.
I was recently delighted to receive a bit of money (do you remember money?) from the estate of Mrs Ed Senior (God rest her wonderful soul) and obviously wanted to do the correct, grown-up thing with it. I must confess it was quite a hard choice as to what to spend it on… the last few years have been exceptionally tough, so there are outstanding debts to pay, and there's the children's education to think of, and the house is in dire need of maintenance…
So I bought a motorbike.
Aaaahhhh… a beautiful motorbike.
Not brand new of course, but also not the rickety type of last-dying-breath bag of bolts that I have historically been known to buy.
You see, when it comes to motorbikes, and even cars for that matter, in fact any mode of transport, I am not well known for thinking things through… In fact my entire life I have owned bicycles, cars and motorbikes that have ALL left one question on everyone's lips.
“Why?”
At nine years old I swapped my totally roadworthy, bog-standard bicycle, which my parents had no doubt painstakingly picked out at “Sam's Sensible Cycles”, for my mate's 'chopper'… which really looked cool, but had no brakes, loose handle-bars, and the left pedal made a metallic clunk sound as it hit the frame on every rotation.
“Why?” my parents wept, when they eventually discovered my dubious decision to downgrade.
“Because it's British racing green!” was all I could muster, “Oh… and he gave me 12 marbles too!”
Eight years later my girlfriend asked “Why, oh why did you spend all your money,” (at the time I worked as a skivvy at the turf-club in Harare) “on this ancient 50cc motorbike? It has no exhaust pipe, no papers, no electrics, no chain, flat wheels and there's a field mouse living in the petrol tank!”This time I was ready with an answer:- “Well, the nice guy who sold it to me said it could be easily fixed up, he just didn't have the time.”
Of course this was the basis of my problem. I have always been a salesman's dream customer. I believe ANYTHING. Ask the Harare lady who convinced me to buy her ex husband's rusty 1957 Morris (this was in 1988 mind you) with an equally dubious Datsun 1200 engine haphazardly bolted to its rapidly deteriorating chassis.
“So your saying is that it's supposed to blow blue smoke, and make that high pitched whining sound?” I asked excitedly, as I signed the 'Voets Toets' agreement of sale and handed her several wads of hard-borrowed cash, “And that the delayed reaction of the steering wheel and collapsed back seat is typical of this model?”
And so it continued (the trend, not the car) even years later, when we first arrived in South Africa, and I proudly purchased an 'immaculate condition, only one owner, well priced gem' for our family car.
“Why?” asked my long-suffering emergency-tow-contact-cum- father-in-law, with an eyebrow raised so high it alarmed air-traffic controllers in George.
I didn't realize until approximately one month (and seven thousand five hundred Rand car repair money, coincidentally borrowed from emergency-tow-contact-cum-father-in-law ) later that perhaps the initials on the car's emblem stood for Bad Move, Wally!
So you can understand when I decided to take the plunge and buy a reasonable motorcycle, my family insisted I take advice from my bro-in-law - a veritable motorbike expert.
Actually I quite liked the idea of giving someone else the responsibility - mainly because my name was already 'MUD' in the huge circle of people belonging to the second hand bike fraternity of South Africa.
Why? Well I have to admit, over the preceding six months, after getting the first inkling that some money might be forthcoming, I had already started a clandestine search for the 'BPB' - Bomber's Perfect Bike.
Practically every day I wasted hours and hours in front of my PC, goggling at Google, gumming about Gumtree, drooling over dirt bikes and generally revving my phone bill up to something chronic!
Eventually bike sellers started recognizing my voice, though I must say, none of them knew anything about 'working a potential buyer' and most refused to consider even the most reasonable of my requests:-
Seller of 650cc Honda Trans-Alp: “Sir, as I told you in your previous phone call, I am NOT going to wheel the bike into my lounge and start it next to the phone so you can hear the engine again, and it is IMPOSSIBLE for me to take time off work to drive from Polokwane to the Garden Route to show it to you.”
Seller of Yamaha XT 500 : “Hang on, weren't you the idiot who called last week and offered your two children and an unhousetrained Yorkshire Terrier as a deposit?”
Seller of Kawasaki KLR 650: “So am I right in saying that after five days of haggling on the phone about the price, not to mention putting my back out photographing the bike from sixty seven different angles, AND allowing your wife's cousin's friend's brother - the drunk engineer - to pop round and test drive the thing, YOU HAVEN'T ACTUALLY GOT ANY MONEY?”
But eventually the money did come through, and my knowledgeable bro-in-law managed to pick me up a real bargain bike, and in good condition too.
“But WHY?” I hear you asking, “Why at this stage in your life (hang on, I'm not even 50 yet!), do you want/need/have-to-have-because-it's-life-or-death a motorbike of all things?”
.
Mrs Ed asked the same question numerous times. In fact, she put her foot down and flatly refused to let me even consider buying a bike… she even mentioned the 'MLC' phrase. “Next you'll be wearing an open shirt with a big medallion!” she harrumphed.
“I am NOT going through a Mid Life Crisis!” I retorted……
But then I had a brainwave, and by a few days later I had quite easily convinced her to see things my way.
It was quite simple really, and her own fault for airing her Mid Life Crisis theory.
After returning from a shopping trip, I stepped out of the bathroom and announced that she needn't worry about the motorcycle anymore, as I had bought something else that I REALLY wanted at Mr Price Sports.
She took one look at me and, after a lengthy silence, said that I could buy any bike I chose….
....Just as long as I took the speedo back.
.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Camping with the Outlaws - part two
So - as promised here's the continuing saga of our camping trip with the in(out)laws to Oudtshoorn the place where an 'oven' is where you put your beer to cool it down.
Just to recap - we had arrived with a flat bed trailer and luggage piled up high enough to get local farmers complaining that their crops weren't getting enough sun. Then set up our tents - our modest little four-man and the Outlaws 'Family Wrecker' - a colossal collection of canvas which would have dwarfed the Sistine Chapel had anyone been foolish enough to build it in Oudtshoorn.
And in the morning, we had a 400metre radius of empty space around us somehow the other campers had moved off so we could have a peaceful weekend.
Peaceful? No, I must admit that's a bit of a fib. Like saying that Hurricane Sally was a still, summer's day is a bit of a fib.
It's not that our campsite was noisy it was just a bit hectic. In a bite-your-hand-to-stop-yourself-screaming-like-a-girl sort of way. For a start there was our campsite driver. He was only 12. And about 4 foot 2 inches (in metric value that's about door handle height).
Before you erroneously come to the conclusion that we had employed someone from OPCS (Oudtshoorn's Pygmy Chauffeur Service), let me explain. My Outlaws are sort of farming stock. Not that they have generations of farming in their blood, they just happened to live on a farm for a couple of years earning them limited access to the title 'Farming Stock'.
If the truth be known they ate ALL the stock on the farm during their two year sojourn into agriculture, which made it rather unprofitable in the end. I suggested they consider growing vegetables but my bro-in law said the dust off their feathers made him sneeze…..
So, during this farming time their youngest son learned how to drive. Apparently this is what happens on farms, quite understandable with all the available open space…. But a public campsite is somewhat different…. One would have thought.
Alas. Since the outlaws have been living in town for the last few months, the young lad has not had the opportunity to refresh his driving skills, because apparently a twelve year old thundering along suburban Heron's Way on a tractor is not socially acceptable. So once we were ensconced amongst the unsuspecting Oudtshoorn campers, he took to the wheel like a squirrel to super-glue, and became our official, number one driver.
If anyone needed anything fetched, taken, the toilet, a shower, a swim, a tour, to dig out a potential bonsai, hunt a small antelope… whatever, he was there to drive. In fact you only had to THINK of doing one of those things and he instantly slipped behind the wheel like a well-oiled wellington boot, and that's really 'behind', like 'behind' a bush or 'behind' a rock… ie practically hidden by the thing.
Of course he knew how to drive. Indeed he is a very good driver - this is something I realized after his 27th circumnavigation of the campsite. But alas, by then I had already chewed my fingernails down to my elbows and pulled what little is left of my hair out through the little holes in the side of my cap.
And don't think I had it bad. The other campers had the added disadvantage, whenever they saw the large Nissan 4X4 lumbering towards them (approximately once every 17.5 minutes), of not knowing if there was a driver at all. Indeed they had to look very closely between the top of the steering wheel and the dashboard to see any sign of him, and even then it was just hair and teeth.
“Mommy there's a spaniel driving that bakkie!” one young lass was heard to scream from behind their hastily built barricade of blow-up mattresses.
The main practical use of my nephew's driving prowess was to fetch firewood.. It takes a whole heap of log and leaf to maintain a 16 foot (that's about one metric skyscraper) blaze, and apparently those of farming stock do not believe in the wimpish Anglo Saxon tradition of buying firewood, especially when there are trees in the nearby (100km radius) vicinity which can be plundered. Indeed by the time the sun blessed our cosy campsite with it's welcoming rays on our first morning, the four trees we had parked under had been stripped of almost all of their bark, at least 75% of their branches, and stood there naked and embarrassed in the cold light of dawn.
I don't quite remember how they did it, those outlaws. I'm not sure I ever knew actually. The one time I was sent to forage for fuel I came back two hours later with three short sticks, 14 twigs (actually there were only seven but I broke each in half on my way back), a burnt broomstick end stolen from someone else's abandoned fire, an armful of green leaves and a nasty rash.
My bro-in law grinned as he took my burden and brazenly chucked it onto the blaze. Within three seconds all but my rash had been incinerated.
But they are real fire-building pro's those Outlaws of mine. I swear, that family can simply glance at a tree and it will chop itself into neat pile of logs just to minimize its own embarrassment. In fact it wasn't long before the other campsite residents were drawn to move closer to us simply because their trees had mysteriously disappeared and the only shade left was cast by our ever-growing woodpile.
At midday on our first day I breathed a sigh of relief when mutual family friends of the outlaws and ours arrived and set up their tent amidst the carcasses and other detritus of our communal campsite. I hoped that perhaps some small inkling of sanity might prevent me from cartwheeling over the cliff of insanity and, for a while at least, it seemed I might be right. The wife at least made all the right noises, such as “Does the fire have to be so big?” and “Please don't point that rifle at me,” and “I'm sure grenade fishing is illegal in the Western Cape,” , so the next morning, when I heard the men of the campsite starting up the vehicle for a predawn mammoth hunt or something similar, I feigned a sleep in!
Making sure the throb of the Nissan engine (and indeed the screams of the campers in its path) had diminished, I stepped out of my tent and sauntered over to the fire. The sane family were having a heated yet refreshingly normal discussion about eggs. The daughter wanted a fried egg for breakfast, but there was no frying pan so her mother suggested scrambled egg, which apparently the daughter didn't like. Eventually they compromised on a poached egg and were busy discussing what could be used to hold the raw egg innards in boiling water until it was cooked when I popped back into my tent to try and find my book.
Apparently I had somehow unknowingly crossed into the twilight zone, because when I stepped out again things had changed somewhat. A few metres away the mother was on all fours whilst my sister-in (out) law steadied a rifle across her back. She was aiming (of course!) at a soup ladle balanced on a braai wall about 30 metres away (I won't convert this distance into imperial measurement because surely no-one with any connection to the British Empire would be foolish enough to attempt this?).
Before I could say boo to a goose (or more appropriately “Get out of the way there's a mad woman with a gun!”) the shot rang out.
Let me back up a bit here, because perhaps one or two of you may not have followed the logical steps that led to this situation. Whilst I was book-searching in my tent it had been decided, amongst the ladies, that our short soup ladle would make the perfect poached egg holder, if only it would stop turning over in the bubbling water. It logically followed that perhaps if it had a hole in the handle, string could be used to tie it in an upright position.
And let's face it ladies and gentlemen, as every girl guide knows, there's no better way to make a ladle-handle-hole in a busy campsite than shooting it with a no.2 pellet gun (with telescopic sights of course!)……?!?
It took a while but Mrs Ed eventually managed to coax me out of the tent, assuring me that all firearms and other weapons (including knives, machetes and various gin-traps) had been packed away with the rest of the camping gear. In fact, by the time we were driving home (with a real grown up behind the wheel!) I had consumed enough 'Calmette' tablets to put me into a nice easy sleep.
Indeed I totally missed out on the "When are we going to do this again?” conversation.
Apparently we are leaving for De Rust at 4pm this Friday.
Right now I am frantically googling B&B rates!
Just to recap - we had arrived with a flat bed trailer and luggage piled up high enough to get local farmers complaining that their crops weren't getting enough sun. Then set up our tents - our modest little four-man and the Outlaws 'Family Wrecker' - a colossal collection of canvas which would have dwarfed the Sistine Chapel had anyone been foolish enough to build it in Oudtshoorn.
And in the morning, we had a 400metre radius of empty space around us somehow the other campers had moved off so we could have a peaceful weekend.
Peaceful? No, I must admit that's a bit of a fib. Like saying that Hurricane Sally was a still, summer's day is a bit of a fib.
It's not that our campsite was noisy it was just a bit hectic. In a bite-your-hand-to-stop-yourself-screaming-like-a-girl sort of way. For a start there was our campsite driver. He was only 12. And about 4 foot 2 inches (in metric value that's about door handle height).
Before you erroneously come to the conclusion that we had employed someone from OPCS (Oudtshoorn's Pygmy Chauffeur Service), let me explain. My Outlaws are sort of farming stock. Not that they have generations of farming in their blood, they just happened to live on a farm for a couple of years earning them limited access to the title 'Farming Stock'.
If the truth be known they ate ALL the stock on the farm during their two year sojourn into agriculture, which made it rather unprofitable in the end. I suggested they consider growing vegetables but my bro-in law said the dust off their feathers made him sneeze…..
So, during this farming time their youngest son learned how to drive. Apparently this is what happens on farms, quite understandable with all the available open space…. But a public campsite is somewhat different…. One would have thought.
Alas. Since the outlaws have been living in town for the last few months, the young lad has not had the opportunity to refresh his driving skills, because apparently a twelve year old thundering along suburban Heron's Way on a tractor is not socially acceptable. So once we were ensconced amongst the unsuspecting Oudtshoorn campers, he took to the wheel like a squirrel to super-glue, and became our official, number one driver.
If anyone needed anything fetched, taken, the toilet, a shower, a swim, a tour, to dig out a potential bonsai, hunt a small antelope… whatever, he was there to drive. In fact you only had to THINK of doing one of those things and he instantly slipped behind the wheel like a well-oiled wellington boot, and that's really 'behind', like 'behind' a bush or 'behind' a rock… ie practically hidden by the thing.
Of course he knew how to drive. Indeed he is a very good driver - this is something I realized after his 27th circumnavigation of the campsite. But alas, by then I had already chewed my fingernails down to my elbows and pulled what little is left of my hair out through the little holes in the side of my cap.
And don't think I had it bad. The other campers had the added disadvantage, whenever they saw the large Nissan 4X4 lumbering towards them (approximately once every 17.5 minutes), of not knowing if there was a driver at all. Indeed they had to look very closely between the top of the steering wheel and the dashboard to see any sign of him, and even then it was just hair and teeth.
“Mommy there's a spaniel driving that bakkie!” one young lass was heard to scream from behind their hastily built barricade of blow-up mattresses.
The main practical use of my nephew's driving prowess was to fetch firewood.. It takes a whole heap of log and leaf to maintain a 16 foot (that's about one metric skyscraper) blaze, and apparently those of farming stock do not believe in the wimpish Anglo Saxon tradition of buying firewood, especially when there are trees in the nearby (100km radius) vicinity which can be plundered. Indeed by the time the sun blessed our cosy campsite with it's welcoming rays on our first morning, the four trees we had parked under had been stripped of almost all of their bark, at least 75% of their branches, and stood there naked and embarrassed in the cold light of dawn.
I don't quite remember how they did it, those outlaws. I'm not sure I ever knew actually. The one time I was sent to forage for fuel I came back two hours later with three short sticks, 14 twigs (actually there were only seven but I broke each in half on my way back), a burnt broomstick end stolen from someone else's abandoned fire, an armful of green leaves and a nasty rash.
My bro-in law grinned as he took my burden and brazenly chucked it onto the blaze. Within three seconds all but my rash had been incinerated.
But they are real fire-building pro's those Outlaws of mine. I swear, that family can simply glance at a tree and it will chop itself into neat pile of logs just to minimize its own embarrassment. In fact it wasn't long before the other campsite residents were drawn to move closer to us simply because their trees had mysteriously disappeared and the only shade left was cast by our ever-growing woodpile.
At midday on our first day I breathed a sigh of relief when mutual family friends of the outlaws and ours arrived and set up their tent amidst the carcasses and other detritus of our communal campsite. I hoped that perhaps some small inkling of sanity might prevent me from cartwheeling over the cliff of insanity and, for a while at least, it seemed I might be right. The wife at least made all the right noises, such as “Does the fire have to be so big?” and “Please don't point that rifle at me,” and “I'm sure grenade fishing is illegal in the Western Cape,” , so the next morning, when I heard the men of the campsite starting up the vehicle for a predawn mammoth hunt or something similar, I feigned a sleep in!
Making sure the throb of the Nissan engine (and indeed the screams of the campers in its path) had diminished, I stepped out of my tent and sauntered over to the fire. The sane family were having a heated yet refreshingly normal discussion about eggs. The daughter wanted a fried egg for breakfast, but there was no frying pan so her mother suggested scrambled egg, which apparently the daughter didn't like. Eventually they compromised on a poached egg and were busy discussing what could be used to hold the raw egg innards in boiling water until it was cooked when I popped back into my tent to try and find my book.
Apparently I had somehow unknowingly crossed into the twilight zone, because when I stepped out again things had changed somewhat. A few metres away the mother was on all fours whilst my sister-in (out) law steadied a rifle across her back. She was aiming (of course!) at a soup ladle balanced on a braai wall about 30 metres away (I won't convert this distance into imperial measurement because surely no-one with any connection to the British Empire would be foolish enough to attempt this?).
Before I could say boo to a goose (or more appropriately “Get out of the way there's a mad woman with a gun!”) the shot rang out.
Let me back up a bit here, because perhaps one or two of you may not have followed the logical steps that led to this situation. Whilst I was book-searching in my tent it had been decided, amongst the ladies, that our short soup ladle would make the perfect poached egg holder, if only it would stop turning over in the bubbling water. It logically followed that perhaps if it had a hole in the handle, string could be used to tie it in an upright position.
And let's face it ladies and gentlemen, as every girl guide knows, there's no better way to make a ladle-handle-hole in a busy campsite than shooting it with a no.2 pellet gun (with telescopic sights of course!)……?!?
It took a while but Mrs Ed eventually managed to coax me out of the tent, assuring me that all firearms and other weapons (including knives, machetes and various gin-traps) had been packed away with the rest of the camping gear. In fact, by the time we were driving home (with a real grown up behind the wheel!) I had consumed enough 'Calmette' tablets to put me into a nice easy sleep.
Indeed I totally missed out on the "When are we going to do this again?” conversation.
Apparently we are leaving for De Rust at 4pm this Friday.
Right now I am frantically googling B&B rates!
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