Some cruising South Africans really need a kick up their jingle bells

There are few things in life as entertaining and at times, awful, as people watching.

After spending a few days in a confined space like say, a cruise ship, camping terrain or a holiday resort, familiar faces and patterns of behaviour start emerging. People are strange, like The Doors sang.

I’ve just had the opportunity to spend five days in a confined environment – and you can’t make up this stuff. It was a cruise between Durban and Mozambique with a cross-section of people and pronouns.

But these were not just the usual pronouns, the him, her, they and whatevers because some people identify either as bricks, pricks or screensavers.

That’s the behavioural quotient some passengers proudly flagged as if on a pride parade of stupefying idiocy.

The ship’s staff were from all around the world, many without the benefit of English as their first language. And when they spoke, it wasn’t the queen’s version. But sure as hell, the South Africans on board would talk to them in the same broken English, instead of speaking normally.

“Ya, how are you today my friend. You make cocktail for me, the gin and flowers one. And me like a beer. You know, Black Label. In my country we call it

Zamalek.” And of course “are you guys behind the bar friends? Brothers in arms.” Later, when the Brakpan approach to communicating with foreigners became inaudible, even for me, a women piped up: “Ag man, maybe he just don’t understand. Let’s leave him. He’s just a bar guy.”

Those people don’t deserve a Bell’s, they deserve a kick up their jingle bells for disrespecting people. It’s a trait that’s more abhorrent than the lies spun by the political lower class.

Then there are the Waltzing

Matildas who don corsets so tight that a tsunami of cleavage drowns the most distant gaze in a deliberate opposite direction.

Or the people with other pronouns who might be akin to “confused” because frankly, dressing up and down at the same time is like a Christmas tree.

And I saw how disagreements over a spot at a cocktail table can turn into a spitting contest between friends.

There’s an adventure in every moment just watching people being themselves.