Shape Up, Ship Out

Hello and welcome to Blog v.2. Sit down and shut up, or you won’t get a biscuit.

Now that I have your attention, allow me to resume my vent in the style I am accustomed to. Ahem. Not only have I successfully migrated my blog (as you can see) from the frankly crap Blogger platform to the user-friendly clickety-clack WordPress, but in a strange way this is reflecting my own relocation to greener pastures. I have, after all, shed blood, sweat and tears for Durban, and we part on good terms. Well, apart from leaving parts of my left leg in the pavement outside City Hall after being shot, those messages scrawled on the toilet walls of every bar in the city and that one barman who insists I never paid for that bottle of Moët, but then it’s his word against mine, ishntit, Orificer? Anyway, moving on…which is the topic for today’s post. Moving: it sucks.

Boohoo? Nah, not really.Of course, I’m going to miss my mates, the warm surf and being able to pick up a bunny chow on virtually any street. ‘Where to?’ I hear you ask. Why, Cape Town, of course. I mean, if I’m going anywhere, it sure as shit isn’t going to be to Jozi. It’s a nice little vicious metropolis, Jozi, and I can handle it in small doses, but Hartebeespoort Dam is hardly the ocean, now is it? Not that I’d swim at Harties – I’d sooner wallow in the waste water treatment plants along the Vaal. In any case, can any of them compare to this?

Didn’t think so. ‘Why?’ you ask. Well after some 33 years spent living in the bars, clubs and shorebreaks of my hometown, it’s time for a change. That, and my wife will start spitting flaming acid from her eyes and end up on Death Row in Westville Prison if she has to face another day challenging the taxi drivers of Ethekwini to games of chicken. Little do they know they’re messing with the wrong woman. Lived in the same road as Rashied Staggie, she did. Apparently the gangsters would give her a wide berth and leave flowers outside her gate on her birthday. Smart move. In any case, in order to get to the fabled Mother City (where apparently the roads are paved with German swimsuit models, the gutters run with champa…Methode De Cap and the sun only sets at midnight), it would appear that there’s no easy way to do it. Inevitably, the entire world my wife and I have created must be dismantled and put into a thousand lookalike boxes – each of which stands an equally hazardous chance of falling off the moving van in some brutally desolate hick town like Stellenbosch or some such. But in order to achieve this mammoth task of course, we must pack. Which is where the fear and loathing sets in. Picture it: we’ve packed almost every item we own into cardboard and bubble wrap. We’re up to our nipples in depleted rolls of packaging tape and have finally discovered where the roach colonies live, and where all that loose change rolled off to. What we’re left with is a disconcertingly empty shell of a home, where the wind whistles through the cracks of yesterday’s memories. Steady on, I think we just hit a patch of nostalgia there. Sorry about that.

In any case, I’m not expecting Cape Town to be easy. I’ve seen the Jack Parow and Die Antwoord videos, and the Flats and Bellville look easily as dodgy as Umbilo and Wentworth. Apparently it’s a dog eat dog town, and when the top dog’s done, apparently it’s quite partial to nailing some stray cats in lieu of an after dinner mint.

But it’s not all good news. No – there’s lots to see and do in Cape Town: whitebread kugels! Hourdes of SUV drivers! Insufferable boytjies who think that popped collars are the biz and the clueless spraytan bimbos who love them! Tik! Trance parties that go on for sixteen days at a time! Running the gamut on the N2! Avoiding crossfire in gang shootouts!

Sounds a lot like Durban, actually.