Bok to the future - Part 1

6000 ft up in the air, with neither wings nor parachute and you would think that my mind might be on something a bit more important than the fact that my nose was constantly blocked up.

Mind you in keeping with my own philosophy, it was a socialist blocking in that it didn’t exclusively favour any one nostril; after each blow it seemed to moved to share its work-to-rule within the recesses of the other nostril, transforming itself from a simple stoppage to a sudden full blown general strike of Synexally Natural Odour Treatment (SNOT).

Three bloody days and it just wouldn’t stop, but I suppose that is what comes from suddenly transferring from a life of sea-level temperance to this lofty existence 6000ft above sea level, up the Highveldt in Johannesburg’s Northcliff district.

With it has come an unusual tiredness that manifests itself particularly at night when I find that as the witching hour takes hold of the moon and the stars, I drift off into a deep sleep only to be awakened 9 hours later by the insistent laugh of the hadida bird (for those who know him, imagine Billy Shannon through an amplifier, for those who don‘t think of your childish reaction to the laughing policeman) or the ‘hoo-ooo-oooop - hoo-ooo-ooop-hoop-hoop-hoop-hoop’ of the surprisingly-named hoop-hoop bird (C’mon the Hoops)! It’s odd how the mind works as in its idle moments it ridiculously suggests that the sleep may be a normal by-product of a (relatively) alcohol free existence and dreams uninterrupted by nocturnal calls to the bladder relief room.

Anyway enough of the physical alterations to a goat-like existence on the sides of the mountain and the liberation from a life tied to Guinness and Sharkeys bar stool.

It had been an interesting journey, more from my own surprise that having been wasted on the Saturday night and then intermittently staying up to watch Mayweather versus Marquez , I was still functioning as Sunday 06:40 ticked into existence. Sufficiently programmed I dragged bags and myself across the road to meet up with Brenda and family for the journey out to the Airport. I was quiet the whole way. My brain was neither sure that it belonged to me nor that I was its normal compatriot. Fortunately Brenda, her mum and Paul kept up a running commentary on life in general and I just left my brain gearbox in neutral, my neural engine just ticking over enough to ensure that life sustaining functions operated in the background. Mind you if it hadn’t been for the help I received to automatically create my boarding ticket, I think I would just have given up and got the bus back to town.

Never mind, I got to Heathrow having eaten breakfast without actually realising that I had done so and while waiting the hours and minutes till my departure for Jo’burg I watched the Celtic v Hearts game on the net, the picture freezing at 1-1 and 1 minute into injury time. I trudged through security, sat down to a pasta meal, checked the final score and lo and behold, a new man appeared at the handle end of the fork. I even phoned Pat! It was gratifying to hear that not only had Celtic grabbed a stoppage time Hearts-breaker, but also that I wasn’t the only one in the world with a grand-canyon sized hangover and memory blank!

And so to Jo’burg and that city’s first encounter with the new Bumblebee - purchased at the last minute from the handily situated airport Celtic shop (tax free I hasten to add - ah the benefits of international playbhoy-dom)!

It was one of those paradoxes in life that Ray (my designated chauffeur) was an East Belfast lad. Oh the banter !!

Bill McIntosh and his wife Gioia, my hosts for the first few days , made my introduction to this new and fascinating culture as smooth as is possible. I can imagine now the apprehension that faces an immigrant, refugee or asylum seeker embarking on a new life in Glasgow. I am the different colour here! I speak the different language. I don’t know where the shops are, what to ask for, what to pay with. I don’t know the safe areas, the dangerous streets, the humour, the intonations of friendliness or threat, and most of all I don’t know where the nearest bar is which sells a decent pint of Guinness - the sole reason I am alcohol free!

Bill’s an ex-pat from Castlemilk; a dealer in gold, diamonds, medical services amongst other activities; Ross, his son is at Uni studying physics - I’ve been a great help to him in his thesis on string theory; Laura his daughter sleeps most of the time, and Gioia or ‘Mrs Bill’ as I call her having picked up the local patois, makes lasagne - but not just any lasagne - not even M&S lasagne - this is lasagne with dreams built in.

They’ve got two dogs - Boorbools - that a pack of Dobermans would do well to avoid, and a maid called Mrs Mugabe that the Boorbools do well to avoid. She makes me breakfast and also fires disapproving looks and grunts in my direction on a fairly regular basis. I take this as a sign of affection.

Johannesburg itself, that is the place that everyone would recognise as Downtown Johannesburg, is a dump and is heading for an implosion as once beautiful buildings, monuments and palazzos are destroyed in an orgy of retribution by immigrant opportunists taking advantage of the efforts to recompense the once downtrodden indigenous black peoples. What must have seemed like a golden age of opportunity for those who had long struggled for recognition or at least acknowledgement, has been decimated by an influx of tenuous kith and kin from Nigeria and Zimbabwe in particular, and that opportunity undoubtedly created has been washed away in a tidal wave of corruption, drugs, murder and Uzis. 50 murders across the country every day!

Businesses by the hundred have deserted their totemic buildings; bohemian city dwellers on a par with Paris have escaped the broken windows and shattered hopes; and societal civilities have been swept into the drains and sewers with each flood of desperate take-everything-give-nothing land-grabbers. The Government is paralysed, confused and leaderless believing that somehow next year’s World Cup is a fairy godmother with a magic wand.

Meanwhile a new city has sprung up, one that is the Johannesburg of old. Sandton is its name and since apartheid’s demise and the decay of the original city (replaced it seems by an epidemic of original sin) it is here that businesses have moved, people have relocated and society has begun its own fight back. But this is no simple like for like replacement for the old regime. Here the hopes of the new egalitarian dawn still shine. Perhaps it is still a bit too glamorous, glitzy and capitalist for me but at least there is no barrier to progress irrespective of colour or creed; and right in the middle sits Nelson Mandela Square (a wee bit more evocative than our very own back in Glasgow), a statue to the great man rising to the heavens as tall as the tallest building but unfortunately bearing a striking resemblance to Lionel Ritchie.

There is a continuing struggle, a struggle sadly echoing the days of the ghettos, the days of the shanty towns, the days of apartheid. But this struggle is not one of colour, nor even one of money or haves and have-nots. This struggle is one of law and order versus anarchy. It is a real battle and the locals, those who believed in the country and stayed (the whites and Afrikaaners), those who triumphed through justice (the blacks), and those who have already embraced the new integrated future (the coloureds) fear for a new ghetto-like existence where vision becomes imprisoned behind strictly defined walls and outside the battles for the quick-rand, the quick adrenaline rush and the quick fix become even more myopic as the country flounders in a disastrous magnification of Zimbabwe.

That is the sad sad truth of a future that one as beautiful as this country is, with the most beautiful people in the world, flashing the most inspiring smiles and welcoming with the most warm of handshakes, just simply doesn’t deserve.

The World Cup may be as good as it gets!

I hope I’m wrong.

I’ll be more upbeat next time as the lack of Guinness and too much sleep probably begins to become the norm for my new lifestyle. I’ll also hopefully be in Durban by then.

Hail Hail

Matt