To Hell with Future Generations

 

The 2023 Annual General Meeting of the Pearly Beach Conservancy was held at Klein Paradijs on 19 December. Twenty-three people were in attendance. The Chairperson opened with a quote from a Native American source that went something like this: “We do not inherit the Earth; we borrow it from future generations.”

The minutes of the previous AGM were approved and the Chairperson reported on the achievements of the Conservancy over the past year. A new committee was elected and the meeting ended with informal conversation over refreshments. The Chairperson who, with her husband, is the owner of the Klein Paradijs farm, then offered to take those who were interested on a guided walk. A dozen or so members followed her on a circuitous route past a dam and up into the mountain fynbos before returning to the homestead.

The one-and-a-half-hour ramble was informative, the indigenous vegetation was in prime condition and the view out over Pearly Beach to the sea put the whole area into perspective.

Back at home, I went over the outing in my head and was struck by two observations. The first had to do with the neighbouring property to the west. A wire fence marked the boundary between low fynbos and a dense forest. Tall Myrtle trees had swallowed up all other vegetation on the adjoining property. The contrast was startling, and I again realised that only through human intervention will the invasion of alien species be kept in check. This is a depressing idea, because it means that we have to live with a constant threat from a situation that is of our own making, having intentionally introduced these plants from Australia over a century ago.

The second thought that occurred to me stemmed from the fact that at the meeting there had not been a single person under the age of sixty. My wife and I were among the founding members of the Pearly Beach Conservation Society back in the mid 1980s. We were in our thirties, and the other members were of a similar age or in their forties. I don’t think there was anyone much older than 60. So, what has changed that younger people appear to have little or no interest in Conservation?

When I consider how disastrous the past 40 years has been for the natural environment, and how bleak the future looks as the effects of Climate Change accelerate, I am puzzled by the apparent apathy on the part of the youth and parents of young children. Are they not capable of imagining the future that lies ahead? Why are they not motivated to do something to slow the process of environmental degradation? Is it out of ignorance, or lethargy, or even despair that they show no interest in supporting their local Conservation group?

After struggling with these questions for a while, I was suddenly struck by a novel consideration. Although I endorse the noble sentiments of the Native American elders, and will continue to support the work of the Conservancy, there is no point in worrying about succeeding generations. If young people are too stupid or self-absorbed to care about the future quality of life on this planet, why should I bother myself with their predicament? And, anyway, I won’t be around to face it with them. No, when they and their kids are choking to death in the toxic smoke from an apocalyptic inferno, they will only have themselves to blame.

With that liberating thought, I felt justified in pouring myself a glass of wine and retiring to the stoep to watch the birds and tortoises coming and going, and to enjoy the feeling of relief at having a weight off my mind.

To view my longer work as an author, you can find me on Smashwords here.

Somebody Is Trying to Kill Me

 

This latest episode has confirmed my suspicion that I am on the way out. It could still take some years to get there, but I have the impression that the journey is now well under way.

It started in 2016 with prostate cancer; then there was the squamous cell carcinoma on my cheek followed by that stupid hernia. The thing on my cheek somehow evaded the old boy’s scalpel and got to work on the nearest lymph node and had to be attacked with chemo and radiation a year ago. A couple of months later more sc carcinoma, this time on my ear, and it was back to the octogenarian plastic surgeon to have a chunk cut out, Van Gogh style. Better luck this time? And now the heart.

A heart murmur was picked up when I was a youngster, and the Army did not want me because of it, for which I was thankful. This murmur kept to itself until about two years ago, when it suddenly raised its voice to a shout. It was like having a panic attack. My heart pounded at a furious rate and I felt light-headed and in danger of fainting. I had to sit down and wait for the episode to pass, which it gradually did over the next half hour.

Since that first incident I have had three or four bouts of varying duration, none of them lasting more than an hour before the hectic pumping slows and my pulse returns to normal. This latest episode, however, was far more serious. I was working in the garden when I felt it coming on. My heart beating rapidly, I went inside and sat down, waiting for the thumping to slow and subside. By the evening I realised I was up against a different beast that showed no sign of buggering off and leaving me alone.

The following morning – it was Wednesday, 6 December – I got out of bed and the pounding resumed, as did the dizziness whenever I stood up. Christ, I said to my wife, we had better do something about this. Alarmed, she sprang into action and phoned the physician I had consulted previously. At the time, he had been unable to make a definitive diagnosis, saying it was like taking a car to a mechanic. While it is running smoothly, it is hard to say why it sometimes cuts out. He now advised me to make haste to my GP in Gansbaai and get her to give me an ECG and send it to him, pronto. We drove to Gansbaai, where the GP had agreed to wait, even though she had seen her last patient. After battling to get electrodes to stick to my hairy chest, she managed to do the ECG and send it to the physician. Back in Pearly Beach, the phone rang and the physician informed me he had made an appointment for me to see a cardiologist in Hermanus at 2pm the next day.

The cardiologist turned out to be a thin woman of about 60. She had a direct manner and I found her line of questioning interesting, as it seemed to reveal something about her as a person who was more than just a medical professional. She took me to her ‘workshop,’ a room with a bed and monitors and various pieces of electronic equipment. I lay down and was once more wired up for an ECG. Then she used a small hand-held device placed over the area of my heart to see what an ultrasound would reveal.

“I’ll turn up the Doppler so you can hear how fast your heart is beating,” she said, and I listened to the rapid beeping that sounded to me like a terribly urgent alarm going off. Around 200 beats a minute. No wonder I felt like I did. “What you have,” she said with conviction, “ is an Atrial Flutter.”

The next step was to take me to a nearby emergency room where a doctor and three paramedics immediately went about setting up an IV line in each arm. I got the impression they were treating this as a life-threatening situation and there was no time to stand around chatting. First, they attempted to slow my troublesome organ by administering a drug intravenously. This had next to no effect and, after trying once more in vain, they all agreed, including the cardiologist, who was directing operations, that it was time to bring out the big gun. A large electrode was stuck to my chest and another on my back. They were going to shock my heart out of its crazy rhythm and bring it back to normalcy. But first they had to put me under, and again I had the pleasure of drifting into unconsciousness. Told to count aloud, I got to 28 or 29 before my voice faded and I returned to the womb.

Minutes later, I was back in the emergency room, fully conscious and aware that my heart had slowed from a gallop to an amble. The cardiologist was clearly pleased that the cardioversion had been successful and she did not have a corpse on her hands. She said I would have to remain in ICU overnight to be on the safe side, but unfortunately the Mediclinic facilities were choc a bloc with all the bloody senigrants who had been pouring into the area. I would have to be taken to Vergelegen in Somerset West. This meant being loaded head first into a crappy little ambulance and taken on an hour-long journey over the mountain, and then offloaded the other side and trundled along endless corridors to the high care ward.

The next 12 hours felt like a form of torture. I was rigged up to an ECG  and a blood pressure aand pulse monitor on one side, and an IV drip on the other, which restricted movement in the bed that soon began to feel like a rack. I was walled in by curtains, beyond which I was aware of other patients. Throughout the night there was a great deal of coming and Going all around and within my chamber, and the noise of beeping monitors, loud voices and clattering equipment was constant. For supper I was served tea and a white bread, cheese and tomato sandwich which, if I was the complaining type, I would describe as unappetizing. I could not get comfortable and doze off, so I remained fully aware of the ordeal I was going through. At one stage I asked the nurse, who was most attentive and gave me the impression that she expected me to have a heart attack before she went off duty, whether I could go to the toilet. Definitely not, If I wanted to empty my bladder she could help me to use a bottle. She unplugged some of the equipment and helped me stand at the side of the bed. Once she was sure my old dick had been thrust into the cardboard urinal, she left me to relieve myself in private. At 4.30 she wheeled in a trolley bearing a bowl of warm water, soap and a towel, and said it was time to bath. Bath? I washed my hands and wiped my face, neck and armpits, and lay back, listening to the commotion going on around me and waiting for breakfast.

The day staff came on at 7, and breakfast arrived at 8. A container of yoghurt, scrambled eggs and toast. And, strangely, a small bowl of mincemeat. It made me think of gruel, the likes of which might have been served to the patients in Bedlam. It tasted alright.

At around 8.30 my cardiologist’s colleague arrived. In his late fifties, he was affable and unhurried. He looked at the file and asked me how I was feeling. Desperate to get out of the place, there was no way I was going to say anything but fine. Good. He called for a discharge form and wrote me a script for a blood thinner, which he said his lady would motivate for chronic with the Medical Aid. He confirmed that my problem was Atrial Flutter and assured me it was not an uncommon condition with the elderly, and could be treated successfully by means of ablation. This technique uses heat or cold energy to create tiny scars in the heart to block irregular electrical signals and restore a typical heartbeat. It is performed by passing a thin catheter through a vein or artery from the groin to the heart. It does not involve major surgery and the patient goes home the next day.

He left me with these comforting words and I immediately phoned my wife to come and fetch me in Somerset West. Our hospital plan only paid for one-way ambulance transport and Discovery weren’t interested in how I got home, just as long as they were not asked to foot the bill.

She made good time and arrived soon after eleven. The road all the way to Hermanus seemed excessively busy and we agreed that, like my heart, the pace of life was becoming too fast for us. When I got out of the car in Pearly Beach and heard the birds in the garden and smelt the sea on a gentle breeze coming from the south I nearly wept with joy and relief. I was lucky to have survived a hellish interlude in an increasingly hostile and alienating environment.

In a month from now I must again go over the mountain, this time all the way into Cape Town, to undergo the procedure that will allow me to live to a hundred, if I don’t die tomorrow or the next day, depending on who or what is waiting in the shadows to jump out and kill me.

 

To view my longer work as an author, you can find me on Smashwords here.

World Toilet Day

When it was brought to my attention that November 19, my birthday, has been designated by the UN as World Toilet Day, I was mildly offended and thought that they had a bloody cheek choosing that particular date. Out of curiosity, I decided to investigate further and was appalled to learn that, of the 8 billion humans on this planet, 3.5 billion of them live without safely managed sanitation, and 419 million people practice open defecation, open defecation being the polite term for shitting on the ground. According to the United Nations, the world faces a sanitation crisis involving the spread of disease and increasing degradation of the natural environment. If the seriousness of this situation is not recognised the world will fail to meet Sustainable Development Goal 6, which aims to provide toilets and safe water to all by 2030. I thought about this for a bit and wondered what I could do to make a difference, even if only in a small way. It was then that I had a brainwave and I sprang to my feet.

From the newspaper box I took an old copy of the Cape Times and went outside, closing the door behind me. I didn’t want the dog following and making a nuisance of herself. It was going to be a warm day, the sun was already high, and I was glad to be wearing a hat.

The indigenous bush has grown up on the adjoining plot to form an unkempt fynbos garden. A path snakes through the low but dense vegetation to a clearing near the centre of the property. I passed a tortoise coming my way, and then disturbed a family of francolin trying to take a dust bath. 

In the clearing I set the business supplement to one side, then opened the main section in the middle and spread it on the ground. Stepping out of my Crocs, I removed shorts and underpants and draped them over a bastard olive. Then I moved onto the newspaper and squatted down.

I didn’t have more than a few moments to wait. A single fart heralded the imminent arrival, my sphincter relaxed, and the faecal serpent slithered from my colon, where it had been waiting with growing impatience. Beyond my dangling genitals I could see it settling itself on the newspaper in a rich brown coil of potter’s clay. The familiar odour of my excrement filled my nostrils in a way that I found extravagantly offensive. 

Well, I thought, as I tore a strip of paper off the Business Report, that was easy enough. But, directing a stream of yellow urine away from the Cape Times and enjoying the feeling of relief as my bladder emptied, I accepted that it was time to deal with the consequences.

Wiping a hairy arse can at times prove to be a messy affair, even when using good quality two-ply. Newsprint is nowhere near as absorbent as toilet paper and tends to smear rather than clean. I would hate having to contend with this mess every time I had a bowel movement.

Fully clothed once more, I was obliged to deal with the next essential stage of the ritual, which was to dispose of the repugnant product lying there on the ground. I lifted the nearest edge of the Cape Times, which was a little soggy, and folded it over in order to cover the heap. Then the back edge forward and the two sides in. I picked up the parcel, weighing it and feeling its warmth, and realised with annoyance that I should have first spread the Business Report, ready to receive the wrapped waste matter. Now I had to set it to one side, spread the supplement, and fold the Times in on itself once more before bundling it in the additional sheets.

Back at the house I dropped the bundle into the black bag lining the dustbin and replaced the lid. Washing my hands in the bathroom, I congratulated myself on having accomplished exactly what I had set out to do. I had experienced firsthand what 419 million people are faced with every day.

Now, having recorded my performance in writing, I would like to encourage all my readers, men and women, young and old, to follow my example and set aside half an hour on 19 November in order to squat in solidarity with all of the unfortunate people who do not have access to decent sanitation.

I urge you to humble yourself and go out into the garden, defecate on a sheet of newspaper and dispose of it in the dustbin as I have indicated. By doing so, you can help to make this become a worldwide movement that will raise awareness and bring about meaningful change.

(If no garden space is available, I suggest the garage as an alternative. Failing that, it will have to be in the house, preferably on a tiled floor.)

To view my longer work as an author, you can find me on Smashwords here.

The Treatment

My deteriorating eyesight forced me to give up driving twenty years ago. This has made me dependent on my wife and, to a lesser extent, my daughter, should I ever need to leave Pearly Beach, and that is why I could not travel back and forth for cancer treatment on my own.

The treatment started on Monday, 31 October, 2022. We left pearly Beach at 1.45pm, allowing sufficient time for delays through the road works between Gansbaai and Stanford in order to be at the Centre by 3pm. After visiting the spotless grey and black tiled facilities with their gleaming white receptacles, we found Pathcare just round the corner. There were no other patients and it did not take long for a nurse to draw a small quantity of blood from my arm and stick a pledget over the puncture site.

At Radiology, I had barely seated myself on the sumptuous black leather couch when Melané and Rochelle arrived and greeted us in a friendly fashion and we descended to the bunker. They showed us the control room from where they monitored the procedure and then took us into the radiation area and explained how I would lie on the table with my head immobilised in the plastic mask and be remotely moved into position beneath the equipment. This, they said, was a linear accelerator programmed prior to each session to deliver high-energy X-rays that conform to the specific size, shape and location of a tumor. In this way, the LINAC could target and destroy cancerous cells in a precise area of a patient’s body with minimal exposure to the surrounding healthy tissue.

Before lying on the table, I was asked to remove my shirt so that the mask fitted snugly over my shoulders. On seeing the scrawny condition of my torso, Melané registered something bordering on horror, and she urged me to eat more protein and start taking food supplements. I later realised that her concern was informed by the knowledge that I would soon be losing weight. I climbed onto the table, was strapped into the mask and they retreated to the safety of the control room. I lay listening to the hum of machinery and wondering whether I was going to have a panic attack.

I heard some whirring and clicking and assumed the radiation head was rotating above me and taking up position to target the tumour. The table jolted, there was more whirring and clicking, and after a few minutes a loud buzz as the actual zapping began. It lasted some ten to fifteen seconds, ceased, and then was repeated another three times with intervals of about two minutes. I heard the head move back to its original position, and then the sound of the door opening and footsteps approaching. The therapists were either side of me releasing the mask from its anchor points and asking me if I was okay. The table was moved out and lowered, and I was able to sit up and get to my feet. The process had lasted no more than fifteen minutes.

I ended up having a total of 32 radiation sessions over a period of almost seven weeks. In that time, Melané, Roshelle and Karien were extremely supportive and seemed to genuinely care about how I was responding to the treatment as it progressed. The fourth member of the team was Michelle, the receptionist, and she proved to be friendly, efficient and helpful, even to the extent of trying to sort out a software issue on my phone.

The following day, Tuesday, we were back at the Centre for my 9.30 am appointment with Doctor D. He announced that my blood test was normal.  This was to be expected at this stage, but as treatment progressed it was important to monitor my condition and ensure that my white blood cell count did not fall too low as the chemotherapy took effect. The programme he had worked out entailed six or seven weekly chemo sessions, and 32 doses of daily (apart from weekends) radiation. Again, he briefly mentioned possible side-effects before taking us through to the chemo lounge to meet Aggie.

Apart from Carol, the tea lady and Sunelle and Martie., the pharmacists, there were three nurses. For some unfathomable reason, I came to think of them as the sisters of mercy. They were Aggie, Tania and India.

I was shown to one of the twelve black leather La-Z-Boy recliners and asked to place my left arm on a pillow for it to be covered with a warm towel. After allowing five to ten minutes for my veins to dilate, India removed the towel and went about inserting a canula and connecting me to a litre bag of prehydration fluid hanging from a mobile drip stand. Attached to the drip stand was a monitor that began beeping a warning when there was a hitch, or the bag was about to run dry.

Prehydration took about an hour and a half, and before the next phase could commence, I was to prove myself ready by passing at least 300ml of urine. The chemotherapy drug was administered from two 400ml bags, one after the other, and took a further hour and a half. The drug that I was given was Cisplatin, which attacks rapidly dividing cells like cancer and, in combination with radiotherapy was designed to destroy the malignancy that was intent on killing me as soon as it could.

As Doctor D had warned me, Cisplatin came with unpleasant side-effects, and to counter them I was given a cocktail of pills to be swallowed before and after meals. Omeprazole was an antacid, and for nausea there was Aprepitant, which was also meant to stimulate the appetite, Prednisone, Granicip and Contromet. They proved effective in that I never felt outright nauseous, and I never threw up in spite of a growing aversion to almost all food and drink.

Tea or coffee was on offer and was always accompanied by a ginger biscuit, ginger being a nausea antidote. However, by the fifth week even this confectionary had become unpalatable.

These three-hour chemo sessions were not too tedious because patients came and went and provided a degree of interest and entertainment. I regularly got to chat to one man in particular. About my age, he was also receiving radiation as well as chemo. Cancer was eating up the fingers of his bandaged right hand. He tried to show me what the wound looked like on his phone but, unable to see any detail I had to use my imagination to appreciate the gory spectacle. Intelligent and outwardly cheerful and positive, he had an irreverent sense of humour that reminded me of my father, and I was grateful for his company.

And there were the nurses, of course. When there were half a dozen patients or more, they worked under extreme pressure, setting up and disconnecting drips, and responding to the frequent beeping of monitors. Nevertheless, they were always cheerful and unflustered, and even managed to chat and banter with their more extrovert charges. The atmosphere was never gloomy, despite the seriousness of the incurable illness each patient was contending with. I asked India if she found the work distressing, and she said she enjoyed interacting with her patients and getting to know the individual, even if it was only for the duration of their treatment. The distressing part was when news came that they had lost someone before the end of their course.

Observing the nurses and the radiation therapists at work, my indignation and anger on encountering injustice was rekindled. How is it, I asked myself, that a society can support a system that rewards self-interest, materialism and greed far more generously than altruism and dedication to alleviating suffering? There has to be something fundamentally wrong with such a status quo but, I told myself, there is nothing much I can do about it, and must confine my feelings to gratitude and admiration for all of those working in the health care profession.

Next: The Side Effect

Other posts chronicling my encounter with cancer:

The Lead Cylinder and the Plastic Urine Sieve 

One Thing Leads to Another

An Aggressive Uptake of Glucose

The Man in the Plastic Mask

To view my longer work as an author, you can find me on Smashwords here.

How Not to Pour a Cup of Tea

This is an extract from The Life of Henry Fuckit:

Of course, it is worse when I am acutely anxious or fraught with existentialist depression like the other day when I was at home in my filthy little chamber at the Olympia Residentia and it was late morning and I thought I'd make myself a nice pot of rooibos tea to steady and comfort myself because I was feeling very shaky for some obscure reason, finding life rather unbearable and feeling rather overwhelmed by the pain and humiliation all around me wherever I looked. So there I was trying to pour myself a cup of tea. As I say, I was at a very low ebb and floundering in a slough of insecurity and self-loathing. My intention was simple and mundane, merely wanting to pour a cup of tea, but as I lifted the teapot I was filled with embarrassment and misery at the spectacle of my hand upon the handle, it looked so weak and ugly. It was bony and the knuckles were white like gristle and it was a weak hand and the skin was red and blotchy and ever so ugly. The hand quivered and shook and the tea came out in a feeble, wavering stream that cut me to the quick. Right to the very core I was cut, bleeding and raw and weeping inside. It was a direct attack on my integrity, my very persona, this pitiful stream. It was like an old drunk pissing, uncertain and erratic. This wasn't rooibos tea, this was piss darkened with blood, and MY piss would be like this soon, a tincture of blood and piss in stinking fish water. Miserably I regretted trying to pour the tea. I shouldn't have poured the tea; I should never have tried to pour the tea. What right did I have to try and hold a teapot steady and aim a steaming spout at a gaping cunt of a cup? Instead I should have crawled under a blanket and crouched there under a blanket in the dark, shaking and trembling inside and wanting to whimper. Why, I asked myself, why am I like this, how has it come to pass that I am like this? This is what I asked myself there in the room, in my hour of dejection there in that anteroom waiting to be summoned into some frigid abyss. Why am I like this, I kept asking myself, why am I like this? I don't know why I'm like this. I couldn't drink this pernicious decoction, this foetid infusion. I wouldn't drink it. No ways. The more I thought about it the more agitated I became. I blamed myself for my own despicable weakness, for I should never have tried to pour it in the first place, knowing what I was like, not being able to do anything right, not even the simplest of tasks. I was a shivering cur, better off with brains kicked in and guts spilled in the gutter. Oh, it was a very dark hour for me, I can tell you. Such debilitating wretchedness. That's why I'm so worried and am forever casting about, this way and that, looking for some kind of explanation, some definitive diagnosis that would help me to overcome what appears to be a relentlessly progressive malady.

If you enjoy this kind of piffle, you can read all of Henry’s monologue here.

To view my longer pieces as an author, you can find me on Smashwords here.

Steve’s Pub and Grill

The Story. A public figure well known for his contemptuous attitude towards black people – let’s call him Steve - is abducted and taken deep into a sprawling squatter camp. He is led to a tiny shack made of iron sheets, cardboard and plastic, and told he must stay there for three weeks in order for him to experience what it is like to live in poverty. He only has the clothes on his back and nothing else. He is given a loaf of bread and a can of pilchards. He is told that if he tries to escape, or make contact with the outside world, he will have his balls cut off.

The night was cold and Steve was shatting himself, which wasn’t good, because there was a long queue outside the nearest toilet. A woman from a neighbouring shack took pity on him and offered him a blanket. He crept into his hovel and tried to sleep.

Of course, he had been praying to his god ever since he had been captured but there didn’t seem to be any reception in that god-forsaken place. Then, in the middle of the night, he dreamt that God was trying to tell him something. Go! Go! God seemed to be saying. Go? Yissus Christus! Was God bedonnerd, or something? What kind of advice was that? Of course he wanted to go.

On awaking in the morning, however, it suddenly became clear. God wasn’t telling him to Go! Go! No, what he was saying was Google! Google!

As Steve finished the last of his bread and pilchards he thought of the loaves and fishes parable and he realised he was feeling much stronger. He now knew that God was on his side and it made him think about his forefathers, and how they had overcome adversity. He remembered visiting the plaas as a little kid, and Oupa saying, ‘n Boer maak ‘n plan. Give me six boys and some basic tools, and there’s nothing I can’t accomplish.

He immediately went in search of six employees. He had about six thousand to choose from, and within an hour he had his half dozen, and two dozen waiting in the wings if this lot didn’t perform. A hundred bucks a day, to be paid out at end of 3-week contract. If he didn’t pay, they could cut his balls off. (The six boys, who were actually full-grown men, all had matric, spoke English fluently, and were both computer literate and world savvy. And one of them had a master’s degree in Musicology and was a gifted saxophonist.) He signed his autograph on the backs of their hands and told them not to wash it off. 

First things first, as per God’s instructions. He called for a smart phone. No problem, the place was awash with stolen phones and no buyers. He Googled ‘toilet’, did a bit of scrolling and clicking, and soon found a neat set of instructions on how to construct a pit latrine. One of the boys he dispatched to find a pick and shovel somewhere. And a carpenter’s hammer and a saw. A little way off stood an old Merc. It had no wheels, engine, doors, bonnet or boot, and the front seats had been stripped out. But the back seat was still intact, the upholstery only a little torn. He told his remaining five workers to drag the wreck up close to his shack, and to clean out the rubbish. Then, while they began to demolish the shack, he climbed into his temporary office and got Googling again.

By the time the first boy returned with the tools, the shack lay in pieces and Steve was busy writing out a list of building materials. He dispatched two boys to the business address of his builder cousin, Piet, telling them to say that Steve had sent them, and to show Piet their autographs by way of bona fides. Piet must bring the goods with his bakkie and drop them off on the edge of the squatter camp. And Piet must keep his mouth shut, otherwise Steve would be minus his balls.

While the four boys got busy digging the hole, Steve Googled ‘township economic activity’, and began going through his options.

The hole was dug, a box seat was made to fit over it, and a cubicle was knocked up around it. Steve inspected the finished product and then shut himself inside and had an inaugural crap.

“Go and collect some firewood,” he told one of his boys. “And look for some mesh to make a grid to braai on.”

He instructed two of his boys to use the remaining material from the shack to build another cubicle alongside the toilet. This was going to be his shower. The fourth boy he took with him and they went in search of a spaza shop willing to extend him some credit. Again he used his balls as collateral, and was able to buy a kilo of wors and a dozen hot dog rolls.

It was midday and the fire had just been lit when a donkey pulling a cart emerged from a lane cutting through the sea of shacks. Loaded up with used shutter boards and an assortment of loose timber, the donkey cart was being followed by Steve’s two boys looking pleased with themselves.

The team immediately set to work erecting the new structure while Steve put up a cardboard sign saying STEVE’S PUB AND GRILL and started to braai the wors. All morning curious onlookers had been keeping an eye on proceedings, and now there was a tidy little crowd standing around feeling famished. At the first whiff of roasting flesh every mouth began to water. A customer stepped forward and Steve was in business.

That evening, when all the people who had been out for the day looking for work, or begging at the traffic lights, or trying to hijack a car or two, and now feeling tired and hungry, came trudging past Steve’s Pub and Grill, the fire was going and the sausage was sizzling. And now Steve was also offering beer to slake the thirst.

He told the musicologist boy to bring his saxophone to work, and also borrow a guitar for Steve. On day two he was able to add DINE TO LIVE ENTERTAINMENT to his signboard, and he created a Facebook page for Steve’s P&G, advertising a genuine township experience. In the second week it went viral, and visitors started arriving in droves. (Brought in by donkey cart, of course, which became a lucrative little enterprise in itself.) He continued to upgrade his accommodation, adding a free electrical connection, a solar water heater for his shower (black PVC pipe on the roof),  a nice Sealy Posturepedic mattress, etc, etc, etc.

As the days went by and Steve’s business flourished, he began to look more and more smug. On the last day of his involuntary encounter with poverty, he called his employees together – now there were 12 of them – and paid them their wages. In an act of pure philanthropy, he told them to form a collective to run the business, because he was handing it over to them. For free!

Back in the suburbs with family and friends, he finished his story with a contemptuous smirk. “And you know what?” he said. “I’ll put my balls on a block there’ll be no trace of Steve’s Pub and Grill, two weeks from now.”

As it turned out, his balls were safe.

Minds-I-Book

I finished writing The Life of Henry Fuckit almost 20 years ago. Two publishers rejected the manuscript, and I was left feeling humiliated and seriously wounded. After a while it occurred to me that the gatekeepers were too dumb to appreciate henry, and what was needed was something for them to look at instead of just reading a whole lot of text that was beyond them.

I commissioned a young graphic artist to draw 50 pictures based on incidents in the story. It was then that I thought of inviting all and sundry to join the illustrative process, and the Minds-I-Book project got underway. With the assistance of my daughter and son a website was designed and saw the light of day in 2014. Unfortunately, the project never took off and, discouraged, I added it to my list of failed enterprises.

The website remains open for inspection, and anyone wishing to contribute to the gallery is still welcome to do so. The Minds-I-Book can be found here. 

To view my longer pieces, you can find me on Smashwords here.