Former Miss South Africa, blonde, tall, widening, with more of a bob now. Almost making eye contact like she knows me but we’ve never been introduced. Or maybe that’s the familiarity. In takkies and jeans, casual, but sexy, tanned. And those freckles women get across their shoulders. On champagne with ice, then still waters. With girls. Girls day at the races.
Mr South Africa: forty. (I know these things) Maybe he’s 42. Fighting it, though. Still has all his hair, and the colour – dark brown. Garnier number 300. Biceps like hams, slacks and slip-on sandals, leather.
– I just think abs at the beginning tires you. That’s your core. It throws you off balance for the rest of your workout.
Former soap star listens in, nods, says nothing. Or, something to the other guy, not me. Smaller then you think, but most of them are. And narrower about the face.
Catherine speaks, though. With jade eyes and Arabian hair, but she’s Irish. From her days air stewarding. For Emirates. Says she’ll try LA. Stunning, stunning. She should’ve gone earlier. She’s thirties now. Gorgeous for that, but LA’s a hard one to crack.
Denim miniskirt and loose floral blouse off the shoulder. Heels that flatter the calves. She gyms too. Boobs, teeth perfect, but the front two overlap slightly. Non-smoker, probably. She’s not smoking.
Boyfriend lurks, heads off to do something. Ignore him. Speak about Joost & Amor, drug smuggling on aeroplanes and gym. She alternates Old Eds and Sandton. Crows feet. She should’ve gone earlier and she would’ve made it.
French wife, forty too. Boobs big, blonde, bum all tight in white bermudas. Tired, exasperated? Inspecting the A1 trophy here on the landing. Striding. Sex. Husband grey in white race top. A1! A1! A1! Off somewhere else. On one of the teams. France? You’d think.
She struts. Boobs too big. Three-fifties. Could’ve got away with a couple of two-fifties. Bum like a teenager. Teen boy? Maybe. Stairclimber. Could be road running – makes face tired like that.
Two guys, the standard hairstyle. For large white guys. Guns. Bench their body weight. Swaying at the top of the stairs. French wife notices. Glances sidelong from the trophy. Chintzy, ball-end sceptre. To the right along the carpet, a sidelong glance.
They don’t notice. Teeter. Stairs yawn beneath them, sucking them down. The one in the white chuckles at it. Green too busy concentrating. It’s been a helluva day.
No music. Only roars of vehicles. And only earplugs for respite. The television for interpretation. Dozens watching intently. Rush to balcony to see a bunch pass. New Zealand run off up the drag. Switzerland won, they say. Monaco third. That guy here in the white was from Monaco. Tall, blond ponytail. Headphones on. Listening to the commentary.
SA withdraws on lap ten. Over. Only Monaco cares. Mr France rushes off. Second? Leaves wife, exasperated. Catherine speaks. Mr South Africa. Miss South Africa. Guns, bench their body weight. Still teetering on the brink of the stairs, chuckling.
It’s been a helluva day.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
It was hectic, and okes just weren’t into it
Okes have got a thing going. Okes make out. Okes know what’s on another oke’s mind.
And there’s okes and there’s okes. But okes are okes, hey, so it doesn’t matter if a oke is another kind of oke. Okes still make out.
Take Jayce. Jayce is a oke. He’s 18 months old, he’s still rocking a nappie, he’s dopping formula out of a baby bottle, but he’s a oke. He can stand, a little wobbly sometimes, but ay. Sometimes okes get a bit wobbly. Nothing wrong.
It’s Sunday arvie, lekker weather for chilling in the back garden and jolling a bit of Baby’s First Shapes Board and then moering the hell out of it with your plastic hammer.
So okes are doing that. The chicks are chilling there, doing chick things. Molly’s on the picnic blanket with her crayons out and she’s got the creative juices going. She’s drawing pictures of her mom, and lank little heart shapes.
Babes are into that kinda thing. You know how it is. Okes are more into just chilling on the front stoep, sucking on a bit of formula and just rapping to yourself. Maybe go for a trap down to the birdbath and splash the water around, fart in your nappie and then come back and chill.
Molly… ag, you know how it is. The girl’s four, she’s got a vivid imagination, so she smaaks playing make-believe. She’s basically writing one-act plays in her head and performing them on the fly.
This latest one is about turning the picnic into a nuclear family. “I’ll be the little girl and you be the little boy and you be the daddy. Now they have to put us to bed!”
“Come on Jason. You have to be the little boy! Come get into bed!”
At this point Molly has wrapped the entire picnic blanket around herself and is busy rolling around on the lawn like she’s a large squealing tartan cocoon with a tuft of blonde hair sticking out the top of it.
“Come on, Jason! You the little boy! You must come let them tuck you into bed!”
But Jason’s not feeling the play-play vibe. He’s standing on the edge of the stoep checking this whole thing out, his sister rolling around like a human hotdog, gurgling and squealing and demanding that he come do the same.
He raises the teat of his baby bottle to his lips, then cradles it in his chest, the way you do. He’s going nowhere. He looks across at me, and we have a bit of an okes moment.
Jayce checks down at his sister freaking out on the ground, then checks at me. Then he just shakes his head.
And there’s okes and there’s okes. But okes are okes, hey, so it doesn’t matter if a oke is another kind of oke. Okes still make out.
Take Jayce. Jayce is a oke. He’s 18 months old, he’s still rocking a nappie, he’s dopping formula out of a baby bottle, but he’s a oke. He can stand, a little wobbly sometimes, but ay. Sometimes okes get a bit wobbly. Nothing wrong.
It’s Sunday arvie, lekker weather for chilling in the back garden and jolling a bit of Baby’s First Shapes Board and then moering the hell out of it with your plastic hammer.
So okes are doing that. The chicks are chilling there, doing chick things. Molly’s on the picnic blanket with her crayons out and she’s got the creative juices going. She’s drawing pictures of her mom, and lank little heart shapes.
Babes are into that kinda thing. You know how it is. Okes are more into just chilling on the front stoep, sucking on a bit of formula and just rapping to yourself. Maybe go for a trap down to the birdbath and splash the water around, fart in your nappie and then come back and chill.
Molly… ag, you know how it is. The girl’s four, she’s got a vivid imagination, so she smaaks playing make-believe. She’s basically writing one-act plays in her head and performing them on the fly.
This latest one is about turning the picnic into a nuclear family. “I’ll be the little girl and you be the little boy and you be the daddy. Now they have to put us to bed!”
“Come on Jason. You have to be the little boy! Come get into bed!”
At this point Molly has wrapped the entire picnic blanket around herself and is busy rolling around on the lawn like she’s a large squealing tartan cocoon with a tuft of blonde hair sticking out the top of it.
“Come on, Jason! You the little boy! You must come let them tuck you into bed!”
But Jason’s not feeling the play-play vibe. He’s standing on the edge of the stoep checking this whole thing out, his sister rolling around like a human hotdog, gurgling and squealing and demanding that he come do the same.
He raises the teat of his baby bottle to his lips, then cradles it in his chest, the way you do. He’s going nowhere. He looks across at me, and we have a bit of an okes moment.
Jayce checks down at his sister freaking out on the ground, then checks at me. Then he just shakes his head.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Boating on the swamp of broken dreams
At number 75 Maude Street, Sandton, lies a metaphor for our imperfect land. It is a pit, an enormous cube of empty space, one hundred metres square in surface area, and then about twenty metres deep.
This pit, or swamp, as it now is, began life as the foundations of a 40-storey skyscraper to be known as the Sears Tower, or more likely “The Sears on Maude”. It no longer matters which, because in April 2008, construction on the Sears building was abruptly suspended.
I know this because the Sears Pit borders the back of our office building. With the wonder common to all boys with a view of a construction site, my co-workers and I had been merrily observing the progress of the build.
We’d watched the excavation of the hole, and the building of the retaining walls. Then the contractors began digging even deeper, sinking individual pits that would accommodate the feet of this massive structure, destined to be the tallest building in Sandton!
They dug ever deeper, until they reached the water table. Now, Johannesburg has a shallow and healthy water table. Once the contractors got down there, an epic battle began between man and nature. They got out the pumps and began frantically dredging the footwells of the skyscraper.
With the aid of some kind of waterproof concrete, they were able to lay some foundations and sink reinforcing steel rods. The dredging was a complete failure, though, and the foundations were soon swamped by the water table. Almost immediately thereafter, the site was abandoned.
This was in the dark times of autumn 08, so we immediately blamed the power shortage, the lack of infrastructure capacity, xenophobia, the government, Polokwane and all points in between.
Most probably it was caused by all of the above, but ultimately, the contractors never returned.
As winter became spring, the steel reinforcements began to rust. With the summer rains the water table rose and the concrete pylons began sinking. The clay walls of the footwells subsided into the swamp. Plant life, weeds… reeds appeared. Around October, a family of ducks moved in.
Today it resembles the set of some post-apocalyptic sci-fi fantasy. Blade Runner meets Waterworld. All man’s dreams of greatness reduced to rubble and flooded. The swamp of broken dreams.
I’m not certain about the address of this pit, because pits do not have addresses. But it’s certainly on Maude street, opposite number 76. And all along the street frontage is a large billboard depicting lush, golden wheat fields, caressed by the wind.
So no one driving by even knows that the pit exists. Only us in our building, monitoring the decay, watching some architect’s dream sink into the mud.
We’ve decided that one of these days we’re going to launch a dingy in the pit. We’ll send some oke to clamber down the stairwell and push himself out into the middle of the lake, where the concrete bollards stand forlorn, rust-stained, askew. Then he must float around smoking cigarettes, and we’ll video him.
That’s our dream. I think we should do it soon.
You can’t take anything for granted these days.
This pit, or swamp, as it now is, began life as the foundations of a 40-storey skyscraper to be known as the Sears Tower, or more likely “The Sears on Maude”. It no longer matters which, because in April 2008, construction on the Sears building was abruptly suspended.
I know this because the Sears Pit borders the back of our office building. With the wonder common to all boys with a view of a construction site, my co-workers and I had been merrily observing the progress of the build.
We’d watched the excavation of the hole, and the building of the retaining walls. Then the contractors began digging even deeper, sinking individual pits that would accommodate the feet of this massive structure, destined to be the tallest building in Sandton!
They dug ever deeper, until they reached the water table. Now, Johannesburg has a shallow and healthy water table. Once the contractors got down there, an epic battle began between man and nature. They got out the pumps and began frantically dredging the footwells of the skyscraper.
With the aid of some kind of waterproof concrete, they were able to lay some foundations and sink reinforcing steel rods. The dredging was a complete failure, though, and the foundations were soon swamped by the water table. Almost immediately thereafter, the site was abandoned.
This was in the dark times of autumn 08, so we immediately blamed the power shortage, the lack of infrastructure capacity, xenophobia, the government, Polokwane and all points in between.
Most probably it was caused by all of the above, but ultimately, the contractors never returned.
As winter became spring, the steel reinforcements began to rust. With the summer rains the water table rose and the concrete pylons began sinking. The clay walls of the footwells subsided into the swamp. Plant life, weeds… reeds appeared. Around October, a family of ducks moved in.
Today it resembles the set of some post-apocalyptic sci-fi fantasy. Blade Runner meets Waterworld. All man’s dreams of greatness reduced to rubble and flooded. The swamp of broken dreams.
I’m not certain about the address of this pit, because pits do not have addresses. But it’s certainly on Maude street, opposite number 76. And all along the street frontage is a large billboard depicting lush, golden wheat fields, caressed by the wind.
So no one driving by even knows that the pit exists. Only us in our building, monitoring the decay, watching some architect’s dream sink into the mud.
We’ve decided that one of these days we’re going to launch a dingy in the pit. We’ll send some oke to clamber down the stairwell and push himself out into the middle of the lake, where the concrete bollards stand forlorn, rust-stained, askew. Then he must float around smoking cigarettes, and we’ll video him.
That’s our dream. I think we should do it soon.
You can’t take anything for granted these days.
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