Then a fellow with a bald pate whom I thought I recognised, but who was wearing a strange pair of Groucho Marx-type spectacles, obviously as a clever disguise, came over. Goodness me, it was my old friend Moe Shaik! He really has gone underground since becoming a major spook.

He introduced me to the minister of finance, the aforementioned P Gordhan, whom I'd not met before, and who, to my bewilderment, started doing a PR job on me about the Fifa World Cup.

"We need to harness this energy. We need to make service delivery happen this way," said Gordhan.

He was really getting Moe revved up. "Yeah, we really did well," said Moe. "Why the newspapers are now banging on about this xenophobia rubbish, I don't know. What do they think? That South Africans will change overnight just because the world cup has ended?"

I was going to explain to Moe and the finance minister about xenophobia and living in townships and so on, but thought better of it and asked Moe how many games he'd gone to.

"Nah, I went to one, but it was no good. I sat there in a total state because I kept on seeing where the security lapses were. So I decided to watch on television - and be anxious at home instead."

At last the two presidents arrived, made two long, bone-numbing speeches - even Collins Chabane, the performance evaluation minister, who was at my table with his wife, the-brains-behind-Chabane, could be seen to let his concentration slip - his head moved perilously close to his soup plate - and then we were let loose on the food.

Problem was that it was a buffet - so many hungry people had to go up in relays. Bigger problem was that the fare was not exactly gourmet. Biggest problem was that there wasn't enough! And there were many hungry guests, not to mention numerous Brazilian courtiers who'd been through a number of gruelling meetings. All I can say is that if my mother had done the catering, she would, my dears, have been mortified (by the short supplies).

I tried to discuss some issues related to the criminal justice system with Jeff Radebe - who is, after all, the minister of justice - but he fled, almost screaming, when he saw me coming and slipped out, not to be seen again.

And so the evening was whiled away - and soon I was driving back to Johannesburg on the newly-broadened M1 highway, my glucose levels back where they ought to have been, and humming a little-known Rolling Stones ditty, Cocksucker Blues, to myself.

But here's the thing. At one point I had espied Essop Pahad, Thabo Mbeki's former right-hand man, wandering about like a ghost from Christmas past. "Oy-va-voy," I thought to myself, "they're really scraping the barrel tonight - Pahad, me ..."

Dancing around Pahad was a young feller doing a really first-class imitation of a fawning puppy. Now, not having read my Mail&Guardian that day, I did not know till the next day that the gormless fat chappie paying court to Essop was none other than a Gupta brother - one of the family that are allegedly going to launch a new newspaper. (They surely can't be that stupid, can they?)

But not only this. I also heard the next day that my other friend - Yunis Shaik - incensed by the M&G article in which the Gupta brothers were said to have replaced the Shaik brothers in JGZ's affections and to be "the new Shaiks" - incensed that these Johnny-come-lately capitalists could even be compared to the Shaik brothers - Yunis was so irritated that he allegedly came out guns blazing and young Gupta and Essop had to be rescued.

Don't mess with Yunis, I tell you. As for me, I go all the way to a state dinner - and miss all the important action. Clearly, you can't take me anywhere.

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