I HAVE always known that airports and train stations occupy a parallel universe, but I only had a vague idea that there might be multiple dimensions lurking in other, innocent-looking, places.  I should have known.

Last week, I went down to the offices of Parliament in Cape Town to collect a document.  I had never thought of government buildings as part of a universal conspiracy to bend the space-time continuum, but now I know better. It started well.  There was a rotating glass door at the visitor’s entrance with a large sign written on each panel: ‘Do not push this door, it is automatic.’  Fair enough.  I waited for the door to swing into action. And waited. And waited. I even feinted a bit towards it, either to surprise it into operating, or to jolt it out of its complacency by making it think that I was going to push it.  Nothing happened. Eventually I decided that unless I wanted to put down roots inside this little cubicle I was going to have to push the door.  So I pushed it, it turned easily and I entered the second sanctum of Parliament. In front of me was a second door with exactly the same legend. “Hah, you don’t catch me that easily,” I thought to myself, and leaned towards the door to give it a hearty push. It opened automatically, I stumbled forward and was precipitately deposited into a grand hall, where hundreds of people going about their business all stopped in their tracks to watch me hurtle through the door. Once I had picked myself up and brushed off my dignity, I proceeded towards reception and asked for directions to the fifth floor. It was in another building. And before I could get in I needed someone on that floor to vouch for me.  It appeared that everyone on the fifth floor was out. For 10 minutes I stood and read the various jolly posters stuck up around the reception hall (‘The Aim of Parliament is to Serve the People’) while the receptionist tried vainly to find someone at their desk who could give me permission to get in. This soon became a group activity. “I don’t know why they don’t just leave the documents at reception to be collected,” chimed in another receptionist, in the ripest of Cape Coloured accents, a speech which makes everything sound charming and profound. After much colourful banter but no real progress, the receptionist gave a rueful sigh and just sommer issued me a permit. Then I was given directions to another building to which I navigated through the pouring rain.  Once inside again, I dived for the lifts. It was only once we were under way that I discovered that the lift did not go to the fifth floor. After a short and congenial journey, I got back to ground floor and asked the lady at reception the way to the fifth floor. I’m sorry I asked – I had to go out again, go all the way round and use the entrance on the other side.   I did so (by the way, we are talking about skirting a large building in freezing, driving, gusty rain) and found myself at another set of lifts. And realised with a shock that they were only separated from my first non-fifth-floor lifts by a plate-glass door. These geniuses at Parliament had made me run all the way round this behemoth of a building when all I had needed to do was go through a glass door. (It was locked.) However, I had now reached the fastnesses of Parliament’s fifth floor and I felt like Indiana Jones in search of the Holy Grail. And like Indy, every step I took brought adventure. Everyone I asked sent me in a different direction until, by sheer process of elimination, I discovered the office I had sought. It was empty.  Now I needed to find a living, breathing human being who might be able to give me this document.  It wasn’t difficult – just a few excursions past man-eating mummies, casks full of spiders, pits of snakes and scorpions, sharpened stakes shooting from walls, and collapsing floors into pools of ravenous sharks, and I stumbled across a Person – but they did not know where to get a copy.  So the hunt was on again.  I must say at this point that the people I encountered were so full of cheer and bonhomie that it was impossible to get uptight, but the whole episode was starting to take on a dreamy, cartoon-like quality while I wondered if I would ever get out alive. A short hunt through a few boxes on the floor – and the document (a standard directory of Parliamentary procedures) was triumphantly produced.  Now all I needed to do was find my way out again. When I emerged again into the wet and cold of Cape Town, blinking in the unaccustomed fresh air, I immediately bought a newspaper to make sure that it was still the same day.  Not only was it still the same day, but it was still morning!  I had been through Parliament, and survived! There is a small footnote to this story, however.  When I got back home I realised that I needed two of these documents (you have to fill them out in duplicate, you know).  So I sent a friend to get another. With a map, a compass, rations for a few days and a first-aid kit. I haven’t heard from her since…