lights on, nobody home

Holy mother of crap and bogs united.

Flew down to Cape Town this weekend for two purposes:
1) To see my grandfather, who is literally days from passing away;
2) Take my German mate down there to check the vibe out and show him around

One day was spent doing each. With a razzle in between on Long Street, where we cornered a drug dealer to ask him about his life. ('Where do you hide the cocaine? Do you miss Lagos? How much do you make in a week? Are you selling to teenagers?') That sort of thing.

But allow me to fast forward to the journey from hell.

My student car – a machine of a banger, with 250 000 kms on the clock – prepared to drive down to Cape Point.
All’s good and well, stop off at Kalk Bay for some fish and chips, and then headed on down the peninsula. It started to get dark – and realized – at Misty Cliffs – that I couldn’t see anything.

No lights. Not a sausage of a light, me and the German were shrouded in darkness along windy cliffy roads, sans headlamps.

Starting to push beads on my palms, it’s getting darker and darker, and head down that hairpin bend, tumbling cliff faces, sort of pass with 9 cars behind me, hating me, because I’m going at 30 km/hour, and can’t see sweet bugger all.

The German remained somewhat calm – amazing – even when I announced that we were probably going to die, and that I needed to vomit. From fright.

My eyesight generally has gone down the toilet from working on a computer all day long for the last six years, so my night vision is about as hot as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s hairy scrotum, and all was actually fairly alright, until I got onto the highway.

‘We’re going to die dude. How do you feel about dying in Cape Town? Or were you envisioning this happening somewhere else?’

Thenm he flicks the indicator forward and suddenly, when I held the indicator towards me, manually, there was light. And I could actually see lines on the road, not just black death all around us.

So from about Constantia through to the City Bowl, I held the indicator twards me, while steering with one hand, because Genius German next to me found ze solution to our problems of immediate demise.

Holy fuck, what a rush. I’m alive. I’m really alive.

Brian Habana sat in front of my on the way home. Didn’t think he was the type to fly budget, but there he was, right ahead of me – I could see the threads at point range in his cap – flying a bit of Kulula.

Bless, he gave a few autographs out. And then a guy accidentally hit me in the face on the shuttle to the terminal. I’m starting to wonder how I get into painful air-travel situations at the moment. I’m either fly paper for freaks, or something violent happens near me.

Or I wonder for 5 long minutes who this guy is, because everyone is saying ‘Oh my word, great game!’ as they walk on board and see him, and I’m thinking, ‘Fuck. Is he a soccer player. Yes. No. Oh wait. That’s that rugby dude called Brian.’

Glad I got to see my grandfather for the last time.