And he has not forgotten.

 Feeling at once morally chastised for my self-pity by the man’s selfless behaviour, and immeasurably more optimistic about life, I emptied my wallet for the old boy. Gladly.  I’m paying a far cheaper price than he had to for perspective.  And a smile.

All human beings are patently not created equal.  I deal with multiple levels on the evolutionary ladder on a daily basis, and it is only by recognising the commonalities across these levels that I survive.  Yes, there’s a lot of generalisation in here, but most of it’s anchored in the truth.

Let’s start with the route.  The first 30km is motorway, which represents the easy part of my day.  Then another 20km through the south east London suburbs of Sidcup, Lee, Lewisham, and onwards past Peckham, New Cross and Bermondsey.  Anyone who knows London will concur that these areas are not normally synonymous with words like “leafy” or “upmarket”.  I think you’re more likely to see “shithole” in the estate agent’s window.

Right, onwards to the protagonists.  At the very top of the evolutionary ladder is the motorcycle courier.  This species does not occur in this format in South Africa, and seems to have evolved in London.  They ride filthy corroded old GPz550s and CB500s, and they’re rude & inconsiderate.  But oh my word how they ride.  There is no equal on British roads.  They are capable of swerving across 3 lanes of stationary traffic at will, while whistling at a pretty girl and giving a motorist the birdie.  Despite their sublime skills, it must be noted that they occupy the top of the tree with a temporary visitors access card only.  There is no way people who ride like this can live long.  Not possible.  The best approach is to get the hell out of their way and let them go.

Next in line are the police motorcyclists.  They take their training very seriously indeed, and are able to exercise that rare skill of making great progress while being safe & careful.

Just below them on the ladder, and this will sound rather strange to my South African mates, are the bus and taxi drivers.  They have a spatial awareness second to none, and long ago gave up the need to drive with their egos.  They’re safe and predictable.

Next in line are the normal motorcyclists.  There’s the old joke about the difference between involved and committed  - look at your breakfast of fried egg and bacon, and you’ll note that the chicken was involved but the pig was committed.  And motorcyclists are committed.  If they cock it up they die.  Which is bad.  So with some exceptions they’re generally very good.

Just below them are the Alfa-Romeo drivers.  Despite driving abject pieces of shit (yes, even the new ones), they tend to be enthusiastic.  They’ll never claim they didn’t see you.  They’re involved in the driving experience, and this is a good thing.

As we slide across the scale, we now get to the fulcrum – the average motorist.  This group is worthy of a book on its own, but I’ll just leave the description at Pretty Bloody Average.  There are some special cases though:  Moms in minivans.  The Renault Scenic / Citroen Picasso driver with or without a carload of screaming snot-gobblers.  Seemingly clueless to the world outside her horrifically-styled vehicle, she just seems to be clueless.  No Idea.  Best approach:  AVOID like the plague.  Also worthy of a mention is any motorist with a hat on.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a baseball cap aiming backwards (1990 BMW with lowered suspension), a bowls hat (mid-eighties Mercedes), or a tracksuit hood (stolen car) – if they’re wearing a hat in the car, avoid them.

Next in line is a subset of motorcyclists.  This species split early in the evolutionary process and lost the self-preservation gene, to the benefit of the fashion gene.  Yes, it’s the Vespa rider.  Not all of them, mind you (says the Piaggio owner).  No, it’s a very specific subset.  The scooter is ALWAYS a modern Vespa / Piaggio, and never a Honda or Yamaha.  The helmet is always a stylish Momo Design number, shaped more like a yarmulke than a piece of protective kit.  No armoured jacket or boots are to be seen.  No no, outfit de jour for these knobs is a tweed coat, overpriced shoes and a Tucano Urbano  lap blanket.  Tossers, the lot of them.  Mercifully Darwin has his way with them eventually, so I don’t have to.

As we begin to plumb the depths of inconsideration and inability we hit the next layer – the Volvo driver.  Doesn’t matter if it’s an old boxy one or a modern XC60, there’s something inherent in the marketing of these cars, no matter how good they may be, that causes their owners to be horrific drivers.  Now before you take offence, remember that I’m generalising.  But know this:  in 1999 the Motorcycle News did an analysis of road traffic accidents involving motorcycles, and determined that motorcyclists were two and a half times more likely to be killed by a Volvo than by any other make of car.  Just sayin’…

Even further down the tree we find a personal bugbear – the Facebooking pedestrian.  She may be sending a text message to a friend, updating her Facebook status, or even just gazing blankly at her phone, but whatever it is she will step out into the road in front of you with not a care in the world, eyes firmly downward.  And she will look up, mildly surprised as you come screeching to a stop, having cheated her of her rightful destiny.

Just below these are the white van drivers.  Analogous to South African minibus taxis, these bastards will TRY to take you out.  They have mastered basic speech and simian-level cognitive functions, but are missing the fear glands.  And the social responsibility ones.  Scary bastards, this lot.

And with this we get to the bottom of the list.  The species most likely to cause death, dismemberment and general unpleasantness – the cyclist.  I too ride a bicycle, but these people are a different species.  They tend to have a wonderful blend of arrogance, a complete lack of consideration, no sense of self-preservation, and they look like twats.  They sometimes behave like pedestrians, sometimes like motorcyclists, and sometimes like motorists.  But there’s no consistency, so it’s up to you to guess which it’ll be today.  Red traffic lights are a Maybe.  Stops signs are a No.  Signalling is a Maybe.  9 out of 10 near accidents I’ve had over the last 6 months have been because of these humourless bastards.  If you value the overall quality of the gene pool you will administer a swift but firm boot to them as you go past.

And that’s that.  And even with all of this on the road, it’s still infinitely better on two wheels than on four, or (god forbid) on public transport.  Just keep the shiny bits up and the sticky bits down.

My number comes up and I submit my paperwork.  I get the nod of approval, and join queue number three for the day – The Cashier.  Despite there being nobody at said cashier, I am ordered into a queue of one.  Morning has now passed into afternoon, but the entertainment has meant my sense of humour is remarkably intact.  Tant Sannie calls me up to the cashier, and I part with £10 in exchange for a receipt.  This woman is sweet and tolerant, but could have come STRAIGHT out of any Home Affairs department in the 1970’s.  She looks too young, but could well be the only remnant from the Old Days.  She stamps my receipt with the vigour of a John Vorster Square sergeant and says “You are now free to go”.

I stroll outside into the bright winter sunshine engulfing Whitehall, thinking that we are a very strange people, and I wonder just how strange we must look to the outside world.

• You have the worst sports commentators in the world.  They are way more professional than the South African ones, but are more cycloptic & biased than even the Poms.  Unashamed self-promotion at the expense of fairness.
• You invented psychological warfare in sports.  Any touring sportsman will tell you Aus is one of the hardest places in the world to tour because of all the subtle little bits of opposition hitting you constantly.
• You have too much social control.  Your laws aimed at protecting people from themselves make even England look like the unregulated wild west.  You need to be careful not to block the natural process of Darwinian evolution, or you will dilute the gene pool.
• Your new PM is not to be trusted.  There’s something in those eyes that’s not right.
• You don’t know when to lose.  You have a tiny base of rugby union players compared to all the major teams, and yet you’ve won two world cups.  And your (until recently) cricket prowess is legendary.  You don’t deserve to be as good as you are on the sports field, and that pisses me off when I’m on the receiving end.

The floods in Queensland this week gave me cause to check on my mates there, both school mates and others.  I have followed the whole disaster intimately, watching via the web & Facebook, subscribing to Twitter feeds from the QLD police, the Courier Mail, Brisbane City Council, ABC News, 612Brisbane and others.  And I have listened to the personal stories from mates.

Queensland, I need to tell you this:  I stand in awe.  Your reaction to these floods has been magnificent.  I’ve watched every little thing done to help, from mates volunteering at refugee centres to people making all sorts of things available for free, including personal transport, public transport, food, gumboots, stables, storage, and even good old fashioned sweat.  I’ve seen friends opening their homes to strangers.  I’ve seen the volunteer centres inundated with offers, to the extent of having to turn some away.  I’ve seen a mask and snorkel on a statue of Wally Lewis.  And I’ve seen the report of stranger randomly dishing out beers to volunteers helping with the cleanup of the CBD.

Adversity doesn’t create character, it reveals it.  And you, Australia, have revealed something exceptional.

Good on ya.

And two of mine are aviation and the Battle of Britain. Which makes the Duxford Air Show on the 70th anniversary of the BoB a great place to be.  So two weeks ago Gav and I took the motorbikes up to Cambridgeshire for this event, and just as well we did. The traffic up the M11 was stationary for miles and miles, such was the popularity of the event. Once again, two wheels beats four.

Inside the gates of Imperial War Museum Duxford was a strange mix of people. Quite a few old codgers, proudly decked out in blazers & medals. Lots of Americans. And everyone reduced to being a wide-eyed little boy inside, just gazing in absolute wonder at the displays. The world famous Red Arrows did their bit, followed by an F-16 Fighting Falcon that hopped across from BAF Kleine Brogel in Belgium for the display. And the RAF was also kind enough to launch a Eurofighter Typhoon from RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire for us. Seeing this £70 million bit of kit open up 40 000 pounds of thrust in a 9g turn is enough to awake the Top Gun wannabe in any of us. The French Airforce’s Patrouille de France popped over from Marseille quickly to give us probably the best display of the day in their Alpha Jets. And the static displays were just as good. You could walk up and touch everything from a tiny P-51 Mustang to a massive B-52 Stratofortress. They’ve also got an F1-11, a U2, a Huey chopper, an F-4 Phantom, and even a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. I was like a child in a sweet shop.

But these weren’t why we were there. 70 years ago The Few defended Britain against the might of Hitler’s onslaught. Among these brave men were South African Sailor Malan, and Douglas Bader. Their tools of choice were the Hurricane and the Spitfire, and there is no better place on the planet to see these than Duxford. I was privileged to see the BoB Memorial Flight again – the combination of Hurricane, Spitfire and the only airworthy Lancaster bomber in the world passing lazily overhead while the rousing words of Sir Winston Churchill resonated from the PA system. And the sound of 16 Spitfires scrambling for take-off at the same time reduced me even further in mental age from 10 to 6. A number of the Spitfires were piloted by foreign pilots, symbolising the contribution made by South Africans, Aussies, Kiwis, Canadians, Poles, Czechs and others. Gav pointed out a t-shirt for sale at one of the stalls, sporting a Union Jack and the comment “These colours don’t run”. Beautiful.

After the sky was cleared of Spitfires, Hurricanes and ME 109 Bouchons, the announcer informed us of a special request: 19 Squadron, based at RAF Valley in Wales were the first squadron ever to deploy Spitfires. It was their request that they be allowed to do a fly-past with their black BAE Hawks in the Missing Man formation, symbolising the thousands of brave young men who took off, but never landed. As the formation approached from the west with the conspicuous unoccupied position, the commentator requested a minute’s silence in memory. For a full 60 seconds somewhere around 30 000 people stood dead silent as the Hawks flew slowly into the distance. And whatever it is that gets to my wife in chick movies got to me. Properly. The sunglasses are purely for UV protection, you understand.

We were in the presence of greatness.

I pootled away from the dealership in Caterham-on-the-Hill very gently, with the utmost respect for the nuclear reactor below me.  My first impression was a solid, planted feeling, as the Akrapovic exhaust burbled gently away.  Onto the M25, and I gave it a bit more as the roads dried out.  Then onto the A21 to Hastings, where I deemed it dry enough to switch out of Rain mode and into Sport.  With an empty stretch of road ahead I slowed to 100 kph, dropped to 3^rd, and Gave It The Beans.   And the world stopped.

Just like that scene from The Matrix where the camera spins around Keanu, suspended in mid-air, my world paused.  And then erupted.  Every single one of those 193 horses pushed my eyes outwards towards the sides of my head, making me look like Jacob Zuma.  My guts were ripped free from their anchors inside my abdomen, and my lungs were pushed around to my back.   The laws of physics were briefly changed to allow the horizon to be shoved vigorously behind me.  5000 revs later I slowed down, and the Arai’s complex laminate structure was tested to the full, keeping my smile from bursting out of the sides of my face.  I found myself giggling hysterically inside the helmet.  It’s difficult to explain the light-headed feeling that comes from that many Gs acting on your pip.  I slowed to 50 kph, dropped to 2^nd, and gave it the good news again.  As the world blurred, the front wheel went light as it reached for the sky.  The complex gyro-assisted electronics took over and limited the wheel’s ascent, compensating for the ham-fistedness of mere mortals like me.  3 seconds later I was north of 160 kph, and still pulling like a Saturn V rocket.

This machine is absolutely staggering.  I have never encountered its equal.  I’d like to compare it to some sort of car for reference, but nothing comes close.  You could hit 100 kph and be stationary again before a Porsche 911 approaches the 100 mark.  It is an exceptional technological tour de force that I strongly recommend you experience.  But you’ve been warned – take a spare pair of undies along.

When we arrived in the UK in 2007, my wife and I were both amazed at the trivial nature of many of the things that seemed to occupy the national psyche.  A quick glance at any given newspaper, when viewed through the eyes of a South African, would have you believe that the Brits have too much time and not enough problems.  We resolved to never lose our “third world” perspective on things.  To, in the words of Ali G, “Keep it Real”.  Well, two and a half years have passed since then, and it’s time to examine if my perspective has changed.

The UK has a mad fixation each year with which song will be number one on the charts for Christmas, as if this will somehow change the world.  And the highly competent Mr Simon Cowell has capitalised on this for the last four years in a row, spewing out banal, vanilla-flavoured inoffensive rubbish with huge success.  This year some chaps on Facebook actively promoted an alternative song as a form of protest against The Cowell Machine.  And with some success, as Killing in the Name gained the number one spot this week.  So we were left with the net effect of a crap, over-rated song by Rage Against the Machine beating a crap Miley Cyrus remake, just to Make A Point.  A mate of mine posted a Facebook comment about this, and one of his South African friends left a response that stuck in my mind.  He said something along the lines of “Who gives a shit.  In South Africa we have real problems to worry about”.  In one fell swoop it became my favourite comment of the year.

But then I gave it some more thought this morning.  Is there really any moral high ground in having problems?  Does the mere existence of issues grant kudos?  I’m reminded of the famous Monty Python sketch of the  Four Yorkshiremen, reminiscing how “toef they ‘ad it when they were yung” (read the transcript here).

Is the mere existence of suffering a noble thing?  Perhaps we confuse adversity with successful triumph over the adversity.

In the last month I’ve had to deal with desperately poor service from:

• my former body corporate in Joburg (who want me to pay for the electricity bills of a tenant who never existed)
• Joburg City Council (who are trying to sue me for a water bill that arose on my house six months after I sold it)
• Kalahari.net (for being completely unable to do something as simple as take a payment and deliver a CD to a PO box address)
• The University of South Africa (who decided in year three of Julia’s post-grad degree that she has to fly to South Africa to register, despite never having to do this before).

Anyone in SA who’s had to deal with Telkom, Eskom, the SAPS or the Joburg traffic department will know exactly what I mean.  There is no glory in mediocrity.  There is no glory in the inability to provide a basic level of service.

South Africa has achieved many great things over the last 15 years, and struggles with many meaningful and challenging issues to this day.  But to confuse this noble struggle with everyday tasks becoming difficult due to a basic lack of ability is madness.  I say it again – there is no glory in mediocrity.

So yes, a huge part of me still loves the Facebook comment in question, and I still really couldn’t care less about insignificant things like Christmas Number Ones.  But to attribute significance to difficulty just because it’s difficult is disingenuous.  It’s not being honest with ourselves.

It’s very difficult to explain to a non-South African exactly how much rugby is woven into the world I grew up in.  Tenuous comparisons with Argentinean or Brazilian football have been made, but I’m not sure that captures it.  Of all the world’s rugby nations, only New Zealand has a passion approaching the one I’m talking about.  This is the sort of passion that borders on the unhealthy.  The sort that has people defining themselves by their team and its fortunes.  Take a minute and have a look at this article in the Wall Street Journal, entitled The Toughest Team in Sports.  You’ll get a sense of what I mean.

On the 25 of May 1995 the Springboks played Australia in the opening match of the rugby world cup at Newlands in Cape Town.  It was a weekday in South Africa, but that made no difference.  I left work in Johannesburg early to drive to Pretoria, where I was going to watch the game with my man “Cheese” Mitchell.  I felt a rising panic as I realised there might be traffic on South Africa’s busiest stretch of road, and that I had a chance of being late for the match.  My panic turned to fascination as I headed northwards on the Ben Schoeman highway.  The road was as empty as if it was a Sunday morning.  Figurative tumbleweed rolled across the lanes as the theme from High Noon played through my mind.  All around the country the time-honoured ritual that accompanies Springbok rugby was underway.  Braai fires were being lit, double brandy & Cokes were being dispensed, and an air of intense excitement took over.  The game was good, and few South Africans will ever forget Pieter Hendriks rounding the posts with his fist raised triumphantly.  The 51 000 people in the stadium were beside themselves, as were the rest of us.

The next month was an electrifying time to be alive in South Africa.  The first democratically-elected government had been in power for a year, and most people had no idea what to expect.  But rugby united them in a way I’ve not seen before or since.  The chap filling up your car at the petrol station would want to know about James Small, rather than his far more familiar “Shoes” Mosheu.  People everywhere were united in praise for a young, magnificent Chester Williams.  The Springboks even had a Zulu name for the first time – amaBokoboko.  Commonality causes community, and the fever pitch that was building just fostered this.  The Boks advanced through the pool matches against Romania and Canada, through the quarters (Western Samoa) and semis (France).  And still the excitement kept building.

The mid-winter morning of the 24th of June 1995 dawned, and I remember clearly how you could cut the atmosphere with a knife.  Complete strangers were chatting with each other about the game wherever you went, and the Joburg air was pregnant with promise.  In the same way as Americans can tell you where they were when JFK was shot, I have never met a South African that doesn’t remember where they were that day, or what they were doing for the final against New Zealand.  It’s tattooed on the individual and national psyches.  And each proud South African has some stories of that day.

One friend remembers seeing a Boeing 747, the “Lebombo”, flying really low over eastern Joburg, not realising that it had the words Good Luck Bokke written on the underside, and that Captain Laurie Kay was about to fly it just over the roof of a packed Ellis Park stadium.

Or the traffic policeman outside the stadium stopping each car and making the driver have glug of wine from his papsak before allowing them to proceed.  Or the lake at the Randburg Waterfront full of delirious revellers after the final whistle.  Or the minibus taxis on Hans Strydom Avenue, blocking the road to have a celebratory party, and people parking their cars and joining in.

I was in The Waterfront Arms with my sister Debs and some mates, and the moment I knew we would win was when I heard 65 000 people chanting “Nelson Nelson!” as President Nelson Mandela entered the stadium.  It sounds corny, but when you have so much self-belief, you simply cannot fail.  History is littered with examples of this.

Joel Theodore Stransky slotted the most beautiful drop goal ever in extra time, sealing a 15-12 victory for South Africa, and I have never seen a better example of the whole being far greater than the sum of its parts.  That kick achieved so much more than 3 points.

The image of of Nelson Mandela handing the William Webb Ellis trophy to Francois Pienaar, the pair of them wearing number 6 Springbok jerseys remains an iconic one.  It gave momentum to a decade of goodwill.

And now the story is finally going to be in a Hollywood movie with Morgan Freeman & Matt Damon, to be released on 11 December this year.

If you remember the 24th of June 1995 like I do, and you get the same chill down your spine thinking about it, have a squizz at the video below.  Turn the volume right up.  I know what I’m doing on the 11th…

This may sound like a Hallmark card gone wrong, but think about it.  Walk into a really old person’s house and you’ll see exactly what I mean.  The curtains, possibly lovingly kept semi-fashionable for decades, would have hit their milestone and never been changed again.  To misquote George Bush Snr, “Read my lips – no new curtains”.  Likewise clothing.  At some point in people’s lives they just stop what they’ve been doing all along and their fashion sense grinds to a halt.  Hence the number of old ducks walking around Sasolburg in crimpline dresses, or the odd old codger in his dashing safari suit, complete with comb in the sock.  I’m hardly a paragon of fashion, but you can see when people close their minds to new things and settle forever on what they’re comfortable with.

The very best example of this is music. Most people’s musical tastes develop and expand to a point, and then they just freeze.  And then you are Old.  And then you’re allowed to complain that “they don’t make music like they used to”, and “Bing Crosby was better than this modern rubbish”.  Interestingly, there is no absolute cutoff point in the music itself that designates this watershed.  It’s wherever that person happens to be in their musical growth at the time that the heyday period is set, and musical exposure never moves on from there.

This is not to say that all new music is good, or for that matter that all old music was good.  A slightly more objective look back shows that our propensity to filter the bad from our memories, leaving only a nostalgic glow, gives us a very warped picture indeed.  The Seventies was not just home to some classic rock, Simon & Garfunkel and Abba (yeah, you know you love it!).  It was also home to some of the most dreadful experimental music in history.  Music follows a Darwinian path, and approximates Darwin’s Tree Of Life, with branches forking outward as external pressures encourage a different direction.  Some of these branches grow strong and fork again (think dance music), and some just die out (think 80′s glam rock with big hair and spandex).  And some music just stays on the main stem and grows.  There’s not a fundamental difference between the 70s rock of Journey and the 00s rock of Nickelback.  It’s moved further along the tree, but not outwards.

During our expansion stage, we try different things (be they crimplene, rap or frilly lace curtains), and some of these ‘branches’ are severed early when we decide we don’t like something.  But the journey along the tree continues until we get old and just stop trying.  I vividly remember one crystal clear early winter morning in 1995, when I was on a breakfast ride to Hartbeestpoort Dam on the YZF750R.  The roads were dry and empty, visibility was perfect, and we were covering ground at a rate that would have me in jail for life in the UK.  As we flew past Lanseria we came across a chap who had just left an all night rave in a warehouse near the airport.  He was decked out in a dayglo green crop-top, silver hot pants, and on his head was one of those alice-band wobbly spring thingies that ravers used to wear.  Our man had apparently had his fill of disco biscuits, and was dancing up a storm in the middle of the R512, DJ Somebody still ripping up the decks inside his head.  He didn’t miss a beat or even flinch as the group of superbikes flew past him on both sides.  And it was that day that I  severed the Dance Music branch in my mind, deciding it was shallow, devoid of substance, and required strong drugs to sound good.

About 6 months ago I was cooking up a chicken saag one Saturday afternoon, the Bose loudly pumping out some tunes.  My better half remarked that whenever I’m working on a curry, both beer and dance music always seem to be involved.  Could this be?  Could I be a closet fan of the “doof-doof” genre?  Cognitive dissonance is not a pleasant feeling, but I had an honest look through the iPod (and my soul) and realised that, yes, there are in fact some tracks I may not have been acknowledging to myself.  Whilst hardly the vanguard of modern Dance, Dario G featured prominently.  And some other stuff I’d rather not disclose in this forum.

But know this – I am definitely not yet Old.  In fact I may be regressing.

…and so it came to be that this chilly autumn morning brought an unlikely sight to rural west Kent:  The BMW C1 thundering southwards on the A225 towards Sevenoaks through the early morning mist.  And at the helm, grin threatening to break the sides of the pisspot helmet, the beaming countenance of a man thoroughly immersed in a very loud rendition of The Killers’ Human.  The Armin van Buuren Club Mix of course. 

My sign is vital

My hands are cold

And I’m on my knees

Looking for the answer

Are we human,

Or are we Dancer?

We went out for a dinner on Wednesday night celebrate our anniversary.  After a really decent supper at The Snail in the little village of Stone Street, it struck me on the way home how beautiful the area is.  The tiny little road home winds through forest after forest.  You have to drive really slowly to make sure you don’t hit the odd rabbit or fox.  It’s so much more beautiful than William Nicol drive.

So much for the Credit.  This morning I stepped into to pharmacy to buy some hydrogen peroxide.  No, it’s not to bleach my flowing locks or anything, it just happens to be the most effective cleaner of in-ear headphones.  H2O2 is readily available in South Africa in corner shops, supermarkets, and pharmacies, so I was surprised when the pharmacist told me "Oh no Sir, we don’t sell that here.  It’s FAR too dangerous."  Seriously.  It’s a pharmacy for god’s sake.

I left the establishment mumbling about the nanny state and interfering with Darwinian development and protecting people from themselves and this’ll all end in tears etc etc etc, when a thought occurred to me.  I stepped into another pharmacy and bought a bottle of Bausch & Lomb cleaner for contact lenses.  What does a quick glance at the chemical composition on the side reveal?  It’s pure 3% hydrogen peroxide – exactly what I tried to buy before.  But renamed in such a way as to protect us all from ourselves.  Lest we drink it or something.

Madness.  This place is beautiful, peaceful, but quite mad.