HOW I GOT SCHUKED ON BLACK SUNDAY
The plan seemed waterproof. Mrs N, the 13-year-old former midget and I would board a BA flight from OR Tambo to King Shaka International. We would take an Uber straight to our hotel in Pinetown, relax a bit and then head out to dinner after 7pm when the Black Friday stampedes had presumably abated. We would then head out to my parents’ house in The Valley of a Thousand Hills, pick up my brother’s car and head to Mpumalanga, Hammarsdale, for a friend’s second leg of nuptials. Later in the afternoon, we would drop off the 13-year-old at Kearsney College for his sleepover, ahead of next year’s enrolment. On Sunday we would pick him up, collect our driver, head to the airport and fly back to Joburg.
Everything went according to plan on the first two days. Well, except for getting caught up in the last vestiges of Black Friday dementia at The Pavilion. But on Sunday the wheels truly came off the Great Black Weekend Plan.
After trying to check in online and being met by an app as responsive as a National Assembly backbencher in the afternoon session, we tried calling the airline. Not one human picked up the phone for six straight hours.
No matter: we were well on schedule to arrive at the airport by 15h05 for our 16h00 BA flight — until we were met by the sight of what seemed like seven trillion taillights on the highway. And then an abrupt stop. Sigh. An accident, clearly. Don’t panic, Mrs N assured us — according to her GPS, it was a three-minute delay. I blame our rampant inflation and degeneration into junk status because the three-minute delay ended up being a 10-minute delay. Panic.
We presented ourselves at the check-in counter — but the flight had closed four minutes earlier, a woman in a tight-fitting uniform and the face of a constipated panda told us with an inexplicably smug expression.
So we made our way to the BA ticket sales counter to try and get onto the 18h05. But the next available flight was at 19h10. Not that it mattered because we did not exist on “the system”. Everyone has had an encounter with the dreaded “system” that’s bandied about when you’re about to fall on your back like a drunken turtle, paws in the air and getting shafted. I groaned loudly.
We had just been diverted to Kulula because maybe we were on their system, when Siphiwe, our driver, called to point out that the fuel light was on and that he didn’t fancy his chances of making it to The Valley. No sweat, I said. Give me two minutes and I’ll e-wallet a few hundred rand from my FNB app. But the app was adamant that I was punching in the incorrect PIN. I dialled Siphiwe to ask him to be patient while Mrs N was making her way to the bathroom and she would send him money from her app. But I got an error message from MTN assuring me that his number did not exist on their network.
At this point it occurred to me that Leon Schuster was obviously shooting a movie at the airport and I was being schuked. I scanned the room and saw a bulky fellow of Indian extraction with an extraordinarily dark skin, a Hercule Poirot ’tache and Elvis sideburns. Aha!
As it turns out, he was just another irate traveller who had been bumped off the same flight. By then we had been found on “the system” and could go on the 18h05 fight after all. But the flights were R690 more expensive. Each. I started giggling and surrendered my credit card with an air of resignation. And then I remembered Siphiwe stuck in Kloof without gas — which we only managed to get to him some 40 minutes later.
Meanwhile, back at the Kulula counter, “the system” was acting up again. When our attendant swiped my card to take her R690 times three, only one payment went through. She needed to do it again. My FNB app was still not playing ball so I had no way of verifying her story. Once again, I surrendered my credit card for more Black Sunday abuse.
By the time we staggered into an eatery to wait for our flight, our souls had diminished to the size of a gnat. It is round about this time that an announcement came over the PA to the effect that our flight had been delayed to 19h10, after all.
And this is when I saw the error of my ways. Dubai has recently appointed the world’s first minister of artificial intelligence because AI is real. I had clearly been the victim of an elaborate prank from the machines all afternoon.
Everything was fine at first, but on Sunday the wheels truly came off the Great Black Weekend Plan