Sometimes things are so bizarre it takes a while to gather a reaction.
Walking down Main Road in Fish Hoek, an old guy comes from behind and bashes past me. I comment on it and he turns his head and says angrily, “You bumped into me!”
Dressed in a purple tracksuit and Elvis Presley sunglasses, he was an amusing sight. But what made it more amusing was when, while scowling at us, he walked into a post box.
We couldn’t help feeling as bit sorry for him after that.
Also in Fish Hoek, my jalopy stopped in the road waiting to turn right, a car pulls up next to us and a guy rudely shouts through the passenger window, “It’s illegal to turn across a solid line!”
Even if I was making an illegal turn – which I wasn’t – it’s not like South Africans follow the rules of the road anyway.
“Apparently,” Lucy says, “drinking seawater makes you mad.”
We were deliberating on the reasons behind the mental state of our new neighbours. I reckoned it was the high instance of retirees in the area, she supposed there was something in the water.
I don’t really believe my theory – there’s nothing to prove that getting old means getting grumpy. My gran is eighty-seven and lovely and charming and sweet. The fact is that if you’re young and grumpy then you’ll be old and grumpy; young + happy = old + happy.
As kids we believed there was a military base hidden in the mountains around Fish Hoek, so maybe an experiment leaked into the sea or reservoir and the water does make one surly.
Not as dramatic as a zombie holocaust but reality seldom is.
Or maybe it’s because Fish Hoek is so far away from Cape Town CBD – not so much physical distance as lifestyle – that people have just evolved differently.
Maybe all that free time for Sudoku, television, tea and rusks doesn’t make one more relaxed and laid back, but just annoyed that there are so many people having so much more fun than you.
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