The Foefie Slide

Having read over the last post, I realise that there aren't yet any tales from the army days, despite my having mentioned that they are the most popular. The reason I always talk of the army and police tales together, instead of separating them, is that they both feature that amazing character, "Bob". He was with me during my national service and later in the traffic police, and without him those days would never have been as humourous or enjoyable as they were. So though you haven't yet heard about us in the army, you do know our antics already. Anyway, here is one of my all time favourites, dredged from a dusty old floppy disc that may have just issued its last gasp in parting with this story:

Place: 5th South African Infantry Battalion, Ladysmith, South Africa
Time: Late Summer, 1992

One fine sunny day we got a call from a girl called Cynthia that we were both trying to impress. Though none of us would admit it, we were actually in competition for her attentions. I felt I had been cuckolded by my steady girlfriend back in Durbs and Bob didn’t have a steady girl at the time, so we were keen on Cynthia, who was by far the most desirable of the local Ladysmith girls.

So here she was, asking what we thought of going with her and her mate Beatrice to the Colenso River for a braai (that's barbecue for you non-South Africans). Of course we were dead keen. Beatrice was short, fat and dark haired, whereas Cynthia was tall, shapely and fair. None of us were interested in Beatrice, but Cynthia had made it abundantly clear that while she would settle for either one of us it would only be on condition that the other one accommodated Beatrice. She played us like a fiddle, but we were happy to accept whatever conditions were imposed, so long as the hope of a night with Cynthia remained within reach. It was tacitly accepted that none of us were capable of getting it on with the tubby Beatrice, but that we would play the game as far as possible and cross that bridge when we got to it. That is to say, hopefully when the other one got to it.

So here we were in the foyer of the NCO's quarters, on the payphone with Cynthia. Knowing that if any of the other off-duty NCOs happened to overhear us they would want to jump on the bandwagon, we tried to keep our conversation low. This was our undoing, because it attracted the attention of my pre-Bob best mate, Padda, who was the last guy we wanted along, as not only was he quite a capable ladies man himself, but he harboured some resentment against Bob and I, as prior to my meeting Bob he and I were basically inseparable. He would certainly give it his best go to try and ruin anything that we had hoped to achieve with Cynthia and Beatrice.

Sauntering past, making it look as casual as possible, Padda gave us a wink and asked where we were going to braai that afternoon.
“What, us? Braai? No, we’re not braaing anywhere!”
“That’s funny guys, ‘cause I just heard you arranging to braai at the Colenso River, so how’s about it? You’ll just have to give me a lift to the Butcher so’s I can buy some meat and then we’re off, eh!”

Nothing for it but to take Padda along, damn. Well that put paid to any romantic notions we might have been cultivating. Once we had been to the Butcher and the Bottle Store, we headed out to the suburb where Cynthia's parents lived. Because she didn’t want her neighbours to see her getting picked up by us instead of her steady Permanent Force boyfriend (whom she had temporarily cut contact with on meeting the two of us) her and Beatrice were waiting for us there instead of at her flat or Beatrice's parents' place. Beatrice still lived at home. We could see their faces fall as they saw Padda, but we made out as if it was all part of our plan, as we couldn’t let them see that we had allowed ourselves to be bullied into bringing him along. The army was like that, especially amongst an elite group such as us that had endured the horrors and rigours of Infantry School together. You just didn’t get outright nasty with one another. It was okay if it was done by omission, such as neglecting to tell Padda that we were off on a fun outing, but it was something else to tell him outright that he wasn’t wanted.

Cynthia was such a lady that it was naturally accepted that she would get the front seat next to Bob, who drove. Of course this left Padda and I with Beatrice squeezed in between us on the back seat. While this sent Beatrice into ecstasies of delight, it did nothing for Padda and I, whose full attention was directed toward the front, in order to see to it that Cynthia was suitably distracted by our superb witticisms and didn’t have too much time to admire Bob's manly profile as he piloted us in that car of cars, the Cream Dream. En route between Ladysmith and Colenso Padda and I must have had at least three beers each, all the while urging another ale on Bob. You see, while we drank for Dutch courage, we were also aware that it wouldn’t do to have Bob appearing all sober and gentlemanly while we degenerated into drunken slobs in the back seat. Fortunately Bob played along and matched us beer for beer.

Soon we found the river and the lovely picnic spot on the banks that Cynthia had in mind when she invited us there. There was a large old tree growing right on the banks of the muddy river, its branches reaching way out over the water. Under the tree was a grassy patch where we could set up our equipment, which basically consisted of cool boxes and braai grids. The big attraction, however, was the very professional foefie slide (known as a Zip-Slide elsewhere in the world) that was mounted in the tree and trailed out over the river, connecting at the far side to some fixed point on the bank.

Someone had attached a proper steel cable, about 10mm diameter, to the tree trunk and across the river. Suspended from the cable was a welded stainless steel inverted T-piece that one could hang from by the hands. At the base of the upside down T was attached a grooved pulley wheel with a proper roller ball bearing on an axle. I had never seen such a professional foefie slide, and naturally we three guys were as eager as hell to try it out. Of course Cynthia had known the reaction that we would have to the slide, and as she seemed to take a perverse pleasure in pitting males against each other to win her attentions, she was more than keen to encourage us to display our manly capabilities. Fighting the other two off, I was the first up the tree. Gripping the shiny stainless steel crosspiece, I launched myself and attempted a somersault as I let go mid-river. Half-stunning myself as I landed flat on my back in the water, I quickly recovered and cast my eyes shoreward to see what reaction I had engendered amongst the watching ladies. After my inglorious and pathetic crash-landing, they had no eyes for me and were intent on Bob and Padda, so I grabbed at the trailing rope (it hung from the T-piece so that you could drag it back to the shore) and headed hurriedly for shore to reclaim my share of the attention. As Padda managed to grab the rope out of my hands, so Bob was up the tree. Padda was left holding the rope for him. Outfoxed by the wily gentleman!

Swinging out over the river, Bob's jump wasn’t much better than my dismal attempt. It wasn’t helped by the disparaging shouts from Padda, who had quickly sussed out that Cynthia was the type to go for whoever was the most impressive and hadn’t actually chosen any one of us yet. Padda didn’t do much better either, and I think we were all left with the impression that we needed more speed on take-off, in order to achieve a more impressive leap into the river, not to mention that he who went furthest would be deemed more manly. With the order of sliding established it was my turn, and I determined that this time I would kick off from the tree with as much might as possible in order to gain the desired velocity. As I gripped the smooth stainless steel handle with my wet hands I gave an almighty push with my feet against the tree trunk. My legs shot out in front of me and the momentum created such a force that I had a moment of desperate panic as I felt my grip slipping on the crossbar. Only the unthinkable fear of making a fool of myself in front of the ladies gave me the necessary strength to retain my grip on the handle, but it was a very close thing indeed. Making a rather weak twist and somersault into the rushing waters, I surfaced thinking how lucky I had been and wondering if the females were suitably impressed.

Once I reached the bank again, rope trailing, I handed over to Padda. Bob had already scrambled up the tree and was waiting for Padda to pull the handle bar within his reach. I knew that he would be thinking exactly the same thing as I had been, and I shouted for him to beware of pushing off with his feet when his hands were wet, but I was too late. He had grasped the handles and pushed off with both feet, full force. To make matters worse, Padda had retained his grip on the trailing rope and was running below Bob, who was suspended a good 8 feet off the ground, pulling with all his might in order to give Bob a boost. As Cynthia, Beatrice and I watched in horror, Bob took off at high velocity, his outstretched arms just maintaining their grip against the force of Padda’s strong pull below. As the force of his kick-off took effect his feet and legs overtook his body, and, as I had feared, the momentum was just too much. His wet hands couldn’t maintain their grip, and the handle was ripped from his grasp by the forces in play. With the forward swing of his legs his torso was forced downwards, hands dangling groundward. The momentum kept him turning, and the everlasting picture burnt into my brain is of Bob descending, arms and legs outstretched like an evil spider dropping onto its unsuspecting prey, as Padda, eyes rolling in terror as he looked over his shoulder at the descending Bob, continued his run with an extra burst of speed to try and avoid the impending impact. Bob kept on turning, and eventually landed on Padda with his back, his head facing down and to the rear, firmly wedged up Padda's crack, while his backside rammed Padda powerfully on the back of his fleeing head.

With a might thump the two collided and Padda went down under the dead weight, arms and legs splayed, literally biting the dust as eyes, nose and mouth were buried in the dirt with the splayed out Bob on his back. Now bear in mind that liberal quantities of alcohol had been consumed, and we were all loose-limbed and brave. What with Padda having taken the brunt of his impact, Bob was immediately up on his feet, albeit somewhat groggy, and ready to regain his stature in the eyes of the ladies. As for me and the girls, we were dumbfounded. What we had just witnessed was normally enough to kill someone, and while both were knocked breathless, and seemed a little dazed, here Bob was insisting that it was only a minor mishap. I realised that, true man that he was, Bob was, in his befuddled state, only following that unspoken manly rule that you don’t let on to women who you are trying to impress that you are mortally injured. Knowing that we were all as drunk as lords, and that Bob was seriously concussed, to say the least, I felt it my duty to dissuade him from another attempt. But he was adamant. “My Uncle Jumbo always told me, Bob, that if you fall off a horse you get straight back on!” he mumbled groggily. Something in his eyes warned me that it wouldn’t do to interfere at this stage, and I let him have his way. Padda was having nothing to do with this round, and stayed far away, nursing his bruises.

Up the tree Bob went again, loudly proclaiming to all and sundry that it was merely a minor setback, but no worries, this time he had everything under control. Noting the glazed look in his eyes I was not so sure, but recognising a fellow male recovering his pride I looked on as he made a repeat performance. Grasping the handles with his still wet hands he gave another almighty push with his legs and this time it was almost instantaneous as his legs shot out in front of him and his fingers relinquished their grasp on the crossbar. Performing a graceful but somewhat loose half somersault, he landed in a puff of dust, splayed out as if caught in a star jump during Army PT.

Dead silence. As we all looked on I was certain that he was dead. One could hear the birds chirruping and the bees buzzing. A couple of kids shouted on the far bank of the river. Bob didn’t move. As we all glanced at each other, wondering if he was alive, I gathered my wits about me and approached the “body”.
“Hey Bob,” I whispered, “Are you alright?”
A low moan emitted from the splayed out form on the ground. Relief! He lived, if only for now. “Bob, speak to me!” I said.
Another long, drawn out moan. Coming close enough to prod him, I gave him a nudge in the ribs. “Are you okay, pal?” I asked.
Loud grunts at the prod in the ribs, and another prolonged groan.
Realising that he was going to live, my usually sadistic side took control again, and I stepped back to view the effect he was making on the rest. Recognising of course that there was the ever-present need to impress the ladies going through his battered thoughts and that he would be extremely worried about the loss of face in front of Cynthia, I began to find the situation extremely amusing. Every time he hauled himself up on all fours he would collapse again in a cloud of dust with a groan. It was all we could elicit, a groan. He was so badly winded that he couldn’t talk, but in his desire to make out to the ladies that it was no big deal he kept on trying to talk, and the more he tried the more he groaned.

It was, of course, the end of the festivities. Cynthia, displaying that other, more mature side of her nature (she was older than all of us, I think) took over completely. Although Padda and I would happily have left Bob to recover on his own (we had after all been through far worse punishment in Infantry School) and thus had the field to ourselves with the handsome, debonair lieutenant out of action, we were quickly put to work by Cynthia who gathered up the car keys from the stunned Bob's possessions and set Padda and myself to packing up our things and getting everything into the car.

Before I knew what I was doing I found myself in the backseat of the Cream Dream with a subdued Padda and Beatrice. While Cynthia drove and Bob sat in the passenger seat protesting that he was more than capable of driving his own car, I sat brooding that I hadn’t taken the initiative myself. After all, he was my mate, and no woman should have been driving the Cream Dream!

Looking back, I realise that it was disgruntlement at the kid glove treatment that Bob was receiving at the hands of Cynthia due to his fall that was causing my irritation. You see, we were all at the absolute peak of fitness, Padda, Bob and I. As I watched Bob I could see his recovery in his eyes, but he, wily bastard that he was, was busy realising that as long as he hammed things up he was going to continue receiving preferential treatment from the luscious Cynthia.

Unfortunately for him Cynthia was wiser than we knew. Once again with hindsight I think that we underestimated her. She was a pretty, single girl saddled with a child from a liaison with her Permanent Force Corporal, and she stood no chance with the locals, who had branded her, but she was able to make a big impression on us “newies” passing through on our military service. While she had intimated to us at the time that she was through with her Corporal, I think he was under the impression that she was wanting a little ‘breathing space’ and not aware that she was dallying with a couple of national servicemen. She must have realised that if Bob was seriously injured then it wouldn’t take long for her name to come out as having been present. This would have put paid to any form of respectability that she may have hoped to retain after we had passed through her life. In fact everything we ever did with her was, without our realising it, kept in secrecy. But that’s another story. At this time it was her priority to dump us safely back at the base where we were dissociated from her. As we arrived at her parent’s house she and Beatrice hurriedly grabbed their belongings from the boot. Once they had entered the house I sauntered around to the drivers door, only to find that Bob, miraculously recovered, had assumed the driver’s seat and was snarling at me to “get in, we’re going!”

“Are you sure, Bob?” I asked, in the hope that I may still recover the chance to pilot the Cream Dream.
“Yeah yeah, only a little bump on the head,” he said.
Ensconced in the back seat Padda just shook his head.
As it turned out, when we got back to the base Bob checked into the sick bay and was treated for concussion. After he was settled in his sickbed it occurred to him that we had arranged a night out on the town that evening, and he wasted no time in signing himself out again. As you can imagine, it was a cheap round for him that evening, what with the medication and concussion. We had survived another rigorous day in the South African Defence Force.

Networks

I'm still here. To those good people who still return even though there is so seldom something new here, I haven't forgotten you. Promise. Life is just so full of things to do that, despite my desire to the contrary, I cannot sit still long enough to jot down all the things here that I would like to. Here are the latest figures on who's doing the most reading:

Switzerland: Well over 400

USA: Just over 100

Denmark: 26

South Africa: 18

Indonesia: 11

The rest (all at ten or less readers) are led by the UK at 10.

I see that the English Forum in Switzerland is responsible for the high readership here in Cheese-Land. Thank you, chaps. I read your forum often too. It's fun, interesting, helpful and entertaining.

To the Ami's (Swiss and German for Americans, pronounced "Ummies"), good for you. It's hard to keep a good nation down. Thanks for helping all us colonials whack the Krauts back then.

To the Danes, how many of you are expats? Viva the Vikings!

To the South Africans, shame on you!

To the Indonesians...uh...you just have to be expats???

Had a good Friday night a short while ago. My ex-apprentice phoned up and insisted that I join him for a "session" in the magazine. Sounds funny huh? I can't help but use the direct translation for the German word "Magazin" (pronounced mug-a-tsin), which is the term for the workshop/stores of a company.

In the bad old days, when I was a bricklayer and later foreman in the firm where he still works, we would have an informal, once-a-month bash after work on a Friday. This was something that I imported from South Africa. It's a great team-building exercise, and fun to boot. Nearly every job I've ever been in in SA was distinguished by an impromptu get-together after work from time to time, and I was horrified to find that the concept seemed unknown over here. The first time I suggested such a thing, typical questions and worries were "who's going to pay for everything?", "how much will I have to pay?", "what happens to the left-overs?", "what's your motive?", "what do you want in return?", etc.

Suffice it to say that after many years my colleagues came to understand my point, and there were many Friday evenings on the company premises where the fire burned merrily while beers were consumed happily and the smell of roasting meat and the sounds of cheerful camaraderie filled the air. When I left that company two years ago, the will to continue the parties seemed to fade. My ex-apprentice has now taken it upon himself to revive the tradition.

This time around was such a hoot. It's great to catch up on old stories and keep contact with people. Life has become so international these days, eh?! At our impromptu little party were: two Poles, a German, three Swiss, an Albanian, a South African (yours truly), a Macedonian, a Portugues and an Italian.

What's interesting here is that out of this group almost all have been able to help one or more of the others in a significant way that is not related to work. Here one must bear in mind that not everyone still works for the same company. This made me think of the network that I have been trying to build among these and other guys over the last few years. They have certainly grasped the concept, and it's gratifying to see how it all comes together for us when we need help. I hope to enlarge on this topic in a later post, because there is a rather funny tale about how we all helped one of the guys to move house, but as you readers know, there's no telling when that will be...

On a different note, with the run-up to Christmas and year-end I have been swamped with end-of-year inventory checks, wrapping up of last-minute, minor construction sites that of course all must be finished "by Christmas" (even though the quotes only went out in December), and of course that dreaded task of billing. Naturally the brass want all sites (especially if they're big, lucrative ones) financially wrapped up and the billing up to date by the end of the year, but this year every single site had to completely current as far as the financials go. This is because here in the land of fondue and chocolate we have a new VAT percentage as of the 1st of January, so there must be no bills for work done this year sent out next year or the customer will start kicking and screaming about the fact that he has to pay more tax to the government.

I knew this was going to be a big job, but the carrot at the end of the stick is of course the break between Christmas and New Year. I have been editing my book and had planned to use this week of rest to finish that and start sending out query letters to prospective agents. Also planned was a launching online so prospective customers could order the book via Amazon, Noble & Barnes,etc. or download the e-version on their Kindles. Something else planned was an aggressive "attack" on the blog, with more Police and Army tales (I see that they are by far the most popular of the stories). Altogether, a veritable feast of writing was in the cards. Was...

Alas, after two years of being flu-free I have been floored by the flu, and boy, do I mean floored! Hit me the day before Christmas and only now am I returning from my zombie-like state. In the few lucid moments I've enjoyed over the last few days, I have joined Facebook. I've always put this off with the reasoning that I don't have enough time yet, and I was right. From the minute I registered yesterday, every waking moment has been used to catch up on where all the good ole boys (and girls) are and what they've been up to. Not too hard when you're stuck in bed anyway and propping the laptop on your lap between dozing is so easy. However, now that I have made the graduation from bed to desk, I shall be attacking the stories again. Hope to have something good up for you all this week.

For now, even though I missed Christmas, I would like to wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.

Regards,
...

Grumpy Old Men

This morning I finished a book that was brought to me all the way from my beloved Underberg in South Africa. The book in question was written by a notoriously grumpy old man who has lived in the district of Underberg for many, many years, and who just happens to be one of those world-class raconteurs that we very rarely get to cross paths with in our lives. When I closed the book, I took the time to lean back and reflect on the years I had known him, and how we had met. After that, I decided to write about it here. Before this, however, I went on the Internet and googled him. Knowing him as I do, I very much doubted that he would be active on the web, but knowing how randomly one’s personal details can find their way into cyberspace these days, I gave it a try anyway. Sure enough, there he was. Under an article on what to do at “Splashy Fen” (Underberg’s reply to Woodstock) were a number of entries concerning local attractions. One of these was the Himeville museum. Himeville is five kilometers from Underberg, and despite the ancient feuds that raged between these two isolated outposts over the last hundred or more years, they are both a part of the so-called “Underberg district”, and their inhabitants and the inhabitants of the farms that surround both towns are all happy to call themselves locals within the context of the greater area. My friend is now curator of the local museum in Himeville, though he would fit in as one of the exhibits too. I know he’ll have a good laugh at that one should he ever read this.Unfortunately, like so many of his kind, computers and the Internet are foreign concepts to him, so I shall have to send him a printed version of this entry.

Anyway, unbeknown to him his home number was also listed on this site, so I gave him a call. We spent a delightful 45 minutes on the phone. The sound of his voice, the cultured colonial English rolling off his tongue in his well-modulated baritone, brought back a flood of memories. It was as if the last 12 years had never occurred. We discussed the weather, politics (both local and international), local affairs and past characters and events, and bemoaned the decline in standards in South Africa and the world in general. We could have been standing in the queue at the local farmers co-operative for all the change in our conversation. I have thought of him often over the years, but to hear his voice again was quite electrifying. To those of you who have read the rest of the blog, he is the gentleman with whom I would share my finds out in the wilderness as related in the entry entitled “Forgotten Places”. To read this one, go to the column on the right of the page you’re looking at now and look under “Popular Posts”. It should still be one of the four there. It used to be the most popular, which has prompted me to share more of my Underberg tales with you.
Well, I’d like to tell how I met my friend, and as I have his permission to share his name with you all, I shall, for the first time ever, use a real name.

Time: Sometime in September 1994.
Place: Underberg, Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa.

I hadn’t been long in town as the new “Chief of Underberg Protection Services” when I had the pleasure (some would say misfortune) of meeting Mr. Michael Clark. By now I had left the provincial traffic police for a new position in Underberg, for those of you who have only read the “Screaming Patrolmen” and “Shooting the Spider” tales, and was rather un-firmly ensconced in Underberg. It was a responsible position that required a responsible attitude which I will elaborate on another time. Suffice it to say that under the circumstances in which I first saw the terrifying Mr. Clark in action, I was forced to remain hidden behind a door.

I had an office in the old building that housed the original Underberg Health Committee. Health Committee was the name given to the town council of a town so tiny, insignificant and poor that its municipal seat of office didn’t even warrant the title of Town Board, which was what they got if the town was marginally more noticeable. This was followed by the title of Municipality, and if a town had this status then they were well on the way to getting included on a map sometime in the future.

Back to the point. Housed within this little building were the town clerk, the local sheriff (yours truly), a front office clerk-cum-secretary who handled day-to-day town business (permits, accounts, etc.) and a back office lady who dealt with all matters to do with transportation, such as the issuing of licenses, renewal of registration plates, etc. At the time there was no town clerk, so we were all without a boss. I was the only man about. The front office was operated by a geriatric of doubtful vintage (she lived down the road with her boyfriend of similar age to herself) and the back office by a young girl of my own age who was as quiet as a mouse and had a heart of gold. The old bat reigned supreme in that establishment. I was only 21 and the young lady in the back office (who later became, and still is, my sister-in-law) was a year younger. The old girl was probably only about 67 or so, but she looked and acted about 80. At least to our young eyes. She was an extremely domineering and shrill old woman, and she would go out of her way to make life unpleasant for the two of us. She knew how to operate though. Moments after she had nearly caused me to draw my pistol and fill her with lead, she would be bringing in a tray of tea and biscuits, all beautifully laid out on a silver tray with cups and saucers and the whole works, with some comment such as “here you are my dear, have some tea!” Whilst munching on a biscuit and sipping delicious hot strong tea, I would think back over the last hour and suppose to myself that maybe I had just misinterpreted her intentions and misread her words. Perhaps she wasn’t so bad after all. These musings would then be shattered by the crash of my office door flying open and her shrieking incomprehensibly at me while she waved some form in my face. “Did you tell Mrs. So-and-so that I’m the one who deals with this application? Well! Speak up, boy, I don’t have all day, you know. I’m a busy woman and I won’t have the general public all flocking up here to waste my time!”

I would be hastily trying to choke down the remains of my half-chewed biscuit and get to my feet, my face red hot with rage and humiliation, ready to inform her that that was precisely what her job was about and that the only reason she was actually still employed at her advanced state of decay was to deal with the very “general public” that she so despised, but before I could even open my mouth she would have slammed my door and been back at the little glass window giving the poor unfortunate on the other side a further dressing down. I hated this treatment of the town citizens, and it was one of the reasons that I eventually came to realize that, despite her moments of kindness and the fact that she didn’t even realize how she was perceived, I actually truly disliked her.

One day I was sitting in my office with the inter-leading door to the front office open. It was shortly before lunch time, so I was winding up my paperwork and preparing to nip off home for a bite to eat. My aged protagonist was ensconced in her knitting in front of her typewriter, just out of my line of sight. All I could see through the doorway was her reflection in the glass panel that separated her from her tormentors when they summoned up the courage to visit the seat of the town authority. Through the hole in the glass I heard the sound of the front door opening and closing, followed immediately by the sharp and hurried sound of typing. How she got her knitting safely stowed and her fingers flying over the keys in such a short space of time befuddles my brain to this day. I had by now stood up and was putting on my jacket, preparing to leave. As I passed the inter-leading door, I got a glimpse of her, just as a deep baritone voice made itself heard over the clacking of the electric typewriter.
“Good morning.” An instant of silence and then the clacking resumed. After another ten seconds or so had passed there came another “Good morning”, followed by the same pause in typing and then more clack-clacking. I now had the door to my office open and was in a unique position whereby I could look through the door between my office and hers as well as out the glass panel in the door that separated our side of the building from that of the public. Standing there in the area before her counter was an elderly gentleman with a weathered look about him, his eyebrows rather tussled and bushy, and his large, elf-like ears sprouting the odd clump of hair similar in appearance to the ones protruding from his nostrils. He wore an old blue jersey and some corduroys of indeterminate age. The holes in his sleeves reminded me very much of the ones in my father’s sleeves. Not ones there through poverty, but simply there because the owner saw no good reason to rid himself of his favourite garment simply because it had begun to show a few minor signs of wear. In fact, the gentleman in question reminded me unmistakably of my own father in all respects. A similarity that was to be borne out in the next few minutes.

All of a sudden, there was a loud bang as the man crashed the base of his clenched fist down on the wooden counter and bellowed “I said GOOD MORNING!”. The clackety-clack of the typewriter ceased instantaneously, and I quickly shifted position so that I could look back into the old she-wolf’s lair. She turned to her would-be customer with a look of absolute disbelief on her face, her mouth hanging open in surprise. I was frozen in delight. This was bound to be interesting, most interesting indeed! I shifted again to get a view of the old chap. He had a grim set to his features and was eyeing her like an eagle on high studying the movements of its prey far below. She leapt to her feet and fired her opening salvo.
“Can’t you see I’m busy!!” she screeched.
“No, you’re bloody well not!” he replied, leaning her way and fixing her with a beady look from under his beetled brows.
“I certainly am,” she yelled, “and I won’t have just every Tom, Dick and Harry waltzing in here and interrupting my work!”
The gentleman gave her a look that would have melted rock and with a slight increase in his already impressive volume replied. “You’re bloody well sitting here knitting on public time, time that I pay for, you old bag, and time that therefore belongs to the public, so get up off your lazy backside and give me the service I expect!”
By the end of this sentence, his voice had taken on the power and volume of a Berg thunder storm, matched only by his thunderous visage. The old girl was apoplectic. There was a moment of silence, during which I wondered if she was in the throes of a coronary seizure brought on by her rage at this unheard-of attack on her supremacy.
“What?! WHAT did you say?” I heard her squeak in a choked voice. “What did you say to me, you…you horrible, uncouth man!!?”. By now she was panting in her rage and quite unable to find her voice, so indignant was she. I had shifted closer to the door in order to get a better view of the stranger through the little glass pane, and was now crying tears of pure mirth at the scene being enacted in front of my eyes. This grizzled old gent was like an incarnation of my dreams, a rugged apparition from the past. The formidable ***** was simply no match for a man of his ilk, and he knew it. He loomed over the counter, his nose inches from the glass, and said, “I suggest you stop wheezing and get on with it before I REALLY lose my patience!”

This last shot seemed to defeat the tyrant, for she snatched up the form from where he had thrown it under the glass and flopped into her chair with an indignant little “Oh!” and began processing whatever it was that he had come for. I wiped the tears from my cheeks and straightened up, the laughter-induced cramps in my belly not yet gone. A last fit of giggles convulsed me before I was able to compose myself into the serious chief of the traffic police that I was supposed to be and step into the room in which he stood. As I closed the door behind me and turned to leave, I found myself face-to-face with him. He gave me the once-over and harrumphed in disdain before turning his attention back to the office in which his now cowed adversary was silently attending to his needs. With a last smile of delight at his broad back, I exited through the front door. Once outside I broke out in howls of unrestrained laughter again. I was so incapacitated by mirth that I must have lingered longer than I intended to, for suddenly I heard the door slam behind me and there he was.

“And what the bloody hell are you laughing at?” he demanded to know. This was too much, and I doubled over in mirth once again, all thoughts of professionalism cast aside in the joy at seeing a real old character of the past do his thing. The wonderful accent, with its overtones of British Imperialism, the tatty old clothing that told the world to go jump, the expectation of a member of the public from his public servants and the classic manner in which he had dealt with a typical, rude bureaucrat had endeared this man to me without his even knowing who I was. Like all Underbergers, he had of course heard about the new young upstart in town who was to fulfill the hated and despised role of “traffic cop”. For the locals, it didn’t matter what grandiose visions I may have had, or that the times and laws had changed, giving the local law enforcement far more powers of criminal investigation if they so chose. I would remain a traffic cop, a being put on earth to plague and harass regular souls as they went about their business, relieving them of their hard-earned cash and generally performing a function that they deemed completely unnecessary in their day-to-day lives.
I straightened up and attempted a serious look. This was not the time to make an attempt at conversation. That could come later. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I replied, “it’s just something personal. Have a good day, sir!” With that, I scampered off to my vehicle and left. I could see the old gent in my rearview-mirror, standing there gazing after me with a puzzled expression on his face.

There is more to tell about the famous Mike Clark, but I will relate it in another entry. For now, I wish to let those of you who would care to read more about Underberg and the rich tales it has to tell know where to get hold of copies of some of the excellent books written by this wonderful man.

These are the titles:

The Saga of Sani Pass and Mokhotlong (also available on www.abebooks.co.uk )

Ihlanyati

The Lighter Side of the Berg and other Stories

The author’s name is Michael Clark, and books can be ordered via the following address:

Mr. M. Clark
PO Box 122
Himeville
3256
South Africa

Alternatively, post a comment on this blog and I will telephone Mike with your order after making contact with you. His writing gives one an insight into how life in one of the true last outposts in the wild country of the Drakensberg really was. I was privileged enough to have experienced the waning remnants of this lifestyle, and it was a pleasure to read his stories. Those of you who have enjoyed my tales will undoubtedly relish the stories Mike has to tell.

In closing, I must mention that in spite of my decision to make the next entry one of the tales of my military adventures, I am going to continue with the story of how I met Mike properly for the first time, and how he became my friend. It’s been great thinking of you, Mike, and I thoroughly enjoyed your book. I know you never thought of me in the same light that I thought of you, and I understand. Just know that your humour, your knowledge and your great insight (not to mention your pessimism, your complaints and your incessant grumbling) have never left my memory. I considered you one of my best friends in Underberg. Keep the home fires burning, and don’t stop writing…

Expulsion of Foreign Criminals?

On Sunday, the 28th of November, the Swiss public voted in one of their "direct democracy" referendums. The initiative, proposed by the conservative Swiss People's Party (SVP), proposed that foreigners automatically lose their residency permits on conviction of certain crimes. It received the majority vote, and now the government has to work out how to implement this within a legal framework.

The question is: Is this morally acceptable or not? The problem for most liberals arises from the fact that it is such a sweeping proposal. For instance, one of the proposed crimes to be included in the list that automatically gets a foreigner evicted on conviction is breaking and entering. Very broad terminology. There is no mention of the scale involved, or the intent to commit violent crime, etc. So if Messrs. Milovic, Smith and co. break into a mansion in the dead of night, armed to the teeth and ready to remove the van Gogh collection at all costs, and unexpectedly encounter Herr Müller having a late night cognac in his study, and Herr Müller jumps up and runs for his alarm panel, shouting Hilfe at the top of his voice, Mr. Smith could quite likely end up filling Herr Müller with lead from his Uzi. Following the results of the referendum, Milovic, Smith and co. will, after conviction, be evicted from the country. As far as I know, they'll have to serve their sentences here first, unless there is some sort of agreement with their home country (can't quite see that one working with Albania, but anyway...).

Excellent stuff, I say!

Now, young Gopal Munsamy, whose parents came here from India two years before he was born, has grown up into a reasonably typical young man of average academic achievement and the usual lack of respect and discipline that most youth have today, In other words, he's not much different from his neighbour, young Fritz Sigrist. He speaks Swiss German as a first language, as he has never been schooled in his parents mother tongue and only ever gets to speak Hindi or whatever with them anyway. Part of his bad attitude in life is that in order to fit in with his peers, he has to try really hard to distance himself from his parents language, culture and customs. He has never been to India and has no idea and no interest whatsoever in what life is like over there. In fact, he couldn't care less. Gopal's father has spent the last eighteen years working in the kitchen of a two star restaurant in Zürich as a dishwasher on the nightshift, so there isn't any money to go around for much, let alone pocket money for the kids. Like all foreigners of working class in Switzerland, the "Kinderzulage", or child allowance, that the Canton pays him every month is simply added onto the meagre salary in order to help make ends meet. Unfortunately for Gopal, our young potential Swiss-of-colour has taken up smoking in the last year. The only good attribute he possesses is his honesty, drummed into him by his dad's tales of how he ran a successful traders stall back in the good ole days, so when he finally succumbs to his addiction and smashes the window of a Kiosk stand one night, his fumbling attempt at theft goes wrong and he is caught and charged.

Gopal gets extradited to a strange land that is totally foreign to him, and his family are left with little choice but to follow.

Right or wrong?

I personally think such a thing would be rather bloody harsh, and when I voted I allowed myself to believe in the SVP's promise that such worst-case scenarios as this and others that were touted by the liberals would obviously be treated differently. Overtones of Nazism? Perhaps I was naive, but I am sick of the decay that I've had to watch set in in the last nine and a half years. One of the things I love about this country is the respect for law and order. One is safe over here. One's possessions are safe over here. This is changing. In the beginning, I marvelled at the lack of crime in the newspapers. As a South African the lack of violent crime fairly leapt off the pages at me. I remember laughing at the amount of articles detailing crimes such as people taking a tram without a ticket, or the snatching of a handbag in Zürich, wondering if the reporters truly had nothing better to do with their time. Until I realised that this was the locals idea of crime! Once I got to terms with that, I settled down to enjoying life in a place where one could ride a train or walk in the city with one's wife at night, or leave your bicycle standing unchained outside the shop while you bought a loaf of bread, etc. I never learned to leave my house unlocked, and I still automatically lock the car doors when in the centre of town, but it was just nice to know that if you did forget, well, you weren't likely to become a victim.

This has changed. At the age of ten, my son used to catch a train on his own to the next big city for his orthodontist appointment. When he was thirteen, I had to forbid this. First the muggings started, then they became violent. After that the rape started, and the next will be killings. The worst of this is that I have never yet read an account of such a thing where the perpetrator is not a foreigner! By the way, something that amuses me over here in this liberal, first world country is a certain little habit they have that so reminds me of the bad old days in SA when I was a tot. Back then, if there was some major road accident for example, the newspapers would carry reports along the lines of "three people were killed, and 13 blacks". This is, thank goodness, a thing of the past now, but here in Switzerland they always report on things along this vein: "Yesterday evening, a Swiss woman was raped by two Serbs, a Croat and a Nigerian on the late night train to blablabla". They're very correct about it all, though. If the perp has managed to get himself naturalised at some stage then he gets described as a Swiss. Only the qualifying little add-on gives the game away, namely "of migrant (or Balkan/Eastern European/African/Middle Eastern, etc.) heritage". Now you tell me, is this necessary? It sure is interesting to me, 'cause I think the hard facts should be made public, but I don't know how good it is for the attitudes of the Swiss to their foreigners...

Anyway, to get back to the point, I don't believe in any kind of crime. As a guest in a foreign country I certainly wouldn't be surprised if they told me to leave after I'd been caught committing crime, of any sort whatsoever. So, for better or for worse, I'm in with the SVP. OK, I admit it, they do tend to stink of zealotry from time to time, and there are flavours of extreme right-wing within the cauldron, but I feel I have to make my stand somewhere.

Just hope they don't go back on their promises now and really send ole Gopal back to (H)India...

(Still, if they do, his dad's buddies kids might just think twice before they nick that next handbag...hmmmn...)

Screaming Patrolmen

Time: Summer 1993
Place: South Coast of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa

Rushing along to the station one fine afternoon, Bob and I were eager to sign off duty and get to the beach. It had been a fine summer’s day with perfectly blue skies and not a breath of wind, and we had been stuck on the 06h00 to 14h30 shift. We were concerned that by the time we got off duty the weather may have changed, but here we were at 14h15 and the weather was still perfect. As we raced into town we saw that just over the bridge that led into the main street there was a massive amount of traffic in the build-up to the traffic lights at the intersection. We had to go right to get to our traffic police station, and just before the bridge there was an unpaved gravel road leading through grassland and bush which came out a little way further up the main road through town and just a little further up the road from the station.

We often took this shortcut in times of need, for it was a simple matter to cut back again once hitting the main road and to turn into the station grounds. As it happened, today I decided to do just this. Whipping the car deftly to the right, I slipped onto the “monkey road”, for that’s what it was called. I slowed down to navigate through the crowds of school children all using the shortcut to get to the suburbs. Realising that this could end up being slower than going through the busy intersection on the main road, I wound down my window in order to lean out and yell at the kids to get out of the way. As I did so, a small sandy coloured grasshopper came sailing in through the window and settled in my bare forearm with his scratchy little legs. I’ve never been much of man when it comes to insects, I must admit. I let out a fearful scream, at the same time jamming both legs straight out in front of me. One foot pressed the clutch all the way in and the other jammed on the brakes. As I screamed in fright I snatched up my rubber baton and commenced beating violently about me as the poor grasshopper performed evasive tactics. By this stage Bob too had started yelling, though more because he didn’t quite know what it was that had started me off. The grasshopper was by now moving so fast that I don’t know if Bob had even managed to identify what exactly it was, but he too valiantly grabbed his baton and came to my aid, swatting blindly about in between yells of panic. We were both yelling at the tops of our voices and thrashing the seats wildly. By now the vehicle had almost stopped skidding along the gravel surface, and we threw open our doors and leapt out as it was coming to a stop, clouds of dust swirling over us. The grasshopper must have leapt to safety when the doors were thrown open, for when we tentatively examined the inside of the patrol car, he was nowhere to be seen. Once Bob realised just what it was that had set me off, he gave me a black glare of malevolence that pretty much let me know what his opinion of idiots that overreacted to harmless little insects was, but the tirade that should have followed was nipped in the bud by the realisation that we weren’t alone.

In the sudden silence that ensued we paused to look around us. There we stood, in a cloud of dust with our cool-as-snow avaitor sunglasses and batons in hand. Our vehicle lay abandoned in the middle of the road with both doors hanging open and we were surrounded by a dumbstruck crowd of little Indian children, who were gaping open-mouthed at us. Not saying a word we silently patted the dust off and climbed back in the car. Clinging to what tattered remnants of our dignity as we could, we slowly drove off without looking back.

I often wonder what those little school children must have thought of these two large and well-armed policemen who suddenly began screaming and leaping out of their moving patrol car, all the while thrashing the air and beating the seats with their batons! It must have been quite a sight...

Sadness

My brother-in-law passed away on the 11.11.2010 after a very brief struggle with cancer. It was a very sad occasion for us. He was one of the most decent men I've ever had the pleasure of knowing, and he leaves behind two wonderful little boys of 5 and 8 years of age. Well brought up little men of the future, left now to find their way in life without a father. So sad. His wife is not yet 40, and now faces a future without the man she loved and adored. It's taking me a while to get used to the whole idea. I can't imagine how that little family must feel.

I will be back, but I can't promise when. We are now having to continue dealing with my father-in-law's terminal cancer. It is a little hard to write down the stories I wish to tell when I have these things preying on my mind. But I will be back...

Smoking in Switzerland

When I came to Switzerland almost ten years ago, I was a smoker. I had given up for two years prior to our move, but what with the winding up of the little business I had and then almost three months of nothing to do before coming over to Europe, I had too much free time on my hands and took up smoking again. This was at a time when the new laws regarding smoking in public places had just been put into effect in SA. Everybody (that smoked) was up in arms and there was much declaring of war going on. My favourite local watering hole, a place that was done in the style of an old western saloon and was as dirty if not worse than the real thing, was owned by a German. He, like most European expats living in SA, thought that he was above the local law, and insisted that such nonsense didn’t apply to him. I remember shortly before I left the country sitting in the bar and seeing everyone happily puffing away, led by the Teutonic fellow himself, defiantly serving drinks with a fag jammed between his lips. In earlier days, as a policeman, I would have taken great pleasure in hauling his arrogant ass before the judge, but then, as a working stiff out to have a quiet beer on a Friday afternoon, I was only too glad to be able to have a smoke myself. I didn’t give much thought to the whole thing, ‘cause I knew I was leaving the country soon and wouldn’t be concerned with the local laws anymore. I planned to stop smoking once I hit Switzerland anyway. I had heard that cigarettes and alcohol cost a fortune over here and wanted to stop for health reasons, so I never bothered to find out what the law in Switzerland had to say about smoking.
Imagine my surprise when I arrived here and saw that people smoked on trains, in bars and restaurants, in fact virtually everywhere. Aside from the fact that building and road crews were all-white, this was the most poignant first impression. Of course, you can imagine how hard it was to give up now! The two hundred and twenty Rand (a princely sum in those days) bottle of Chivas Regal that I had brought for a family friend of my father-in-law who had assisted my wife to get acquainted with the country was accepted with puzzlement, as the same thing over here cost forty francs, which was at that time about R160. Not only was the alcohol much cheaper than back home, the cigarettes were too. So with the liberal smoking laws and the cheap cigarettes, I simply carried on where I left off. It was quite amazing to sit in a restaurant and puff away happily with almost all the other patrons. Most of the places I patronized were the sort of small, cosy little country pubs that litter each town, and the ventilation was almost always non-existent. In winter it was even worse, for every window and door was sealed tightly shut (they have an absolute phobia about draughts in this place). After an hour or two you could barely see the guys at the table across the room, so thick was the smoke. It amazed me how non-smokers (few that they were) could even enter such a place, but enter they did.
This went on for many years, and when I occasionally mentioned the smoking laws in SA I would be greeted with incredulous looks of disbelief and comments such as “What! Not here that won’t happen!” or “Over my dead body!” etc. When it happened in Ireland there was much laughter at the “dumb Irish” for their idiotic laws and more threats of rebellion if anyone ever got it into his head to try that “nonsense” here in good old Switzerland. “If they ever do that they may as well take our guns away too!” I heard often. How ironic, when you consider the discussions taking place at political levels today.
Anyway, after nine idyllic years in the jam packed local “restaurants” (a Swiss country bar/eatery) with the after-work crowd of artisans, their leathery faces, muscled arms and incredibly thick, strong fingers obscured by clouds of pipe, cigar and cigarette smoke, The Day finally arrived. I must just mention that I had spent four of these years as a non-smoker, and though the stink of cigarette smoke drove me nutty with distaste and curbed my desire to frequent the stuffy little pubs, I still went for the occasional drink or twenty with friends. I saw a bar as a place in which tobacco belonged, and realized that if I wanted to go there and ruin my health with alcohol then I would have to put up with the hazards of secondary smoke inhalation too. As is usual in Switzerland, when there is a proposal for a new law the populace has to vote on it. I think in this case none of the smokers really believed that such a law would ever be taken seriously enough to actually be voted into place, because when the results of the referendum came out, it was obvious that the anti-smoking lobby had done their background work. The vote was overwhelmingly in favour of banning smoking in public places. The smokers had been caught napping! A deadline was set for October 2009, after which there was to be no more smoking in public houses in the Canton of Zürich. Other Cantons brought in the law at different times, but as I live in Zürich, I will discuss our own situation. Still the smokers went on smoking in the restaurants and when the time approached an extension of the deadline was announced for the end of the year. This new deadline approached and was once again extended. The regulars in my favourite watering hole laughed off all discussion of the dreaded new law. “Look how they keep on extending it! Never happen here, I tell you!” was the kind of thing one heard all the time. Then the new deadline was announced. 1st of May, 2010. As the day approached, no one was brave enough to comment on the lack of any talk concerning further extensions.
On the last night before the ban was to come into effect, most places threw a bash for their regulars, where smoking was almost “celebrated”. The next morning arrived and everyone went about their business. Contrary to popular opinion, the world hadn’t ended. Of course, the authorities were very, very clever with all their extensions of the deadlines. By the end of March, the weather was warming up again dramatically. By the end of April people had been sitting on the garden terraces of their favourite pubs for nearly a month. When the ban took effect, nobody even noticed. Living in cold, grey climates such as this, one learns to treasure every possible moment that can be spent outdoors, and smokers are no different. Things just went on as normal. The particular crowd that I like to join on a Friday afternoon (workers from the construction firm that was my previous employer) would still all be congregated around a long table under a sun umbrella, beers and cigarette packets littering the table wherever one looked, like they were every spring. This continued through the lovely hot months of summer and life seemed so normal that nobody worried about the new law, or protested overly much. After all, even a seasoned smoker understands and can live with going to a good restaurant for what he hopes is a good meal and not having to put up with ashtrays and the stink of cigarettes. It’s the cosy, grubby little place where you go to drink that would never be the same without a smoke!
Evidence of the discomfort that would come showed itself on the occasional rainy day. The regulars would all be crowded under a small marquee at the “Stammtisch” (directly translated to “tribal table”, but meaning more “regulars table”) outside that was set up for them every summer, bravely ignoring the chilly rain and miserable weather around them. On a day like that, there would be no strangers or casual visitors at the pub, so the actual pub remained empty while the locals swapped stories and hooted with laughter out on the terrace. In a country of people that have a hernia at the slightest bit of wind or chill, this was a stark reminder of the presence of the forbidding new law for me. I happily sit out in the elements and always have. Here, at the first hint of a darkening sky, the Swiss run for cover and warmth, even if it’s 20°C outside. The wonderful Spanish lady who runs my favourite pub had converted a tiny cubicle of a room (quite literally the size of a regular one-car garage) into a darts room some time before the change in the law, and with the onset of NO MORE SMOKING, SINNERS! she had been able to utilize this little room as a so-called fumoir, because it was only a tiny percentage in size of her already tiny little pub. The thing is, no one could bear to go in there. It is so small and crowded that one has to move ones chair to open or close the door or let someone else in, or continually duck your head to avoid flying darts. The darts players have to thread their way between drinkers and their chairs to retrieve their darts and, well… you get the picture. I remember one particular night in July when I was outside with a large crowd of friends and all our wives and partners. The locals table was going strong, loud roars of laughter and much merriment washing over our end of the terrace, where things weren’t much quieter. It was one of those Friday nights that just never seem to end. At around ten I realized that I needed to release some of the beer I’d been pouring down my gullet for the last few hours and made my way through the restaurant to the toilets. The evening had become chilly, and as I made my way past the entrance to the bar I peeped in to see who was making themselves comfortable in the warm, familiar surroundings of the little tavern while all the smokers caught colds outside. There was no-one in the pub. NO-ONE. The chairs were all upside down on the tables and the place was in darkness. I was horrified. Where were all the rabid anti-smokers who had been waiting all their lives to enjoy a beer in a non-smoking bar? Where were all the fitness fanatics and health freaks who had so relished their victory at the last vote? The Spanish lady was going out of business and the few non-smokers were all outside in the cold with their friends, enjoying the fun and intimacy that goes hand-in-hand with a visit to the pub. The little “fumoir” was empty aside from the two half-wits who spend every waking moment throwing plastic darts at a plastic, computerized dartboard that does the maths for you. As I stood before the ancient old urinal, contemplating the familiar old cracked green tiles from the late forties and listening to the faint shouts of merriment echoing through the building from the people out front on the terrace, I realized how this new law was going to change things for us.
Since then, the upbeat, modern little nightclub-cum-bar that opened a few years ago near the train station and has been a steady place of entertainment for the whole village and a lot of out-of-towners has also closed. In a chat one cold and rainy day under a sun umbrella on the terrace with the young female owner, I asked her if the rumours were true. She confirmed that she would be closing and gave me some figures. The losses she spoke about were shocking. She had considered other options, but realized that trying to move location or adding new enticements to her business weren’t going to change the basic fact that her regular clientele were no longer prepared to go out for a night on the town in a place where they couldn’t enjoy a cigarette with their drinks. And the sad fact is that all the non-smokers also find that when the place is at peak only populated by about three quiet, healthy and sober people, morbidly sitting and sipping at their beer, they don‘t have the desire to go out either. I looked around me at the stylish, expensive garden furniture the young lady had bought to doll up her pathetic little enclosure on the open terrace, complete with very expensive retractable, waterproof wall to try and block the wind that sweeps in over the farmers fields that surround her establishment, and mentally shook my head. What a waste of an enterprising, successful young person’s attempts to retain a thriving little business.
My local is closing now too. The Spanish lady is going to try her hand at another place in town that has recently closed down, due to over-investment by the last owners. It has a huge hall in the back, which used to be rented out for functions but was otherwise closed. The last owners exploited the loophole in the law about being allowed to use a small percentage of your premises for a fumoir if it was separate from the rest of the bar and had closed doors. They simply moved tables and chairs into the giant old hall in back and declared it their “bar”. It remained empty and silent while the real old bar, a typically quaint and dark place paneled in old wood and having a large ceramic stove in the middle for heating, became the fumoir. Life went on as normal for the locals there, and the last time I went it was so packed that I had nowhere to sit and had to leave again. People, non-smokers and smokers alike, had found one normal place they could still go to and find their friends.
Now that it has closed, there is nowhere to go anymore. The amount of guests and parties I have in my home has increased dramatically, while the pub owners stand wringing their hands on their front steps, in the forlorn hope that somebody, anybody, even some health freaks who want a glass of water or milk, will stop by for an hour or two. I’ll be sad to see my favourite pub go. All the others too. They’re all winding down their businesses now as we head into autumn. They know there’ll be no more custom once winter arrives. Even the toughest clientele aren’t going to sit around a table in the snow just so they can have a beer with their friends. The crowds of non-smokers have never materialized, and no-one can run a simple tavern without customers.
The free choice of people to frequent the place they want to has been ignored. The free choice of owners to ban smoking in their establishments has been ignored. The fact that people who frequent bars and spend a goodly portion of their time and income there (not the quick in-and-out, down-a-beer-between-business types) are generally smokers, has been ignored. The plight of small time bar owners has been ignored. And worst of all, the bloody non-smokers are nowhere to be seen.
It seems to me there are only losers in this situation…

Shooting the Spider

Having given the introduction to what this blog is all about in the last entry, it occurred to me that nothing is stopping me retrieving some of the old tales from their dust-gathering floppy tombs in the cupboard in my office upstairs. After signing off, I went upstairs and switched on the house computer, which these days seems to need about half an hour to get ready for operation, and began trolling through the pile of little cardboard boxes that hold my memories. You can imagine what followed...

After finding the little box that holds the memories of my days as a traffic policeman in the early nineties in South Africa, I found the floppy disc that I thought held the particular memory I wish to post here. Imagine my surprise when I loaded its contents onto the house computer and saw that there were a number of "memories" that I couldn't even recall writing! They deal with my introduction to the beautiful little farming town in the foothills of the Drakensberg to which I eventually relocated after leaving the state traffic police and taking up a job as "Chief" of the non-existent local police force in said town. This is the same town to which I allude in the post "Forgotten Places". My wife and I both think of this town and the district that encompasses it as being the place in which we experienced the most happy times of our lives. I am so pleased to have found these "forgotten" writings. I look forward to sharing them with you.

For now, this is a story that every single person who has ever read it, or heard me tell it around a fire late at night (after sufficient beer intake...) has enjoyed. Some things need explaining for my readers who don't know me, such as the fact that "Bob" is the nickname of my best buddy since we got to know each other in the old South African Defence Force. By that you can understand National Service in the existing military of the country at the time. We had both been to Officer School in Oudtshoorn (pronounced "owe-ts-hoo-wern") and while I with my loud mouth, overbearing manner and only a matric education had been made a sergeant, he with his Rhodesian upbringing of tea and houseboys, crisp linen shirts and wholesome colonial British inbred authority, not to mention the three year diploma in Human Resources Management, had been made a lieutenant. We had, unbeknown to us, a "past". That, however, is another tale. Suffice it to say that by the time this story came to pass, he was my very best friend in the world, and we had already created a history of our own. I was also known as "Bob", by the way. Just so it doesn't get too confusing.

The style of the storytelling may differ slightly from the blog at present but that's because this was written a long time ago. I hope it's still enjoyable.

Here goes:

Place: South Africa, Kwazulu-Natal, South Coast.
Time: Sometime in late Spring, 1993.



One fine morning I arrived, fresh and healthy for a change, at the testing grounds in Umzinto, ready for another shift of taming reckless roadsters in our beautiful province. Of course, Bob was already there, badges shining and the shadows thrown by the bright neon office lights falling off the crisp edges of the knife blade creases in his uniform slacks.
“Howdy Bob,” said he, “what say we head for the hills this morning, eh?”
A fine idea, I thought. For us “the hills” referred to the inland portion of our domain, stretching up from the back of Umzinto toward the crisp and beautifully green district surrounding Ixopo. This area was covered by an infamous road known as the R612. I say “infamous” because it was a guaranteed source of work for any self-respecting traffic officer. There were scores of illegal taxis, unlicensed private vehicles, overloaded sugar cane trucks and buses, drunken drivers, underage drivers, drivers having sex with passengers while driving, drivers having a shootout with passengers while driving, treacherous curves on which reckless drivers overtook their slower brethren over double barrier lines, etc.

The fun and excitement of working on this route included the fact that it was one of the main routes up which an escaping bank robber or more particularly car thief would escape en route to one of the locations in which the loot or stolen vehicle would be most effectively dissipated among the remote and outlying areas of countryside for a cooling off period before being brought back into circulation. This meant that one stood a quite reasonable chance of being pulled into a high speed chase and shootout with a suspect. Heady stuff for young men, and certainly a draw card for bored traffic officers.

Another thing that particularly appealed to Bob and I was the weather up the R612. While in one direction bright sunshine could shine over green grassy slopes shimmering in the breeze, one could turn through 180 degrees and see the massive storm clouds standing one on top of the other, pierced with lightning bolts and advancing menacingly towards you as they seemed to obliterate everything in their path with a solid sheet of rain slanted at the ground.

Another spectacular weather phenomenon was the sudden bank of thick, impenetrable mist that could roll over the road, seemingly out of nowhere. It would be a cold and cloudy day, though with good visibility, and suddenly one would round a corner and be in thick mist, or you would be driving down a long straight on a shored up stretch of tarmac, the valley dropping away among the hillsides to your left and the dark forest on your right, and suddenly a veil of mist would rush up out of the valley and speed across the road, mysteriously dissipating in among the dark trees on the right. You could drive up a long and steep stretch of road in glaring sunlight, yet it would have that peculiarly yellow tinge that occurs before a violent storm and above and in front of you, filling your windscreen, would be a brooding, black sky. As you crested the hill you would be plunged into a maelstrom of swirling wind and pelting, clattering hailstones, blinding you and turning the roadway into a shifting, shimmering river of icy pebbles.

These weather patterns, so random and violent in their intensity, were the cause of a further reason for us wanting to work this road in particular. Both Bob and I were extremely interested in the medical rescue aspect of our jobs, and had taken to the additional courses on offer in this field with alacrity. We had discovered a reasonably good means of justifying our mundane existence as traffic officers by being able to rescue accident victims and save lives and this aspect of our careers excited us, as opposed to the more common practice of hiding away and pouncing on unsuspecting old ladies who didn’t come to a complete stop at a stop street.

The problem with wanting to work on the R612 was that the powers that be had decided that we were to work almost exclusively on the freeways and not on the more out of the way old national road system. I can only put this down to the fact that freeways were high profile patrol routes, which meant that important people who would demand political accountability from our highest brass would be able to see us standing on the side of the freeway as they whizzed by on their way to the casino down the coast, or their wild coast fishing trips, etc. and thus be satisfied that we were “doing our job”. Of course, one could only really conduct speed controls on the highways and even these weren’t really that interesting because within 20 minutes after setting up the motorists going in the opposite direction would have “flashed” their counterparts going in our direction for the entire length of the freeway all the way up to Durban, and so everyone would be rumbling along at a gentle 120km per hour. This was a good thing, of course, for it led to orderly and safe driving for the entire time that we were parked there without anyone having to pay a fortune in speeding fines, but it was terribly boring work for us. And of course a lot of frustration lay in the fact that at times one could actually hear the more powerful vehicles dropping a gear and accelerating once they had passed us and knew that the danger was over. Being understaffed there was never anyone further down that we could alert either, so all in all it was quite frustrating. Another fact of life in the district was that all the fancy modern cars that were all perfectly roadworthy and legal, as well as driven by legally licensed and not intoxicated people were going about their business on the highways, while just over the crest of the great banks that lined the highway, on the old national routes, there was a multitude of sinners of varying degrees driving rusted out old claptraps that barely managed to stay together, and all of them laughing at the uniformed idiots that were wasting their time standing around on the highway, watching all the rich holidaymakers whizzing by in their new Mercedes’ and BMW’s.

It was quite remiss of the bosses, actually. Here we were, forced to waste our time standing on the side of the highway twiddling our thumbs, when we could have been making a valuable contribution to road safety in the really dangerous parts of the road network and still been within a stones throw of any highway on-ramp in times of need. As it was we would sneak off the highways to get our daily quota of charges quickly on some side road (there was hardly anything to charge on the highway, and we had to satisfy the bosses with an average of about 10 to 15 charges per day, though that was always denied to the public) and then still do a few long patrols up and down the length of the highway in order to show a presence. I think that this was enough but the bosses never did and so we were forced to stay on the freeways, hour after hour.

From time to time though, and especially on weekends when it was likely that the station commander or his second in command who supervised every second weekend were likely to be ducking off at friend’s houses or at home themselves with the patrol car parked outside the lounge window and the two way radio turned up on full volume, we would take it upon ourselves to do a patrol where we wanted to, and not where we were supposed to.

This was obviously going to be one of those weekends, and what with the beautiful crisp predawn air of a dewy spring morning and the prospect of those rolling green hills interspersed with kraals and dams, and luscious green fields filled with sleek and fat dairy cows, I couldn’t agree more with Bob’s suggestion. The R612 was a fantastic place to catch barrier line offenders, and what’s more they were normally the rich and arrogant farmers of the area who assumed that all officers of the law were appointed to maintain the status quo of white over black. This meant that they thought that they could do whatever they liked on the roads while we had to ensure that any black people attempting to use the roads were subjected to the third degree.

Of course not everyone was like this, but unfortunately it was the select few that created the lasting impression of all the rest. Anyway, it was always a pleasure to catch and charge an obviously wealthy and influential person who plainly thought he was above the law and ranted and raved at us for being useless bloodsucking parasites on society. It went a long way toward assuaging the sympathy we felt for ordinary battling people who were just trying to go about their lives and couldn’t afford that new tyre or the leaking oil seal but had to go on using their vehicle to get children to school or to earn a living. What made it worse was that these people were always polite and decent to us. They didn’t earn a lot yet made no fuss and accepted their fines with good grace. In fact, even though we weren’t really supposed to, we often waived an official summons to appear in court or pay a fine in favour of a verbal “warning” which didn’t really achieve much but went a long way toward satisfying our empathy with the ordinary people. The rich farmers and sales reps with their BMW’s, Audi’s and Mercedes’ were quite another story though.

I had recently uncovered the old camera that belonged to the station, having found it in the strong room one day. In the old days, before my time in the force and when they still operated on a more professional basis, keeping good records of accidents and using these to support the investigation into causes of serious road accidents and motivating the implementation of preventative measures such as road alterations and speed control measures, etc. this camera had seen good service. In fact I can still recall a time when at six years old I had accompanied my father on a patrol and witnessed him using the same camera to record an accident scene which was still on display in the traffic training college 13 years later when I attended that august institution.

The camera was a very good one and all I had to do was get some petty cash from the office ladies and buy some film for it. I had taken to carrying it around with me and was trying to revive the old practice of meticulously recording the accidents that occurred. It was also proving to be very useful for other reasons, such as using photos taken with it as a very effective tool in winning court cases against people who blatantly broke the law yet still tried to use their massive financial capabilities to worm their way out of a R200 fine with a R10 000 lawyer rather than admit they had broken the law. There was nothing quite like seeing the light of battle slowly fade and die from a powerful Durban or Johannesburg attorney’s eyes as I nonchalantly pulled a pair of photos out of my file for the magistrate’s perusal toward the end of the court case, when the defendant and his lawyer had already spent considerable energy demonstrating the outstanding character and honesty of the defendant, as opposed to the morally despicable and fascist-like young power freak who had so wrongly accused the defendant. The magistrate would gaze at the photo clearly showing a speeding vehicle fully on the wrong side of the road and brightly painted double barrier lines, oncoming traffic pulling to the side to avoid him while he raced passed a slower vehicle, his face and registration plate clearly visible, and his honour’s visage would take on the dark aspect of an approaching storm. Thundering at the cowering lawyer and his sheepish client he would throw the two out of his courtroom and that would be the end of all argument.

The thought of catching the beginning of such a beautiful morning in the picturesque surroundings alongside the R612 as well as the prospect of finding some interesting cases and perhaps putting an arrogant rich person in their place was a mighty pleasing one at the beginning of a weekend that was to be wasted working.
“Just a moment, Bob”, I said, and rushed into my office to grab the camera. Bob had already fetched the speed-timing device from the strong room and soon we had our vehicle loaded and ready to go. By 05h45 we had left the town and were on our way up the winding old national route that linked the Drakensberg to the Indian Ocean. The road seems to climb from the minute it leaves the coast, and accordingly (or so it always seemed to my coastal eyes), so the vegetation and the very air itself seemed to change. This was a perception that remained with me far into the future and another job that took me down the R612 fairly often but in the opposite direction. However, that is another tale.

Both my partner and I drank in the still dark early morning atmosphere on the ride up. It was a fair while before either of us spoke again, and then we had to decide what to do and where. We liked to do what is today known as multitasking. For instance, while most of our colleagues would either set up a speed timing device or stand and make arbitrary vehicle checks, or conduct drunken driving tests, we preferred to set up as much equipment as possible at one sitting, thereby broadening our net and serving more of a purpose in the process. After all, why allow two drunken drivers to go past simply because they weren’t speeding and you didn’t stop them? Or why sit and watch two speedsters racing by because you were only doing roadworthy checks and didn’t have your speed timing apparatus in place? Anyway, we had come upon a good place to set up shop, and so we pulled over and began to set ourselves up.

The reason we liked the place was that it afforded excellent cover and a superb vantage point over a long and dangerous curve that wound its way out of a steep downhill and into the uphill stretch on which we waited. The roadway was divided by a double barrier line, as any vehicles descending toward the curve from either North or South had no clear line of sight to establish whether or not it was safe to overtake. They also had the advantage of the steep downhill in either direction to aid an illegal and dangerous attempt to accelerate and rapidly overtake any crawling logging vehicle or overloaded sugar cane transporters such as regularly held up traffic on the long haul up or down the R612. Although dangerous it was obviously a very tempting place to do a quick passing of a vehicle that could well hold you up all the way to the next town, provided you were willing to take the chance that no one was coming in the opposite direction.

Our spot was the very ornate driveway of somebody’s farm. There were great big whitewashed driveway pillars, about three meters tall, on either side of the entrance way leading off the main road, and attached to each pillar was a curving wall that started about half a meter below the top of the pillar and gradually lowered in height as it curved out toward the side away from the driveway, culminating in a shorter pillar of about half a meter in height. We could park our vehicle behind one of these walls, between it and the cleared back bush. Bob could set up the speed timing device with a good line of sight down to the curve in the road while remaining out of sight himself and I could walk up the curving wall right up to the top of the pillar where I commanded an excellent field of vision and could zoom in on offending motorists. From there it was a clear shot of both their offending actions and their registration plates. Thus if anybody failed to stop we didn’t have to disrupt our cautiously and meticulously laid out set-up with a mad scramble to pack up, get in the vehicle and commence a usually fruitless high speed chase of the offending vehicle. Rather, we could, after a leisurely breakfast, radio in the details of the registration plate and simply arrive at the person’s home or office where we could arrest him on a charge of failing to comply with the instructions of a traffic officer, as well as charge him with the original offence. So, here we were perfectly set up in a good place and ready to take advantage of a new and unknown hideout while enjoying the beauty of an early morning sunrise over the still dark hills and misty valleys.

Watching the sun come up that morning was one of those rare pleasures that the unfortunate traffic cop gets to enjoy as he begins a predawn shift on the beginning of a beautiful weekend that other more fortunate souls spend at their leisure. Though we were actually visible at the last minute to the passing traffic going in the direction of the coast and away from us, almost everybody seemed more intent on the road and were either yawning as they drove or rubbing their eyes in the glare of the rising sun. We reaped a bounteous crop from all walks of life that morning, all chancing their arm on the barrier lines through the dangerous curve below us. We even caught a few early morning speedsters (mostly the same ones we were about to stop for overtaking in the first place!). A few really decrepit death traps on wheels fell into our net too and all in all it was a rather profitable few hours. Realising that we had satisfied the bosses’ quota of charges in one fell swoop, with a satisfyingly varying and justified batch of charges, and all that before breakfast too, we decided to pack up and make our leisurely way back down to the coast for breakfast at our favourite hotel.

This should have been a quick and easy affair, however it turned out that a nasty surprise was awaiting me. Dating back to my earliest years living on the coast and having large, hairy rain spiders lurking above doorways in the home, or small black jumping spiders which sprang onto little children’s exposed legs and inflicted a painful bite that resulted in large sores full of stinking pus, I have suffered from arachnophobia. Now, in the clear light of the bright morning sun, I was in for a shock.

In my appreciation of the beautiful predawn morning, the trill of awakening birds, the smell of the soil damp with early morning dew and the expectation of a good morning’s pickings, I had blithely walked up the spiral wall that led to the top of the pillar upon which I had perched myself to spy out and photograph offending motorists. This had been done in that half light that precedes the full rising of the sun. Now, as I stepped forward down the curve of the whitewashed wall, a perfectly formed ring like the outwardly spreading ripples on a still lake surface after the rise of an early morning trout showed itself. Neatly attached to the wall I was on and completely filling the half circle formed by the curving wall was a gigantic spider’s web, each strand beautifully illuminated by golden droplets of dew catching the early sun’s rays. Each individual strand looked to be about the diameter of a matchstick, though I think this was merely an exaggeration in the arachnophobic mind I possess.

Instantly freezing in the manner of the proverbial deer in the headlights, I frantically cast my eyes about the monstrosity of a web in search of what would surely be a monstrosity of a spider. True enough, when I eventually spotted him he was about the size of my hand from front foot to back, and he had an abdomen the size of a small plum. Not only was he intimidating in size but he also had a fearful array of dangerous looking colours splashed and dotted about his body. Altogether one of the scariest looking spiders I had ever seen! He was in the quarter of the web nearest to me and steadily advancing. I could even see his trail leading from the centre of the web as he disturbed the dew drops in his path. He had been heading directly for me! I took a fearful step backwards and he immediately stopped his movement.
“Come on, Bob, hurry up!” said Bob from down below.
He had packed up the radar machine and was now waiting for me. I took another step forward. The spider immediately resumed his movement toward me, only this time a little faster. I paused, heart thumping, and so did the spider. This is ridiculous, I thought. Here I am, 80kg of grown man, and he’s just a little insect. I took another step forward. So did he. I stopped. So did he. By now I was breaking out in a sweat and my mouth had gone dry. I was stuck on this damn wall, too high up to jump and too scared to run the gauntlet past the belligerent spider. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I was aware that Bob was laughing at me, but I was too busy dealing with my fear of the spider to worry too much. I had to get off the damn wall, but there was no way I was going to risk having that great big monstrosity of a spider springing on me! Then it dawned on me what had to be done. Drawing my 9mm pistol, I took a tentative step forward. The spider immediately settled its baleful gaze on me again and resumed its stalking. A trickle of sweat ran down my temple, but I resolutely took another step forward. The spider was now within a couple of feet of me, and steadily advancing. Cold chills were racing up and down my spine as my legs turned weak with fear. As he got to within a foot of my own foot, I raised my pistol in both hands, the camera hanging around my neck. With shaking hands I drew a bead on his massive abdomen, while he paused for one last look before making what would surely be his killing leap onto my quivering body.

With a squeeze of the trigger I dissolved my fearsome opponent into a fine mist of gooey spray, leaving nought but a still twitching leg stuck to the tattered silk waving around the hole in the web. In the aftermath of my fear the silence of my dumbfounded partner and the relief of knowing that I lived to breathe another day were too much for me, and I broke out in hysterical laughter. I wonder to this day what a casual observer would have thought of us had he been watching from afar, these brave policemen that were so afraid of spiders that they shot them...

Thank you

To those of you who continue coming back in the forlorn hope of finding something new, thank you. It's been two weeks since the last entry now and my guilt complex is growing. I see from the stats (my new favourite occupation) that the incredible increase in readership is continually growing. However, the longer the gap between posts, the steadier the decline in readership. Pretty logical I know, but having gone on for the first few months with virtually no readers and little interest in how many I may attract, it's not so easy to suddenly fill a gap that you didn't know was there. I hope that doesn't sound arrogant, but I'm one of those lazy sods that doesn't like to be put under pressure. Don't mention that to my boss, by the way. The job I do is such a combination of hectic stress and necessary adaptability that pressure is a mild description of why exactly my particular job title is something that is always in demand in this little country. We whinge and scream about the amount of Germans we have here in Rösti-land (pronounced "rerschty" but without the second "r" and indicating one of the traditional dishes over here: grated, fried potato, DELICIOUS!), but we couldn't do without them, because there are simply too few qualified Swiss to manage all the construction going on. That's not to say there are too few qualified Swiss in general, rather there are about five million over-qualified Swiss, but somehow the construction trade doesn't grab the young anymore. A result of our overwhelmingly "information technology" world of today, I suppose. Ok, here comes my usual, favourite and true phrase: I digress! How unusual.

I always like to come onto the blog with something new and interesting, or even something old and interesting. Sometimes though, I get the urge to just talk, much like writing in a diary in the old days of pen and paper. I try to resist this, because I am convinced that there is not much in my everyday thoughts that a zillion of us haven't already thought or worried about and don't really need to see written down here by some arbitrary twat (pronounced "twot" and used in South African dialect to denote a prize prick. It's real meaning probably lies hidden in Afrikaans somewhere, but in my day it meant the same as that terrible English word "C*NT", and has the same connotations).

Anyway, I wanted first of all to thank all the people who come back to this blog. I'm really surprised. Truly. Thank you. Secondly, about the poll that I posted. There was no reaction for a while until someone I know complained that she couldn't get the thing to work. I had promised myself that I wouldn't do any voting for myself, but this was too much. I logged in at work and did the unthinkable. It worked fine. So there I was, one miserable little vote and done by myself. I felt terrible! I even considered voting for "mediocre" or "as boring as hell", just so that I couldn't be seen to be furthering my own cause. Couldn't bring myself to do that though, so I voted for "interesting". There, it's out. Imagine my surprise and pleasure when I logged on a few days later and found that there were now four votes! Four whole votes!! It was a 50/50 result. Two "interesting" and two "good for a laugh". Subtract my own "interesting" and the likely "interesting" of my aquaintance and you have two "good for a laugh"'s. Pathetic, yet intensely gratifying, I must say. Once again, thank you to the two unkowns who made those votes.

To outline another interesting aspect (for me), I have seen that it's the stories about the past that attract the most attention. I would have thought the day-to-day life of a foreigner in Switzerland would interest most people, but I have been proved wrong by the stats, which show that the two tales of the past have attracted about 70% of the close to four hundred viewings I've had. To this end I have decided to include at least one tale of yore per month.

I think it's time to clarify a little of that which I intend here on the blog. I have spoken about it before, but it could be made a little clearer. I wish to relate the things that have happened to me that could have happened to anyone the world over. The difference is, most of us either remember the events fondly and go on with our lives without ever mentioning the occurrences again, or we simply don't have the capability to retell whatever it was in an interesting enough manner to capture and hold our audiences attention, or we are not the type of person that feels that our own particular experiences are worthy enough of telling. I have learnt from the likes of James Herriot, Alex Haley and many world war two soldiers that everyday experiences or personal history can be extremely interesting or funny if expressed in precisely the way that the author perceives it. This requires a certain talent at writing. I like to think that I have that talent. I'm not sure if I do have it, but nonetheless I will continue to try here. That is the essence of this blog. To write down my memories and experiences and see if anyone else finds it interesting. I certainly find some of the life experiences I and others that I know have had to be noteworthy and therefore I wish to record them. I have a number of past stories written down and saved on old floppy discs, but this seems like such a better place to store ones memories. Here people can enjoy them "live" and they can still be recovered for personal use, rather than lying about in a cupboard somewhere in the house on software that could become obsolete in the near future. I'm under no delusions that there is a wealth of people out there just waiting to hear all my personal tales and hence I am so surprised and pleased that (once again, for me!) so many of you read what I have to say. Once again, thank you. I hope that the regulars from South Africa and America find something from my past that meshes with their own memories, and I wish the Danish and Swiss readership lots of fun exploring the mentality and past of an ex "old South African".

Of course, it could be that my most faithful readers are the two from Hong Kong who reappear every single day (I doubt that there are enough interested parties in Hong Kong for there to be a continual couple of views daily from different people each time...or is it the same poor loner who is so devoted that he/she goes to my page twice a day? If so, keep it up!). Whatever the case is, I won't thank all the rest individually. The bulk of the readership seems to be from the USA, Denmark, Switzerland and South Africa. The rest are minor, but appreciated.

Well, that's it for this entry. I have now spent a log in on myself and the blog, something I don't wish to do to often. I haven't checked up on what I wrote last, but I know that there is a lot to do with this type of thing and at least one complete banality. The next will be a story of the past.

Yours, ...

Huh?

Just a short one today. Most of the things I write about take a good few pages but today I read something that, despite the circumstances that led to it coming to my attention, struck me as somewhat hilarious.

Cancer has become a red hot topic in my family over the last year, what with four people within the family circle having been badly stricken. In a recent discussion (conducted by mail) with someone, I was informed that, among other things, one should consume copious amounts of cruciferous vegetables. Now then, I pride myself on my vocabulary but let me tell you, this one had me nailed to the wall...oops...excuse me, I mean stumped. What the hell is a cruciferous vegetable? I'm not too sure, but I'll bet it was on the menu at the Last Supper...

Forgotten Places

Date: Sometime in Summer, 1998.
Place: Foothills of the Southern Drakensberg, Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa.

One of the most unfortunate times in my working years to date has been the couple of years during which I was employed by a well-known chain of furniture retailers in SA. I had been in a dead-end job as a floor salesman in a hardware supply store, working for two miserly little rich boys from Johannesburg and hating every minute of it, when the furniture chain decided to open up an outlet in our beautiful little farming town. Had I possessed a crystal ball, I would have rather continued to enjoy being insulted or ignored by the super wealthy or assisting the super poor to count out the 23 screws they so desperately needed but could hardly afford. However, I didn't have any idea of what I was letting myself in for and assumed that anything would be better than working for the "white rat", as I remember thinking of the major partner.

I went along for an interview and soon thereafter I was informed that I had the job. It wasn't long before I realised that, as assistant manager, it was my job to drive a team of black ladies around the native reserves in the surrounding countryside and see to it that they fleeced as many ignorant, poor and needy people of whatever paltry amount of cash they possessed in exchange for second rate, crap furniture that would never last as long as the exhorbitant terms of credit to which they would unwittingly be coerced into putting their illegible scrawls to. In fact, the retelling of this part is making my blood boil already, so let me skip all that. It's a story on it's own and I will probably deal with it another day. Suffice it to say that I have an interest in history, geography, geology and archeaology that saved my sanity during those terrible two years that I worked for that den of thieves.

The reason these particular interests of mine came to the fore was that there was so much to be discovered out in the native reserves. Besides the traces of the original Bushmen that once inhabited the area there was evidence of stream beds that had had their courses altered by unknown hands, deserted and forgotted old sentinel posts of cut stone left over from the poor souls who did duty on the furthest reaches of the empire, and, if one knew what to look for, traces of old wagon routes winding their way steadily against the grain of nature over the green, endlessly rolling hills.

I had a wonderful rapport with the black people that worked in the shop. Most of them were well known to me through various other jobs I had had in the area, and my interest in them and the surrounding countryside, as well as a penchant for sharing jokes with them in their own language, must have endeared me to them, for they were different people once we were out and away from the young Afrikaner who was our mutual boss and the only other white man in the shop. From childhood I had had a very rudimentary grasp of the Zulu language, and these wonderful people loved to teach me what they called "real" Zulu and what I today would call "High Zulu". This fascinated me, for I already understood enough to understand most of what a white farmer would say to his farm workers in fluent enough Zulu to know that he was using a lot of slang and dialect (called Fanagalo in South Africa), but not enough to speak a clear and grammatically correct sentence myself. A very irritating and confining situation indeed. Today I have again forgotten most of what they taught me back then, but at the time I began to enjoy a reasonably good grasp of the language. I could never bring myself to speak it in the presence of my white friends, who could rattle it off so well and who would, I was sure, take every opportunity to belittle my attempts, yet out in the bush with those ladies and the poor rural dwellers, my reserve melted away and I would experiment with all and sundry.

On one particularly pleasant and sunny day, my ladies promised to show me something I hadn't seen before if we could stock up on supplies at one of the ubiquitous African trading stores along the way and stop for lunch while I explored. Of course, I readily agreed. What they eventually led me to was just up my alley. Leaving the dirt road with its ruts and boulders, we pulled into a patch of veldt and left the vehicle. A short walk into a stand of black wattle trees brought us to the ruins of a hand-built stone farmhouse. The roof was long since gone and the walls were now only knee-high. A large young tree was growing on the hearth where once, a hundred or more years ago, a young family of settlers may have warmed their hands before a blaze on a cold and snowy night. Out in the sparse forest with tangles of undergrowth that surrounded the old homestead, you could picture the green grass spread before the wide verandah whose foundations were so clearly visible in the patch of hard-packed, goat-trodden dirt before the gap in the wall that would have, once upon a time, been blocked by a solid, hand-made wooden door.

Standing in the ruins of that old settler's house on a bright sunny morning I enjoyed a moment of silence, contemplating the surroundings and trying to imagine the story lying dormant in the silent ruins. My gaggle of sales ladies had long since shed their company scarves and smart black company shoes and were sitting in a circle under a large tree in the corner of a small clearing that was probably the remains of a kitchen garden at the back of the old house. They chatted and giggled quietly among themselves as they passed a cooked chicken around, tearing hunks of meat off and wrapping them in a chunk of fresh white bread before stuffing the whole lot into their constantly jabbering mouths. I can still see the grease reflecting off their happy, round black faces as they enjoyed the break from the tyranny in the shop and the peaceful surroundings. I was standing to one side, my own shoes and socks and tie having been removed the moment we left the white people's town, and enjoying the long grass tickling my calves below the rolled up hems of my suit slacks. How ridiculous we must have seemed, us greedy whites out to rob the poor people of their bucks! I think one of the reasons they must have enjoyed me was my disregard for the whole comedy of dress. Our Führer back in the safety of his shop would have had a hernia if he knew what went on once we were out in the bush.

Soon, my musings were interrupted by the sound of goats and their little bells tinkling as they moved through the bush towards where we were holed up. I must mention that the ladies always steered me toward these sort of places, for they knew they were guaranteed an hour or two of peace while I explored and ruminated on the past. When the goats and their ancient minder broke through into the patchy clearing around the ruins, I seized the moment and called out to the old goatherd. By the look of him, he could well have been around when this place was still a working farm! After a few attempts at picking his knowledge of the surroundings, and his vigourous denials of any wrong-doing (a common enough reaction of old black people to young white men in those days) I realised that I wasn't getting through to him. My favourite saleslady, whose Zulu name meant "We give thanks!", saw my difficulties and came over to assure him that this uMlungu (white man) only wanted to know if he had any interesting stories to tell about the ruins. Once the old fellow realised that he had nothing to fear, he indicated somewhere over his shoulder, saying the whites that had lived here had come from there. "From the town?" I asked him, frowning because I knew that the town was younger than these ruins. "No no," he replied, "somewhere else, much further away." I asked if he knew them. "No," he replied, "but my grandfather did. They came here on a wagon and built this house, and my grandfather lived here and worked for them when he was a little boy."
"A wagon?" I asked, raising my eyebrows. "Yes," replied he, "come, I will show you."

Huh? I was beginning to quiver with excitement. For all I knew, this was a story well known to the local whites, but I had never heard it. I followed the old chap through some bush, passing a very thick clump of bright coloured flowers along the way. As I slowed to admire the flowers, trailing a finger over the bright peach petals, he looked over his shoulder and saw what I was doing. Turning, he came back to me and said, "This was where they got their water from." I looked at the clump of flowers and wondered if he was a bit nutty. He leaned forward and ripped a large clump of the beautiful flowers out of the earth. Standing there in front of me, hidden by the tangle of foliage, were the walls of an old well. It was not very deep and completely dry, and I assume that although time had filled it in considerably, there was still a source of water somewhere below the layers of sand, for the flowers were certainly thriving. We continued for a short while, threading our way through patchy trees and occasionally having to step over the last row or two of an old stone wall, until we came to a bright green patch of grass, not more than about ten metres by five. On one side of the little clearing was a massive shrub, of the kind one would find in a suburban garden, but about ten times bigger and bushier. Sticking out from one side was an ancient-looking piece of solid wood, and on closer inspection I discovered that it was the drawbar of a wagon. Not only that, the rest of the wagon was still attached to it! With my heart pounding in excitement, I spent the rest of the afternoon freeing the old wagon from the overgrown bush which had grown next to it and finally hid it from casual eyes. The ladies laughed at my antics, cheering me on from the shade at the other end of the clearing, to which they had moved themselves in order to view the mad uMlungu with his passion for rotting relics.

The old man helped me a bit at first, but soon he had to go. Before he left I asked him what had happened to the family, if they had moved to the town when it was eventually founded. "No," he told me, "they left before that."
"Where to?" A shrug of the shoulders. "Why?" Another shrug. "What was their name?" A blank look. I realised that I was getting nowhere and gave up. After I thanked him and he gave me the customary courteous best wishes, he gathered up his scattered goats from where they were decimating the flora and wandered off into the bush without a backward glance. I remember wondering how much untold history he was taking with him as he vanished from sight. There were many such experiences during those times. I promised myself I would go back one day in the far future and tell the tale of those forgotten people who settled out there in the middle of nowhere in the harsh mountian winters where not even the native tribes were tempted to settle permanently, 'til they were forced there by internal wars or colonial plans. I was loathe to uncover these sort of finds to anybody back in the village, for somehow I believed that they were secrets that belonged to me and the uncaring natives that lived on in these areas, but there was one old gentleman back in the village who shared my passions and who was well-versed in the history of the area and who I trusted with some of my finds. He cast light on some but not all of these mysteries for me, and had indeed combed much of the countryside in his younger days and seen some of my "discoveries" for himself. I never asked him why nothing much was made of these old sites, but I think in retrospect that he was much like myself. He too preferred to keep these things to himself. To me the old wagon was far more glorious in its original setting than it would have been in the little local musuem, glanced at by the uncaring eyes of bored tourists passing through the region for a day. To my mind, it was better off standing there where its owner had last parked it, waiting for the day when it would be pulled out and hooked up to a team of oxen again, ready to take its family of pioneers further along the trail of hope.

When I finally left that little outpost in the middle of nowhere, the sudden African dusk had fallen and my white shirt was stained with green plant juices and smears of red soil. I had reconstructed the layout of the original homestead and its surrounds in my mind by allowing my imagination to form the missing walls, channels, ditches, trails, etc. and encouraged by the little finds along the way that confirmed my thoughts. The little nicks and tears in my smart "work" trousers meant that I would have to buy new ones, and the dirt under my nails would need much scrubbing to remove it in time for work the next day. The spineless (morally and physically) oaf that we slaved for would still be sitting in the brightly lit cavern of a shop, hiding behind locked plate glass doors in the silent and deserted little town, desperately awaiting a non-existent last hopeful who wanted a new lounge suite and preparing his tirade for us when we arrived with less than the expected tally of new credit victims. We laughed that idea off and passed by three of our favourite regulars on the way home. These were very rich black businessman who laughed at the furniture chains attempts to enslave them in never-ending credit. When they or one of their numerous wives wanted something, they would whip out great wads of cash from a deep pocket and pay cash on the spot. Sometimes, such as this evening in particular, they would even buy something that they didn't really want, just to silence the protests of my crew. I wonder just what kind of deals our intrepid sales ladies did actually get up to? Anyway, two of these gentlemen made some very large purchases, and one of them insisted that we sample the quality of our own chipboard-and-cheap-veneer dining room suite while wife number one served us supper. Yet another entertaining experience for another time! By the time we got home, bypassing the shop and the nazi in it to go to our warm beds and sweet dreams, I had a full stomach and many thoughts and memories to ponder and preserve for the future.

Another day had passed. How I wish I could have that particular one over...