The fifteen year old has very definite opinions. On my driving he is clear: Sedate, boring, too slow. “Break some laws, Dad!” he’ll urge from time to time. “Just once!”.
So we went to Bluff Meats yesterday Sunday to bulk buy essentials like biltong, roasts, chicken nuggets and his favourite thick aged steaks. On the way back I need to turn right into Old Main Road. As I’m turning I realise Whoa! there’s a big island across the road, we’re actually at a left-turn-only intersection. Too late, I’m committed, gotta follow through. Luckily mine is a high-rise Ford Ranger bakkie so I hop the island and ‘proceed’ hoping no-one I know saw me.
“Cool Dad!’ says the opinionated one. Tonight he follows up with “Hey Dad that was cool yesterday. You were real gangster for a change”.
At last I’ve made it. Acceptance in gangster circles.
Who remembers the AWB’s Eugene Terreblanche? Who can forget him? I bumped into him one day ca.1999.
Driving my hired car in a crowded Pretorius Street in downtown Pretoria one fine day I slowed down to let a car wanting in move around a stationary truck. It pulled past the truck and went back into the left lane and slowed so that I drew next to it. The driver wound down his window and gave me a very sincere, “Baie dankie, ek waardeer dit terdeë,” in that voice, staring straight at me, impaling me on the pale blue flames of his blowtorch eyes. *
I reminded myself to breave. * It was Eugene Terreblanche himself. Charismatic bliksem.
Like this, except he was driving and he didn’t smile – he was all sincerity and dankbaarheid.
Famous for his 1988 / 89 liaison with Sunday Times reporter Jani Allan.
His large white bottom and his green underpants hit the news.
In court: Further testimony was given by AWB financial secretary Mej. Kays Smit. Smit testified that Allan had phoned her to come and remove a drunken Terre’Blanche from her flat early one morning because Allan was expecting someone and was anxious to get rid of him. Smit testified to finding Terre’Blanche on Allan’s couch “naked except for a khaki jacket around his shoulders and a pair of green underpants with holes in them”.
I have inspected my own underpants carefully ever since, and replace them more frequently than I used to, and I never buy green. You never know . . . .
~~oo0oo~~
*Jani Allan’s description of his penetrating gaze! She wrote “Right now I’ve got to remind myself to breathe … I’m impaled on the blue flames of his blowtorch eyes.”
“Baie dankie, ek waardeer dit terdee” – Fank you, sincerely appreciated
Bewilderbeast Droppings 