Editor’s Note

If you go to Glen beach, Cape Town, at six in the morning on any day of the year, in a howling storm or for a glorious pink sunrise or during the bitterest misty morning of pea-soup fog, you’ll find footprints leading across the beach into the brain-freeze ocean. Through summer and winter, before work, in the icy currents of the Atlantic seaboard, the crazies are out there, getting their fix of the bracing cold water that, if you survive it, will make you fitter, stronger, saner and more clear-headed than almost anything else you can do on Earth — discounting the shocking cold winter bathing of those truly insane Scandinavians.

Dipping into the freezing ocean is not as counterintuitive as it, at first, feels. First you put in a toe — it goes numb, then you add a foot — it goes numb too, then a whole leg — numb, the torso, etcetera. By the time you’ve submerged your head and you feel that numb sense of oneness with the universe professed by mystics, yoga teachers, acid poppers, meditators, extreme sports people, tightrope walkers and near-death experiencers, you know you’re onto something good.

The sense of relief you feel after surviving your arteries icing up, your hands and feet turning into claws and your life blood freezing in the motion of pumping through your arrhythmic heart, dispels any sense of gloom you could have about the world, your life and its circumstances. It’s all plain sailing from there on in for the rest of the day. No wonder there are always footprints leading into the ocean on Glen beach.

An added benefit is the development of brown fat, as Paula Andropoulos writes on page 12 of this issue, as is the sense of stillness and quiet you get from being underwater in commune with and answerable to only yourself. All swimmers will agree that it’s good to shut out the world sporadically, even if it’s only for a few seconds.

Nomzama Mbatha may soon long for just such a moment of peace — she’s hit Hollywood with a bang, starring in a mega-hit that’s out this coming week. She’s on the precipice of stardom.

You read about it first, here!

Iwent into a biltong shop and got myself a packet this past week. It was only R30 worth. With current biltong prices, he really shouldn’t have bothered with that brown paper bag of air. He might as well have put it in a weed bankie. After he rang it up I asked him for a toothpick. He looked at me like he was behind the counter at an automotive parts dealer and I had asked him for a packet of avos. With a dismissive wave of hand, he grunted, “I haven’t got any.”

I think it was hunger that made me refuse to let it go. “If you were running a hot dog stand, I suppose you wouldn’t give out serviettes, would you?” I said. My point disappeared into his skull like Covid relief funds into the cadre deployment Bermuda Triangle. He mumbled something about the stupidity of comparing hot dogs and biltong.

I literally cannot function with anything stuck between my teeth, so I sauntered into a nearby Wimpy and grabbed a toothpick from the counter.

If you’re thinking I’m a nitpicker, it’s because I am. But I don’t think that my expectation of a toothpick in a biltong shop is unreasonable. There are many things that come in combos. You purchase a vehicle and get insurance. Pap comes with vleis. Peanut butter and jam. Julius comes with Floyd. They are all combos.

In his defence, the grumpy biltong pusher is not alone in dispensing incomplete offerings to the public. Let’s talk about Mexican, Portuguese and Indian cuisine restaurants and takeaways. About 20 years ago there was a Portuguese cafe called Mario’s in downtown Benoni. It used to open until about 2am, which was very convenient for bachelors such as myself, in the throes of enjoying their last few years of freedom.

I grew up in Durban, which means that my chilli heat tolerance is extremely high. But even I didn’t mess around with Mario’s spicy chicken — I always ordered the mild flavour. But in the early hours of this particular morning I was feeling bold, no doubt fuelled by the Jager bombs I’d been downing all night. I ordered the extra hot wings. Halfway through the quarter chicken, I burst into the bathroom in my apartment, half blind, my mouth on fire and molten wax dribbling out of my left ear.

Without bothering to disrobe fully, I jumped into the shower and opened the cold tap on full blast, yelling expletives in Portuguese. And I don’t even speak Portuguese.

I believe that Mario should have sold it as a chicken-and-ice pack combo. This goes for every curry café in the Overport area in Durban. They should be selling a combo of bunny chow, antacid sachet and wet wipes for the following morning.

Gold Reef City has rides such as the Anaconda and the Tower of Terror. In all the years I’ve been taking the kids there, I have avoided participating in any of those rides. My reason is simple. Each ticket should come with a complimentary adult diaper. My children still look up to me as some kind of hero. It would be a damn shame if, as I disembarked from the ride, my pants had brown stains.

When I tell people that companies have been stealing my creative ideas for decades, they snigger and give me that “he’s so delusional” look. But I tell them that I came up with the SpeedPoint machine-in-church combo in a chapter in my second collection of hallucinations titled Is It Coz I’m Black?. Since then, the beloved faithful have been swiping for their blessings. And long before Uber came along, I was irritating bar owners with the idea. These were days before apps, and the good ole SMS was cutting-edge technology.

It seemed to me like a no-brainer, offering drunks a ride home.

Pubs across the land must be commended for condom vending machines in bathrooms. It’s a nobrainer that after a certain number of shots, fellow patrons that were five-out-of-tens when you started quaffing undergo a magical transformation into nine-out-oftens.

Now the only thing missing from the pub arsenal is the complimentary breathalyser. When the habit takes off, remember that you read about it here first.

It’s only a matter of time before you order your Nando’s and, wrapped with your sachet of extra peri-peri sauce, you will find a sachet of Gaviscon. And when that happens, readers of this column will be called to the high court as witnesses after I take them on like that “Please call me” guy.

In his defence, the grumpy biltong pusher is not alone in dispensing incomplete offerings to the public