The flight from Cape Town’s DF Malan Airport – or whatever its current name is – to Dulles Airport, Washington DC was 28 hours.

My companion and only friend as I embraced the unknown, was a three pound Pomeranian called Tinytot Miss Tiggywinkle.

She was named for the hedgehog in the Beatrix Potter series. In order to have Tiggyangel with me in the cabin I had to fly business class.

Tinytot Miss Tiggywinkle

I was leaving a life. And a loft apartment on First Beach Clifton (elevator access to the beach).

“Theeza eeza your last chanz to re-inventa yourselfa,’ said the Italian-American who had insisted I leave the country.

The mighty plane took off and soon Table Mountain and the fairest Cape were a faded tapestry.

Loneliness surrounded me like a high dark hedge. But my pocket-sized travelling companion, seemed to sense that I needed comforting. From time to time she would push her tiny black nose under my wrist.

“Pet me mummy! Pet me!”

When we landed I allowed Miss Tiggy to stretch her leg and explore while I attempted to find my luggage – a trunk with a Cape Times poster ‘Jani Allan Does It Again’ plastered on the top. She enthusiastically kissed the noses of the huge drug-sniffing Alsations.

I didn’t understand then – and still don’t – the American aversion to pets/pet hair/pet dander/pet breath etc in public places. Why, the shops of Knightsbridge are densely thicketed with Cavalier King Charles spaniels. Once I saw one in the Perfume Hall in Horrids.

In those first few months in Washington DC Tiggy and I were barred from all the Museums. When the cherry blossoms covered the banks of the Potomac we walked in Arlington Cemetery. At the Iwo Jima Memorial she did circuits and bumps to the delight of the Americans.

“My what a tiny lil DAWG!” they would say. And for those few moments I had human contact.

Back in my throat lozenge sized apartment it was insufferably hot. Tiggy and I would lie next to each other and I would stroke her tiny paws with an ice-cube.

When a job opportunity presented itself in New Hope, we struck camp and set off.

At Union Station, soon after boarding the train several inspectors and a large gentleman who could have been the mayor of Washington boiled up to me.

‘Ma’am you ain’t got permission to have a dawg on the train! There ain’t been a dawg on the train since ninteen fiddy something.”

In desperation I pretended I was both deaf and rather dumb.

“Thith ith a hearing dog…”

“Show us the papers!”

I took out her vaccination papers. There was a lot of scowling and tutting. Tiggy was quiet as a foxglove in her little traveller.

Finally ‘We have reason to believe you ain’t been too truthful to us, but this time we gonna let you go.”

I heaved a sigh of relief.

“Nice one,” said Martin Sheen, who happened to be sitting opposite me.

Tiggy and I had grand adventures. I remember the time we were on the top of a New York bus. It was as cold as a plate glass negative. I tried to keep her warm by tucking her inside my puffer jacket. We went to Broadway shows together, with her discreet in her traveller.

There were many times her auburn fur was damp with my tears.

When her tiny kneecaps starting giving her trouble I took her to an animal acupuncturist. Then an animal physiotherapist.

I took her in her perambulator to visit my friend Jeff’s kindergarten class. Her fan base at the restaurant grew. She was given tiny pink Ralph Lauren cashmere sweaters and once a houndstooth cape.

When the snow was as high as my VW’s roof, her body shrank to the size of a tiny bird.

But she lost none of her gumption. When I tried to dress her she made a noise like a little scooter.

She faded before my eyes. Her once luxurious coat was gone. Her huge tail now mouse-sized.

She entered into immortality in the early hours of April 16 2012.

I had hoped that after one year the grief I feel at her loss would be manageable. It is not. She left me when the magnolias were unfurling and the blossoms carpeted the streets like soft seashells…as they are now.

So I write this piece for you Tiggyangel, the little girl who travelled so many miles with me and negotiated the emotional topography of my life with me…

You were a heartbeat at my heart.

It is said that one needs an Isosceles triangle of stability in order to be content.

One’s home life should be secure. One’s work should be stimulating (and hopefully financially rewarding) and one should be emotionally nurtured.

For various reasons I cannot lay claim to any of these conditions.

Furthermore, given that the average wage a server earns is a little over two dollars an hour, my financials (as Mr Micawber would say) are dependent on the grace of the diners.

When someone leaves a poor tip it is tragic. Worse, it is wounding. Damaging. Even maiming!

You’d think that because I live in a liberal county, money would be flowing like sand in an hourglass, but strangely ‘liberal’ doesn’t necessarily equate with ‘generous.’

Stupidly I see every table as a job interview. Often I feel as though I am found lacking: I am too old, too thin, too foreign….and possibly too…. clever?

On Monday night I was too clever.

I waited on a table of blokes from the mid-west. As has become the norm, at some stage of the night it is demanded of me to tell where I am from.

“From the kitchen,” I usually say. This response invariably elicits surprised laughter.

But on Monday night, Mr Minnesota became annoyed.

“She’s too smart for the likes of us,” he taunted. ‘She ain’t from Joisey.’ He thumped the table looking to his colleagues to endorse his view.

I was so mesmerised by a gob of Beechies gum that was migrating from the west side of his mouth to the east as he spoke like a mobile tooth (yes, in America grown men chew gum) that I hardly heard the threat in his voice.

When I took the cream and sugar to the table he affected to not know what a bowl of brown sugar was.

“Oh we are not worthy. We are not worthy.”

If giving is indeed the highest expression of potency I’ll wager he was endowed with a pair like wrinkled cashew nuts.

If one is stingy with one’s money one will be stingy with one’s emotions. I often wish I could tell the new girlfriend he’s trying to impress what a poor tip he has given me.

I want to scream at her retreating back ‘He’s the kind of man who will buy the inexpensive tickets…you’ll be so far from the stage Bob Dylan will look as though he could be hanging on a keyring!'”

Given that in America it is the norm to tip twenty percent, its perplexing there is a tendency to undertip. Not by a lot, but by say, a buck fifty.

Thus, instead of leaving a $16 tip on a bill that was $80, Mr Mingypants will leave $14.50 – after earnestly consulting the app on his iPhone 5 which tells him how much to tip.

Its just the tiniest little FU – one the size of the middle finger on a dwarf’s glove…

Haven’t they seen ‘My Blue Heaven?’ Steve Martin’s character says:

“I don’t tip. I overtip! That’s my philosophy!’

Thankfully there are some who do. No names no packdrill, you know who you are.

To the others –

Dear Customer,

I don’t know how many calories there are in the shrimp but I have heard it say that a foodie who thinks of calories is like a tart looking at her watch. Please don’t punish me because the oysters are too large, the steak too chewy, the fish too boney…its not even my fault that the table next to you was noisy.”

I am merely a food porter!

As Santayana said “Our dignity is not in what we do but what we understand.”

A BYOB establishment provides plenty of opportunity for wine snobs to show off.

Depending on the size of the party, it can take a wheely bin or a perambulator to transport the wine from a black SUV to a table.

Those who are familiar with the process of a BYOB take delight in telling you (Special category of the Bleeding Obvious) that they will be needing….

“And I’ll want a….um…”

Yes, sir, of course sir, immediately. I’ll bring you an ice-bucket and some flutes for the champagne.

Those unfamiliar with the BYOB usually present you with a plastic bag filled with ice chips. Somewhere in the bag is a lone bottle of something you wouldn’t want to use to put out a fire.

“Are you going to be taking care of us?”

“Taking care of” is what they call it here. In my books you take care of someone with mumps. Or dementia. Or elderly men take care of those forced into the oldest profession in the world, as in “Ee took good care of me ee did. Ee was a good man…”

So you wait (because that is what waiters do) while Mr Wine Snob roots around undecided about what wine you should open first. His party are his captive audience.

“Let’s start with the Cab” finally suggests a man with hair that looked as though it were the main reason for Brylcreem’s success.

Mr Wine Snob puts his meat plate hands on the table.

“OK. Well, open the Cab and also open the Zinf.” Mr WS is clearly annoyed that someone else has an opine.

“But we don’t know what we are going to eat yet!” he says argumentatively.

In my books thinking that you HAVE to drink white wine with fish and red wine with meat is as silly and dated as people who wag a finger in your face and say “No white after Labour Day!”

“I know! Let’s start with the champagne!”

It is my fervent hope that the expression on my face doesn’t belie the fact that I know the difference between Dom Perignon and a little Prosecco picked up for $9.99.

“What’s this? What’s this say? I can’t read the menu…. It looks like Caramel 123…”

“Caramelized, sir. It says caramelized.” I explain gently.

I return to the table with six flutes. By now I can open a bottle of pop so that it makes as much noise as a moth landing. But those sitting at the table look dubious.

Six pairs of eyes like headlights with feelers follow my every move. Perhaps they are merely mesmerized by my barbed-wire veined arms and hands.

“Can you…er….”

“Bring you glasses for the red? Of course, sir, immediately.”

“And when you’ve done that open this one. It needs to breathe.”

I nod gravely while he sniffs the cork like a bloodhound.

Thinking that wine can breathe through the neck of a bottle is a nonsense. So is it a nonsense to decant wine that is next door to Fortris.

So is it an affectation to sniff the cork.

“Beaujolais Nouveau is a fun wine…” Mr Wine Snob has commenced a soliloquy. “It’s not too fruity, neither is it too primeur. It’s not flimsy…. To put it another way …it has a cheeky little nose.”

All six people are frantically swirling wine around and poking their noses into the Riedel crystal glasses. Swirl, swirl, swirlswirlSWIRL….some are swirling at 78 rpms….others at a more sedate 33 and third….

Two hours later they are still at it. A fungus of drinkers who have started to carouse – while sitting down – and behave like clots.