TIME WAITS FOR NO-ONE
One of my favourite Jackson 5 songs is a little-known ditty called Time Waits For Noone. At this point in my life, when I have significantly fewer whiskeys and orgasms in my future than I’ve had in my past, this is a much bigger deal than one would think. The importance of time has never been clearer to me.
This is why I’m baffled by Joe Biden’s appetite for the White House. Four years into the job, Clinton, Bush jnr and Obama had aged by an average of 15 years each. By extrapolation, Biden will effectively be 137 years old by the time his term ends. He’ll be the size of a prune left out in the Namib desert for a year.
About 140 years ago, a yellow metal was discovered on the Reef and capitalism around these parts went on steroids. This is when we were told that a day was 24 hours long, eight to 12 of which had to be spent making some double-chinned obese fellows even fatter and richer so they could spend their evenings smoking cigars, guzzling cognac and banging cocktail waitresses at Leopard Creek.
Before that, individuals owned their own time. Your mother would send you to a village 150 miles away to deliver a message to your uncle that his favourite stud bull, Mgibeli, had broken his own record and impregnated 28 cows in one day. You would set out on foot at dawn on a random Wednesday because, hey, you don’t have to report at work at 8am to work on Excel spreadsheets at the plantation. And you don’t have to fill in leave forms or anything. You’d get there at 7am and be received by your aunt. She’d pour water for you to wash and send you to a rondavel to wait. Maybe half an hour later she’d appear with a platter of amadumbe, wild spinach and pumpkin. She’d shout at your cousins to grab the fattest cockerel in the yard and prepare it for you.
No sign of your uncle.
It takes about three hours to boil a grain-fed organic chicken. If you were lucky, the slain cockerel would appear on a platter at around 1pm, staring morosely at you.
No sign of your uncle.
A calabash of homebrew would appear. And then maybe around 6pm your uncle would arrive. He’d spend the next two hours talking about everything under the sun except why you were there. The following morning would be the same until maybe, if you’re lucky, your uncle asks you why you’re there. After sharing Mgibeli the bovine manwhore’s exploits, your uncle would nod sagely and say something profound like, “Oh, OK.” If you were lucky again, you would set out on foot for the great trek home two days later. Time was of no consequence. Fast-forward to the 2021st Year of our Lord and I’m convinced that some mad scientist has invented a time travel machine and brought folks from that pre-gold rush era to life.
We’ve all met these folks. Folks who have no concept of time. But this weekend I had an encounter on the Umzinto R612 route that confirmed my suspicions about the existence of the time machine.
I’d just realised that by the time I got to our Kingsburgh destination, it would be after Cyril’s 6pm booze curfew. And I had no appetite for Bheki Cele’s Blue Shirts. So I suggested we stop at this nondescript liquor store somewhere between Kenterton and Himmerville.
The fellow behind the counter seemed completely wrong-footed by the idea that there was a customer. He kept making entries in an exercise book. I stood there for a good 30 seconds until I asked him if he was going to serve me. He gave me a look like I’d asked him to break into the SA Mint.
He looked at the fridge, looked at me and scribbled in his book again, for another 20 seconds. Excuse me, is there beer for me to buy, I inquired again. The owner is at the back, he informed me, going back to writing. Are you going to get him, I asked—
I interrupt this story because I have run out of space. The next time you’re face to face with a time waster, remember that you’re not alone. But also, remember there’s a time machine bringing back folks from 1881 to live among us.
If you were lucky, the slain cockerel would appear on a platter at around 1pm, staring morosely at you