Winter of a pukka sahib’s discontent
DAYS, I’ve noticed before, seldom bode well when one begins them by missing a plane.
Missing, in this instance, should not imply the physical departure of aforesaid aircraft for it is there, large as life on Chennai airport’s apron, pilot most likely still gulping down his motion-sick pills. But the assistant airline manager remains adamant. Check-in time is two hours before, not dam’ twenty minutes.
We tell him: Blame the dam’ New Delhi fog. It got us here late, if eight-thirty in the morning may ever be so construed. Why, anyway, does Indian Airways insist on flying out of New Delhi at sparrow? Certainly not to escape the fog, we say. Why doesn’t it fly the night before?
Loud altercation. Then, from our side, attempts at craven pleading. If we miss this connection, we point out, we’ll be stuck in Colombo for a week. Only one weekly flight to Johannesburg from there. Second prize, two weeks in Colombo. So forth.
We adjourn to a private office, for the deputy airline manager to hear our case. He listens, eyes hooded like a judge, then announces that the argument is academic. The Chennai-Colombo flight has left, winging southwards even as we speak.
Huge anger, only some of it theatrical. But it succeeds in invoking the Airline Manager himself. He arrives, kicking rumps in his wake, bearing profuse apologies and offers for us to stay overnight at company expense. Also propaganda about Chennai being the real jewel in India’s crown. Forget the Taj Mahal, the Pink City: Inspect our modern slums, view our waterworks.
The man is well-meaning but his presentation falls apart after we mention the problems with the Colombo link. When we suggest the airline’s obligation in the matter should extend to a swift charter flight, the manager disappears. Not to be encountered again.
Back to town and the tour operators. There is a slim chance of seats on the Air India flight to Harare, thence Johannesburg, though flights are wait-listed. My own situation is less severe since I intended to be in London anyway in three days. At minimal extra cost, approximating one leg, I can fly there from Mumbai, via Kuwait, tomorrow.
Night in Mumbai, mooching around the terminal. All the decent hotels are full, suggesting a convention of snake charmers, up-market beggars.
Mumbai airport seethes with low-flying aircraft, lower-flying luggage. See London and die, see Mumbai and duck. Killing time, dodging suitcases tossed hand to hand among sundry labourers, I remember one of my own.
It is in a locker at Johannesburg airport, lodged there on my way to India a week ago. The plan was that I should return to Johannesburg on the Saturday (tomorrow), meet up with my wife and accompany her to London the next day, swopping suitcases in transit. To wit, one with all manner of winter woollies – in the airport locker – for one now in hand, containing pukka sahib cotton goods and soiled underwear.
This original arrangement was rooted less in logistics that economics. First light, I broach the Mumbai airport kiosks. A Kashmir sweater would be ideal. One size smaller and it could double as a present for my wife. Not a Kashmir sweater in the place, nor sweater or jacket of any kind. Eventually, I am forced to settle for a Mumbai T-shirt with graphic views of the harbour.
The plane for London in late. Not surprisingly, for it has come from Auckland and Sydney. It is also dry. The dam’ Aussies have drunk all the beer. And no prospect of replenishing at Kuwait; you can lose a hand for tippling in that place.
Twelve hours of agony. And the movie is last week’s, Johannesburg-Colombo. More shock-horror. The skipper announces that it’s snowing in London.
Thank goodness for British reserve. Anyone wearing shirt-sleeves over a Mumbai T-shirt in brass-monkey weather at Kennedy or La Guardia would be a public spectacle, laughed to scorn. I pass through Heathrow, Customs and all, without one comment, although I read a few thoughts. They say: Man’s been at the duty-free liquor, out of his skull, probably lost his overcoat down the loo.
Even the skinheads and soccer thugs on the Underground display only mild, but happily mute, astonishment. At Russell Square, my stop, the shops are long closed. I make my hotel a sprint ahead of terminal exposure and withdraw to room service and the television.
Next morning, Sunday, I review the situation. A search through my luggage produces a pocket mackintosh I forgot I had packed against the Indian monsoons that never eventuated. Anything better than nothing. And maybe something will be open in Leicester Square or Piccadilly.
Then suddenly the awful prospect dawns of being apprehended around Soho in a plastic raincoat, Sunday morning or not. (“But, officer, I was only looking for something to warm me up!” “I’m sure you were, sir, kindly step this way.”)
Downstairs, the bellhop informs me he knows of a clothing place that will be open at Notting Hill Gate. Much safer. Dash there, find it and – for 20 pounds – a foam topcoat that immediately transforms me into the Michelin Man.
Halfway back to Russell Square, I remember I have left the plastic raincoat on the Notting Hill Gate shop counter. Oh, well. I trust it will go to some deserving voyeur.
Setting a minnow to catch a game fish
There we are, quayed-up so to speak, among the Hout Bay gulls. Three hundred broad-shouldered, muscle-honed specimens from the top drawer of South African deep sea angling.
And me. A minnow among leviathans.
Standing about, wiping nerve symptoms from palms, I find a public relations hand-out in the clutch of one. I read it and am startled by the small print on the last page which describes this event as “a must for anyone who has ever matched his strength and wits against the great fighters of the sea”.
Had I seen this before leaving home yesterday, I would still be there, mowing the lawn, though at 6am on a Saturday such activity might have excited the neighbours, not least before we don’t have a lawn.
I cast around for an escape route but am hemmed in on all sides by a phalanx of oil-skinned Titans, rods and foul bait to the fore, eager for the fray.
The sponsors, mine hosts, purveyors of last night’s free Italian whisky (what do you mean, Justerini isn’t Italian?) are in evidence too. One slaps another and points in my direction. The two become mirthful. Press-ganging suddenly takes on a new dimension.
So. Nothing for it but a bold face. However pale. Dread minutes pass.
When the boats arrive, all 35 of them, it is small consolation to find that ours is among the largest. Most of the rest I wouldn’t sail in my bath.
We board. I am consoled further to find at least a pair of kindred souls among our complement. They are immediately recognisable by the position they take up at the gunwales, heads well over the side. And we have yet to leave harbour.
They introduce themselves by shaking hands from a position somewhere behind their backs. One is the owner of a pizza parlour in Johannesburg, the other a wine farmer from Paarl. Nino and Theuns.
I meet the crew. Titans all, preoccupied with discussing traces and breaking strains, wind directions and, paramount, the prospect of landing the winning marlin or the tagged yellowtail worth 62 000 rands.
Our vessel moves out, motors growling like a well-trained Rottweiler. The growl says, those fighters of the deep had better watch out. For some reason, I do not feel reassured.
Up on the pulpit deck is the skipper, guiding us through the Hout Bay heads. He is a large, genial man. He is also a cigar smoker, one of which he lights as we accelerate through the first breaker.
Twenty-five grams of Marzine (my sole breakfast intake) struggle gamely on my behalf and barely win. The smoke wafts down to Nino and Theuns, who begin making goose-type noises. They both come close to abandoning ship.
The crew has set up the rods in their slots. There are seven of them, too many by four for my fancy, bristling out around the stern.
Reports start coming in on a radio from boats further out. No one is catching. How long did Hemingway’s Old Man of the Sea go without a fish? Eighty-four days? There could be hope yet.
At once, one of the lines goes with the sound of a small siren. I stumble down the gangway to watch the action. And discover, with abject horror, that I am intended to be it.
Protests are useless. The crew is insistent. Guests first and Nino and Theuns are hardly fit for that category. I am bundled into a swivel chair, harnessed up, handed the screaming rod.
To begin with, I decide big game fishing is a cinch. The angler is merely a fulcrum between a fixed point, the harness, and a moving force, the fish. All he has to do is heave and reel, heave and reel, heave and reel.
But after twenty minutes, I have the distinct feeling that the only thing still attaching arms to torso is the fabric of my windbreaker. Then the line goes limp. Reaction from the crew is as if I had dropped a vital catch in a Test match. I am slightly exonerated when they pull in the line and find the tunny has straightened the lure.
So to the cabin for liquid therapy and a stocktaking of limbs. Duty has been done, permanently, surely.
No such luck. Not an hour later, we strike a school. Five lines howl. This time we land five good-sized long-fin. The deck is awash with blood. I slip in the stuff and end up atop Nino and Theuns, by now prostrate in the bilges. We might be a scene from a Clint Eastwood movie.
For the record, our boat caught the largest fish of the day, and contest: 80 kilograms. The second day was aborted after an hour because of a gale. During that time, the biggest catch was five kilograms – about a quarter of the size of my biggest the previous day, as I shall remind by grandchildren.
There is a second national big game competition at the end of the month and another during the next. They will be at least one contestant short on each occasion.
Time Wounds All Heels column.
A party in disarray
Almost the first encouraging sign in the early Nineties that a peaceful transition might be possible after all was the relationship formed between Cyril Ramaphosa and Roelf Meyer.
The two were the chief negotiators for the ANC and the National Party in the Multiparty Negotiating Forum, whose brief was to end apartheid and steer the country towards its first democratic elections in April 1994. Public optimism grew even further when Ramaphosa offered to introduce Meyer to the sport of trout fishing and had to remove a hook from the novice’s finger.
It was almost analogous of Androcles and the lion he befriended by taking a thorn out of its paw.
There must have been the same kind of encouragement among many voters recently when Cyril Ramaphosa returned to active politics from big business and became the ANC’s deputy president. Surely, disillusioned voters would have thought, such a cool and experienced head was exactly what was needed to reform the capricious Jacob Zuma or even replace him should he be indicted or impeached.
But hopes of that kind were dashed on Sunday when Ramaphosa urged Limpopo voters to support the ANC “or the Boers will come back to control us”.
Not only was it a tired race card from a man who helped set up a non-race Constitution 20 years ago. It was a race card entirely without substance and suggests the governing party is in a state of complete panic and disarray on the eve of the elections.
John Ryan 