A Town called Catatonia

Mountain dark! That is the blackest of imaginable darks! Nights when the stars are hidden by angry cloud and the roads, verges, precipices and disasters are indistinguishable at more than two or three yards.

Driving in those conditions at anything above a slow amble is not particularly recommended, but traversing in this darkest of dark nights well above the cloud line and in the eye of waterfall of this particular storm, the journey was fraught with unfenced edges of a canionesque crater. This was exacerbated by the fact that the road had recently been used by the South African army for target practice. Pot-holes were everywhere, and as the rain filled them to the same muddy reflection as the rest of the road, it was evens that one would get me and there I would be, broken axle, stranded a couple of thousand feet up in the uninhabited void between civilisation and the Indian Ocean.

Except, on this night on possibly the most inhospitable weather in the most inhospitable land, it was anything but unpopulated; From the mist, cloud and rain, people came from all angles, across fields, from above, below, all points of the compass they would emerge from a the background gloom and just as quickly disappear again.

Some were running, some bending against the wind, some with essential stuff balanced on their heads, strangely unaffected by the gale, some (just to make the issue even more precarious) had kitted themselves out for the weather in black bin bags.

Black people, covered in black bin bags and running out of a deep dark wet night, visibility - negligible, out of a unfathomable void of black cloud. It had the feel of a computer game; your going for the record score and the game throws everything it’s got as you plough your way through hazard and disaster. It’s you against the deviously nasty programmer. But you really, really want that record score.

Hit a pot-hole, go off the edge, avoid the pot-hole and here are five people on the way to work, home from work, or just out for a stroll suddenly appearing like gunmen in a high noon shoot out; wait a minute that’s a cow, goat, ass, horse; slam on the brakes, check heart and trousers.

I was heading for a seaside village called Port St Johns, a few hundred kilometres south of Durban, and the furthest point I could get before the road ran out forcing me inland towards the hyperactive city of Mthatha. I had passed through it on the bus a few weeks previous and it gave the appearance of a nuclear reactor.

As for Port St Johns, I had no reason for going there other than trying to stick to the coast and get an alternative view of Southern Africa away from the inland. The portents hadn’t been brilliant with two of the preceding towns not only bearing the names Margate and Ramsgate, but also being uncannily ‘English’ seaside towns. I just didn’t fancy that at all.

With every swerve, skid, panic and shuddering stop I was fancying this whole idea less and less. Mind you there was no turning back.

In a helter skelter, and I sped down the other side, my desire to get off the peak more motivating than the fear of potholes or human carnage.

I got my record score, but believe me nothing less than great fortune, a strong suspension, and very agile folk of the night who could beat the blink of an eye in avoiding a collision, all played major roles. I contributed little.

My heart fell even further; immediately after the town sign was a big KFC.

I found a place to hole up and occasionally peaked out of van curtains trying to discern anything of interest while I struggled for sleep.

6.00 am was my first real wake call as the town tumbled from its slumber and jumped to attention for another day of English Pub, pub grub, jellied eels, silly kiss me quick hats, what the butler saw and ‘just hit the frog on the head Justin Darling, ……..on the head dear,……… ON THE FLIPPIN HEAD YA DAFT WEE BOOGER!

(Justin breaks into tears, wets himself and the mother embarrassedly searches around trying to find her last elocution lesson! Mother buys him an ice-cream, he drops it, more tears and ‘you’re your fathers son, that’s a fact. He can sort you out. Right home! Boy smiles, he‘s won - he hates arcades.)

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Oops! Sorry about that, just a scene more or less regularly played out every Sunday in Worthing, Brighton and Portslade when I lived in those towns. I am not a fan of English seaside resorts!

I jumped out of the camper prepared to move on almost immediately.

The sun came out.

And the music started.

The town rubbed its eyes, and faced another day with the left-overs of a smiling dream still on their lips and in their eyes.

A hive of activity with people rushing everywhere, opening their stores, setting up there stalls. One after one the pairs of giant loudspeakers bust into life and as I walked through town, reggae merged with soul, with Jazz, rap and Tamla giving every area of town a different feel, flavour and sound.

And with the sun, the laughter started, the smiles beamed, hand after hand was shaken and the voices of the street called from one end of the street to the other.

Port St Johns became the only place to be for the next few days at least.

This was my kind of town.

I was going nowhere.

And then it hits you. All this hustle and bustle, to-ing and fro-ing is a mask. As I strolled seemingly directionless, so did most of the inhabitants. Fifteen minutes in and you’ve already encountered the same faces at least three times.

They become familiar with you and you with them.

“Yo man, howzitgoin man.’

“yeh man, hanging easy and sweet man’ (that’s me by the way, I used that rather clever response to ….sort off…..blend.)

And then you get the boxers stance with their two thumbs stuck in the air in approval, one long stride forward, bend at the knees and do a choo-choo train action, 1-2-3. All done by at least three in harmony. With the obligatory “Cool man”!

I practiced it that night and can now do it pretty much as second nature.

But the real breakthrough came when they asked my name.

“hey man, who are you. What’s your name man.?”

“Matt’s the name, chilling’s ma game, man”.(Blending in really brilliantly now).

“Cool Matt. Won’t give you our full names, man cos they’re a bit long but we use their meanings anyway. This here’s Virile, Hero, Perfection, and yours truly Prestige” he stretched out the P-r-e-s-t-i-g-e finishing with an upward flourish.

‘Matt’ seemed a bit bland compared to their names.

“Of course man, Matt’s my formal name. In Scotland we tend to do like you and use the meaning of our names rather than the given handle……..man”

“What’s your name mean, man” then asked Virile

“ ‘Gift of God‘, man” (as so many names do mean when the people who allocate these things - what a job that is, you could have real fun with that - when they‘ve had a bad night and their hangover simple will not focus on the fundamental skill needed to define a name).

They seemed impressed.

“Yo ‘gift of God’, good talkin man. See you around man.”

I assumed the position, did my choo-choo train and said simply “Cool man”.

Everyone is doing this directionless wander, stopping a few times to update each other on the world shattering events on a parallel street not five minutes ago. But the general air is one of total relaxation, the epitome of Africa Time.

This town is so laid back in attitude that the rush to go nowhere is virulently infectious as I took my part in the dash for mental proneness.

Once you suss that ,you’ve got it. There is no point other than doing what you’re doing.

Every stall’s a different colour, offering fruit, clothes, electricals, second hand anything, hair cuts (internationally recognised), traditional remedies, dentistry, shoes, meats. This is an African Market town and seaside resort ; it is mainly black but with a smattering of white backpackers and refugees and asylum seekers from the lost world of western society! This is civilised in a chaotic (to the initiate) sort of way. Deals are done, goods sold and acquired, plans made and tales told.

This is Puccini’s La Boheme or Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody …..with a black beat and an African tempo accompanied by the massed dancers of the town, moving in rhythm while conducting their business.

As the music and voices resound, the clatter screech and grind of four-wheel drive pick-ups and illegal taxis belting up and down the street roar out, oblivious to the pot-holes until the occupants in the open rear are thrown in the air as the offside wheel finds a two foot hole in the road. People jumping clear of mud, water and anything else that the wheels of the vans throw up. And everyone laughs; and so it goes on.

Up comes my man ‘Prestige’ for the third time in half an hour.

“Hey, The Gift Man (shortened already - another sign of status). Ganja man? Dagga man?”

I repeat my tactics of the previous two encounters and pretend that I don’t know what he is talking about, shrug my shoulders, choo choo train and move on.

“Hey, Gift man, I’ve got it man.“

His eyes lit up and he shouts out at the top of his voice “You already stoned man. Way to go man! Hey bros, the Gift man is high as his good old lord and protector”

I didn’t bother arguing.

And the day passed the pace slowed and thinned out.

Catatonic suspended animation loomed as the night began to fall, the stalls were disassembled or secured, shutters closed, the lights of the houses shacks and tents on the on the hill side villages shining like earth-ridden stars, and laughter, singing and the ripples of parties filtered down the gradient to the listening empty streets below.

Empty, apart from me anyway, absorbing the reality of civilisation and knowing that this ‘Emerald Jewel of the Transkei’ will eventually go the same way as any place with rolling waves, blue skies, gilt-edged sunshine and a welcoming populace.

The developers the planners, the builders, the architects, the exploiters and they will destroy it. Margate, Ramsgate will have the third ugly witch as we welcome visitors to the new Scarborough.

Now that is worth fighting against

See youse all man!

(Gift of God does Choo-choo train, ‘cool man‘)

Matt

p.s. I know it's not as perfect as it appears. Perhaps at those evening parties they conjure up all sorts of occult forces and wish ill on their fellow man. In fact I even encountered the seamier side in a confrontation with a security guard in their Spar supermarket. I had wandered in and had a look for a cash point, it wasn’t up and running and so I strolled back out again.

“Hey man, can’t you read”?

He pointed above my head at the sign saying ‘ No exit/entrance only’.

The 'No entrance/exit only' was beside it, no turnstiles, no barriers, no difference except the signs. Two identical gaps in the wall, leading onto the identical bitof ground.

I was going to argue but decided ‘Yo man, cool man’ and took two extra paces to my left and exited under the exit sign.

He was happy, his authority reinforced and I wondered why in a town where mass slaughter by random acts of psychotic driving was but a moment away, it was so important to go through that particular door.

I found out later..... I should have remembered!

In Pursuit of the Fallen Angel.

October 2009

There was nothing below me; well nothing of substance, nothing that I could hold, step or rest upon, nothing that would give me peace of mind. Unfortunately there wasn’t even the whirlpool of disorienting space with its far away depth urging me with its sneering insincerity to let go and fall, to flail my arms pointlessly, to plummet through my own terror until either my heart’s beat failed to keep pace with my brain’s needs or to come a poor second in the battle of the fragility of blood, skin and bone versus the permanently unyielding might of granite, sandstone and the daggers of storm hewn trunks and branches.

All I could see, in the word of the indigenous Sotho, was ‘Rilithithithi’, ‘less than nothing‘, ‘darker than darkness’, a suddenly impenetrable mass of rain filled, cold strangling cloud. All I could feel was the icy impact of searing rain, all I could touch was the numbing poultice of wet mud and rocks, and all I could hope for was that the next step, the next ledge, the next painful wrench of another yard would yield somewhere, anywhere to give me a moment’s respite from deluge, wind and my hopelessly inbred dread of height.

It was October 7th 2009, and I was clinging to the vertical surface of a creviced mountainside approximately 2800 feet nearer to God’s realm than man in the normal course of events really should be. I was more than clinging, I was attempting to become a chameleon of the rock not just in appearance but in substance, hugging physically and mentally to the surface, the texture and the contours; but I knew that I couldn’t stay where I was; I couldn’t bear even the thought of trying to go back down never mind attempting the descent; so outrageous as it may seem (and believe me even I argued against the suggestion), I had only one option - I had to go onwards and upwards; I had to complete the next 200 feet or so to scale the height of this mountain, a partner to the more famous Table Mountain overlooking Cape Town, and once again face up to the curse laid on me by some prince of darkness.

On the climb this far I had heard the voice of fear and doubt whispering in my ear, ‘look down, look down, see how high it is, you feel dizzy, you might fall, you will fall, give up!’. By now the fear had approached barely controlled panic, and the voice was a gale spiralling and buffeting round the crags of both his choosing and even worse, his name.

This was “Devil’s Peak” in name and in just about every other sense you can imagine.

Adrenalin takes over and endomorphism kick in. I squiggled my feet secure in the rock holds and my right hand firmly in the grip of the sandstone and granite. My left arm stretched, my body trembling but this time through effort and with the cold, soaking and bone aching fatigue of someone who has just taken on about three hundred per-cent more than he should have and now faced the final insult. But that final insult at least wouldn’t be succumbing to the siren voice of fear; it would simply be the failure of having to accept that nature with even the merest of inconsequential whims was stronger than the ego and puny strength of any man’s arrogance.

I knew she was going to win (she always does in the end); but my stubbornness hadn’t been totally drained and so I knew that she was going to HAVE to win; There would be no resigned capitulation before I had exhausted whatever reserves of energy still existed. I just had to balance them across the priorities of keeping the autonomous life support systems working, breathing and moving on inch by painful inch.

I turned my face away from the tearing elements, took a deep breath and with my left hand in its new hold, I heaved my body upwards. My grip was solid…..for a moment….and then I felt a sudden sinking and wetness as the niche turned from sandstone to mud. The wind blew a final victorious blast, laughed in my face and screamed in my ear. “I WIN”!

The dyke above my head burst and the wetness turned to a sudden rush of a dam’s release showering me with rocks, mud, and enough water to solve the drought in the Kalahari. I tried to press myself against the side of the rocks but my hands, feet and possibly my will all gave way at the same time and I flew backwards spluttering and swallowing the cataract, plunging into the mountain’s halo of mist and mystery towards……..somewhere!

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Many decades earlier.

The wind howled like a banshee with piles, rain intermingling with bursts of hail strafing the windows, doing its violent utmost to breach the steel and glass lattice that protected the single bedroom of the five year old fast asleep in the safety of his pillow and dreams. Basically it was a typical fresh wee sma’ hours of a Coatbridge January; sadly all too typical and ever more disturbing for the other four occupants of the room standing around the boy and where he lay.

His father, mother and elder sisters watched, while as if in a fit of uncontrolled muscle spasms the boy tossed , turned, shadow boxed and kicked out at unseen demons, screaming and shouting in a foretaste of a future number one occult best seller.

They were resigned by now if not accustomed to the interrupted nights and disconnected days which followed. They had only once tried to waken him from whatever world he was in, but the almost catatonic reaction from the youngster had outlawed that as an option.

After an hour or so the outrage being enacted on the single bed eased and the screaming softened to an occasional moderated plea and a whimper eventually steadying to an uneven breath and moan.

Only his dad remained, sitting now in the little bed-side chair, having urged the girls to return to their room and ‘mammy’ to go and ease the weight of the advanced bump soon to produce another daughter and sister for the family.

The boy didn’t know the agonies that everyone else was going through but he did know that something was far wrong. The atmosphere the day after one of those nights was never the best, not bad, just not the normal liveliness of a child’s interaction with his family. Everyone else seemed so tired and the whole world seemed on edge.

Sometimes nothing would happen for months, sometimes only days but it would never disappear completely and another five years later, a brother on the way this time and the ‘terrors’ as he later found out they were called continued, irregularly perhaps but unabated in impact and ferocity.

They were never really discussed; how can you legislate for a nightmare? After all this was the West of Scotland, the land where men didn’t have feelings, emotions or tears, and in the unlikely event that they even admitted it to themselves, the possibility was immediately condemned and mocked as a passing phase.

The boy wouldn’t have told them anyway. After all it wasn’t just the dreams; dreams that consisted of falling from great heights, bellowing strangled screams, sharpened tree stumps getting ever closer, shifting position to prevent his pointless manoeuvres to evade their pointed intent, then just as the inevitable fate pierced his eyes the whole mad movie would start over again, this time a thousand moving stalagmites beckoning him ever closer.

The following day would be even worse as the fallout hit his life. ‘Good mornings’ sounded like accusations, simple questions like interrogations, every breath like a gasp for life, every sound, every movement and every touch like a threat, an attack or an assault.

He learned quickly to control it. He knew the dreams were the trigger; but then the secondary cause started. Heights would bring it on, not just standing somewhere high, but seeing it in reality or even in a film or on television. The world would become a bad place to be. Year after year it continued, and so as anyone who suffered from the affliction of acrophobia, NOT vertigo, but terrifying acrophobia, he took what he considered the only sensible action.

He took up parachute jumping, scaled the outside of multi-story flats, attempted (fruitless due to gendarme intervention) a mission to ascend the outside of the Eiffel Tower, walked over the struts and cantilevers of bridges spanning many of the world’s great rivers, gorges and valleys and in one particular episode at a place called Port Samson on the West Coast of Australia he found himself no more than two feet from the edge of a hundred and fifty foot sheer drop onto the rocks and swirling foam of the ocean below.
How he had got through the barbed grass and lethal flint shards was one thing; how he was going to get down, quite another.

As he got to his feet the wind changed direction and with a few more knots to its power, the journey down would have been solved for him. But there were compensations.

The view and vista of sea roar, wind song, and silence of mankind for just a few moments made it the only place on earth where he wanted to be and with a will and foolhardiness that he didn't know even he had, he stood on that two-foot wide ledge, stared first out to the distant blue horizon and then at the breakers below, stretched out his arms inviting the up draught to do its worse, closed his eyes and felt what it was like to be truly free!

The height did not phase him!

The height did not phase me!

Now though I hope that the above adds a wee bit of foliage to the wasteland of simply admitting to ‘acrophobia’, it also begs the question that if I no longer had the phobia, the challenge to be overcome, the fiend in my mind’s ear, why was I mucking around with extremophile plants and creatures with the added advantage of wings, at altitudes where re-entry rather than descent would have been more appropriate to return to ground zero?

Well, I suppose that there always remains the ex-smoker’s nagging doubt that a relapse is possible but on that day the real reason has to be put down to Bill Mitchell.

Everyone needs a Bill Mitchell.

We met in the car park of the Rhodes monument as I stared up at the peak disappearing into the wispy low clouds of an intermittently sunny day.

He introduced himself in the friendly manner that I had become accustomed to.

“That looks like a Celtic shirt. Thank god you’re not one of them.”

He then introduced himself as Bill Mitchell, Cape Town born and bred, but of solid Orkney stock who recently found himself at the top of Ben Nevis, admittedly by cable-car, and then he told me straight.

“The wind we normally get here is a warm south easterly and that is where our magic climate comes from. Tomorrow and for the next few days it is turning to a northerly blast that not only brings colder and wetter weather, but also the low dark cloud that foretells disaster for the idiotic who still try and climb the Devil’s Peak.”

The mountain loomed over the initially gentle rise that took those ‘idiots’ of Bill’s warning up towards the cloud enshrouded summit of the raucous ‘come on and get me’ ascent that overlooked the city.

The car park attendant, his name ‘Moses’ as I was later to discover wandered over, the rain just starting to pepper the air, ground and conversation.

“You wanta climb up there? Ok man, but not today. Try tomorrow and follow the winding trail. Take you a while maybe two hours but when you get there man, what a view of Kaap Tu,”

That’s Cape Town in the vernacular.

Bill Mitchell, pulled me aside and simply said, “if you can’t see the top, don’t even bother starting out.”

As the following day dawned I stood in the car park again and looked up dolefully at the shroud that swaddled the hidden peaks of the mountains. The sky was broken and at the level I was at there was a fair amount of sunshine, deceptively encouraging me to ignore the warnings and go for it. It wasn’t the height this time, but the cloud and the warnings that loomed as large as the peak itself.

I had been warned of all sorts of dangers in Johannesburg, Durban and now Cape Town, and had ignored them as the usual ravings of locals who were too familiar with and focussed on their problems not to see just how infrequently incidents actually occurred.

Unfortunately it was my judgement that had gone awry and skin of the teeth brushes with a couple of cocked rifles had stemmed my forays into the night life of the City centres. So this time I decided to heed the advice and turned back towards the car park exit.

Who should suddenly emerge from his little soldier hut than Moses.

“Hey Mr, you came back to do the climb today?”

I voiced my concern; well Bill’s concern.

“Stick to the trail man, and you’ll be fine.”

At first I remembered Bill’s advice and refused to buckle, but then I remembered it again. It was just too sensible and it wasn’t the peak that became the challenge, it was the warning not to go for it!

Mind you Moses’ smiling confidence definitely helped. (Never trust a smiling assassin!)

So once again I started towards the ascending rough terrain.

Moses called after me, sounding faintly like a final goodnight from Dave Allen …….“May your God go with you”!

He might as well have cackled and rubbed his hands with devious glee! Nuances and intuition never were my strong point..

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Moses’ had been quite clear, “take the rough path over two walkways and then take a left at the third walkway and follow it all the way round and round and round to the summit”.

I reached the third walkway and since I had already ignored Bill’s guidance I decided that I may as well ignore Moses’ advice and head through the low shrub and rain soaked mud coated basalt towards the hand over fist, foot over sense climb up the perpendicular face of the Devil’s peak.

I mean who in their right mind wants to simply walk up a winding trail to a vantage point, no matter how beautiful. The scenic route may very well have been aesthetically delightful, but the weather was coming in faster than a hun chasing a moonbeam and the hike would take about 2 hours, whereas the summit lay a tantalising five-hundred feet from where I stood. Surely no more than an hour and a half of exhilarating exertion.

It had been a good if challenging foray so far, the wind changing direction, rain then dry, sun then cloud, cold followed by a life affirming gust of warm air.

My moods had alternated with the elements. Confidence, pleasure, pain, enthusiasm, doubt and ultimate certainty.

But now I was in the final straight. Each three steps forwards were followed by a slip backwards, each three yards of clear gentle gradient led to two yards of lacerating vertical shrubbery.

Memories of Ben Lomond came back! But then, foolhardy and without any sense of what I was taking on, I had strayed from the signposted rising trail to the mountaineers’ ascent where ropes, clothing and years of experience were the basis of not only success but survival. I had been wearing a Celtic training jacket, Celtic trainers, Celtic track suit bottoms and carrying a mobile phone….. with a flat battery.

I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

This time the battery was fully charged….. Sadly there was no signal!

But old Devil’s Peak wasn’t as high as a Munro was it? Well it was and is. At almost exactly 1000m it passes the 3000 ft qualifying height by nearly 3oo ft.

The wildlife, flying, crawling, scampering or just salivating camouflaged themselves and with each chirp, whistle, growl or threatening silence they sniggered at my prospects.

The previously beautiful multi-coloured songsters became brooding mocking vultures.

“ Here’s another one. Look at him. He’s finished. Food for a year. Ha ha hah!!!”

I tried to ignore them all but as the rain swept in again from above I looked back down to the fast disappearing car-park! The doubts over my conquest of acrophobia came back with a ripping vengeance. The wind started shouting at me, the rustle of the bushes came at me from all directions whip-lashing my neck as I searched for the unseen and probably non-existent threat that lurked in my mind.

But what was as real as the rain was the mud on my hands, the numbness in my fingers, the pain in my knees and ankles, the tiredness in my spirit and the sudden prospect of the darkness of the cold cloud descending as I ascended and the inevitable conjunction of sightless eyes with impenetrable greyness.

I looked back down past my aches and pains to the incomprehensible sight of Cape Town spotlighted in a sun break in the far away clouds and then it was gone, the route back was gone, and all that was left was silence, cold, the return of fear and the deep memory of how I had never given in to it before.

A chimney through the rock appeared in front of me and as I clambered knees and back wedged in its narrowness to its exit, a wind cleared the clouds for a second and the sharp deliverance of trunks, branches and stalagmites called to me from the valley below. The cloud cover came back and I looked heavenwards.

I could make out some hand and foot grabs; I looked back down and could make out nothing. Up I went onto a place that I had never known before, a place that I couldn’t stay and one that I couldn’t go back down from.

This was fear and one that didn’t scream at me. Just one that whispered. It whispered my past, it whispered its patience and it whispered my future.

You know the rest.

“Rilithithithi, who gives a …..and then the deluge broke from the last hand grab and ‘I flew backwards spluttering and swallowing the cataract, plunging into the mountain’s halo of mist and mystery towards……..somewhere!’

I probably fell no more than thirty feet wedging in the chimney in V formation, jammed by my back pack of camera and Celtic towel, my knees level with my face.

I knew it was only another thirty feet to the bottom of the chimney and with a heave of my calves I freed my upper body and made the next stop with bloodied hands, face and pride where the final straight had started. I checked that my camera was ok.

I knew I was going no further up, and as I looked around at first dispiritedly, I cheered up when realised that the fear had gone again, blown up with the clouds as the sun shone through another gap on the downward trail. I looked up but the mist above clung still to the summit and the rain from its midst fell unrelenting, turning the mountainside into one huge cascade of water and rubble.

I followed it (or it washed me) downwards, tumbling, sliding and as the water cleansed away blood and mud, the birds and creatures of the undergrowth reappeared and made themselves heard, this time cheerfully welcoming my return and applauding my survival.

They still thought I was an erse!

The car park approached like an oasis and there was Moses. He was still grinning.

“Your God was looking after you” he said “you didn’t stick to the trail did you man?” it wasn’t really a question.

A little shadow appeared on my shoulder and whispered in my ear “you failed, I won!”

“Feck off, you never beat me, your just a fallen angel, a we feart fallen angel condemned to your own hell of misery. I found you and I beat you”.

Moses seemed to know what I was talking about.

I made my way back into town and thought 'Bill Mitchell was right after all. I’ll check the weather before my next attempt at scaling Devil’s Peak - the idiot’s guide indeed'.

Hail hail

Matt